Peter Drake, he/him, LFHCfS 🔥 @peterdrake@social.cleverlibre.org

One of the most thrilling parts of lightsaber dancing is yeeting a several-hundred-dollar piece of electronics ten feet into the air. #mwowm

Violet basking in the late summer sun. #dog

@Pyretta@girlcock.club I've noticed that same thing and assumed that they all have the same size motor; it just generates more acceleration in a smol doggo.

@freemo Out of curiosity, where to we go to view #QOTO stats?

@SecondJon @williamlweaver I'm all for good-faith discussion.

@SecondJon @williamlweaver Would it be fair to summarize your previous comments as, "He's just saying these things to rile people up?"

Regardless of why he's constantly saying demonstrably false things, I think it's relevant to @williamlweaver's original question about discussing policy: it's impossible to debate someone who doesn't come to the table in good faith. How can I make an argument or compare evidence with someone who's just going to make stuff up?

I am, of course, not asserting that nobody on the left has ever said anything untrue. I am saying that the amount happening on each side, especially from political leaders, is far from symmetrical.

It took a bit of work to summon them, but I got someone from HP to remotely exorcise my printer.

I'm on HP's website trying to figure out why my printer is so slow. In the section on drivers, my OS options are Linux, SAP, UNIX, and Windows. Seriously? No Mac OS?

@SecondJon @williamlweaver They didn't say the collusion statement was a "lie", they said it was "false or misleading". Clearly his intent was to say, "What I'm accused of isn't a crime." This is misleading. Do you believe otherwise?

Let's not litigate each one of these. There are plenty where there's no wiggle room -- Trump is just flat out contradicting observable facts. One very direct example:

“I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.” This is not true (which the White House later admitted) and there's no conceivable way he didn't know this.

PolitiFact does a better job than WaPo at rating degrees of dishonesty/inaccuracy. Here are their "Pants on Fire" statements from Trump:

https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/

Trump seems to be constantly fabricating numbers and saying "I never said..." things we have video of him saying.

@SecondJon @williamlweaver @AnonByNature By "rejection of dissent" I mean his oft-repeated assertion that the press is the enemy of the people.

The left certainly hate Fox News (who have little more attachment to facts than Trump), and I imagine the right hates places like the Huffington Post. That's one thing. To imagine that CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. are all conspiring against him smacks of mental illness. To assert that a criticism of Trump is an attack on America is autocratic, anti-democratic, and extremely dangerous.

@williamlweaver @SecondJon @AnonByNature

Yes. His press secretaries regularly double-down on his bald-faced lies. He has certainly enacted policies consistent with his lies, racism, and rejection of dissent, like his voter fraud commission and his child-separation policy.

I don't see how his position that he is immune to prosecution is consistent with "rule of law".

Of course, I think previous administrations have been insufficiently progressive.

@SecondJon @williamlweaver

No, they didn't say his statement is true. They said, "He's playing games with words. Conspiracy to defraud the government is certainly a crime." The crime may not be named "collusion", but what he's accused of is a crime.

Do you disagree with the characterization of Trump as a pathological liar, or at least someone who makes far more patently untrue statements than a typical politician?

I'm sure we'll get to policies eventually, but my issue here is that it's hard to have a debate with someone who has no interest in truth.

@williamlweaver Some of the hatred of Trump from the left is that he is majestically narcissistic, obscenely greedy, blatantly racist, and a pathological liar.

All politicians certainly spin things in their direction. Some lie to cover up their crimes. Trump lies for no reason about things that nobody else cares about: his inauguration was the biggest ever, the Boy Scouts praised him for his speech, Obama was born in Kenya, Muslims were cheering in New York after 9/11. Some of his lies, notably that he won the popular vote but a bunch of foreigners voted illegally, are fantastically dangerous to our democracy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/

It's hard to have a debate when the other side rejects basic, demonstrable facts and just makes stuff up.

Yes, we on the left think the GOP's policies are monstrous, but Trump as a person takes things to a whole new level. That's why a popular protest sign has been "Don't Normalize This".

@freemo Yes, it looks like it did!

TEST: Crossposting from Mastodon to Twitter (using moa.party).