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I like how this crappy meme weights “Israel” the same as “He’s Old” as if genocide is comparable to the inability of Biden to hold a coherent conversation.
Hahaha you are literally doing what the post is calling people out for.
You can criticize Biden. But the point of your post wasn’t to do that, was it? It was to cause dissent, not create solutions.
So stop it. Get some help. He’s a better choice than Trump, and that’s the only thing that actually fucking matters.
I didn’t even complain about both sides, I just said why is the weight so ridiculously unbalanced in the picture.
Trump has the same two blocks as if age is equal in weight to genocide.
The lesser of two evils is still evil. This is just a plain statement of fact. Like sure, I’d rather eat a turd sandwich than be immersed and drowned in shit, but that doesn’t make the turd in the sandwich any less of a piece of shit.
If a set of people don’t like being called out for doing shitty things, they can also you know, stop doing shitty things.
PS . I’m not an American and don’t vote in your country’s elections.
PS2. Sorry for all the shit analogies.
don’t worry it’s fine there’s plenty of turds downvoting you
You know, usually when I read “both sides are the same”, it’s a blue conservative like you trying to make people critical of the Democratic party seem unreasonable.
Both sides are capitalist and conservative, but there are differences for sure. Dont you want more differences?
If you wanna really shut up those people bitchhing from the sidelines, the best way to do so is to put them in the game! Force them to show us how to do things since it’s so easy and they have it figured out.
Switching away from first past the post voting allows people to vote for who represents them best while still counting their vote against those they dont want to win. Just search for videos on FPTP voting if you want an explanation on how and why the spoiler effect exists.
Electoral reform is possible in each individual state (for now), we dont need federal reform! Maine and Alaska have already passed electoral reform.
Republicans are moving to make alternative electoral systems illegal in their states. Republicans LOVE first past the post voting. Just sbsolutely adore it. Why would you want to use the same voting system republicans want?
So what’s the hold up blue states?
Consider starting a campaign to change how we vote in your own state! Force our representatives to compete with fresh outside ideas. We deserve the best representation, not excuses.
Nice copypasta man. Have any original thoughts though?
As I’ve said many times before, Approval Voting and Proportional Representation are the way to go in order to break the duopoly. Volunteer with Election Science to get this shit started.
If you start talking about getting rid of Red vs Blue, and get more into eating the rich, you find a whole lot more unity real fast. I know many conservatives that hop right on that bandwagon, enthusiastically. Trump v Biden? That’s pointless. Wasting billionaires and their families? Now that gets people excited and unified.
unless they get to kill trans people, then the reds will always vote for them.
Wasting billionaires and their families? Now that gets people excited and unified.
Yeah it turns moderates and liberals into fascists real fast.
Yo, you already spammed this when you made the Hilary post. Exact wording too.
Internet discourse is when ctrl+c ctrl+v
Zerked it zilly style to this post, and I really felt it in my political self-satisfaction.
No but seriously where do I find actual good and nuanced political discussion that’s either about theory or about like, capital hill politics, or the machinations and nuances of the US political system? The specifics of legislature, maybe, more specific pros and cons to each candidacy, possible alternatives, shit like that? Cause it’s obviously not here, and not on lemmy generally. The only conversations I am doomed to find here are the same leftist-liberal circlejerk sparring, ad nauseam, and it’s really draining me. Mostly because of how obviously vapid, self-serving, and totally useless it is. Does there exist a holy land of good political discourse, or is this just kinda, where we are now?
Jill Stein will resolve problems created by two-party mess.
I was gonna call out the “grammar” one, since a person’s grammar really isn’t all that big a deal… Then I remembered reading one of his tweets a few days ago. It was somewhere around 200 words, all caps, and zero punctuation.
I can’t. I can’t do four more years of this guy’s fucking tweets. Guys. Please.
Someone pointed out that him Ying his Hs (yuuuuuuge) is apparently a current linguistic trend in American English, and I about died of a heart attack
I normally am a hard descriptivist but oh sweet God no not more people talking like him!
Just… Don’t go on Twitter?
You’re not wrong lol. I don’t actually use twitter, just made the mistake this time of clicking a link from a news article.
shudders
Never again.Incredibly easy in the current incarnation.
Not really, because many articles and blogs embed Tweets in them and my brain automatically goes “you can close this thing by clicking the X in the corner”…
He isn’t on Twitter anymore.
Biden libs casually forgetting to put the most damning crime of Genocide on that scale.
I don’t understand why people bother with this crap on here. It’s exhausting and pointless. Anyone that is going to vote and isn’t casting a ballot for Biden is either a MAGA idiot or has the mental acuity of an inbred toddler. They both share a lack of mental depth that is required to process anything of substance.
The annual pretending Democrats don’t uphold systemic issues because Trump is clearly worse. 🙄
I don’t think many people are saying that Biden is the same as Trump or just as bad as Trump. I think most progressives, for instance, would agree that Biden is better than Trump, it’s just that that’s such a low bar. I mean, are liberals really surprised that people aren’t all that impressed with a president whose main selling point is that he’s not as bad as the only alternative? Now, I get that liberals don’t see it that way, I understand that liberals, apparently, are really very happy with Joe Biden, but for the rest of us he is only the least bad option.
In some parts of Lemmy, they are absolutely making that argument.
Are they literally saying they are the same person? That they share the same atoms?
Or is the point that they are the same in the most important ways?
Maybe your disagreement is over what qualities/policies are most important, but accusing them for being blind is easier than addressing the actual disagreement?
The arguments are that Biden is just as bad as Trump.
And it doesn’t occur to you to ask by what metrics they think that? All metrics? One metric? A spattering of metrics?
accusing them for being blind is easier than addressing the actual disagreement
So you agree that people on Lemmy are arguing that Biden is just as bad as Trump.
People on Lemmy are arguing that Biden is just as bad as Trump in the most important ways.
So we’re in agreement.
And this is exactly how nothing ever gets done. Only criticize, never do anything, create the feeling that getting involved is pointless because"they’re all the same anyway".
I hate that humans are so awful at nuance. People could absolutely praise and condemn the same person for different actions, instead they want to boil down that person’s entire existence to “good, bad, different, same”. And we all suffer for that
I would imagine those people are Marxists, or other anti-capitalists. If you’re somebody whose primary litmus test is whether a candidate is pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist, you might not see much of a difference between Biden and Trump because they are both staunchly pro-capitalist. But I think those people are overrepresented on lemmy and only make up a very small percentage of the actual US voter base.
Or perhaps these people live in the middle east or africa and every day they get a taste of “capitalism”.
On Lemmy, yeah. The political leanings here is different than the body politic of America.
This is the answer.
Lemmy is farther from real life than Tumblr or 4chan, be real.
How so?
Many of the people using this site are more detached from reality than on the other sites I mentioned.
Ok and we’re on lemmy right now talking about it so wtf is your point
Ya, replies like this just reinforce my point. This place is full of reactionary retards.
It’s very weird to see people say “Biden is awful. I won’t support him anymore” and get “Why didn’t you say that about Donald Trump?!!!” thrown back at them.
At some point, insisting that Donald Trump will ALSO do a genocide, so you need to donate all your money to the Biden campaign and block walk for him… Fucking bananas.
Even Obama didn’t get this kind of Ride or Die support from Democrats.
Exhibit A
It’s because Trump has said he wants the genocide to be stronger. Biden wants it to end, but isn’t doing much to stop it. Trump also wants to go after minorities in the US.
Obama didn’t get the same support because his opponent wasn’t even close to as bad. Trump has already tried to overturn democracy. Republicans have also put together a plan to innact a Christo-fascist dictatorship (project 2025). The elections with Obama were business as usual. This election is, for many people, life or death, and potentially the last hope for democracy.
Also, Obama was cooler than Biden but he wasn’t better. Honestly, I think if you were to compare their actions as president, Biden would be better. He still sucks, but he’s much better than I expected (very low bar). They’re just not great at communicating what he’s done.
Trump has said he wants the genocide to be stronger.
And Mitt Romney said “Double Gitmo”. That doesn’t absolve Obama or Biden for keeping the illegal torture prison open during their terms.
You don’t absolve yourself of genocide by saying “Well, it was either me or Mega-Hitler”
No one is saying they’re absolved. Where have you heard that?
The fact of the matter is that if you don’t like genocide or gitmo or whatever other horrible things, you should vote for the person who at worst wants to maintain the status quo of horrible things.
That said, Obama wanted to close Gitmo. Biden has also condemned Israel’s attacks, and the US has warned them to stop. We’ve also stopped some military aid to them, but obviously not all. The recent jets, for example, still happened, but they’re air-superiority fighters which serve no use against Palestine. We’ve also continued to send a lot of other defensive aid, though offensive has slowed down if not stopped. To imply Obama or Biden didn’t try to do anything is ignorance at best, if not an outright lie. The fact of the matter is that much of it is handled by congress though, and republicans in congress will stop a Democrat from doing essentially anything.
That said, Obama wanted to close Gitmo.
Obama said he wanted to close Gitmo. He gave up forever at the very first setback.
Sure, and we can question it, but we can’t know what he will do. My understanding is that he really had not control over that though
Oh geeze what’s worse a bigger war crime prison or bringing a genocide against Arabs to America?
You don’t absolve yourself of genocide by saying “Well, it was either me or Mega-Hitler”
What? So let’s apply this to 1930s Germany.
Your stance is that, if Hitlers political rivals stood for anything “wrong” by your moral code, whatever that is, that voters were in the right to not vote against literally Hitler?
That’s taking “two wrongs don’t make a right” to extreme absolutes.
Your stance is that, if Hitlers political rivals stood for anything “wrong” by your moral code, whatever that is, that voters were in the right to not vote against literally Hitler?
This was what brought down the Hindenburg government, in fact. His performance in the Presidency was notoriously abysmal and his country suffered enormously under his tenure. In fact, one could very easily argue that Hindenburg’s failures created the Nazi Party, as disaffected voters fled the traditional political sphere for the edges of the ideological map - to the Nazis, the Communists, and the Friekorps radicals…
It was, after all, Hindenburg himself who appointed Hitler to the Chancellorship, because he considered Hitler someone he could compromise with.
This is a shockingly similar position to the current Biden/Schumer Congress, which consistently attempts to negotiate with “moderates” in the Republican Party even to this day.
That’s taking “two wrongs don’t make a right” to extreme absolutes.
Looking at the trajectory the conservative wing of the Democratic Party has us on, and comparing it to the Weimer Republic, reveals some terrifying parallels.
This isn’t “two wrongs make a right” nearly so much as it is “the marginal less or two evils is still unconscionable”.
Even Obama didn’t get this kind of Ride or Die from Dems
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He wasn’t running against Donald “ban the Muslims” Trump,
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YES HE ABSOLUTELY DID IF YOU’RE SAYING THIS YOU ARE CLEARLY TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER THE OBAMA GIRL SQUAD
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Because the reality of our shitty political system is that not supporting the only viable non-fascist candidate means supporting the one that is. It only actually matters in the handful of swing states, but the internet is worldwide and heaping negativity about supporting the non-fascist candidate can matter. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t criticize Biden and the Democrats for their many failings, but not supporting him in the election for the sake of the country is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Because the reality of our shitty political system is that not supporting the only viable non-fascist candidate means supporting the one that is.
Isn’t this a little disingenuous? Or maybe individualism is so ingrained in the western psyche that people honestly don’t see the asymmetry of this framing.
The reality of our political system is that the only way to get change is to demand it from the people who need your vote. By giving your vote without demanding change, you’re supporting the system that disenfranchises you (and you’re supporting the binary choice that was given to you by it).
Isn’t this a little disingenuous?
No, not even slightly
not supporting the only viable non-fascist candidate
If
You’re
Doing
Genocide
Then
You’re
A
Fascist
Candidate
You are aware that fascism already has a definition, correct? It’s not just someone doing something that you don’t agree with.
Please don’t water down a word that has very serious implications right now.
It’s not just someone doing something that you don’t agree with.
Are we trying to do moral relativism on genocide?
The IDF knowingly and deliberately bombed food aid workers in clearly marked vehicles on a road designated for food aid delivery, entirely for the purpose of starving out war refugees.
They did that with munitions built and supplied by the American government.
And when questioned, the American National Security Secretary said it was the IDF’s prerogative to bomb them.
This was deliberate, calculated, cold blooded murder of aid workers done with the participation of the US military under the command of President Joe Biden.
Everything you just said has nothing to do with fascism and is therefore irrelevant to the term.
I’m not saying that any of that is ok, but that doesn’t make it fascism.
Have you talked with Republicans, though? This has always been the way of a republican. Democrat does bad things, republican does bad thing. To them it’s a wash even though what the Republican did was 100 times worse.
This meme is targeting leftists, not republicans.
The point is that they have the same “both sides do any bad things at all so Dems just as bad” mentality
It reveals how this is all kvetch from the white left, only people raised by Republicans can have this absolutist moral line of thinking
I don’t think many people are saying that Biden is the same as Trump or just as bad as Trump.
You wrote this on Lemmy. I don’t see how you missed how popular this attitude is.
I think people who want no criticism of Biden choose to believe that any criticism at all of Biden is the same thing as saying Biden is the same as Trump.
I recognize you as one of the people I’m talking about so it’s no surprise you’d say some baloney like this
I’ve never said Biden is the same as or just as bad as Trump. You on the other hand love to be hostile to anyone opposed to genocide.
Yeah, you lie your ass off and say that opposition to your false equivalency means “no criticism of Biden” and also support of genocide.
Great job, facts don’t matter, nuance is dead.
I have never and will never say that Biden is the same as Trump.
You said I do, then have the unmitigated temerity to call me a liar.
And yet here you are disagreeing with anyone saying this post makes a good point
are liberals really surprised that people aren’t all that impressed with a president whose main selling point is that he’s not as bad as the only alternative?
When your opponent is Trump, it’s kind of hard for that to not be the main selling point; he could be the best president ever and that would likely still be true.
he could be the best president ever and that would likely still be true.
If he were the best president ever, he might have something better to run on than “at least I’m second worst to Trump.”
You missed the point completely. But that being said, he barely even mentions trump. This idea that he’s only campaigning on not being trump is completely detached from reality.
Perhaps it’s just a case of vote for biden now so trump can be shut out for the next 4 yrs and hope that his senility eats him before the next course
ITT: “no one is making <argument x>, and everyone is making <argument y>; OP <agrees/disagrees> with me and therefore that makes OP <position z>”
nearly everyone here needs to pause, look around, and recognize that there is tremendous diversity to people and their worldviews. if you engage with every issue as a monolith, you become the monolith. but if you engage with people as what they are, individuals, you might actually get something done.
The card says moops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4
Whether or not complicit, these people are helping the alt-right make their case and win elections.
who are you referring to with “these people”?
i think i agree with you but your comment is a bit unclear sorry
ITT: “no one is making <argument x>, and everyone is making <argument y>; OP <agrees/disagrees> with me and therefore that makes OP <position z>”
People who say that.
yiss agree :)
Definitely not biased at all. Israel which rapes, pillages and kills that’s not at all a small thing. To try say that Biden is much better than trump is false. They’re both poisons only difference is one is a loud mouth. Don’t vote for Biden and set a precedence that supporting genocide as a US president will get you to lose your office chair.
Brandon 2024, warts and all. Fuck the republican traitor filth.
I don’t see the thousands of regressive bills that have Biden’s fingerprints all over them since 70s.
The actual argument is that we can do a lot better, but disingenuous political hacks shriek “THAT MEANS YOU THINK BOTH ARE THE EXACT SAME!!!1” and so we’re stuck with voting “not the other guy” for the rest of our lives as the wealth gap keeps widening, everything gets less affordable, the climate is still worsening, and nothing improves in any meaningful capacity.
I’m just blocking the idiots that post these. So tired already of their bullshit.
We COULD do a lot better if it wasn’t for all those idiots sitting under the scales. There’s a shit load of people that actively want everything on the right side of that scale. There’s groups of people actively supporting Israeli because they believe it’ll bring about the apocalypse and let Jesus return.
Hagee has MILLIONS of followers. And not on twitter, in real life. People who live their lives in service to his vision. People who donate money and time to the cause.
And those are just the zealots. There’s millions more that do whatever these people say “just to be on the safe side” in case they’re right.
These people cannot be reasoned with, they are blood bound members of a death cult and the only recourse we have is to out vote them.
We could do a lot better right now, but biden has demonstrated time and again that he won’t take action even when he can. The genocide in Gaza is the perfect example. He’ll say he’s sad and frustrated but then supplies israel even more to continue their genocide. It’s hard to believe that if we just vote in democrats hard enough that they will take action when they refuse to take action on things they have the power to right now.
Wow, it’s almost like their’s a third candidate running on similar policy changes… Cost of living, environment and improving people’s lives in a meaningful capacity.
I don’t know about this candidate in general, but there’s no chance anyone outside of the democrat-republican approval filter will get anywhere near the presidency. It’s like the myth of “anyone can be rich if they put their mind to it and work hard enough”. In theory enough votes could get any candidate the presidency, but in practice it’s impossible (with even lower odds than becoming individually rich).
Especially with that attitude.
Kennedy is an antivax idiot.
“For many, many years, I think parents were so gaslighted, and they were scapegoated, and they were vilified and marginalized, so that even parents of kids who were very, very badly injured, knew what happened to their kid, but they were just reluctant to talk about it. And I think now those days are over,” Kennedy said.
“We – our job is to resist and to talk about it to everybody. If you’re walking down the street – and I do this now myself, which is, you know, I don’t want to do – I’m not a busybody. I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’ And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it, you know, maybe he will save that child.”
Kennedy repeated later in the podcast: “If you’re one of 10 people that goes up to a guy, a man or a woman, who’s carrying a baby, and says, ‘Don’t vaccinate that baby,’ when they hear that from 10 people, it’ll make an impression on ‘em, you know. And we all kept our mouth shut. Don’t keep your mouth shut anymore. Confront everybody on it.”
On a different podcast, he said "Every one of us has an obligation to do a civil disobedience every day. And that could just be walking up to another person – a mother who’s carrying a baby, like I did this morning – and saying, ‘Before you vaccinate that baby, do your independent research.’”
So either he changed his mind – in which case he should very loudly and publicly say he was wrong and recant his remarks – or he’s a fucking liar.
As a potential voter of his. I guess I don’t really care? If I was never allowed to change my opinion, I wouldn’t be able to grow as a person. With his most recent statement, he’s not anti-vaccine. I can find it but I don’t feel like it right now.
Talk is one thing, actions are another. Give the guy a break.
God forbid I have an opinion about Biden’s old age. Another 4 years of inflation out the wazoo, 4 more years of a state sponsored genocide in Gaza, 4 more years giving $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine. We REALLY don’t have ANYTHING else better to spend it on?
That’s not what is being addressed here and I think you know that.
There are LOTS of people who equate the two sides and say they are no different. This is a toxic lie and you shouldn’t defend it
There is not. Most people who criticize Biden believe we could do better including not supporting the mass killing and ethnic cleansing or Palestinians by the Israeli state.
And the reality is that as far as the presidency is concerned on that specific topic we have a choice between someone who has been maintaining the existing status quo vis a vis Israel and Palestine but has been successfully pressured into at least looking like he’s trying to stop it by his base and the guy who, last time he was in office, made it worse by moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and several other actions, plus everything else wrong with his policies. As far as the presidency goes, those are the only two options, so while we could maybe have done better before, we don’t have a different option now.
So, between “bad but can be influenced to be better” and “far, far, demonstrably worse and only descending,” the only two actual options, which should people vote for?
I won’t tell any one who they should vote for. However, I think the time to influence the president is now. We’ll see if he is influencable for this particular horror.
Have you tried to speak up to your elected officials to influence the US government to change it’s current position so that we aren’t enabling the Israeli government in its massacre of the Palestinean people?
It’s plain to anyone who is willing to see that this administration has been influenced in a positive direction vis a vis Israel, and they are doing much more to help the Palestinian people than the “turn Gaza into a radioactive parking lot” crew that is the other option will do should they regain power. And yes, I have called the offices of my elected representatives, which didn’t go very far because they’re Republicans.
I do not share your compunction about telling people that a vote for better is better, even if better is not ideal, because I’m an adult who has been paying attention to how it has been and is promised to be worse. There is no viable third party, and mathematically there will not be until every state changes away from First Past the Post, which will not happen before the election. Therefore, the better of the two parties, obviously the Democrats, should be voted for. Full stop. Up and down the ballot. Anyone who decides to not vote this way is indicating that they are fine with the Republicans regaining power, and aren’t allowed to complain about the leapords eating their face should they win. The only instance in which voting third party is acceptable is for smaller local elections, and even then that’s if they did a good job canvassing. You should help them canvass, if there are any nearby.
I am too, believe it or not, an adult. I have different values that lead me to different decisions. I’ve refrained from condescending to you even though we disagree. I hope shining a light on that will change the tenor of this conversation.
Regarding Gaza, I see that the administration has been inching away from the full support of Israel. But from I can tell, it’s been wholly rhetorical. While I would like a long term ceasefire, I know that that’s unlikely at this moment. However, this doesn’t mean that the Biden administration lacks leverage. They continue to supply the IDF with weapons. Biden needs to stop this. Second, threaten cutting off funding to Israel. We average about 3 billion dollars in yearly aid to Israel. The last time a present threaten to cut off funding to Israel was HW Bush in 1991.
Those would be two material and immediate changes that would make sense to me. Next, support resolutions with other western countries in the UN to move towards a long term ceasefire. Get them to open more land crossing to allow for additional aid to enter via truck. The roads exist. We don’t need to build a port.
These steps, would be meaningful. I think it would influence uncommitted voters in swing states. Biden is influenceable now because we are entering into an election. Staying uncommitted means that we have leverage.
I hope that framing makes sense even if you don’t agree with it.
Those are good things to want. Since we’re talking about elections, it’s worth mentioning that of the grand total of two options, only democrats have even a slight possibility for them to happen, wheras the Republicans are saying that Gaza should be nuked, which is worse than what’s happening right now, I’m sure you’ll agree. Which is to say nothing of literally every single other issue where the Rs are universally much worse.
Feel free to appear uncommitted right up until the general, at which point you and everyone else trying to extract concessions needs to show up. And as long as that happens, I’m sorry for implying you’re not an adult.
Somehow you scrolled past a dozen comments proving you wrong to lie about it here
Every comment I scrolled past was some form of agreement. The parent to this comment was the first one critical of the OP.
I don’t know what else to say. I’m being sincere. I’m not interested in some victory points. I’d like my views to be taken seriously and not flattened to farsical stance. I’d like good faith interactions, but understand that this is a passionate project for many.
I’m open to discussion if you want to engage in one that isn’t focused on trying to dunk on your opponent.
