Mr Biden’s speech is his first major campaign event of the 2024 election season

President Joe Biden marked the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by warning that the issue of American democracy will be “what the 2024 election is all about,” as he runs against former president Donald Trump once more.

Mr Biden, who spoke near the Valley Forge historical site where George Washington and the Continental Army were encamped during the winter of 1777 and 1778, told attendees that they were there “to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”

“This isn’t rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time,” he said.

Mr Biden said his speech, his first major event of the 2024 election season, was “deadly serious,” and about a topic that needed to be raised at the outset of his campaign.

  • @lennybird
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    2511 months ago

    Indeed, Hitler’s first coup failed as well.

    Massive efforts deprogramming cultist behavior needs to be priority. How does one get through to these people, or do you just write them off as broken and focus on those you can save or still on the fence? (we know this is the strategy of the Right, after all).

    • @[email protected]
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      1011 months ago

      How does one get through to these people, or do you just write them off as broken and focus on those you can save or still on the fence?

      The only tactic I’m familiar with that can actually get through to the self-centered conservatives is called Deep Canvasing, and it’s quite effective.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_canvassing

      • Digitalprimate
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        511 months ago

        Had not heard of this technique being applied outside qualitative research (although its goal is the opposite of qualitative research, the methods are near identical). Thanks for introducing me to this.

        Now. We just need to find one, just one billionaire on our side to fund it.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        That’s great, but like many other efforts, it’s only really effective face-to-face, one at a time. There are millions of these people who have been mass-brainwashed by media targeting them in the hundreds of thousands.

        We need to combat that with similar efforts, or we’ll all be dead before it works.

        What we really need is for anti-cult psychology experts to team up with viral video producers to make loads of deprogramming content that will actually pierce the snowglobes. And we need it yesterday.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        God damn did they setup that name for Fox News to scream it 24/7.

        Beware the extended conversation with the communist, the colored, and the witch!

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Unfortunately in the US deep canvassing is not a viable strategy for most political campaigns since it’s too resource intensive. It’s far more effective to canvass as way of identifying likely voters. Then you can make sure they vote when the time comes.

        • @[email protected]
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          311 months ago

          I can’t say for sure if it’s viable at scale or not. I can say with certainty that it was a big part of why California finally approved same-sex marriage in the early 2000s.

          You don’t have to convince everybody, just enough to tip the scales in your favor.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            I think you might have your history mixed up. The courts legalized same sex marriage in California in 2008 but it was banned again after proposition 8 was passed by voters. It’s possible deep canvassing was used in the campaign against proposition 8. However, it certainly didn’t tip the scales. Same sex marriage only became legal again in 2013 thanks to a different court case that invalidated the proposition.

            That said, I do think there are contexts where deep canvassing may be effective. For example, similar methods are an essential part of labor organizing. Progressive causes are just too resource poor in the US to use such methods at scale.

            • @[email protected]
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              111 months ago

              Thanks! I read about it in the book How Minds Change sometime last year, so I probably got some of those details a bit mixed up.

          • @[email protected]
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            011 months ago

            Unfortunately, that’s not how it played out. California residents actually voted for proposition 8 which banned same sex marriage. It wasn’t until a court case invalidated said proposition that same sex marriage became legal.