I think what it all comes down to is most people don't really want rational debate, and don't participate in debates in the hope of learning or even to help others learn. Most people participate in debates to feel superior/"own" the other side. The result is debates that are typically lazy, uninformative, and downright mean.

I think all of us have a little bit of this desire for superiority in us and we need to consciously make an effort to suppress it.

if you’re planning to kill the guy, what would you do with our cat?”

So...this makes no sense. If I had to guess, I'd imagine your girlfriend exhibits this kind of strange obsessive behavior inconsistently, has occasional bouts of depression, and is no older than 30. Regardless of whether I'm right (but especially if I am), you should consider whether your girlfriend is suffering from something that requires a psych evaluation and get her one.

The consequences was losing the election in 2020, no? I mean Democrats are really, really, really bad at fighting back. Like bringing pool noodles to a gun fight bad. But saying they do nothing is a bit much.

I'll guess it that people who like third parties fall into 2 categories: people who are really focused on one issue in particular (green party, free soil party, pirate party), and people who are really individualistic (Angus King, Bernie Sanders, Jesse Ventura, etc.). The former aren't really there to win, but rather to draw attention to the issue. And the latter don't wanna join someone else's party.

To be fair, I'm not sure this is an unrealistic scenario of your average instagram influencer going out camping.

Ok yeah, but that doesn't mean we need to choose Alfred to do the actual fighting against the Joker. Instead, it's perfectly OK to say "Hey Alfred, let Batman handle the Joker, you watch and provide advice if you're needed."

I'd argue madness is sticking with a candidate who now has virtually zero chance of winning what should be an easy race with anyone else. Democrats have stuck their head in the sand way too many times. They did it with how unpopular Hillary was in 2016. They did it with RBG not retiring. And now They're doing it again.

This is the simple, undeniable truth: Biden is extremely unpopular. One could argue he might win, but that's the best you can do. A remote, unlikely possibility that he could beat what should be the least electable person in history.

You are the one pulling an ad hominem, not me. You ignore my answer to your “argument” and go on to attack my person.

No I didn't, everything was specific to your argument. I said nothing about you. As for your argument, well I guess I'm glad that I'm promoted to teenager now.

Your entire argument is “without the context of the site we’re on, no-one could know what this is referring to”, as if this was some sort of “both sides” bullshit, which you claim to despise.

But the argument I'm making is that both sides are guilty of claiming the other side is defending genocide not that both sides are guilty of committing genocide right now. The argument that one side is defending genocide is bad faith, as other than a few extremists nobody on either side is actually defending genocide.

Ad hominem = attacking the person rather than the argument. Like "you're a little kid..." The fact that you feel the need to accuse someone you've never seen of being a kid instead of pointing out what's actually wrong with what I'm saying should be seen as evidence that you are desperately flailing, pathetically grasping for straws to build an argument from when you clearly have nothing. Instead, it's getting upvoted, for some reason.

Everything else you say is completely and absolutely non-responsive, internet tropes in place of argument. You completely ignore the whole point of my argument, which is that you replaced my argument with another argument and argued against that instead, and proceeded to argue against an argument that was never made in the exact way I described.

Forget Israel and Palestine, the fact that this illogical Trumpian debate tactic shit is getting upvoted is the new thing that disturbs me. We're truly fucked as a species.

"What the fuck are you smoking" is an ad hominem designed to distract from my undeniably true point, specifically: that both sides are similar in using unfair allegations of defending genocide to dismiss more nuanced beliefs of the other side.

Outside of shitty Israeli propaganda, no-one thinks Israel is under the threat of genocide.

This is called a motte-and-bailey fallacy. You're taking my point implying that both sides accuse the other of defending genocide and then wanna say I'm suggesting Israel is under threat of genocide. These are different things. You use a different thing because if you were to address the actual point, which again is undeniably true, you would have a very hard time.

To be clear, the "genocide" Israel supporters (unfairly) accuse others of defending is the Hamas attack on Israel, where Hamas killed unarmed civilians at close range, proudly recording it on video. I don't mean to imply you can't figure that out on your own, but you kinda forced me to point it out.

And if you say "but people who are protesting Israel aren't defending Hamas attacking Israeli civilians, but are defending the right of the Palestinian civilians to remain alive", then you understand completely. Now try swapping the relevant ethno-religious tribes.

Ok let's see how the polls move. If they move in the right direction, Biden stays on. If they move in the direction everyone knows they'll move in, he steps down. Deal?

If you took this out of the context of being on lemmy, it would be impossible to tell which side this came from.

It's interesting how as religious belief declines, government forcing of religion increases

Anybody. Buttigieg, Harris, Sanders, AOC, John Elway, I don't care. Biden keeps saying he's the only guy who can beat Trump. After last night's debate it should be obvious that he's the only guy who can't beat Trump.

At this point it's starting to feel like Biden's holding the nation at gunpoint and making us have a second Trump term. He's always been a terrible politician, running twice for the nomination and failing to get a single delegate, until Obama made him VP. Honestly I suspect part of the reason Obama chose him is because he didn't wanna play kingmaker and figured Biden was too old to run again.

Then in 2020 I think the argument was Biden could benefit from Obama's popularity. I certainly thought that was a terrible pick, but not totally lacking in logic. But in 2024 there was utterly no rational basis for Biden to be running in the first place. Now that he's been a complete disaster, he's just fucking us as a nation for his own narcissism.

Why the hell would anti-genocide protesters be protesting Bernie Sanders, the rare jewish voice that has condemned Israel's war? It goes to show how the biggest unwitting enablers of Israel getting continued support from the US are these edgelord protesters. All they did was piss people off.

It's time for everyone on the left to be clear-eyed. Just try to be convincing. That's the only thing we gotta do differently if we wanna end poverty, war, and live in a literal utopia. Just try being convincing and picking the right hills to die on and not being willfully blind of weak spots, just once.

I love all the Bernie bros coming out and implying that the solution to the We Have No One But Octogenerians To Vote For Problem would be another octogenarian.

Surely there's someone under the age of 80 who's qualified to be president.

We should start a campaign to write him in to force the Dems' hand.

Well this is an explicitly peaceful march so leave the rioting for another day