Hello, ElPlywood. Thanks for participating, and I appreciate your passion! I'll try to answer the first few here as best as I can. 1 Why do you...
"I think what you're reacting to is that, at the moment, Biden is an unpopular president seeking a second term while Trump is a popular figure inside his party who is winning primary races. I wouldn't necessarily compare the two."
Post Citizens United/Hilary democrats are just as bad in that rite.
The media sounds neutral on Trump because noone is surprised. The media is mostly silent on Biden because there is nothing to say other than 'experts say he is slightly better than Trump'.
While I think what she did was wrong, you can do the right thing and get the wrong outcome. You can also do the wrong thing and get a good outcome.
My point is we should judge all politicians on the totality of their actions. Hilary would have been a good president, if flawed, just like any other good president. Trump was and would be a terrible president. He brings shame to the role and minimises the plight of those that suffer with his childish and petty nature.
How can a politician that manipulates free elections and risking so much the lives of the many, for her own benefit, be a good president.
She is obviously selfish and manipulative. She Got the worst possible candidate to be a Republican nominie just so she doesn't have to let someone else more popular in her party be candidate.
Agreed, Clinton was terrible. I knew a few people who came from Honduras during the years after she engineered the coup there if that gives you some idea what I think of her.
I have low hopes in general for the Democrats; that's why it was so surprising when Biden actually turned out to be quite good.
If Hilary was president rather than Trump, millions of people would not have died of Covid. That's good in my book. She may not be a good person, but she would have been a good and effective president.
Manipulation implies what she did was nefarious. Like her opposition, that actively manipulated, conspired with the enemy, against the law, and then started a coup.
If when your only contribution to the discussion is insults, it's clear you cannot even express your opinion. That's such a shame, I'm sure it would be insightful.
Hilary, just like Trump, is a rich person shill and would do anything to get corporations that are losing money from lockdown to get what they want. She is no better, she got Trump as a primary Republican candidate in her pied piper strategy just because she knew she would certainly lose if someone more reasonable would have been a Republican candidate.
and would do anything to get corporations that are losing money from lockdown to get what they want
Absolutely
She is no better
Hundreds of thousands of people who died of Covid, who wouldn't have if Trump hadn't fucked up the response, would disagree
Dozens of dead CIA agents, God knows how many dead Kurds, would disagree
The capitol policemen who got beat and maimed and disabled for doing their jobs would disagree
Little Honduran kids who got separated from their parents at the border, or their families who still haven't gotten them back and may never see them again, would disagree
There is a yawning chasm between saying that Hillary is pretty crappy as candidates go, especially if you want real change in the US, and saying she's no better than Trump.
All of the things and much worse then that happens under both Democrats and Republicans and Hilary is no better. After all, if she knew Trump was that bad, why would she risk all of that and support him in her pied piper strategy if she actually cares about any of these people?
The examples you listed are the smallest arguments you could make, since any of that is easily overshadowed by an actual genocide both sides fund. Since when should people have empathy towards CIA agents that coup governments, traffic drugs, kill people and destroy democracies for benefit of some oil companies. And since when should we have empathy for murder cops? And how would you be sure that less people would have died of Covid with Hilary, she has same interests as Trump did in that situation.
And Democrats where happy with not letting separated kids be reunited, they just pretend like they always do.
And all of these are so small compared to most important issues like wealth inequilty, gencoide, housing crisis, etc. Where their rich people policies are almost identical. Don't be fooled by their propaganda.
Well, in the better times, Democrats called themselves liberals.
They stopped genocides, they didn't enable them.
Hilary refused to call herself a liberal (because she is a conservative) and lost to Obama bringing the word "Progressive" back to to the party and killing the term "Liberal".
I was a liberal democrat. Now I am a disenfranchised fuck you all, don't commit genocide, don't subsidize billionaires, shelter and feed the homeless, make housing affordable again guy.
Ah yes, all those OG Democrats with their humane and sensible Israel policy. As a good left wing person like you, I remember them well. Which ones were your favorites?
Y'all remember Kennedy and how he called for the end of the Vietnam War? Yeah, me neither.
Both parties have always had pretty shitty international policy, but at least one of those parties actually wants to govern and participate in democracy.
And one party has a leader who's now telling the Israelis to stop killing Palestinians and starting to talk about consequences for them if they don't. It's not much; it's very slight, it's nothing that anybody in Gaza is gonna say "oh thank God he was rude to Netanyahu, our problems are over." But it's not something that usually happens, from leaders of either party.
Passing legislation that prevents railway workers from protesting and in turn working out a private deal where they get a one time raise that isnt codified in law is pro union?
Yes, that is progressivism. Its being crony conservative, but Democrat.
Damn... I am just taken aback by your take. Eat up their lies, keep your eyes as tightly shut as possible.
Which were your favorite pro-Palestinian establishment Democrats from back in the day, again?
I'm sure the story you told about how you used to support them but now they've turned into Israel-enablers and so you can't anymore was just you relaying the truth of what had happened. Not just sneakily plausible-sounding messaging that doesn't correspond to your actual political history. So which ones?
Well, Bill Clinton bombed the fuck out of Serbia to end the Croatian genocide, and a ton of people supported that.
That sounded right.
Now Biden is sending massive amounts of the public trust to Israel so they can spend that money to buy the ammunition that is committing genocide on Palestine, and the Democrats CENSURED a Democrat who dissented.
My viewpoint isn't pro-Palestine. My viewpoint is con-genocide. And the 2 party system rang true when Reds wanted slaughter and Blues wanted peace.
Now that Dems want genocide, I have no party. We need something else.
Biden's too far right for you so you miss Clinton? Do you know what happened to the Democratic party's general alignment, in the years that came between Carter and Obama?
And the 2 party system rang true when Reds wanted slaughter and Blues wanted peace.
You know Trump says we should just kill them all, right?
I mean... in fairness, I read a bunch of this thinking through what to write here, and (a) it just made me real real sad (b) I do genuinely think Clinton wanted genuine peace in the middle east. The thing is, he sent billions of dollars of weapons every year too. The stuff you're complaining about Biden doing, Clinton was doing too. Clinton's attitude was if we just get together and talk, maybe we can work it out. I won't say that's wrong. IDK. Like I say, I read up that little summary and it just made me real sad.
All I can really say is that domestically, Clinton pulled the whole party real real far to the right, and Biden is pulling it significantly to the left as compared with the Obama and Hilary positioning.
Democrats CENSURED a Democrat who dissented.
They censured her because she said "from the river to the sea."
Do you know what would have happened to an American congresswoman who said that in the mid-1990s Democratic party?
Now that Dems want genocide, I have no party. We need something else.
This idea that Biden wants what's happening in the middle east right now is absolutely nuts to me. Why do you think he wants that?
I get criticizing him because we're still sending weapons (or trying to). Why do you think he wants this to be happening, though?
(Edit: Oh, also there's this. Not that I think a return to the status quo is all that great a thing, but definitely better than what it was before he came in, yes.)
Not planning on addressing anything I actually said? I asked a few questions, and Biden isn’t Baal or Diablo, although that is a quippy stock response you can throw to avoid continuing the conversation.
I'm trying not to bring it up because I don't want just a sprawling argument about everything, but after Biden "union busted" the rail workers, his labor department kept working the issue and got the workers their sick days anyway. Like a lot of the quippy little criticisms, "union busting" has a lot more to do with cherry-picking one event people are familiar with and trying to create a Biden-is-bad picture out of it, than it does with reality.
Being pro-worker for a tepid neoliberal is like being woke for a member of the GOP. While better than outright fascism, of course, liberalism is inherently anti-worker and pro-Capitalist. Biden has been giving band-aids to gaping stab wounds and running victory laps, without attempting to meaningfully address the root cause.