I would not say both sides are the same, but this a bullshit oversimplification. The dems are not some ray of sunshine who have only made this country better.
Wrong argument. No one is saying they are faultless. They are responding to the both sides argument. The ‘both sides’ argument is a relative argument and oversimplified comparisons they are still clearly the lesser evil. Yes they could improve but this isn’t the argument it’s answering to.
Clinton is one of the worst. The party went, can't beat 'em, might as well join em.
Clinton essentially fulfilled some of the great Republican dreams of deregulation. See Glass-Stegall how he joined hands with Republicans. Which you can then fast forward to the banking and financial crisis that hit the world and screwed economies and brought austerity programs worldwide.
Dare ya to read up on all the congressional stock trading from not just Repubs but very much Dems as well.
I don't disagree but it bears repeating. If you ignore the past, you never learn from it. You get repetition. Control of the narrative very much influences the present and therefore, the future.
The devastating illegal war in Iraq was not only costly to human life, but also to the social and economic damage to Iraq and the US afterwards. Ironically it helped create a more virulent terrorism in the region where there was none before. Falsified reports of terrorists in Iraq were a reason for the war mongers and war profiteers to go all out Dr. Strangelove and justify the war.
The financial crisis and the toll it took and its after effects weave right into life today. No one was charged, Bernie Madoff was a perfect fall guy for an entire financial and banking industry that fought against any changes to the way of doing things.
Obama's admin basically helped enshrine "Too big to fail" and they all got away with the damage they wrought.
Never any repercussions or prosecutions or accountability for people bringing humans to the brink, to one abyss or another. Whether it was Reagan and Iran-Contra, or even Clinton being impeached for lying under oath and obstruction of justice. Had Clinton been impeached, perhaps Trump would never have risen. But when people see powerful people getting away with 'it', whatever it is, then that creates a future where someone like Trump will get away with 'it'. You've undermined equal under the rule of law and that has blowback.
It's why I especially hate this idea that you're not allowed to criticize the party you vote for without being some bOtH siDeS strawman for people. The Democrats fucking suck too, and the mess we are currently in is just as much their fault as it is the Republicans and the American peoples fault. That the Dems have gone to attacking their own voters and trying to censure them is incredibly worrying.
Clinton wasn't being impeached over a war, he was impeached for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office and lying about it afterwards. Note that during that impeachment thing he fired a bunch of cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan. Obviously just trying to distract from the whole scandal, right? Except that strike was against a little known group called al Qaeda that led by some guy called Osama bin Laden. Had those strikes succeeded in taking out bin Laden it would have been considered completely about a distraction from a scandal.
At any rate, Clinton fired missiles at a bunch of different countries during his presidency. What exactly would have been the lesson had he been impeached for lying about a blowjob? The lesson would be kill whoever you want as long as you don't have an extramarital affair, or at least don't get caught! There are no lessons there about firing missiles at countries and the fact that one of those attacks could have prevented one of the biggest terrorist attacks in history, the lesson actually goes the opposite way. Maybe Kissinger was right, the attacks didn't go far enough.
Sure Clinton probably should have faced more repercussions given he was in a position of power over Lewinsky. But we all know the impeachment had nothing to do with that. Newt Gingrich was doing the same kinds of things after all. It was all just about impeaching Clinton on anything they could find to impeach him on and it was purely political. Had Clinton been removed from power there still would have been air strikes against bin Laden and against Saddam Hussein.
The intent behind Clinton's impeachment was 100% petty politics, there was no intent based on ethics, and what can we learn from it? Sexual harassment by a democrat will lead to scandal (but no real repercussions) while sexual harassment done by a Republican will not be a scandal and probably be rewarded by the base. But Clinton isn't running in this election but the "grab 'em by the pussy" guy is. So if you think Clinton should have been removed from power, why are you ok with Trump (who's at least as bad) regaining power?
But we all know the impeachment had nothing to do with that.
Yes, and now they'll say it has nothing to do with this. I get the sense you're implying it was just a blowjob, but then bring up "grab 'em by the pussy". You are driving my point home for me. These things have an affect, they can ripple through time, having left a bad taste in enough people's mouths and minds. That can then accumulate.
And I never said I was okay with Trump regaining power. That's just you saying I said something I didn't.
Lastly, Kissinger was a pretty horrible human being that you seem to casually quote. A lot of blood on his hands. You think he killed enough human life in Vietnam and Cambodia?
Sure seems like bOtH SiDeZ have started blatantly lying for their propoganda, and are trying their damnedest to villify the other by pretending that they are perfect. If you're demanding unquestioning loyalty, you're a fascist regardless of your label.
Tbf, society used to have "news", and many people are slow to realize that while the media still call themselves by that name, they no longer live up to that truth. i.e., not everyone who is blind is purposefully ignoring the truth - there is a whole spectrum of people in the middle.
I do not know much about those, as I do not have any special-purpose devices that can receive those signals. Do they not also follow the "if it bleeds, then it leads" mantra? e.g. did they report when Biden "betrayed" the railway workers by preventing them from striking at the busiest time of year (Christmas 2022), and if so did they also report when Biden spent MONTHS of effort after that to get those workers basically every single thing that they had asked for from their employers if they had been allowed to go ahead with their strike? B/c the for-profit media definitely did the former, though conveniently forgot all about the latter, despite how crucial such info as "how the current President is doing" and "whether the current President lives up to his promises" are to the upcoming election this year.
But even if the only fact that I knew about public radio and TV at all was that they require special devices to access them, they still seem to me to be handicapped, even if differently than the for-profit media sources.
Anyway, what percentage market share are public sources compared to private ones? To use the Fediverse as a readily-accessible example since anyone who reads this is definitely here (hehe, by definition:-P), how many news stories shared in some community such as !PoliticalMemes are from "public" sources? If all that needs to be done to save journalistic integrity would be to create a new Lemmy community, and put public journalism onto it, then I will definitely subscribe and be a big fan of it! Though I doubt it is anywhere close to being as easy as all that... :-(
Even my absolute favorites of all time - e.g. Jon Stewart - still does it. It is the nature of the game, which we hate rather than the playa. :-(
Though in his case, some of it he does b/c it is necessary, a lot is rather tongue-in-cheek, and anyway he seems to be aware and definitely tries to use his power as responsibly as he can. Also, it may be hate-boning to e.g. watch a politician say something like "never in my entire life have I held this position", then 2s later watch a different video showing that same politician a few years before where they espouse precisely that position that they later claimed that they never had - like yeah, it produces a "reaction" in us, but like... shouldn't it, to watch such a blatant and bold-faced lie?
The difference, imho, is that he doesn't do such things purely for the sake of that reaction, and instead uses that reaction as the vehicle to convey his point, which is that that politician is a bad person, and should be replaced by someone who may perhaps be less bad. And, hate-engendering as it may be, it is also The Truth so... there's that. Which stands in stark contrast to e.g. Alex Jones who also tries to engender hate, but not using Truth, and instead rather for the sake of personal profits.:-(
As the New York Times' coverage of the Israeli Genocide has made obvious to even the blindest most tribalist of people, the "liberal" media was and is just as hard spouting propaganda as the far-right one.
Personally I think that the decay from Journalism into "Opinion Forming" in the traditional more liberal Press long predates the Fox-News Age and their destruction of the trust in the Traditional Press for temporary political gains of "their side" created the prime conditions for the rise of the made-up-outrage "Press" that so well fits the modus operandi of far-right populism and hence fed and was fed by made-up-outrage far-right populist politicians like Trump.
I mean... not equally though, unless you mean in the sense that both are incorrect. Liberal media in particular always tried to at least make their BS sound like it wasn't nonsense, as opposed to e.g. MTG's Jewish Space Laser rants. I appreciate the effort that goes into making a chart when I am lied to, rather than just some short pithy saying - it's the effort that wins my heart! :-P (/s btw)
I have heard it said that the only true way to spot a counterfeit message is to know the real thing backwards and forwards so well that nobody can pull a fast one on you when they try to sell you short (or long). e.g. we know that 1+1=2, but if Democrats tell us it is =11 whereas old-school Republicans say that it is =-100000000000000000, newer ones say that it is the sqrt of stfu, and the most modern ones of all have already shot your mom and fucked your dog, and hold everything else you hold dear hostage until you tell them that you LIKED it... then who is to blame the most if you did not know the answer in the first place?
The answer, I believe, is that MOST of the blame goes to the people who did the WORST attrocity(-ies), but at least part of it falls onto us, for letting it happen.
Therefore I do not blame older liberal media, or at least not nearly so much as I do what followed that got significantly worse. Though yeah, I do put some of the blame onto it as well, ofc.
More important is what we do in response to it all?
People used to believe in the Press - it was what is called an Authoritative Source.
What the breaking of Trust in the Press - the greatest most influential of Autoritative Sources - did was create an environment were most people don't believe in Authoritative Sources, hence were each individual - ignorant, untrained in analytical thinking, with neither the time, the access or the knowledge to trully dig down on a subject - is on his or her own to figure out what is true and is not.
This new environment didn't just open the doors for the likes of Fox News, it openned the doors for Anti-Vaxing, Russian interference, countless Internet conspiracies and an Era were Politics is essentially professional scam artists managing scams - the damage is way vaster than merelly their some sleazy manipulative "news" pieces.
I absolutelly blame them for that: for the sake of momentary political gains for their team, newsmedia which for decades were trusted and respected broke the entire Trust Hierarchy and created the conditions for chaos and what looks more and more like Fascism.
The other side, that of assholes being assholes, is nothing compared to the betrayal by those you trusted.
I have likened it to an immune system: fighting bacteria is way easier than fighting cancer. The ratio of sizes of Bacterial cells to Human cells is like a football to a football stadium, and their surfaces look extremely different, nor do bacteria even so much as try to blend in to look like their host cells (though they do put out a slimy coating to obscure their origins in the more general sense). So when the human immune system sees non-human cells somewhere they shouldn't, like inside your anatomical tissues, it goes all-out WAR on those bitches, and just obliterates everything.
In contrast, cancer cells not only look like, but they actually are YOUR CELLS - they are YOU! With just one tiny little alteration, hardly worth noticing, in that they no longer pay attention to the signals to halt, cease & desist growing anymore. They do what they fucking want, when they want, how they want, and never mind that their actions will (not offer "a chance of", but a 100% certainty guarantee) kill themselves, it will also kill the organism as well, essentially taking it down with it. So all that "foreign detection apparatus", which can eliminate bacteria, mold, non-human eukaryotes like amoeba, nonliving particles like dust, also the in-between stuff like viruses, none of that helps, when fighting against cancer.
And that hasn't even begun to get into HIV, where those immune processes are themselves subverted... when the police refuse to police the police, then how can the work of policing happen? (answer: it does not, and the body dies, far more often than not, unless some external intervention can prevent that outcome)
There is a reason why people say that the only party slightly less worse than Republicans are Democrats. Although that might have something to do with the whole "2-party" system...:-P - but it does convey that neither party aim to be correct, so much as to just win. Also, whatever happened to just being "Americans"? Like, regardless of what party put you into office, once you get there, don't (or rather, shouldn't) you belong to the citizenry at large and need to represent all of your people, even those who voted for your opponent(s)? So like a Senator would represent a single state's interests, and a President or Supreme Court Justice would represent the entire nation's at large, etc. Enshittification is not just a term for capitalistic corporations, but applies to society at large - i.e. whatever higher functions were once meant to happen, have now been subverted by more basic lower processes like greed and corruption and such.
Which makes sense - entropy doesn't decrease for simply no reason (although that said, an open system does have quite a bit of wiggle room to play around in), and Maslov's hierarchy of needs tends to revert to the lower, more basic ones when necessary, the higher ones only opening up when the lower ones are already met.
How all this relates to what you said: people are stupid, and more importantly short-sighted. When the people entrusted with something become no longer worthy of that trust... that is the most dangerous thing of all to the survival of an organism. On the other hand, what are we going to do about it - just sit back and watch it die? For my part, I promote video sources such as Innuendo Studios, Kurzgesagt, Crash Course, etc. that have acted to step up in the wake of the demise of trust in our "official" media, but ofc there is no magic bullet, no one-solution-fits-all that is going to solve the enormous scope of the problem (and if there were, it would likely be taken out by an aggressive competitor or malicious actor, so would not last for long). Meh, oh well, I've made my peace that I cannot hold out even the remotest hope that it can all be solved, yet I still do my part b/c that is all that I can, and therefore must, do.
Well, having lived in a country with actual Proportional Vote, I would say that the "just win" mindset is derived from the two party system you get in First Past The Post representative allocation systems like the US, probably with a pinch of the higher aggressiveness of baseline American culture.
That said, I don't think the aggressive "just win" posture we see reflects them being different, quite the contrary: it's Theatre for the masses because the two sides of the Power Duopoly are too similar, so lots of posturing with loud disagreements serves to both keep their own tribe (the people whose relation to politics is similar to their relation to sports: they have chosen a "team") inspired and acting as unthinking supporters and keeping the rest of people thinking there is true competition when there really isn't. This is why most of the fight is happening in the Moral field (stuff like LGBT rights) rather than anything to do with Power, Wealth and Quality Of Life - in the things that matter the most for those politicians both parties think the same, leaving only the things they don't genuinelly care about as the field in which put one a very loud, very dramatic theatrical play about how difference they are.
By the way, I liked your idea of using "enshittification" for Society and Politics and I hope you don't mind if I use it in my own posts.
Personally my own approach to help change things is to go around pointing the inconsitencies out to get at least some people thiking about it. I'm also a member of a small political party in the country I lived in and was also in one back when I lived in Britain (though there it's a lot like the US and, frankly, at best things will need to get a lot worse before people are pissed of enough to change them).
I understand what you are saying, and in the past I would have agreed with you, except for two more recent alterations. Nothing is ofc all entirely one way or another, everything is on a continuum, and so even those alterations are based upon the backdrop of... yes, what you said: "political theater".
First, looking not at the words that candidates say but rather at their actions following the election, politicians from the 70s, 80s, and 90s were as you describe. e.g. George W. Bush, despite running on the "conservative" ticket, was a progressive! And Hillary Rodham Clinton was the most pro-war, pro-big business Democrat that I have ever even so much as heard of. What you are saying used to be true, back in the day. Say whatever you need to in order to get elected, then go about the real business at hand, of getting shit done.
The first change though was the Tea Party (e.g. Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, there's a whole list if you expand the right-hand show/hide boxes on that wikipedia page link). They got radicalized somehow, and replaced the old-guard who actually knew how to compromise, instead doing things like sending letters overseas to sabotage ongoing negotations (I am not a lawyer, but looking up the old-timey definition, the word "treason" literally includes exactly that scenario as part of its definition!), and ofc the imfamous "shutting down the entire government" trick, holding the budget hostage until and unless they get their way - not the "American" way, no not that, but their way specifically b/c that is all that matters to them. Obviously prior Republicans had done all that this new breed were also looking to do, but the difference seems to be in the degree of obstinancy, and the eagerness to immediately knaw off the USA's own legs just in order to spite the head - like for them, it is not the absolute last, final choice, but rather their second choice every time. They have done more filibustering, more blocking, more obstructionism than any modern party in the history of anyone alive in the USA (I have heard), and fun fact: even the Congress that functioned during the Civil War managed to pass more bills than a Congress involved with the Tea Party (obviously due to a technicality, where the southern democrats left in a huff, leaving the northern republicans to pass whatever they wanted free of interference:-P). Thus began the major Power Creep trend of modern obstructionism & enshittification - yes please feel free to use as you like, b/c if the shoe fits...:-D
But even before that trend could either snuff itself out or be subsumed by more old-guard politicians who actually want the government to be functional, the Alt-Right started to rise to power. This new breed... seems less concerned with "getting their way", and more about simply burning everything to the fucking ground. Donald Trump has moved beyond obstructionism, to the point where if he does not get his way, a literal (if horribly inept) coup attempt was tried, and it remains to be seen if he, or one of the other followers of that movement will start a literal, actual, physical Civil War. e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene has literally called for this - in a not-joking manner.
This is far past theater is what I am saying, yes in the past it was that, but now, at this point, we are well past that. America could literally fall as a democratic nation - and most experts (I have read) seem to agree that some kind of "constitutional crisis event" is imminent in the next 5-10 years. These people are far past playing around.
Kudos for being part of the solution where you are at. Similar to the UK, where I don't know what could possibly reverse the effects of Brexit - that damage seems irreparable and permanent, it only remains to move forward from here on out and try to avoid further harm (in that case, not the end of a nation, but metrics are already revealing that it ushered in a sharp decline of its prominence?) - in the USA I don't know what can be done to save it from its self-inflited injuries, given how many people seem hell-bent on ending it.
At a minimum though, it seems like it would have to begin with education, since currently the major differences seem to be about alternate sets of "facts" - e.g. does the COVID vaccine work, or does it rather harm you, making boys infertile, etc.? "Trust" in the media has been lost, in large part b/c literal pastors/priests/ministers have been promoting politics from behind their pulpits, thus mixing in the messages from religion to the point where it is becoming more of a "christian holy jihad" war than a logically-reasoned one where both sides are attempting to "get their way". For that, pointing out inconsisties might help, but even then, people seem to already KNOW that they are wrong, and yet simply do not care.
Like if you look at Trump, there is simply no way to honestly call him "God's man" (plus, if anyone who is placed in charge can be that, then why wasn't Obama "God's man" too?), but there seems to be a sense of "even though that's not fully true, still supporting him is the right thing to do regardless". A LOT of people seem to value "argument by authority" over what they see literally with their own eyes. And I get it: these matters - economics, geopolitics, treaties, climate change, pandemics - they can get quite complex, and many just want daddy to take care of them. Which in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. they legit did do! B/c the interests of the wealthy happened to align with the interests of the nation overall - other countries were bombed by Germany and the USA was riding high, so its success meant their own personal success too, plus all the engineers & scientists were creating wonderful new gadgets that were fun & helpful too. However, with globalization and automation that alignment is no longer true, and they are instead taking whatever they can get, seemingly with an exit strategy in place to sit back and watch as climate change happens and the world simply burns.
It seems extremely short-sighted to me - especially if a nation such as the USA could bend its enormous might towards literally halting or even reversing the effects of climate change? But, such thinking is a remnant of past days, and now multi-national corporations such as Alphabet and Apple and Meta are more powerful than the US government itself, so it seems that they now see it as a competitor and are at least allowing, sometimes rooting, occasionally even participating in taking it down. e.g. FaceBook's sources of "alternative facts" helping to shatter the, as you pointed out, already quite brittle remaining trust that people had in the news media.
This is all a lot, but I hope it has been an interesting read? :-D
Well, I think that church pastors replacing the Press as authoritative sources is not at all unexpected, though I don't think that's part of the cause of loss of trust in the Press, I think it's in part a consequence and in part something that already happenned.
My home country - Portugal - was Fascist until 1974 and the Fascist Regime used the Church (which around here was 100% Catholic) through the perceive authority of priests, to tell people what to believe in matters that were social, economic and even political rather than religious, especially in the northern part of the country. This was especially easy because most people were either illiterate or close to it.
It's funny that you mention the Tea Party: For some years now I've been convinced that we live in the time of the fall of Ideologies, in that the fully defined Ideologies from the early XX century that included visions for how the country should be, keen awareness of how Power works, their own specific folklore of visual elements and even specific language (say: the overuse of "proletariat"), and other such things, such as Fascism and Communist, were pretty much dead and buried in the West by the mid/late XX century and were replaced by the "laisser faire" of neoliberalism which doesn't really has a vision for the future, is all about The Economy never about Power or People (even though it's definitelly about Money being the one and only Power, though that's not how it sells itself) and is sold to us very much as a hands off "que será, será" way of managing a nation.
What we've seen in the late XX century and onwards was the rise of Politics being done using Marketing - saying what people want to hear, moment by moment, using techniques from Marketing to determine what to say and measure impact (such as focus groups), changing what's said if people change in what they want to hear (hence said politicians often being accused of flip-flopping), all of which to obtain powder and use it I ways that have nothing to do with what voters wanted. This is still how to this day the Democrat Party works and ditto the modern Labour Party in the UK (aka New Labour).
I think the Tea Party was a reboot of traditional ideology in the US and I actually think the Republicans are at the moment the only party with an actual ideology (not a good one, but one none the less).
Mind you this doesn't mean it's not still theatre for the politicians involved (maybe circus would be a better word), it's just that their beast is as much theirs as it is the crowd's and they're forced to give the crowd what it wants, which started as something they've convinced the crowd they wanted but then the crowd took it, made it its own and changed it (look at the whole anti-vax movement for COVID which is pretty senseless and how things like anti-mask which is even more senseless came out of it).
I think Republican politicians are just as fake as Democrats, but they're ridding a bull, not controlling a donkey with the promise of carrot and at times the use of a stick like the Democrats, so you get a lot more loud circus from the former and at times they are dragged into things far beyond what they wanted.
Last but not least there is a true market of ideas within the present day Republican party and the politicians competing for attention in that market are each doing it by trying to be more loud and outrageous that the rest. Meanwhile the Democrat party has used procedural tricks internally to make sure a handful of people control who gets the top positions, so there is no markt of ideas in there hence the party keeps being led by bland politcians who use techniques from Marketimg to control public oerception and voters.
And yeah, I think that, like in Britain, things will go too far and the US will end up doing something it cannot undo. Then again I think the US has been in a post-imperial decay path since the 80s, same as inevitably happenned to all nations that were once great powers.
I very much love your whole message there of "those who are not aware of their history are doomed to repeat it". 100% that is true, and as I now believe, it is not ignorance that is being fought against, but obstinacy - e.g. those January 6th rioters who stormed the White House, they were not merely ignorant when they showed up ready to "defend the Constitution", since they had made the full-on actual choice to not read that document first-hand, nor bother to discern what it meant.
In case you haven't watched yet, John Oliver has a fascinating Last Week Tonight special on "Authoritarianism" that has been steadily rising all across the globe. You already know that, but it is an interesting watch nonetheless:-).
What worries me about these movements having an "identity" is that one, the identity seems to be defined almost solely in opposition to "the other side", as in so long as the other side loses, then "we win"... except that is not true, b/c the reality is that we all lose, when America grinds to an absolute halt. A perfect example of that is the "anti-abortion" movement, ironically called "pro-life", except it is killing and endangering women in many states. Even if we took for granted that abortion straight up equals murder, with no room for wiggle room in that discussion, that still does not explain things like why doctors are not allowed to remove already-necrotic tissue from a miscarriage, or those weird events like a fetus in Texas that had a giant fluid-filled sack where a brain would normally appear, or even just run-of-the-mill cancer, if it happens to be in the uterus. Not all actions of "removing tissue from a uterus" are equivalent to "abortions" - and does not explain how failing to provide medical care to a woman is not also a form of "murder"? i.e., having a stance against something is not the same thing as "having a stance"... not really, not "fully" - I mean, yes, you've prevented one form of "murder", but at the expense of introducing another form of it, WTF!? The sheer incompetence of someone who flunked out of school as a child thinking that they know more than literal medical doctors that spent decades of their life learning that profession!?!
But as you say, that grew out of the earlier events where people had already stopped listening to the "authoritative" sources. At which point they became vulnerable to listening to... "alternative" sources of authoritarian-sounding sources. I LOVE your analogy of controlling the donkey with a carrot and Repubs a bull - I've used that myself so I wholeheartedly agree (the caveat being that often the carrot never actually arrives - just like the analogy seems to suggest too!).
What worries me most is that this is not something "new", since the 80s, but rather something very, VERY old, as in somewhat mathematical, predating humanity itself, and even Earth itself in the sense of representing a fundamental law of how the universe works. And if that is true, then I think this nation might be well & truly fucked? B/c if the most powerful people within it are no longer invested in its success, then they will take what they can get from it ofc, but they will no longer give back, seeing no reason to - and the loss of that incentivization seems to me to spell out a doom spiral to the ending? I am talking about e.g. Rules for Rulers by CGP Grey, where "corruption" isn't a flaw in a system, but instead a feature, and we ignore that at our peril.
You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it's a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.
And it's actually quite simple if subtle:
In Capitalist Democractic countries there are two main forms of power: the State, whose leaders are elected by a vote were all citizens are the same and count the same (ideally, in practice not really) and Money which buys all kinds of things, including better treatment by the Justice System and which is an incredibly uneven power.
Neoliberalism is all about the State removing itself from the Markets, i.e. the place were Money operates and which impacts even the basic needs of people. This goes as far as the State removing itself from the provision or even regulation of the provision of life essentials: water, food, housing. Neoliberalism sells itself as Meritocratic yet strongly defends anti-meritocratic mechanisms such as private elite schools (were it's money that buys entry, not merit) and which you can see from the experience in the UK (which has been doing it thus for almost a century) just serve to entrench power in the same segments of society across generations and collapse Social Mobility to pretty much zero.
In other words, Neoliberalism wants to reduce to meaniglessness the Power within Democracy which is controlled by people elected via a system were all citizens have roughly the same power, leaving only a single Power in action, that of Money whose control is so uneven that some people have billions of times more power than others, an inballance only beaten by that of Kings vs Peasants in the deepest darkest of Middle Age's Feudalism.
The effect is achieved via the capture, subversion and/or nullification of the mechanisms of the State within Democracy rather bloody revolution, and people are kept in their place using techniques from Modern Psychology and Marketing to prey on human cognitive weaknesses (tribalism, information overload, emotion-driven action, familiarity, halo effect and so many others) rather than force (though at times, that too: look at how Obama suppressed Occupy Wall Street) but ultimatelly it anchores itself on the same principles.
And if you look around with a different perspective you see a lot of the things from John Oliver's segment:
The institution which is the Press was not taken over by the State using force, it was simply bought with money.
The Judiciary in the US has long been subverted by the Political power nominating the Supreme Court Judges, breaking the independence between these supposedly independent pillars of Democracy
The demonised enemy has changed over time, in order: communists, middle easterns, terrorists, the other half of the US (yeah, the Identity Wars really perfectly allow both "sides" to give their bases a perfect enemy on the bases of the other side).
The Projection of Strength is the US' hyper-nationalism and militarism (cultivated by both "sides"), with near constant military interventions abroad, both under Republican and Democrat presidents.
From this pespective the fight in the US is not between leftwing and rightwing, not even close, it's between Oligarchy and Fascism. It is thus unsurprising how so many Americans feel powerless: they are powerless as the fight is really between two different models of Power were wealthy elites control everything and hence it's mainly a fight between two side of the elites were the rest are but pawns.
You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it’s a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.
Which is why people rolled the dice on Trump - b/c the only other alternative was Hillary Clinton, so people chose to play Russian Roulette rather than that known quantity.
I need to update the words I use - e.g. I have been calling that "plutocracy", but yeah neoliberalism seems to mean essentially the same thing? In the end at least. I really don't like that word though, b/c it is basically the polar opposite of "liberal" - which I think is perhaps by design, as in describing people who present themselves as "liberal" but by virtue of being "neoliberal" they are the opposite.
That aside though, I also do not like it b/c that leads to a word creep, b/c what will come after that - post-neoliberalism? Nouveau-neoliberalism? :-) We are seeing the same effect with neoconservatism as well - as in, what the hell does it even mean!? And especially, how is neoconservatism any different from neoliberalism, especially when both devolve to mean the same thing as plutocracy!?
Wording aside though, absolutely yes: press bought with money, check, judiciary too, check (though it arguably took longer, and I think not strictly speaking in the precise manner in which you said but... yes, there's no use quibbling intricacies when it amounts to the same end of agreement).
What did you think of the CGP Grey's Rules for Rulers video? If you have any suggestions for a video to watch after that one, I am interested. That one messed me up, emotionally, and I still am not past it, b/c it highlights, as you said, that there IS no fixing this - this is simply how it is going to be, from now on. The Golden Era in the USA that, regardless of whether it truly even existed (expecially for e.g. black people), is definitely over. As soon as corporations started to amass more power than people could ever hope to - e.g. people die, and have to breathe, eat, sleep, etc., but corporations have special exemptions that give them super-human status, essentially making them Giants in the land of us mere pawn-style Humans. Even the CEOs of those institutions are helpless before their might, if the Board of Directors were to want to get rid of them.
We are fast becoming slaves to corporations, and while government was the only thing rivaling their strength, the power of misinformation seems to be reducing those hallowed institutions to weak ghosts of their former selves, or rather more like a cancer patient, barely able to move their arms a bit and even that ability fast waning until there will soon be nothing left. The wasps have laid eggs in the brain of this caterpillar, and when they finish hatching and eating us from the inside there will be nothing left. Nor will revolution likely work, when they have all of nukes and drones on their side and the rest of the people have... what, possibly slightly better AI? Even which weapons will end up being used in that fight seem to have not yet been defined.
At this point, maybe we should put all our hope into the EU to save democracy? :-P But if so, it won't be for everyone, and I think the USA is probably too far gone... :-(
Yeah, that's exactly what I think happenned in the US to elect Trump.
Agree that the words do not mean what they seem, but then again what else is new: NAZI stands for National Socialist German Workers' Party and at least 2 of those things are the opposite of what they really stood for. The misnaming of political parties and ideologies is probably a hill not worth dying on, IMHO.
I like and agree with the Rules for Rulers video, though I think it oversimplifies things, especially in Democracies: if it was that simple, why is there such a massive difference in median quality of life and wealth between the US and, say, Sweden or why has oil-rich Norway not turned in to a Dictatorship, or why the difference between present day US and 1960s US - same country, same rules, yet hugelly different wealth distribution, quality of life and social mobility levels.
Clearly there are a lot more factors at least in Democracy.
Not that I think that video is wrong - I can actually see a lot of that in my own country both before and after Fascism was overthrown - I just think it's not enough to explain everything.
Can't really recomend any other videos: I've built my views on politics from reading a lot in quite a number of subjects (Finance, Behavioural Economics, Psychology, Mathematics and so on) as well as crossed with my life experience including membership in political parties. I don't think this is easilly replicable and it would most definitelly not fit a couple of videos, which given the very pressures of seeking Youtube views and aimed for audience means the videos by need be very simplified views of reality.
As for Corporations, never forget that they do not have a will of their own - it's all people doing the choices behind the veil of the corporation and those choices are made for the personal upside maximization of those people, even if only indirectly (which is why you see massive CEO payouts when it's seldom in the best interest of the corporation). IMHO, the personification of corporation is a trick in Modern Capitalism meant to help deflect the blame away from the decision-makers within the corporation to the corporate entity itself, which is how for example a CEO of an airplane maker can decide to cut corners in the building of their planes, leading to hundreds of avoidable deaths, and yet instead of the CEO ending up in jail for Manslaughter it's the company that ends up paying a fine - the system all the way through levels of the State such as the Legislative and Judiciary are set-up to stop certain elite from getting punished in the same way as non-elites would and the Press often cooperates by going on and on about the Corporation itself and never mention the CEO(s) who made the decision.
(I suspect that the solution for the current problems with corporations is simply going after the individuals themselves making the decisions in the name of the corporations. I'm probably not the only one who thinks so, which is why you often see people on the Internet advocating for prision sentences for CEOs of corporations for the crimes who for public consumption are attributed to the corporations)
I would be more worried about dynastic hold on Power and Money than explicitly about corporation, as corporations are simply agents and façades for those holding power.
Plutocracy means what it says it means - so not all words have be designed poorly, it is we who allow them to get away with it. Then again, how are we going to go to the nazis and tell them to change the name they use to refer to themselves?:-P On the other hand, we could call them what they are: fascists.
You asked why there is such a difference b/t Sweden vs. the USA, and I think the answer is simple: the former is a democracy, whereas the latter is not. The latter calls itself one, but that is merely a convenient fiction for something that is more trule rather a plutocracy. I don't know how Norway has managed to remain so awesome - it has truly been a sight to behold though:-).
Back to the USA, the difference as I mentioned was the rise of "corporations" in the late 1970s: prior to that, if someone owned a "company", like Mr. Smith's paper mill, and he did something bad, then they could come and take it from him, plus also his actual house. However nowadays those limited liability organizations allow him to do whatever he pleases, confident that the LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) will take the fall, while he retains all of the privileges. At the highest levels, someone can live the lifestyle of a FABULOUSLY wealthy person - driving the best cars, flying around to their private jets and traveling not by car but by helicopter to & from it, to their personal private building where they live in the penthouse suites, eating the best foodstuffs and sampling all the best products, all while the corporation pays the taxes - at a significantly lower rate than a human being would - and shoulders all the liability concerns. And sure, occasionally they will pay the human a million dollars here or there, but that is a pittance compared to the multimillion-dollar lifestyle they live in perpetuity, offered by the corporation. We created these legal fictions to exist "above" us, we the people, and now they live... above us, while we suffer along barely able to eat.
Anyway that Rules for Rulers video was never meant to explain everything, just one of the various rules - i.e. it helps people to avoid falling into one of the various common traps.
I disagree about corporations though: the USA Supreme Court itself has stipulated that "corporations are people", and moreover they are abstract entities that exist semi-independently from humans. Yes, humans are involved, but like cells in a body, whereas the corporation is more than the sum of all of them combined. e.g. if a CEO dies, it can be replaced, while the corporation moves ever onwards. Sometimes it may act in accordance aligned perfectly with the will of a particular CEO, but other times not - e.g. if the Board directs otherwise. It is not the only such entity, human families may act likewise: sometimes a dad may be in charge, other times a mom, still other times the children take the lead, e.g. perhaps they are put in charge of deciding where the entire family will go for a vacation; and there too the components are replacable, e.g. if a father dies and a step-father comes in to fill the gap, but the "family" abstract entity will go on, never quite being the same, but then again it's never the same from one year to the next in any case.
But getting back to corporations: they DO have a will, and that will is to seek profits, at any cost. Like a zombie constantly eating flesh, even picking up the food that fell out of its own deteriorated body that could not hold it, a corporation just nom-noms forever, regardless of whether it has been successful or failed in the past, it always marches on towards the direction of profits. Though, like the human abstract concept of "family", yes it too receives input from its component parts, even as it also takes on a semi-independence beyond that as well. I probably am horribly botching this explanation, b/c it almost sounds like I am disagreeing with you, but what I am intending is to say that corporations are not solely limited to being made up of humans: they also have something inherent within themselves. For example, if the exact same humans within an LLC would behave differently in a non-LLC, where they could be held personally responsible for their actions, then that is the difference that the "corporation" aspect made.
Though yeah, you do bring up a valid point about things that work against the interests of the corporation as a whole. Just like humans who drink or do drugs and harm the whole entire body - freedom is a bitch, which offers benefits & detractions both. The legal fiction of corporations have given those giants "abilities" that humans do not have, but somehow people never got around to doing much to place "restrictions" upon those super-persons - like a human cannot murder another human, so why are corporations allowed to do things like hostile take-overs? And yes, pay their CEOs enormous compensation packages that hurt the corporation overall - should that be allowable, or does that additional "freedom" hurt society, as well as all the humans within the corporation, to a greater degree than it provides any benefits? The EU is placing restrictions upon corporations, and the USA used to do things like have anti-trust lawsuits to hold back the likes of Microsoft e.g. in the infamous browser wars of the 90s, but ever since such laws have not been enforced, making the restrictions weaker and effectively no longer present - inept and hobbled - by design of course.
i.e. that "trick in Modern Capitalism" is on purpose, by those who wish to make use of those tricks, hence put them into the law to begin with, and constantly fiddle with the laws to keep them and tune them further towards their liking.
I do disagree though that corporations are nothing to worry about - they might have been such when they were first growing up, but now their might literally rivals that of many countries, and furthermore they are starting to hollow out the actual governments of literal nations in order to control them parasitically from within. Imagine a man holding a sword and also a small knife - yes the abstract idea of a "corporation" may only be the sword, and yes he still has a small knife (plus whatever other tricks up his sleeve, including his own hands, feet, and whatever else), but even so... it would be foolish to ignore the sword that is currently pointed at you. Likewise, a literal child could pick up the sword and do GREAT damage with it (e.g. Elon Musk). So it is not that humans are dangerous and that corporations are not, it is that both offer their unique challenges, as well as tbf probably some benefits to society as well. However, the balance seems to have been lost, just like with guns in the USA, wherever everyone and their brother can run around with them unchecked, and despite how many people continue to die on a DAILY basis (including literal fucking CHILDREN!!!), those who enjoy using (read: abusing) the power of such do not want limitations or restrictions to be placed upon them, and in fact continue to work to remove those whenever possible.
e.g. Trump - among many other things - lowered the budgets of the organizations that police fraud (the Securities and Exchange Commission), and what you are allowed to get away with saying on television (FCC), and regulations on what train companies must uphold. Therefore now, mere months later to watch MULTIPLE train derailments happen across the nation... strains credibility to think that those deregulation events and the subsequent derailments are entirely unconnected. i.e. humans, using corporations, reach into the realm of government and alter the rules to work better for those Giants and less well for mere Humans overall. And since corporations control such a large fraction of the wealth in this country, which can pass between humans even when they die, they seem to be taking on an increasingly prominent role in Western society. Not entirely but semi-independently of the humans that run them. e.g. even if all of the current CEOs were to die, and even if we threw in all forms of all upper management, then just how much would it do, really, to stem the evil tide of greed that they push upon us, when their whole entire and literal purpose in being is to generate profits, with no real restrictions on "ethics" or even things like "sustainability" that affect profits in a more long-term rather than strictly short-term sense? The adult dies, a child picks up the sword, and continues the trend - at some point the issue is the sword-wielder, but at another level of abstraction it is the sword itself? Therefore perhaps restrictions should be placed upon it, e.g. you perhaps should not be allowed to draw out a sword when you are in the presence of valuable things like museums or schools or in the company of a king - they have their uses, in the proper time & place, but why should anarchy reign supreme in all places, just b/c those who have chosen to become sword-wielders say that it should?
I've worked in all sizes of company, including major corporations.
Internally they're a mess of interests, the carrot of money and the stick of dismissal mostly keeping people in line but those tools only work for things that can be measured (and there are oh so many ways to put one's personal upsides above the company's with little or no risk of detection) and mainly for people who have little power (upper management has long figured out ways to subvert the supposed surveillace of the board).
At the most you could compare Corporations to the Mafia - the aggregated pressures of the interests, punishement and rewards mechanisms within them means certain things when wished by those with enough power get executed, but it's still the the bosses choosing who gets wacked: they're mechanisms for execution of somebody's will (mainly the owners and high level management) but they don't actually chose what gets executed.
Personal legal liability would both remove the de facto immunity of the decision makers within corporation and the willingness of those in the machinery of the corporation to execute actions which are illegal, but as you so well pointed out the laws that created this form of corporation have been created exactly for corporations to operate as they do and keep getting adjusted to keep things the same.
(Also note how immunity for people within the mechanism which is the State works in pretty much the same way as with corporations. Actually in my professional experience the internal social and behavioural patterns that sit behind so many of the problems pointed out in the Public Sector are exactly the same in Private companies which have Monopoly or Cartel market positions - it's just how humans behave in a content of having power with weak oversight, which in the case of the Private sector happens when a company has no real competition and can thus grow fat and lazy)
I would say that corporations should be seen and treated as explosives: something that can be used to do good things but which also gives those who want to do harm the means to do so. In this framework corporations by themselves would have no legal power or personhood because they would be treated as just tools and it would be those yielding those tools who get the full responsability.
Instead you see neoliberals (i.e the plutocrats) doing the exact opposite: corporations are treated as better and more important than people and we're constantly getting told by those politicians about how important it is to do what's "better for businesses", never ever with the condition that only businesses which are good for people will get our support.
But then there are two main vehicles - these days - to power: government and money. In the olden days, there used to be physical strength, but what can compare with e.g. the powers of nukes & greed? Democratic governments, when implemented correctly, provide an internal system of checks & balances, and forces people (like HRC) to still try to, or at least make a minimally-convincing outward appearance of, competing against their "opponents". Corporations, on the other hand, just have to keep raking in the dough, and quite frankly as we saw with Reddit not even that really.
Also, for all the mouth-noises that people make about "voting with your wallets" - how can a normal, non-Giant human being "vote" when it comes to going toe-to-toe with the big Giants? Even Elon Musk strongly leveraged Tesla in order to purchase Twitter X. Like if we e.g. wanted to see more space exploration, I suppose "all we have to do" is pull ourselves up by our boostraps and go there, beating out the likes of Bezos & Musk etc. along the way, i.e. somehow do MOAR than them, b/c when they went they had the actual help of the USA government, but now we are supposed to do it against the gradient of their anti-competitive business practices? Those quoted phrases are "alternative facts" lies.
Government at least can exist without the might of corporate greed digging into it. And even if not quite yet, soon corporations will be able to exist independently of governments as well - e.g. when AI comes more to fruition and workforces are no longer needed. Though personal slaves workers may still hold some appeal, for awhile, until they too can be replaced. By virtue of tying a democratic government to the welfare of its constituents, however loosely, I still think democracy aka oligarchy wins out over corporations that exist solely to feed their capitalistic greed, in terms of morality. If only just barely. Therefore I like your analogies e.g. about explosives:-) - some people do not want to have any restrictions placed upon them whatsoever, but those tend to be the absolute worst people of all, in any system (government or business):-(.
he's the worst dipshit that could be running here, sucking up all the support for the smallest permissible 'better', when you have enough bipartisan issues to get support from both the left and sane-right if you ran anyone else. biden is not defending democracy; he's dangling it over a cliff with Donald trump at the bottom.
Neirher West nor Stein would do anything different. In fact both of them want to give in to Putin and weaken democracy world wide. Who could do it better?
anyone. else. literally anyone on my block, including many of the pets.
and if 'west' and 'stein' wouldn't do anything different than biden, they're shit too. your whole argument is that the entire democratic party is worthless, that none of them have any virtue to counter trump, just the exact same calculated amount of vice less, the smallest amount so we can say they're not quite the same, following them down the intellectual lacuna, using them as a wind break?
that seems like a party I'm literally never going to vote for.
Those people are not running and Bernie is playing penny pincher with Ukraine aid which strengthens Putin which weakens democracy world wide. Since they are not running does that translate into not voting in this election?
nobody else is running because biden's hogging the stage.
you know, I could handle a few bad policies from Sanders in return for stopping the world war Joe biden us so eagerly rushing towards and getting healthcare, maybe reinstating the epa.
Sanders would further a world war by pushing for peace with Putin while he is winning which means he gets what he wants and then will just treat this treaty like all the others...a break so he can build up for the next invasion. Ukraine has to be able to defend itself and push Putin back or this just all happens again in a few years and be even worse. God forbid he weakens NATO which just proliferates nuclear weapons by weakening the U.S. nuclear shield forcing European countries to get nukes themselves.
Okay, while I think the other person's complaints are unreasonable and dishonest, I really need to answer this sincerely, because it's genuinely important that people understand.
Ways that American democracy can be improved:
Eliminating lobbyists
Capping how much money can be spent on political campaigns
Capping individual donation sizes
Capping donation frequency
Implementing a cardinal or ordinal voting system (such as approval or single transferable vote)
Making voting more accessible
Removing the possibility of gerrymandering
Outlawing political parties
Making voting mandatory
Several other things who's scope mean they probably don't count (like better education, which would help citizens perform democracy better, but also clearly falls outside the scope of the list) or that I am otherwise forgetting.
Edit:formatting.
Edit2: I never intended to answer "who" because that question doesn't have a single answer; the president can't do those things, and it's silly to expect them to.
Not only did they not answer the question of "who", they instead listed off a wish list of things no president is able to do unilaterally. Like, those are all good things, but blaming the current incumbent / candidate for not doing those is a completely ignorant take (if not intentionally moving the goalposts).
We need better civics lessons both in K-12 and maybe some kind of adult education classes.
The only unilateral goal in the meme was destroying "democracy" because Trump instigated January 6th. Everything else was a goal that required bipartisan support.
Because they need to be in the opposite order. If we can't outlaw lobbying, then lobbyists will simply pay to undo the school lunches.
This is usually met with appeals to emotion - "how dare you sacrifice children, my child will starve to death tomorrow if you don't trade everyone's representation".
Despite his age, Bernie Sanders is still the most qualified person to be president. He would get more done and made election reform a focus of his campaigns.
I love Sanders but he couldn't do all of that. He also supports Ukraine but is willing to sacrifice Ukrainians and Ukraine territory in a squabble over money to support Ukraine. This weakens democracy and strengthens Putin's resolve to continue plowing through Ukraine.
Yes; of course there isn't. It requires a movement, not a person. Every election season I am baffled by how everyone is willing to blame or credit the president for literally everything. You asked how, and I answered. That was the entire scope of my comment.
Personally, I don't credit him with "saving democracy" however, putting Trump in the White House would endanger democracy as an institution because his faction would have enough control to implement their will without being checked.
The problem isn't that we don't have solutions. The problem is that, collectively, we don't have the will to implement them. It's like effective Climate Change policy or Covid policies. At best, we're getting half measures because people rather have their popcorn and circuses than saving their children. Biden doesn't represent a solution, he represents a theater of a solution.
But... he's old! And not perfect!!! So obviously, we should stay home and see how much better our lives will be under Trump when it's his last (legal) term and literally what keeps him out of prison... Duh.
Yeah I'm pretty close to seeing if I can block the whole instance, right now I'm all blocking certain communities. (I was banned from worldnews.ml for saying NATO was a defensive treaty lol.)
It's no wonder your generation is seen as such a fucking waste if you think typing "go back to fucking reddit" is A.) a Trump biased statement and B.) that it constitutes "working overtime" in such pursuits. Start rubbing the two brain cells you have left in an attempt to create enough static electricity to fire the one neuron you have remaining.
tell me with a straight face your life is better off under Biden than 4 years ago. or 8 years ago under Obama. This "meme" is so fucking stupid acting like no republican did anything good, or that no democrat did anything bad. If you believe that you're a fucking idiot that can't be helped.
yeah, I am quickly walking towards the door here, because these are the posts that get the most engagement, and quite obviously nothing about this platform has solved the core problems at the heart of reddit. Ooh, avoid the IPO, federation is so nice, sure, whatever, but then everything is still a horrible echo chamber where there's no room for nuance. Maybe even more of an echo chamber than previously, because of federation, I dunno, hard to tell. Makes me want to not be here, though.
I remember with each Presidential change, that when a Republican president came into power, they had a budget surplus, created by their democratic predecessor, which they then squandered, and when it was tome to switch to a democratic president, they got a deficit, and managed to work theyr way out of it. Each time, fox would comment on how these Democrat presidents always had a deficit. It was, and continues to be, maddening.
Require news organizations to be truthful again, fuck that "but much first amendment" bullshit, one has nothing to do with the other
It's the same in the UK. Within 15 minutes of the Tories finally (hopefully) losing power in the next election they'll be gesturing to the shit state of things, that they themselves caused, and saying "Look at how the Labour government has ruined this country!"
I find it funny how tories were like "This is the best the economy has been in five years! Look at us go!!" Okay, and who was in government 5 years ago?
TBF they literally won a total war against the greatest military powers back to back and built the foundation for one of the rising stars of the region today.
Something like 90% home ownership rates, a HOT labor market, low cost of living, incredible food, a friendly and honest culture, 4.4% poverty rate, a serious effort to improve development metrics (universal healthcare, literacy rate, maternal care, etc)…
Sure sounds like the fight was worth it compared to how the US-aligned developing countries turned out.
Sure sounds like the fight was worth it compared to how the US-aligned developing countries turned out.
Yeah, who would want to be a shithole like South Korea or Taiwan? /s
The fight of Vietnam against American occupation was correct on its own merits - namely, that of the morality of national self-determination. Trying to bring in other criteria doesn't strengthen the point, and can very well weaken it.
For Biden it's only an acceptable outcome (for some godforsaken fuckin reason which I won't defend in the slightest)
For Trump, punishing brown people is a core value he makes a priority of. Remember Muslim ban / family separation / moving the embassy to Jerusalem / "finish the job"?
Hi, Palestinian American here, stop fetishizing our corpses as an excuse to let the guy who wants the genocide to come here too into office.
Badna N3aesh.
Edit: fuckin' love the full mask off reply of
"The genocide of your people isn't about your people!"
Whitest bougeyvik bullshit I have ever witnessed put to keyboard, PoC aren't even allowed ownership of being genocided anymore if whitey doesn't like how we decide to respond to it.
It's not just about you guys. If we let this slide then our laws about not supporting human rights violations are a dead letter. We have important domestic reasons for holding Biden's feet to the fire.
Yeah, forgive me for not seeing "Well, if we contribute to Biden's defeat, MAYBE next time, after the Trumpist genocide here in the States is done and if we get a democracy again, we won't tolerate genocide abroad, because THIS time there will be PRECIDENT for giving power to fascism if the politicians don't listen to less than half of their own party on foreign policy!" as a particularly appealing line of reasoning.
Oh wow, now anyone who wants to hold Biden accountable hates LGBT people?
Is that what you got from "Trump will definitely perform a genocide on LGBT folk and pretending otherwise is delusional at best or homophobic at worst"?
I mean, I guess if you want to call yourself out for seeing the only means of 'holding Biden accountable' as ushering in a fascist Trump regime, that's on you, but I have to admit I wasn't expecting to see an admission quite that naked.
No it's what I got from you saying I must hate LGBTQ people. Which is just a ridiculous jump to make. And for all of this worrying Biden hasn't used the Constitution to protect LGBTQ people from what's already happening. So to bring them out as fucking hostages to voting for Biden is ridiculous. If they want that credit then they need to be arresting GOP state officials on federal charges.
At this point you're just throwing ridiculous ad hominems around because you cannot defend Biden's actions.
And for all of this worrying Biden hasn’t used the Constitution to protect LGBTQ people from what’s already happening.
Oh, of course! He just had to use the power of the Constitution! Silly Biden! Here I thought we had a government with actual processes, and a judicial branch that's completely fucked by conservative appointees, despite the Biden administration's defense of cases in favor of LGBT rights and multiple executive orders defending LGBT rights. It was just that he had to INVOKE the constitution, and then everything would be fine! The power of the dictator-I mean, president!
Thanks for saying this. The comments are crazy. Like it would be more convenient if you could be genocided after the election, because you know this genocide is kind of in the way of some other domestic issues we’re having. So if you could just let Biden have this one until after the election that’d be great.
I take back everything. This guy makes no sense and I completely misunderstood the comment. And I don’t think he speaks Arabic but claims to speak for Palestinian Americans. L take.
Those "other domestic issues" is the other guy wanting to bring the genocide here that you seem to have glossed over.
Palestinian corpses are not a set piece for white leftists to ignore their duty to mitigate harm in the US and still feel like they get to play ally at all the grammable marches and rallies.
You'll not find one Palestinian American who thinks Biden is a good president right now, and you'll just as soon find one who won't look at you like a complete moron for thinking letting Trump win over it would be of any help to our cause in the slightest, in fact, they'd probably assume you were an Israeli agent agitating on Bibi's behalf. Who else would side against keeping Trump out of office after he gave Israel a free hand on The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and The Golan Heights?
Edit: claims to be Arab, but swears they and all their totally Arabic family members are gonna let Trump win because "but Dems bad too!" When Trump brings the genocide here, Palestinians will remember all the help "Arabs" such as yourself showed us by laying the red carpet out for him.
Either you're a liar or a knowing collaborator, either way you are no ally to Palestinians here in America, nor are you any help to them in the homeland.
Go ahead keeping on feeling righteous about letting fascism win to "punish" people you've probably ranted a hundred times now would rather lose than let a progressive win, meaning Trump winning is literally just giving them what they want in your backwards line of thinking..
وأنا عربي يا زلمه بعرفش مع مين بتحكي بس ولا حدا من حواليي بدو الترمب يفوز وبنفس الوقت ولا واحد منهم رح ينخب لبيدن
None of my relatives, Palestinian / Arab / muslim friends is gonna vote for Biden. And none of them want Trump to win. In the end the same people who are now refusing to vote for Biden aren‘t in America because that was always the dream. We ended up here because of the geopolitical games and the support of the settler colonial Zionist project that forced us to abandon our homes because there’s no future. And if my relatives who died from American and European ammunition could have lived if Biden had stopped them, I’m not gonna keep him in power.
It’s up to the DNC to act according to the will of their voters. Voting now for Biden will send exactly what message, that he can get away with facilitating a genocide and that our lives are unimportant compared to the bigger picture? And for the record, I don’t know anyone who’d vote for trump. People will simply stay at home or vote third party.
Everyone would have wanted a different outcome, but it’s just impossible to ask me or anyone to put a cross for the murderer of our families.
عفكرة ما حدا غير انا وإياك رح يقرأ ايش بتكتب وبالصراحة بتحكيلي انو مش مصدق انو أنا عربي بس بشوفكش ترد غير انو كتبت بدنا نعيش… طب ماشي عايشين بس كيف بتعيش أهل غزة… احنا مستقبلنا ولا بيدن ولا الترمب رح يتحسن علينا و وأولاد عمنا رح يخلصو شغلهم قبل ما أي حد عندو فرصة لغير اشي
احكيلي كمان مرة انو أنا ندل وجاسوس بس انت مقاومتك انك بتساعد لبيدين عن جد؟ مش عارف وينتا جيت على أمريكا ووينتا اخير مرة بقيت انت بالبلاد بس تحكيش عني أو عن اهلي أو صحابي إذا بدك تمص لإلي احتلنا وقتلنا ولو سمحت رد علي بالعربي إذا عروبتك على هالدرج انك بتعرف مين عربي ومين لا هيك عالسريع
So you’re not gonna answer anymore huh? I can only assume that you’re a second generation immigrant and you’re not capable of actually speaking, let alone reading or writing in Arabic. If you’re indeed Palestinian go ask your parents what I wrote lmao. Machine translation is not gonna help you.
Assuming that YOU indeed are who you claim, let me tell you something. Unlike you I actually grew up in Palestine and I’m Palestinian first. You seem to be first of all American and this whole Palestine thing is more of a thing where in high school you bring some Hommos and celebrate diversity. But we’re not some illusion of your assumed identity. We are real people living real lives, and we’re dying and being oppressed right now. This is happening at the hands of a genocidal maniac armed and supported by the current president Joe Biden. Many of my relatives and friends have died, my family has been displaced and lives in diaspora.
Since you’re mainly American you won’t understand this, but if Biden isn’t willing to give up his die hard Zionist stance, we’re not gonna vote for him. If Trump wins the election and the US becomes a dictatorship, we will go somewhere else. We have left our lives behind and we’re prepared to do it again. And we’re not going to sacrifice ourselves because people like you are too afraid to give up their cushy American lifestyle.
Discontinued American Rescue Plan programs that helped low income Americans like the Expanded Child Tax Credit.
Did $1,200 payments during covid (-Promissed $2,000)
Did not actually do meaningful college debt relief ("muh, but the courts" - shut up, the Secretary Of education has the power, he really just doesn't care about it that much)
Still kinda sorta half asking the effort via another legal argument
Cabinet full of corporate ghouls
Based Lina Khan and NLRB
Unconditional support for Israel
Did not deschedule marijuana ("working" on it, believe when you see it)
Continued monetary incentives and subsidies for anti-union corps
Left Afghanistan
No challenge to the Supreme Court corruption
No real platform for re-election, no interviews, no debate, no primaries
A bunch more.
Trump:
Literally nothing good. Just way worse all around.
Good or bad, it doesn't belong in that list. Trump made the decision to leave Afghanistan. By the time Biden had the power it was too late to stay there.
There was never going to be a clean exit from Afghanistan from the moment the US decided to try to nation build there.
People wanted blood after 9/11, and if we were honest with ourselves about who we really are as a country, after Bin Laden got away in Tora Bora we would've leveled Kabul and called it a day, for all the difference it ultimately ended up making. Not saying it would've been right, but it would've accomplished the exact same thing as what 20 years of occupation did, arguably with less blowback, and it could've been done without dragging the rest of our allies into it, but gotta keep up appearances.
Well shit. I totally fucked up the formatting. Leaving Afghanistan was a definite positive. People who grief him for it also seem to forget that it was Trump who made the agreement with the Taliban and set the thing in motion. Not sure if he would've actually gone ahead and fully withdraw though, but at least Biden followed through with it.
With the naming schemes going on for GOP legislation, that would only tell you that they do everything to hide the actual effects under some nice boilerplate names just to help sell it to their constituents, like if people they elect would never lie to them.
My last attempt was about 10 years ago. It started to dramatically improve about a year later, then another year saw more improvement, and so on. Eventually I got on the right antidepressant and honestly my life is pretty freaking good now. Hell, I'm about to be a dad.
You could not have convinced me it would get better a decade ago.
Dumb luck saved me. Please don't be like me back then.
I would look at resources in your area. If there is a prevention hotline where you live, they can usually offer better advice than I can.
Outside of that, what really helped me was accepting that my brain was trying to attack itself, and that I needed to be aware it was fucking with my perception of reality.
If your brain is doing bad chemistry, sometimes meds are the only thing that can help. I forget to take mine sometimes, and when I do it is usually a week before the old feelings start coming back. Talk to a doctor.
If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the 988 Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States.
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The 988 Lifeline is available for everyone, is free, and confidential. See below for additional crisis services and hotlines.
Man I'm a progressive and even I can tell this is propaganda.
Also, missed a bunch of presidents? Bush 1 after Reagan. Lyndon B, Nixon, Ford and CARTER between Kennedy and Reagan.
I obviously agree with the overall message (that "both sides" is and always has been bullshit) but c'mon man.
Edit: like, you could put the actual campaign goals and summarized impacts and then it would be a real infographic. Like "passed tax cuts for top _% of income earning Americans" "repealed gun laws". It's still cherry picking and biased but that's what moves something like this out of the realm of propaganda and into I dunno...something more like biased news? Bias isn't inherently bad, obviously when you're trying to have an argument you have a side and an agenda.
William Harrison was a Whig, which was definitely the more progressive party at the time. His vice president, John Tyler, abandoned the Whig party and aligned himself more with Andrew Jackson and the Democrats, which were the conservative party at the time. It should be noted that the Whigs were much less destructive toward Indians than the Jackson and the Democrats, and Tyler was also strongly anti-Indian and anti-Mexican.
Here were the political positions of the Whig party:
The party was hostile toward manifest destiny, territorial expansion into Texas and the Southwest, and the Mexican–American War. It disliked strong presidential power as exhibited by Jackson and Polk, and preferred congressional dominance in lawmaking. Members advocated modernization, meritocracy, the rule of law, protections against majority tyranny, and vigilance against executive tyranny. They favored an economic program known as the American System, which called for a protective tariff, federal subsidies for the construction of infrastructure, and support for a national bank. The party was active in both the Northern United States and the Southern United States and did not take a strong stance on slavery, but Northern Whigs tended to be less supportive than their Democratic counterparts.
Man I'm a progressive and even I can tell this is propaganda.
Aw man, you saw right through it!
I was told you progressives were smart but you caught this propaganda in no time! And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling progressives!!
Ok how else would you word that I'm on the political "side" of the meme and still call it out for being kinda shitty by misrepresenting the 'other side' in a way that undermines the credibility of the message?
I did not expect this to blow up and made an offhand criticism that used a cliche literary device before heading out for the day. I apologize for getting tripped up when information is misleading or inaccurate, it's a condition, and obviously I am long overdue at the gulag
Y'all take stuff way too seriously on the Internet.
It obviously has a point of view. Just like any text, image, or other media.
It's fun because it's pretty much true. If you want to make sure to include Johnson (hey - can we do the whole JFK thing here? Cause you know Johnson was . . . I guess that wouldn't fit in this particular meme) or Carter (yeah a meme is probably not the place to re-litigate his administration, though that's a good idea) one could, and apparently that would work towards being less "propaganda" like, but it wouldn't be very brief.
If you're saying the overall message of the meme is wrong, well we'll disagree there. But if you're saying it's just not properly balanced; I mean - Yeah. Obviously. Y'know what else isn't properly balanced, though - actual news articles from the New York Times and Washington Post, every single day. "Biden is old, Biden fares poorly in some poll we found on the floor. Trump does outlandish bullshit again, people love it." C'mon. We can take a look at the point of view of those articles and that would be propaganda in a more denotative sense.
So calling out a pro-Biden meme for being propaganda is, well, not wrong, but . . . kinda . . irrelevant? Hey, you wanna explore each of the listed presidential administrations and go through their accomplishments to see how true the meme is? Man, that's a long thread but we can do that - and when we finish, guess what - it'll be pretty close to this. But sure. Why not, Let's go.
I guess we can, what, use JFK as a "gimme" and just allow that a defining accomplishment was to create the space program as we know it. Should we add anything in there about the Cuban Missle Crisis or - ? What even would that be? "Faced down communist aggression"? "Skillfully negotiated aggressive military . . something"? Yeah ok let's just leave it at the moon thing. I mean, he only got three years, right.
Reagan. Why'd we jump to Reagan? We missed Nixon! Oh man, where are the Nixon memes amirite. Well, Regan - who as we know served two terms - really laid the foundation for the absolute mind-meltingly disastrous republican party politics that we know and love today. What was the defining element of his two administrations? (Should we split the two or just - I guess the format is for one line each so, no - ok) Well, he's really most famous for taking money from federal programs and giving it to the military contractors or back to other people who have money, i.e. the rich. It's actually pretty apt. But we can debate that one, everyone loves a good Reagan hullabaloo. We could also do the October Surprise, or Iran Contra, or invading El Salvador or a bunch of other shady shit, but let's go on an "affects Americans daily lives' bend. "Gave money to the rich" is correct.
Bush I - oops we skipped him, hm. Why's that I wonder. (Oh, hey maybe it's two term presidents only?) Eh, Let's just put Iraq I and then I guess we'll have to figure out why we went to war for oil. Oh - or we could just put "blood for oil" and hope that the economic implication is obvious enough. Anyway, moving on.
Clinton - well, we could talk about the whole healthcare reform thing that was a major component of the first term. Or in how he pulled the rug out from under Newt "contract with America" Gingrich by declaring big government "over" and adding a ton more cops. That's . . y'know . . true but . . . not as . . pithy? as we're going for here. His balancing the budget and actually leaving office with a surplus is, frankly, astonishing in retrospect though. It's absolutely no small feat and no one thought it was even possible since Reagan just said it's fine to blow all the money and hope future generations figure it out. Well, he figured it out. So that's not nothing. That doesn't seem like propaganda, that seems about right actually.
Okay the meme is getting really long at this point but I think you see the direction I'm going here. Is it misinterpreting "the other side"? Only in the sense that a meme is a single point of view and a deep discussion of the differences would be more balanced and nuanced but also take a long time and wouldnt ultimately be that far off from what we have.
So if you really feel like this meme is some horrible brainwashing propaganda of "the liberal left" or whatever? I dunno what to tell ya. Yeah? I guess? And it's nice?
You're right. It's not an infographic. It's also not a meme.
It's a political cartoon. Definition from Brittanica: " a drawing (often including caricature) made for the purpose of conveying editorial commentary on politics, politicians, and current events. "
I'm convinced that Lemmy is riddled with Russian bot farms trying to stir up shit. I'm mostly democrat and believe Biden is a net good over Trump, but I won't delude myself into thinking they care about me personally. How-fucking-ever, Trump is a literal threat to our democracy and if we can't rally against him by rallying for Biden, we're absolutely fucked. And you morons are just giving into this extreme lefty rhetoric because of people like Hasan? That mother fucker is a millionaire and lives like one too.
Lemmy is a worse echo chamber than reddit. I was proud when I came here during the API-bullshit and supported Sync for Lemmy but I can't do this shit any more. I'm actually embarrassed to come here and read all this anti Biden shit while you guys complain about roe v wade being overturned, billionaires (which trump made the biggest tax cuts in history to), Israel (which is somehow Biden's fault? 🤣).
I believe this post, OP. Whether you're trolling or not. Everyone else can go fuck yourselves. Go ahead and ban this one too, mods. Since we're not living in an echo chamber.
the fact that you don't know either of this despite it being available in a 5 second google search proves that we're screwed and going to have to keep doing this until there is no longer a "lesser evil" to vote for.
EDIT: this isn't any kind of an indictment on you; i feel that your view is extremely common and felt the need to point that out.
Seems to happen more and more with the internet as a whole. There's always a douchebag or edge lord to come in and drop a post "bomb" just to watch ppl squirm. Hell I don't even think it's the internet that is bad, it's the ppl on it. Alot of us are sick in the head and it's depressing.
Before the Reddit API exodus, Lemmy was a lot harder left leaning. Lemmygrad (literal communists) were the largest instance, and tankies on Lemmy.ml still make up a decent portion of the userbase. So don't be surprised that there's a lot more extreme viewpoints here.
Many of us on the Left will vote for Biden because we're terrified of another Trump presidency but like to complain about how we resent having to do so. I want far more than dems give us. I want actual care for the people who make up our country. I know I'm not gettin' that, so I complain and vote for the less-bad of the two.
Honestly, I think the left needs to lean into shit like this post. Just loudly pretend Biden is the best president ever and should be unanimously elected god-emperor of the earth for life. We can have the real adult discussion when some jurisdiction finally smacks Trump with something that'll bar him from office (or he kicks the bucket) and enough of the boomers have died off that the Republican party can't win purely by catering to the most deranged of them. Or at least wait until 2028 when we have Democrat primary.
I don't think that people are dumb, but most are too distracted, tired and disengaged to see "vote as harm reduction" as meaningful motivation to vote for someone. Nuance does not make for good propaganda, and while propaganda is distasteful, it's necessary.
Even if you're of the opinion that the only way to effect meaningful change is through violent revolution, the far left in this country does not have and is not in a position to co-opt the infrastructure necessary to do that, nor the widespread political support.
