OBJECTION!

Because suggesting your enemy do things is meaningless.

Fair, and people in swing states get inundated with ads as it is. Mostly I’d say it’s more useful for mobilization than persuasion, like if you get a text reminding you when voting day is maybe someone makes it when they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Ideally, volunteers could mean quality over quantity, less automated spam asking for money and instead actual humans responding to concerns and answering questions. Even more ideally, that could be paired with voters’ concerns being elevated and the party actually responding to them. The goal is to improve the quality of the campaign’s voter outreach, in whatever form that outreach takes.

I’m not a fan of Biden myself but I still think it’s worth discussing general electoral strategies.

The vast majority of Americans both already know how they feel about Trump and Biden and live in a solidly red or blue state. If you do want to focus on Biden, volunteer with phone banking or canvassing so that your efforts are directed to where they’ll actually matter and be organized in line with their messaging. Personally, I’d say you’re better off focusing on local races where you have more of an opportunity to come at it from a different angle and cut through people’s fortified positions. And as another user said, focus on mobilization, it’s easier to get someone who already agrees with you to register and make a plan than to convince someone to change their whole worldview.

There are also strategies outside of electoralism, such as protests and counter-protests. You can join an organization and form tactics and strategies to subvert the right’s actions, and engage with direct action to build trust and community that could be important in the future. Form strategies while being realistic about your goals and capabilities and coordinate with others.

I try not to be but sometimes I can’t help myself.

The New York Crimes is a garbage propaganda rag. They don’t deserve a red cent from anyone after pushing their transphobic agenda, (and responding to widespread criticism by publishing an article defending JK Rowling) or after they blatantly lied and published a fake news story about Hamas conducting mass rape in an attempt to sway public opinion to be in favor of Israel’s genocide. If you have a NYT subscription, you are paying people to lie to you.

You can go to archive.is and put in the url of a news story you want to read in the second box and it will usually let you bypass the paywall.

YES

My understanding is that a tankie is defined as someone who seeks to promote global peace, understanding, and equality, with nuanced views that incorporate marginalized and international perspectives, grounded in historical evidence.

That’s how I see it used anyway.

Sell their land to a shell company (pun intended) which leased the land back to the main company at inflated rates as part of a convoluted financial scheme to embezzle money, and then blame the endless shrimp.

Fuck Nazis.

I don’t see where I established a moral high ground or provoked a visceral reaction. All I did was establish that vegans see it as a moral question and not just a matter of preference.

Do I know you?

Bad faith, however, is definitely your strong suit. Going from intentional mischaractarization into whining and playing the victim because I called you out on it is quite a skillful combo to sidetrack away from any serious discussion.

I do think that harping on this stance of “Anytime anyone says anything is bad, it’s basically the same as being a religious nut job” is pretty ridiculous, so I’d advise finding a different angle next time, except that that’s the only thing you’ve got that even resembles an argument, so idk.

Surprise surprise non-vegans don’t particularly like being told that are on the same moral footing as children beaters. If it puts you right with your god I give you permission to compare me to one again. I won’t be convinced but hey you got my permission to do it. Unlike one of us in this conversation, I can tolerate people who don’t agree with me.

The purpose of the analogy was to establish the difference between disagreements and preference and disagreements about morality, not to put you on “the same moral footing as children beaters” which is an intentional, bad faith mischaracterization. If you’ll look at what I actually said:

Vegans don’t view it as the type of question that’s like, “Do you like Kirk or do you like Picard?” but rather as the type of question that’s like, “Is it ok to beat your children?"

Reading comprehension not your strong suit, I take it.

But what about disagreements that aren’t just about preferences, but about right and wrong? Vegans don’t view it as the type of question that’s like, “Do you like Kirk or do you like Picard?” but rather as the type of question that’s like, “Is it ok to beat your children?” The proper way to live is to not beat children and all other ways are wrong and awful. Framing the question as merely about individual preferences and not about morality is assuming the conclusion.

I won’t deny that there are farmers who abuse their animals, that is a problem that can be dealt with through the legal system, but you can’t sell me a sack of lies claiming that I abused the cows I milked growing up.

The legal system has no interest in addressing the vast majority of animal abuse, and there’s a lot of money in it which means enough political influence to ensure that never changes. The vast majority of produced goods relies on abusive conditions. It is possible to produce animal products without abuse, but removing abuse from the system means less will be produced, which means a reduction in consumption is still necessary.

Well, it’s not actually that different. There’s no consistent moral principle that explains why the animals we treat preferentially ought to be treated preferentially, it just comes down to cultural norms and which animals you think look cute. It’s worth examining whether our behaviors are grounded on what we actually think makes sense.

Because brains are wired to avoid 1) changes to habits and 2) admission of wrongdoing. Encountering a vegan makes the brain start running cover and looking for ways to discredit arguments. Often, the mental framework for dismissing “uppity” advocates already exists. There’s also the force of money and industry propaganda which should be acknowledged, but in my experience people are more than capable of coming up with justifications on their own.

It’s very difficult to overcome these psychological forces, but simply making the switch can remove a lot of cognitive dissonance and expose certain BS arguments for what they are.

Thanks for your advice, but just to be sure it actually works, may I ask how many people you have convinced to go vegan?

Surely your advice is based on actual experience, right? You’re not just saying this because you disagree with veganism and want vegans to phrase their arguments in a toothless and ineffective way, right?

This post is unsubstantiated hearsay! You should know better than to make claims without any sort of evidence to back them up!