Not really on basic principles. Just on methods and approaches. There’s general agreement that the civilian casualties in Gaza are too high, for instance. The debate is do we try to maintain some influence over Netanyahu to try to sway him, or do we just cut them off and then whatever happens over there is whatever happens, we’d wash our hands of it.
Then the people that go after him more hardcore aren’t exactly the strongest “supporters”.
Stupid hot-take. Israel has been an ally of the United States for decades. Biden is trying to walk a fine line between maintaining relations with them (despite their current despicable right-wing government, which might not last long, given the huge calls for a new election in Israel) and pressuring them to stop. Trump would gladly suggest paving Gaza over and turning it into a parking lot, and voting for any third-party candidate is identical in result to voting for Trump.
I just want to make you aware that your argument is that Biden is basically not responsible for his position on Israel. Like I really want you to actually notice what that does rhetorically, because you are effectively ceding the position that Biden is bad, but Trump would be worse (maybe).
So is Biden the President or is he not? Like, the fucking point is that Biden can do better right now and is choosing not to. Is he the President and capable of such a thing or is he not? With whom does the buck stop?
You need to start understanding that the consequence of the “Any blue will do argument” is the recognition that Biden is a weak, unfit leader that doesn’t have accountability, and that this rhetorical structure is what is losing Biden this election. Making excuses for Biden on this policy position weakens him as a candidate, and further ensures a Trump victory.
That’s a blatant misreading. He is fully responsible for his position, but due to the circumstances of this situation, his position is necessarily nuanced. It has to be, to avoid destabilizing the entire Middle East.
Imagine he just declares Israel no longer an ally, and tells them they’re on their own. How long before Iran attacks? How long before other Muslim-majority countries are dragged into it? How long before it becomes a broader conflict, with Israel fighting basically everyone?
How long before we end up dragged into it anyway?
Biden is trying to pressure Netanyahu with what leverage he has, and he is trying to prevent it from become a large regional conflict. I’m sure he wishes BiBi wasn’t the one in charge there - most Israeli citizens certainly seem to want him gone, too - but wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster.
With Biden, we have someone in the White House who actually gives a shit whether Palestinians get to live. That’s a hell of a lot better than anything Trump has to offer.
Biden is, and always has been, a full throat-ed Zionist. He’s maybe the furthest right Democrat on this issue from his cohort/ demographic of senators. He’s hard right in this way. Further right than Trump. You are projecting nuance and your own desire to belief that Biden is good on Israel onto Biden beliefs. But by Biden’s own words and his stated beliefs, he is doing pretty much exactly what we would expect him to do in support of Zionism. If you map current actions onto his previously stated beliefs, nothing is out of order. The only change has bee some lip-service sound byte level saber rattling. There is no need to project deep nuance onto the situation if you just look at Biden’s words and policy positions and map them to what he does. He lines up as a squarely Neo-conservative Zionist in rhetoric (preter Israels advancement of the genocide of the Palestinian people post October) and has lined up squarely as a Neo-conservative Zionist in action. He makes decisions and acts like the person he said he is.
The people abstaining from voting or voting third party need to get their heads out of their asses and understand they’re not doing anything but helping that insurrectionist turnip by doing so. If they aren’t willing to consider that their actions can have that consequence, they weren’t going to use their vote in any meaningful way to begin with.
The people abstaining from voting or voting third party need to get their heads out of their asses and understand they’re not doing anything but helping that insurrectionist turnip by doing so. If they aren’t willing to consider that their actions can have that consequence, they weren’t going to use their vote in any meaningful way to begin with.
You don’t seem to understand that you are the one with their heads up there ass and have been this whole time, to the point where its not even clear that this election is salvageable. How you are arguing that people should vote doesn’t work and isn’t convincing people to support Biden. Its having the opposite effect. If you keep relying on this approach to rhetoric, you are guaranteeing we’ll get Trump as president. The only thing that is working is upping the pressure on Biden to do better, and apologizing for his shittiness to date by arguing that “We’ll Trump is probably worse” is basically an argument to not support Biden, so just stop apologizing for him. Start calling on him and his apologists to demand better; its the only thing that stands an icecubes chance in hell of saving this election for him/ us. He needs to feel so isolated and see the writing on the wall so plainly that he see’s himself as having no other option.
Saying you’ll be supporting him in-spite of his shitty policy positions means he doesn’t have to move to your policy position. And there are enough people out there that aren’t going to vote for this guy based on his policy positions that he wont win without them. Brow beating and wagging your finger at them isn’t going to change them. You have to change Biden. Continuing an approach that is driver voters away from Biden is stupid. Change your approach. Make your arguments to Biden. Call into radio shows. Share you’re new opinion online and don’t let up. We lose if Biden doesn’t change his policy position and months of apologetic (both online and in media) may have cost us the ability to win this election.
I understand where you’re coming from, but respectfully, I disagree with how effective it would be. If telling somebody that their actions will lead to a Trump victory and explaining how much worse that will be not only for Palestinians but for Americans doesn’t convince them to choose the lesser of two evils, nothing short of replacing Biden in the next election will work.
Skepticism runs really deep in the current political climate, and even if Biden changed his mind tomorrow and withdrew support, those voters are still going to distrust the motives behind it. For all they believe, it’s an election year, and Biden is just making an empty promise to stay in power. He could easily turn around and resume support once he regains his position, and they’re not going to trust that he won’t when they “know” he was more than happy to support their genocide before he got in trouble for it.
That’s not to say I am supporting Biden or apologizing for his actions. I’m right there with you when it comes to trying to demonstrate my dislike for his handling of the conflict, but I’m also voicing my concerns that whatever election cycle Trump is participating in isn’t the time to practice a hard line stance on voting third party to express your dislike of both the Republican and Democratic candidates.
Skepticism runs really deep in the current political climate, and even if Biden changed his mind tomorrow and withdrew support, those voters are still going to distrust the motives behind it.
I agree. If not for the apologists making excuses for Biden’s shitty policy positions (Any blue will do/ Trump is worse), we maybe could have gotten to him early enough to salvage this mess. But continuing to apologize for Biden’s shitty policies is continuing to damage his electoral chances. Its the only option we have at this point, barring a complete rebellion at the convention.
Even in a scenario where nobody took the “he’s better than Trump approach,” I think it would have still been too late.
Any hesitation in taking a stance against genocide is going to look like a begrudging concession. I agree that the optics are even worse now that it has gone on for half a year without any significant change, but he cemented the public perception of himself by the end of the first week of continued support after we were all made aware of Israel’s actions. Changing his mind at any point after that looks like a politician doing what a slimy politician does: chasing public opinion to stay in power.
Granted, it might have worked to convince some people. But, I believe there’s enough of an overlap between that demographic and the “any blue will do” voters that the only ones left would have permanently rejected the idea of voting for him the moment they felt he supported genocide. That is to say, I think the only people left not choosing him over Trump are either disenfranchised voters or hardline moralists who don’t realize what’s at stake by letting Trump win.
I think, in hindsight, I was very wrong about this.
If months of pussyfooting around dropping support for the Israeli government in spite of public outcry and Democrat voters’ desires hasn’t done anything, maybe we’re not actually something that Biden cares about. I don’t think Israel holds that much value in military intelligence that it’s worth risking both tarnishing the United States’ global reputation and being hated by his own voter base over.
Either he’s expecting to win, just by virtue of his opposition being worse, and doing what he wants because of it (which you pointed out), or he’s doing what his party was paid to do by lobbyists. It doesn’t make sense for someone who is supposed to be representing his voters to go through so much effort to avoid listening to them unless there are greater interests at play. Either way, something is very fucked up about this election cycle, and it’s going to have some nasty consequences for the future.
His point is that Trump’s position is to absolutely flatten Palestine, and that would be far worse than Biden continuing his half-assed pussyfooting.
When the only viable options for president are Trump or Biden, why would anybody who actually cares about Palestinian lives not do what they could to prevent Trump from turning them into glass and ash?
His point is that Trump’s position is to absolutely flatten Palestine, and that would be far worse than Biden continuing his half-assed pussyfooting.
No fucking shit. Every idiot talking head is parroting the identical argument. And its not working, which is my point.
Trump isn’t president, Biden is. So Trump being better or worse is irrelevant and the argument is worthless. And that’s what they and (perhaps?) you don’t seem to get. The rhetorical approach of blaming Trump/ claiming Trump is worse, is having the opposite effect that I assume you think it should have. The argument they and you are making isn’t gaining Biden support, it is weakening support for Biden, and the insistence on this failed rhetorical approach is currently costing us the general.
Fucking stop. Stop apologizing for Biden. Stop defending it. Stop excusing it. Start demanding Biden do better or we’re fucked and you’ve guaranteed us Trump.
You can both demand Biden do better and still meaningfully vote against Trump. These are not mutually exclusive actions.
By all means, threaten to not vote for him. Write him a letter saying why you refuse to donate to his campaign. Hold him accountable for his part in not condemning Israel and withdrawing support for them. But when the time comes in this election year, if you don’t actually vote for the Democrat candidate, you are undeniably tipping the scale in favor of the more genocidal candidate.
It’s not that anybody arguing to vote for Biden wants him to win. It’s just that nobody here wants Trump to win instead.
If you can’t understand the cost of Trump winning, good luck to you, and thanks for ruining it for the rest of the country.
Man, there’s a bajillion angles to this. We’re talking global politics here.
Israel under Netanyahu has said that it will extinguish Hamas even if the entire world turns against them. And you can go down many paths looking at what happens if the US abandons Israel.
First, some facts.
Israel has not imposed sanctions on Russia.
Israel maintains diplomatic relations with Russia.
Israel has not backed Ukraine in the war.
Russian is the third most-widely spoken language in Israel
Israel has the third largest Russian-Speaking population outside of Russia and other post-Soviet states.
Israel took a neutral stance on the Crimea invasion.
Netanyahu and Putin have a particularly close relationship.
Now, just think for a moment what Russia might do if the US were to end its special relationship with Israel? I’m sure that’s weighing on Biden’s mind as he navigates the waters of reining in Israel’s attack on Palestinians. Putin is looking for ways to erode American influence world-wide, and this might well be an own goal if we just blindly drop Israel like so many of these…ahem, ‘dissenters’ seem to want us to do.
Besides. Trump says Israel should ‘finish the job’ in regards to the Palestinians so I’m not sure how the … person below you thinks Biden is to the right of Trump on this matter. Unless ‘the right’ means letting SOME Palestinians live, and ‘the left’ means ‘invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.’ I mean, it’s not like some rightwing shithead ever said anything like that, amirite? Lol.
Will you address the fact that Trump is much, much worse for Palestinians? You and the rest of your ilk have been dodging that. Address it directly, or GTFO.
I didn’t like Biden in the 80s when he voted on a constitutional amendment for states to over turn Roe v Wade. I didn’t like Biden in the 90s when he reinforced the war on drugs and drastically increased the prison population. I didn’t like Biden in the 2000s when he supported the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, and removed the ability to default on student loans. And I still don’t like him today when he claims he’ll undo some of the awful shit he did if we vote for him just one more time, all while supporting a genocide and inching us closer and closer to an all out war in the middle east.
So no, I won’t be bullied. If your candidate sucks, and you parties policies suck, that’s on you.
By all means, abstain. Just don’t expect to have earned the right to complain when one of those two candidates still wins and does something you don’t like.
Nothing short of a revolution would change the rigged system. At the very least, voting gives me a small chance to push the results towards the least-crappy direction.
I’m actually going to disagree that Biden sucks. Biden did the best he could with what he was given. Let’s remember:
Biden was handed an epic shitshow of a situation when he took office.
He was given ZERO help by the previous administration. They did everything in their power to gimp Biden out the gate. That he managed to handle COVID so well is a testament to his skills and determination.
Inflation was beginning before COVID, and thus before Biden. It started with electronics, where combinations of chip shortages and tariffs on Chinese imports saw prices of GPUs and game machines and so on skyrocket. I remember the ridiculous costs of the 30x0 GPUs thanks to bitcoin mining and then Trump went Tariff Happy. ** No plans at all on how we were supposed to buy stuff that didn’t have the Chinese Import Tariff on it. No plans, at least, until Biden took office and passed the Chips Act.
Biden actually DID implement Student Loan forgiveness. Between my wife and I, we’d have saved 40k USD on our loans, but the Trump Supreme Court, brought on by people voting Stein in 2016 (and Nader in 2000) ensured we got zip. Biden’s trying to work around the Supreme Court, even now, but of course, Republicans know the court is their friend. They knew that the Court was NOT their friend in 2000 and 2016, but we forgot that the court was our friend during those elections and now the Court is most definitely NOT our friend, but Biden is doing the best he can with what we gave him.
The Chips and Infrastructure Acts, and the various COVID era funding helped pull a LOT of people out of the fire.
I see jerks who come in and complain they didn’t get what they want to be akin to staying home on the election because they didn’t get the shiny rainbow unicorn they SWORE they were promised. Like a petulant child stomping his feet because he didn’t get the Christmas gift he begged Santa for, just before he threw a screaming temper tantrum in the Mall when his parents were warning him that Santa knows when he’s been naughty. An immature git that deserves to be taken over a knee and swatted, or just outright ignored, rather than indulged.
Inflation sucks. These last 4 years have been difficult, and not everybody has gotten out in one piece. But it was worse for a whole hell of a lot of people when Trump was in office, and he promises to make it hard for those people again if he gets in office. We can’t reach out to the Trumpers, but let’s NOT do their dirty work for them!
Wow. You did a good job illustrating exactly why I’m not going to play nice with you people anymore. You’re lying and distorting the truth in order to make it more likely that people like my wife are ground under the bootheel of Team Pepe authoritarianism this time next year. Let’s break this down a bit, shall we?
Your claim that Biden voted for a constitutional amendment for States to overturn Roe v Wade omits the fact that he voted against it the next time Shithead Hatch presented it. Why don’t you explain to the class why you felt it necessary to distort Biden’s record, holding him accountable for a vote he has already acknowledged he got wrong by voting against it the second time it was presented, eh?
And the Iraq War? Yes, Biden got that vote wrong. He bought Bush’s lies that this was about bringing Hussein to the negotiation table, like a lot of us did in that time. The guy even admitted he got it wrong as early as 2005. What more can you ask? The guy can’t go back in time and fix his mistake. He can just own up to it. And let me tell you, I was on the same page as Biden back in 2003, when it seemed that Hussein was holding onto weapons and helping the people that attacked us on 9/11. I hoped we would use the same things that Biden hoped we would use – diplomacy and the threat of the big stick to convince Hussein to let the weapons inspectors back in and comply with the mandates the UN put on him.
The Patriot Act was indeed one of the darkest moments of American history, a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 that we should have gotten rid of far sooner than we did. Biden was instrumental in getting it passed, for sure. But it expired in 2020…and despite Biden being in office for 4 years, it has not been reauthorised. Again, are we not to give him credit for what he’s done since these horrible things he did? Is he to be held accountable for everything he’s ever done, with no chance of redemption? I think that’s really damn stupid, or a plot by a really evil person to try to eat away at Biden’s voter base in order to get somebody far worse elected.
Let me remind you who is on the other side of the equation – a man who bragged he could grab any woman he wanted by the privates, who ran the country headfirst off the cliff of Covid because he thought it was some Democratic Party plot, who pulled us out of Kyoto AND scrubbed any mention of climate change from the website, who got into a trade war with China without any plans for how to deal with our reliance on cheap Chinese manufacturing (causing the inflation we are dealing with, in part), and who referred to the shitheads that killed minorities, gays, and liberals as ‘good people’. I also remind you that he plans on being “Dictator for a Day” should he win in 2024, and will implement Project 2025, a nightmarish scenario for gays, minorities, transgender folk, environmentalists, scientific thinkers, and liberals of all stripes. And need I remind you that Roe v. Wade went down thanks to Trump.
One of two people will win the election in 2024. You can’t change this. Either the guy who may not be liberal enough for you wins, and we make slow and halting progress on all Left-Wing priorities, or the guy who is an utter shithead gets into office and everything we’ve worked for in the past 100 years gets torn down. Gay marriage? Gone. Minority rights? Gone. Freedom to worship or not worship according to one’s desires? Gone. Freedom to protest our government? Remember the white vans that disappeared people during the George Floyd protests? Yeah, gone too. Oh, yeah, and IVF and contraception is gone, and women’s rights are gone. It’s very likely that your 2028 election will look like the one Putin just ‘won’, corrupted and replaced with ‘vote for Master Trump or suffer’. We aren’t kidding when we say that this is the most important election ever. It’s a rehash of 2020, which was the most important election ever (prompting me to donate money to a politician for the first time in my goddamn life…) at that time.
So. There’s one of two things you could be. Either you are…
Somebody so stupidly obstinate that you’d vote against your best interests because you’re blinded for your hatred of Biden and can’t see the fucking blindingly obvious truth that Trump is 100 times fucking worse than even your stupid caricature of Biden…
Somebody who is an evil sack of shit that would rather see Trump win so he’s here trying to convince us we should not vote for Biden, despite the blindingly fucking obvious truth that Trump is 1000 times fucking worse than Biden.
So, which is it? Are you a moron, or are you an asshole? Either way…this article wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for the people you and your fellow sockpuppets full of excrement are trying to convince to let Trump win the fucking election.
Per Rule 6, I am not allowed to call you what I really want to call you, nor use the strength of language I feel you and your fellow … ahem, ‘dissidents’ deserve. Therefore, I’ll just say it this way. You can buzz off, pal. You aren’t convincing me of your nonsense, and the only reason I’m here is to tell people who might fall for your … BS…yeah, I’ll call it that…is that this person trying to convince you to vote third party or stay home is full of nonsense and will lead this country into ruin. So, do us all a favour and piss off, would ya?
So, if Biden doesn’t win, Trump WILL.
What’s Trump’s plan?
Arm Israel and expand the genocide.
How can you possibly think you have any kind of moral high ground when you’re willing to let someone win that will make the problem worse?
This is a literal example of the trolley problem.
If you do nothing and don’t vote, millions of children die.
If you vote, thousands of children will die.
But you know who’s killing those children?
Benjamin Netanyahu
Yet you fuckers act like Biden is over there doing it with his bare hands.
Get your morals straightened out, because if Trump wins, that blood is on your hands as well as his, and I’d rather only have a little blood of my hands than a lot.
Yet you fuckers act like Biden is over there doing it with his bare hands.
I’d be far more interested in discourse if they sad what’s actually going on. Biden’s turning a blind eye towards the misbehaviour of Netanyahu because he’s afraid of what happens if he actually takes a stand. He’s not actually doing the Genocide. He’s picking sides.
It’s like threatening your best friend with a knuckle sandwich if he doesn’t stop creeping on a woman you barely know and don’t really like. Do you throw away decades worth of friendship by setting your best friend straight, or do you tolerate the boorish behaviour from your male friend? Bonus points: if you choose your friend over this woman, you get called a rapist, despite the fact that you told this gal to get lost and leave you alone. That’s the choice Biden has right now. Israel is America’s friend. Hamas is not and while we are empathic about innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire, we know that Russia is waiting in the wings to reduce our influence world-wide…so on TOP of having to choose between your best friend and some annoying woman you barely know, you ALSO have your worst enemy at the club waiting to swoop in and tell your now-ex-best-friend how awful and cruel you are and bend said ex-best-friend into another enemy. Yay!
that go after him more hardcore aren’t exactly the strongest “supporters”.
Yeah that’s just patently untrue. The people going hard in the paint on Biden from the left are your hardcore progressive and leftist base. People that actually volunteer on campaigns, donate, go door to door, sign people up to vote and otherwise do work to get people elected. Think our revolution, justice democrats, extinction rebellion etc… Its not people passively engaged in politics that are activated and engaged in these organizations which are fundamental to getting any Democrats elected. Its activated, deeply engaged, strongly opinionated people who do the work of getting Democrats elected.
And this highlights the divide in Biden’s support. You have armchair centrists who basically do almost nothing and are only minimally engaged in the political process wagging their fingers saying “Any Blue Will Do” at the cohort of individuals who are being critical of Biden, but whom are also operate the cranks of the actual machines that gets Democrats elected. Any leftist worth their salt understands strategic voting, but that’s not the point. The point has been that this neo-liberal, technocratic approach to voting that Democratic centrists are insisting on, is losing and will continue to lose this election. The only thing that has kept Biden in this game was an activist rebellion within the Democratic primary system that forced his response, and he’s only really offered a papier-mâché stiffening of his rhetoric on Israel, but has done basically nothing to fix the underlying issue. IF Biden doesn’t fundamentally shift his position on Gaza and Israel now, this is over. He’s lost this election.
In this vein, the only thing that can actually save Biden from him self is a complete and total rebellion within the DNC voter base, and to basically drag Biden to a better policy position. Otherwise he will lose this election. The lame ass excuse of “Well Trump would be worse” is actually working against Biden right now, because Biden is actually the president, not Trump. The phrase “The buck stops here” is so apropos in this situation, that its almost comical.
The people going hard in the paint on Biden from the left are your hardcore progressive and leftist base.
That seems to be the central point of your argument, and then you claim all the centrists are not really helping in the trenches. It seems to me this has no basis in fact, and there are plenty of more moderate dems that volunteer, donate, are politically active, etc.
I imagine the confusion stems from moderates not protesting at as high a percentage, since protests draw a lot of attention, where a lot of the other work is less dramatic. The core of the democratic party isn’t just excited young progressives though, it’s also educated soccer moms with time on their hands.
edit: Consider it this way: When Hilary ran against Bernie, did she just have no volunteers on her side, because they were all with Bernie?
You obviously have no clue who is involved or works on political campaigns.
Both left and right, its people who care deeply about something. You don’t do that kind of work if you are on the fence on issues. You do that kind of work when you have a strong belief about something.
You’re just assuming that there aren’t people that care about having moderate policy positions.
edit: Here’s another question to get at the heart of that. Are all moderates just “on the fence” between two extremes that draw the only people that feel strongly? Or is centrism its own philosophy, that someone can believe deeply in, even if you personally may not see the appeal?
I don’t know, I think you’re just spinning together a bunch of bullshit to hide the fact that there kinda is a large, more moderate faction in the country, that doesn’t like any extremist politics. They’re not all disengaged or apathetic, they’re the Bill Clinton supporters, and now Joe Biden supporters.
This group is far larger than either the far left or right, often middle aged, employed, often with kids. They’re not disaffected, and actually pay quite a bit of attention.
Of course, the existence of this group completely destroys the entire DNC conspiracy theory bullshit people like to lean on to attack democrats, just like it destroys MAGA people’s happy illusions that they’re the ones that are actually the “average American”, so I understand why it’s so distasteful to some.
But yeah, they’re out there. So go ahead I suppose, what do you got?
I don’t know, I think you’re just spinning together a bunch of bullshit to hide the fact that there kinda is a large, more moderate faction in the country, that doesn’t like any extremist politics. They’re not all disengaged or apathetic, they’re the Bill Clinton supporters, and now Joe Biden supporters.
I keep half-agreeing with your comments: you’re right about the faction you’re talking about existing, but I think it’s a very them-centric point of view to call them “moderates” and not “neoliberal extremists.”
If they were all neo-liberals then there wouldn’t be support for broad business regulation and higher taxes, which there is. There is a neo-liberal faction of it, though, certainly.
The problem I have with your argument is the implication that people who care deeply about helping the Democratic party are extreme leftists/progressives and not extreme neoliberals.
When you volunteer for a campaign, you aren’t volunteering for the “Democratic Party”, you are volunteering for a candidate, whom you may agree with somethings on but not others. However, people who want to make a difference are strategic about how they use their time. You pick whoever you are ideologically aligned with that you can stomach and you think has a chance of winning and you sign up and start dialing/ knocking on doors/ etc.
I keep hearing words like “fight” and “drag” and “push” as to what we do to stop this, but they don’t mean actually fighting or dragging or pushing, just being annoying in ways that are easily dismissed.
I’ve gotten enough “fuck you I do what I want” letters from my reps and senators about things that I’ve given up “pushing” them in that way.
I think you make a good point on this. Its also not clear to me that any amount of cajoling is going to move Biden. However, I can’t think of anything else that can be ‘done’. If demanding he step further to us on a policy to get our votes when he’s losing an election doesn’t move him, it might be that he cares more about the policy position than he does winning the election.
And it kind of seems like that’s the case. He’s losing the election and he’s not moving on the policy position except in ‘leaked calls’ and sternly worded letters. If he doesn’t move left, he loses the election, but staying where he is at policy wise might be more important to him than preventing Trump from taking office. We shouldn’t assume he has the same priorities we do around government. Everything I’ve seen from his generation of geriatric politicians is an unfounded faith in the systems ability to self correct and resist things like the coup attempt in 2021. He’s from a generation that believes “the system works”, because its worked well for him/ them. I wouldn’t put it past him to leave us completely exposed to a fetishist take over because of this unfounded belief. In failing to support Ukraine when its core to the principals of a liberal democracy, and in supporting Israel while the actions they take are antithetical to a liberal democracy, he’s left us glaringly exposed to a fascist take over this election cycle.
The other part is that online lefties like us are a minority. If Biden does move left he risks losing the election to the majority of Americans who support Israel unconditionally. So nobody’s going to end up happy and he loses the election anyway.
He’s from a generation that believes “the system works”, because its worked well for him/ them.
This is a great insight that people who keep saying “we just need to push him after the election” don’t seem to get. Yes, I’m sure that in the past writing letters to Congress might have done something more than waste paper. But the system is so broken now that people don’t believe them and see the only way to get a message across that this is unacceptable is to not vote.
[Edit: I did not mean to write an essay but then here we are…]
If Biden does move left he risks losing the election to the majority of Americans
I agree completly overall, but I want to dig into this particular statement. My view on elections and electoralism has evolved, and at this point, I consider the ‘center’ of Americans to be a fiction. The basic paradigms driving votership in the US has shift to be basically cohorts of distinct voting blocs that have to be corralled into moving together. I think the right have used this understanding to great effect, and because of this they’ve been punching well above their weight class in terms of electoral impact relative to the actual number of people who vote. The right started this strategy in the 1960s with the southern strategy splitting off white evangelicals from Christians more broadly, and building them into a coherent voting bloc. Its more than I want to put the effort into writing down here, but my basic argument is that you don’t win modern elections through broad appeal. You win modern elections by appealing strongly to specific voting blocs and driving those cohorts of individuals to the polls. Bernie used this to almost snatch the primary from Hillary, before the DNC pumped the brakes and put the fix in. He wrangled voting blocs that were otherwise non-voters or more limited in their engagement with the party (leftists, progressives, black, lgbtqia, etc…) to engage a diverse coalition into voting for him, even if they were not individually united in their interests. Trump is doing a similar thing with libertarians, MAGA, qanon, anti-women voters, fascists, christian fascists, neo-liberals, and neo-conservatives. Internally they don’t really have a coherent issue set, but he basically goes to them one at a time, develops an understanding for their priorities, then speaks to those priorities directly. Trump isn’t making a broad appeal to the American center, he’s making a narrow appeal to hyper engaged individual blocs of voters, and its working extremely well. Biden comes from a different generation of neoliberalism (1984-2000) when there basically was 0 diversity in American politics and both parties effectively had the exact same set of policies. It was a unimodal distribution of issues, and so appealing to the center made sense. We no longer have a unimodal issue set or a unimodal distribution of voters. We have something, not even bi-modal, but more like two inverse paretos or poissons. There is almost no overlap in votership or policy priorities for the two parties or for the sets of demographic blocs that are going to show up to get some one elected.
So my overall argument is that an appeal to the center or to moderates is basically worthless because they don’t actually exist any more in the American electorate. There isn’t a silent majority. The unimodal distribution of votership died during/ after Clintons second term. Since then we’ve become increasing polarised as a country and as a votership because we no longer overlap whatsoever in terms of legislative priorities. As such, there is little value in appeals to moderation or centrism, because there are no voter blocs in those locations you can drive out to the polls. And recursive or negative attacks are also of little value because blocs aren’t formed ‘against’ things, they are formed ‘for things’ so you have to be ‘pro-something’ to drive a bloc. I think Trump gets this very much and is using it effectively, whereas Biden and basically all Democrats apart from Bernie simply do not understand how the electorate is formed and what it takes to win a national election at this point. 2020 was exceptional in that Bernie had fully activated a massive bloc of progressive and leftist voters on issues that were priorities for them. Young people and progressives won 2020 for the Democrats, and have been basically rewarded with a punch to the teeth in terms of Bidens policies.
In summary, modern voters don’t like Democrats or Republicans, but are voting based on their particular issue sets or identities and who is speaking to them or prioritizing those issues. Trump figured this out in 2016 and has been using it to great effect. Biden still thinks voters are “Democrats” first, and that their policy positions come second. This view is a holdover from a political paradigm that is no longer present.
Thanks for the essay! I liked it a lot. (Though the first paragraph could be broken up for readability.)
The tl;dr I’m getting is this: Both parties are “big tent” parties now, and Democrats seem to have forgotten this and are operating on 90s political theory. Sound about right? If so, I agree wholeheartedly.
My problem with the idiots screaming “Genocide!!!” is that they are overly simplistic in their understanding of the problem. First, if we cut Israel off, lots of very pro-Israeli donors carry out their threats to cut donations to the Left and give more to the Right. That’s more ads, more canvassers, more campaign staff, and more polling moving from Team Blue to Team Red. As much as I hate the fact that $$$ rules everything in the fucking USA, it’s still a fact, and the LAST thing Team Blue wants to have voters hearing is “America sold out Israel to Hamas after Hamas started the war.” Think about how low-information so many voters are in the USA, and think about how EASY it would be for Russian-Amplified Republican Propaganda to convince low-information, and frankly low-IQ voters that Democrats are the antisemites in the discussion.
Speaking of Russian-Amplified propaganda, let me remind everyone of these fact:
Russia and Israel have historically had a friendly relationship with each other.
Israel has a strong Russian contingent. The language is the third most spoken language, and Israel is ranked third in the list of non-Soviet nations that speak Russian.
Netanyahu and Putin have particularly close ties, both being right-wing Authoritarian Jerks.
What is Russia trying to do? Reduce America’s influence in the world so it can step in and take over (it will fail, and learn QUICKLY that it is China’s bitch, but it doesn’t know this yet…). What’s the easiest way to do that? Have America cut off aid to Israel, then step in. Alternatively, if America STAYS supporting Israel, amplify the lie that Biden supports Genocide since he won’t cut off aid to Israel, allowing Russia to step in.
We need to call this bullshit out here and now, and point out the fact that either people pushing this nonsense are useful idiots, pushing Putin and Trump’s propaganda like the morons they are, or that they’re actually in cahoots with Putin and Trump, and need to be called out as the shitheads they are.
I’m done playing nice. It’s time to call a spade a spade.
Anybody who thinks the US will abandon Israel is ignorant of history, too. As is anybody who thinks they can vote for a president and not get blood on their hands.
I think this is a bad way to say ‘you have to vote for the least bad option out there’, because it implies you are responsible for what your President does. The logical next step, argued by shitheads a plenty here, is that if you don’t vote for a president, you don’t have blood on your hands. My argument is that’s not true.
Vote for Biden, you have voted for the least bad option out there. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is.
Vote for Trump, you have voted for the worst option out there. You are directly responsible for what comes next.
Vote for Third Party or staying home as a Lefty, you have reduced Biden’s vote share for no chance at winning. In my 51/49 Left/Right split, you and two of your buddies have picked Left2, ensuring Right wins 49R/48L/3L’. You too are directly responsible for what comes next.
Vote for Third Party or stay home as a Rightie, while you won’t offset the Lefties voting Left2, you’ll at least reduce Trump’s share and maybe we can get 48L/47R/3L’/2R’. Can you convince a buddy to join you?
Because Israel sucks and so does Hamas, Palestine is going to get Genocided either way. The difference is that with Biden in office, Muslims, Gays, Minorities, and Transgendered folks aren’t going to get genocided here, and MAYBE Netanyahu reads the room and backs off, grudgingly, because he knows Dem voters are good with hanging him out to dry if he keeps this shit up. Elect Trump like the assholes we keep encountering screaming Biden Genocide want us to do, and not only do Palestinians get gleefully genocided by Netanyahu (who is the actual genocidal maniac), then so do all the other people I listed above.
I don’t think the Gaza issue will end up being a big issue for Biden. Those wanting more action on Gaza are generally to the left of Biden. It’s not likely that they will stay home on election day or vote 3rd party and help Trump that way. They’d much rather have Biden after all.
I think that few people are Biden supporters and more are “We have to get Biden in so that Trump doesn’t get in and hopefully someone younger will come by for the next round but he’s still better than the alternative by a mile”.
We could have elected a shoe into office in 2020 the anti-Trump sentiment was so strong. Its not as strong now, and Biden is a worse candidate than he’s ever been.
I’m very confused that this is happening now. I thought it happened a long time ago (them being found liable I mean). It’s crazy to me that it’s taken this long for such a pitiful punishment. It is good though that people are being reminded once again how shitty they are. Maybe we can impact their bottom line somehow (doubtful)
This is about Chiquita’s activities in the late 1990s and early 2000s, not about the 1928 coup in Honduras which was funded by Chiquita, then called United Fruit Company.
You know how every once in a while there’s an article going “man, check out all this illegal fucked up shit the CIA was doing 20 years ago, sure is great they stopped and don’t do anything illegal and fucked up anymore”, and the date they stopped doing the illegal shit is always “20 years ago”, regardless of when the article is published?
Nice to know that if you work for a company that can afford to pay the fine, you can literally just straight up kill people(*) and pay the money and it's all good
When the military sees a problem that can only be solved by war crimes they literally just hire contractors to do them.
But you don’t have to be the US government to hire private companies to do war crimes for you. Any citizen* can hire private military contractors to go out and do war crimes for them.
*A citizen is anyone with a net worth of greater than 500 million dollars.
According to this, 3 million tons a year go from Colombia to Israel.
This is thermal coal, not the (rarer, purer) metallurgical coal.
Israel imports more than 50 per cent of its coal from Colombia, according to the American Journal for Transportation, and uses much of it to feed its power plants.
Israel isn’t huge, so one doesn’t have to come up with a lot of replacement coal.
Coal is fungible, and when shipped by ship, doesn’t have the kind of transportation limitations that gave Russian pipelines, for example, influence over Europe’s natural gas supply. Anyone can buy from anyone. If anyone is willing to sell to Israel, then Columbia’s exports go elsewhere to fill the additional demand that gets created for their coal.
There isn’t any kind of a unified bloc with control of coal, which makes it a hard commodity to cut someone off from. The US, Australia, China, Russia, India, and Germany are all major coal producers.
The US in particular, which I expect probably isn’t gonna cut Israel off, has a ton of coal.
More than 90% of the world’s total proved coal reserves are located in just ten countries. The US tops the list holding more than one-fifth of the total proven coal reserves, while China, which ranks third, is the biggest producer and consumer of coal.
I found another article about his on middleeasteye providing some extra context
Colombia is Israel’s primary coal supplier, accounting for 60 percent of all the country’s coal imports in 2023, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data.
Ynet news has reported that Israel has been quick to seek alternative suppliers and reportedly has “received positive responses from South Africa and Russia”, but will have to pay a higher premium on its coal imports.
“In the immediate term, they have reserves, so it’s not going to lead to energy outages, but it will have an economic impact long term, and joined by others, it will have the effect of impacting their energy production capabilities,” a Global Energy Embargo spokesperson told Middle East Eye. “If these other countries are taking action, that’s going to have a massive knock on effect.”
The coalition is now turning its attention to South Africa, where it will begin to mobilise to halt coal exports after the new government has been formed.
“We urgently call on South Africa, which provides nine percent of Israel’s coal, to follow Colombia’s lead,” the group said. t is also looking to stop crude oil exports from Brazil.)
60% of an import is pretty huge number. Israel will be able to find alternatives but it’s going to cost them.
The syntax they're constructing is working the opposite of how you said
You don't have to agree with them (and as they point out, one random solider saying one random thing doesn't mean anything "official" about Hamas as a whole), but they are saying that it is relevant that some individual in Hamas is talking about its female captives in explicitly sexual-slavery terms.
Put it this way, if a US prison guard or an IDF person were talking about female prisoners in an analogous way, it would abso fuckin lutely be some news.
I would say that the reception it's getting indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people. If I were simply posting a two-week-old story about the IDF desert detention camp, or a US policeman from last November who shot somebody when they shouldn't have, I don't think it would be receiving this level of anguished scrutiny about timeliness and relevance and headline.
I get it. I think because Israel are objectively the bad guys, there's a tendency to interpret any story like this as supportive of them, and so start trashing it out of defense for the Palestinians. I won't say that's a crazy thing to do, but I don't think it should be all that difficult to accept Hamas as bad people. I meant the Israeli government has been giving them funding and support against their domestic opposition, specifically because they can be relied upon to be violent and corrupt in a way that tears down legitimacy for the Palestinian cause. Someone on Lemmy who's standing up in defense of Hamas in any particular war-criminal action they're doing is not making the bold stand for Palestinian people that I think they may believe that they are making.
It looks like it’s getting the reception it’s getting because, as @Cheradenine said, it’s two weeks old and it’s already been rebutted.
I realize rule 1 says within 30 days, but this sort of thing is a story that can change from one day to the next.
Very few people think Hamas are good. They just know, like I do, that Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They’re at war with all of Gaza. They don’t care whether you’re a member of Hamas or not. They don’t care if you’re a baby or you’re 99 years old. And don’t give me the “Hamas hides amongst them” bullshit. That in no way justifies the thousands of dead children.
What do you mean by "it," here? The IDF translation?
Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They're at war with all of Gaza. They don't care whether you're a member of Hamas or not. They don't care if you're a baby or you're 99 years old.
100% agreed. I usually put "war" in quotes because it's much more accurate to describe it as a large-scale terrorist attack by the IDF (killing and threatening a helpless civilian population to influence their behavior) than anything remotely resembling a normal state-level conflict between armed combatants.
indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people
Oh fuck off with this delusional bullshit. Nobody calls Hamas good people or has trouble saying they are bad people. 99% of the world would happily let every person in Hamas die. The only people who think anyone is supporting Hamas are the same ones who think it’s OK to blindly kill 30,000 civilians in response to 700 civilians being brutally murdered.
It’s not news because everyone knows that Hamas is evil and doing/saying evil things.
Buddy buddy. I'm on your side. If I need to say it, I think that the war crimes Israel is committing are at least 10 times worse than anything Hamas has done. That doesn't mean that all of a sudden a story about Hamas doing crimes becomes a non issue or a thing to react to with hostility. In my opinion.
I didn't say anyone here was supporting Hamas. I was saying that it seems like people are clearly reacting negatively to this story because it makes Hamas look bad, when they would be completely fine with a story that made the IDF look bad, even if it contained some of these issues which they are claiming are what they're so aggrieved about about this story.
Again, I get why there's a value judgement that the IDF is the bad guys. I agree with that judgement. I'm just saying you don't have to demand that your news coverage obey the same judgements.
To me, stories about the world have value beyond the conclusion being "Hamas good" or "Hamas bad," and can be important even if the conclusion along that axis is "Hamas bad" which we knew already. It seems weird that people are saying that because the conclusion is that Hamas is bad, the story is irrelevant, and also are pretending for some reason that the anti-Palestinian-looking viewpoint is not the entire reason they don't like it.
I am downvoting bc of the exceedingly clickbait title with absolutely zero follow-up details except for a link. This post is therefore “advertising” - like spam in my inbox alerting me to an “opportunity” (to save on car insurance or printer ink, ignoring whether or not I even have one of those devices, or whatever), it takes up all of our attention. Which at currently 37k subscribers to this community, measured at a one minute each, is collectively 617 hours, or 15.4 work week time periods, i.e. 3.9 months total.
The article itself might even be good, or it might not be but at this point I am indisposed to click the bait in order to find out. And my point above stands either way.
Possibly you mean well OP - I have had troubles posting articles myself, assuming that details would be auto-populated like I see elsewhere, but then it did not happen - I am just offering my unasked-for opinion, in case it helps.:-) Especially since others I see are likewise downvoting so I wanted to add an explanation at least from my own POV.
People are either familiar with the sabaya controversy, in which case it's instantly obvious what is meant, or else they are unfamiliar, in which case it would be impossible to communicate any level of approximation of the full situation in 250 characters (and I think the headline is about as good as anything at communicating the rough sketch). A big whole point of the article is, the situation's more complex than can be communicated with quick phrases.
The article itself is a pretty deeply factual and nuanced take on an active controversy in the news, i.e. not just a waste of time oversold by the headline
I am forbidden by the sub rules from changing the title
It's not selling you fucking printer ink, it is news in a news sub
I would be pretty surprised if the phrasing of the headline is why they are downvoting -- I think it's being interpreted as some kind of Zionism or excuse for Israel's crimes, which is a pretty sensible assumption TBF, but in this case is wrong
I don’t think it’s a poor title, and even if it was as you said there is a constraint there, but rather my beef was how the title was the only piece of information offered.
I am not accusing you of trying to sell anything commercially - I was offering some advice to help you get the message out that you wanted to spread. This is not your family that you might expect to click on every single link that you send, this is a social media platform where people from all walks of life are here, and you had an opportunity to not quite “sell” but “encourage” people to read this post. I ran into a similar situation in the past where I posted a video, and someone was kind enough to explain why they did not want to watch it, so I added a description and while it was too late for discoverability, it did help I think.
Yeah some people are discussing the content too, I was hyper-focusing on the delivery aspect here, in case it was of interest to you.
That's actually a pretty good point. I added a body which explained what's in the article and why I think it's relevant.
I'm a little doubtful that that will lead to it being any more well-received, since as I say I think the issue is people interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and reflexively going on the attack, but yeah there's no reason for it to be cryptic for no reason, so I fixed it.
Oh yes that’s MUCH better! Whether your original goal was to encourage people to read the article, or to encourage us all to have a conversation about the matter, either way this helps a ton to increase discoverability! I mean, as you say it’s probably too late now, but still it should help - I get people replying to my comments days to over a week later sometimes - and it is good practice for next time:-).
You don’t have to put the in quotation marks, the translation was released by the Israeli goveernment, that is what this article and many others are referring to.
When this was released, two weeks ago, when the article was written, most articles disagreed with the official translation.
I thought my message was short enough that it wouldn't have been missed, but this is one of the articles which disagree with what you're calling the official translation (along with providing a lot of other information.)
Honestly, I posted it because (a) it was news to me; it was a detailed explanation of a news event which enhanced my understanding (b) I felt it was needed perspective to add the "IDF translation was wrong and so nothing to see here" narrative which as we are learning is pretty popular (c) I checked and it was within the 30 day window according to the sub rules
I suspect that the hostility is because people are interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist. Which is a fair conclusion, I get it, but not why I posted it. Israel's crimes are objectively 10 times worse than anything Hamas has been doing, but I don't see a need to proceed from there to "and therefore anything Hamas does is okay and any attempt to criticize them is probably a lie and I need to support them."
Not that I'm saying you're doing that, but like I say, I suspect some of the hostility to this story lies somewhere on a continuum which does include that at one end.
This bill? 42 democrats apparently voted to protect a foreign genocidal maniac.
how much you wanna bet they also have their names appear on this list
(edit: yeah. I just checked they all do. it’s possible every congress person does, but, uhm, after a cursory search the average is around 100k in contributions from pro-israeli sources. I’m not even going to be bothering to check the republicans that voted yea.)
Instead of supporting a court that has the goal of prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity like they themselves did after 1945, they are now boycotting such courts. I wonder what made them change their position 180 degrees. …
Years of political bribes and outright propaganda. AIPAC has pro-Israel billboards in some locations in the Bay Area. I saw at least one somewhere between Vallejo and Richmond when we were coming back from a hike or something (partner picks outings and drives to spare my frustration in traffic, so I don’t have a solid memory of why we were on that stretch of highway).
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