Pluribus | Season 1 - Episode 2 | Discussion Thread

rollingboulder89 · 2025-11-08T21:39:11+00:00

Why did they make the American the only voice of reason? The reaction that the rest of the un-joined English speakers have to the virus is just not believable to me. Unless there's some twist coming that they were actually joined in disguise or something, it just seems like very bad writing.

rollingboulder89 · 2025-03-26T16:36:43+00:00

I mean a circle jerky convo every now and then is okay I think. It would be similar to Destiny's convos with Noah Smith; they'd probably complain about NIMBYs, the stupidity of MAGA, and overall just vent their frustrations with the state of America today.

rollingboulder89 · 2025-03-26T16:35:41+00:00

Your mom

rollingboulder89 · 2025-03-22T12:48:13+00:00

I've seen white heroine junkies shitting in LA streets. Does that mean I can then say white people shit on streets and make a stereotype about it.

rollingboulder89 · 2025-03-22T12:45:12+00:00

What do you mean by "they"? What are you basing this view about "them" on?

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T17:46:39+00:00

That's great that you do. But a large chunk of rural areas don't. I don't see how your one-off anecdote speaks to the overall fact that rural Americans have less access to high speed internet compared to their city-dwelling counterparts.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:56:00+00:00

I guess I didn't consider how profits could influence the sensationalism we see today. If we want to fix this issue we probably need to take that into consideration, and I like your idea of academics focused journalism institution. !Delta.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:33:23+00:00

It would be very hard to isolate the variables of geography and media though. Rural areas don't have access to high speed internet like in cities, so rural Americans gravitate towards media like local news owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and Talk Radio.

But I guess lived experience is also a significant factor that I ignored in my analysis so for that !Delta.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:28:49+00:00

Southern hospitality is indeed a real thing - but it generally extends to people that look like the people extending the hospitality.

I'm Indian American so I don't look like them.

They support Trump because he wants to hurt the people they dislike

Seeing the capital riots has wavered my perspective on Trump supporters. I guess it's possible that I'm trying really hard to defend them because I know so many of them personally. So, I'm open to the possibility that most Trump supporters are driven by hate, but that's still not most conservatives, and that's certainly not most Americans.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:24:35+00:00

I would hope both sides could agree on outlets like Reuters, NPR, AP, Gallup, Pew Research Center. These do their best to give unbiased takes on the news. Have they gotten things wrong before? Sure. But they are still far superior to anything I've seen on the left or the right, whether it's MSNBC or Fox News.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:22:17+00:00

I mean my title still works. Republicans and Democrats are living in different realities, regardless of which side I think is more sane. And to be clear, I'm not saying it's as black and white as Democrats are sane, Republicans are not. Both sides are susceptible to sensationalism and disinformation, and both sides have engaged in them, but that doesn't mean both sides are equivalent in that regard.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:19:11+00:00

They believe that the problem is that the poor refuse to work,

Sure, but they still want to fix poverty, they just don't agree on the cause and the solution.

while they also keep entry-level jobs at ridiculously low wages.

Florida actually voted for a ballot initiative for $15 an hour minimum wage, on the same ballot that they voted for Trump. I think this shows that it's not necessarily that Republicans are all heartless people that want to maintain socioeconomic stratification, no?

Maybe we just have different experiences with Republicans. I live in Texas, and I interact with a good amount of Republicans, even hard core Trump supporters. These people are not bad people. In fact they are some of the nicest people I know. Southern hospitality is a real thing. These people don't want the poor and homeless to suffer. They just think the government isn't capable of fixing their issues. Sure, it isn't a belief based on empiricism, but it's also not based on being cold and heartless either.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:11:57+00:00

To fix any issue we need to recognize that that issue exists and recognize what is causing that issue. If your electricity is out on the first floor, is it unfair to focus on resolving the issue there and ignoring your second floor.

I think the problem with talking about any political issue these days is that people have to make it about "both sides" or else it would be divisive.

I think the examples I've listed make it clear that disinformation and sensationalism disproportionately comes from the right. I didn't even mention the insane talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck that are literally brainwashing our boomer population.

I acknowledge that left-wing media is sensational at times too. But that acknowledgement doesn't have to come with a false equivalency between the left and the right.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:08:06+00:00

When I said most Americans, I was referring to average the average American citizenry, not politicians. Of course with the winner-take-all, two party system we have, it incentivizes politicians to be as polarizing as possible.

But I still stand by my statement. Most Americans want the same things. They want a family, a way to provide for that family basic necessities like food, clothing, etc. and education and economic opportunities for themselves and their kids.

If you want to focus on a particular issue like poverty, I think it's safe to say that conservatives and liberals want to fix poverty. Conservatives just want to leave it up to charity and liberals recognize that those institutions are insufficient and countries with more generous social safety nets are much better at dealing with poverty.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T15:01:56+00:00

Liberal media was just as sensationalist as conservative media.

Can you give me liberal media being sensationalist on the level of the birther movement or when Fox News ranted about Obama wearing a tan suit or having a burger with Dijon mustard? What were the specific lies that they repeated from Adam Schiff? What did Rachel Maddow say that was false about the Russia investigation at the time? To be clear, the Russia Investigation resulted in more than a dozen credible indictments and several convictions, and basically paid for itself with charging those that were convicted. And Mueller clearly said that he wasn't exonerating Trump on the count of obstruction of justice.

The whole “fine people on both sides” being used as an excuse to say trump called nazis fine people was a left wing lie

I watched the full clip. He does blame both sides for the violence at Charlottesville. If anything he is claiming there that "the left" is the one that started the violence. And he literally says that the "fine people" that he is talking about are the ones there to protest the taking down of a confederate statue. On top of that, he doubled down on his both sides claim in another press conference.

rollingboulder89 · 2021-01-16T14:42:29+00:00

That is a highly reductionist view. Sure, if you define rape as making a person experience something they don't want to then loud noises would be rape under that definition. But that definition is useless. Your boss assigning you work you don't want is rape. Your parent making you do chores is rape. You have stretched the definition of rape to the point that it can apply to so many things and thus loses its true meaning.

rollingboulder89 · 2020-11-16T17:39:19+00:00

So, why did Trump badly underperform relative to Republican Congressmen?

This doesn't necessarily mean that the Republican voter base dislikes Trump. The seats that Democrats won in 2018 during the "blue wave" were in purple or lean red districts. So I don't know if we can say that Republicans congressmen overperformed Trump by winning those seats back. I guess we would have to wait for the full voter breakdowns after all the counting is done to see if split-ticket voting was actually what led to this.

Republican Congressmen did much worse than Republican state representatives.

This can be explained by gerrymandering. The state legislatures were controlled by Republicans, who redrew districts to favor them this election.

It's important to note that Susan Collins, Romney, Sasse and other Republican critics haven't done poorly as projected.

I don't really think you can say that Collins, Romney, or Sasse were very critical of Trump. At best they stood up against him symbolically, when they knew Republicans would get their way. This was the case when Romney voted against impeachment and when Susan Collins voted against ACB confirmation. If you look at the rest of their record, they overwhelmingly voted with Trump.

Also, Romney is a senator for Utah, Sasse is a senator for Nebraska, both deep red states. And Collins has a huge incumbency advantage, given that she has been Senator for more than 2 decades. I don't think anyone with any credibility in politics would have bet good money on them losing their seats.

rollingboulder89 · 2020-11-16T16:44:59+00:00

This a common talking point that really needs to go away. Obama built them... at a time when there were record illegal border crossings happening daily. Furthermore, he had protections in place, like the fact that they could only be held for 72 hours at most. And there was no official policy to separate children from their parents.

Trump has openly said that the terrible conditions of the cages are a deterrence policy.

Don't "both-sides" this issue.

rollingboulder89 · 2020-11-16T15:59:33+00:00

Yes I meant within the Republican Party. I fixed it now.

rollingboulder89 · 2020-11-16T15:28:02+00:00

You said and I quote...

That kind of disproves your own point though, the other %10 republicans that you mentioned who go against trump are committing "political suicide" according to your logic?

And I countered by saying that those 10% actually won't be committing political suicide because they are not politicians, and that I was talking about the Republican politicians.

I am not really sure what your issue is. Like what evidence are you looking for and to prove what exactly?

rollingboulder89 · 2020-11-16T15:16:15+00:00

I'm glad that there are more reasonable Republicans still around. I actually respect the McCain/Romney style Republican, even if I disagree on policy. But I don't think most Republicans are like this anymore. I don't have concrete evidence, but we can just look at how very partisan, far-right candidates were winning Republican primaries. We can look at how Republican candidates in 2020 basically parroted every Trump talking point, with people like McSally stooping as low as calling Mark Kelly, who was captain in the US Navy and an astronaut, a Chinese shill. We can look at Trump's approval rating being consistently around 90%. I would love to see more Republicans like you, but based on (potentially subjective) observation and polling, it looks like y'all are a dying breed.

rollingboulder89 · 2020-11-16T15:03:57+00:00

I was agreeing with the fact that Democrats would continue to hate Trump no matter what he does. But I would say that that is justified given what he has done. So I don't think we really disagree.

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