• cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Non English speaker: inevitable means it will happen no matter what. They way i see it, its used wrong here correct? It should maybe have been ‘increasingly realistic’ or maybe ‘increasingly plausible’ but inevitable assumes that voting for someone else won’t stop it from happening

    • Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The title is a bit clickbaity, but the subtext is that if he is elected, dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.

      And the ‘increasingly’ modifier further shows it’s only a potential outcome.

      • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The author isn’t the most self-aware… Robert Kagan was a Republican strategist until 2016, he’s an interventionalist neocon, thinks the GOP “lost it’s way” rather than contributed to this by design.

      • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I agree. I think that if Trump is elected and puts an end to democracy as we know it, but it won’t be a dictatorship of Trump, alone. Trump is but a mortal man. And whoever replaces him will be worse.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      One of the many examples of how English is manipulated and massaged to mean whatever you want it to mean. A more accurate phrase they should have chosen is “increasingly likely”.

    • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.social
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      11 months ago

      Technically, I’d say “increasingly inevitable” is a meaningless phrase. “Inevitable” is an absolute - an outcome either is, or is not, inevitable. Like they say, “you can’t be a little bit pregnant”, outcomes cannot be a little bit inevitable, or somewhat inevitable, or mostly inevitable, so the degree of inevitability cannot be increasing.

      However, I think most native English speakers would not think twice about it, and would read it as something like: “a Trump dictatorship is approaching inevitability.” That’s how I read it, at least.

    • Broax@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      This is just the usual polarising fear mongering bullshit. Even “increasingly plausible” is a stretch.

      Maybe the democratic party should focus more energy trying to understand what is that that makes so many people even considering trump.

      When people turn the other side into a one dimensional caricature they just ignore the real world problems that make them lose elections.