“Technically, the United States didn’t get bad, it’s always been bad! It only got worse!” isn’t the flex a lot of leftists think it is.
What’s wrong with the message “We should be doing better, not worse”?
Seems preferable to the “hurt people who also want the things I have” that seems the core of conservatism.
What’s wrong with it is it’s normalizing Donald Trump. Like, actually pointing at Trump and saying “this is normal.” US democracy is on life support, and calling this business-as-usual is like telling people there’s nothing to see here while he yanks and tugs on the plug.
I’m not sure I understand.
Saying “We can do better than Trump/Fascism/Corruption/Kleptocracy” seems far from normalising the current state?
Saying we can do better than trump/fascism is not what the OP is implying. The op is implying what were are doing now is the same as what we have done before. We can acknowledge that we’ve done bad before, but now it’s for sure way worse. I agree with Bernie that now is way worse than before
The point is it isn’t really worse. Yet, anyway. He’s only been president for a few weeks so obviously it can get worse.
But right now, Trump is about as bad as every other president. Bad in different ways, of course, but they all belong in prison.
I disagree. No president has ever abandoned a democratic ally to invasion by an imperialist dictator for such petty, malicious reasons.
They might all belong in prison, but that’s like saying a shoplifter is just as bad as a serial killer.
The only reason Trump has this opportunity to screw over Ukraine is because Biden kept the war going. The previous administration pressured Ukraine to keep the war going instead of entering negotiations over territory back when Russia was in a much worse position than it is now.
The reason? At the time it appeared that the war was an opportunity to weaken Russia and let them to waste blood and treasure on an unwinnable quagmire.
Years later all they accomplished was killing more Ukrainians and Russia is stronger than ever. Biden got Ukraine here, even if Trump is the one to finish them off.
The only reason Trump has this opportunity to screw over Ukraine is because Biden kept the war going.
Some DARVO shit right here.
DARVO shit would be blaming Ukraine, which is what Trump does.
I’m blaming the imperial power that provoked the war in the first place and then stopped negotiations from taking place and never gave Ukraine enough aid to actually win outright. The plan was always to hurt Russia, not help Ukraine. They’re the victims in all this.
The US has a lot of responsibility for the war going on this long. All presidents are criminals.
I’m blaming the imperial power that provoked the war in the first place
So, Russia?
Russia was not justified in its invasion, but let’s not pretend the goal is just to steal land. They need a buffer state from NATO or it’s only a matter of time until they get the Libya treatment. This is to protect Russians, unfortunately Ukrainians got used as pawns to threaten them when their government was overthrown by a Western coup i.e. imperialism.
To fact check the fact check: There doesn’t seem to be a list of “dictatorships” on the Freedom house website. Interesting that they’re missing a link to that source isn’t it? Their point hinges on a listing from some website I’ve never heard of and they don’t link to it? A little sus.
Freedom house does have a listing of countries that are “free”, “not free”, and “partly free” here: https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores
Note that Israel is considered a free country, and Gaza and the West Bank are listed as “not free”. So the methodology of used by the fact checker would consider providing aid to countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey would count against the US while giving aid to Israel would be a positive. Providing aid to Palestine would be a double negative as the West Bank and Gaza are counted separately.
Also note that Ukraine is listed as “Partly Free” so I’m not sure whether the fact-checker is labeling Ukraine as a “dicatorship”. Trump called Zelenskyy a dictator, so who knows?
Seems to me the fact checker was just cooking the books to promote a narrative that what Trump is doing is the status quo. Trump is surrendering to a dictatorship that’s a threat to a great many democracies. It’s not at all comparable to providing aid to a country that has shitty leaders, but shitty leaders that will fight against ISIS and/or al Qadea. If those groups were successful it would not increase freedom in they countries they exist in.
And who knows who the fact-checker is? Elon Musk controls everything on that site.
This is not fact checking. This is gaslighting. The fact that the USA has been supporting dictators for decades does not change or alter what Bernie is saying.
Supporting manufacturing war against Russia without regards to their security concerns, or talking to them, may have been a necessity in loyalty to Biden. Keeping up the charade is definitely not progressive.
Stop drinking the Russian kool aid. This has literally been the Russian gameplan since they knew they couldn’t beat us in a hot war. Psy-ops to turn us anti-globalist is almost literally verbatim the whole plan.
You can accept that the US has done some shady shit that needs to be criticized and not forgotten about, without totally dumping liberal democracy and spewing straight Russian propaganda
Russian kool aid
It is understandable to be pro-war and a total warmonger because growing up in the United States, all the propaganda we hear and are taught since we are born is done to make us not question or critically think about our imperialist ways.
Growing up and learning the non-propaganda history and other views should shift you away from US military propaganda of liking forever wars and the blind nationalism of bringing “democracy” to Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
shady shit
That is a major downplaying and rewriting of the true history of our country.
Here is a small example of what we do to other countries and the only reason we know about this is due to it being leaked by great people: https://lemmy.world/post/15002828
I suggest reading up on the military leaks and many more independent journalists, fewer legacy media viewpoints; the major ones are Julian Assange and Edward Snowden leaks.
Russian propaganda
You do know that people can come to the same conclusion without needing others to tell us what to think or being tricked into seeing the world a certain way…
I suggest learning about the Uhuru Three and the Uhuru Movement: https://lemmy.world/post/23366029
I got reminded of a song: dead prez - They School | https://lemmy.world/post/26450948
Bud you are talkin’ to the wroooong person. The MAGA movement repeatedly claimed Trump is the anti-war president
Check OP’s profile. They are explicitly pushing the Russian view that NATO and the US are encroaching on Russia
I’m not trying to downplay and I apologize if I comes off that way, but if you stop being a bad actor or playing devil’s advocate for the sake of it, we’re obviously not talking about the US’s crimes right now or of course we can start a list. We have to have a degree of focus in conversations
Care to explain the Uhuru relevance? You are bordering on bad actor territory, seemingly to imply that it is not true that folks in the US are Russian agents. Did you drink the kool aid?
Look up “Foundations of Geopolitics” and “Project Russia” – when you look at their own words of wanting to dismantle us from within via propaganda and turning us anti-globalist and understand that every investigation (all of them Republican led) found Russian interference in the election to Trump’s benefit, only unable to find further crimes due to Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the investigations
And now we are explicitly refusing to back Ukraine and are seemingly turning to drop sanctions on Russia… by a President alleged to, if nothing else, have been financed by Russian money since the 80s when his casino was crashing
You may be unwilling to accept Trump is directly a Russian agent, but to deny that we are in this situation partially due to Russia never truly dropping the Cold War is beyond stupidity at this point. It is outright denial of reality
They are explicitly pushing the Russian view that NATO and the US are encroaching on Russia
US started the war and wanted it continued as long as possible. Diminish Russia to the last Ukrainian. Denying that reality, while clinging to a return to it to this day does not make your propaganda true, by calling reality the Russian view.
War on Russia is not just evil, it is stupid and has made them stronger instead of weaker. War on everyone is evil, including manipulating democracy such that all the progressive options are warmongering pro US empire evil. Among the top 3 sycophantic depravity acts of Trudeau, is a response to an unjustified war on Canada by US, to support unjustified US war on Mexico by agreeing to terrorist designation of cartels.
As completely evil as Republicans are, if they get to focus on the issue of neocon warmongering derangement evil of their opposition, that becomes an easy win for them, because that is the single greatest evil of all, and rabidly returning to Empire is neither progressive, nor possible to balance progressive mandates with the megalomania. Those European moderates/progressives CIA/neocon puppets now rabidly tripling down on a losing war by sacrificing social spending for either direct war on Russia, or begging to buy extortion priced weapons from US so that it returns to NATO and Ukrainian nazification.
World peace does not happen through propagandizing far better leaders than our own who contain oligarchy and US empire control over democracy as being evil. The result is this incoherent unprincipled hate as supposedly being inclusive of progressiveness.
Be quiet, Russian/Russian bootlicker. No one wants your lies and poison here.
“Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism neoliberal GLOBALIST Western hegemony”
Released in 1997. Became Russian military doctrine and evolved into Project Russia
If Russia does not want war, tell Russia to fuck off. We are at war with Russia because Russia remains at war with us.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Edit: also to be very clear - this Russian author still works for & produces works that are all very Russia centric and 100% in line with this book. This is not something that was planted and went away. This IS how Russia operates. You can see this for yourself, you really don’t have to trust me. Just don’t trust these bad actors.
“Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism neoliberal GLOBALIST Western hegemony”
I’ll read the link.
Democracy is so appreciated because it is the easiest vector for oligarchy, zionism, and US empire to control nations. Much of that control is to align demonism against “axis of resistance”. That democracy can include parties that oppose US hegemony or enjoy divisiveness, and can outsource or amplify any divisive or PEACE message, is part of democracy. But hysteria over foreign interference that is not US or Israel, just makes it easier for a democracy to be a completely unanimously subservient colonty to US and Israel.
If Russia does not want war, tell Russia to fuck off. We are at war with Russia because Russia remains at war with us.
1997 was period of Russia’s most corrupt democratic stooge for CIA interests. So still interested in link. Despite US love for Yeltsin, Russia could understand that US has always wanted to destroy it, and that it would need to participate in information/propaganda war.
This is the 2nd comment I received in last few minutes emphasizing that a kenetic war on Russia is justified because they participate in the disinformation of democracy. Corrupt evil by heads of state and their state aligned media, with force CIA written articles, are justified because there exists low reach click farms that may or may not have FSB funding. It is still extreme idiocy to think that kenetic threats to Russia, and childish propaganda lies, is a path to stop what you accuse Russia of, and definitely in hindsight, had the slightest chance of actually diminishing Russia instead of destroying yourselves.
Instead of interpreting my statements against demonic evil as pro-Russia, consider them as anti-stupid.
The good thing about all this is that once Trump is done, and one day he will be done, the next guy who follows can finally build something good from the ground up
Chabging how American elections work, for example, has always been impossible. After this shit show, the pieces that are left will be broken enough to rebuild something good
Americans will NEVER accept more than two parties.
Sadly it’s what you need so that the whole country won’t flip-flop every 4 years. One 10-15 congressman party who the major parties need to make concessions to
With ranked choice voting, they would.
Which is why the two major parties will never support it.
It got through in Maine and Alaska. I am very disappointed on the loss in Nevada, but hopeful the current two-state foothold gets people more comfortable with the idea enough to support it, or at least not spend energy fighting it, in their state.
I think no more than two parties would dominate, even in a ranked choice system. But they would evolve more representatively: party platforms are shaped by issue polling, with the ballot box being both the ultimate poll but also obscure on what exactly the detailed driving issues are.
Ranked choice voting would give single-issue parties a real seat at the ballot box, and enable the two big parties to more accurately adjust their platforms to target voters who first-choiced a little party and second-choiced one of the big ones.
Right now they don’t have more than two parties not because they don’t want to but basically because they can’t.
Once that would be possible watch everyone vote for who they actually want to vote for. Within no time you’d be seeing dozens of parties pop up
Australia has had ranked choice voting for decades. Wikipedia describes their system as a “mild” two-party system. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Australia
I don’t see any reason the US would have a different outcome. But I believe transitioning from our current “hard” two-party system to a “mild” one would be a huge positive.
The Netherlands always had 10-20 parties.
Maybe Australia should simply push for more parties…more choice is always better
The Netherlands has party-list proportional representation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation
Instant run-off / ranked choice voting is a different system, and where implemented I’m not aware of it leading to many parties. I believe it will make the two parties better, which is still a good and beneficial outcome.
Obama’s human rights record is abysmal. Sure he did a lot of good things too, but not closing Guantanamo, ramping up drone strikes etc negate all of that good. I’ve written him a couple of letters with all of this in detail to which he has yet to respond (no surprise). Instead he’s doing voice over work for shitty documentaries on Netflix.
Yeah Obama hasn’t written me back either!
wtf
When trying to hold your leaders to a higher standard gets you downvotes. Classic.
Obama hasn’t been president for nearly a decade.
And there are a lot of things to criticize him about, but he legitimately tried to close Guantanamo, and was blocked by Republicans (and possibly some Democrats?) over and over.
Sounds like you are on crack, and happy about it.
For the modlog, the comment is made by a user named crackhappy. Also, hi, downvote brigade.
Lol.
Freedom House doesn’t label places as “dictatorships.” So this is suspect right off the bat. They use a “freedom index.”
No doubt the figure from 2015 includes significant support and training to Afghanistan, labeled with a score of 6 out of 100. Does that count as supporting a dictatorship? No.
If we sell weapons to the Saudis to fight Iranian creep, is that supporting dictatorship? Maybe a little. No question of Iran and Saudi, Iran is a much less free and much worse dictatorship. Sometimes that’s just how progress looks.
This “fact check” is at best highly misleading, bordering on false.
Iran is fighting Israel. They are the best country in the Middle East.
Fun to see Democrats simping for Saudi to placate Israel now.
What a simplistic worldview
It’s called a “lesser evil”. Are you not a huge fan of it?
