The end of democracy in the U.S. is not going to come from fascist conservatives, but from too-busy-with-life normies, the type who don’t vote in anything but presidential elections. They’re just too busy to notice anything other than their bills.
In their minds, they’re going to “punish” the blues for inflation while ignoring that the reds only ever made them poorer. These type of people don’t care about genocides (someone else’s problem, there’s always brown people dying, Israel is an ally etc), abortion rights (only stupid people get pregnant or only sluts need that), or trans people (that’s too weird for them). They don’t care about climate change (it’s a topic up for debate, it’s not factual), but have kids. They don’t care about workers rights, but work deadend or multiple jobs. They don’t care about getting more healthcare rights, but are a medical emergency away from bankruptcy.
I am not saying these people are dumb or callous, they need outreach and they need to be presented clearly with their options and outcomes. If you can, volunteer to sign people up to vote and present what’s at stake.
In my country, basically everyone accepts climate change, except perhaps the most conservative and those who already believe in conspiracy theories. What is going on in the US?
Those who believe in conspiracy theories have become our conservative party. Some (myself included) would argue they’ve always been there or that that’s always been the nature of the republican party. But the important thing here in the modern day is that the conspiracy theorists now control half of the country’s political system.
I’m personally of the opinion that conspiracy theory is the result of a fundamental unwillingness or inability to engage with reality. If that is the case then why on earth would you choose to believe in climate change? It’s scary, and an existential threat to humanity if it’s taken seriously. Besides, theres a lot of money to be made burning the planet.
I think at the end of the day that’s what the American right’s denial of climate change boils down to. Everyone in that party participates in some way in denying reality in favor of a collective fantasy. What’s one more denial?
So, something the better journalists have to be careful with, is using neutral language even in certain clearly one-sided situations. That’s not just to not upset people on both sides; it helps to inform the truth to those who want to read carefully and critically.
If I read, “beware! The right-wingers are conspiring to make a fascist government!” then all I can do is shrug at another sensationalist conspiracy clickbait.
If I read factual details of things said, done and published by said right-wingers: it turns out I’m capable myself of seeing something is bad or good. Sure, it’s still the journalist’s job to interpret the facts to a degree, but those facts should be as transparent as possible and attaching inflammatory language, even if appropriate, often obscures that.
There is a place for opinion writers. But we need, I think, more of the less-opinioned honest truth for honest people. Even if that scares you that readers might not take up your call to arms as quickly as you think they ought.
Sorry, that went a bit off the rails, because I’m not quite sure how to express - though I still think it’s true - the important place for journalism that doesn’t call a spade a spade but tells you its shape so you can understand.
Absolutely - and I agree entirely. However - there are a lot of choices that get made with regards to words and context indicators when writing a piece (Video is a whole other box of frogs but similiar things apply).
Just sticking to text, let’s say, I’m not suggesting that the NYT should write a front page article entitled Watch Out: Crazy Trump Will Kill Us All (although, that’s upsettingly not a zero-percent chance either.)
What I am saying is that they need to stop giving trump the benefit of neutrality. That was a typical and to a small-extent-reasonable excuse they made in 2016. “Let’s see what kind of President he’ll be” and “maybe he’ll grow into it” and sorts of rationalizations that I ranted against at the time and I think was extremely validated by the subesquent nightmare of an administration.
So that’s over. Now, we know who he is - he’s the kind of guy who lies at the drop of a hat. He’ll do it by force of habit. He’s incapable of empathy. He’s so singularly focused on grabbing money (not ‘making money’ now, he doesn’t care about that), and weilding power over his perceived enemies that he’s an absolutely dismal choice for president. He staged a failed coup right in front of us. And still remains unrepentant. Anyone who’s not a complete cult member can see that.
So the NYT writing their article can use that to leverage his latest outrageousness and limit the faux-respect (he deserves none) such as “former President”. Fuck that - that’s not a “fact” as much as it is an “editorial position”. He’s also a former game show host. He’s also gone bankrupt five times. (four? five, whatever) He’s never been a billionaire. These are facts. They don’t use those. Why not.
Because. The tenor of the NYT is that they are “supposed” to be lofty - distanced - respectful. Well, they’re failing us with that. Trump is using that against them and us.
Maggie Haberman’s mom used to be trump’s publicist. And she’s the trump-whisperer? Fuck.
Same can be applied to any of the video-based services. (Minus the sniffly air of old money). I’ll try to use a future post to dive into one of the articles and really highlight it because once you see it, it’s pretty blatant they’re tipping the scales towards trump. It shouldn’t be close at all. It is because they’re doing that. On purpose.
Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it’s incredibly rare for there to be only two options.
Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.
The whole “both sides” reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly, so mainstream media frames all human subjects with political implications to match that polical system’s own artificially reduced set of choices so as to make it seem like that political system is well suited to deal with human subject with political implications.
(I’ve actually lived in a couple of countries with different levels of actual political freedom, from the UK which is a lot like US and arguably in some ways even less representative, to The Netherlans which has Proportional Vote, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that the way the established Press frames news closelly matches the limitations in political choices in that system)
Then if you go out of mainstream media and look at amateurs (i.e. social media posts) the way they frame subjects is also almost invariably like the Propaganda they grew up with, IMHO not because of them trying to be manipulative but because that’s all they’ve ever known and seen all around them, though the result is still that in their parroting of a sometimes more sometimes less rationalised version of somebody else’s talking points, they follow the same falacious structuring.
There are a handfull of less mainstream media who actually mostly practice Journalism and a few diamond-Journalist amongst the muck which is mainstream media, but generally well established news media will not stray away from a framing that justifies the very system that made them “established”.
Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.
Agreed
The whole “both sides” reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly
Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it’s incredibly rare for there to be only two options.
‘Both sides’ is also a shorthand for both or more. I like your description of “discussing the situation on its own implications…” but I think it’s common in human discourse to frame things in two main perspectives and discuss from there.
That’s because journalism has more or less lost all semblance of integrity, so it’s turned into “what cheap clickbait can I crap out today to maximize my clicks?” That’s why instead of the hard-hitting investigation and journalism we got with Watergate, we get “TRUMP = LITERAL NAZI, CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHY”
So is Trump threatening these journalists somehow, or paying them off perhaps?
As I recall, journalists had no difficulties being critical of him before, during, and after his presidency, writing countless of hit pieces without suffering any sort of consequences.
To my knowledge, none of them have been disappeared, sued, or otherwise silenced, the worst that would happen to them was Trump tweeting something mean about them in retaliation.
Why would they be afraid all of a sudden to be critical of him?
If Sanders ever got the Presidency, leftists would drop him within 3 months.
Leftists want a unicorn, and they don’t exist. Until leftists realize this, they’ll be powerless. Leftism in America has spent 20 years eating itself, and now they’re surprised they have no power.
AND the DNC went to court to make it explicitly clear in a court of law that voters and donors can suck a dick, we do what we want.
But “vote blue no matter who and move them left later (even though they only have ever moved right and attack anyone left of Biden WAYYYYY more than they ever have Republicans!)”
From dingdongs who are repeating -- accidentally or on purpose -- some bullshit that was professionally constructed to emotionally resonate and sound convincing on surface level, so that when people spread it on social media it can do its job and help Trump get elected and fuck up the country absolutely beyond recognition
Neither of us can convince someone whose friends had their asses beat by cops at a university protesting Biden’s action. Only Biden can do that, by ending the genocide.
When dems lose for not doing the things they need to do to get elected, are you going to blame the dems for not winning what should be an easy election by just doing the things the people want him to do, using all the means at his disposal, or are you going to blame every single voter in the US for not voting for a party that shows nothing but contempt for them?
Dems lose? We all lose. You people seem to forget you’re fucking everyone. Your feelings don’t matter, outcomes do. If you know Trump wins in this scenario, and you know there may be no more free elections, how does this “force the Dems to learn for next time?” Braindead ideological bullshit. You’re a fucking cult.
Why the hell are you coming at me then? I can’t control the dems policies, nor can I change the psychology of muslims to vote for a guy who is facilitating genocide. Nothing I say would convince someone who is struggling to pay rent because their student loans were resumed by executive order.
The only thing either of us can do is pressure the dems to do the things they need to do to get elected. If Biden stops the genocide, then I could tell muslims “Hey, if you don’t vote Biden, Trump will resume it”, and college grads “Hey, if you don’t vote Biden, Trump will resume loan repayments”, and women “Hey, if you don’t vote Biden, Trump’s gonna remove your right to bodily autonomy” but I can’t do that because he doesn’t give me shit to work with.
That’s nice, but it’s really hard to convince someone to vote for the person still pushing the knife deeper into them. Stopping further damage done via gaza and student loans are an absolute minimum. I’m not even expecting him to pull the knife out, let alone do something to heal the wound. The bar is underwater when I have to set it at “Not actively making your personal material conditions worse”. “Yes he’s making things worse for you and will not stop doing so, but some of the things he did aren’t objectively bad” is not gonna win an election.
Also some of those were objectively bad, such as increasing militarism and oil production.
Biden attempted to forgive half a trillion dollars in student loans, and the Supreme Court told him no. He's still managed to do about $150 billion on his own. In what sense are you saying he's driving the knife in?
Biden is holding up military aid for Israel right now. Too little too fucking late, in my opinion, but you are aware that that's happening, right? That the leader who is actively killing Palestinians is a whole different world leader on a whole different side of the planet?
There's a whole conversation to be had about 40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030; that may be opening up a significant additional topic. But you brought up oil production.
That's not even the main point. You said elsewhere:
You'd "have to" support Israel, even if they were genociding Palestinians just like they are today, if they weren't on the same side as the US, because you support all enemies of the US uncritically.
"There is a discrepancy" between you wanting to drive the US as quickly as possible to its destruction, and being deeply concerned about Biden's strategy and offering critique to what he's doing (supposedly, ultimately, to help him win the election.)
I don't know man. I think you wanna think through that discrepancy at some length. I'm pretty doubtful that you're sincere about what you're saying. Sorry.
If you actually are an American and this is actually what you believe, then you should know that I carry the same absurd hope that you're talking about that the US can do better things. If you want better outcomes for the people inside the United States and less evil done in its name on the world stage, I think there are actually some good ways you can work towards that outcome.
Biden attempted to forgive half a trillion dollars in student loans,
He restarted loan repayments. Every dollar paid on every loan he didn’t forgive is the knife going deeper.
You’d “have to” support Israel, even if they were genociding Palestinians just like they are today
No no no, I’d have to support the US against Israel. My fault, “I’d have to support it” was ambiguous, it could have been referring to the US’s opposition to Israel or Israel.
No he didn't. The relevant quote is, "But this time is different. The debt ceiling bill’s statutory language will tie Biden’s hands. Barring a new national emergency, he will no longer have the statutory authority to extend the current student loan pause."
The thing that actually was in his power to do -- forgive balances -- he did. And, when other parts of the federal government cancelled his order to do a massive forgiveness, he did smaller forgiveness packages that added up to around $150 billion so far.
No no no, I'd have to support the US against Israel. My fault, "I'd have to support it" was ambiguous, it could have been referring to the US's opposition to Israel or Israel.
Got it. Makes sense. So what made you change your mind? What's different about Israel if they were an enemy of the US that would make you not support them (in a way that you would some other small middle-eastern country that was an enemy of the US)?
I didn’t, the “oppose the US and you’ll be on the right side” heuristic only describes the end result, the core is still anti-imperialism. That is a weird scenario where the US is incidentally opposing its own imperialism.
Same with the US opposition to ISIS after they supplied them with weapons and trucks and personnel they trained and radicalized to fight Assad.
Same with the US opposition to Nazi Germany after they supplied them with materials and weapons to crush the communist at home and in hope they’d go after the USSR.
I didn't, the "oppose the US and you'll be on the right side" heuristic only describes the end result, the core is still anti-imperialism
Interesting
Who do you support in the Ukraine war? Who would you support if the Chinese military invaded Taiwan?
Same with the US opposition to Nazi Germany after they supplied them with materials and weapons to crush the communist at home and in hope they'd go after the USSR.
The US government is made of many, many parts and conflicting goals and interests. The actions on student loan forgiveness are one small example, but the same applies even to big actions like what to do with Nazi Germany.
If there was a faction of the US government that was opposing Nazi Germany the whole time, and a faction of it that was supporting the Nazis even during part of the shooting war, is it fair to say you'd support the faction that was fighting the Nazis and oppose the faction that was supporting the Nazis? Or would you assert that the faction that was opposing the Nazis the whole time didn't exist or things didn't happen that way?
Who do you support in the Ukraine war? Who would you support if the Chinese military invaded Taiwan?
Re: Ukraine, I oppose the US’s actions. More specifically, I support peace at any cost; every day the war goes on, and every bomb we send there, is a bad day for someone, statistically mostly women and children. The region will never be safe again in our lifetimes. Literally anything would be better than what we’re seeing now. I have significant criticisms of Russia, but right now they would only serve to support more needless deaths.
Re: China. Assuming eventual, peaceful reunification was off the table due to US machinations and not invading meant a hostile state being used to launch hostile actions within PRC, I’d have to support it. The alternative is another Ukraine.
If there was a faction of the US government that was opposing Nazi Germany the whole time, and a faction of it that was supporting the Nazis even during part of the shooting war, is it fair to say you’d support the faction that was fighting the Nazis and oppose the faction that was supporting the Nazis?
This is correct. We’re getting into weird hypotheticals and counter-factuals. I’m more comfortable with things that actually happened.
There were Americans who opposed the nazis before 1941. During the mccarthy era, they were smeared as “preeminent anti-fascists” meaning “these people weren’t opposed to the nazis when we thought they were the answer to communism, that must mean they’re secret communists”.
Such a world where they were strongly influential, America might have taken different actions that had different results for the people living there and the heuristic wouldn’t work so well. But we don’t, and it does.
Have you read any Gerald Horne? The Counter Revolution of 1776 and The Counter Revolution of 1860 do a good job of showing how it’s baked into the US’s DNA.
every day the war goes on, and every bomb we send there, is a bad day for someone, statistically mostly women and children
not invading meant a hostile state being used to launch hostile actions within PRC, I'd have to support it
Fascinating
There were Americans who opposed the nazis before 1941. During the mccarthy era, they were smeared as "preeminent anti-fascists" meaning "these people weren't opposed to the nazis when we thought they were the answer to communism, that must mean they're secret communists".
Very fascinating. Can you give me some examples of some of these people? I know people in my family who were against the Nazis have all these stories about how they were shunned by their neighbors, harassed, all these bad things had happened to them, because they were against the Nazis too early. Anyone with a native understanding of US history is real familiar with it.
You can just ask questions if something doesn’t make sense, I’m happy to fill in any gaps. The RoC was secured on Taiwan by the US toward the end of the civil war for the purpose of future regime change and very explicitly used for this purpose until Nixon. We’re talking about a country that dropped a bunch of lamas into Tibet in the 50s to restore their theocratic slave regime and supported terrorists in Xinjiang.
That’s pretty standard when you look at the way the US enacts regime change.
It’s late and I’m tired, I can search some examples from the HUAC or w/e where pre-1941 opposition of nazi germany gets smeared as pro-communism another time.
It's late and I'm tired, I can search some examples from the HUAC or w/e of pre-1941 opposition of nazi germany gets smeared as pro-communism another time.
It’s obvious you didn’t even read one sentence of the link. I know you and the troll farm have a job to do with your “Genocide Joe” rhetoric, but we’re tired of it and don’t want you here.
Except I referenced multiple things in that link; 3 of them were increased militarism, 1 was that oil production in the US had increased. Those are objectively bad things.
I would argue domestic production of oil is a generally good thing, or at least neutral/balanced thing.
Yeah, we need to get away from oil, and we need more green generation, but that takes a long time. There’s a quick win in producing more domestically, by not having to import oil from halfway across the world, and also reducing foreign dependence for energy.
Problem is, last I heard, we are exporting most domestic oil now.
No, it’s not neutral, as oil prices increase, the incentive to invest in green energy decreases. There’s a reason US cars gas efficiency was abysmal until the oil embargo incentivized gas efficiency.
Oil prices should already be higher as it is. It costs roughly $4.40 just to recapture the CO2 that gets emitted from 1 gallon of gas. Gas should be closer to $10/gal (to capture the carbon emitted, and to pay for renewable subsidies, and the market price of oil itself).
But who would that hit? All of the expenses of higher fuel get sent down the consumer in the end, who is already getting squeezed for every cent.
That’s why I didn’t mention oil price at all. That’s a very delicate issue all of its own. How do we severe our dependence on fossil fuels entirely, while also not destroying the economy? Not just the fatcats but every day folk too. The people with gas cars, and stoves, and clothes dryers, and hot water, and heat, that all would need to be retrofitted to electric. That’s a huge expense. I don’t think most Americans are in a place to buy a new car, today, because gas is suddenly $10/gal…and even less so because in this universe, ICE cars are entirely useless so there’s no secondary market and no trade-in value. Let alone replace their appliances and HVAC.
We have to have more carrots for renewables and more sticks for fossil fuels…but too many sticks will collapse the whole damn thing. Not to mention carrots for public transit and walkable/bikable communities and everything else we should have in “the best and most advanced country in the world”. We’re a disgrace. We’re not even the best and most advanced country in America. God damn koolaid turned sour.
Also keep in mind that personal use of fossil fuels isn’t even one of the biggest sources of GHGs. That’s still behind commercial transport/shipping and animal agriculture. It needs to be reigned in, but there are far bigger fish to fry.
That’s why I focussed more on the drawbacks of international transport of oil. It takes energy and GHG emissions to get oil across the world. And there’s a substantial risk to an environmental disaster along the way. The closer it is, the lesser risk of environmental disaster.
There’s other ways we can relieve the consumer, such as removing the tariff on Chinese EVs and other green technology so they can afford it. Instead Biden is quadrupling it. Naturally Trump is already promising to raise it further so anyone who likes tariffs are going to vote Trump anyway, and anyone who wants a cheap EV just sees Biden raising the tariff.
Like Biden’s border policy and foreign policy, it’s morally wrong, but more importantly, every effort to appeal to “moderate republicans” is just electorally stupid. The fascists aren’t gonna vote for diet fascism when they can have the real thing.
The Chinese government is heavily subsidizing the costs of those vehicles, both directly and through their labor practices. By exporting them to the US at a price-point that includes Chinese subsidies, it is an economic attack on our automotive industry. The Chinese government is basically paying half the cost of the car and the net effect would be to destabilize our domestic auto industry.
Put another way, it is not possible to have a car, made with fair labor practices, at that price, without direct government subsidies.
For the administration to not levy a tariff is essentially akin to bending over and taking their economic offense up the ass.
China’s export prices for passenger vehicles have been increasing since at least Covid. If they were dumping/selling at a loss, we would expect it would decrease.
They sell for half the price domestically as they do rebranded in Europe because there is a strong domestic subsidy, but America has that too.
Considering his cabinet has stated they actively had to dissuade him, several times, from simply ordering military elements to “gun down” protestors during the Floyd protests in 2020…yeah.
I notice a certain slight tendency in your comments to talk about China, implication that aid for Taiwan was "bought" from the US congress by someone, tendency to delve into the details of tariffs and suchlike.
Quick question for you: If I protest in China against a Chinese policy I don't agree with, what happens to me?
(This isn't a whataboutism -- China doing something doesn't excuse the US police from doing a much milder version of the same thing. I don't think they should be beating or arresting protestors here either. I'm just curious how universally you apply this concern for protestors who had their asses beat.)
You could probably find much better data if you googled the chinese word for protestors, but then you’d have to translate the results.
Even when the government wants to shut down protests, such as in HK, it’s 100x more gentle than the US is. Think of how many people getting run over by cops we saw in 2020. I didn’t see a single child get domed with a pepperball in Hong Kong.
I'm not in favor of Abu Ghraib, or Guantánamo, or the Uyghur detention camps, or the genocide in Gaza. From my point of view as a person who likes human rights, it's actually not really that complicated to say that I'm not in favor of any of those things. It wouldn't even occur to me to bring up one of them as a defense for any of the others, because I would have no reason to want to defend any of them.
This is exactly why I wanted to ask you that seemingly unrelated question. I was curious whether you were an overall pro-human-rights person who came organically to your viewpoint about not wanting to vote for the Democrats, or whether that "of course I hate that Palestine protestors in the US are being abused" -- a pretty sensible view, tbh -- came alongside some other views which were incongruous and surprising, and wouldn't commonly be encountered in a person who has strong feelings about human rights as they pertain to domestic US politics.
Sounds like I got my answer.
(Edit: Oh, not that this is the point, because (1) as I said it's not a contest (2) it is actually a little unfair to compare Hong Kong's mini-insurrection against peaceful US Palestine protests -- but Hong Kong protestors absolutely were shot in the head with nonlethal rounds, shot with live ammunition, given brain injuries and broken bones, sexually assaulted, and in some cases had their eyes shot out. Maybe they can get together with the BLM people who had eyes shot out and the lot of them could start working out how we can get these assholes out of power please.)
a person who has strong feelings about human rights and domestic US politics.
My take on any enemies of the US is uncritical support; the only impact the US will have on those people is further immiseration, thus to criticize them as an American living in America is to carry water for imperialism.
It’s why you see people get more worked up about Iranian oppression than Saudi oppression, despite Saudi Arabia being dependent on US military aid to oppress it’s people. The context of you, and American, hearing about gay rights in Palestine is to support further oppression of the Palestinian people.
My take on any enemies of the US is uncritical support
Also, I want to circle back to this for a second. Doesn't this mean that we maybe shouldn't take your advice on how as voters to approach the presidential election?
Or does your "enemies of the US get uncritical support" stance come in conjunction with a "the US election is very important to me and I have some criticisms of the Democrats but they're purely meant from a constructive helping-the-country-get-better point of view" viewpoint on electoral politics?
Yeah, there is a discrepancy, I should be voting for the candidate that would lead to the quickest and least violent destruction of the US, but I live here and I can’t give up the admittedly absurd hope that despite all evidence, the US will just you know, stop it, without a revolution or anything.
There is a difference in what libs and I consider “helping-the-country-get-better” is; I feel helping the country get better at imperialism is a bad thing, they don’t.
Conversely, I feel helping the country get better at improving material conditions for the working class at the expense of the capitalist class to be good, where libs do not.
No, no, if they were still the core of imperialism. I don't think that's likely to change any time soon. But if voter sentiment in the US turned so aggressively and permanently against Israel that cutting off military aid to Israel became a huge campaign issue, and then it happened, and Israel went absolutely on a tear of anti-US realignment and made an alliance of survival with the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Or something like that. It's a lot more plausible than other things that people are talking about, like legalizing weed or abolishing the FBI and DOJ.
If that happened and the US still had a mostly-unchanged-otherwise foreign policy, would you uncritically support Israel because they'd become an avowed enemy of the US?
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also US puppets though.
But yes, I would support the US decolonizing its own puppets.
The uncritical support is right 99% of the time, there’s been a handful of weird historical flukes where the US accidentally ends up on the right side of history, such as WWII and briefly supporting Rojava against ISIS (which is really a wash, since they created the context that lead to ISIS, then supplied ISIS with trucks and weapons).
But yes, I would support the US decolonizing its own puppets.
That wasn't the question.
Would you uncritically support Israel, if they had a falling out with the US and started criticizing the US? Getting no military funding from us anymore, and getting up at the UN and calling out the US and giving criticism and making friends with countries that were avowed enemies of the US (while still killing Palestinians exactly like at present)?
I feel like you're saying you would, but I want to make sure I'm hearing you right.
It gets more complicated when US is on both sides or the same side as one of its enemies; eg, China supplying weapons to US puppets Indonesia and Philippians against their maoist guerillas.
But yes, in such a world where the US was openly taking action against one of their puppets, I’d have to support it, and be critical of whoever is supporting them.
It would be one hell of a historical fluke though.
making friends with countries that were avowed enemies of the US
They kinda have been, historically, in the late 40s, the USSR sent them some weapons, and more recently, they had warm relations with Russia and China.
North Korea good because US bad? Seems a bit reductive.
It’s not a fight between good and bad nations in my mind, it’s more about the struggle of people everywhere for liberation, justice, and equality. I’m pretty skeptical of most military actions since WW2 around the world. Such a destructive waste of human potential.
No, US’s opposition to North Korea is bad. It doesn’t make North Korea good, but I’m not going to criticize within the context of America, since the only use of that criticism is to support further sanctions or military actions against the people of North Korea.
“what should be an easy election” <- this is how we know you are campaigning for Trump. There is no such thing as an easy election. Since 1992, Democrats have won the popular vote in 7 out of 8 elections, but that didn’t stop Bush from beating Gore, or Trump from beating Clinton.
lol, all your type does is talk about dems dems dems, not a single word about Republicans or how much worse they have proven to be when they are in office.
Trump said he would help Israel end the genocide, I guess that’s what you want after all, right?
Oh, so you’re still under the delusion the DNC did nothing wrong, and it’s the voters who were wrong for not voting harder.
Look at it this way: The democrats can change their own policy. They cannot change the psychology of the masses. No matter how much you yell at people for pointing it out, facilitating genocide, restarting student loans, letting Texas keep their child drowning fence, standing around while states ban abortion, are bad for electoral outcomes.
The republicans are psychopaths whose policies are bad for the material conditions of 99% of Americans. This has been true forever, but here we are, with dems somehow right of Richard Nixon. You have to have absolute dogshit policies for it to even be close, and that’s exactly what got us here. “Well trump might have restarted student loan payments but worse” isn’t gonna convince someone who is building up credit card debt now because they can’t balance rent, food, and student loan repayments.
my student loan repayments are currently $0 due to the SAVE repayment plan. the threat i currently face as a borrower in repayment comes from states suing the Biden admin in federal court to stop affordable repayment.
i see your propaganda. i hope others see it for what it is as well.
I’m not under any delusions. ANY political party wielding power is going to make decisions that help some people and hurt others. It can’t be helped it’s the nature of power itself.
I’ll repeat, the Democrats have won the popular vote 7 out of 8 times since 1992. They have the more popular policies on their side, and only have to fight rhetoric like yours. What are you doing to help change the Democratic party, hm? Tea Party and MAGA have each managed to get their fucknuts into power and change the direction of the Republicans towards fascism. What’s your plan, how does whinging in comment section trying to create voter apathy towards the Dems do anything but put Trump in office?
In life, you have two mutually exclusive options: you can be right about something, or you can be effective. So you go ahead and keep on being the rightist guy in the room. The people who focus on being effective will manage to work around you.
Biden needs to stop this fascist takeover by putting Trump in jail or by giving Trump massive fines so he can’t campaign properly. Kick him off the ballot in various states. That will show that fascist who’s boss. Make cnn or msnbc write hit pieces on Trump, non-stop. Nice.
you do realise that’s the exact idea used by every fascist from Mao to Mussolini to Modi, right?
who determines that actions taken are crimes? should there not be due process that measures them against the law before such a distinction–such a judgement, one may say–is made?
or should anyone be able to point a finger willy-nilly at anyone else claiming them to be a criminal and to start doling out the lynchrope?
"How Democracies Die" goes into this in quite a bit of detail. Once the fascists start breaking the rules, there's a terrible temptation to start fighting back in kind, violating norms like the one against politically motivated prosecutions dictated by the executive branch, which it's easy to decide it's time to start breaking, because we have to do something or else they might take over the fucking country. Breaking those rules is one of the last stages in the collapse of the democratic system which will hasten the fascist takeover, though. It must not be done. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you have to fight the uphill battle continuing to obey the rules against people who are breaking them. It sucks but in most cases it's the only move that leads to any good outcome.
Biden is doing the right thing by staying out of the prosecutions and letting the DOJ for some awful fuckin reason handle them at the same glacial pace that it handles everything. Why they're doing that, I don't know, but Biden is right to stay out of it.
I’m sorry to say someone lied to you, it’s really unfortunate. Biden cannot do the things you say due to seperation of powers, Trump ended up getting himself into those situations through his own actions.
Be better than the person who lied to you about this stuff, stop spreading their lies.
You think Trumps mugshot (him in jail) was not politically motivated? You think the legal fines and all that time in court is not politically motivated or simply to keep him away from the campaign trail? You don’t think they will do everything to “disqualify” him, this includes kicking him off the ballot? You don’t think cnn, msnbc, nyt, wapo writes hit pieces, are politically motivated?
I think you’re right about them being politically motivated, simply because other politicians have gotten away with far worse than most of what he’s being charged with.
But lets take a look at some of what he’s not being charged with.
Trump encouraged the J6 “protesters” to become violent with thinly veiled language. I watched it happen in real time.
He refused to denounce political extremists, instead asking them to “Stand back and stand by.” I watched that happen live, too.
He suggested injecting bleach to fight the corona virus. Live.
He bragged about passing a basic cognitive test by repeating “Man, Woman, Person, Camera, TV” once again, live.
He let US citizens die by withholding pandemic aid to states that he felt weren’t aligned with him politically.
I could go on (and on) but I think I’ve made my point.
I don’t care what the motivations are. Bury the motherfucker.
I know it’s hard to accept that people you trust have been telling you lies, but once you consider it you’ll recognize the simplest explanation is that Trump did those things to himself, by committing the actions he was accused of, and he is being treated like anyone else would be in those situations.
Clearly you’re smart, but someone is treating you like your stupid. Be better than them.
If Journalists point that out and report on it, then the Republicans will refuse their interviews and to come on their shows… and they much rather have the fall of democracy, than risk losing access.
Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we don’t have time to worry about the fall of democracy when the fall of ratings is on the line!
You have blue MAGA outlets like NPR that spent the last 8 years being “fair” to both sides, telling their audience the antivax fascist psychopaths are just as valid and worthy as the left trying to give people education and healthcare.
As if conservative views are even worth recognizing.
Liberalism without a STRONG left wing always ends in fascism, and the liberals are more than happy to join the fascists (see: literally all liberal discourse on Lemmy).
Guess what the US has spent the past 80 years doing. Real coincidence every time a country leans left, they are overthrown by CIA puppets.
So now you have liberals in literal tears trying to get their guy elected without even fucking understanding the issues at play. They don’t give a shit.
Not all NPRs. Boston Public Radio, or at least Jim and Marjorie, the only time I ever heard them talking about antivaxers was when Art Caplan (a weekly regular…“American ethicist and professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine” per his Wikipedia) was tearing apart most of what they say.
But that’s more like a talk news show. You kind of expect a little bit less neutrality in that.
Art Caplan was also recently on an episode of Nova talking about ethics in modern medicine. Think it was actually about vaccination (may have been designer babies).
If you’re going to join conversations with people you might want to check your tone, as you could have the most sound argument ever but if you come across as a prick you’re going to turn people off your pov.
Be better my guy and talk to people how you would expect people to talk to your mother.
I’m so glad idiots like you are a joke to the silent majority, who will continue living free under liberalism long after fascism and communism are forgotten.
Have you been frozen since the 90s? All the proclamations that liberalism won and it was the end of history, and we’d just have technocratic tweaks to capitalism forever were wrong.
Capitalism tends towards crisis when it can’t expand its markets, it’s structural.
Hell this very post is about liberals being complicit with or facilitating the rise of fascism.
Because there’s nothing new under the sun, you can study the same dynamic in 1930s germany. The choice is socialism or barbarism, and the liberals choose barbarism every time.
to Those Leftists™, anyone thats left of them, right of them, or has identical political beliefs on everything except one issue are “libs”, its been thrown around so much on lemmy that it takes up the same part of my brain as “woke”, when I see someone use it unironically its generally safe to say I can ignore them.
Social democrats literally are liberals though; liberal is defined by support of capitalism, social democrats seek to buttress capitalism with social programs.
Not to be confused with Democratic Socialism, such as in Bolivia and and Venezuela, who aren’t liberals, nor are anarchists, or communists or various indigenous movements that are their own flavor of anti-capitalist.
Yeah, but I wasn’t replying to the social democrat. I can only go through seeing anarchists and communists be called lib so many times before feeling like the word liberal has lost all meaning and it just becomes another abstract insult
Where the hell do you see anarchists and communists get called lib?
Is it by republicans, who think liberal means anyone left of them and that communists are a type of liberal, and Mao’s Combat Liberalism was a pamphlet about doing liberalism, but really aggressively?
Those people are even dumber and more politically illiterate than the average blue maga.
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