Sorry to beat the same drum in a short amount of time, but this is where thinking Biden wasn’t doing enough has led. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all. Explicit calls for ethnic cleansing were at least not on the table with the last administration.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    13 days ago

    Sure biden wouldn’t have explicitly called for ethnic cleansing but he was and would continue sending them all the bombs they needed to do it while supporting all of their propaganda. The only difference is rhetoric and speed.

    Why are you angry at the voters who “failed the party” and not at the party for failing to attract voters?

    • millie@beehaw.org
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      13 days ago

      It’s not my fault I shot myself in the foot. Someone should have provided me with a better pair of shoes.

      No I can’t be bothered to take up cobbling.

        • millie@beehaw.org
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          13 days ago

          No. They’re supposed to be a means for us to make intelligent decisions that keep the world from being as bad as it possibly could be. They’re a means of exerting our influence other than spilling blood.

          Is it better when they represent us? Yes. Is it better when we have access to politicians who actually have a substantial moral compass and aren’t swayed by money? Absolutely.

          But does that mean that if we don’t have that we should throw childish fits and sabotage our own world in response? Absolutely not.

          Want to know a good way to make sure that politicians actually focus on representing the interests of their electorate?

          …Become a politician and do it. Put your money where your mouth is. Instead of having a tantrum and letting the worst possible person literally light the government on fire, go be the change you want to see.

          Or, if you’re not willing to do that, use your intelligence to make the world as good as you can with the limited power that you have instead of lying on the ground kicking and screaming because nobody’s doing it for you.

          • LukeZaz@beehaw.org
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            12 days ago

            I could tell you about the mistakes and crimes the Democrats have committed, here, but I don’t think that’s worthwhile; you probably already know what I’d say. So instead, I’ll ask this: How many evil, horrible things do the Democrats have to do before you decide that voting for them alone isn’t working?

            I suspect the answer is that there is no such point so long as the Republicans are worse. In that, they hold you and those like you hostage, and can operate with impunity; there’s no reason to change or improve when they know you’ll vote for them regardless. They are not making “intelligent decisions that keep the world from being as bad as it possibly could be,” they are enabling the backslide of society into hell because they benefit from it.

            If the Democrat establishment wanted to make the world better, Trump would be in prison right now, and barred from holding office. They don’t, and he isn’t.

            Maybe you should be upset at them for that.

            • millie@beehaw.org
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              12 days ago

              Literally none of that changes the self-destructive stupidity of letting Trump get into office.

              It isn’t about whether the Democrats are exemplary or even decent. It’s about the actual result of your actions. Are the Democrats to blame for failing to act, for failing to prevent a second term, and for all the other mistakes and capitulations they’re guilty of? Absolutely. Does that absolve voters of responsibility? Not even a little bit.

              At the end of the day, voters still decided that they were willing to let others suffer. They decided that Palestinians don’t matter, that health care doesn’t matter, that trans rights don’t matter, that immigrants don’t matter, that the environment doesn’t matter, that access to food and housing doesn’t matter, that reproductive rights don’t matter, and on and on and on, because it’s more important to send a message that they don’t approve of the Democrats.

              Everyone who spread the narrative that they’re no different is complicit in everything Trump does, because this is what you chose. This is the supposed lack of difference. This is what you said doesn’t matter and isn’t important.

              Nothing you say about the Democrats will wash the blood from your hands.

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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        13 days ago

        Now you see the problem here is I never expected better shoes, I knew damn well no one would give them to me. I also despise the insinuation that the democrats provided protection of any kind

      • TanyaJLaird@beehaw.org
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        12 days ago

        “No, this pair of shoes must be better, it’s from that brand I like! I know it’s made of cardboard and duct tape, but I swear, it’s from that brand I like, so it has to be better!”

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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        13 days ago

        My apologies, that wasn’t a quote it was meant to imply sarcasm. I was saying failed the party in a facetious sense because I don’t believe anyone actually failed them.

        • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.orgOP
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          13 days ago

          The Democratic Party failed with their lurch toward neoliberalism in the '90s in the face of Gingrich. NAFTA was virulently antilabour, and things didn’t get better from there, with the next domino being WTO shit.

  • bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    13 days ago

    Letting them destroy the whole place was step 1. I guess everybody’s seen the pictures.

    “Thinking Biden didn’t do enough led us here” is an insane thing to say. Voting for Trump led us to step 2. You’re not even sure the people you are blaming did vote for Trump, are you? Stop the blame game and focus.

    • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.orgOP
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      13 days ago

      I’m not here to defend the prior administration. I just find it almost comical that anyone thought Trump would be an improvement if not for the drastic outcomes we’re going to see. Bluntly, I think he wants the strip cleared out so that he and the Kushners can get some cheap real estate. The only thing that matters to him is self enrichment.

      If you believe this is an improvement, that’s certainly your right, but I don’t see it.

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        13 days ago

        I just find it almost comical that anyone thought Trump would be an improvement if not for the drastic outcomes we’re going to see.

        OK…just to make sure I understand you correctly - the people you’re mad at, are people who either voted for Trump, or didn’t vote at all, because of their opinions about Biden’s response to the genocide in Gaza.

        if that’s accurate, two questions:

        a) what is your estimate for the size of that group of people?

        b) how many actual individual people in that group can you identify by name? how many do you know personally? (vs having read a news story quoting them)

        • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.orgOP
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          13 days ago

          Counterpoint: What’s the relevance of either of those questions for an election that happened three months ago? I don’t like relitigating unspooled events.

          You’re welcome to your opinion that Biden or Harris would have been worse, but the facts don’t bear that out at all. I’m not mad at people; I’m somewhat surprised Pikachu that anyone thought this would not be the net result and vote accordingly.

          Projecting your political beliefs and rationales on others is not Beeing Nice. Your takeaway is not at all what I said, no matter how much you’d like it to be.

          • spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org
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            13 days ago

            What’s the relevance of either of those questions for an election that happened three months ago? I don’t like relitigating unspooled events.

            my brother in Cthulhu, you started this post by saying:

            this is where thinking Biden wasn’t doing enough has led.

            you should decide if you’re for or against re-litigating things

            Projecting your political beliefs and rationales on others is not Beeing Nice.

            meanwhile, one paragraph above, you’re projecting an opinion onto me that I don’t have:

            You’re welcome to your opinion that Biden or Harris would have been worse

      • TanyaJLaird@beehaw.org
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        12 days ago

        I don’t think many people actually thought Trump would be an improvement, aside from the Christian nationalists.

        When your life is misery, a chance, any chance, no matter how small, can often be or at least seem worth it. Rents are through the roof, pay is stagnant, health insurance is complete scam, and people have lost any hope of improving their lives. For tens of millions of people, the probability of them ever actually improving their lot in life is next to zero.

        Someone comes along and says, “I’ll smash the current order to pieces and reshuffle the entire deck.”

        Imagine you’re a person in desperate straits. You think that overall, that potential leader will be a net negative society. But in the current system, the probability of anything improving in your life is zero. With a complete shuffling of the societal deck, well your odds aren’t great, but they are non-zero. You’re not going to end up an oligarch, but maybe you’ll be one of the minority that ends up slightly better off. After all, some ordinary German citizens did actually materially benefit from the Nazis. Most didn’t, but some got lucky.

        This is why many people aside from Christian nationalists voted for Trump. The saw him as someone would would come along and knock over the Jenga tower of the existing sociopolitical order. They knew that the odds of their life being directly improved by this were slim. But they thought a slim chance was still there. And if nothing else, it would punish the bastards who have been keeping them down for years.

        This is the fatal flaw with milquetoast Democratic centrism. It ignores that if you go long enough without actually helping millions of people who really need help, eventually those desperate people will vote to burn it all down out of sheer spite.

        Is such a vote rational? No. But human beings are not rational. Human beings are not perfect utilitarian optimization engines. They vote with their hearts and souls, with both hope and rage. And that is what Democrats have repeatedly failed to realize.

  • spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org
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    13 days ago

    Explicit calls for ethnic cleansing were at least not on the table with the last administration.

    Trump: we should ethnically cleanse Gaza

    Democrats: 👏 HIRE 👏 MORE 👏 FEMALE 👏 GENOCIDE 👏 DENYING 👏 PRESS 👏 SECRETARIES 👏

    • LukeZaz@beehaw.org
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      12 days ago

      Man, I don’t even say this shit about people who actually did vote for Trump, let alone on a forum made 90% up of people who voted against him!

      I recommend working on your empathy game, yeah? We’re supposed to be working towards a world where people don’t get hurt, not one where the people getting hurt are the ones you don’t like.

    • araneae@beehaw.org
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      13 days ago

      The answer to violence or evil committed by a subset of semitic people is not antisemitism.

        • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.orgOP
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          13 days ago

          I’m so fucking sick of people not understanding what the words they’re lobbing mean. Of course Palestinians are Semitic. Everyone in the Middle East with minor exceptions is. And having had Palestinian friends over the years, they aren’t against Israel existing as a concept; they’d just like some (proportion varies) of their land back and to be treated with dignity. I don’t see that as a huge ask.

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    12 days ago

    Except… just not to.

    Maybe the golden toilet guy doesn’t understand, but you can endure unpleasant things. I pretty much believe the people of Gaza will never leave their home alive - many wouldn’t given the chance, and the other Arab countries don’t need more reason than that not to collaborate in taking them in.