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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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i'm more cynical about her. it's not that i don't think gay rights and women rights aren't important. they are. but to me, the primary issues i care about, in order of importance
a) probability of war
b) attitude towards immigrants
c) economic position
d) foreign policy in general
so for example I think Kamala is probably more likely to get us into war than Trump is. That gives points to Trump.
on the immigration front, I don't have any illusions about where the national conversation is going. I was brought here to this country illegally as a small child. I grew up here illegal and it wasn't until my early 20s that I managed to naturalize
so i've been embedded in immigrant communities, with a lot of illegals sprinkled in, and have been paying attention to immigration news for virtually all of life
i can only think of two politicians who have done something meaningful for illegals. Reagan and Obama. Reagan of course gave amnesty to millions of illegals. Obama enacted the DACA policy, which wasn't nearly as broad as amnesty, but it was definitely a good thing that helped hundreds of thousands of people. but "immigration reform" has been promised my whole life by DNC and never delivered. best was the half-assed DACA
But let's look at rhetoric from Biden. During campaign in 2020 he advocated for a "compassionate approach" and was "pushing for immigration reform". he promised to halt the construction of "the Wall tm"
What about the last couple years? He expanded construction of the wall which he timed with a photoshoot with Customs and Border Patrol at the southern border. He also went on TV and started using the word illegal - which is a term Democrats historically haven't used. I don't think it's offensive or anything- but it's telling to show how the overton window has sharply been shoved to the right
Now look at Biden's successor - Kamala - the woman I voted for begrudgingly. go to her website and look at the policies and you will see zilch about compassionate approach or immigration reform. today it's "security and strong border"
right now over 65% of all Americans (not just GOP) support deporting all illegal immigrants. Something absurd to say even a decade ago. Majority of Americans support a policy which would effectively have the military going around house to house in order to put over 10 million people in camps, which they would stay at for years while the government tries to figure out the complex and expensive logistical challenge of moving millions of people out of the country (Germans had this same problem back in first half of the 1900s. they came up with a controversial solution to that question, of course)
so i'm not saying kamala is equal or worse than trump on this. trump is partly at fault for the rise in this change. but i think long term it won't make a difference who wins in this field. either way immigrants are screwed, so it doesn't really matter to me in this election
economic position, i think not gonna matter much. the whole "tax breaks for first time homeowners" from Kamala is yet another bailout to the banks at the expense of regular people. Trump put in sanctions on China, raising prices for Americans... Biden kept them in place and put some more. I don't think this is much different. the reductionist "tax the rich" is a nice slogan but without meaning. as long as the government has a money tap funneling public money to leeches, no amount of taxes will ever filter down to help the working class
foreign policy in general. again, i don't see much of a difference. china from above is a good example. iran is another. Obama actually came up with a revolutionary deal- bringing the Iranians back into the fold. Trump torpedoed that deal in spectacular fashion and then moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Biden maintained the "get fucked" attitude towards Iran and went to Tel Aviv in Oct of last year to bend the knee to Netanyahu.
so to summarize
for the issues i mentioned, which are the ones that matter to me, i think long term the choice of candidate isn't going to influence anything significantly either way. the zietgiest is headed in a certain direction and i don't think either candidate has the capacity or willingness to meaningfully change the course of things
so then we get to why did i vote for kamala. because I think it'll be inspiring to girls and women across the country. it'll implicitly let them know they are equal and are able to accomplish anything, even the highest office in the country
i think that alone is worth voting for her. and of course Trump is a bit of a wild card and I prefer stability.
To be fair I think there are scenarios where Harris is less likely to get into a war, a bit like Chamberlain was less likely than Churchill to get Britain into a war. Trump pretty much plans to roll over and give people like Putin whatever they want.
So you have a bit of a point there, but again in the worst way
How you end up on the candidates being equal on immigration is more mysterious to me. One of them is talking of mass deportation and there are still kids left over from the family separation camps
Thanks for explaining your reasoning, and lucky that the woman wasn't the fascist this time like in France or Italy
i guess i didn't communicate my message well enough. it's not that they are equal. it's that I think they are both equally impotent to stop the march of the zeitgeist.
if you fast forward 10 or 15 years, i don't think it'll matter which president wins next week- in terms of immigration. people are inevitably going into camps, no matter what, at this point in time.
remember that Biden continued using Trump's illegal loopholes to refuse asylum to people at the border, breaking both US and international law, while also still separating kids: https://www.kpbs.org/news/border-immigration/2024/07/29/report-reveals-migrant-family-separations-continue-under-biden
it's done "bureaucratically" instead of "cruelly" but I dare you to try and explain the difference to a scared 6 year old
i hate trump because of his racist comments. but i hate biden and kamala too. at least trump doesn't pretend to care- would you prefer someone abusing you to be honest about it or gaslight you? is it really a meaningful choice?
this is frankly a reductionist take. the situation today is not like the situation in the 1930s. if anything, Biden's approach of milquetoast risk-aversion is probably closer to Chamberlain than a hypothetical Trump presidency would be
consider why the US doesn't allow Ukraine to use American weapons in Russia. consider why US aid is limited to just enough to keep Ukraine alive. consider why the US has been openly pumping untold millions into Ukraine under the guise of the National Endowment for Democracy since the early 90s (and almost certainly many millions covertly, too)
this is a proxy war for control of Ukraine. if you were to make an analogy to WW2 it would be more Spanish Civil War than the invasion of Poland
I don't think we'll agree on immigration. In my eyes the proven track reckord of Trump should be ebought to make it obvious, but you don't agree and I doubt I can say anything that would be more convincing than the pervious Trump administration
Have you looked into what Trump is proposing on Ukraine? He does keep it vague, perhaps to allow people to imagine freely like you do here, but he keeps talking about negotiating a peace, which in itself is a stark difference from say Biden who seems to think that such things are up to Ukraine, being a sovereign nation and all.
Here's a more concrete proposal on the Trump side: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/
Of course you can imagine any policy you want, as trump isn't being clear, but the fact that he refuses to be clear on this should be a signal in itself. Another signal should be that Nato leadership and Europe are making moves to insulate the support of Ukraine against a Trump win. A third signal should be how desperately Russia seems to want Trump to win.
I don't understand your point here. Are you implying that Russia was justified in invading Ukraine because they were getting economic support from the US? Poland was too after the fall of the soviet union, so I guess they're next?
The war in Ukraine is not a civil war. It is a sovereign european nation being invaded by russia to expand their territory, much like poland during ww2.
The war started in 2014 with Euromaidan. Where the pro-Russian government got ousted in a violent coup/revolution/uprising (what you call it depends on what you believe). The pro-Russian president had to flee the country.
Then a new government was quickly appointed, unconstitutionally, and that government is the current one. That administration was made up of far right leaders (think people like Andriy Biletsky). This administration immediately started cooperating with the CIA the very first day.
Then Russia invaded Crimea and started the covert operation in Donbas a few days after that.
It's more complicated than saying it's an invasion of a sovereign nation. It's not a civil war either, you are right. But I think it's closer to the Spanish Civil War than the invasion of Poland.
Really it's: a coup triggered a war of independence against Russia. Ukraine was firmly in Russian sphere from 91 until 2014. Once that stopped being true, Russia invaded.
But I like to think of the Spanish Civil War because it's the proxy war before the war. It's a place for big powers to test new technologies. Get ready for the inevitable showdown.