this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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I mean with Trump now, surely Obama comparatively seems great? Not a saint but isn't it easy to see why those relatives would miss him?
Yes but part of being a lefty is never being happy. It's traditional!
Well clearly you're not a real lefty then pfft
What else would I be, they always said I'm not right.
Obama bombed children, that will never seem great in any way, shape, or form.
If someone worse than Trump comes along, are you happy to say “I miss Trump?”.
Have a line and hold it.
I mean that’s the reason we have the words: “better” and “worse.”
If something is “better than”, then yes, I believe it is better.
Y’all act like anyone said Obama was a saint. Hell, some saints have been worse than Obama.
It’s why the overton window keeps shifting, because the level of evil you accept keeps looking better in comparison to worse.
... would you like to outline the past ~70 years of the Overton window shifting to allow more evil instead of less? Or were we voting for saints back in the 50s?
Why does it have to be 70 years? Can we do 10 20 30? Then I don't believe the overtone window is that obvious 30-40 years ago you were considered bad if you bought a right wing newspaper, people would stop talking to you. (Well at least where I am from)
Coincidentally that is the period where workers had the most rights, which has slowly become worse with time in every western country.
At that time they thought right wing people where against them having rights and quiet evil, they had been thought by their parents, who worked hard for those rights. Our generation has not learned the importance and given more room for the right wing to control our media, which then controls the narrative. Why is there so many articles about trump or Elon musk, I mean we have two idiots who cares, do we have to know that trump misspelled coffee?
Yeah, sure, let's do 10, 20, 30.
30 years ago Black folk were being called 'superpredators' and blamed for a 'crime wave', the push to dismantle the meager welfare state in the USA was wildly popular, immigration law was reformed to militarize the border and deportation, being gay was illegal in about half of US states... do I need to go on?
You are making an argument against your own point of lesser evils, we are debating if the overtone window has shifted. Which is obvious that it has. As I stated before media is owned by the wealthy even state owned media is controlled by the wealthy, they set the narrative, why do you think that they write and talk about super predators, so that becomes the agenda. And not that coperate america is fucking over the working class, and the politicians aren't doing jack shit about it.
What.
You need to revisit politics in the 90s. Shit was mainstream that would make your milk curdle in the fridge.
... who do you think controlled the media in the West before 1990?
The absurd 'superpredator' line died with the lingering effects of the 1980s crime wave. I don't know where you're hearing it today.
Sure, but that's not fucking new.
Ok what’s your suggestion? To keep going with “worse”? To what end? What if I told you that not everyone wanted Bernie Sanders? What if I told you we live in a world where we need to live with each other and we all have different opinions and values?
Since you can’t get everything YOU want you think you’re morally superior to others around you.
Would you say that James Buchanan and/or Andrew Jackson are better or worse than Obama?
History is full of horrible presidents, kings and leaders. Progress isn’t a straight line.
it's not about what you or i want; it's about having basic human decency and standing up against red lines like genocide; ethnic cleansing; and especially bombing innocent people from orbit or separating children from their parents to trying them individually in obama's case.
pretending that these are little more than wish list item minimizes these nazi level atrocities and reflects your character as a human being.
I get your point and I don't disagree, but surely you get your relatives too?
Nope. I don't really get that shortsighted mentality of missing the lesser evil.
Evil is evil regardless and it should never be missed just because you weren't a victim of their evil deeds. That's how you abandon your solidarity
"I don't understand why someone might miss when things were less bad!"
Tracks.
Bad is bad. Just because you weren't personally affected by the bad doesn't make it less bad, just exposes how little solidarity with the oppressed you actually have.
There's always degrees to it. I dunno why so many online forget about this
Because there are people who don't have a shortsighted, reactionary mentality.
The degrees of how bad is entirely contextual. And part of the context of seeing the lesser evil as "better" involves limiting the scope to a false dichotomy.
Being stabbed is better than being shot, but regardless of which option you're still fucking being injured.
Not being able to see degrees to things seems more like a handicap than anything good tbh.
Nice bad faith interpretation. Nothing about what I said implies that I can't recognize that degrees exist. In fact, I explicitly recognized that degrees exist and the contextual nature of them.
Your inability to have contextual understanding of the wider picture and not limit yourself to the immediate, reactionary perspective is the handicap here.
One step forward for every two steps back is "technically" better than no steps forward and three steps back. Yet, if you understand the full picture, you realize that both are still resulting in backwards progress; so, another choice needs to be made if one's goal is to go forward.
If all you ever do is react to the "greater evil" by giving power to the "lesser evil", you simply allow evil to hold it over you as a threat to coerce your obedience and consolidate power while dangling performative concessions to keep the people distracted by the illusion of progress.
It doesn't give much power to anyone to think "this time sucks, I wish we still had the better times"
I just can't with the shortsightedness.
In a vacuum, no, not that one single instance, but I am not simply talking about the singular instance but the mentality and logic behind it while also criticizing the logic of that mentality.
I had already made my point about those that miss the "better times" in a previous comment. Then you made a comment about a lack of seeing degrees, and then I continued from that point.
Learn to follow a conversation.
You are upset about people being wishful for better times, it is just your explanation for the upset doesn't make much sense to me. I think it's easier to continue this convo in just the other thread, I'll continue replying just in that
Nice accusations about what I am "upset" at, too bad they are completely wrong. Sorry you cannot grasp the argument. I have explained it to the best I can. If you still cannot understand it then you are beyond my help.
Continue in the other thread if you wish but judging from how this conversation has gone I do believe I'm just gonna check out of it. It is clearly going nowhere.
I agree that I can't follow your logic or argument, it just seems nonsensical. If there's a sense, it is beyond me or maybe you just see some sense in it that I don't. Not sure further explaining will help, so I get it.
It does not expose anything of the sort. You are just applying strawmen in your purity test.
no, saying “i miss obama” is the same as those republicans who whinge that they voted for trump three times but NOW trump is bad because it effects them.
they remember Obama fondly because that time was good FOR THEM. and not because obama was a good president. it’s gross because it’s selfish and akin to saying “i wish it was like the 20’s - 50’s, times were better then…” you automatically know the type of person who said that and why
I wouldn't trust you at all making any judgements about history or anything else, because you are so scared about not passing your own purity test, that you think making any kind of concession about a grading scale of the difference of various historical characters makes your peers denounce your own political purity.
Remember noone said anything about supporting anybody, but they definitely said something about Obama is not the same as Trump.
I remember Obama fondly because Obama's actions were less bad. People who say "I wish it was the 20s-50s" are wishing for a time when things were worse on matters that they find less-compelling.
Would you like to outline any of Obama's policies which were worse than the current shitshow in the fascist merry-go-round?
"Things were bad in the past, therefore, things can never get worse" is fucking childish and asinine and something that should've been educated out of folk in the 1st-2nd grade.
i remember the cop who beats people fondly because cops now a days just shoot people.
…
“People who say ‘I wish it was the 20’s-50’s ‘ are wishing for a time when things were worse on matters that they find less-compelling”
that was my exact point. it speaks to the character of a person who determines that the bad things that happen are not their problem, and shows a lack of empathy, and signals where its ok to stop trying to push things to being better. that is why its gross.
it was never about who was worse
Unironically, yes; for the same reason I would be nostalgic for the Weimar Republic whilst living under the fucking Nazi regime.
That you find those two to be morally equivalent is a 'you' problem.
"Wow, I miss the days when we were fighting a less-fucked system."
"Oh, so you'd want to stop fighting if only you could have that system back?"
???????
i would have both cops … removed instead of pointing for the days where it was only the minorities who were getting shot. the point is to acknowledge that both cops were pices of fucking shit and both needed to be stopped
Bad is bad. Less bad is less bad.
Having family members concerned about the level of uncertainty involved in their immigration proceedings was bad, as no one, but especially not people who've been in the country and established lives, should be treated as illegal for their region of residence. Having family members fucking deported for it because of changes in Federal immigration enforcement policy is fucking worse.
Inflicting more suffering on the oppressed so you can feel 'pure' isn't solidarity, it's solipsism.
Miss me with your uneducated, centrist bullshit.
We get it, you weren't affected personally, so you don't give a shit about the lives of those that were already being affected. We get it. You have no solidarity.
And FYI, we aren't the ones inflicting the suffering so nice try shifting that blame.
What happened to the concept of better?
Nothing.
Better is contextual. The lesser is technically better, sure, but it still falls below the minimum standards.
Being stabbed is "better" than being shot but regardless of which, you're still fucking injured.
But if you understand "better" then shouldn't that help in understanding how people miss better times?
Sure but it also makes me understand that people lack solidarity if they miss a time when their comfort came at the expense of the oppressed simply because they weren't the one personally being oppressed.
Just because life was more comfortable before doesn't mean I miss it, because I have solidarity with those who were oppressed for that comfort to have been possible. I would never want those times to return just because I personally benefit from it, thus I do not miss those times.
I also do not miss those times because I understand that those times are what allowed the ones we are currently living in to manifest. The systems, institutions, and cultural norms of those times are what led to today.
I do not miss those times. I yearn for times where those things did not come at the expense of others while enabling evil to continue to consolidate power and disenfranchise my brothers and sisters of the working class.
Did that oppression stop or why is missing those times so bad?
Irrelevant. The oppression didn't stop beforehand either, and what came before enabled what we have today.
Did you just not read the comment at all? That's literally what was being explained.
So if the oppression is the same then what does it matter to the oppressed if you were wishful for a time when other things were better?
What kind of question even is this? Did you really just ask what it matters to people being oppressed that others wish for comforts that came at their expense?
Do you not understand what "solidarity" is?
I don't think the oppressed care if you are wishful for this or that time if it makes no difference to them. They'd probably understand that you were being wishful for a time when things were better for you, same as they undoubtedly are if things have become worse.
The idea that you're never allowed to be wishful ever, even when things have gone worse, because someone somewhere is always going to be oppressed is a bit nonsensical.
I bet Iranians now are wishful for Obama, for example.
Trump has bombed children. And he has RAPED children.