Man I'm a progressive and even I can tell this is propaganda.
Also, missed a bunch of presidents? Bush 1 after Reagan. Lyndon B, Nixon, Ford and CARTER between Kennedy and Reagan.
I obviously agree with the overall message (that "both sides" is and always has been bullshit) but c'mon man.
Edit: like, you could put the actual campaign goals and summarized impacts and then it would be a real infographic. Like "passed tax cuts for top _% of income earning Americans" "repealed gun laws". It's still cherry picking and biased but that's what moves something like this out of the realm of propaganda and into I dunno...something more like biased news? Bias isn't inherently bad, obviously when you're trying to have an argument you have a side and an agenda.
William Harrison was a Whig, which was definitely the more progressive party at the time. His vice president, John Tyler, abandoned the Whig party and aligned himself more with Andrew Jackson and the Democrats, which were the conservative party at the time. It should be noted that the Whigs were much less destructive toward Indians than the Jackson and the Democrats, and Tyler was also strongly anti-Indian and anti-Mexican.
Here were the political positions of the Whig party:
The party was hostile toward manifest destiny, territorial expansion into Texas and the Southwest, and the Mexican–American War. It disliked strong presidential power as exhibited by Jackson and Polk, and preferred congressional dominance in lawmaking. Members advocated modernization, meritocracy, the rule of law, protections against majority tyranny, and vigilance against executive tyranny. They favored an economic program known as the American System, which called for a protective tariff, federal subsidies for the construction of infrastructure, and support for a national bank. The party was active in both the Northern United States and the Southern United States and did not take a strong stance on slavery, but Northern Whigs tended to be less supportive than their Democratic counterparts.
You're right. It's not an infographic. It's also not a meme.
It's a political cartoon. Definition from Brittanica: " a drawing (often including caricature) made for the purpose of conveying editorial commentary on politics, politicians, and current events. "
Man I'm a progressive and even I can tell this is propaganda.
Aw man, you saw right through it!
I was told you progressives were smart but you caught this propaganda in no time! And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling progressives!!
Ok how else would you word that I'm on the political "side" of the meme and still call it out for being kinda shitty by misrepresenting the 'other side' in a way that undermines the credibility of the message?
I did not expect this to blow up and made an offhand criticism that used a cliche literary device before heading out for the day. I apologize for getting tripped up when information is misleading or inaccurate, it's a condition, and obviously I am long overdue at the gulag
Y'all take stuff way too seriously on the Internet.
It obviously has a point of view. Just like any text, image, or other media.
It's fun because it's pretty much true. If you want to make sure to include Johnson (hey - can we do the whole JFK thing here? Cause you know Johnson was . . . I guess that wouldn't fit in this particular meme) or Carter (yeah a meme is probably not the place to re-litigate his administration, though that's a good idea) one could, and apparently that would work towards being less "propaganda" like, but it wouldn't be very brief.
If you're saying the overall message of the meme is wrong, well we'll disagree there. But if you're saying it's just not properly balanced; I mean - Yeah. Obviously. Y'know what else isn't properly balanced, though - actual news articles from the New York Times and Washington Post, every single day. "Biden is old, Biden fares poorly in some poll we found on the floor. Trump does outlandish bullshit again, people love it." C'mon. We can take a look at the point of view of those articles and that would be propaganda in a more denotative sense.
So calling out a pro-Biden meme for being propaganda is, well, not wrong, but . . . kinda . . irrelevant? Hey, you wanna explore each of the listed presidential administrations and go through their accomplishments to see how true the meme is? Man, that's a long thread but we can do that - and when we finish, guess what - it'll be pretty close to this. But sure. Why not, Let's go.
I guess we can, what, use JFK as a "gimme" and just allow that a defining accomplishment was to create the space program as we know it. Should we add anything in there about the Cuban Missle Crisis or - ? What even would that be? "Faced down communist aggression"? "Skillfully negotiated aggressive military . . something"? Yeah ok let's just leave it at the moon thing. I mean, he only got three years, right.
Reagan. Why'd we jump to Reagan? We missed Nixon! Oh man, where are the Nixon memes amirite. Well, Regan - who as we know served two terms - really laid the foundation for the absolute mind-meltingly disastrous republican party politics that we know and love today. What was the defining element of his two administrations? (Should we split the two or just - I guess the format is for one line each so, no - ok) Well, he's really most famous for taking money from federal programs and giving it to the military contractors or back to other people who have money, i.e. the rich. It's actually pretty apt. But we can debate that one, everyone loves a good Reagan hullabaloo. We could also do the October Surprise, or Iran Contra, or invading El Salvador or a bunch of other shady shit, but let's go on an "affects Americans daily lives' bend. "Gave money to the rich" is correct.
Bush I - oops we skipped him, hm. Why's that I wonder. (Oh, hey maybe it's two term presidents only?) Eh, Let's just put Iraq I and then I guess we'll have to figure out why we went to war for oil. Oh - or we could just put "blood for oil" and hope that the economic implication is obvious enough. Anyway, moving on.
Clinton - well, we could talk about the whole healthcare reform thing that was a major component of the first term. Or in how he pulled the rug out from under Newt "contract with America" Gingrich by declaring big government "over" and adding a ton more cops. That's . . y'know . . true but . . . not as . . pithy? as we're going for here. His balancing the budget and actually leaving office with a surplus is, frankly, astonishing in retrospect though. It's absolutely no small feat and no one thought it was even possible since Reagan just said it's fine to blow all the money and hope future generations figure it out. Well, he figured it out. So that's not nothing. That doesn't seem like propaganda, that seems about right actually.
Okay the meme is getting really long at this point but I think you see the direction I'm going here. Is it misinterpreting "the other side"? Only in the sense that a meme is a single point of view and a deep discussion of the differences would be more balanced and nuanced but also take a long time and wouldnt ultimately be that far off from what we have.
So if you really feel like this meme is some horrible brainwashing propaganda of "the liberal left" or whatever? I dunno what to tell ya. Yeah? I guess? And it's nice?
Tbf, society used to have "news", and many people are slow to realize that while the media still call themselves by that name, they no longer live up to that truth. i.e., not everyone who is blind is purposefully ignoring the truth - there is a whole spectrum of people in the middle.
As the New York Times' coverage of the Israeli Genocide has made obvious to even the blindest most tribalist of people, the "liberal" media was and is just as hard spouting propaganda as the far-right one.
Personally I think that the decay from Journalism into "Opinion Forming" in the traditional more liberal Press long predates the Fox-News Age and their destruction of the trust in the Traditional Press for temporary political gains of "their side" created the prime conditions for the rise of the made-up-outrage "Press" that so well fits the modus operandi of far-right populism and hence fed and was fed by made-up-outrage far-right populist politicians like Trump.
I mean... not equally though, unless you mean in the sense that both are incorrect. Liberal media in particular always tried to at least make their BS sound like it wasn't nonsense, as opposed to e.g. MTG's Jewish Space Laser rants. I appreciate the effort that goes into making a chart when I am lied to, rather than just some short pithy saying - it's the effort that wins my heart! :-P (/s btw)
I have heard it said that the only true way to spot a counterfeit message is to know the real thing backwards and forwards so well that nobody can pull a fast one on you when they try to sell you short (or long). e.g. we know that 1+1=2, but if Democrats tell us it is =11 whereas old-school Republicans say that it is =-100000000000000000, newer ones say that it is the sqrt of stfu, and the most modern ones of all have already shot your mom and fucked your dog, and hold everything else you hold dear hostage until you tell them that you LIKED it... then who is to blame the most if you did not know the answer in the first place?
The answer, I believe, is that MOST of the blame goes to the people who did the WORST attrocity(-ies), but at least part of it falls onto us, for letting it happen.
Therefore I do not blame older liberal media, or at least not nearly so much as I do what followed that got significantly worse. Though yeah, I do put some of the blame onto it as well, ofc.
More important is what we do in response to it all?
People used to believe in the Press - it was what is called an Authoritative Source.
What the breaking of Trust in the Press - the greatest most influential of Autoritative Sources - did was create an environment were most people don't believe in Authoritative Sources, hence were each individual - ignorant, untrained in analytical thinking, with neither the time, the access or the knowledge to trully dig down on a subject - is on his or her own to figure out what is true and is not.
This new environment didn't just open the doors for the likes of Fox News, it openned the doors for Anti-Vaxing, Russian interference, countless Internet conspiracies and an Era were Politics is essentially professional scam artists managing scams - the damage is way vaster than merelly their some sleazy manipulative "news" pieces.
I absolutelly blame them for that: for the sake of momentary political gains for their team, newsmedia which for decades were trusted and respected broke the entire Trust Hierarchy and created the conditions for chaos and what looks more and more like Fascism.
The other side, that of assholes being assholes, is nothing compared to the betrayal by those you trusted.
I have likened it to an immune system: fighting bacteria is way easier than fighting cancer. The ratio of sizes of Bacterial cells to Human cells is like a football to a football stadium, and their surfaces look extremely different, nor do bacteria even so much as try to blend in to look like their host cells (though they do put out a slimy coating to obscure their origins in the more general sense). So when the human immune system sees non-human cells somewhere they shouldn't, like inside your anatomical tissues, it goes all-out WAR on those bitches, and just obliterates everything.
In contrast, cancer cells not only look like, but they actually are YOUR CELLS - they are YOU! With just one tiny little alteration, hardly worth noticing, in that they no longer pay attention to the signals to halt, cease & desist growing anymore. They do what they fucking want, when they want, how they want, and never mind that their actions will (not offer "a chance of", but a 100% certainty guarantee) kill themselves, it will also kill the organism as well, essentially taking it down with it. So all that "foreign detection apparatus", which can eliminate bacteria, mold, non-human eukaryotes like amoeba, nonliving particles like dust, also the in-between stuff like viruses, none of that helps, when fighting against cancer.
And that hasn't even begun to get into HIV, where those immune processes are themselves subverted... when the police refuse to police the police, then how can the work of policing happen? (answer: it does not, and the body dies, far more often than not, unless some external intervention can prevent that outcome)
There is a reason why people say that the only party slightly less worse than Republicans are Democrats. Although that might have something to do with the whole "2-party" system...:-P - but it does convey that neither party aim to be correct, so much as to just win. Also, whatever happened to just being "Americans"? Like, regardless of what party put you into office, once you get there, don't (or rather, shouldn't) you belong to the citizenry at large and need to represent all of your people, even those who voted for your opponent(s)? So like a Senator would represent a single state's interests, and a President or Supreme Court Justice would represent the entire nation's at large, etc. Enshittification is not just a term for capitalistic corporations, but applies to society at large - i.e. whatever higher functions were once meant to happen, have now been subverted by more basic lower processes like greed and corruption and such.
Which makes sense - entropy doesn't decrease for simply no reason (although that said, an open system does have quite a bit of wiggle room to play around in), and Maslov's hierarchy of needs tends to revert to the lower, more basic ones when necessary, the higher ones only opening up when the lower ones are already met.
How all this relates to what you said: people are stupid, and more importantly short-sighted. When the people entrusted with something become no longer worthy of that trust... that is the most dangerous thing of all to the survival of an organism. On the other hand, what are we going to do about it - just sit back and watch it die? For my part, I promote video sources such as Innuendo Studios, Kurzgesagt, Crash Course, etc. that have acted to step up in the wake of the demise of trust in our "official" media, but ofc there is no magic bullet, no one-solution-fits-all that is going to solve the enormous scope of the problem (and if there were, it would likely be taken out by an aggressive competitor or malicious actor, so would not last for long). Meh, oh well, I've made my peace that I cannot hold out even the remotest hope that it can all be solved, yet I still do my part b/c that is all that I can, and therefore must, do.
Well, having lived in a country with actual Proportional Vote, I would say that the "just win" mindset is derived from the two party system you get in First Past The Post representative allocation systems like the US, probably with a pinch of the higher aggressiveness of baseline American culture.
That said, I don't think the aggressive "just win" posture we see reflects them being different, quite the contrary: it's Theatre for the masses because the two sides of the Power Duopoly are too similar, so lots of posturing with loud disagreements serves to both keep their own tribe (the people whose relation to politics is similar to their relation to sports: they have chosen a "team") inspired and acting as unthinking supporters and keeping the rest of people thinking there is true competition when there really isn't. This is why most of the fight is happening in the Moral field (stuff like LGBT rights) rather than anything to do with Power, Wealth and Quality Of Life - in the things that matter the most for those politicians both parties think the same, leaving only the things they don't genuinelly care about as the field in which put one a very loud, very dramatic theatrical play about how difference they are.
By the way, I liked your idea of using "enshittification" for Society and Politics and I hope you don't mind if I use it in my own posts.
Personally my own approach to help change things is to go around pointing the inconsitencies out to get at least some people thiking about it. I'm also a member of a small political party in the country I lived in and was also in one back when I lived in Britain (though there it's a lot like the US and, frankly, at best things will need to get a lot worse before people are pissed of enough to change them).
I understand what you are saying, and in the past I would have agreed with you, except for two more recent alterations. Nothing is ofc all entirely one way or another, everything is on a continuum, and so even those alterations are based upon the backdrop of... yes, what you said: "political theater".
First, looking not at the words that candidates say but rather at their actions following the election, politicians from the 70s, 80s, and 90s were as you describe. e.g. George W. Bush, despite running on the "conservative" ticket, was a progressive! And Hillary Rodham Clinton was the most pro-war, pro-big business Democrat that I have ever even so much as heard of. What you are saying used to be true, back in the day. Say whatever you need to in order to get elected, then go about the real business at hand, of getting shit done.
The first change though was the Tea Party (e.g. Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, there's a whole list if you expand the right-hand show/hide boxes on that wikipedia page link). They got radicalized somehow, and replaced the old-guard who actually knew how to compromise, instead doing things like sending letters overseas to sabotage ongoing negotations (I am not a lawyer, but looking up the old-timey definition, the word "treason" literally includes exactly that scenario as part of its definition!), and ofc the imfamous "shutting down the entire government" trick, holding the budget hostage until and unless they get their way - not the "American" way, no not that, but their way specifically b/c that is all that matters to them. Obviously prior Republicans had done all that this new breed were also looking to do, but the difference seems to be in the degree of obstinancy, and the eagerness to immediately knaw off the USA's own legs just in order to spite the head - like for them, it is not the absolute last, final choice, but rather their second choice every time. They have done more filibustering, more blocking, more obstructionism than any modern party in the history of anyone alive in the USA (I have heard), and fun fact: even the Congress that functioned during the Civil War managed to pass more bills than a Congress involved with the Tea Party (obviously due to a technicality, where the southern democrats left in a huff, leaving the northern republicans to pass whatever they wanted free of interference:-P). Thus began the major Power Creep trend of modern obstructionism & enshittification - yes please feel free to use as you like, b/c if the shoe fits...:-D
But even before that trend could either snuff itself out or be subsumed by more old-guard politicians who actually want the government to be functional, the Alt-Right started to rise to power. This new breed... seems less concerned with "getting their way", and more about simply burning everything to the fucking ground. Donald Trump has moved beyond obstructionism, to the point where if he does not get his way, a literal (if horribly inept) coup attempt was tried, and it remains to be seen if he, or one of the other followers of that movement will start a literal, actual, physical Civil War. e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene has literally called for this - in a not-joking manner.
This is far past theater is what I am saying, yes in the past it was that, but now, at this point, we are well past that. America could literally fall as a democratic nation - and most experts (I have read) seem to agree that some kind of "constitutional crisis event" is imminent in the next 5-10 years. These people are far past playing around.
Kudos for being part of the solution where you are at. Similar to the UK, where I don't know what could possibly reverse the effects of Brexit - that damage seems irreparable and permanent, it only remains to move forward from here on out and try to avoid further harm (in that case, not the end of a nation, but metrics are already revealing that it ushered in a sharp decline of its prominence?) - in the USA I don't know what can be done to save it from its self-inflited injuries, given how many people seem hell-bent on ending it.
At a minimum though, it seems like it would have to begin with education, since currently the major differences seem to be about alternate sets of "facts" - e.g. does the COVID vaccine work, or does it rather harm you, making boys infertile, etc.? "Trust" in the media has been lost, in large part b/c literal pastors/priests/ministers have been promoting politics from behind their pulpits, thus mixing in the messages from religion to the point where it is becoming more of a "christian holy jihad" war than a logically-reasoned one where both sides are attempting to "get their way". For that, pointing out inconsisties might help, but even then, people seem to already KNOW that they are wrong, and yet simply do not care.
Like if you look at Trump, there is simply no way to honestly call him "God's man" (plus, if anyone who is placed in charge can be that, then why wasn't Obama "God's man" too?), but there seems to be a sense of "even though that's not fully true, still supporting him is the right thing to do regardless". A LOT of people seem to value "argument by authority" over what they see literally with their own eyes. And I get it: these matters - economics, geopolitics, treaties, climate change, pandemics - they can get quite complex, and many just want daddy to take care of them. Which in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. they legit did do! B/c the interests of the wealthy happened to align with the interests of the nation overall - other countries were bombed by Germany and the USA was riding high, so its success meant their own personal success too, plus all the engineers & scientists were creating wonderful new gadgets that were fun & helpful too. However, with globalization and automation that alignment is no longer true, and they are instead taking whatever they can get, seemingly with an exit strategy in place to sit back and watch as climate change happens and the world simply burns.
It seems extremely short-sighted to me - especially if a nation such as the USA could bend its enormous might towards literally halting or even reversing the effects of climate change? But, such thinking is a remnant of past days, and now multi-national corporations such as Alphabet and Apple and Meta are more powerful than the US government itself, so it seems that they now see it as a competitor and are at least allowing, sometimes rooting, occasionally even participating in taking it down. e.g. FaceBook's sources of "alternative facts" helping to shatter the, as you pointed out, already quite brittle remaining trust that people had in the news media.
This is all a lot, but I hope it has been an interesting read? :-D
I do not know much about those, as I do not have any special-purpose devices that can receive those signals. Do they not also follow the "if it bleeds, then it leads" mantra? e.g. did they report when Biden "betrayed" the railway workers by preventing them from striking at the busiest time of year (Christmas 2022), and if so did they also report when Biden spent MONTHS of effort after that to get those workers basically every single thing that they had asked for from their employers if they had been allowed to go ahead with their strike? B/c the for-profit media definitely did the former, though conveniently forgot all about the latter, despite how crucial such info as "how the current President is doing" and "whether the current President lives up to his promises" are to the upcoming election this year.
But even if the only fact that I knew about public radio and TV at all was that they require special devices to access them, they still seem to me to be handicapped, even if differently than the for-profit media sources.
Anyway, what percentage market share are public sources compared to private ones? To use the Fediverse as a readily-accessible example since anyone who reads this is definitely here (hehe, by definition:-P), how many news stories shared in some community such as ![email protected] are from "public" sources? If all that needs to be done to save journalistic integrity would be to create a new Lemmy community, and put public journalism onto it, then I will definitely subscribe and be a big fan of it! Though I doubt it is anywhere close to being as easy as all that... :-(
Even my absolute favorites of all time - e.g. Jon Stewart - still does it. It is the nature of the game, which we hate rather than the playa. :-(
Though in his case, some of it he does b/c it is necessary, a lot is rather tongue-in-cheek, and anyway he seems to be aware and definitely tries to use his power as responsibly as he can. Also, it may be hate-boning to e.g. watch a politician say something like "never in my entire life have I held this position", then 2s later watch a different video showing that same politician a few years before where they espouse precisely that position that they later claimed that they never had - like yeah, it produces a "reaction" in us, but like... shouldn't it, to watch such a blatant and bold-faced lie?
The difference, imho, is that he doesn't do such things purely for the sake of that reaction, and instead uses that reaction as the vehicle to convey his point, which is that that politician is a bad person, and should be replaced by someone who may perhaps be less bad. And, hate-engendering as it may be, it is also The Truth so... there's that. Which stands in stark contrast to e.g. Alex Jones who also tries to engender hate, but not using Truth, and instead rather for the sake of personal profits.:-(
But... he's old! And not perfect!!! So obviously, we should stay home and see how much better our lives will be under Trump when it's his last (legal) term and literally what keeps him out of prison... Duh.
Okay, while I think the other person's complaints are unreasonable and dishonest, I really need to answer this sincerely, because it's genuinely important that people understand.
Ways that American democracy can be improved:
Eliminating lobbyists
Capping how much money can be spent on political campaigns
Capping individual donation sizes
Capping donation frequency
Implementing a cardinal or ordinal voting system (such as approval or single transferable vote)
Making voting more accessible
Removing the possibility of gerrymandering
Outlawing political parties
Making voting mandatory
Several other things who's scope mean they probably don't count (like better education, which would help citizens perform democracy better, but also clearly falls outside the scope of the list) or that I am otherwise forgetting.
Edit:formatting.
Edit2: I never intended to answer "who" because that question doesn't have a single answer; the president can't do those things, and it's silly to expect them to.
Despite his age, Bernie Sanders is still the most qualified person to be president. He would get more done and made election reform a focus of his campaigns.
Not only did they not answer the question of "who", they instead listed off a wish list of things no president is able to do unilaterally. Like, those are all good things, but blaming the current incumbent / candidate for not doing those is a completely ignorant take (if not intentionally moving the goalposts).
We need better civics lessons both in K-12 and maybe some kind of adult education classes.
The problem isn't that we don't have solutions. The problem is that, collectively, we don't have the will to implement them. It's like effective Climate Change policy or Covid policies. At best, we're getting half measures because people rather have their popcorn and circuses than saving their children. Biden doesn't represent a solution, he represents a theater of a solution.
he's the worst dipshit that could be running here, sucking up all the support for the smallest permissible 'better', when you have enough bipartisan issues to get support from both the left and sane-right if you ran anyone else. biden is not defending democracy; he's dangling it over a cliff with Donald trump at the bottom.
Neirher West nor Stein would do anything different. In fact both of them want to give in to Putin and weaken democracy world wide. Who could do it better?
anyone. else. literally anyone on my block, including many of the pets.
and if 'west' and 'stein' wouldn't do anything different than biden, they're shit too. your whole argument is that the entire democratic party is worthless, that none of them have any virtue to counter trump, just the exact same calculated amount of vice less, the smallest amount so we can say they're not quite the same, following them down the intellectual lacuna, using them as a wind break?
that seems like a party I'm literally never going to vote for.
Yeah I'm pretty close to seeing if I can block the whole instance, right now I'm all blocking certain communities. (I was banned from worldnews.ml for saying NATO was a defensive treaty lol.)
That's the problem: There isn't anybody. My money is going to lodge grenade fragments in disabled children's eyes and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Nobody can stop this from happening because the path of that grenade fragment started seventy years ago.
We can do something, though. We can vote. Not in just this election but every election we are eligible for. There is 60% of the population that needs this message. We also need to vote in primaries and force out current dem leadership. It will be case by case but numbers is what we need. Not division.
The message isn't for you. It's for the 60% who have wiped their hands clean of it.
I know it's a lost cause. It's just a high EV lost cause. I don't have to invest very much and if I ever saw a return on the investmentment it would be magnitudes greater than what effort I put in.
Okay, I get what you're saying, but to call the Affordable Care Act "Universal Healthcare" is like calling one of those meal boxes from Taco Bell an all-you-can-eat buffet
While I do agree with what you say, the post is about goals, not achievements. It's an important distinction, and Obama did have universal healthcare as a goal.
Per usual - it was Biden, rushing to the aid of republicans to assist with their agenda. Which in this case was watering down their own healthcare proposal in order to remove the public option. In fact, he conceded this portion of the bill before any negotiations had even begun, as a “show of good faith” toward his Republican colleagues. Thanks Biden.
Obama also campaigned that he would codify abortion into law, got elected, and then said it was not a priority. Then didn't do anything to protect reproductive rights.
Really stupid that we beat down the people on the left that demand a better candidate than the one who said he would be a one term president. A man who is further left than Nixon in most aspects. Yet, we have all these people who will die on the hill of Biden and we continue to ratchet to the right.
The meme here overstates Biden, but that's not where you were originally poking.
It's totally fine to want a better candidate, but I don't get down with cutting off your nose to spite your face: "Haha allowing authoritarianism and the erosion of democracy by non participation or durden voting will sure teach the Dems to pick a better candidate! Got em!"
Biden never actually said that, but the fact that you think he did tells me all I need to know about how little you pay attention and what news sources you follow.
If he is to be believed (and that is certainly up to debate), Obama's goal was universal healthcare, and his compromise was the ACA.
Personally I think as soon as the public option was gutted this compromise failed to meet what was sought out by the goal, so I don't think it should be counted at all as achieving that goal, but I don't think it's inherently disingenuous to make the claim that Obama wanted universal healthcare... I guess he just didn't want it enough.
Obama supported the public option which would have been a form of universal healthcare. It was axed because Joe Lieberman spent months grandstanding and then Ted Kennedy died.
Lieberman threatened to join Republicans in filibuster to kill the public option and Obama's response was "Okay, we'll just pull that piece for you, no problem."
To be fair, I don't believe Trump's goal is more money for rich people.
I believe it's more money for himself but to do that he works towards more money for rich people because those rich people will in turn support and fund him further.
He's too damn selfish to actually consider people, rich or not.
It's funny to read this about self defense because I just wrote a letter to my representatives and NASA about funding for the Chandra X-ray telescope and pretty much used those terms too. We trade improvements to our shared existence in favor of "self defense" that just happens to bring us to other countries to bomb them all the time...
A huge part of Clinton's deficit reduction was eviscerating welfare with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. He also made a lot of money for rich people by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which directly let to the 2008 financial collapse. Also, Obamacare is not Universal Healthcare; Obama would have needed to keep the Public Option for it to be considered universal coverage. He also made a lot of money for rich people through TARP.
The public option was tanked by Senator Lieberman, who at that point became an independent. All we would have needed was a Republican to break ranks and we would have had a public option.
A) Lieberman didn't become an independent at that point, he'd been an independent since he lost his primary in 2006 B) no matter what the excuse, it doesn't change the fact that saying the ACA is Universal Healthcare is a lie.
I remember with each Presidential change, that when a Republican president came into power, they had a budget surplus, created by their democratic predecessor, which they then squandered, and when it was tome to switch to a democratic president, they got a deficit, and managed to work theyr way out of it. Each time, fox would comment on how these Democrat presidents always had a deficit. It was, and continues to be, maddening.
Require news organizations to be truthful again, fuck that "but much first amendment" bullshit, one has nothing to do with the other
It's the same in the UK. Within 15 minutes of the Tories finally (hopefully) losing power in the next election they'll be gesturing to the shit state of things, that they themselves caused, and saying "Look at how the Labour government has ruined this country!"
I find it funny how tories were like "This is the best the economy has been in five years! Look at us go!!" Okay, and who was in government 5 years ago?
Clinton is one of the worst. The party went, can't beat 'em, might as well join em.
Clinton essentially fulfilled some of the great Republican dreams of deregulation. See Glass-Stegall how he joined hands with Republicans. Which you can then fast forward to the banking and financial crisis that hit the world and screwed economies and brought austerity programs worldwide.
Dare ya to read up on all the congressional stock trading from not just Repubs but very much Dems as well.
Well... Why not? How is it different? Deregulation generally refers to smaller loosenings(and smaller legalizations) rather than outright legalization- but that's a kinda arbitrary distinction
But how does deregulation happen? By legalizing subsets of the already legal thing. Think- legalizing operating a car without a license, vs deregulating driving.
Democrats aren't for more money for rich people? News to me. Nice job leaving off things like welfare reform, the crime bill, and the repeal of glass-steagall (which led to the 2008 global financial crisis) from under clinton. You left off obama continuing the policy of bailouts for the rich after the 2008 global financial crisis, his support for the surveillance state (and going after Snowden after claiming to protect whistleblowers), and bombing so many more countries (like Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria). Of course there's the glaring absence of supporting genocide under biden, but I think you get the picture.
Both sides aren't the same in all things, but they are definitely the same in supporting the rich first and foremost. Democrats are better than republicans, but you're not making a strong point by pretending democrats only do good things.
In this system money is speech. Not literally, like the Supreme court has codified but in practice. No matter the party the only chance you have in getting elected is fund raising. It's a shit system and no democrats aren't a victim but their is no other credible option.
Biden was responsible for removing the democratically elected prime minister in Pakistan because he refused to follow the geopolitical whims of the USA. His entire party is dead in the water with several MNAs assasinated, hundreds tortured, and thousands of supporters still in jail without trial or bail.
So respectfully, fuck off with this shitty propaganda meme.
I would not say both sides are the same, but this a bullshit oversimplification. The dems are not some ray of sunshine who have only made this country better.
Clinton repealled the Glass-Steagal act, which led to the 2008 crash, Obama's unconditional bailouts of financial institutions and ultra-low interest rates and subsequent hyperfinancialization of the Economy, the current house prices bubbles, an explosion in inequality, and an even further collapse of social mobility in the US.
To say that he doubled-down on Reagan's work is an underestimation.
Sure, it's all a bit obscure for those who weren't in Finance during the period around 2008, but that doesn't make it any less so.
(And lets not forget his wife's later "got paid million dollar for a speech to a room full of financiers" that helped her loose to none other than Donald Trump)
The idea that almost all those Democrats in that list didn't do "More money for the rich" is hilarious.
Also as an European in a country with a National Health Service, celebrating Obama's version of "Universal Healthcare" is "you're fucking kidding me"-level insulting.
That stuff is some Narnia-level Eyes Hard Closed level of tribalist self-delusion.
The alternative explanation is that you're a commited member of this specific political tribe and just have to defended those you see as your chiefs no matter what, even if lacking an actual argument.
This alternative explanation perfectly explains the absence of even a shred of an actual counter argument in your post.
I was right in the middle of the Investment Banking Industry back at the time and paid close attention to all the details about how the entire thing was conducted and the kind of market interventions going on, rather than just eat up the high level bullshit fed to pre-convinced members of that specific political tribe who don't know how the business works ...
I actually had a pretty good opinion of Obama up until I saw who he put there conduction the bailouts, how they were conducted, how the pain was distributed, how the market was intervened in and which economic strata were saved with whose money.
So glad Obama gave us universal healthcare.... Oh wait.
We all know this is bullshit right? Neither the Republicans or the Democrats give a shit about anything else then making rich people more money. I'm sorry to break it to you but the Democrats aren't your friends. I know they pretended to be but they're not. They are just as much your enemy as the Republicans. 😞
We know and the point of this post is that voting for one of them and grinding down the other is a clear message of what people want. Rich dude making his friends richer should have been a no-brainer but people keep using slimy tactics like the one you are using to distract the people from that fact.
The rich people who pay them both through lobbyists know what the people actually want. We don't need to vote more clearly. 🙃
I'm not using a slimy tactic. This is my opinion. Sorry you think that not agreeing with you is slimy.
I'm a socialist. The Republican and Democratic parties are Siamese twins. They cannot survive without each other. They are completely dependent on the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils. Pretending like the Democrats actually cared about you or will do the things they say they will is an understandable coping mechanism for our situation but it's not real. 🤷
There's a big difference between stealing a pack of gum and literal nuclear secrets, don't be obtuse.
We can agree they ignored some good Republicans did and very cleverly cut it off before Nixon creating the EPA, making dialysis ubiquitous when at the time a single treatment was ≈35k.
At least you named yourself appropriately. Lazy. Otherwise, you would know that Obama attempted to provide a public option for healthcare. You do realize how politics works, right? You need a certain amount of votes and support in order to pass new legislation. If you don't have enough votes on both sides of the aisle, then you change NOTHING. So yes, one side, the Democrats, tried to provide healthcare that had a public option, and the other side, the Republicans, fought tooth and nail to stop it.
Don't forget Bush the First, the former director of the CIA and his mad desire to run shadow wars to disrupt democracy in other countries in the name of American corporate interests
If you only compare democrats to republicans, every Democrat is going to look amazing.
Like comparing a large McDonalds combo meal to a literal shit sandwich.
I'll always take some Mickey D's in that choice. Even though it's probably been a decade since I've actually ate that trash.
But if those are my only two options for every meal, I know on a long enough timeline the McDonald's is going to kill me. Eventually I got to start asking why my only options are something bad for me and something that's drastically worse for me.
I just want a fucking salad for once. Like, let's just give it a chance, see how it works out.
Excellent. Changing the electoral system and changing the FPTP ranking is going to take a lot of work, but that’s the way to go!
Until then though, we got the McDonalds (now with 30% less plastic!), or the shit sandwich which wasn’t refrigerated properly. So. Make your choice. Oh and If we could maybe not kill the planet, like, real soon that’d be swell.
If McD's knows you'll always buy whatever they put out because you essentially have no choice, why would they EVER want to implement something like eliminating FPTP voting that locks you into this ridiculous choice?
You act like the only two parties America has had is D and R...
And that the parties are the important part not the voters.
Before we're able to kick all the neoliberals at of the dem party and beat back republicans to have the numbers to really change our political system, we'll see the parties shake up. Marc Cuban has been getting his name out there for four years. He's coming in 2028. And regardless of who wins 2024, the majority of Americans will be upset about it and there won't be an incumbent.
"Beating the system from within" doesn't mean just using the two existing parties, it means using the party system to replace the FPTP.
You act like the only two parties America has had is D and R...
It is the case, because the Constitution says whoever gets the most votes wins, i.e. First Past The Post (and yes the electoral college screwed with that immediately).
Okay, as an old I gotta tell you - you're right, but you're wrong. A third party win is a pipe dream that is never going to happen BECAUSE you'll never get a third party to outvote one of the two existing. Unless the mutated GQP does something even more upsetting and unfortunate, I guess. You might get a third nazi party that outvotes "moderates", that's possible I guess. National Socialists. Ugh.
But getting a more progressive, liberal party to peel away enough Democrats AND Republicans to win a federal election in order to change the voting structure - I mean, just wish for a pot of gold, or a new washer & dryer combo. Work towards it, of course - vote towards it, yes. But pining for it and pretending it's a viable option is going to waste decades of your political interested life for nothing. Ask everyone else who has been doing that since the 1800s. (no I'm not that old, but national politics are.)
It's because if too many people ask for salads without enough asking for a salad, then everyone has to eat the shit.
So are you confident enough that enough people want salads to risk eating shit if you're wrong, when the alternative is one more burger?
Point being, we need to move to some type of ranked choice voting instead of first past the post in order for it to be safe for people to say what they really want, and still not risk "horror" if not enough people agree.
What and you think that's just gonna happen? Why would the Dems ever want to implement ranked choice voting when FPTP is exactly what keeps you in this ridiculous situation?
Just keep voting for Dems, that's how we'll eventually reform the system into one where we don't have to vote for Dems... Yeah
Wow, look at all those rebuttals to all those things I never said!
I'll definitely myopically ignore the realities of our political system and do something vaguely cathartic but ultimately pointless and let the people I entirely disagree with win to spite the people I only kind of agree with.
Politicians want to get elected, and they don't really care about the party. If supporting a popular initiative that hurts the party later helps you, you coincidentally agree with it, and on paper it aligns with your party ideals, why wouldn't you vote in favor of it?
It's one of those game theory situations where each individual operating in their own interests creates a situation that's worse for the collective.
Sounds fuckin great; if you know how to navigate in the direction of the salad please let me know
I used to say voting in the party from the ground up. But that hasn't worked and the more we try the more the parties fight it.
The 2020 DNC "fund" changes is even worse than Citizen's united, but no one ever mentions that.
The DNC outright says if they don't like a primary they can ignore the results. And they're already taking delegates from states.
But it's a different age now, debates rarely even get held and haven't mattered for decades. Which was the big thing that used to hold third parties back: access to debates and tv interviews. The parties are nothing more than agents at the end of the day. Just middle men who hand money between people and keep some while enjoying the high life.
What matters now is internet exposure and buzz.
For good candidates that can be almost free, for shit candidates that can cost over a billion dollars even against someone as hated as trump. And Bernie showed us that even with small donors, you can run a pretty big campaign.
A third party president only takes getting people on the same page.
Political change is rarely slow and gradual, shit happens quick, even though the people who were in power always says change will take forever right up till it happens
Disclaimer- I know about the Dixie Flip and how the parties are not what they were a hundred years ago. However you said every Democrat. I am legally obligated to mention this.
Don't forget Obama's work on a 2015 stimulus for the international Doctors without Borders program that allowed the construction of a brand new hospital in Kunduz, saving countless lives!
For more information, Google "2015 Kunduz Doctors without Borders"
yeah, I am quickly walking towards the door here, because these are the posts that get the most engagement, and quite obviously nothing about this platform has solved the core problems at the heart of reddit. Ooh, avoid the IPO, federation is so nice, sure, whatever, but then everything is still a horrible echo chamber where there's no room for nuance. Maybe even more of an echo chamber than previously, because of federation, I dunno, hard to tell. Makes me want to not be here, though.
It's no wonder your generation is seen as such a fucking waste if you think typing "go back to fucking reddit" is A.) a Trump biased statement and B.) that it constitutes "working overtime" in such pursuits. Start rubbing the two brain cells you have left in an attempt to create enough static electricity to fire the one neuron you have remaining.
tell me with a straight face your life is better off under Biden than 4 years ago. or 8 years ago under Obama. This "meme" is so fucking stupid acting like no republican did anything good, or that no democrat did anything bad. If you believe that you're a fucking idiot that can't be helped.
Clinton ushered in the era of the neoliberal democrats, after a series of genuinely good ones like JFK and Carter, and ones like LBJ that might have been murderers abroad but at least were aggressively progressive at home. (I know, JFK killed a bunch of people too)
I'm not saying Clinton was bad necessarily; he was certainly better than more Republicans, but he wasn't a mostly affirmatively good thing like Obama or Biden have been. The pre-internet picture of the world that most voters had was radically more conservative than today's view (in a way that's honestly hard to remember now that non-establishment news is a normal thing). I think as a result of that blinkered view, candidates too far on the left were just getting their ass kicked in the election over and over again, so maybe it was the right thing for him to do to move to the right. But even some of the stuff on that list of achievements is sinister neoliberal shenanigans (more police, less people on welfare after welfare-to-work, etc). Income at the top went up, but income inequality continued to skyrocket under Clinton's economic policies pretty much exactly as it had under Reagan's.
And yet people's lives haven't improved much, if at all, in quite some time. The war machine is also still marching forward; we spend billions on things that don't actually improve the lives of the average person. Both sides of the aisle are bought and you can't just ignore that. With all of that said, I'm still voting for Biden, but only because I'm forced to due to how unbelievably fucked our system is.
TBF they literally won a total war against the greatest military powers back to back and built the foundation for one of the rising stars of the region today.
Something like 90% home ownership rates, a HOT labor market, low cost of living, incredible food, a friendly and honest culture, 4.4% poverty rate, a serious effort to improve development metrics (universal healthcare, literacy rate, maternal care, etc)…
Sure sounds like the fight was worth it compared to how the US-aligned developing countries turned out.
Sure sounds like the fight was worth it compared to how the US-aligned developing countries turned out.
Yeah, who would want to be a shithole like South Korea or Taiwan? /s
The fight of Vietnam against American occupation was correct on its own merits - namely, that of the morality of national self-determination. Trying to bring in other criteria doesn't strengthen the point, and can very well weaken it.
Even though I agree with the sentiment, and being a very extreme leftist myself, this is cartoonishly lopsided.
This will not convince anyone. Have fun preaching to the choir I guess, it is a pointless endeavor 🤷🏻♀️
If we want to turn people away from them, it will take more than pointing out that they’re evil, however true it may be. (And don’t misunderstand me, it is very true)
Sure seems like bOtH SiDeZ have started blatantly lying for their propoganda, and are trying their damnedest to villify the other by pretending that they are perfect. If you're demanding unquestioning loyalty, you're a fascist regardless of your label.
Bush: More money for rich People, killing a bunch of brown people, try to be be even more of a global disaster as dear old dad (was close but too incompetent to do it)
Obama: More money for rich people, killing a bunch of brown people
Trump: More money for rich people, killing a bunch of brown people, destroying democracy, treason, try to be even more of a global disaster as Reagan (was close but too incompetent to do it, there's always next time)
Biden: More money for rich people, killing a bunch of brown people
Infrastructure was done under every president but Trump and is normal functioning governance.
Corporate subsidy and monopolization of EV market
Corporate subsidy for MIC
Not actually loan Reform, college is more expensive than ever
Drug pricing might be the only novel and just good thing going on this list. But it's certainly not stacking up to ACA and Zero Deficit Budgeting.
Yet another bad faith meme trying to make Biden look more friendly to the average American than he is.
In other news today we found out he never meant for Palestine to have it's own state. That was all lies. We know this because the cables leaked showing the US trying their damnedest to get other countries to vote against Palestinian Statehood. This couldn't possibly be a distraction from that, right guys?
My last attempt was about 10 years ago. It started to dramatically improve about a year later, then another year saw more improvement, and so on. Eventually I got on the right antidepressant and honestly my life is pretty freaking good now. Hell, I'm about to be a dad.
You could not have convinced me it would get better a decade ago.
Dumb luck saved me. Please don't be like me back then.
I would look at resources in your area. If there is a prevention hotline where you live, they can usually offer better advice than I can.
Outside of that, what really helped me was accepting that my brain was trying to attack itself, and that I needed to be aware it was fucking with my perception of reality.
If your brain is doing bad chemistry, sometimes meds are the only thing that can help. I forget to take mine sometimes, and when I do it is usually a week before the old feelings start coming back. Talk to a doctor.
If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the 988 Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States.
Directory
The 988 Lifeline is available for everyone, is free, and confidential. See below for additional crisis services and hotlines.
If anyone's interested in actually good stuff Trump signed, two things off the top of my head are Right To Try Act and the Second Chance Act. He also opposed the renewal of the Patriot Act.
I mean usually if you wanted to jerk off in front of other people, you'd pay like, an e-girl to watch you do it and give maybe a live football commentary or whatever. Guess shitposting also works though
I'm convinced that Lemmy is riddled with Russian bot farms trying to stir up shit. I'm mostly democrat and believe Biden is a net good over Trump, but I won't delude myself into thinking they care about me personally. How-fucking-ever, Trump is a literal threat to our democracy and if we can't rally against him by rallying for Biden, we're absolutely fucked. And you morons are just giving into this extreme lefty rhetoric because of people like Hasan? That mother fucker is a millionaire and lives like one too.
Lemmy is a worse echo chamber than reddit. I was proud when I came here during the API-bullshit and supported Sync for Lemmy but I can't do this shit any more. I'm actually embarrassed to come here and read all this anti Biden shit while you guys complain about roe v wade being overturned, billionaires (which trump made the biggest tax cuts in history to), Israel (which is somehow Biden's fault? 🤣).
I believe this post, OP. Whether you're trolling or not. Everyone else can go fuck yourselves. Go ahead and ban this one too, mods. Since we're not living in an echo chamber.
Don't you know if a president doesn't want to lick daddy Stalin's blood-strained boots they're no better than Hitler? Clearly, none of these facts matter.
Edit: either y'all don't understand sarcasm or tankies are pissed and I can't tell which.
For Biden it's only an acceptable outcome (for some godforsaken fuckin reason which I won't defend in the slightest)
For Trump, punishing brown people is a core value he makes a priority of. Remember Muslim ban / family separation / moving the embassy to Jerusalem / "finish the job"?
Hi, Palestinian American here, stop fetishizing our corpses as an excuse to let the guy who wants the genocide to come here too into office.
Badna N3aesh.
Edit: fuckin' love the full mask off reply of
"The genocide of your people isn't about your people!"
Whitest bougeyvik bullshit I have ever witnessed put to keyboard, PoC aren't even allowed ownership of being genocided anymore if whitey doesn't like how we decide to respond to it.
So you’re not gonna answer anymore huh? I can only assume that you’re a second generation immigrant and you’re not capable of actually speaking, let alone reading or writing in Arabic. If you’re indeed Palestinian go ask your parents what I wrote lmao. Machine translation is not gonna help you.
Assuming that YOU indeed are who you claim, let me tell you something. Unlike you I actually grew up in Palestine and I’m Palestinian first. You seem to be first of all American and this whole Palestine thing is more of a thing where in high school you bring some Hommos and celebrate diversity. But we’re not some illusion of your assumed identity. We are real people living real lives, and we’re dying and being oppressed right now. This is happening at the hands of a genocidal maniac armed and supported by the current president Joe Biden. Many of my relatives and friends have died, my family has been displaced and lives in diaspora.
Since you’re mainly American you won’t understand this, but if Biden isn’t willing to give up his die hard Zionist stance, we’re not gonna vote for him. If Trump wins the election and the US becomes a dictatorship, we will go somewhere else. We have left our lives behind and we’re prepared to do it again. And we’re not going to sacrifice ourselves because people like you are too afraid to give up their cushy American lifestyle.
Thanks for saying this. The comments are crazy. Like it would be more convenient if you could be genocided after the election, because you know this genocide is kind of in the way of some other domestic issues we’re having. So if you could just let Biden have this one until after the election that’d be great.
I take back everything. This guy makes no sense and I completely misunderstood the comment. And I don’t think he speaks Arabic but claims to speak for Palestinian Americans. L take.
Those "other domestic issues" is the other guy wanting to bring the genocide here that you seem to have glossed over.
Palestinian corpses are not a set piece for white leftists to ignore their duty to mitigate harm in the US and still feel like they get to play ally at all the grammable marches and rallies.
You'll not find one Palestinian American who thinks Biden is a good president right now, and you'll just as soon find one who won't look at you like a complete moron for thinking letting Trump win over it would be of any help to our cause in the slightest, in fact, they'd probably assume you were an Israeli agent agitating on Bibi's behalf. Who else would side against keeping Trump out of office after he gave Israel a free hand on The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and The Golan Heights?
Edit: claims to be Arab, but swears they and all their totally Arabic family members are gonna let Trump win because "but Dems bad too!" When Trump brings the genocide here, Palestinians will remember all the help "Arabs" such as yourself showed us by laying the red carpet out for him.
Either you're a liar or a knowing collaborator, either way you are no ally to Palestinians here in America, nor are you any help to them in the homeland.
Go ahead keeping on feeling righteous about letting fascism win to "punish" people you've probably ranted a hundred times now would rather lose than let a progressive win, meaning Trump winning is literally just giving them what they want in your backwards line of thinking..
عفكرة ما حدا غير انا وإياك رح يقرأ ايش بتكتب وبالصراحة بتحكيلي انو مش مصدق انو أنا عربي بس بشوفكش ترد غير انو كتبت بدنا نعيش… طب ماشي عايشين بس كيف بتعيش أهل غزة… احنا مستقبلنا ولا بيدن ولا الترمب رح يتحسن علينا و وأولاد عمنا رح يخلصو شغلهم قبل ما أي حد عندو فرصة لغير اشي
احكيلي كمان مرة انو أنا ندل وجاسوس بس انت مقاومتك انك بتساعد لبيدين عن جد؟ مش عارف وينتا جيت على أمريكا ووينتا اخير مرة بقيت انت بالبلاد بس تحكيش عني أو عن اهلي أو صحابي إذا بدك تمص لإلي احتلنا وقتلنا ولو سمحت رد علي بالعربي إذا عروبتك على هالدرج انك بتعرف مين عربي ومين لا هيك عالسريع
وأنا عربي يا زلمه بعرفش مع مين بتحكي بس ولا حدا من حواليي بدو الترمب يفوز وبنفس الوقت ولا واحد منهم رح ينخب لبيدن
None of my relatives, Palestinian / Arab / muslim friends is gonna vote for Biden. And none of them want Trump to win. In the end the same people who are now refusing to vote for Biden aren‘t in America because that was always the dream. We ended up here because of the geopolitical games and the support of the settler colonial Zionist project that forced us to abandon our homes because there’s no future. And if my relatives who died from American and European ammunition could have lived if Biden had stopped them, I’m not gonna keep him in power.
It’s up to the DNC to act according to the will of their voters. Voting now for Biden will send exactly what message, that he can get away with facilitating a genocide and that our lives are unimportant compared to the bigger picture? And for the record, I don’t know anyone who’d vote for trump. People will simply stay at home or vote third party.
Everyone would have wanted a different outcome, but it’s just impossible to ask me or anyone to put a cross for the murderer of our families.
It's not just about you guys. If we let this slide then our laws about not supporting human rights violations are a dead letter. We have important domestic reasons for holding Biden's feet to the fire.
Yeah, forgive me for not seeing "Well, if we contribute to Biden's defeat, MAYBE next time, after the Trumpist genocide here in the States is done and if we get a democracy again, we won't tolerate genocide abroad, because THIS time there will be PRECIDENT for giving power to fascism if the politicians don't listen to less than half of their own party on foreign policy!" as a particularly appealing line of reasoning.
Everyone cares about genocide, just not everyone is dumb enough to think that a president of another country has the ability to stop it from happening.
And before you go off and dumb shit about how he’s supplying them with arms, go ahead and look up how much arms they already had before this started, and how what Biden is sending is pretty much irrelevant in comparison.
Everyone cares about genocide, just not everyone is dumb enough to think that a president of another country has the ability to stop it from happening.
Do you have any idea about the nature of the existence of Israel? Iran hates them, Irak hates them, Syria hates them, Lebanon hates them, Egypt and the Saudis hold up their noses because they're pragmatic enough to look the other way as long as that gets them the favor of the US. It's a tiny country with a small population which viability as a state is dependent on several European and North American countries being willing to give them full military support. If the US threatens them with a blockade, it would be possible to negotiate Palestinian statehood (not just stopping the genocide) within weeks, and a two state solution would no longer be a pipe dream. Instead, the US has been protecting them from any potential reprisal against their crimes.
There are great arguments about why you should vote for Biden, but flaunting this much ignorance is certainly not doing his camp any favors.
If you want "both sidez", both sides supports the federal reserves which directly robs the poor and middle class and has been doing it for decades. But sure, taxes on the rich are really the problem!
I can point to how the federal reserve is harming the poor and middle class, and I think its important to recognize when your own side is fucking them.
Yeah, it's probably better to go back to a lot of FDRs policies.
Or the bipartisan effort to keep house prices by any means necessary. Such as by giving everyone who a fairly low interest home loan , which directly led to 2008.
No, guaranteed loans. If everyone can get a loan interest loan, it doesn't really matter to them if a house costs $200,000 or $400,000 spread out across 30 years. So home prices just continue to inflate. The loan interest rates and guaranteed loans are the reason prices got so high in the first place, the collapse of this scheme by flying too close to the sun with repealing Glass-Steagal is what lit the fuse in 2008. But they've got their plan back on track now.
A necessity in a society whose economy operates via credit expansion.
it doesn’t really matter to them if a house costs $200,000 or $400,000 spread out across 30 years
If you've ever had to pay a mortgage note, you'll discover that it matters substantively. The real benefit of the 30 year note isn't the scale but the fixed interest rate. Once you find a house you can afford, rising rates of pay relative to a fixed rate of interest means the real house note costs decrease over time.
The loan interest rates and guaranteed loans are the reason prices got so high in the first place
Prices for housing vary substantively by region and by density. Housing prices in neighborhoods with low rates of development continued to be cheap well into the early 2000s. Housing prices in the suburbs and exurbs - particularly for new builds - are consistently cheaper than in the urban centers where real estate is scarce.
If you check out the Austin, TX real estate market during the Carter to Clinton period, housing was incredibly cheap and abundant. It wasn't until the construction boom in the mid-00s that prices began to climb, and the rate of climb outpaced most of the continental US well into the Trump/Biden era. That had nothing to do with "guaranteed loans" under Carter and everything to do with Austin developers quickly maxing out available real estate development area easily accessible from the freeways. Same thing happened in DC and Virginia, after Amazon moved in. Housing speculation boomed, completely apart from individual credit.
You can see the reverse in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois, where the collapse of the auto industry made real estate incredibly cheap. Also in Florida, abet on a much tighter timeline.
Man I'm a progressive and even I can tell this is propaganda.
Also, missed a bunch of presidents? Bush 1 after Reagan. Lyndon B, Nixon, Ford and CARTER between Kennedy and Reagan.
I obviously agree with the overall message (that "both sides" is and always has been bullshit) but c'mon man.
Edit: like, you could put the actual campaign goals and summarized impacts and then it would be a real infographic. Like "passed tax cuts for top _% of income earning Americans" "repealed gun laws". It's still cherry picking and biased but that's what moves something like this out of the realm of propaganda and into I dunno...something more like biased news? Bias isn't inherently bad, obviously when you're trying to have an argument you have a side and an agenda.
The point of a meme is to be short and punchy, not academic.
This like watching the trope of “Republicans are evil, and Democrats can’t govern” play out in realtime.
We're here for memes, not to RaRa your campaign.
Yes, yes, I'm well aware of the position of your kind. "Only memes that agree with me or empower fascism are allowed."
No, not really. Just when it's blatant propaganda.
It's a fucking meme! Just go full boomer already and say "things I don't like should be banned".
No because that's not the position no matter how much you want to straw man it.
What were William Harrison's goals for office? 🤔
You know I'm not sure if you're joking but I'm genuinely curious now.
Edit: I looked it up and most of what I could find was, "Let's finish killing all the Indians". 😬
lmao I'm glad that bitch died
Lmao I was just joking because he died only a month after taking office, but I did not expect that!
IIRC he was famous for being the guy that ended Tecumseh's war, so yeah, he didn't have the fondest opinions of indigenous rights
William Harrison was a Whig, which was definitely the more progressive party at the time. His vice president, John Tyler, abandoned the Whig party and aligned himself more with Andrew Jackson and the Democrats, which were the conservative party at the time. It should be noted that the Whigs were much less destructive toward Indians than the Jackson and the Democrats, and Tyler was also strongly anti-Indian and anti-Mexican.
Here were the political positions of the Whig party:
I think he was just really happy to be included.
political memes are propaganda. all of them. always have been always will.
there are no exceptions, only examples which oppress and exploit more or less.
something this sublemmy needs to get into its head.
This a meme, not an infographic.
You're right. It's not an infographic. It's also not a meme.
It's a political cartoon. Definition from Brittanica: " a drawing (often including caricature) made for the purpose of conveying editorial commentary on politics, politicians, and current events. "
It's just a joke.
Where have I heard that before?
It's... a political meme. I wonder what sub this is...
This feels more like boomer humour than a meme.
I would argue that you know it's propaganda because you are progressive.
What? I think a lot of non-progressives would call this propaganda.
True but it probably helps not being of the party the propaganda was meant for. It would be an additional level of security.
Who was in meant for?
It was made to make fun of progressives, by people who don't want Biden to be critiqued.
Really? I interpreted it as more making fun of republicans and patting themselves on the back
Look at the title of the post. It's to make fun of anyone who critques both parties.
Aw man, you saw right through it!
I was told you progressives were smart but you caught this propaganda in no time! And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling progressives!!
Ok how else would you word that I'm on the political "side" of the meme and still call it out for being kinda shitty by misrepresenting the 'other side' in a way that undermines the credibility of the message?
I did not expect this to blow up and made an offhand criticism that used a cliche literary device before heading out for the day. I apologize for getting tripped up when information is misleading or inaccurate, it's a condition, and obviously I am long overdue at the gulag
Y'all take stuff way too seriously on the Internet.
It obviously has a point of view. Just like any text, image, or other media.
It's fun because it's pretty much true. If you want to make sure to include Johnson (hey - can we do the whole JFK thing here? Cause you know Johnson was . . . I guess that wouldn't fit in this particular meme) or Carter (yeah a meme is probably not the place to re-litigate his administration, though that's a good idea) one could, and apparently that would work towards being less "propaganda" like, but it wouldn't be very brief.
If you're saying the overall message of the meme is wrong, well we'll disagree there. But if you're saying it's just not properly balanced; I mean - Yeah. Obviously. Y'know what else isn't properly balanced, though - actual news articles from the New York Times and Washington Post, every single day. "Biden is old, Biden fares poorly in some poll we found on the floor. Trump does outlandish bullshit again, people love it." C'mon. We can take a look at the point of view of those articles and that would be propaganda in a more denotative sense.
So calling out a pro-Biden meme for being propaganda is, well, not wrong, but . . . kinda . . irrelevant? Hey, you wanna explore each of the listed presidential administrations and go through their accomplishments to see how true the meme is? Man, that's a long thread but we can do that - and when we finish, guess what - it'll be pretty close to this. But sure. Why not, Let's go.
I guess we can, what, use JFK as a "gimme" and just allow that a defining accomplishment was to create the space program as we know it. Should we add anything in there about the Cuban Missle Crisis or - ? What even would that be? "Faced down communist aggression"? "Skillfully negotiated aggressive military . . something"? Yeah ok let's just leave it at the moon thing. I mean, he only got three years, right.
Reagan. Why'd we jump to Reagan? We missed Nixon! Oh man, where are the Nixon memes amirite. Well, Regan - who as we know served two terms - really laid the foundation for the absolute mind-meltingly disastrous republican party politics that we know and love today. What was the defining element of his two administrations? (Should we split the two or just - I guess the format is for one line each so, no - ok) Well, he's really most famous for taking money from federal programs and giving it to the military contractors or back to other people who have money, i.e. the rich. It's actually pretty apt. But we can debate that one, everyone loves a good Reagan hullabaloo. We could also do the October Surprise, or Iran Contra, or invading El Salvador or a bunch of other shady shit, but let's go on an "affects Americans daily lives' bend. "Gave money to the rich" is correct.
Bush I - oops we skipped him, hm. Why's that I wonder. (Oh, hey maybe it's two term presidents only?) Eh, Let's just put Iraq I and then I guess we'll have to figure out why we went to war for oil. Oh - or we could just put "blood for oil" and hope that the economic implication is obvious enough. Anyway, moving on.
Clinton - well, we could talk about the whole healthcare reform thing that was a major component of the first term. Or in how he pulled the rug out from under Newt "contract with America" Gingrich by declaring big government "over" and adding a ton more cops. That's . . y'know . . true but . . . not as . . pithy? as we're going for here. His balancing the budget and actually leaving office with a surplus is, frankly, astonishing in retrospect though. It's absolutely no small feat and no one thought it was even possible since Reagan just said it's fine to blow all the money and hope future generations figure it out. Well, he figured it out. So that's not nothing. That doesn't seem like propaganda, that seems about right actually.
Okay the meme is getting really long at this point but I think you see the direction I'm going here. Is it misinterpreting "the other side"? Only in the sense that a meme is a single point of view and a deep discussion of the differences would be more balanced and nuanced but also take a long time and wouldnt ultimately be that far off from what we have.
So if you really feel like this meme is some horrible brainwashing propaganda of "the liberal left" or whatever? I dunno what to tell ya. Yeah? I guess? And it's nice?
Anyone that says Biden isn't doing anything is blind.
Or most likely not reading truthful news.
Tbf, society used to have "news", and many people are slow to realize that while the media still call themselves by that name, they no longer live up to that truth. i.e., not everyone who is blind is purposefully ignoring the truth - there is a whole spectrum of people in the middle.
As the New York Times' coverage of the Israeli Genocide has made obvious to even the blindest most tribalist of people, the "liberal" media was and is just as hard spouting propaganda as the far-right one.
Personally I think that the decay from Journalism into "Opinion Forming" in the traditional more liberal Press long predates the Fox-News Age and their destruction of the trust in the Traditional Press for temporary political gains of "their side" created the prime conditions for the rise of the made-up-outrage "Press" that so well fits the modus operandi of far-right populism and hence fed and was fed by made-up-outrage far-right populist politicians like Trump.
I mean... not equally though, unless you mean in the sense that both are incorrect. Liberal media in particular always tried to at least make their BS sound like it wasn't nonsense, as opposed to e.g. MTG's Jewish Space Laser rants. I appreciate the effort that goes into making a chart when I am lied to, rather than just some short pithy saying - it's the effort that wins my heart! :-P (/s btw)
I have heard it said that the only true way to spot a counterfeit message is to know the real thing backwards and forwards so well that nobody can pull a fast one on you when they try to sell you short (or long). e.g. we know that 1+1=2, but if Democrats tell us it is =11 whereas old-school Republicans say that it is =-100000000000000000, newer ones say that it is the sqrt of stfu, and the most modern ones of all have already shot your mom and fucked your dog, and hold everything else you hold dear hostage until you tell them that you LIKED it... then who is to blame the most if you did not know the answer in the first place?
The answer, I believe, is that MOST of the blame goes to the people who did the WORST attrocity(-ies), but at least part of it falls onto us, for letting it happen.
Therefore I do not blame older liberal media, or at least not nearly so much as I do what followed that got significantly worse. Though yeah, I do put some of the blame onto it as well, ofc.
More important is what we do in response to it all?
It's all about Trust.
People used to believe in the Press - it was what is called an Authoritative Source.
What the breaking of Trust in the Press - the greatest most influential of Autoritative Sources - did was create an environment were most people don't believe in Authoritative Sources, hence were each individual - ignorant, untrained in analytical thinking, with neither the time, the access or the knowledge to trully dig down on a subject - is on his or her own to figure out what is true and is not.
This new environment didn't just open the doors for the likes of Fox News, it openned the doors for Anti-Vaxing, Russian interference, countless Internet conspiracies and an Era were Politics is essentially professional scam artists managing scams - the damage is way vaster than merelly their some sleazy manipulative "news" pieces.
I absolutelly blame them for that: for the sake of momentary political gains for their team, newsmedia which for decades were trusted and respected broke the entire Trust Hierarchy and created the conditions for chaos and what looks more and more like Fascism.
The other side, that of assholes being assholes, is nothing compared to the betrayal by those you trusted.
Yup.
I have likened it to an immune system: fighting bacteria is way easier than fighting cancer. The ratio of sizes of Bacterial cells to Human cells is like a football to a football stadium, and their surfaces look extremely different, nor do bacteria even so much as try to blend in to look like their host cells (though they do put out a slimy coating to obscure their origins in the more general sense). So when the human immune system sees non-human cells somewhere they shouldn't, like inside your anatomical tissues, it goes all-out WAR on those bitches, and just obliterates everything.
In contrast, cancer cells not only look like, but they actually are YOUR CELLS - they are YOU! With just one tiny little alteration, hardly worth noticing, in that they no longer pay attention to the signals to halt, cease & desist growing anymore. They do what they fucking want, when they want, how they want, and never mind that their actions will (not offer "a chance of", but a 100% certainty guarantee) kill themselves, it will also kill the organism as well, essentially taking it down with it. So all that "foreign detection apparatus", which can eliminate bacteria, mold, non-human eukaryotes like amoeba, nonliving particles like dust, also the in-between stuff like viruses, none of that helps, when fighting against cancer.
And that hasn't even begun to get into HIV, where those immune processes are themselves subverted... when the police refuse to police the police, then how can the work of policing happen? (answer: it does not, and the body dies, far more often than not, unless some external intervention can prevent that outcome)
There is a reason why people say that the only party slightly less worse than Republicans are Democrats. Although that might have something to do with the whole "2-party" system...:-P - but it does convey that neither party aim to be correct, so much as to just win. Also, whatever happened to just being "Americans"? Like, regardless of what party put you into office, once you get there, don't (or rather, shouldn't) you belong to the citizenry at large and need to represent all of your people, even those who voted for your opponent(s)? So like a Senator would represent a single state's interests, and a President or Supreme Court Justice would represent the entire nation's at large, etc. Enshittification is not just a term for capitalistic corporations, but applies to society at large - i.e. whatever higher functions were once meant to happen, have now been subverted by more basic lower processes like greed and corruption and such.
Which makes sense - entropy doesn't decrease for simply no reason (although that said, an open system does have quite a bit of wiggle room to play around in), and Maslov's hierarchy of needs tends to revert to the lower, more basic ones when necessary, the higher ones only opening up when the lower ones are already met.
How all this relates to what you said: people are stupid, and more importantly short-sighted. When the people entrusted with something become no longer worthy of that trust... that is the most dangerous thing of all to the survival of an organism. On the other hand, what are we going to do about it - just sit back and watch it die? For my part, I promote video sources such as Innuendo Studios, Kurzgesagt, Crash Course, etc. that have acted to step up in the wake of the demise of trust in our "official" media, but ofc there is no magic bullet, no one-solution-fits-all that is going to solve the enormous scope of the problem (and if there were, it would likely be taken out by an aggressive competitor or malicious actor, so would not last for long). Meh, oh well, I've made my peace that I cannot hold out even the remotest hope that it can all be solved, yet I still do my part b/c that is all that I can, and therefore must, do.
Well, having lived in a country with actual Proportional Vote, I would say that the "just win" mindset is derived from the two party system you get in First Past The Post representative allocation systems like the US, probably with a pinch of the higher aggressiveness of baseline American culture.
That said, I don't think the aggressive "just win" posture we see reflects them being different, quite the contrary: it's Theatre for the masses because the two sides of the Power Duopoly are too similar, so lots of posturing with loud disagreements serves to both keep their own tribe (the people whose relation to politics is similar to their relation to sports: they have chosen a "team") inspired and acting as unthinking supporters and keeping the rest of people thinking there is true competition when there really isn't. This is why most of the fight is happening in the Moral field (stuff like LGBT rights) rather than anything to do with Power, Wealth and Quality Of Life - in the things that matter the most for those politicians both parties think the same, leaving only the things they don't genuinelly care about as the field in which put one a very loud, very dramatic theatrical play about how difference they are.
By the way, I liked your idea of using "enshittification" for Society and Politics and I hope you don't mind if I use it in my own posts.
Personally my own approach to help change things is to go around pointing the inconsitencies out to get at least some people thiking about it. I'm also a member of a small political party in the country I lived in and was also in one back when I lived in Britain (though there it's a lot like the US and, frankly, at best things will need to get a lot worse before people are pissed of enough to change them).
I understand what you are saying, and in the past I would have agreed with you, except for two more recent alterations. Nothing is ofc all entirely one way or another, everything is on a continuum, and so even those alterations are based upon the backdrop of... yes, what you said: "political theater".
First, looking not at the words that candidates say but rather at their actions following the election, politicians from the 70s, 80s, and 90s were as you describe. e.g. George W. Bush, despite running on the "conservative" ticket, was a progressive! And Hillary Rodham Clinton was the most pro-war, pro-big business Democrat that I have ever even so much as heard of. What you are saying used to be true, back in the day. Say whatever you need to in order to get elected, then go about the real business at hand, of getting shit done.
The first change though was the Tea Party (e.g. Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, there's a whole list if you expand the right-hand show/hide boxes on that wikipedia page link). They got radicalized somehow, and replaced the old-guard who actually knew how to compromise, instead doing things like sending letters overseas to sabotage ongoing negotations (I am not a lawyer, but looking up the old-timey definition, the word "treason" literally includes exactly that scenario as part of its definition!), and ofc the imfamous "shutting down the entire government" trick, holding the budget hostage until and unless they get their way - not the "American" way, no not that, but their way specifically b/c that is all that matters to them. Obviously prior Republicans had done all that this new breed were also looking to do, but the difference seems to be in the degree of obstinancy, and the eagerness to immediately knaw off the USA's own legs just in order to spite the head - like for them, it is not the absolute last, final choice, but rather their second choice every time. They have done more filibustering, more blocking, more obstructionism than any modern party in the history of anyone alive in the USA (I have heard), and fun fact: even the Congress that functioned during the Civil War managed to pass more bills than a Congress involved with the Tea Party (obviously due to a technicality, where the southern democrats left in a huff, leaving the northern republicans to pass whatever they wanted free of interference:-P). Thus began the major Power Creep trend of modern obstructionism & enshittification - yes please feel free to use as you like, b/c if the shoe fits...:-D
But even before that trend could either snuff itself out or be subsumed by more old-guard politicians who actually want the government to be functional, the Alt-Right started to rise to power. This new breed... seems less concerned with "getting their way", and more about simply burning everything to the fucking ground. Donald Trump has moved beyond obstructionism, to the point where if he does not get his way, a literal (if horribly inept) coup attempt was tried, and it remains to be seen if he, or one of the other followers of that movement will start a literal, actual, physical Civil War. e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene has literally called for this - in a not-joking manner.
This is far past theater is what I am saying, yes in the past it was that, but now, at this point, we are well past that. America could literally fall as a democratic nation - and most experts (I have read) seem to agree that some kind of "constitutional crisis event" is imminent in the next 5-10 years. These people are far past playing around.
Kudos for being part of the solution where you are at. Similar to the UK, where I don't know what could possibly reverse the effects of Brexit - that damage seems irreparable and permanent, it only remains to move forward from here on out and try to avoid further harm (in that case, not the end of a nation, but metrics are already revealing that it ushered in a sharp decline of its prominence?) - in the USA I don't know what can be done to save it from its self-inflited injuries, given how many people seem hell-bent on ending it.
At a minimum though, it seems like it would have to begin with education, since currently the major differences seem to be about alternate sets of "facts" - e.g. does the COVID vaccine work, or does it rather harm you, making boys infertile, etc.? "Trust" in the media has been lost, in large part b/c literal pastors/priests/ministers have been promoting politics from behind their pulpits, thus mixing in the messages from religion to the point where it is becoming more of a "christian holy jihad" war than a logically-reasoned one where both sides are attempting to "get their way". For that, pointing out inconsisties might help, but even then, people seem to already KNOW that they are wrong, and yet simply do not care.
Like if you look at Trump, there is simply no way to honestly call him "God's man" (plus, if anyone who is placed in charge can be that, then why wasn't Obama "God's man" too?), but there seems to be a sense of "even though that's not fully true, still supporting him is the right thing to do regardless". A LOT of people seem to value "argument by authority" over what they see literally with their own eyes. And I get it: these matters - economics, geopolitics, treaties, climate change, pandemics - they can get quite complex, and many just want daddy to take care of them. Which in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. they legit did do! B/c the interests of the wealthy happened to align with the interests of the nation overall - other countries were bombed by Germany and the USA was riding high, so its success meant their own personal success too, plus all the engineers & scientists were creating wonderful new gadgets that were fun & helpful too. However, with globalization and automation that alignment is no longer true, and they are instead taking whatever they can get, seemingly with an exit strategy in place to sit back and watch as climate change happens and the world simply burns.
It seems extremely short-sighted to me - especially if a nation such as the USA could bend its enormous might towards literally halting or even reversing the effects of climate change? But, such thinking is a remnant of past days, and now multi-national corporations such as Alphabet and Apple and Meta are more powerful than the US government itself, so it seems that they now see it as a competitor and are at least allowing, sometimes rooting, occasionally even participating in taking it down. e.g. FaceBook's sources of "alternative facts" helping to shatter the, as you pointed out, already quite brittle remaining trust that people had in the news media.
This is all a lot, but I hope it has been an interesting read? :-D
I mean, public radio and tv exists.
I do not know much about those, as I do not have any special-purpose devices that can receive those signals. Do they not also follow the "if it bleeds, then it leads" mantra? e.g. did they report when Biden "betrayed" the railway workers by preventing them from striking at the busiest time of year (Christmas 2022), and if so did they also report when Biden spent MONTHS of effort after that to get those workers basically every single thing that they had asked for from their employers if they had been allowed to go ahead with their strike? B/c the for-profit media definitely did the former, though conveniently forgot all about the latter, despite how crucial such info as "how the current President is doing" and "whether the current President lives up to his promises" are to the upcoming election this year.
But even if the only fact that I knew about public radio and TV at all was that they require special devices to access them, they still seem to me to be handicapped, even if differently than the for-profit media sources.
Anyway, what percentage market share are public sources compared to private ones? To use the Fediverse as a readily-accessible example since anyone who reads this is definitely here (hehe, by definition:-P), how many news stories shared in some community such as ![email protected] are from "public" sources? If all that needs to be done to save journalistic integrity would be to create a new Lemmy community, and put public journalism onto it, then I will definitely subscribe and be a big fan of it! Though I doubt it is anywhere close to being as easy as all that... :-(
Still, your point was worth mentioning.
Radio and television aren't really considered specialty devices.
What's "radio"? Television is the old word for "app" right?
Now we have hate boner political infotainment. It's disgusting.
We need a free press, but we need to figure out how to deal with those that take advantage of their status... In this case, all of them...
Even my absolute favorites of all time - e.g. Jon Stewart - still does it. It is the nature of the game, which we hate rather than the playa. :-(
Though in his case, some of it he does b/c it is necessary, a lot is rather tongue-in-cheek, and anyway he seems to be aware and definitely tries to use his power as responsibly as he can. Also, it may be hate-boning to e.g. watch a politician say something like "never in my entire life have I held this position", then 2s later watch a different video showing that same politician a few years before where they espouse precisely that position that they later claimed that they never had - like yeah, it produces a "reaction" in us, but like... shouldn't it, to watch such a blatant and bold-faced lie?
The difference, imho, is that he doesn't do such things purely for the sake of that reaction, and instead uses that reaction as the vehicle to convey his point, which is that that politician is a bad person, and should be replaced by someone who may perhaps be less bad. And, hate-engendering as it may be, it is also The Truth so... there's that. Which stands in stark contrast to e.g. Alex Jones who also tries to engender hate, but not using Truth, and instead rather for the sake of personal profits.:-(
He sure is sucking zionist dick really hard. Some would say too hard.
Hey guys I found this book written by god that says trump tower is mine. Think the us government will back me?
How much capital do you have?
Listen, give me the biggest loan you can manage. I'm good for it.
I would trust you with my life
Oops too big to fail now.
But... he's old! And not perfect!!! So obviously, we should stay home and see how much better our lives will be under Trump when it's his last (legal) term and literally what keeps him out of prison... Duh.
Look, I know the opposition is worse in quite literally every conceivable sense, but BOTH SIDES! Ha, take that, LIBS!
"saving democracy" tho; lol. if he wanted to do that, why the fuck is he running again?
edit: that feels more like 'dangling democracy over a trumpian abyss to jack off his own geriatric ego'.
He's certainly not destroying it.
Oh, yes, the only two options. Death or life support. No way to improve it.
How could someone improve democracy and who would it be?
Edit: weird that I would be down voted for asking who and how to improve democracy.
Okay, while I think the other person's complaints are unreasonable and dishonest, I really need to answer this sincerely, because it's genuinely important that people understand.
Ways that American democracy can be improved:
Eliminating lobbyists
Capping how much money can be spent on political campaigns
Capping individual donation sizes
Capping donation frequency
Implementing a cardinal or ordinal voting system (such as approval or single transferable vote)
Making voting more accessible
Removing the possibility of gerrymandering
Outlawing political parties
Making voting mandatory
Several other things who's scope mean they probably don't count (like better education, which would help citizens perform democracy better, but also clearly falls outside the scope of the list) or that I am otherwise forgetting.
Edit:formatting.
Edit2: I never intended to answer "who" because that question doesn't have a single answer; the president can't do those things, and it's silly to expect them to.
Unfortunately, I don’t see how any president can do any of those. The best he can do is appoint competent justices and try to persuade Congress
So in this case, expand the Supreme Court? And at least mention these issues at all?
Correct; the president can't do those things, hence why the other commentor's complaints didn't make sense. I was answering the question of how.
You didn't answer who. Who is so much better than Biden that they would be able to do all of this.
Despite his age, Bernie Sanders is still the most qualified person to be president. He would get more done and made election reform a focus of his campaigns.
Remember how I said the other commentor's complaints didn't make sense?
Not only did they not answer the question of "who", they instead listed off a wish list of things no president is able to do unilaterally. Like, those are all good things, but blaming the current incumbent / candidate for not doing those is a completely ignorant take (if not intentionally moving the goalposts).
We need better civics lessons both in K-12 and maybe some kind of adult education classes.
https://daily.jstor.org/lawrence-lessig-how-to-repair-our-democracy/
Great, a usual list of improvements but you didn't answer who. Who will be so much better than Biden and would accomplish this?
Lawrence Lessig...
The problem isn't that we don't have solutions. The problem is that, collectively, we don't have the will to implement them. It's like effective Climate Change policy or Covid policies. At best, we're getting half measures because people rather have their popcorn and circuses than saving their children. Biden doesn't represent a solution, he represents a theater of a solution.
he's keeping anyone else from saving it. anyone whose chances are more than ’questionable'.
How is he not saving it from Trump?
he's the worst dipshit that could be running here, sucking up all the support for the smallest permissible 'better', when you have enough bipartisan issues to get support from both the left and sane-right if you ran anyone else. biden is not defending democracy; he's dangling it over a cliff with Donald trump at the bottom.
Neirher West nor Stein would do anything different. In fact both of them want to give in to Putin and weaken democracy world wide. Who could do it better?
anyone. else. literally anyone on my block, including many of the pets.
and if 'west' and 'stein' wouldn't do anything different than biden, they're shit too. your whole argument is that the entire democratic party is worthless, that none of them have any virtue to counter trump, just the exact same calculated amount of vice less, the smallest amount so we can say they're not quite the same, following them down the intellectual lacuna, using them as a wind break?
that seems like a party I'm literally never going to vote for.
About as blind as Biden is to Palestine.
They're liars, they know full well what he's accomplished, but they refuse to acknowledge it because their peers would ostracize them
Right, he is totally supporting genocide of the Palestinian people.
Good to see the ratio favoring logic and reason. Seems the anti-Biden propagandists are being run off finally.
I notice the .ml communities are, how to say it, "I'm 14 and edgy".
Yep. I don’t know why they aren’t deferderated along with Hexbear. It’s pretty much the same people. They’re just circumventing the block via .ml.
Yeah I'm pretty close to seeing if I can block the whole instance, right now I'm all blocking certain communities. (I was banned from worldnews.ml for saying NATO was a defensive treaty lol.)
I blocked the entire instance when they banned me for suggesting that their meme responses were childish and a bad way to debate their point.
Shockedpikachu.jpg
Mu'min wants to know if this is a pro-Biden or anti-Biden comment.
I would say it's a devisive comment that very obviously serves only one political party.
That's the problem: There isn't anybody. My money is going to lodge grenade fragments in disabled children's eyes and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Nobody can stop this from happening because the path of that grenade fragment started seventy years ago.
We can do something, though. We can vote. Not in just this election but every election we are eligible for. There is 60% of the population that needs this message. We also need to vote in primaries and force out current dem leadership. It will be case by case but numbers is what we need. Not division.
I've been voting every time I can for the last 24 years and I'm still waiting for it to help.
The message isn't for you. It's for the 60% who have wiped their hands clean of it.
I know it's a lost cause. It's just a high EV lost cause. I don't have to invest very much and if I ever saw a return on the investmentment it would be magnitudes greater than what effort I put in.
Okay, I get what you're saying, but to call the Affordable Care Act "Universal Healthcare" is like calling one of those meal boxes from Taco Bell an all-you-can-eat buffet
While I do agree with what you say, the post is about goals, not achievements. It's an important distinction, and Obama did have universal healthcare as a goal.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/11/obama-administration-universal-healthcare-reform
Gee, I wonder WHO was taking actions to prevent that from coming out as universal healthcare. And I wonder WHICH SIDE of the aisle they were on.
Per usual - it was Biden, rushing to the aid of republicans to assist with their agenda. Which in this case was watering down their own healthcare proposal in order to remove the public option. In fact, he conceded this portion of the bill before any negotiations had even begun, as a “show of good faith” toward his Republican colleagues. Thanks Biden.
I think you're letting Joe Lieberman get away
Obama also campaigned that he would codify abortion into law, got elected, and then said it was not a priority. Then didn't do anything to protect reproductive rights.
This image is complete propaganda.
Obama goal:
end FPTP so the 2000 election doesn't happen again and againShort term easily reversible promisesBiden goal: what democracy, and how exactly
A democracy where someone can lose the popular vote and still get elected president, and where a minority can hold both chambers of Congress, clearly
It's a democracy we must fight to protect.
And by fight, I might go on the Internet and complain that other people aren't voting hard enough.
Broke: Republicans
Woke: Democrats
Bespoke: Cum
Ah yes, the old "it's propaganda because it doesn't include literally everything that has ever happened".
Bush dodged that shoe like a fucking boss so how bad a president could he have been?!
Is it rosy colored? Sure. Does it still have a generally true premise? IMO yes.
Really stupid that we beat down the people on the left that demand a better candidate than the one who said he would be a one term president. A man who is further left than Nixon in most aspects. Yet, we have all these people who will die on the hill of Biden and we continue to ratchet to the right.
The meme here overstates Biden, but that's not where you were originally poking.
It's totally fine to want a better candidate, but I don't get down with cutting off your nose to spite your face: "Haha allowing authoritarianism and the erosion of democracy by non participation or durden voting will sure teach the Dems to pick a better candidate! Got em!"
Side note, I think you mean right of Nixon, yeah?
A better candidate would have been 2021-2023. You missed your window of THREE YEARS.
Okay, so let's say Biden in 2024 for the sake of argument. Who's the best candiate starting 2025? For the next President? Who. Name someone. Anyone.
For the Democratic Party: Pritzker would have handled it well. Maybe Beshear, even Evers.
By 2025 I will be curious if Hobbs or Shapiro will have the chops. Maybe even Grisham or Kotek, who knows.
And that's just the governor pool.
There are options and have been options.
Biden never actually said that, but the fact that you think he did tells me all I need to know about how little you pay attention and what news sources you follow.
If he is to be believed (and that is certainly up to debate), Obama's goal was universal healthcare, and his compromise was the ACA.
Personally I think as soon as the public option was gutted this compromise failed to meet what was sought out by the goal, so I don't think it should be counted at all as achieving that goal, but I don't think it's inherently disingenuous to make the claim that Obama wanted universal healthcare... I guess he just didn't want it enough.
People hate finding out the ACA is the Republican plan based on Romney's healthcare system from MA.
Well we couldn't know what it said til they passed it. "Call it the stupidity of the American voter"
Obama supported the public option which would have been a form of universal healthcare. It was axed because Joe Lieberman spent months grandstanding and then Ted Kennedy died.
Postal 2 was right to teach us all to hate that dude
Lieberman threatened to join Republicans in filibuster to kill the public option and Obama's response was "Okay, we'll just pull that piece for you, no problem."
Gee, thanks, you jerk. Now I want one of those meal boxes from Taco Bell.
To be fair, I don't believe Trump's goal is more money for rich people.
I believe it's more money for himself but to do that he works towards more money for rich people because those rich people will in turn support and fund him further.
He's too damn selfish to actually consider people, rich or not.
Not even money, I have no doubt he just wants to be president to get out of all the rape and fraud accusations running against him.
The Romans are said to have conquered the world in self defense. Trump's plan is to ruin it instead. Easier.
It's funny to read this about self defense because I just wrote a letter to my representatives and NASA about funding for the Chandra X-ray telescope and pretty much used those terms too. We trade improvements to our shared existence in favor of "self defense" that just happens to bring us to other countries to bomb them all the time...
Rome is eternal. Glory to the Roman empire
Rome is literally gone lmao
? pretty sure I went there on vacation recently
It never left our hearts and minds
Before Trump, the Rich controlled America via the Politicians.
Trump just removed the middle man.
Politicians have always been part of the wealthy owning class, its built into the system becsuse the system was created by a wealthy owning class
A huge part of Clinton's deficit reduction was eviscerating welfare with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. He also made a lot of money for rich people by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which directly let to the 2008 financial collapse. Also, Obamacare is not Universal Healthcare; Obama would have needed to keep the Public Option for it to be considered universal coverage. He also made a lot of money for rich people through TARP.
Also, the year gaps are a little disingenuous. Like, where are Nixon, or even Carter. Like, Carter is a good man at least.
The public option was tanked by Senator Lieberman, who at that point became an independent. All we would have needed was a Republican to break ranks and we would have had a public option.
A) Lieberman didn't become an independent at that point, he'd been an independent since he lost his primary in 2006 B) no matter what the excuse, it doesn't change the fact that saying the ACA is Universal Healthcare is a lie.
Define "huge"
Why, would it be better if he gutted welfare for a small deficit reduction?
I would like to see a more accurate one that actually just listed passed and proposed legislation for each one instead of just circlejerk fodder.
I remember with each Presidential change, that when a Republican president came into power, they had a budget surplus, created by their democratic predecessor, which they then squandered, and when it was tome to switch to a democratic president, they got a deficit, and managed to work theyr way out of it. Each time, fox would comment on how these Democrat presidents always had a deficit. It was, and continues to be, maddening.
Require news organizations to be truthful again, fuck that "but much first amendment" bullshit, one has nothing to do with the other
Faux News has stated in court that they are not a "news organization", they are "entertainment".
That sounds like an admission to false advertising to me
We have a store called Best Buy.
It's the same in the UK. Within 15 minutes of the Tories finally (hopefully) losing power in the next election they'll be gesturing to the shit state of things, that they themselves caused, and saying "Look at how the Labour government has ruined this country!"
I find it funny how tories were like "This is the best the economy has been in five years! Look at us go!!" Okay, and who was in government 5 years ago?
News conglomerates haven't been truthful since at least Hearst.
Clinton is one of the worst. The party went, can't beat 'em, might as well join em.
Clinton essentially fulfilled some of the great Republican dreams of deregulation. See Glass-Stegall how he joined hands with Republicans. Which you can then fast forward to the banking and financial crisis that hit the world and screwed economies and brought austerity programs worldwide.
Dare ya to read up on all the congressional stock trading from not just Repubs but very much Dems as well.
The party went fully corporate with Clinton.
Don't forget deregulation, those fuckers love removing protections for the environment and workers.
especially child workers
The Republicans are cartoon villains.
Yeah but deregulation is ultimately just a way for them to give more money to rich people.
The democratic governor in my state recently succeeded in a years long endeavor to legalize gambling. That's deregulation too
Legalizing something isn't the same as deregulation but it's a subtle distinction.
Well... Why not? How is it different? Deregulation generally refers to smaller loosenings(and smaller legalizations) rather than outright legalization- but that's a kinda arbitrary distinction
Legalization:- whether or not it's legal to do something.
Deregulation:- removing rules and enforcement around something that's already legal.
Like I said, it's subtle.
But how does deregulation happen? By legalizing subsets of the already legal thing. Think- legalizing operating a car without a license, vs deregulating driving.
I'm sorry, remind me - are you here for the 15 minute argument or did you pay for the full half hour?
15 minute
Democrats aren't for more money for rich people? News to me. Nice job leaving off things like welfare reform, the crime bill, and the repeal of glass-steagall (which led to the 2008 global financial crisis) from under clinton. You left off obama continuing the policy of bailouts for the rich after the 2008 global financial crisis, his support for the surveillance state (and going after Snowden after claiming to protect whistleblowers), and bombing so many more countries (like Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria). Of course there's the glaring absence of supporting genocide under biden, but I think you get the picture.
Both sides aren't the same in all things, but they are definitely the same in supporting the rich first and foremost. Democrats are better than republicans, but you're not making a strong point by pretending democrats only do good things.
In this system money is speech. Not literally, like the Supreme court has codified but in practice. No matter the party the only chance you have in getting elected is fund raising. It's a shit system and no democrats aren't a victim but their is no other credible option.
No, no, critical support for genocide here in the US. /s
OK who let the DNC get a lemmy.world account
Nixon: More money for rich people,
Carter: Peace in The Middle East
Edit: Carter: Climate Change. He installed solar panels at the White House that Reagan destroyed.
Also, getting started fighting climate change back when we should've started. (See also: solar panels on the White House etc.)
Oh you're correct, totally forgot that Reagan ripped those off.
Carter: Selling weapons to Indonesia to commit genocide in East Timor.
As an Australian, I’d like to give a personal fuck you to Jimmy Carter for that one. Fucking arsehole he was.
Biden was responsible for removing the democratically elected prime minister in Pakistan because he refused to follow the geopolitical whims of the USA. His entire party is dead in the water with several MNAs assasinated, hundreds tortured, and thousands of supporters still in jail without trial or bail.
So respectfully, fuck off with this shitty propaganda meme.
I would not say both sides are the same, but this a bullshit oversimplification. The dems are not some ray of sunshine who have only made this country better.
Clinton repealled the Glass-Steagal act, which led to the 2008 crash, Obama's unconditional bailouts of financial institutions and ultra-low interest rates and subsequent hyperfinancialization of the Economy, the current house prices bubbles, an explosion in inequality, and an even further collapse of social mobility in the US.
To say that he doubled-down on Reagan's work is an underestimation.
Sure, it's all a bit obscure for those who weren't in Finance during the period around 2008, but that doesn't make it any less so.
(And lets not forget his wife's later "got paid million dollar for a speech to a room full of financiers" that helped her loose to none other than Donald Trump)
The idea that almost all those Democrats in that list didn't do "More money for the rich" is hilarious.
Also as an European in a country with a National Health Service, celebrating Obama's version of "Universal Healthcare" is "you're fucking kidding me"-level insulting.
That stuff is some Narnia-level Eyes Hard Closed level of tribalist self-delusion.
That's a giant load of revisionist history
The alternative explanation is that you're a commited member of this specific political tribe and just have to defended those you see as your chiefs no matter what, even if lacking an actual argument.
This alternative explanation perfectly explains the absence of even a shred of an actual counter argument in your post.
I was right in the middle of the Investment Banking Industry back at the time and paid close attention to all the details about how the entire thing was conducted and the kind of market interventions going on, rather than just eat up the high level bullshit fed to pre-convinced members of that specific political tribe who don't know how the business works ...
I actually had a pretty good opinion of Obama up until I saw who he put there conduction the bailouts, how they were conducted, how the pain was distributed, how the market was intervened in and which economic strata were saved with whose money.
TARP doesn't even amount to a tip of an iceberg.
So glad Obama gave us universal healthcare.... Oh wait.
We all know this is bullshit right? Neither the Republicans or the Democrats give a shit about anything else then making rich people more money. I'm sorry to break it to you but the Democrats aren't your friends. I know they pretended to be but they're not. They are just as much your enemy as the Republicans. 😞
We know and the point of this post is that voting for one of them and grinding down the other is a clear message of what people want. Rich dude making his friends richer should have been a no-brainer but people keep using slimy tactics like the one you are using to distract the people from that fact.
The rich people who pay them both through lobbyists know what the people actually want. We don't need to vote more clearly. 🙃
I'm not using a slimy tactic. This is my opinion. Sorry you think that not agreeing with you is slimy.
I'm a socialist. The Republican and Democratic parties are Siamese twins. They cannot survive without each other. They are completely dependent on the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils. Pretending like the Democrats actually cared about you or will do the things they say they will is an understandable coping mechanism for our situation but it's not real. 🤷
Both sides are rich dudes making rich dudes richer…
One is negociating with what the people want, the other is lying and laughing while doing whatever they want.
There's a big difference between stealing a pack of gum and literal nuclear secrets, don't be obtuse.
We can agree they ignored some good Republicans did and very cleverly cut it off before Nixon creating the EPA, making dialysis ubiquitous when at the time a single treatment was ≈35k.
Which president reversed that?
At least you named yourself appropriately. Lazy. Otherwise, you would know that Obama attempted to provide a public option for healthcare. You do realize how politics works, right? You need a certain amount of votes and support in order to pass new legislation. If you don't have enough votes on both sides of the aisle, then you change NOTHING. So yes, one side, the Democrats, tried to provide healthcare that had a public option, and the other side, the Republicans, fought tooth and nail to stop it.
And you blame Obama.
Don't forget Bush the First, the former director of the CIA and his mad desire to run shadow wars to disrupt democracy in other countries in the name of American corporate interests
Thank god no other president has done this
If you only compare democrats to republicans, every Democrat is going to look amazing.
Like comparing a large McDonalds combo meal to a literal shit sandwich.
I'll always take some Mickey D's in that choice. Even though it's probably been a decade since I've actually ate that trash.
But if those are my only two options for every meal, I know on a long enough timeline the McDonald's is going to kill me. Eventually I got to start asking why my only options are something bad for me and something that's drastically worse for me.
I just want a fucking salad for once. Like, let's just give it a chance, see how it works out.
Excellent. Changing the electoral system and changing the FPTP ranking is going to take a lot of work, but that’s the way to go!
Until then though, we got the McDonalds (now with 30% less plastic!), or the shit sandwich which wasn’t refrigerated properly. So. Make your choice. Oh and If we could maybe not kill the planet, like, real soon that’d be swell.
If McD's knows you'll always buy whatever they put out because you essentially have no choice, why would they EVER want to implement something like eliminating FPTP voting that locks you into this ridiculous choice?
You act like the only two parties America has had is D and R...
And that the parties are the important part not the voters.
Before we're able to kick all the neoliberals at of the dem party and beat back republicans to have the numbers to really change our political system, we'll see the parties shake up. Marc Cuban has been getting his name out there for four years. He's coming in 2028. And regardless of who wins 2024, the majority of Americans will be upset about it and there won't be an incumbent.
"Beating the system from within" doesn't mean just using the two existing parties, it means using the party system to replace the FPTP.
It is the case, because the Constitution says whoever gets the most votes wins, i.e. First Past The Post (and yes the electoral college screwed with that immediately).
Okay, as an old I gotta tell you - you're right, but you're wrong. A third party win is a pipe dream that is never going to happen BECAUSE you'll never get a third party to outvote one of the two existing. Unless the mutated GQP does something even more upsetting and unfortunate, I guess. You might get a third nazi party that outvotes "moderates", that's possible I guess. National Socialists. Ugh.
But getting a more progressive, liberal party to peel away enough Democrats AND Republicans to win a federal election in order to change the voting structure - I mean, just wish for a pot of gold, or a new washer & dryer combo. Work towards it, of course - vote towards it, yes. But pining for it and pretending it's a viable option is going to waste decades of your political interested life for nothing. Ask everyone else who has been doing that since the 1800s. (no I'm not that old, but national politics are.)
It's because if too many people ask for salads without enough asking for a salad, then everyone has to eat the shit.
So are you confident enough that enough people want salads to risk eating shit if you're wrong, when the alternative is one more burger?
Point being, we need to move to some type of ranked choice voting instead of first past the post in order for it to be safe for people to say what they really want, and still not risk "horror" if not enough people agree.
What and you think that's just gonna happen? Why would the Dems ever want to implement ranked choice voting when FPTP is exactly what keeps you in this ridiculous situation?
Just keep voting for Dems, that's how we'll eventually reform the system into one where we don't have to vote for Dems... Yeah
Wow, look at all those rebuttals to all those things I never said!
I'll definitely myopically ignore the realities of our political system and do something vaguely cathartic but ultimately pointless and let the people I entirely disagree with win to spite the people I only kind of agree with.
Not sarcastically, you're forgetting that the parties are ultimately made of people who are elected by people.
Democratic politicians tend to be Democrats, and Democrats tend to be more positive towards electoral representation.
That's why places are actually adopting ranked choice systems, albeit usually at more local levels where it's easier to change systems and politicians.
https://fairvote.org/our-reforms/ranked-choice-voting-information/#where-is-ranked-choice-voting-used
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1214199019/ranked-choice-voting-explainer
Politicians want to get elected, and they don't really care about the party. If supporting a popular initiative that hurts the party later helps you, you coincidentally agree with it, and on paper it aligns with your party ideals, why wouldn't you vote in favor of it?
It's one of those game theory situations where each individual operating in their own interests creates a situation that's worse for the collective.
It sounds like someone's ordering shit for dinner
They're also ordering shit for the rest of us too.
Sounds fuckin great; if you know how to navigate in the direction of the salad please let me know.
In the meantime I do think it makes sense to request the burger instead of telling the waiter to just bring whatever
No don't worry, THIS time when we eat shit it will TOTALLY encourage everyone to agree to not eating shit next time!
Unlike, you know, the last 20 or so times this happened.
I dunno, I think the establishment burgercrats need a 9-0 against voting rights for non-property owners to really learn their lesson!
I used to say voting in the party from the ground up. But that hasn't worked and the more we try the more the parties fight it.
The 2020 DNC "fund" changes is even worse than Citizen's united, but no one ever mentions that.
The DNC outright says if they don't like a primary they can ignore the results. And they're already taking delegates from states.
But it's a different age now, debates rarely even get held and haven't mattered for decades. Which was the big thing that used to hold third parties back: access to debates and tv interviews. The parties are nothing more than agents at the end of the day. Just middle men who hand money between people and keep some while enjoying the high life.
What matters now is internet exposure and buzz.
For good candidates that can be almost free, for shit candidates that can cost over a billion dollars even against someone as hated as trump. And Bernie showed us that even with small donors, you can run a pretty big campaign.
A third party president only takes getting people on the same page.
Political change is rarely slow and gradual, shit happens quick, even though the people who were in power always says change will take forever right up till it happens
Disclaimer- I know about the Dixie Flip and how the parties are not what they were a hundred years ago. However you said every Democrat. I am legally obligated to mention this.
Abraham Lincoln.
Don't forget Rough-Ridin' Trust-Bustin' National-Parks-foundin' Teddy "Bull Moose" Roosevelt
Don't forget Obama's work on a 2015 stimulus for the international Doctors without Borders program that allowed the construction of a brand new hospital in Kunduz, saving countless lives!
For more information, Google "2015 Kunduz Doctors without Borders"
God, go back to fucking Reddit.
yeah, I am quickly walking towards the door here, because these are the posts that get the most engagement, and quite obviously nothing about this platform has solved the core problems at the heart of reddit. Ooh, avoid the IPO, federation is so nice, sure, whatever, but then everything is still a horrible echo chamber where there's no room for nuance. Maybe even more of an echo chamber than previously, because of federation, I dunno, hard to tell. Makes me want to not be here, though.
Yeah, it's a fucking cesspool of ideological nonsense here.
Lol, ok Trumper
How on earth can that be construed as a "Trumper" statement? He really does live rent free in your head, doesn't he?
bro is working overtime 😭
It's no wonder your generation is seen as such a fucking waste if you think typing "go back to fucking reddit" is A.) a Trump biased statement and B.) that it constitutes "working overtime" in such pursuits. Start rubbing the two brain cells you have left in an attempt to create enough static electricity to fire the one neuron you have remaining.
A) you're getting pressed over a single fucking comment
B) you're replying to any reply that is even remotely critical of trump
C) i only have one brain cell left, thank you very much
D) get off my dick or buy me lunch
Fragile ego much? jfc.
nah i just like taking the piss whenever i can lmao
tell me with a straight face your life is better off under Biden than 4 years ago. or 8 years ago under Obama. This "meme" is so fucking stupid acting like no republican did anything good, or that no democrat did anything bad. If you believe that you're a fucking idiot that can't be helped.
Don't be blind.... Every President gets more money for rich people in some way or another. Some just also try to help the little man sometimes.
All presidents kinda suck....you can't get to that level of power without some compromise of character
Here are Clinton's claimed achievements. It's a lot more than "the deficit". There's a reason why he was reelected:
https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-01.html
Clinton ushered in the era of the neoliberal democrats, after a series of genuinely good ones like JFK and Carter, and ones like LBJ that might have been murderers abroad but at least were aggressively progressive at home. (I know, JFK killed a bunch of people too)
I'm not saying Clinton was bad necessarily; he was certainly better than more Republicans, but he wasn't a mostly affirmatively good thing like Obama or Biden have been. The pre-internet picture of the world that most voters had was radically more conservative than today's view (in a way that's honestly hard to remember now that non-establishment news is a normal thing). I think as a result of that blinkered view, candidates too far on the left were just getting their ass kicked in the election over and over again, so maybe it was the right thing for him to do to move to the right. But even some of the stuff on that list of achievements is sinister neoliberal shenanigans (more police, less people on welfare after welfare-to-work, etc). Income at the top went up, but income inequality continued to skyrocket under Clinton's economic policies pretty much exactly as it had under Reagan's.
And yet people's lives haven't improved much, if at all, in quite some time. The war machine is also still marching forward; we spend billions on things that don't actually improve the lives of the average person. Both sides of the aisle are bought and you can't just ignore that. With all of that said, I'm still voting for Biden, but only because I'm forced to due to how unbelievably fucked our system is.
Kennedy also got us into Vietnam. Just saying.
IIRC Kennedy was more just doing it to keep the french from doing something stupid, Johnson was the one who kicked it into full gear
Phew, I bet those Viet Cong feel pretty silly that they fought for their lives after learning that.
TBF they literally won a total war against the greatest military powers back to back and built the foundation for one of the rising stars of the region today.
Something like 90% home ownership rates, a HOT labor market, low cost of living, incredible food, a friendly and honest culture, 4.4% poverty rate, a serious effort to improve development metrics (universal healthcare, literacy rate, maternal care, etc)…
Sure sounds like the fight was worth it compared to how the US-aligned developing countries turned out.
Yeah, who would want to be a shithole like South Korea or Taiwan? /s
The fight of Vietnam against American occupation was correct on its own merits - namely, that of the morality of national self-determination. Trying to bring in other criteria doesn't strengthen the point, and can very well weaken it.
Almost got us into a nuclear war, too
Sounds good - get it on my ballot, I'll vote for it.
Fun copypasta.
Ok but this is not balanced because you didn't list all the great things Trump has in store:
The definitive end of democracy
ww3
all money that's left goes to billionaires
hopefully the end of humanity
Nobody left to incriminate him with anything
huge wins
nobody has ever seen wins such as this
anybody? Hello?
You left out
It depends at which point it applies.
If it's after Trump ghoul comes out from his vault, I'm not sure it works.
You forgot:
Johnson: Eliminate Poverty
Nixon: Burglary and coverup
Ford: Swine Flu vaccination
Carter: Egypt/Israel peace agreement
Even though I agree with the sentiment, and being a very extreme leftist myself, this is cartoonishly lopsided.
This will not convince anyone. Have fun preaching to the choir I guess, it is a pointless endeavor 🤷🏻♀️
If we want to turn people away from them, it will take more than pointing out that they’re evil, however true it may be. (And don’t misunderstand me, it is very true)
Why isn't the Peace Corps a good thing JFK did and why is only one Bush listed?
And for that matter why skip LBJ with Civil Rights? Or Carter with nascent attempts to address Clime change?
Bush and Bush Jr both fed the war machine
Yup, totally the same.
-insert The Office meme here-
_ Corporate wants you to tell the difference between the two parties.
_ American: They are the same party.
I love how you just continue to insist on being wrong despite reality
Dawg you cant be serious. They both want more money for rich people 💀
Trump wants to win because he is a narcissist and really needs a few get out of jail free cards.
Sure seems like bOtH SiDeZ have started blatantly lying for their propoganda, and are trying their damnedest to villify the other by pretending that they are perfect. If you're demanding unquestioning loyalty, you're a fascist regardless of your label.
Bush: More money for rich People, killing a bunch of brown people, try to be be even more of a global disaster as dear old dad (was close but too incompetent to do it)
Obama: More money for rich people, killing a bunch of brown people
Trump: More money for rich people, killing a bunch of brown people, destroying democracy, treason, try to be even more of a global disaster as Reagan (was close but too incompetent to do it, there's always next time)
Biden: More money for rich people, killing a bunch of brown people
I think this is the most accurate take I’ve read so far
Now do one where you show who were the majority holders of each respective legislative house.
You're not going to like what happened during Gingrich
Infrastructure was done under every president but Trump and is normal functioning governance.
Corporate subsidy and monopolization of EV market
Corporate subsidy for MIC
Not actually loan Reform, college is more expensive than ever
Drug pricing might be the only novel and just good thing going on this list. But it's certainly not stacking up to ACA and Zero Deficit Budgeting.
Yet another bad faith meme trying to make Biden look more friendly to the average American than he is.
In other news today we found out he never meant for Palestine to have it's own state. That was all lies. We know this because the cables leaked showing the US trying their damnedest to get other countries to vote against Palestinian Statehood. This couldn't possibly be a distraction from that, right guys?
I'm thinking about killing myself by jumping off a tall building, but I don't think I have the courage.
Well in case this isn't a joke going over my head, you probably have more to live for than you realize :)
Unfortunately it's not a joke. You're probably right but it doesn't feel like it today.
My last attempt was about 10 years ago. It started to dramatically improve about a year later, then another year saw more improvement, and so on. Eventually I got on the right antidepressant and honestly my life is pretty freaking good now. Hell, I'm about to be a dad.
You could not have convinced me it would get better a decade ago.
Dumb luck saved me. Please don't be like me back then.
I'm not sure what to do, really. It would be great if things did start improving.
I would look at resources in your area. If there is a prevention hotline where you live, they can usually offer better advice than I can.
Outside of that, what really helped me was accepting that my brain was trying to attack itself, and that I needed to be aware it was fucking with my perception of reality.
If your brain is doing bad chemistry, sometimes meds are the only thing that can help. I forget to take mine sometimes, and when I do it is usually a week before the old feelings start coming back. Talk to a doctor.
Been there. You start regretting it half way down
https://988lifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now/
If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the 988 Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States.
Directory The 988 Lifeline is available for everyone, is free, and confidential. See below for additional crisis services and hotlines.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 988 Text 988
Please don't.
There are innocent people walking below, and even if you don't hit any of them you'll traumatize them for life.
Unfortunately, while true, this will usually not mean much to someone in this state of mind.
He's also going to fix all ice cream machines nationwide.
If anyone's interested in actually good stuff Trump signed, two things off the top of my head are Right To Try Act and the Second Chance Act. He also opposed the renewal of the Patriot Act.
The First Step Act he signed reauthorized the Second Chance Act, which was Obama. Still a good thing though.
What, Trumpers have to lie about good things he did?
No way!
Interesting, I didn't know that, thanks for clarifying!
Y'all left off "enabling genocide" for Biden. should definitely be before saving democracy.
Edit: also, you can't save something if it's already destroyed.
You really got downvoted for this? Lol, Lemmy is pretty fucking stupid.
Lowering admission standards is not helping the country, is dumbing it down.
I mean usually if you wanted to jerk off in front of other people, you'd pay like, an e-girl to watch you do it and give maybe a live football commentary or whatever. Guess shitposting also works though
Facebook leftist grandpa type meme
There isn't a leftist on earth praising Biden for "saving democracy"
This isn't even close to leftism lmao
I'm convinced that Lemmy is riddled with Russian bot farms trying to stir up shit. I'm mostly democrat and believe Biden is a net good over Trump, but I won't delude myself into thinking they care about me personally. How-fucking-ever, Trump is a literal threat to our democracy and if we can't rally against him by rallying for Biden, we're absolutely fucked. And you morons are just giving into this extreme lefty rhetoric because of people like Hasan? That mother fucker is a millionaire and lives like one too.
Lemmy is a worse echo chamber than reddit. I was proud when I came here during the API-bullshit and supported Sync for Lemmy but I can't do this shit any more. I'm actually embarrassed to come here and read all this anti Biden shit while you guys complain about roe v wade being overturned, billionaires (which trump made the biggest tax cuts in history to), Israel (which is somehow Biden's fault? 🤣).
I believe this post, OP. Whether you're trolling or not. Everyone else can go fuck yourselves. Go ahead and ban this one too, mods. Since we're not living in an echo chamber.
Don't you know if a president doesn't want to lick daddy Stalin's blood-strained boots they're no better than Hitler? Clearly, none of these facts matter.
Edit: either y'all don't understand sarcasm or tankies are pissed and I can't tell which.
It's the latter
You left 'exterminating Palestinians' off that last one.
I think it's only listed if it's different than the opposing party.
For Biden it's only an acceptable outcome (for some godforsaken fuckin reason which I won't defend in the slightest)
For Trump, punishing brown people is a core value he makes a priority of. Remember Muslim ban / family separation / moving the embassy to Jerusalem / "finish the job"?
Hi, Palestinian American here, stop fetishizing our corpses as an excuse to let the guy who wants the genocide to come here too into office.
Badna N3aesh.
Edit: fuckin' love the full mask off reply of
"The genocide of your people isn't about your people!"
Whitest bougeyvik bullshit I have ever witnessed put to keyboard, PoC aren't even allowed ownership of being genocided anymore if whitey doesn't like how we decide to respond to it.
So you’re not gonna answer anymore huh? I can only assume that you’re a second generation immigrant and you’re not capable of actually speaking, let alone reading or writing in Arabic. If you’re indeed Palestinian go ask your parents what I wrote lmao. Machine translation is not gonna help you.
Assuming that YOU indeed are who you claim, let me tell you something. Unlike you I actually grew up in Palestine and I’m Palestinian first. You seem to be first of all American and this whole Palestine thing is more of a thing where in high school you bring some Hommos and celebrate diversity. But we’re not some illusion of your assumed identity. We are real people living real lives, and we’re dying and being oppressed right now. This is happening at the hands of a genocidal maniac armed and supported by the current president Joe Biden. Many of my relatives and friends have died, my family has been displaced and lives in diaspora.
Since you’re mainly American you won’t understand this, but if Biden isn’t willing to give up his die hard Zionist stance, we’re not gonna vote for him. If Trump wins the election and the US becomes a dictatorship, we will go somewhere else. We have left our lives behind and we’re prepared to do it again. And we’re not going to sacrifice ourselves because people like you are too afraid to give up their cushy American lifestyle.
Thanks for saying this. The comments are crazy. Like it would be more convenient if you could be genocided after the election, because you know this genocide is kind of in the way of some other domestic issues we’re having. So if you could just let Biden have this one until after the election that’d be great.I take back everything. This guy makes no sense and I completely misunderstood the comment. And I don’t think he speaks Arabic but claims to speak for Palestinian Americans. L take.
No I'm talking about you.
Those "other domestic issues" is the other guy wanting to bring the genocide here that you seem to have glossed over.
Palestinian corpses are not a set piece for white leftists to ignore their duty to mitigate harm in the US and still feel like they get to play ally at all the grammable marches and rallies.
You'll not find one Palestinian American who thinks Biden is a good president right now, and you'll just as soon find one who won't look at you like a complete moron for thinking letting Trump win over it would be of any help to our cause in the slightest, in fact, they'd probably assume you were an Israeli agent agitating on Bibi's behalf. Who else would side against keeping Trump out of office after he gave Israel a free hand on The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and The Golan Heights?
Edit: claims to be Arab, but swears they and all their totally Arabic family members are gonna let Trump win because "but Dems bad too!" When Trump brings the genocide here, Palestinians will remember all the help "Arabs" such as yourself showed us by laying the red carpet out for him.
Either you're a liar or a knowing collaborator, either way you are no ally to Palestinians here in America, nor are you any help to them in the homeland.
Go ahead keeping on feeling righteous about letting fascism win to "punish" people you've probably ranted a hundred times now would rather lose than let a progressive win, meaning Trump winning is literally just giving them what they want in your backwards line of thinking..
عفكرة ما حدا غير انا وإياك رح يقرأ ايش بتكتب وبالصراحة بتحكيلي انو مش مصدق انو أنا عربي بس بشوفكش ترد غير انو كتبت بدنا نعيش… طب ماشي عايشين بس كيف بتعيش أهل غزة… احنا مستقبلنا ولا بيدن ولا الترمب رح يتحسن علينا و وأولاد عمنا رح يخلصو شغلهم قبل ما أي حد عندو فرصة لغير اشي
احكيلي كمان مرة انو أنا ندل وجاسوس بس انت مقاومتك انك بتساعد لبيدين عن جد؟ مش عارف وينتا جيت على أمريكا ووينتا اخير مرة بقيت انت بالبلاد بس تحكيش عني أو عن اهلي أو صحابي إذا بدك تمص لإلي احتلنا وقتلنا ولو سمحت رد علي بالعربي إذا عروبتك على هالدرج انك بتعرف مين عربي ومين لا هيك عالسريع
وأنا عربي يا زلمه بعرفش مع مين بتحكي بس ولا حدا من حواليي بدو الترمب يفوز وبنفس الوقت ولا واحد منهم رح ينخب لبيدن
None of my relatives, Palestinian / Arab / muslim friends is gonna vote for Biden. And none of them want Trump to win. In the end the same people who are now refusing to vote for Biden aren‘t in America because that was always the dream. We ended up here because of the geopolitical games and the support of the settler colonial Zionist project that forced us to abandon our homes because there’s no future. And if my relatives who died from American and European ammunition could have lived if Biden had stopped them, I’m not gonna keep him in power.
It’s up to the DNC to act according to the will of their voters. Voting now for Biden will send exactly what message, that he can get away with facilitating a genocide and that our lives are unimportant compared to the bigger picture? And for the record, I don’t know anyone who’d vote for trump. People will simply stay at home or vote third party.
Everyone would have wanted a different outcome, but it’s just impossible to ask me or anyone to put a cross for the murderer of our families.
It's not just about you guys. If we let this slide then our laws about not supporting human rights violations are a dead letter. We have important domestic reasons for holding Biden's feet to the fire.
Oh good, our laws about not supporting human rights violations will TOTALLY be stronger with Trump in office. Thanks.
They aren't going to stay strong if we don't defend them either though. They can become a dead letter under the Democrats too.
Yeah, forgive me for not seeing "Well, if we contribute to Biden's defeat, MAYBE next time, after the Trumpist genocide here in the States is done and if we get a democracy again, we won't tolerate genocide abroad, because THIS time there will be PRECIDENT for giving power to fascism if the politicians don't listen to less than half of their own party on foreign policy!" as a particularly appealing line of reasoning.
Wait, you think Trump is going to commit genocide in the US? Lmao. That's a new level even for Biden die hards.
Imagine hating LGBT people this much.
Da.
bUt gEnOciDE!!!!!
Geez...how could anyone care about genocide. Were gonna possibly get negotiated drug prices. That's the real deal.
Everyone cares about genocide, just not everyone is dumb enough to think that a president of another country has the ability to stop it from happening.
And before you go off and dumb shit about how he’s supplying them with arms, go ahead and look up how much arms they already had before this started, and how what Biden is sending is pretty much irrelevant in comparison.
Do you have any idea about the nature of the existence of Israel? Iran hates them, Irak hates them, Syria hates them, Lebanon hates them, Egypt and the Saudis hold up their noses because they're pragmatic enough to look the other way as long as that gets them the favor of the US. It's a tiny country with a small population which viability as a state is dependent on several European and North American countries being willing to give them full military support. If the US threatens them with a blockade, it would be possible to negotiate Palestinian statehood (not just stopping the genocide) within weeks, and a two state solution would no longer be a pipe dream. Instead, the US has been protecting them from any potential reprisal against their crimes.
There are great arguments about why you should vote for Biden, but flaunting this much ignorance is certainly not doing his camp any favors.
And accusing him of genocide isn’t helping either.
EvErYoNe cArEs aBoUt gEnOcIdE!
If you want "both sidez", both sides supports the federal reserves which directly robs the poor and middle class and has been doing it for decades. But sure, taxes on the rich are really the problem!
Deep cut!
I can point to how the federal reserve is harming the poor and middle class, and I think its important to recognize when your own side is fucking them.
Is anyone buying these lib propaganda memes? Carter is the one the screwed over the economy.
Carter, who was President for 4 Years Screwed up the economy by liberalizing the housing market
Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush Sr, who ran the White House for 20 years had nothing to do with it
Please nobody ask what inflation was like between 1968 and 1992
Yeah, it's probably better to go back to a lot of FDRs policies.
Or the bipartisan effort to keep house prices by any means necessary. Such as by giving everyone who a fairly low interest home loan , which directly led to 2008.
You think 2008 was the result of low interest rates?
No, guaranteed loans. If everyone can get a loan interest loan, it doesn't really matter to them if a house costs $200,000 or $400,000 spread out across 30 years. So home prices just continue to inflate. The loan interest rates and guaranteed loans are the reason prices got so high in the first place, the collapse of this scheme by flying too close to the sun with repealing Glass-Steagal is what lit the fuse in 2008. But they've got their plan back on track now.
A necessity in a society whose economy operates via credit expansion.
If you've ever had to pay a mortgage note, you'll discover that it matters substantively. The real benefit of the 30 year note isn't the scale but the fixed interest rate. Once you find a house you can afford, rising rates of pay relative to a fixed rate of interest means the real house note costs decrease over time.
Prices for housing vary substantively by region and by density. Housing prices in neighborhoods with low rates of development continued to be cheap well into the early 2000s. Housing prices in the suburbs and exurbs - particularly for new builds - are consistently cheaper than in the urban centers where real estate is scarce.
If you check out the Austin, TX real estate market during the Carter to Clinton period, housing was incredibly cheap and abundant. It wasn't until the construction boom in the mid-00s that prices began to climb, and the rate of climb outpaced most of the continental US well into the Trump/Biden era. That had nothing to do with "guaranteed loans" under Carter and everything to do with Austin developers quickly maxing out available real estate development area easily accessible from the freeways. Same thing happened in DC and Virginia, after Amazon moved in. Housing speculation boomed, completely apart from individual credit.
You can see the reverse in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois, where the collapse of the auto industry made real estate incredibly cheap. Also in Florida, abet on a much tighter timeline.
And the major driver behind all of these price fluctuations has been private equity investment in residential real estate
This has nothing to do with Carter and everything to do with three men by the names Gramm, Leech, and Biley.
Is anyone buying these right wing trolls pretending to be leftists?
Yeah libs keep trying to pretend to be leftists, its annoying.
Liberals you mean?
Everyone who disagrees with Stalin is a liberal.
Lol, lib propaganda, ok Trumper