And you dont see how voting for the “lesser evil” allows both parties to move further and further right? I was actually taken aback by how blatant you were in your steps, most liberals dont state it so directly.
I’m gonna assume(hope) you think American foreign policy is bad real quick. Biden is complicit in a genocide, like an actual child killing, people starving, oppressor disguising bombs as canned food genocide. Sure trump is hypothetically worse, but by voting for biden you are showing the democratic party that you are willing to vote for someone who is actually genocidal. You are showing them that they can commit genocide when it benefits them and you’ll still vote for them. Of course this isn’t the only incredibly horrific thing the american establishment does that neither party budges on and the american populace just accepts. It’s just the worst and most obvious at the moment.
You've admitted that you are young and haven't been around for large scale issues and deep seated treaties and ally-ships that lead to the development of global political issues. It is incredibly understandable that given your age and experience you've summed up your decision into what you've currently seen in the news and perhaps the few bullet-point-history issues you've read up on.
The issues going on with Israel are enormously complex and are not as simple as who's land it is, who is keeping who away, and who is committing genocide. Yes, it is horrible, and it would be ideal if our political leader could step up and call out that country for those actions. The unfortunate reality from a geopolitical perspective and from the strategic perspective of being a world leader that needs to think many, many steps ahead is that the middle east is a very hostile area, and Israel is very strategically placed to not only have an ally, but also to keep key ports open - both for economic and military reasons.
Making a statement against the actions of Israel would have been detrimental to future global peace options. Instead, Biden can work with Netanyahu behind the scenes without making an official statement.
No, fuck you, there’s no justification for aiding a genocide. It is absolutely as simple as who is committing a genocide, you should have zero tolerance for it. Would you give bullets to someone after watching them shoot a kid if it benefitted you? The US can survive without israel and the people of the middle east would be better off without both the US and Israel. American and its client state are a destabilizing force in the region and that is not an accident. Can you even name a time where US invention in that region helped the people who live there? I dont want biden to work out an agreement with natanyahu, i want netanyahu to face the fucking wall.
Would you give bullets to someone after watching them shoot a kid if it benefitted you?
It has nothing to do with it benefiting me - or specifically the US as the case with Israel goes, or even the party or the politician. As I tried to describe in my original comment, it is a strategic move for GLOBAL PEACE - not just the US. This is not only about US intervention, which it is clear you have a lot of thoughts about, but also about the ports and access to resources both in and out for all of the countries in that region, and militaries of all countries. And destroying our only allyship in that region (not just us, but the other countries that have maintained their stance with Israel), maintains the ability to keep a foothold in that region.
If someone just shot a child in front of me, would I give them bullets? If they controlled the only access to all of the resources (oil, water, food, etc) that would cause my other allies to die without during times of crisis, I would absolutely consider it. That does not mean it would come without limitations.
For you to still think this way after it being explained to you shows how shortsighted and limited you are thinking.
From the rest of your comments, it's clear that you are very interested in politics and learning a lot, which is good! And you've gotten to a lot of topics, also good. But it seems like you have gotten to the surface level issues and become very passionate about them and it's that way or the highway instead of looking any deeper.
The US is not interested in global peace. It is not engaging in genocide for the peace. The idea that you can murder civilians for peace is ludicrous. I fully understand that the US and Israel control much of the resources in the region and regularly engage militarily. I am also aware that maintaining a foothold in that region is very important for the western ruling class. Im an not disagreeing with these facts. I am saying that these things are wrong and should not be done. I am saying the US, Israel, and numerous other western powers have done significantly more harm than good for the people within that region. I am also saying that no one should have that much control over those resources because it gives them the power to commit these sorts of atrocities.
Let me be clear, israel should not exist and before you lecture me on how nuanced and actually super complicated it is because theres been conflict in that region for 3000 years; i am well aware of the history. Everything before the establishment of the israeli state is nearly irrelevant to the current context. I fundamentally disagree with the existence of a settler colonial state.
The US and other western powers have no innate right to the resources of that land. Every single one of them can exist without israel. We should not have to pay for our resources in blood. Their influence in that area is not in the name of world peace and security but in the monetary interests of our ruling class. Western capitalists are a major cause of instability in that region.
Maybe if our current system of government requires the murder and systemic exploitation of hundreds of millions of people in order to provide for its citizens then it should not exist.
As for my anology, would you think differently if you had a gun too? The US has invaded and couped for with significantly less justification. It is not unreasonable to say that israel could be dismantled by force, it will likely have to be.
I think you’re much too resigned to your current reality. Its easy to look the other way and pretend the horrors are justified because of some sort of complexity. Telling yourself there is good reason or that theres nothing that can be done is very surely very comforting.
Nowhere in my response did I say that anyone had a right to the land, and nowhere in my response did I say that it was Western powers that I was concerned about getting resources.
This is what happens when someone looks at the surface of issues and then becomes incredibly passionate about it.
You need to listen to people that have lived through many, many years of middle east conflicts. Talk with people who have been entrenched over there. Become friends with middle easterners who have moved over here during the 80s and 90s (as adults, not the children of those that came over) and started businesses and ask about their experiences.
You don't want to hear about how things are nuanced, but you look at things in such a black and white manner, which is typical of those in your age group becoming interested in politics.
Why do you target Biden though? If you ever voted before, chances are the candidate you voted for had the same complicit stance with Isreal. Is this really how you fix it?
I haven’t voted in a presidential election before (in my early 20s), however if i had i would wish that i didn’t. I target biden becuase he is currently arming and aiding fascists.
As for fixing the israel issue; i’m hoping, praying that democrats see the threat of being unelectable due to their complicity as more important than aiding a genocide. If biden ended his support of israel i’d actually vote for him. I dont have much else i like about him, many things i really dislike about him even, but thats normal for US presidential candidates. Its the genocide that pushed me over the edge, i cant budge on that.
If you meant fixing US politics then I would say that is not possible without radical change of our current political system.
Doesn’t this boil down to what-about-ism then, if we we denounce our state as fascist when in the case of our neighbors, while holding our grievance against state for the crimes against the population as a whole. Lesser or greater evil means our democratic voice is used against those that would lead us into darker times still rather than try to facilitate trust. I’m just saying it’s a silly self-defeating manipulation acting out without regard to trust.
Idk maybe it’s cause I don’t live in as much of a two party system as the US, but essentially still a two party system.
I think there’s value in strategic voting. I don’t know what the equivalent would be in the US but strategic voting for the lesser of two evils at a national level and then voting more true to your convictions at a municipal and provincial level is still valid.
Again my opinions probably don’t work in the US electoral system, but voter apathy is a big part of how rights get eroded where I’m from. A party or political figure stays in power because of apathy and then they just keep getting away with shit. At least if you cast a vote it can be seen as you participating in the democracy.
I will say there is something to the act of not voting as being a part of democracy, but truly I think along with abstaining any functioning democracy needs a “none” option.
Your mistake is thinking Trump would stop the war in Gaza, and not end the war in Ukraine in the worst possible manner, by giving Putin everything he needs to exterminate the Ukrainians.
You really need to pay better attention to what’s going on. I’m embarrassed for you here.
The rich benefit most from politically right policies and the rich are our governing body. If you vote for the most left candidate no matter how far on the right they realistically are then they will just continue to move right because thats what benefits them. I imagine part of your problem is that maybe you view the democratic party as left? It is not, both american political parties are on the right, one is just a little more left than the other. Let me know if this makes sense, i did a lot of work today and my brain is a little fried so im not sure how well i explained that.
That doesn't really make sense, but I appreciate the honest effort.
Good luck, I hope you remember that one of Trump and Biden is going to be the next president whether you vote or not. Which one do you think is going to push the US farther to right? (That's a rhetorical question that you should answer for yourself, no one else's opinion really matters here)
The American government as with all capitalist governments is run by and for the owning class. Notice how our elected officials are property owners and business owners. They typically have a lot of investments in large business etc etc. So it follows that they would run their government in a way that would protect or bolster their investments. Whats good for business is good for them. This is why the “economy” and GDP are so talked about in our politics, its incredibly important to our elected officials and our unelected officials such as CEOS that the businesses they have invested into continue to turn a profit. Businesses will lobby and bribe politicians for laws that work in their favor and our politicians do it because it is in their best interests to do so. This extends beyond just maintaining a low minimum wage, refusing to pass rent control laws, cutting welfare, keeping privatized healthcare, loosening child labor laws, bailing out failed businesses, and writing loopholes into our tax laws that allows the owning class to evade them. It is also the reason the US overthrows democratically elected governments, invades sovereign nations, and funds far right insurgencies. Ultimately every single decision the US makes can be boiled down to protecting the interests of the owning class.
So, both the Democratic and Republican party have essentially the same interests. The main difference being that the Democratic party gives a few more concessions to the working class because it needs to maintain a voting body and it knows that pushing workers to hard can cause a revolution. It wants to extract as much profit as possible without risking a loss of power. The Republican party just does a little more for the owning class and a lot less for the working class.
Voting for the left most party no matter how far right they actually are because the other party is worse shows them that they can maintain their power and capital while doing less and less for the working class. Why should the Democratic party give you free healthcare, free education, a better wage, less working hours, or better working conditions if you’re gonna vote for them anyway. The far right republican is an incredibly useful tool for the Democratic party because it means they can maintain their position of power without actually doing the things you want them to do. Hell they even fund them. As for foreign policy, there’s little difference between the parties. They both know they can get away with bombing millions of innocent people bc wtf are we gonna do about it? Vote harder? For who?
As for israel specifically, im hoping that the Democratic party is worried enough about losing their executive power that they stop comitting a genocide but I truly honestly doubt it will happen. AIPAC is a very powerful lobbying group and the ruling class who benefit from the existence of Israel know that they can get what they want regardless of who is elected.
There is a real conversation that needs to be had about how do we drive the democrats left. Biden is not getting my vote. But I live in Delaware where he has no chance of losing*. I will vote green party.
The democrats are courting Republicans and old republican platforms. Joe Biden sounds like George Bush. I didn’t hear or remember a single progressive thing in his state of the union but I heard issues driven by republican wants and unions sort of. I hear support but I don’t see what Biden is doing. We have Supreme Court cases in line to strip the national labor board and almost all cabinet departments from governing yet I haven’t heard a peep from the administration
Thank you! Is there a reason Dale Earnhardt is in these memes? Is he a leftist Nascar driver? (Maybe your video will answer my questions, but I don’t have the time to watch an hour long video essay right now, though I’m quite interested and hope to in the future, thanks for the link!)
I see he died in 2001, so all the reasons I could think of as to why he’s in two memes representing the Left are falling short …
It’s not for no reason. It’s because they have stuff we want. Whether that’s resources, land, strategic locations, etc., that’s the reason. Furthermore, we have the means to acquire those things we want. On the great stage, that’s often justification enough.
Rail workers tried to use their collective bargaining power in negotiating with rail companies, Biden made it illegal and forced them to accept the rail companies terms.
A lot of my American friends are buying into this both sides thing, they say prices are up and the democrats aren’t doing enough to deal with the climate so neither really care about anything…
I’ve been an eco obsessive since the 90s so to me it’s painfully clear the night and day difference between the two parties, trying to explain it is so hard because they’ve got their talking points like more drilling under Biden than Trump but when you try to talk about the lag effects related to leased land it’s all just hand waved away - they’ve seen people talking about it as true and not mentioning that lease sales are at all time lows which will result in significantly less permits in future years so it’s ‘Biden bad, end of story.’ Saying ‘they say there’ll be less but they say anything, they said there would be less now’ totally ignoring the logic of the argument.
Right wing psychological experts plan these talking points and seed them, the left falls for them every time it’s so frustrating.
I think part of the problem is people want the world to be simple, the immigration issue is another thing a lot of my left voting friends are struggling with at the moment, blaming the housing crisis on immigration for example then I point out immigrants working construction is super common and they say why don’t they work instead of being put up in hotels so I say there’s a complex process involved in getting a right to work designed to protect American jobs and many are rejected and returned to their country of origin without obtaining this right… but again ‘it’s super complex and messy but they’re trying to improve things’ is easily shrugged off just like with the climate argument by saying ‘they only say they’re trying, trying means nothing only actions matter’
The problem is the two parties play totally different games with totally different objectives. One is trying to tangle a ball of yarn into.a mess and the other is attempting to untangle it and knit a cardigan.
The issue that I am passionate about is election reform. Including things like getting rid of gerrymandering, making voting more accessible, making the houses more representative of the people, and breaking down big donor influence on elections and policy. Neither of the big two parties comes close to making any of this happen.
If these things are not fixed, the parties in control can do whatever they want. They can keep us divided by shouting about one passion-based issue in public then doing nothing about it while serving big donor interests in legislation.
I don’t see how any mainstream issue matters when you can’t trust elected officials to act on any issue you care about. That is unless you are one of the self-interested donors who writes your own bills. Then it still doesn’t matter which party is in power because you can control them both.
Off topic slightly, but I’ve seen on Lemmy lately where people are saying “get rid of gerrymandering” and I’m curious about the argument for this.
Honestly, I’d love for it to happen, but I assumed it was impossible in a Representative Democracy because of how the system/math worked. Kinda of an inherit problem. Mostly because the ways I’ve heard to remedy this issue is to distribute districts in such a way that they more closely resemble their population ratios. However, isn’t this also a form of gerrymandering? Districts are getting set to way we think they should be. Not saying that wrong persay, just feel like a bandage solution. Like we’re beating a nail in with a wrench. In a way though, this reminds me of the Observer Effect in a way
There isn’t a perfect way to draw districts. I like sortest splitline for its simplicity and impartial strategy.
The best solution I can see is to evolve the House of Representatives into a body of proportional representation. This could be done in state level houses as well. Single winner, or other small number of winners elections should have ranked choice to make it harder for parties to maintain dominance.
gerrymandering is editing the borders for your party’s gain.
If it’s done to be balanced and representive, then it isn’t gerrymandering.
there’s a super simple solution: stop having the ruling party be allowed to draw the lines. Have the whole thing be controlled by ordinary government bureaucrats. No-one elected involved at any point.
then, suddenly, impossible for gerrymandering to exist, outside of criminal interference.
One is trying to tangle a ball of yarn into.a mess and the other is attempting to untangle it and knit a cardigan.
Building on this metaphor, one of my single biggest frustrations with the left is how many of them won’t accept anything short of a fully knit cardigan; unless they get exactly what they want, they’d rather just hand it over to the tanglers.
The fact liberals are riding and dying for genocide joe is proof that the democrats deserve the bloodbath they’ve set up for themselves when they inevitably lose to the worst candidate possible. The bar is literally underground and they still managed to dig to get under it.
I mean, trump seems obvious. Unstable wannabe tyrant/dictator from a party of evangelical theocrats, criminal, fraudster, blatant liar, thief, rapist, sycophant of dictators, insurrectionist, wife beater…and we haven’t even dug in to the party that supports this behavior along with their LGBTQ hate, restricting womens’ rights, voter fraud, election fraud, gun rights > your life, handing everything to the billionaires, environmental destruction of most every kind, and of course their NAZI underpinnings.
Joe is a career politician with all the baggage that goes with that, but he’s not actively and willfully sabotaging the country.
The bad parts of capitalism are the authoritarianism and the grift. Venezuela, like any soviet structured entity is not an alternative to capitalism, its just imperialism wearing a different coat of paint
Proving that liberals like fascism when it’s not pointing at them. To them, it is a weapon that should be wielded against their opponents rather than a blight that needs to be eradicated before it kills us all. Your irresponsibility will have devastating consequences.
So for anyone other than that guy who might actually be interested…
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
( a ) Killing members of the group;
( b ) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
( c ) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
( d ) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
( e ) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
There is video evidence of 1-3, and I would personally say that the intentional, wanton destruction of hospitals, almost 20 years blockade with restriction of caloric intake, escalating into a famine. Guess who is specifically called out in a recent report by MedGlobal:
But we are also seeing that pregnant and lactating women are suffering from this, as well, and there’s a rapid increase in malnutrition across mothers, as well.
Both are objectively terrible, the Democrats are tepid liberals that are trying to put band-aids on gaping holes in a sinking ship rather than solving the underlying issues.
The GOP is, of course, fascist, and thus far worse, but in the sinking ship that is America, continuing to sink without fixing the underlying issues is bad as well.
Actually fixing the problems is far greater than the DNC, which is far greater than the GOP.
Edit: no, I’m not advocating for third party voting, I plan on voting for Biden, because I believe change must come from below. Begging the DNC to fix the gaping problems with American society will never get anything done, ever. Organize, donate to strike funds, actually try to build pressure from below.
People really seem to think Biden should have a magic wand, or should somehow impose things the majority of Americans are against and when he can’t they say he’s the devil. It’s so silly.
I’m far more radical left than most people and I’ve come to accept that, I have faith in the strength of my ideas and that they’ll displace capitalism but understand it’ll be a struggle and a fight. Biden has very likely literally no concept of the ideals I value, I imagine it’d take me hours to explain the importance of open source software for example and I don’t expect he’d take it on board very seriously even at best so of course I wouldn’t pick him as the leader of my.movememt but that’s not what people are being asked to pick, they’re picking the president of the whole country so of course he’s also going to have to work in the existing frameworks and with the many factions that exist.
I don’t expect Biden to do anything other than continue the American Liberal project, but I’m also not a reformist, I don’t believe it’s possible to vote Capitalism into Socialism. I only vote for Biden because it appears to me that it is easier to organize a grassroots movement under liberals than under fascists.
Liberalism won’t make America better, it just won’t make it fascist as quickly as the fascist party.
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
One has worked with Bernie Sanders and helped get some his goals achieved in policy and legislature.
The other hired his own children despite their inability to get security clearances, cheated on his wife while she was at home with their newborn, paid illegal hush money over that matter, stole classified documents and likely gave them to adversaries, likely compromised national security multiple times, sowed doubt in our elections with zero evidence to back it up, blew up the debt, fucked up the Supreme Court and has said he’d ignore the constitution, term limits all of that.
“I let my hatred willfully blind me to admitting trump is a sack of shit and I’d prefer a dictatorship to democracy if that pisses off the libs. Bonus: I get to be a bastard too because the libs will be shut up unless they want to go to a reeducation camp.”
More likely.
E: I re-read what you said and realized I didn’t get it right. Do Dems really think like that, or is it just general apathy of some Dems and the independent voters?
That depends what you think the greatest threats to quality of life for the average in American are. I believe the greatest threat is the corrupt system, which gives more power and money to the rich and screws over almost everyone else, and both of those candidates are firmly entrenched in it.
They both know and embrace their role in that system, although they would phrase it in different terms.
Finally, you asked about objective terribleness. But there is no such thing. This is all subjective, because of course it is, the country has hundreds of millions of residents who all have different priorities.
If it wasn’t for his position regarding Israel and Palestine, I would have been pleasantly surprised by Biden overall. His administration seemed to be making a lot of good moves for a bunch of liberals.
Joe is a self-admitted Zionist. He’s also a U.S. President and unfortunately for the Palestinians, U.S. hegemony in the Middle East is entirely predicated on a stable U.S.-friendly Country (i.e Israel) in the region.
“If we didn’t have an Israel, we’d probably have to make one.” ~Joe Biden
It’s a shit-trap, for any POTUS regardless of their personal beliefs
As bad as establishment candidates tend to be, trump is far far worse. The problem with the trump supporters is they boil everything down to “X bad, so not X good!” Trump was an outsider which is why they supported him, but just being an outsider doesn’t automatically make you good, and in his case he’s far worse.
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