Are there any lemmy servers that consist of more moderate and centrist or even moderate right-leaning people? I don't like solely participating in the echo chambers, because if you don't think like the liberal hivemind you get insulted repeatedly with no meaningful discussion, and the talking points are combative instead of philosophical or thought provoking. Surely there are less extremist communities on lemmy somewhere?
The problem is I want a home feed where left-wing political stances and memes aren't crammed into every possible row, and lemmy users seem to spend significant amounts of brain power making anti-right wing memes and whatnot, so instead of having useful meaningful entertaining content it's just political garbage and left-wing propaganda. Might have to just make my own instance and somehow filter out the useless political rhetoric noise I guess.
I sincerely doubt you have much to add that is philosophical or thought provoking, if this (honestly tired old image) was enough to make you respond like anyone who criticizes Trump, or attacks bad takes about how both sides are bad, makes everyone here extremists. And now you must flee to a safe haven where nobody does that? Is that not... Seeking to participate in a different echo chamber? Do you not see how ridiculous that is?
Not participating so much as reading the hivemind room temp IQ drivel that usually comes with the territory is just a complete waste of time because there's nothing interesting or valuable in any way. I'm still on the hunt for better circles as is tradition. Eventually I'm going to write my own javascript extension for firefox to help mitigate some of the overly politically biased posts and comments in the main feeds, which will likely have to work over time as I start building regular expression rules and whatnot and start doing weighted statistics. Might actually be a good use case to start using Python to start classification systems as I aggregate the datasets. Might even be an interesting case for machine learning. I think I might actually do that now that I think about it..
The reality is people posting this copium are just upset at the prospect of having to return to opposing the state. Having Biden in power meant you didn't have to give a shit who lived and who died because "Trump could be worse". The idea that you'd "hold him to account" was an objective lie and has allowed you all to sleepwalk into an inevitable victory for someone way more evil than the guy who spent his younger years advocating for killing women and children in Beirut.
If Biden wins, someone like Trump is inevitable in 4 years' time. Either way you're in the weimar republic now.
Having Biden in power meant you didn’t have to give a shit who lived and who died because “Trump could be worse”.
I do have to give a shit, but that's because I'm in a red state.
As a Texas resident, I get to see a new draconian set of fascist laws constrict around Harris County with every State Congressional cycle.
The Biden DOJ doesn't intervene. The local Democrats (John Whitmire, our Houston Mayor, is a prime example) just roll over in the face of it. And folks who protest to loud or too long routinely find themselves dead in the state prison system (the one with cells that go up to 100 degrees in the summer).
"Oh but look at what Biden has done for California and Minnesota and Delaware, tho!"
Yeah, thanks. I don't live there.
Folks in Texas and Florida and South Carolina and the Dakotas are getting thrown to the fucking wolves.
I think the middle person is living on the military grade hopium where there's bound to be a revolution that solves everything, it's just around the corner too. So why bother trying to get small wins or even slow down the worsening conditions. Revolution will fix everything.
There's a chapter in uncle Bob's book Clean Code about how everybody dreams of a grand redesign in the sky, but that it never really works out in the end.
Everybody thinks they'll come out on top after a "revolution" but they almost certainly will not. Such chaos is far more likely to help than hurt fascists. That's kind of their jam.
AAAAnd China. The progressive communist revolution was pioneered by young and ambitious urban intellectuals to fight against warlords, Foreign imperialism, and old China; later also the attempted dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek. Unfortunately, their hard work was eventually hijacked by conservatives and dictators.
A bit of fun fact: after the communist revolution and cultural revolution, China was slowly stepping towards democracy, through internal CCP reform:
called for the end of bureaucracy, centralisation of power as well as patriarchy, proposing term limits to the leading positions in China and advocating the "democratic centralism" as well as the "collective leadership".
Deng emphasized that the Constitution must be able to protect the civil rights of Chinese citizens and must reflect the principle of separation of powers; he also described the idea of "collective leadership" and championed the principle of "one man, one vote" among leaders to avoid the dictatorship of the General Secretary of CCP.
Unfortunately, the pro-democracy crowd lost, because they sided with Tiananmen square student protest. Their defeat eventually leads to the Tiananmen Square massacre. And the political power fallen into the hand of the conservatives.
after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, many leading reformists including Zhao and Bao were removed from their posts, and the majority of the planned political reforms (after 1986) ended drastically. Left-wing conservatives led by Chen Yun, President Li Xiannian and Premier Li Peng took control
The pro-democracy leaders were all weakened or arrested after Tiananmen Square massacre:
During the 1989 Tian’anmen square protests, he was one of the very few Chinese senior officials to express understandings with the demonstrating students, which led to his arrest shortly before the June Fourth incident.
So there might be a bizarre alternative world, where Tiananmen Square protest did not happen and China is now a democracy...
The bizarre alternative world isn’t even where the protests didn’t happen, it’s where agents of foreign governments and local fanatics didn’t hijack/build them up with the explicit goal of producing as much bloodshed as possible.
I was hoping tankies won't have a conspiracy theory about one of the most tragic event of human kind, but I guess I overestimated humanity.
These were well-educated, progressive, and ambitious students, passionated about a brighter future for China. They share the same vision and drive as the founding members of CCP. And they are more passionate about communism than all the tankies I have seen, and willing to sacrifice their life for their admirable goals.
Their requirements has always been simple and clear: build a progressive democratic government in Hu Yaobang's vision, and purge the conservatives like Li Peng from CCP, which is founded upon a progressive vision of China. Thus, they are needlessly and brutally murdered by conservatives who seek to stabilize their own power.
If you work for the CCP, I doubt I will be able to project any sense into your brain. I can only hope these word might be helpful for readers of your comments to gain some context.
Okay, I guess Chai Ling never existed and the multiple admitted connections to western regime change programs of three letter agencies are all cpc propaganda?
It’s one thing to say that the events are tragic and that it would have been good if dengist students could have implemented reforms, a sentiment I mostly agree with, it’s another entirely to suggest that there was no manipulation towards violence by people either directly or indirectly tied to western intelligence operations.
E: autocorrect dengist -> dentist where’s my denguin holding a pick hexbear emoji?
Correct, that's what I'm trying to say. The chaos resulting from the US interference led to the current regime using other factions to, ultimately, get into power and quickly turn against. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
There are only so many ways to get the kind of society that works, and far too many ways for it to go wrong. It's kind of a crazy idea to think that burning it down and starting over would be beneficial.
Like how do people like that exist with themselves all with coming up with an opinion and just not researching it let alone questioning it for a second just to be debased in a matter of seconds. And that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt. Deep down I think they are trolling.
Of course they are. After all the allure of spreading fake news anonymously is strong indeed. In such environment default stance is trolling and conscious effort is required to not to when there are no consequences.
they are definitely a troll and I’m with you on that. there is always a slim possibility there is someone who will read this shit and actually swallows it. So it’s exhausting when so many bots and trolls suck up time of others who are trying to run triage.
And yeah, I wish there were better and more effective consequences than ‘tell a mod’ cuz that doesn’t do shit on meta or Reddit or x
Advanced trolls are almost indistinguishable except that they seemingly drastically change opinions every other comment. Best you can do is just refute the comment as it is and quickly end it.
We should train a neural network that will detect this. We have the technology. Create a profile of political views and likes of a user, and if it is too chaotic, eliminate the dissenter with a well-placed Improvised Explosive Device.
Alternatively, we can carry out a precise air strike on the subversive element. For example with a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator remotely piloted aircraft.
I think it's just because the media reports the negative things that happened under Trump more loudly than they reported the positive things under Biden.
Like how do people like that exist with themselves
In 2016 it was reported by several places that tens of millions of Americans can't absorb a sudden $400 expense without going further into debt. That number has grown significantly under Biden, which is why people don't care about articulating their opinion of why he's a bad president. (For instance, in 2023, homelessness jumped 12%)
Their lives just got harder, and that experience is all they need.
I'm pretty old. Biden has been the best president of my lifetime.
He should be viewed as a national hero for beating Donnie in 2020 and making it stick, which was probably harder than it looked. The US President starting a coup has lots of strings to pull.
I deduct credit from a President if they are primarily fixing problems that they themselves caused or greatly assisted in creating throughout their previous political career. In Biden's case, that means that he is unlikely to get better than absolute neutral due to his incredibly long history of selling out the American people.
I will not give Biden an 11th hour passing grade just because he is up against Trump, he doesn't deserve to be graded on a curve.
You think Biden becoming President and trying to fix the mistakes he made previously in his political career is a bad thing?
How many politicians do you know of that will admit they made a bad call or their previous track record was shitty for the people, let alone become president in an effort to "right those wrongs?"
Politicians make bad decisions all the time, and we suffer because of it, so I applaud anyone who can realize it and do what they can to fix it... a lot of the politicians today will stand by every decision they make, most of which will just double-down on it.
No, I don't think it's a bad thing. In fact I think that fixing his mistakes is a good thing. I also don't think that it more than balances out the years of damage that be did before having a change of heart when he is running for President and needs votes. He started in a hole, and the good things he does start in that hole, not at ground level.
I don't think that Biden is now as ethical as Bernie Sanders just because he is trying to reduce some of the harm he was responsible for. Let's also not attribute to genuine generosity and compassion that which can also be explained by pragmatism and calculus. If he was not running for President and was instead still a 30+ year incumbent Senator of Delaware, would he be sponsoring student loan relief bills and credit card/banking fee limitation bills? I don't think so, but maybe you do.
If he was not running for President and was instead still a 30+ year incumbent Senator of Delaware, would he be sponsoring student loan relief bills and credit card/banking fee limitation bills? I don’t think so, but maybe you do.
I honestly think he would. Not out of compassion or anything, but if you follow Biden's career, there are three constants:
Man loves his choo-choos.
He's a strong Union supporter by the standards of US politicians (ie by the lowest imaginable bar).
He otherwise shifts with the party.
When the party's opinions change, so does he. Not necessary the opinions of the entire American electorate - not necessarily the opinions of just the top brass - the party as a whole. In some ways, you could say, in that sense, he's a reed in the wind or an opportunist - but he is pretty consistently responsive to firm shifts in the outlook of Democratic voters, before most other moderates do.
Student loan relief and banking fee limitations would have be anathema (yes, even amongst most of the voters) for Dems even just 20 years ago. Dem opinions have changed, and Biden sways with them.
Eh, this is a bit too "moving the finish line" for me. In a super long political career, attitudes shift. I don't think you can judge someone for, say, cheering about Don't Ask Don't Tell (a win for it's time, but now seen as a crappy half measure) as long as their attitudes shifted. That's kind of how politics works. 100 years from now current liberal attitudes will be looked down on because they aren't progressive enough. That's sort of the definition of progress.
So if I spend my life being a right bastard, like 50 straight years of kicking dogs, stealing from old ladies, being a slum lord and extorting people, breaking people's legs in mafia style protection rackets, dumping toxic industrial byproducts into rivers, and using my wealth and power to keep and enforce "sundown laws", but then in my 60s open an animal shelter, fund bingo nights and retirement centers, set up community reinvestment grants, sponsor efforts to get the wetlands to get cleaned up as a Superfund site, and get diversity and equality training implemented for the police department, would I then be considered to be a good person because my attitude shifted? The thousands of people I hurt and potentially indirectly killed over those 50 years don't count against the good I am now doing?
Even simpler, if I steal and destroy your car, causing you to lose your job because you don't have transportation which then causes you to lose your home, should I then be praised for giving you a nicer brand new car a year later?
Sticking to politics in case that's the only place this kind of behavior gets a pass, what if someone didn't cheer for Don't Ask Don't Tell but instead had sponsored bills undoing limitations or bans on gay conversion therapy. Does later supporting a bill making conversion therapy illegal undo the suicides and trauma they inflicted because their apparent attitude has changed? Are they now equal to the person who spent their entire career pushing for gay rights, because this person supported strengthening of domestic partnership laws instead of marriage equality 20-30 years ago? They both support gay rights now, so is saying that the first person is doing the bare minimum and shouldn't really be called an ally "moving the finish line"?
Biden was Senator from Delaware for nearly 25 years, during which time his state discarded usury laws and became a haven for the Credit Card companies and predatory Banks. He was one of the sponsors removing the ability to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. He had a rather staunch record of supporting financial lobby interests throughout his career. He supported drone strikes, including on American citizens, while Vice President. He was openly against desegregation actions in the 70's, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he has grown on that front.
I am saying that the harm he was part of due to the selling out of protections for the American people at the beheadst of the financial services lobby over multiple decades means that his current actions to cap fees and provide some student loan relief are little and late. It's better than nothing, but he is not a paragon of supporting the little guy
I totally agree, but I also think that every president for the last 50+ years would have walked out of office and into a prison cell in a just world. Judged in that context, Biden looks pretty good.
Also, a ham sandwich would have beaten Trump in 2020. I know this because half the Biden supporters on Reddit were constantly paving over Biden's deep flaws by pointing out that they would pick a ham sandwich over Trump. I have no idea why it was always a ham sandwich. All Biden had to do was hide in his basement and not say anything mind-blisteringly stupid. That and avoid catching COVID from Trump on the debate stage.
It was a ham sandwich because Sol Wachtler, a New York State Chief Judge, once said that he could get the average Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich, if he were to bring charges against it.
I fucking abhor the rapist orange turd, but he did sign in the farm act which (unintentionally, especially unpredictably to conservatives) made it pretty much legal to buy weed over the Internet in vape/gummy form. So at least something good came from his term.
We can all be good and lit for next time when he refuses to leave office and turns the US into Gilead.
There's a visibly coordinated effort to trash Biden and/or democrats on lemmy. The commentary is all the same. They use some form of "both sides" blaming both democrats and republicans for being awful while attacking voting for either. They focus hard on Israel and call Biden "Genocide Joe" or some similar derogatory term. Overall, they always pick at Biden's policy completely devoid of nuance while never discussing Trump's policies past or planned. I got several posts removed from /world calling out such similar comments.
Conversely, every single time someone makes a legitimate criticism of Biden or the Democratic establishment (and there are many to be made), someone dismisses it as "both sides".
Democrats are undoubtedly better than Republicans. Biden is undoubtedly better than Trump. Both parties are still corrupted by mega-donors and entrenched elitism.
I have no problem with legitimate criticism. There’s plenty to criticize. However, when that criticism is derogatory, often baseless, and comes with the aforementioned attacks on voting, you bet your *** that there was nothing constructive about it.
The only people propping up their argument these days with “both sides” are the willfully uneducated and the conservatives.
I'm willfully educated and a Bernie Democrat, and I've been accused of making "both sides" arguments many, many times. It's almost a guarantee that it will come out in response to any criticism of Democrats.
I don't disagree about disengenuous conservatives making bad equivalency or "uni-party" arguments. However, it's also true that the establishment consensus across both parties is very much outside the needs and desires of mainstream Americans.
I'm just pointing out of that it's really easy to accidentally throw the baby out with the bathwater, and it's not in the long term interests of the Democratic party to derail serious criticism.
sourced, or very well established facts, i.e. winner of an election (not including The Big Lie of course)
longer than one paragraph
have an original point
Bernie Bros are a thing. Not that you're a Bernie Bro, just that - Trump-supporting Bernie people most definitely exist and are famous for crapping in threads. As a Bernie person myself, I don't mean offense, I'm saying it's easy to say "hey i'm a progressive, but Biden sucks" and that's actually what we're calling out here. That's a russian troll mainstay. Actual reasoned criticism is . . . rare at best.
Please try and apply your criteria to that statement. Write it up with multiple paragraphs with ample citations, add something original to it, then, frankly, shove it up your ass.
Or they call you a Russian asset/plant/bot or whatever.
Further, if you're a wage earner, chances are pretty good nothing has happened under Biden to make meaningful positive change in your life, so why skip a day's pay you desperately need in order to vote?
Unless you are in a union, have a child, drive an electric vehicle, did anything to make your home more energy efficient, want to avoid WW3, or benefit from a functional economy, Biden hasn't done anything for most Americans.
I have a lot of criticisms to make of Biden, but he's the best president we've had in at least 50 years. That is sadly an incredibly low bar, but I think he's cleared it. I think he could have handled Gaza a lot better, but I'm not sure it would have actually helped, and I'm pretty sure that no other recent president would have done much different.
If you mean he hasn't personally come to your home and washed the dishes and played with the kids, yeah. Ok.
For having not eventwo years to unfuck all the amazing bullshit Trump intentionally or incompetently caused with a Democratic house, he's done amazingly well.
And seriously "I'm a workin' man he ain't done nothin' for me" is straight up talk radio garbage. Do you want examples? We got a bag full. But I'm guessing you don't.
I totally agree. However I never see any well-stated nuanced argument against it.
It's always "Yeah teh genocide" and a (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
My point being, that's indistinguishable from a russian troll / MAGAt / b0tH SiDeS comment. Occasionally people will use some keywords like FPTP or Citizens United or such, which is good, but they usually still essentially just leave snark droppings and wander off. Which doesn't really help.
If Trump wins, he will outright ban the Democratic Party, if not at least make it SUPREMELY difficult for the party to be changed in any significant way for the better. I will only vote for Biden to buy a little more time in which for the more progressive wings of the Democratic Party to act. Technically, there's nothing stopping our government from just Thanos snapping a party out of existence. I really would not want to see Trump snap his fingers and suddenly the only party with the means to oppose him just stops existing. And before you say the DNC doesn't have the means to oppose Trump and the GOP, they absolutely do have the means. They have all the tools they need to stop them. The will to use those tools? That's what the DNC is sorely lacking. This is because the party is suffused with neoliberals and their bullshit that MUST be called out and pushed out. Unfortunately these neolibs also have a lot of money, something something the more progressive members of the Party are lacking.
While I’m sure these trolls exist, I think there is still a minority that genuinely disliked the dems and don’t want to support genocide.
My point is: everytime I see someone saying that lemmy is having a coordinated effort to trash Biden, it kind of makes me trust that statement less because I’m one of those who actually criticizes Biden without trolling.
This is why those trolls are so effective, cause their goal is not to troll us, is to get us to troll and argue with each other over miscommunications they started.
Then I don't think you understand the difference between trolling and criticism. There is absolutely plenty to criticize about Biden, and criticism should be done, however making up "genocide Joe" comments, trashing on voting for him, and implying potential supporters are complicit in the actions of the administration is not criticism.
Like, I know Biden is not that great, but at least the slow collapse of the country isn't being put in your faceevery day like it was with Trump.
I can't think of a single other president in my 32 years on this planet that I can say that the end of their time in office acutely improved my mental health.
Maybe if he didn't do horrible things to benefit himself at our expense every day the media wouldn't have been having a field day. I mean, every word and every action that guy makes is 100% about boosting himself up and knocking everyone else down. Hard not to report on all that when the guy that's supposed to be leading us and improving things is sabotaging and grifting us in plain sight. Ya know?
True. And honestly I wish they would stop. Even now he KEEPS getting tons of media attention he wants.
Even media adjacent things like all the late shows went from comedy about anything to all Trump all the time and I had to stop watching them. It is exhausting.
Like, I know Biden is not that great, but at least the slow collapse of the country isn't being put in your face every day like it was with Trump.
Noted, but if you work for a wage, you're living the collapse of the country every day. You're likely paying 2.5x more for groceries now than you did in 2020. Permanent $3 gas is here. You're also likely paying for those things with 2-3 jobs.
What you guys don't get is that it doesn't matter that Trump was a bad president. Too many people are living in a bad presidency, and they're going to want change.
I honestly don't get the hate against Biden. From what I've seen, he's old and he's done a whole lot of good, more than the average democratic president.
Him being the choice over Trump should be an obvious, nearly anyone over Trump is the better choice, so what the hell is wrong with these people wanting to vote trump or not vote at all just to stick it to Biden?
They're angry and justify to avoid challenging their own worldview. Apart from general evil, that basically sums it up. To expand: Plenty of them are convinced what they are doing is right. They legitimately believe they are on the right side. We don't really see this because we aren't constantly soaking up the same news every single day. We aren't surrounded by people parroting false truths without a check (though we are in our own nodes), and we challenge one another's beliefs, something people leaning left tend to do. For the rest it is about hurting others. A much smaller percentage could be convinced they're wrong and just haven't found a strong enough reason to challenge what they believe in.
None of this is good. Though we will gain the most ground by attempting to be understanding and being firm whenever needed.
Two reasons. First, there's GOP just blanket hating on anything without their party's Seal of Approval, sometime posing as democrats.
Second, it's in the nature of progressives to want something better. To point out that, while [thing] may be OK, it could be improved, even in small ways. So, while you're comparing Biden and Trump, they're comparing Biden with some Platonic ideal President. Most of them will, when it comes to the actual ballot, and they have to choose between the two actual candidates, vote against Trump, but they'll grouse about it. The others probably weren't going to get off the couch for anyone, anyway.
There's other good answers here, but there's a more basic one.
Biden simply doesn't have the charisma of Obama or the outlandishness of Trump. The reason he was an effective leader in the Senate was because of his ability to coordinate people and get shit done.
It's what he's done as President as well. It's good organizational leadership, but it isn't flashy.
I strongly disagree. A little inspirational leadership would go a long way to calming my nerves about a potential second Trump administration. Biden is incapable of winning a mandate for a second term, and we are all lucky that Trump seems capable of losing anyways.
It's easy enough for some voters to be happy with a competent administration. But, for a lot of Americans, that looks like an extremely privileged point of view.
I said "leadership". Flowery speeches and clever memes are fine, but what's his vision, and how do we get there? At best, he offers minor tweaks to a system that's starting to implode.
Oh they definitely were memed. But I don't think speeches resonate as they once did. I personally find people reference memes and jokes more than policy and facts. Maybe it's who I work with.
Biden has also been way better than Obama on policy, which I really didn't expect from his record in Congress. Obama's charisma has really blinded a lot of people to the deep flaws of his administration.
He campaigned on "change" then governed as a competent manager of the status quo. His first major initiative was to protect Wall Street execs from the crisis they caused and stabilize the banking system on the backs of working Americans.
His crowning achievement was the ACA, which will be a complete economic disaster. It fixed some terrible shortcomings, but it's also been a massive wealth transfer from workers to Wall Street, and the worst is yet to come on that score. He mistakenly gave the health insurance companies a seat at the table as a stakeholder in American healthcare, when they are actually in the financial services business. That philosophical mistake is at the heart of the rapidly accelerating collapse of the system today.
Price controls in the ACA were very badly thought out or, worse, they were well thought out. The rule that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% on healthcare sounds great, but it also means that insurance companies can continue to grow profits out of the 20% by spending more on the 80%. There is a soft cap of 15% on annual rate increases and, sure enough, the industry has aimed to stay just below that. It also means that the insurance companies largely ignores fraudulent claims. Those claims just increase spending on the 80% side, allowing them to increase profits. Anti-fraud enforcement comes from the 20%, which decreases profits. I don't want to write a novel, but I could go on for quite a while on the ACA.
In short, Obama was just another neoliberal who only addressed the worst issues in society when he could sell the solution to Wall Street. The moment he left office he received a flood of cash from the investment community, all under a thin veil of legitimate transactions. He also bankrupted the DNC, setting the stage for Hillary to come in and "rescue" it. The particulars of the resulting takeover led directly to the infamous emails that got leaked and probably threw the election to Trump.
It’s not a job for a clown. It’s a job for an accountant. You would expect your accountant to honk a horn each return they do so I don’t get this expectation a president is supposed to act like a sideshow reverend in Las Vegas
Prior to being the VP and now President, he had a long political career as an establishment corporate Democrat. His home state is where almost all US usury is headquartered, and he consistently sold out the American people to those corporations. He sponsored the bill removing bankruptcy options from student loans, sided with the banks and credit card companies on interest rates and fees, was a war hawk, and was more than "it was just how it was at the time" racist.
Essentially every bit of the "whole lot of good" has been an 11th hour change of heart and fixing problems he was more than complicit in creating. Add to that the DNC manipulation to block other candidates, and you have the South Park special of a Douche vs. a Turd Sandwich.
Do you have a better word for lending money and charging exorbitant interest rates, fees, or conditions to unjustly enrich the lender? I could just call them legally gray loan sharks, which they are, but the laws surrounding the governance of money lending are actually called usury laws. That's why I used the term. I think the Banks and Credit companies that have bled the countries bottom 50% dry and have nearly succeeded in eliminating the middle class qualify for the label, but you do you.
The only people who are really pushing the trump agenda are Russian bots. Like they did during his first campaign only then it was pizzagate Hilary bullshit.
I hate on Biden, even though I believe he is a good president overall. My hate stems for the very obvious (maybe petty) reason:
He is the wrong direction. The way to beat fascism is by being bold, progressive and forward thinking. Biden is basically the “let’s play it safe” candidate. All well and good, but clearly he did not reduce the appetite for fascism.
That's great and everything, and overall I agree, but Bernie lost two primaries. But somehow the trolls ignore that and move to how he should run for president in 2024 because he'd be better than Biden when clearly that'd just help elect Trump.
I agree almost entirely. Boldness is the way to defeat fascism, and Biden is not bold enough.
At the same time, I do think there is a caveat. Reducing the appetite for fascism is reliant on success, and, if I am being honest, fucking no one was going to be successful in this political climate with this Congress and electorate. If Bernie flounders, progressivism is discredited, even if it's not at all his fault; even if he, individually, is doing the best anyone could be expected to do. If Biden, who is very much a moderate on most issues, flounders, appetite for change increases.
There's a sick calculus in politics that, though you as a voter should always vote for the best candidate who has a serious chance to win, in objective analysis, the best candidate winning isn't always the best thing for the cause.
I voted for Bernie in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and if the 2024 primary was at all serious instead of locked-in to the incumbent, seriously speaking, I would vote for him in 2024 too, just to be clear.
What gets me is the Democrats have a candidate who actually supports policies that would enrich the poor and working poor: Marianne Williamson: Universal health care, universal living wages, affordable housing, free college, taxing the ultra wealthy, etc.
You wouldn't have to make excuses for her like you do for Biden. And even better, she can string together a coherent sentence.
This election is a rerun of 2016. You're all ignoring the most important fact, that tens of millions of Americans have experienced such paralyzing inflation that their cost-of-living has become untenable unless they work 2-3 jobs and sacrifice their lives and health in order to do it. I'm seeing it myself, with 80 year-old parents that have to work DoorDash.
They're not going to care that Trump is a fascist. What's going to win this election for Trump is that he can market himself as the candidate of change.
What’s going to win this election for Trump is that he can market himself as the candidate of change.
People don't understand the power of this, but that was like, half of obama's whole schtick, his whole charisma, despite being a kind of lukewarm libshit president a lot of the time. There's a lot of power to that kind of marketing, there's a lot of power to the anti-institutional appeal, for americans.
i know you hate to hear this but its all symbolic cherrypicked stuff.
did he stop the concentration camps for mexicans at the border? or the genocide in gaza? did he rollback anything that matters?
democrats always pretend to be doing shit since i remember, but don't actually get anything done at all. then republicans inevitably come and push the country further into fascism, rinse repeat.
i literally didnt say this. we are not saying this.
Nah. Vote for Biden. Then carry that momentum to enact change.
i vote for the leftmost candidate i can, dunno where you get the impression i dont. i just dont pretend they are giving me any momentum because the leftmost in this specific case is still a right wing genocidal maniac.
come join me at any revolutionary leftist organization, or a good union if you truly want to enact actual change. this is the momentum we need, participating in the theather wont make that much difference.
i vote for the leftmost candidate i can, dunno where you get the impression i dont. i just dont pretend they are giving me any momentum because the leftmost in this specific case is still a right wing genocidal maniac.
A right-wing genocidal maniac? You do hear yourself right. You sound like a russian troll. It reads like russian troll comments. If it also just so happens to coincidentally mirror your political position perfectly, then. Ok.
OK, low hanging fruit, but do you know where the shift or comma keys are?
Anyway, how is student loan debt forgiveness, as an example, purely symbolic. People like you pretend it's only symbolic stuff, point to a few instances that are, then ignore the rest.
education should never have been for-profit in the first place. making the problem then selling the solution is not exactly a hero's endeavour.
wake me up when they are pushing for actual change in this regard. if the right is pushing for literal fascism, democrats should AT LEAST be pushing for something at all. they arent because they are another side of the same coin, in on the game.
im not worried about perfect punctuation capitalization on the internet, im sorry if that bothers you.
Lol. Sure, it shouldn't have been the case but it is. Anyone trying to make things slightly better I guess just shouldn't try, right? Why run a charity if the problem should never have existed? Why run a homeless shelter when no one should have been homeless? Why try to reduce the cost of medicine when no one should struggle to pay for it?
Because it diverts energy and time that could be invested into revolutionary change. Doing those things you listed aren't bad by any means, but they're bandaid solutions. If all we ever do is spend our time putting on bandaids, when do we have the time to replace the system that is actively harming us and build a new one?
Yeah, revolutionary change takes, at this moment in time, infinite effort and time. It's not happening until we get some smaller changes first. We need more representative voting, for one large example. Changes that make life better for people is worth doing, because then they can spend more of their time doing this that are meaningful rather than struggling to survive.
That's kind of assuming that there's a single source of political will or energy, that time and energy are limited things. It's not really on the ballot, but just kind of, as an off-hand example because I'm tired, you could think of like, what if we lowered the work week from 40 hours to 32 with the same amount of pay in the same period? Sure, not a revolutionary position to take, not an overhaul of the economy, nothing would really change. At the same time, this is a pretty big change for most people who now have three day weekends, who get better overtime pay, it's a pretty big change for people who work two jobs, maybe one full time and one part time.
Do you think that the energy that it took to make that change, do you think it evaporated after the change happened? No, it didn't. Now, all those people have extra hours in their day which they can then spend on pushing for more shit, for more revolutionary shit. It means they have to participate less in this system which globally exploits them. Sure, I mean, there's a minor conflict in interest that the better you make the system, the less incentivized people are to overthrow it, but I don't think that's actually a serious problem. If you can abolish or reform away the police more, or pass sweeping scale-backs to the domestic military, that makes revolutionary easier, not harder. If you pass free healthcare, that means people are more free to take risks without endangering, say, their whole family with bankruptcy. The more major problem that people conflate with this is one of "fuck the police" turning into "defund the police" turning into "reform the police" turning into "fund the police", because politics is an insane game of translation and telephone. That's not because reformism is bad necessarily, as the other side of the coin, as the other side of "dual power", right, it's just because capitalism is extremely good at either absorbing or crushing revolutionary sentiments.
It's not the core idea there that's wrong, it's the fact that people hear "I want fascism!", which to them just means basically like, racism, when you tell them you want communism. Because it gets translated through the smudged lens of anticolonial revolutionary sentiment getting crushed by the CIA, and fascist states coming about in the wake, or because they equivocate communism itself as being the same as fascism, or what have you. It's people programmed with the mechanisms by which revolutionary sentiment is absorbed almost automatically. Everyone takes the conflation by their opposition as evidence that efforts for reform are totally wasted, but I think that's kind of bunk.
Oftentimes, it's not even the case that the actions you would take for both, either reform or revolution, are mutually exclusive. If you want to engage in revolutionary action, joining or creating a union or political action group is sometimes the best stuff you can do. A union slashes tires and throws firebombs just as much as they negotiate, and the two are actually mutually beneficial, rather than mutually exclusive. By fucking shit up they increase the costs of not negotiating with them or ceding to their demands, and the union, by pretending to negotiate, they can waste more company resources, attempt to dispel some amount of clapback, they can attempt to slowly ratchet the company into a position where they will become completely dissolved and bought out by a co-operative. I use the example of a union here, but these same tactics could be employed really at any level.
So, uh, yeah. If I want to extend the medical metaphor, then I say like, okay, say you got shot in the arm, right. Maybe we could argue that it's more similar to a cancer, but for this example, you've been shot in the arm. You do need to probably get the lead out, you do need to close the wound, you do need to examine for internal damage, maybe get a cast if it hit your bone and fractured it, yeah. But, the first course of action, if you're not in the hospital, if you don't have the medical knowledge, a doctor, the tools, disinfectant. The first step, if you don't have those, is to put pressure on it, stop the bleeding, get a tourniquet in place. I.E. the first step is to basically put a band-aid on it. This is a bad metaphor, to be frank, but, yeah.
I mean sure it looks good I guess but I’m not holding my breath that the White House office of gun violence prevention is going to stop mass shootings.
All this stuff is designed to sound good on paper but then what’s the real impact?
“President Joe Biden unveiled another round in his steady drip of student debt write-offs on Thursday, announcing that 78,000 public sector workers would not have to repay $6 billion in loans.
…
Biden’s previous loan cancellation plan was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. However, his more recent debt transfers rest on a different legal authority than the original, $400 billion-plus plan.”
Emphasis mine. Literally cut his own demands by two orders of magnitude because he didn’t want to pack the court. I’m very glad those small fraction of borrowers got some relief. We all deserve that.
"You don't think this is a result of decades long fucked up relationship between US and Israel, driven by almost all political and administrative entities from both DNC and GOP, and not just Biden?"
You are mixing up "the way it is" with "the way it should be". They are speaking to the way it is not trying to argue that it should be that way because we always have.
It's simply stating a fact. The US has a multiple decades long bromance with Israel and the unsettling truth is that we both love doing the whole industrial war machine killing and genocide thing. A lot. Slavery, Trail of Tears, Vietnam, Banana Republics, Tuskegee, Iraq, Afghanistan, and on and on. And you're gonna sit there and tell me it's Biden's fault alone that Israel is doing a genocide? And that he alone can somehow stop them after decades of doing it too and backing them?
Should Biden denounce the genocide? YES
Should Biden at least stop sending munitions? YES
Should Biden send in our troops to stop the IDF? Yes? No? Maybe? I don't even know.
Is he responsible for the genocide? NO
One thing that makes me bristle at the situation is that a lot of people are saying “he is doing the genocide so let’s elect Trump!”
And one thing that makes me bristle is when people assume that all opposition to the genocide is this. My position is that Biden is supporting Netanyahu's genocide and that he should stop.
What actions so you suppose I can take? You just know I'm utterly powerless to change it and want to blame me for not stopping Biden's support for the genocide every centrist has always wanted.
