The fact you phrase it as though that’s an actual question is terrifying. You’re comparing someone who wants to LITERALLY be a dictator and never have an election again, to someone who isn’t willing to fully embrace every last left-wing policy you demand.
The “ruling class” didn’t dictate Bernie not getting the Democratic nomination, people voting in primaries did. Do you know which group of people overwhelmingly don’t vote in primaries? The same 20-somethings bitching about Biden being the “only other option”. Get the fuck out of here with your “demonstrating to the ruling class” - you had your opportunity to show up and overwhelm the primaries and chose not to. The “ruling class” don’t have the numbers to determine a primary, and if you choose to watch their commercials and buy into it, that’s on you. But hey, if a bunch of people think like you’ll they’ll find out what actually living in a dictatorship is like. And no, Canada isn’t just going to welcome you with open arms when the world starts burning down around you so I hope you’ve got an exit strategy.
Recently came across project 2025, which is a plan to upend the government for trump to run it like a dictatorship. It’s actually frightening to even entertain the possibility. And I’m guessing it’s derived from how putin got to his dictatorship position, because trump really likes putin and met with him too often.
Personally, i’m worried that the biden administration is underestimating the electoral importance of his decision to continue supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
If you are worried about the Palestinians, do you expect Trump to be more lenient in that regard? I think it would be even worse with Trump. He’d not be mildly criticizing Netanyahu, but would rather asking Netanyahu why he isn’t going further
But as someone who doesn’t have to live in the hellhole called the US, sees that they are represented by their own politicians accurately. The US let it come this far because the US decided to perpetuate a system that just makes everything worse due to lesser evil politics. So by USean logic, voting Biden prevents worse things from happening to Palestinians compared to Trump. But I personally would vote for someone who accurately represents my stances instead of buying into the lesser evilism in a messed up system.
Personally, i’m worried that the biden administration is underestimating the electoral importance of his decision to continue supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
he’s aware of the optics of his positions and voting history; that’s why he reversed course on gay marriage; gays in the military and federal service long after it was popular and gave the barest of minimums for weed and student loans that didn’t have much of an impact on the status quo.
palestine is the one thing he won’t budge on; but he’ll (somewhat) do all of the other things that’ll get him votes like he’s always done and give the people not paying enough attention warm fuzzy feels for supporting him.
i think the worst take away from this election cycle is learning that most american’s don’t give a rat’s ass about genocide; so long as their guy wins and get to express regret over it. (i also wonder if that’s how every other genocide is/was allowed to happen).
Yup. (I was just mirroring Bernie’s verbiage and flipping the active subject)
Biden is the quintessential capital-L Liberal: he is performatively responsive to progressive issues, but only insofar as it does not alter the fundamental power structures of the western capitalistic and chauvinistic principles.
as a black person i’m worried that donald trump’s batting average isn’t showing the potential it should be this season. he should spend more time in the cages.
there is an understandable wave of nihilism manifesting in the younger generations that will probably persist for as long as they live. i don’t imagine the united states will stop producing nihilists for a long time as the circumstances are not projected to change
If they fuck around they’re going to find out real fast. Look how long it’s taken to get weed semi legal. Like we’ve already lived in a kinda super wealthy oligarchy. I don’t think we need to fight, unless the fascists win. They don’t make up nearly the majority though so we could see what happened in Brazil here, horrible but they did get a more socially minded president. But Trump never conceded and still doesn’t. He’s caused basically a weird cult.
I get it that Biden has some possibly underreported accomplishments, but like Trump tried to overthrow the government and is still walking around like nothing happened.
Eh, I got a day job and a full life. I can barely fit in the doom scrolling I already do today.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s been my experience in >40 years of living that the amount of influence I’ll be able to have over the onslaught of doom is miniscule.
I kinda lost all hope for the future of this country when Trump was elected the first time. After how disastrous his first term was, if this country full of morons actually puts the clown back in that same position I’ll completely and fully give up on it.
It’s the idiots’ country, I just have to live in it.
I think the current climate of digging up anything someone has ever done or said that is against the current accepted morality and punishing them for it severely makes a lot of people not want to stick out their neck. This probably isn’t an accident.
I’ve come to the conclusion from this thread and others that liberals either don’t believe or can’t comprehend that leftists consider Palestinians to be actual human beings whose lives are inherently valuable. The way they see it, we’re whiny children throwing a fit because we were refused a puppy. I keep seeing people talk about opposition to genocide as “an individual want” or “being upset that you got bread instead of a cake,” and so on, characterizing us as selfishly prioritizing our individual preferences, because in their minds it’s just about us feeling bad when we see dying Palestinians, and not about the Palestinians themselves.
Opposition to genocide is a hard red line and a fundamental moral principle. It’s not a want, it’s not a preference, it is a demand which is absolutely non-negotiable.
I’m never going to be convinced to vote for Biden, but if you actually care about convincing leftists, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot by trivializing the issue. Of course, the most effective way to convince an opponent of genocide to support a politician would be to get the politician to stop supporting genocide, but if you choose to focus you efforts on getting leftists to stop opposing genocide instead, I can’t stop you.
How about we flip this around and talk about trivializing the issue of having a Trump-led slide into fascism and any attempt at leftist organising getting you thrown into a camp… while Palestinians are still getting bombed because Israel certainly doesn’t need the US’s help to produce arms. Mabye that’s an evil enough evil to convince you that the lesser evil is, indeed, the lesser one.
Nobody is trivializing Trump. The fact is that the Democrats are getting worse and worse, and will commit more and more atrocities and crimes if nobody holds them accountable. Ask yourself why they’d rather have Trump become a president instead of stopping to aid in a fucking genocide? Also the Dems were happy to continue most of Trumps policies, like internment camps at the borders and building that infamous wall. By supporting the Dems no matter what all you get is the Dems in 4 years to be where the Reps are now.
Also the Dems were happy to continue most of Trumps policies,
I’m still waiting for the people held without a trail in Guantanamo to be released. There have been 11 years of Democratic Presidential leadership since then…
they’d rather have Trump become a president instead of stopping to aid in a fucking genocide?
Trump is no less likely to support Israel, on top of that he’s a gazillion times more likely to support genocides within the US itself.
By supporting the Dems no matter what all you get is the Dems in 4 years to be where the Reps are now.
That’s what you get by not organising civil society to move past the current bipartisan BS. Make the right policies popular and politicians will rise to support those policies because guess what, politicians want to get elected. Therefore, yes, it’s true that the solution is not electoralism, also, yes, it’s also true that you shouldn’t shoot yourself in both foot and knee by allowing democracy to be abolished and organisation, changing the mind of the people, to be made illegal.
Also the Dems were happy to continue most of Trumps policies
I’m sorry did Biden order the army to break up strikes with artillery or something. Must’ve missed that.
A protest vote won’t save Gaza. It will allow the war in russia to expand and get more innocents killed though. I do wish people wouldn’t trivialize the second Ukrainian genocide they’re risking.
In two years of the Russian invasion the UN gives a confirmed minimum of 10.700 killed Civilians and 20.000 wounded by the End of February 2024. Ukraine reports another 11.000 missing and 28.000 captive by Nov/Dec 2023.
So even extrapolating that till may, for a two year period we are nowhere near close to the killing of Civilians by Israel in Gaza within just 7 months. Russias invasion of Ukraine is illegal, it is appalling and it is a grave injustice with Millions of people suffering. But in terms of murder of Civilians it is hardly comparable. Especially when considering that Ukraine has a population of about 34 Million whereas Gaza has a population of about 2 Million.
So even extrapolating that till may, for a two year period we are nowhere near close to the killing of Civilians by Israel in Gaza within just 7 months. Russias invasion of Ukraine is illegal, it is appalling and it is a grave injustice with Millions of people suffering. But in terms of murder of Civilians it is hardly comparable.
You know why? Play a game like Armored Brigade which imagines a cold war gone hot scenario in eastern Europe (Fulda Gap or feinting going for the Fulda Gap) where nuclear war somehow doesn’t erupt and end civilization (which it would in all likelihood making the entire wargame of Armored Brigade a weird fucked up memorial to the last people on earth) and full on armored warfare has begun with entire armored divisions committed to catastrophically quick and deadly warfare.
Everything happens fast, mistakes come in the form of universe ending mass rocket artillery strikes or precision Close Air Support or a “tactical support missile” ATACMS missile that hunts down a critical piece of air defense equipment that thought it was hiding tens of miles from the reach of artillery near the front. Two Main Battle Tanks can obliterate an entire field of 60 armored personnel carriers loaded with heavily armored troops in a matter of minutes from a kilometer away from a fold in a hilltop.
This kind of war is brutal and awful, with weapons having become so powerful and decisive in order to penetrate thick armor or catch impossibly fast jets, that human bodies almost instantly become thrown to pieces when they get anywhere nearby them even if they aren’t the target. A lot of Hollywood explosion fx in movies is really stupid and unrealistic but have you ever seen footage of a tank turret getting launched hundreds of feet straight up into the air by the incredible build up of pressure from a High Explosive Anti Tank shell or missile turning the inside of a tank into such a pressure cooker that it shears straight off from the rest of the hull like a wine cork?
Still, this kind of war is about the movement of strategically valuable resources and military equipment, the goal isn’t to put a bullet in every single one of your enemies troops. The goal is to punch through their lines where they aren’t expecting it using armored divisions and then develop the breach in the lines into a deep thrust into enemy territory. Armored units race to exploit the temporary confusion in the enemies intelligence and move at high speed to critical junctures in transportation infrastructure (cities with rail line convergences, important bridges) far behind where the enemy thinks the front line is, and if the geometry of the offensive is right and is in sync with quickly adapting supply lines than massive numbers of enemy troops can be decisively removed from relevance from the broader war without excessive sacrifices of friendly troops to accomplish the attrition (and thus not require killing all of the enemy troops to destroy their army).
This is the polar opposite of the brutal pointlessness of WW1, not in terms of ethics but in terms of literal military strategy towards achieving political aims (winning a war and removing your enemies military from the political picture as a force).
You see when this happens and a large amount of a military is encircled, fighting doesn’t automatically stop, but it really isn’t in the best interests for either the vulnerable encircled army to shed needless lives in aimless attacks at the enemies flanking force or for the vulnerable sections of the encircling army to risk starting a fight on two sides (the encircled enemies side and the enemy side). Both sides have every incentive to fight as hard as they possibly can in that moment, but the risk and consequences of choosing the wrong time and place to do so limits the willingness of higherups in military to just grind whole sections of their troops into meat. Thus a complex interaction of maneuver warfare plays out that isn’t not willing to carelessly toss away human lives but at least it isn’t actively invested either way in how many humans do or don’t die to accomplish a strategic goal (so long as it doesn’t undermine the strategic goal…).
See the point of this entire post is that Israel basically started from this position with the Palestinians except Palestine is a city not an army and so people just live there and mostly don’t want to hurt anybody just go about their lives. When Israel successfully “encircled” these violent Palestinians for trying to be a city when the land was rightfully owned by rightwing jewish colonial settlers (another lame rip off of MAGA heads echoed somewhere else in the world) instead of negotiating peace terms and ending a period of symmetrical war with two armies that both had air support, tanks, armored divisions and complex logistics support networks capable of supplying a MOVING army with consistent weapons and supplies Israel decided to just start randomly killing innocent Palestinians one by one, for various different bullshit reasons.
This is not a war. Palestinians dying en masse (what, 80,000 dead by now probably? who knows? Israel killed all the journalists or threatened them enough for them to stop checking the numbers) is not a means to an end for the IDF in winning this Not War.
Killing Palestinians en mass IS THE POINT. THE GENOCIDE IS THE POINT
This is just Murderers killing helpless people who already control their victims access to food, electricity, internet, housing, their loved ones who only live nearby past a purposefully byzantine checkpoint…
Also FUCK Russia and its brutal war on Ukraine too, please if anyone comes into this reply and starts claiming “but Russia is still bad” like yes of course Russia is committing an awful act. I don’t know who the hell not living in Russia thinks the invasion of Ukraine is ok that doesn’t directly profit from it but they are an idiot if they do.
What exactly is the game plan for Ukraine anyway? It seems to be headed for a stalemate along their current borders. If that happens, how long will the US need to keep funding them? 10 years? 20?
The war in Ukraine is tragic but it doesn’t fit the classification a genocide, and regardless, I’m not going to vote for one genocide to stop another. As I said, genocide is a hard red line that I will never support, even if you put a gun to my head.
Young people? How about Democrat party leadership? If you need certain people to vote for you, then you have to earn their votes! How is this so hard to understand?
how about refusing to acknowledge that repubs would do the same or worse with this situation? no sane person thinks the situation is great. but brain dead is making a voting issue out of this when it isn’t one.
I’m trying to convince essentially one guy to stop supporting genocide. People like you have the unenviable task of convincing millions of people to vote for a guy who currently supports genocide. The election isn’t happening tomorrow, why don’t you put your efforts into convincing your party leaders to adopt saner positions rather than bullying people who are genuinely and rightly outraged at what our country is and isn’t doing in regards to it’s support of Israel?
once again, you’re making this into a voting issue when it isn’t one because neither party is interested in taking your preferred stance. naturally, withholding a vote because of this makes no sense especially when the stakes on other important issues are so high.
I understand how strongly you feel about this issue. I agree with your feelings about it. I would love to see the Israeli govt get pulverised for what they are doing. and it is objectively atrocious in every way that they are supported.
I can also use my brain to logically determine that refusing to vote dem is likely to put power into the hands of those who will do worse both on this specific issue and many others. voting for Biden might not make it better, but doing anything else will definitely make it worse. and that’s the brain dead choice.
The brain dead choice is allowing yourself to be literally without political agency. I have a list of things I care about, and there isn’t really anything higher than “not doing genocide”. I’m never going to change my mind about that, and I’m never going to listen to anyone who says “of course genocide is bad, but…”. Are you making your opposition to genocide known to your party leaders? Are you supporting efforts to get them to notice the significance of electorate opposition to genocide? Your efforts are better spent doing that kind of thing over the coming months, than arguing with me.
which is the definition of ideological to a fault.
you’re falsely equating voting dem for justifying genocide. they are not the same. one can be actively working against it and still vote blue, recognizing that any other action likely promotes genocide and more terrible things.
Ideological to a fault is losing an election because you just can’t stop supporting a genocidal state. If our only choices for leadership both support genocide, then we’ve already lost anything we might have needed to save. It’s not ideological, it is a low fucking bar.
let’s be absolutely clear here. the only argument you have is to say that Republicans will do less genocide. that’s it. because in any other case your extreme ideology only causes more.
Let’s be clear here: you refuse to do anything to pressure an administration that is doing genocide right now. Your extreme ideology is causing genocide right now. Don’t blame me if Republicans win in the fall, blame yourself and your party who can’t even manage to stop causing genocide long enough to win an election.
as a non American i have no party in your shit hole country.
are you incapable of thinking pragmatically? because it’s pretty clear you are letting your ideals cloud your judgement, unless you actually believe Republicans will help your cause. your pathetic political system has long been about choosing the lesser of 2 evils and frankly the fact that you refuse to accept this tells me everything I need to know. enjoy living in a fascist hellscape, with all those leopards eating your face.
Hard to believe you’re not American the way you sound just like our whiney liberals. Particularly the way you insist on reducing my outrage and opposition to an ongoing genocide as mere ideology or unpragmatic. If you genuinely care who wins our next elections, I hope you are having similarly spirited conversations with my “blue no matter who” countrymen about what a losing strategy their party is employing.
Because the side that benefits from voter apathy is relying on that exact ‘wall of noise’ media coverage to disenfranchise enough voters to get their preferred candidate in.
The amount of damage that Trump was able to inflict upon the United States in his term (3 Supreme Court picks, countless lower court picks); he will deliver a killing blow if given the opportunity.
As hyperbolic as it sounds, this could very well be the least legitimate Presidential election should he succeed.
“Both Sides Bad” is a 4Chan-level talking point concocted by the right, to obfuscate all the good that has been implemented over the past four years - even without all the roadblocks the GOP keeps putting in the way.
Is the system so weak that one president can break it? If so then it is already broken. If Trump is able to leverage presidential power to such effect, then why isn’t Biden able to do the same? I think the word apathy obscures how a lot of non-voters feel. Give people some credit for their political motivations, even if they may present as lack of motivation.
Democracy is fragile, and requires buy-in from a majority of politicians to maintain.
The GOP have been evil for longer than you’ve been alive; and their grand scheme has always been “to shrink the Government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”. They are not in a position to do it.
The Trump presidency brought to light a flaw in the existing systems, that a lot of processes and regulations weren’t sufficiently bound by law, but rather protocol.
In that, one bad actor with support from their political party could ignore norms and standards set previously to withhold judicial appointments in an election year to deprive Obama of a seat, and then completely ignore that precedent when it happened again to Trump, giving him a 3rd appointment after one term.
Could/should Biden try something similar? Perhaps, and in some ways he is (student debt forgiveness) - but he now faces an uphill struggle against an openly hostile Supreme Court which has already proved to have no care for precedent either (e.g. overturning Rowe v. Wade).
Just remember, it takes a lot less time to destroy something, than it was to build it in the first place.
I just don’t think the Democrats are up to the task of saving democracy (if that’s what we even have). I think it’s an indictment of them as a party that they struggle to achieve decisive wins against the totally kookoo Republicans.
Because of the electoral college, my vote doesn’t mean much of anything in a presidential election because I live in a very blue state, not a swing state. I still vote, though.
Well, there is a very simple solution to this. The Democrats could actually be a progressive party that recognizes and protects human rights, international law, and basic humanity of its American people.
But they don’t. They continue to aid a genocide. They continue to obstruct justice on an international level. They continue the racist policies of Trumps like interment camps at the southern borders and building “the wall”. They continue to protect the interest of rich elites against the American people like denying universal healthcare and basic social security for all.
The Democrats would rather have Trump win, than have the US not be a violent rogue nation internationally and a far-right economics hellhole internally.
Now they decided to crack down on free speech together with the Republicans, instead of taking the young peoples protests seriously. They are fine with Trump. For them Trump is better than universal healthcare or upholding international laws, like not committing mass murder.
In addition, Democrats do everything possible to make sure nobody left of center wins the Democratic nomination: when there was a real challenge to the corporate Democrats (Bernie in 2016 and 2020), they did everything they could to rig the primary process in order to keep out any leftward movement. Similarly for 2024, instead of holding debates to convince Democrats that Joe Biden was still up to the task, they held no debates and even canceled the primaries in several states. In 2020, polling showed that Bernie would have a much more comfortable path to victory than Biden, but Democrats were more comfortable with Trump than Bernie.
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