The notion that Americans should dial down their incendiary rhetoric is undeniable, but that message cannot be delivered credibly by the person who literally sent a mob to the US Capitol, and then sat back and cheered the thugs who assaulted cops for three hours.
The plea to ease up on hate speech cannot be made by the guy who invented a patois of political violence, who prods supporters to assault hecklers, threatens to shoot undocumented immigrants and looters, jeers the husband of a rival who was assaulted with a hammer, and refers to opposition as “vermin.”
And the idea that the toxic talk has gone too far sounds hollow coming from a demagogue who thinks Hillary Clinton’s fate might best be settled by “Second Amendment people,” that Liz Cheney should be sent before a military tribunal, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, should be executed.
This is the political atmosphere that Donald Trump has nurtured, so when he whines about how “the rhetoric of Biden and Harris” has inspired two troubled people (both likely Republicans) to shoot at him with assault rifles, it can be dismissed as one of the most pitiful attempts at gaslighting from a deranged felon who has made a career of it.
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Many of his supporters do not want democracy. They want minority rule, whether that’s through an ethno-state or a homogenous ideological state of some other kind. They have glamorous fantasies that somehow they are part of the in-crowd that will enjoy a privileged position in an authoritarian regime.
Do most of them even know what an “authoritarian regime” is? They might be pretty surprised to find out what that actually looks like.
Surely the leopards won’t eat my face!
Probably a lot of winning and Jesus?
So this guy says things like what outlined here:
But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
and people react with hey that is a threat to democracy and they whine us pointing out the threat to democracy is rhetoric. Its not rhetoric when its based on actual things. Whats funny is the assasination attempts both seem to be voters of his from 2016 and just before that we got one of those convicted from the riots who showed anger because they left them hanging in the wind. Seems to me all the anger they have bread into the folks they weaponized is coming back to bite them.
Wasn’t the kid in PA too young to vote in 2016?
Yeah sorry was just resgistered as a republican but too young for the first trump election.
Is everybody else using ‘rhetoric’ wrong or am I the one off base? Afaik, it just means ‘speech’, or maybe ‘eloquence’ in certain contexts, but I’ve never seen it used to mean ‘lie’ until jd opened his mouth and everybody else followed along.
Thus is a holdover from half remembered lessons on Plato I guess. Socrates is contrasted with the rhetoricians as seeking Truth, a noumenal thing beyond us that we discover (or recall as Socrates would put it). The rhetoricians representative Gorgias has his argument famously summed up as “man is the measure of all things”, that is to say that nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Rhetoricians famously taught people how to convince others of their point of view, essentially modern debate technique. Socrates undermined this practice by pointing out that the skills employed (tone of voice, rhythm, eloquence) had nothing to do with determining truth.
With this argument in mind we can see why “rhetoric” is now used as a shorthand for emotional appeals, or style over substance. Rhetoric is what you rely on when you cannot make a structured and logical argument, while in theory the truth is the truth even if delivered in a dull monotone of limited vocabulary.
Rhetoric does mean speech. It’s usually used in a political context, so incediary rhetoric would be incidiary (political) speech.
Other than that, rhetoric is often equated with the policies talked about, so Trump’s rhetoric would be anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, pro-Russia, etc.
As for the ‘it’s not rhetoric’ part of the title - I think they meant it’s not just speech, it’s verifiable - so no direct meaning of ‘lie’ anywhere although the meaning of ‘lie’ is heavily implied.
I have to assume you learned the literal definition of rhetoric because you attended at least one higher level education course. (Just to be clear: I am complimenting your understanding of the fact that words have meaning).
Most people absolutely use the word “rhetoric” to mean “lie”, or more frequently: “a pathos that directly contrasts my own”.
It has basically been forced into a completely different meaning as part of the lexicon of internet speech.
I don’t think it’s being used as “lie” here, so much as “and I’m not just saying that, I really mean it”. Rhetoric being used like speech in the sense that it’s something that can be true or false vs something necessarily false
Using the second definition, I’d still clarify as “false rhetoric” or something. Maybe that’s just me shrug
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When it’s seldom used in my language, ‘rhetoric’ acts as a sum of similar opinions, talking points etc in a negative way, as holding no water or consisting of trickery and strawmen. One can say liberal rhetoric, partisan rhetoric, prehistoric rhetoric, whatever - it’s a reference to a part of an existing discourse.
There author implies that it’s not just words from a part of the audience with some possible exaggeration, it’s all facts.
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What does this have to do with orange “dictator from day 1” being undemocratic?
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This town needs an enema!
…did you just have a stroke in the middle of a strawman argument?
What democracy?
When they use their judges to steal this election (as they are currently planning to do), what will normal people do? Anything?
Yeah Trumps the biggest threat to democracy. But its not like people here want democracy. They dont want other people on the ballot. Yall use the word democracy like republicans use the word freedom.
I’ve yet to meet a person on Lemmy that doesn’t want more candidates on the ballots. Especially in local/state elections.
Not wanting other people on the ballot, and being happy when bourgeoisie funded spoiler candidates for national elections. Like Stein, who do nothing for anyone but themselves. Fail to make it on a state’s ballot to divide the left. Are very different things.
No that is definitely a clear cut example of not wanting a candidate on the ballot
Failing to make the ballot and not wanting them on the ballot are two different things.
What? You’re saying you failed to make the ballot.
No. Good try though.
Youre disagreeing with a claim im making about you
“I didnt say X, I said Y, which is different from X”
Its not a comparison between failing to make a ballot and wanting someone to not be on a ballot. Its wanting someone to fail to make a ballot. Which means they wont be on the ballot…
Its wanting someone to fail to make a ballot.
That’s not really what’s happening here either.
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Does NJ stand for New Jersey or what? I clicked a couple of buttons and they are just NJ everywhere.
Hilarious that the thumbnail contains a Dollar General sign. It’s obviously not part of the collection of crap in front of it, but just couldn’t be more fitting from a stereotypical point of view.
I know where that picture is from. It’s a small town in northern NY, and the people there are exactly how you think they are.
Trump is a useful idiot. The real threat to democracy is the Heritage Society, Project 2025, and the christofascists using Trump to gain power. They telegraphed their intentions when they said that the democrats were only electing Biden and Harris so they could kill off Biden and install Harris. I guarantee that their plan is to get Trump elected, kill him and Vance, and install the christofascist speaker of the house president.
Journalism
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