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I’m a mod at /truenews @reddit
It’s hard to keep a healthy news sub because of so much polarization, and so much subpar stuff that’s called “news”. I can point to 2 successful examples that handled it differently.
At truenews https://www.reddit.com/r/truenews/We simply ask for quality sources. You can read the sidebar for the rules. Basically we demand that all news posts are actually from reputable news sources. We provide an explanation of what that means and tons of valid examples. Then we mod to remove non-valid sources, and work with posters to help them understand the rules. If a user is having trouble getting used to the rules, we ask them to stick to the 2 dozen recommended sources we provided.
Another example is neutralnews https://www.reddit.com/r/neutralnews/This is a very clean sub because it went a very strict way. Not only are all posts expected to be from valid sources, but any comment is expected to contribute something useful (so no jokes or venting), and all claims in comments have to be substantiated. This sub is very hard to moderate and it can also be hard on participants because so many comments get deleted until users get the hang of the rules. But the benefit is that it enables real discussion from any angle of politics because people are blocked from repeating party lines and memes, and instead have to argue their point with sources. Some of the most useful political discussions I’ve seen have happened in this sub, due to the requirement for good faith arguments with sources.
Humanity has bad spots and problems everywhere. Here in the US we throw the expression “greatest country” at the drop of a hat. What is greatness, if not to try to work on our problems as much or better than everyone else is working on theirs?
People that want to wallpaper over our history of mistakes are doing the opposite of making the country great. True greatness is recognizing the problems and working hard to fix them. People like Sanders are the opposite of patriots. She would have us lie about who we are and what we’ve done, perpetuate our mistakes, and oppose those that want to do the work to actually make us greater.
Lemmy is a bit of a darkweb corner. It’s growing fast from Reddit users, but redditors are not particularly known for being the best form of the online argument either.
Like anywhere else, I’d say pick your communities carefully. And accept that a platform that is in shift and growth has a lot of potential for weird encounters. Try not to take the bad experiences too personally.
This is what happened. We have vaccines now, and masks are readily available. We also learned that many jobs can be done remotely. They tried as hard as they could to educate the constituents. People already picked their sides and are as informed as they are going to get.
So if you want to keep yourself safe, great. If you want to be crippled by or die of a preventable disease, have at it. Freedom for all.
Rule of thumb: You can be idealist in the primaries, but you have to be pragmatic in the general. Tell the world what you want during the off season, but the general election determines who we are stuck with for 4 years, and if you refuse to participate you are part owner of the mess you leave behind. If you didn’t vote against Trump in 2016, you helped him win and need to take ownership of that. Same for 2024.
Good vs bad is subjective and some people might disagree. For instance, many in Trump’s base are happy that he separated children at the border from their parents as a form of medieval punishment to immigrants seeking asylum.
However, here are two pages that I find important. Here is a super tiny list of Biden’s accomplishments, keeping it to only 30 for brevity: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
And since there’s so much negative to say about Trump, given that he is a criminal with bankrupt ideas and tons of problems, here is one link that focuses on economics: https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
I like to summarize Trump’s ability as a president with this simple example: Trump is the only president to have ever promised to completely wipe out the US national debt. The reason other presidents don’t promise this is because it’s stupid, no country should operate without debt. An economist should know that, BTW, and he is constantly remind us that he graduated in Economics from a top school, while he doesn’t seem to understand basics of macro economics. Then, once he became president, he added the most debt in a single presidential term in history. So he campaigned on a truly stupid promise to completely wipe the national debt, yet he then added the most debt ever.
That’s the kind of president you get when you vote for Trump. As Rex Tillerson said, a man that doesn’t seem to comprehend what the adults are talking about and doesn’t even understand why the adults want to talk about it. A fucking moron incapable of presidential decisions. That’s in addition to all the horrible stuff he brings with his nasty personality, corruption, crimes, and so on.