I love watching this strawman over and over.
Of course Biden is better than Trump. He should still stop supporting genocide.
As far as I know, the Oval Office doesn't have start/stop genocide button, or control inflation lever for that matter.
If it's not going to be Biden, then it will be someone else. Either a Republican or a Democrat.
Even someone who earlier looked promising, eg Fetterman is a staunch Israel supporter.
Because the problem is systematic. You can't just uproot the US-Israel nexus that's deeply entrenched in the US politics.
the Oval Office doesn't have start/stop genocide button
True, but it DOES have the option to stop supplying bombs that they know for a fact are being used to commit that genocide.
Your "either they can push a magic button or they're doing all they can" dichotomy isn't clever. It shows that you're being either disingenuous, willfully ignorant or just extremely obtuse.
Because the problem is systematic
Yes, Israel is systematically wiping out the population of Gaza and the Biden White House is using the levers of the system to help them do it. That's not an argument for not telling them to stop.
You can't just uproot the US-Israel nexus that's deeply entrenched in the US politics
You can, in fact. It worked with Apartheid South Africa, which the US also kept supporting way beyond the point that most other countries stopped, and it'll work with THIS apartheid regime too.
It has a stop paying for genocide button.
It has a stop vetoing UN resolutions button.
It has an impose sanctions button and a freeze assets button.
It has a pull their warships out button.
It has dozens of make life really uncomfortable for Israel if it doesn't fucking stop committing genocide buttons.
But at the very least it could stop actively helping them commit genocide.
As far as I know, the Oval Office doesn’t have start/stop genocide button
I didn't say "stop genocide". I said "stop supporting genocide."
Not sure where you got the implication from that he shouldn't stop supporting genocide?
Right here on lemmy. Try saying that Biden should stop supporting genocide here on lemmy a few times. You'll get plenty of people acting like you're both-sidesing for Trump.
Just going to preface this by saying yes please vote for Biden. If nothing else he is not openly fascist and he will not himself actively work to forward queer genocide and the removal of women's rights. Please vote for him. If you're not going to take any measures to change this system and have resigned yourself to existing within it, do one good thing for women and minorities.
If you think it's fine for a totalitarian fascist state to become established and to mass murder queer people, don't even fucking bother responding to me. If you're saying "don't vote and also don't revolutionize. Just let trans people and women fucking die" then fuck off. You're not even worth engaging with. If fascism takes over and my friends, my family, my loved ones and my community are mass murdered I'll remember how you watched it happen and did literally nothing. Our blood will be on your hands.
I'm not engaging further in this thread.
It's amazing how passive and tolerant the working class has become of the state. If half the energy that was devoted to arguing about why the system sucks but can't be changed was instead put into organizing and committing to revolutionary action... Actual real-world change might have already happened.
Like, what's the line for people? They took away women's bodily autonomy. What about if they took away women's right to work? What if they did away with the 40-hour work week? What if they made it so only land owning whites could vote again? Like, where is the line that people will respond by actually trying to change the system?
"The system is broken, but I'm not here to talk about why we should materially do anything to change that" like what kind of argument is that? Are you just going to watch as fascism literally takes over and then try and revolutionize? If Trump wins, are you then going to try and change the system? After the guy who's definitely a-ok using the military on civilians takes over?
Is this just what it's going to be forever? Forever arguing for the lesser of two evils, the person who will still cause human suffering but not as much as the other guy? Why are so many people seemingly resigned to this status quo? "It sucks but here we are," like what?? Even when revolutionary thought is put forward, people say that it would never work, as though no revolution in history has ever worked or achieved any of its aims. Which is just wrong. Neo liberal propaganda has got yall so bad that you genuinely believe that Western capitalist democracy is the only possible way for society to exist and that any and all attempts to change it are impossible.
Biden literally signed into law a resolution that took away the ability of railworkers to strike. This is one of the most anti-union and anti-worker moves from the legislative and executive branches I have ever seen in my entire life.
My choice is between that disgusting sack of shit, and an even worse more putrified fascist disgusting sack of shit scumbag pondscum asshole.
I will not be voting for either, and instead will be selecting the candidate available to me on the ticket most closely matching my priorities and convictions. Either way, the electoral college will look at my vote and immediately trash can it to put the true vote to one of these bought and paid for pricks. Happy fucking democracy, what a goddamn joke.
The people who vote Trump consider some of those slabs to be pros, not cons.
I don't think many people are saying that Biden is the same as Trump or just as bad as Trump. I think most progressives, for instance, would agree that Biden is better than Trump, it's just that that's such a low bar. I mean, are liberals really surprised that people aren't all that impressed with a president whose main selling point is that he's not as bad as the only alternative? Now, I get that liberals don't see it that way, I understand that liberals, apparently, are really very happy with Joe Biden, but for the rest of us he is only the least bad option.
In some parts of Lemmy, they are absolutely making that argument.
I would imagine those people are Marxists, or other anti-capitalists. If you're somebody whose primary litmus test is whether a candidate is pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist, you might not see much of a difference between Biden and Trump because they are both staunchly pro-capitalist. But I think those people are overrepresented on lemmy and only make up a very small percentage of the actual US voter base.
The actual argument is that we can do a lot better, but disingenuous political hacks shriek "THAT MEANS YOU THINK BOTH ARE THE EXACT SAME!!!1" and so we're stuck with voting "not the other guy" for the rest of our lives as the wealth gap keeps widening, everything gets less affordable, the climate is still worsening, and nothing improves in any meaningful capacity.
We COULD do a lot better if it wasn't for all those idiots sitting under the scales. There's a shit load of people that actively want everything on the right side of that scale. There's groups of people actively supporting Israeli because they believe it'll bring about the apocalypse and let Jesus return.
Hagee has MILLIONS of followers. And not on twitter, in real life. People who live their lives in service to his vision. People who donate money and time to the cause.
And those are just the zealots. There's millions more that do whatever these people say "just to be on the safe side" in case they're right.
In total they compromise about 15-20% of the population, which is roughly the entire population of France or the UK. https://www.deseret.com/faith/2021/10/28/22750589/what-the-latest-data-tells-us-about-christian-nationalism-pew-research-center-andrew-whitehead/
These people cannot be reasoned with, they are blood bound members of a death cult and the only recourse we have is to out vote them. It fucking sucks.
Gawd. Do we have to get one of these braindead posts every damn day? You think it's convincing anyone?
Biden's concerns aren't people choosing Trump. Those voters are fixed and committed. Biden has to worry about Democratic voters getting so frustrated with the system that they check out. These posts are practically (if not actually) designed to do exactly that.
Democrats listen up! Bitching at voters is not an effective campaign strategy! Learn something from Hillary or suffer the same fate!
That's the real takeaway. I've said it from the beginning of these posts, making an enemy of disaffected leftists does not make them want to vote for you. Additionally, the drop in support for Democrats is not the fault of leftists, but of Democrats.
Push the Democrats to do better, and leftists will come back. If more leftists see liberals heavily criticizing the DNC and pushing for better, it's more likely that leftists will vote DNC.
It's insane that anyone is doing the work of defending either. We deserve significantly better.
This is the thing I can't believe 100% of the left isn't screaming from the rooftops. Yes, we'll all vote for Biden, but we're going to have to live with the fact that we knowingly voted for a genocide supporter for the rest of our lives. Sure, we voted for the lesser genocide supporter, but that really shouldn't matter to our own sense of disgust at ourselves.
Innocent people are dying, and my vote for the guy supplying the weapons that kill them will be the most shameful moment of my life. At least, I hope it will - I don't have much faith at this point that I won't be forced to do something even worse in 4 years. And 4 years after that. And 4 years after that...
I get what you're saying, but this is the United States. We've been voting for genocide supporters for like our entire history...
That doesn't make it right, but it's not new by any means. The entire world deserves better than what we put forward time and time again :(
The lesser of two evils is still evil. This is just a plain statement of fact. Like sure, I'd rather eat a turd sandwich than be immersed and drowned in shit, but that doesn't make the turd in the sandwich any less of a piece of shit.
Voters have the right to call a turd a piece of shit, even if that's their least bad option. And if certain politicians don't like being called out for doing shitty things, they can also you know, stop doing shitty things.
Conversely, politicians who are not for the "drown people in shit" policy, don't get a free pass for increasing the amount of turds in sandwiches.
PS . I'm not an American and don't vote in your country's elections.
PS2. Sorry for all the shit analogies.
Brandon 2024, warts and all. Fuck the republican traitor filth.
A lot of demonstration here of people who think politics and democracy is strictly voting, and approximately about once every four years.
The self-reports in these threads are wild.
I was gonna call out the "grammar" one, since a person's grammar really isn't all that big a deal... Then I remembered reading one of his tweets a few days ago. It was somewhere around 200 words, all caps, and zero punctuation.
I can't. I can't do four more years of this guy's fucking tweets. Guys. Please.
this is a bad faith reading of a basic ass fucking tenant of socialist theory. democrats, party of the educated, are feigning ignorance to try and silence dissent.
I mean materially supporting genocide is pretty fucking bad
It's almost like this two party system was always a bad idea advised against from the start by George Washington at the inception of this removed.
ITT: “no one is making , and everyone is making ; OP <agrees/disagrees> with me and therefore that makes OP ”
nearly everyone here needs to pause, look around, and recognize that there is tremendous diversity to people and their worldviews. if you engage with every issue as a monolith, you become the monolith. but if you engage with people as what they are, individuals, you might actually get something done.
All it would take is for Biden to change his actions when it comes to Israel and Trump would lose.
Instead millions are supposed to swallow their principles and vote for somebody who is openly and activelly supporting a new Holocaust.
Most Americans now think Israel's actions are wrong and yet there is Biden sending 2000lb (that the US itself doesn't use because of their extreme danger for civilians) to Israel.
Biden is doing the kind of thing one would expect from Putin.
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