mekka okereke :verified:
Q: Why is it so bad for Bernie to say, "Elon was right about cutting government spending?" The government does spend too much sometimes. Isn't it always good to acknowledge when your opponent makes a valid point?
A:
Saying "Musk is right about..."
Or "Trump was right about..."
Or "Hitler was right about..."
Is a silly rhetorical device designed to curry favor with people that hate you, but irredeemably loses you trust with people that used to like you. You never need to say it.
1/N
mekka okereke :verified:
"The government spends money on things it shouldn't" is not an original thought by Musk. And there is nothing "right" about their plan to threaten, harass, and fire entire departments and remove consumer protections.
Bernie Sanders shouldn't have said it, period.
Black voters don't trust him for good reason. Black voters do trust AOC, even though many of her policies are very similar to the one suggested by Bernie. Because AOC is a much more intelligent communicator.
2/N
mekka okereke :verified:
Picture this tweet minus the "Elon Musk is right."
What does the "Musk is right add?"
What do you lose by saying it?
3/N
mekka okereke :verified:
I could start almost every banal statement with "Hitler was right" and be factually correct.
"Hitler was right, Tuesday does come after Monday.
"Hitler was right, daily morning exercise does improve health."
"Hitler was right, nutrition is important."
That should make it clear how weird this is.
Whenever someone does that weird Hitler stanning / hunting for reasons to agree with Hitler's worldview, I immediately wonder why they are doing that.
And my trust in that person evaporates.
4/4
mekka okereke :verified:
That's better, but you still don't *need* to say that.
Again, from my example: tell me 5 things that you agree with Hitler on. And you do agree with Hitler on far more than you disagree with him on. Seriously! We all do. Most people, agree with Hitler, on most things.🙂🙃
That's how human society works.
Not rhetorical: list out 5 things that you agree with Hitler on, in the preferred, better format. You'll feel the wrongness of it immediately.
Jerome (He/Him)
@mekkaokereke “I agree with Musk on…” is my preferred way of expressing this.
Jen
@jeromechoo @mekkaokereke my preferred way of expressing it is not at all. If asked a direct question, it's an opportunity to dismiss the rest of what whoever says by referencing how rare it is they say something reasonable.
mekka okereke :verified:
Anyway, now Bernie Sanders is in the ridiculous position of trying to explain to voters, why Elon Musk is wrong for causing the shutdown of the government due to its budget, when just a few days ago he said that Elon Musk is right about the government due to its budget. 🙂🙃
He makes it seem like he and Musk agree on the root of the problem, but Musk, the bold business visionary has the will to act, and Bernie, the old career politician, does not.
Bernie did this to himself.
5/N
mhoye
@mekkaokereke You sort of wish that every time a Democrat said, we need bipartisanship, they're right about this thing, whatever, that they knew they were cashing in a token that says "50,000 votes".
"Elon Musk is right...", yup, that'll be 50,000 votes Mr. Sanders. You know the rules, hand it over.
Good work, Mr. Schumer, this week you've cashed in 250,000 votes and it's only Thursday.
Azuaron
@mekkaokereke It seems like what he was trying to do was juxtapose what Musk wants to cut vs what's actually causing problems, which makes the "Elon Musk is right" a premise that he's redirecting.
It's a traditional debate tactic. But Twitter is not a debate stage, and he did not develop the argument.
A better opening would have been, "Elon Musk wants to cut the government budget." Then have what he says about the Pentagon. Then end with, "Why isn't Musk talking about the Pentagon budget?"
mekka okereke :verified:
No. I said what I said about those early primaries or caucuses. Or as they should be called, Caucastrophies.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112749414545760293
Those early primary states don't matter.
No disrespect intended to the 7 or 8 Black people in Iowa and New Hampshire. Hold down the outpost! Supplies coming after winter!
My proposal, replace the "Caucuses" with an "Africus" (No the word has nothing to do with Black! Why would you think that?)
Africus states: GA, NYC, SC, NC, MI, VA
wasabi brain
@mekkaokereke Bernie adopting a rhetorical device of pretending to agree with an opponent to shock people into reading the rest (cut military spending!) isn’t why he lost the black vote. he won the young black vote in those early primary states. It was the older black vote that more closely aligned with the DNC
FeralRobots
@mekkaokereke @jeromechoo
If it were me, & I felt utterly compelled to champion spending cuts*, I'd start with something like "Musk is wrong about why and where government spending needs to be cut."
_
*I probably wouldn't but just saying.
FeralRobots
@rakoo @mekkaokereke @jeromechoo
Bingo. 'I agree with' is just wrong - he factually doesn't agree with Musk. But he just endorsed Musk's whole deal.
rakoo
Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:
@venitamathias @mekkaokereke Bernie is joking at Musk’s expense. How is nobody understanding this?
Venita
@mekkaokereke Why is Bernie or any other Senator even acknowledging Musk's musings regarding how taxpayer money is spent? Musk is being written about and media covered as if he won the popular vote in the presidential election.
Michael Busch
Elon Musk gets attention and influence only because he has a lot of money.
Sanders could point that out and pivot immediately talking about taxing the rich.
mekka okereke :verified:
*White person says something foolish that harms Black people*
👴🏻Guys guys, it's a joke! Don't you get it? A joke! It's called satire! Why is no one understanding satire! 🤡
Stop pretending that capitol hill staffers aren't talking publicly about changing their strategy of approaching Musk and Musk supporters, to be more friendly with him.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/12/democrats-elon-musk-relationship-000579
There's a clear difference in the strategy that different senators are taking. Bernie's is bad.
FeralRobots
@virtualinanity
I won't argue about how he lost or didn't lose which segment's vote. I will go out on a limb to say the "rhetorical device" he used is fundamentally risky, & the way he used it was really bad.
Not just for the reasons @mekkaokereke outlined, but also because it was wrong. It was wrong because Musk wasn't speaking factually - he was trafficking bullshit. Musk doesn't care whether, where, or how there's misspending - he just wants to con people into shutting down the gov't.
mekka okereke :verified:
Correct. I didn't get the joke.
Lord Hurkle-Durkle :bc:
@mekkaokereke So you didn’t get Bernie’s joke? Is that it?
Rufus J. Cooter
@mekkaokereke This whole thread! And this part in particular: "The government spends money on things it shouldn't"
That's something that will always remind me of Bobby Jindal's State of the Union response, where he railed against gov't spending on "something called 'volcano monitoring'"
Like, yes, when the volcanoes aren't doing anything, sure, it seems silly to be monitoring them.
But!
Just because Mt. Rainier isn't erupting /right now/, doesn't make it foolish to keep an eye on it!
JustAFrog
@mekkaokereke Giving credit to bad people never makes the bad people less bad, and never makes other good things easier.
Don't know how Bernie can get this old without learning that.
mekka okereke :verified:
And I don't care if you're tired. White people stay mad at Black people calling Bernie out on his nonsense. Occupational hazard. I accept it.
And the "full context" is included lower in the numbered thread. I'm tired of Bernie Bros going off sideways and half-cocked on my mentions. Read the whole thread, and then get mad.
Shadow Heart
@mekkaokereke I really get sick and tired of this Bernie bashing bullshit from liberals not being honest about the full context of what was said.
https://x.com/SenSanders/status/1863268770371772863
"Elon Musk is right.
The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.
Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.
That must change."
mekka okereke :verified:
Oh, this has everything to do with race!
Bernie bro 101 is being loud and wrong about "It's not race, it's class!"
I'm bringing it up. In my thread. As is my right.
Now, go back to wherever it is that you Bernie Bros hang out online. Wherever that is, it's far away from Black men that don't tolerate your nonsense or his.
Shadow Heart
@mekkaokereke gotta deflect by using race, when it was never mentioned. Fuck off with the punching left bullshit.
Dan Kalafus
@RufusJCooter @mekkaokereke seriously, it’s like complaining that you’re wasting money by buying fire extinguishers for your kitchen
mekka okereke :verified:
Black people did not trust Biden. Read what I posted on Twitter at the time.
Black people just trusted white voters even less than they trusted Biden.🙂🙃
And we were right!
Warren couldn't even win Massachusetts in the primary. We typically make harm reduction decisions.
FTR I wanted Warren in the primary. I couldn't believe that old Black voters in SC were correct when they predicted that white voters would not show up for Warren on election day, despite what they claimed.
wasabi brain
@mekkaokereke we agree a lot. But I don’t understand how you can say black community didn’t trust Bernie but trusted Biden whose big thing was tough on crime / war on drugs when he wasn’t championing foreign wars. Biden was dead in water until the DNC joined together via clybourne and Obama in SC to block Bernie
mekka okereke :verified:
Given Biden's shenanigans and anti-blackness during his first term, it was clear that we were not going to give him a second chance to destroy us.
This is what I spent the better part of 4 years trying to tell white people that wouldn't listen.🤷🏿♂️
Bernie's not getting a first chance. Him and his followers suck. Bernie Bros curse out Black folk online more than anybody other than Trump supporters. They are worse than Andrew Yang supporters, and DeSantis or Abbott supporters.
nick
Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.
I have been ready for 5 years for Bernie to be retired as any kind of de facto movement leader and I'm 3x as ready now. He keeps sticking his foot in his damn mouth and saying needless shit. His "identity politics" tweet after the election was unforgiveable (yeah lets throw Black and immigrant and trans folk under the bus sounds awesome).
Don Whiteside
@mekkaokereke @acdha Hitler liked dogs. Why would we need to validate Hitler to say nice things about dogs?
mekka okereke :verified:
When you see something like "3/N" or "4/N" at the bottom of a post, it means "This post is part of a thread. Scroll up to see the beginning."
If you do that, you'll see that further up the themread, I said that what Bernie did, "Is a silly rhetorical device designed to curry favor with people that hate you, but irredeemably loses you trust with people that used to like you. You never need to say it."
I know it's a rhetorical device. It's a bad one, done for bad reasons.
Bill Seitz
@mekkaokereke he's not agreeing, he's using rhetorical judo, pointing out that the people who complain about waste never touch the biggest waster.
mekka okereke :verified:
Bernie's own camp and others on capital hill are talking in public about how their strategy is to build rapport with Musk and Musk fans. It's literally the talk of the town in DC right now. There are a few notable exceptions who talk publicly about refusing to go along with this. But most are signaling that they are warming to Musk and DOGE, many on record.
Don't argue with me about if this is their strategy. Go argue with them.
Bill Seitz
@mekkaokereke I read the whole thread before my first response.
Saying "rhetorical device designed to curry favor with people that hate you" is wrong. Whose favor would Bernie's comment currying?
The first line would curry favor with Musk fans, then the rest would make them angry.
Did you mean "curry favor for 3 seconds before currying anger"?
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/028/720/t3qkhrohrh321.jpg
mekka okereke :verified:
And again, I've asked this question non-rhetorically Maybe 10 times over the past few weeks, and still don't have a single taker.
I'll ask it again:
Give me 10 posts that begin, "Hitler was right about..." And then end each statement with something you agree with Hitler on. You can use all the rhetorical judo you want! But the statement has to start "Hitler was right about." Give me 10 of those.
No one does it. Because it becomes painfully obvious how this is weirdo behavior.
mekka okereke :verified:
Please leave my mentions and go away.
I'm not doing the "This fascist hasn't done a holocaust (yet) so they're not as bad as the previous person that said the exact same things before they did their holocaust."
I'm also not doing the "Nowhere in my thread did I say Elon was the same as Hitler, so take your straw man and go."
And I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. If in 2024 you need convincing that someone promoting great replacement and AfD is bad? Just go away.
Ma’moun
@mekkaokereke Elon is a narcissist attention seeker piece of shit, but he’s absolutely very, very far from being Hitler bad. This argument doesn’t help except increasing the polarization and dehumanizing the other side. I think acknowledging something good he said is actually helpful albeit it being irritating to many people. We need more healthy debates. The more we push these people away by saying you’re Hitler and fuck you regardless the more hateful and extremists they will be.
mekka okereke :verified:
And the "If we just love the fascists harder, they'll love us back!" is a loser strategy and I reject it outright.
The answer is no.
No now, and no always. I don't seek common ground with fascists. I seek to take the ground they're standing on, expel them from it, and replace them with kind people that don't believe in ethnic cleansing.
And I don't make room for fascist apologists either. Which is why you and I are unlikely to see eye to eye on this topic.
So... just go away.
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