The left is shockingly asleep about how bad this is. X still is the single most important platform for driving narratives about the news and politics. And it’s still important in part because Democrats and the left as a whole have been lethargic in leaving it. The fact that it’s blatantly being used to tilt the national political discussion in whatever direction Elon wants was probably one of many keys to getting Trump elected in 2024, and should be regarded as an ongoing emergency for Democrats and the left.

On the contrary it’s right, perhaps even acute

Assuming you actually believe I misunderstood their argument, perhaps it would be more useful to explain their actual argument that I’m not grasping?

So this version of the argument basically amounts to: people who have harmed society should contribute to social welfare that bolsters the economy and society collectively. Which while a solid effort and earning my upvote, 1) the_petty_auntie’s reply doesn’t show signs of making this particular argument and 2) in this particular case, it fails because society as a whole wasn’t harmed by her son’s actions - rather a particular victim was. And as the victim was a teen at the time of the incident, it’s unlikely that the victim would be able to take advantage of student loan forgiveness unless it happened many years ago.

The question asks why the audience’s student loans should be repaid now when hers were not. The response is that the reason is the same as paying for her son’s prison sentence for raping a minor, which is “betterment of society”. Let’s count the number of ways this fails:

• “For the betterment of society” is a justification that could be used for pretty much any defensible policy decision. It really doesn’t further the argument at all unless there is something specified about how paying student loans makes society better.
• RAPING A MINOR is in caps both to indicate shoutiness and to emphasize this aspect of the crime, which again, is hard to tie back to an argument about student loans
• The main failure - the fact that it’s a blatant ad hominem directed at the poster for having a son who raped a minor, which is an evidently successful attempt to hide the weakness of the purported argument by casting the OP as someone whom one would not want to be associated with by virtue of being a parent to a rapist. This implied argument, which is the real argument, is invalid in the absence of evidence that rapist-parents cannot have valid opinions.
• It’s also a particularly egregious example of an ad hominem because it relies on guilt/worthiness by blood relation, the same concept behind ideas like racism and even worse, inheritance.

Better answers might include:

• Education costs have risen to a degree that the fairness calculation is now different
• Student loan debt is a threat to the whole economy and just as bailing out banks sometimes makes sense, bailing out student loan holders might as well
• Financial inequality is out of control and we should dispense with antiquated notions of “fairness” to the wealthy when circumstances have been more fair to them overall than at any time in the past

But these answers would not get reposted on social media as much because they don’t play into tribalism and social drama.

All three people here are terrible

Charlize is cool.

The most politically incorrect truth is this: People are not good or bad, individual people do a variety of good and bad things. Mister Rogers told his gay friend to stay in the closet and marry a woman. Hitler banned animal cruelty. We don’t like to talk about these things, but it’s a true principle and a useful one to live by.

People create content knowing others are going to get filthy rich off it and they’ll get nothing in return. Except total loss of privacy.

The country was in decline for at least a decade before Trump took office.

Well 4 years of that decade was Trump being in office, and 4 other years was the result of people being willing to vote in literally anyone who wasn’t him. So really 8 years of that decade was Trump’s fault. And the other two years? Not bad.

As for the rest, Trump is cutting funding for research like crazy. That won’t just affect things today, that’s going to make stuff shitty for decades. And that’s exactly the kind of harm that the emotion-laden American news and social media simply won’t cover. So I don’t think there will be a backlash, rather the opposite - politicians will realize bullying scientists, government agencies, immigrants, and other voiceless Trump targets is just good politics, and keep doing it.

Of course future prediction is hard, so who knows what will happen. But I’m not seeing the path for this to turn around anytime soon. The same media that created MAGA, and made it even more popular 4 years after it proved itself to be a horrific disaster is the same media we have today. Democrats will probably win the next two elections because people can see what Trump is doing in real time, but after that I have no hope for America. If I have to predict the future, I’d guess the EU becomes the new global leader, driven by relatively high democracy and pro-science policies compared to the rest of the world. This could even occur in a relatively short time frame, like 5 years.

I’m plenty open to questioning every part of copyright (has the idea ever actually been proven to be worth the enormous costs? It’s like an infinity-percent tariff on anything information related.) but the same copyright should apply to everbody. It sounds like this proposal gives a specific pass to corporations developing AI - anything these corporations can access should be accessible to the general public as well. If you can use a song to train an AI for free, a human artist should also be allowed to use it directly and turn it into a new work.

“Of course I know what due process is. A lot of my friends are due process experts, and they’re always telling me ‘Donald, you do so much process. Nobody does process as brilliantly as you.’”

Many things are impeachable offenses; but nothing is convictable.

It would be hilarious if instead of asking this, the reporter asked him to define “due process”

I mean that’s a pretty easy choice for me

Always has been.

Skibidi Toilet is the modern Ninja Turtles.

BlueSky may not be ideal, but anything is better than X.

X is just a machine for turning billionaire cash into political domination.

The strategy they’ve been floating for years is: have two other candidates run while he runs for the house. Trump gets chosen as house speaker, meanwhile the President and VP resign, making Trump president. Then they argue this is technically constitutional since he didn’t win an election to become president.

That’s why it’s essential that after 2026, there is a push to eliminate this loophole. It may take a constitutional change, but first it’s going to take absolute annihilation of Republicans in the midterms.

I’m against violence, but I’m not sure urinating and/or defecating on anyone wearing this hat counts as violence