I am tired of this world, these people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.
Do you think Americans were not bombing brown people when Democrats were in power? Didn’t Obama get a Nobel Peace Prize while having a top score in drone kill strikes? Lol. The empire is evil and murderous, regardless of who’s playing the part of the leader.
We aren’t both-sidesing this, are we?
Obama was a breath of fresh air on the international stage and widely respected, globally for good reason. It was clear to anyone paying even half attention that he was confronting powerful forces.
Couple points of fact to mention:
- Obama used drone strikes, yes.
- These Drone Strikes are orders of magnitude more precise with far less collateral damage than traditional warfare strategies used by his predecessors.
- Obama passed an executive order making these drone strikes transparent to the public, understanding the danger.
- Trump came in and reversed that transparency, making them classified.
- Obama’s civilian death toll is significantly less than Trump’s first term alone.
By the way:
- Nearly all dissenting opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan originated from Democrats or Independents who caucused with Democrats for good reason.
- Nearly all later dissent came from this side as well.
- A Democrat is the one who actually got us out of Iraq
- A Democrat is the one who actually got us out of Afghanistan
- A Democrat is the one who actually stayed on task to eliminate Bin Laden.
Republicans start wars; Democrats usually get them out. Perfect? No. But there is a very, very clear trend.
Getting tired of seeing this false equivalence nonsense.
Yeah, Obama ran cover for his predecessor’s war crimes too. Adopted his policies. Made them his own, accelerated them.
Before Biden, Obama had the record of most deportations per term. Biden actually built Trump’s border wall, and beat Obama’s deportation record.
I’m tired of pretending the centrist, corporate Democrats are “left” of anything but Nazis.
There is not a single quantifiable mark you can place that Republicans aren’t exceedingly worse on, in every respect. The two proverbial poisons are nowhere near equal potency; and it always amuses me that these armchair leaders would’ve reacted especially nobly if they were in the hot-seat and privy to the intelligence Obama was. I look forward to their run for office.
Deportation number is irrelevant; the methodology is of course what matters. Obama prioritized violent offenders, for example; he also did not separate mothers from children the same way Trump did. Literally no pro-immigrant advocacy group would trade what Biden or Obama did for what Trump is doing right now.
MuH BoTh SiDes false equivalence fallacies are easy for the mind to comprehend, but when you actually examine with any particular depth and nuance, they tend to fall apart.
There is not a single quantifiable mark you can place that Republicans aren’t exceedingly worse on, in every respect
And Democrats rush to accept their terms without considering the voters, any principles, or even practicality.
They haven’t had a real primary for the Presidential candidate since 2008. Here is your one Mark. I’m begrudged to give the Red Team that much, but your Blue Team is what it is.
Its not a false equivalence to say the following: yes, your shit team is better than literal Nazis, but that’s still not calling anyone good.
What are your thoughts on Mamdani? Are you a “Blue No Matter Who” voter in this context, or only without him? If Democrats want to win, he’s got a model that works. I’m scared that the party insiders demand Ezra Klein’s Reaganism repackaged in New Age “law of attraction”-pretending-to-be-Economics.
What are your thoughts on Mamdani? Are you a “Blue No Matter Who” voter in this context, or only without him? If Democrats want to win, he’s got a model that works. I’m scared that the party insiders demand Ezra Klein’s Reaganism repackaged in New Age “law of attraction”-pretending-to-be-Economics.
Couldn’t agree more, honestly. I am pretty progressive-left and have much criticism of Democrats, much like Sanders or AOC do. I embrace the Fight Oligarchy movement; I denounce the Third Way enlightened centrism at every turn. Schumer, Jeffries, Martin need to go. Pelosi’s seat needs to be taken by Chakrabarti and not some AIPAC centrist puppet. Major reforms must happen between now and through Primaries season. And yes, I absolutely cheer Mamdani on and hope he suceeds. Agreed, Ezra is basically as useless as Bill Maher.
But years ago I swear to fuck I was one of the first to use the term Pragmatic Progressive" title, in noting that I would vote for Sanders but vote for Hillary and vote for several other candidates ahead of Harris or Biden in 2020, but still vote for Biden; still voted for Harris even though I wished for something different. Why? Because the reality is that in a binary choice election — and my ultimate point in this discussion on Biden and Obama — they were objectively, logically, by every qualitative and quantifiable measure the better choice. I do not subscribe to the deeply selfish ideologies of accelerationism or nihilism that would see others like my children or anyone else’s suffer as a sacrifice to meet another’s ends, either.
I of course am not alone in that damage-control assessment; after all, the likes of Bernie and AOC adhere to the same principle.
I apologize for coming out strong on this. I’ve just seen so many people try to act like Obama wasn’t a genuinely good person trying to do his best but confronting forces or failing, versus someone is genuinely pathologically evil and psychopathic, like Trump.
Is Obama better than Trump? Yes.
Do we need to keep claiming he is perfect? No, let’s quit deluding ourselves.
https://youtube.com/shorts/4xaT7Qr7hA8 a short video that cites a couple sources.
So much of what Trump can do is built upon what Obama accomplished in the name of “National Security”. Even ICE.
He caved. He was an effective, brilliant, and charismatic community organizer. But when he took office in the White House, he balanced all of those things we love about him? With his party’s pathological need to please both his opposition and their shared donors.
And he was so much more effective at doing what Republicans wanted, even when he adds some “humane restrictions” to it, these policies and precedents set us on an even more dangerous path. Just like with every previous presidency in my lifetime.
I don’t say this to be mean, I wish it wasn’t true. But we need to be honest with ourselves. If Democracy is supposed to work, we cannot afford to trust our representatives to be surrounded by lobbyists without our active voices demanding some share of their time.
And yet, we have allowed our politics to be “vote every 2-4 years along party lines, and trust that it will be fine.” We’re not doing just fine.
Obama was awarded the Nobel only nine months into his first term, so he hadn’t really had the chance to rack up the requisite number of war crimes to be awarded the peace prize.
They believed in him and, from what I recall, he did his job thoroughly (something like 500+ drone strikes? Wasn’t there one at a wedding too?). Yes we can! 😂 These people are fucking monsters, lol.
I had previous learned that we will run out of oil soon. It seems this is not the scientific consensus - it’s just that known reserves will run out in about 50 years. In other words, this meme can repeat itself ad nauseam. We should look at every US geopolitical strategy or even statement through this lens. Greenland? Canada? Oil!
Thanks to the improvements in efficiency and price fluctuations that allowed shale oil extraction and the like, as well as new exploration, for all intents and purposes, we still have a basically unlimited amount of oil.
When oil gets expensive, it justifies infrastructure that was previously economically unfeasible and not part of our reserves. And once that infrastructure is in place, the price can still go down and it can sustain itself. Is it really unlimited? Absolutely not. But innovation and economics have stretched what’s available to a level of surprising longevity.
At this rate of price fluctuation and investment, in 300 years we will be extracting the oil from your facial pores and still have a “50 year reserve”.
It’s kinda a neat thing if it wasn’t for all the shitty side effects, tbh.
And since BASF already invented methods to revert plastic to oil, if the price is right, we wouldn’t even need oil anymore, just trash.
How Americans don’t take this as a sign that their electoralism is always bound for failure will forever remain a mystery to me. You emerge from the fallout of Republican leaders by voting democrats and joyously claim, “the storm has passed” and “we should never repeat these mistakes”. Come 8 or so years and a Republican is re-elected.
How have you guys not en masse realized that democratic reign is merely a refractory period for Republican governance? Why have you not organized and promoted other parties? The greens are slow and will take a lot of work to build, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. This cycle will continue until you’ve en masse woken up to the real contradictions driving your politics.
Spiel over!
our constitution is intentionally structured to favor the wants and needs of capital holders instead of the working people
It’s less that than people think dems are doing OK then go back to their shitty apathy that lets Republicans back in. Rinse, repeat.
I can’t even comprehend it with the blinding majesty of the democratic actions taken, where they heroically and with the utmost of poise forgive their opponents for all crimes domestic and international.
The darn Republicans just don’t understand how forgiving and merciful the Democrats will always be. So mean.
First we need to excise the foreign influence from the Greens though, which is probably harder than just starting over again. Which doesn’t fix the problem with first past the post voting systems which mathematically make it almost impossible for one ideology to win if they have more candidates that an opposing ideology. That’s where the fight has to start, grass roots voting reform to more represational systems like STAR. Get it in locally, and then push it up from there. Then new parties will be allowed to flourish, instead of just torpedoing their platform by splitting the votes.
I hope Biden runs again in 2028 to fix this back up.
I hope that’s a joke; the elderly shouldn’t be in charge.
Ageist. But obviously they mean Hunter.
They said “runs again”
He might be a zombie by then. It would still be a step up.
The Gulf War was about kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, after Iraq invaded. It had a wide support, both worldwide and within the Arab world. Saudi Arabia and Egypt actively participated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
Check the coalition drop down.
Iraq invaded Kuwait because economic collapse and oil disputes thinking the west won’t go to war for this emirate.
Don’t come citing the deep magic, I was there when it was written.
From your Wiki link:
_The invasion was primarily over disputes regarding Kuwait’s alleged slant drilling in Iraq’s Rumaila oil field…
The conflict’s environmental impact included Iraqi forces causing over six hundred oil well fires and the largest oil spill in history until that point._
The 2003 Gulf war was about oil, that’s why the US started it in the first place. It was also about defending the souverainity of an invaded country, that’s why a lot of countries followed.
Who’s ready to send there kids off to war to die for oil, I mean freedom? 🫲🍊🫱
No, this time it’s drugs.
The 1980s were another big part of this trend.
Question that will enrage everyone:
What would you do with $8/gallon gas (in the US where there is very very little public transport). Many many people would be totally fucked.
There’s a reason this happens unfortunately, there’s prices to pay for modern life, just like the slave labor that built all of our electronics and clothing.
Pretending that invading a country, causing mass destruction and death, because America has bad public infrastructure and gas prices might rise is an evil and insane thing to say and a completely head-assed opinion. This is absolutely not a “this happens, unfortunately” situation.
We are an exporter of oil. These wars increase prices not lower them, and that is no accident.
At that price a gallon everything would be electric, hybrid and people will think twice before wasting energy.
“If you’d have cared from the start, none of this would’ve happened.”
