This is the biggest thing IMO, liberals would rather attack leftists than try to work with them. All this does, however, is convince leftists that they have nothing to gain from siding with liberals and instead trying to build outside pressure.
Liberals would rather defend genocide than join leftists in trying to force Biden’s hand and gain back leftist voters.
I say this as a Leftist likely voting for Biden: Leftists are going third party because Liberals have been blocking all leftward movement, thus alienating leftists from the electoral process. If you want leftist votes, work with leftists, instead of constantly punching left.
Biden’s corporate tax reforms swung Amazon’s taxes from negative $1.2 billion per quarter to positive $1 billion when they took effect at the start of 2023, and they’re currently paying $3 billion per quarter, a comfortable amount more than they’ve ever paid before. Here’s this year’s proposal of what he plans to do to build on top of that. Raising corporate taxes was most of how he funded stuff like the infrastructure bill.
I literally do not see anyone “punching left” outside of the mainstream media. No one on Lemmy is out here saying “these damn protestors if only they would shut up” or anything like that. I see a bunch of people punching Biden, and then other people saying hey, what you said is actually not accurate; for as criminal as his support for Israel is, he’s actually the first pro-working-people president the US has had in many many years.
That’s not “punching left,” that’s refuting the punching that is coming inwards towards the person who is right now the only available alternative to full throated, military-seize-the-voting-machines, shoot-the-protestors, fascism.
You just punched left, lol. Telling leftists that extremely minor shifts within the context of a far-right system are good enough actually, minimizes the voice of leftists. You aren’t going to convince a leftist that Biden is good, for leftists, continuing Capitalism and making no efforts to end it is already enough to not consider a candidate to be good.
If you want to move leftists to your side, it’s far more effective to agree with them that Biden has been continuing liberalism and making no tangible leftist movements. Telling leftists that they should actually be celebrating less than the bare minimum further alienates leftists.
Never said that; in fact you’ll find me several places saying that moving further than Biden would be a great idea, and pointing out that one of the big problems with Trump is that he will very effectively end some of the methods that currently exist whereby real leftwards progress can be made in this country.
You aren’t going to convince a leftist that Biden is good, for leftists, continuing Capitalism and making no efforts to end it is already enough to not consider a candidate to be good.
So we’re moving the goal posts so that Biden has to want to end capitalism before you’ll support him, even against literal Hitler.
Sure, sounds perfectly sane and productive. Sorry for ever punching left by having a different opinion than that.
If you want to move leftists to your side, it’s far more effective to agree with them that Biden has been continuing liberalism and making no tangible leftist movements.
That’s a funny way of spelling “I have no way to disagree with your factual rundown of good things Biden has done, so I’m going to demand that you agree with me, and in particular cease citing any objective facts for why you think what you think, as a precondition of ‘moving to your side’, because facts are punching left.”
I mean I could be right or wrong on this or anything else. But I’m not planning on just agreeing with you on everything and ceasing hurting your feelings by arguing otherwise, so that you’ll become open to “moving to my side.”
You opened up with some unnecessary pro-Biden stances to attempt to make him seem better, no? As for leftward movement, it’s already impossible electorally, which is why I am voting for Biden. That’s my point, really, you would rather gas up a genocide supporter and enabler of fascism than simply take the correct approach and state that leftward change is impossible electorally.
If leftist change was possible electorally, you would be suggesting people vote for a leftist party, like PSL, but because PSL can’t win we must agree that leftist change is impossible.
Yes, Biden indeed needs to be a leftist of some sort before I give any approval to him. I already said I am voting for him, are you telling me I need to also enjoy voting for a genocidal enabler of fascism?
Listing extremely minor concessions within the context of a country absolutely tumbling into fascism to make it seem like things are improving under Biden and not continuing to get worse is a form of punching left, because the purpose is to silence dissent.
You opened up with some unnecessary pro-Biden stances to attempt to make him seem better, no?
So, I went back and re read your initial message carefully. I actually pretty much agree with it – the Hillary Clintons and Nancy Pelosis of the world have been attacking leftists, blocking forward progress, and then blaming the voters when they lose elections because they are more or less even with Reagan politically. There’s nothing really to vote for there, and not voting for open fascism when the alternative is screwing you left and right isn’t really all that appealing.
The reason I responded the way I did is that Biden actually isn’t at all the same as them. If you look factually at what he’s done, he’s a huge departure from the norm for corporate Democrats. You can believe that or not (or, you can say that abetting a genocide in Gaza makes it hard to like anything he might have done domestically – and pretty understandable, I think, if you say that.)
But I don’t get how citing facts of what’s he done is “unnecessary” or “attempting” to make him seem better. I didn’t like Biden initially, just because he’s a rich white guy who’s worked in Washington all his life. I didn’t expect real good things out of him. Then he started doing all this good stuff, and I started liking him. Surely that’s an allowed way to go about things? Responding to the reality of what someone’s doing as a reason to like or dislike them?
the purpose is to silence dissent
This is a framing that usually comes out of conservatives. I am not silencing your dissent. I am disagreeing with you.
I won’t tell you what to do, but I would politely ask that if you want me to take you seriously, stop saying that I am “silencing dissent” or “punching left” or whatever, just because I am holding a different opinion than you, and explaining why I hold it. Those are very different things. I’m allowed to hold a different viewpoint, and it’s weird to me that you are so vigorous about the idea that it’s violent or inappropriate for me to do so.
But I don’t get how citing facts of what’s he done is “unnecessary” or “attempting” to make him seem better.
My take on that would be that it brings nuance and humanity to those that some auth-leftists want to hate and dehumanize. Pointing out that Biden is not a cardboard cutout of [insert chosen evil diety here] and that he has done good things makes it harder to rationalize digging in. To justify vilifying, “dunking on”, and generally bullying those who would support him (even unhappily) rather than embrace accelerationiam that would load to extraordinary harm of LGBTQ+ people with no concrete data to suggest that it would cause net benefit or leftward motion, while claiming dialectics and opposition to silencing dissent, takes a good deal of cognitive dissonance as is. Being forced to acknowledge that ramps that dissonance up higher.
(Holy long sentence Batman! Sorry about that.)
Just to be clear to auth-left folks (though any state or corpo actors can get fucked), I’m not trying to be sectarian or talk shit. This is honestly how I perceive this. Dehumanizing other leftists (or people for that matter, or hell, even bourgeois dickheads) is not something that has led to positive societal changes in history. Generally, it’s just used to justify unnecessary death and suffering. Suppressing or ignoring data (or lack thereof) is not conducive to making data-backed theses.
Yeah. There are people who are just straight-up evil and trying to hurt people on purpose (Trump is one), but it’s actually very rare, I think, even in political leaders. Mostly I think the destructive stuff in the world comes from people who have a weird reality built up in their head where what they’re doing makes sense.
I see this even in internet arguments. It’s very common that two people will both be saying things that makes sense, but because they both have this caricature built up of the other person and the other viewpoint in their head, they can’t even understand each other and keep talking at cross purposes.
Person A says “How DARE you say that genocide is okay, genocide is NEVER okay”
Then person B says “How DARE you say Biden and Trump are the same, Trump is obviously way worse and we need to vote for Biden”
“How DARE you vote for genocide”
“How DARE you refuse to vote against Trump’s genocide”
And so on. I mean, neither one is really wrong, and yet they’re all angry at each other and each seem genuinely convinced that the person they’re talking to carries cartoonishly wrong views like “genocide is okay as long as it comes from my political allies,” and then they get all bent out of shape arguing against those imaginary views that almost no one really actually holds. And they can’t even listen to the other person for long enough to understand what they’re saying, because I can’t possibly sit here and listen to a pro-genocide person, when I am ANTI genocide, and I just need to fight against this pro genocide person right now.
I’m not saying that you personally cannot like him. For you, those changes are substantial and good, to the point of justifying support. For leftists alienated by the DNC, this is obviously not enough, which is why I consider it unnecessary.
For leftists, generally, continuing down this descent into fascism that is happening slowly under Biden and rapidly under Trump is unnacceptable.
My broader point here is that if your goal is to get leftists to vote for Biden, trying to explain why you think Biden is good is counterproductive. Instead, explain how leftist change is impossible via electoralism, and that voting for a leftist party like PSL will never materially bring America to the left.
My broader point here is that if your goal is to get leftists to vote for Biden, trying to explain why you think Biden is good is counterproductive. Instead, explain how leftist change is impossible via electoralism
If someone’s mindset is such that it’s unnecessary to talk about what actions a politician has taken when deciding whether to vote for them, I’m comfortable with not being able to appeal to that person.
Honestly my goal isn’t to “get” anyone to do anything. I am trying to communicate the reality I see in front of me. Obviously I hope that that will produce a result and a better outcome in the real world, if the reality I see seems compelling to someone else as a useful model, but I’m not into the idea of trying to move away from “this is how I see it and why” and into something else, to try to engineer a stated result in some other person. They can make their own decisions, as can you.
For leftists, generally, continuing down this descent into fascism that is happening slowly under Biden and rapidly under Trump is unnacceptable.
What are fascist things that Biden has done? How has he moved the needle towards fascism? Maybe this is where some of the disconnect between our views on him comes from.
That wasn’t the point, though. It’s necessary to look at the actions a politician has taken. The fact that you believe it necessary to “uhmm, akshually” someone who has expressed disapproval of Biden from the left is condescending and counterproductive.
As for the fascist and fasc-adjacent things Biden has done, there are quite a few. Enabling and funding a genocide, labeling protestors as anti-semetic, further entrenching US Imperialism, building Nationalism, and more have resulted in continued cancerous growth of fascists domestically.
In addition to overt actions, it’s important to look at what causes fascism itself. Fascism is Capitalism in decline, a violent assertion of Capital. As the head of state, failing to push back against Capitalism is also failing to push back against it’s decline, and thus is why I say voting for Biden is slow fascism rather than rapid fascism.
The US will inevitably continue down the train of fascism until derailed, which is accomplished via outside pressure. Voting for Biden buys time, but does not prevent fascism.
Don’t forget, took climate change seriously for the first time a US politician has ever done that, and made a huge priority to pass a massive climate bill that is predicted to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030. It’s too late, but that’s not Biden’s fault, and he started working on it practically the instant he got in office.
I literally do not see anyone “punching left” outside of the mainstream media. No one on Lemmy is out here saying “these damn protestors if only they would shut up” or anything like that.
Someone then argues that that criticism is unfair or disagrees with it
… is not punching left.
Someone from the pro-Biden camp directing some kind of “punching” at someone who hadn’t already brought Biden into the argument themselves, from an anti perspective, would be punching left. Someone “punching” at Biden (which terminology I don’t even really agree with), and then there’s a response “actually here’s why I don’t think that’s true,” is not punching.
Surely that makes sense?
Or, like I said, someone from the establishment-Democrat camp who directs condemnation at someone who’s literally just trying to stick up for the Palestinians, because it makes Biden look bad. That would be punching left, and that definitely happens from Democratic politicians and in the MSM. I’m saying I haven’t seen any of that on Lemmy.
Surely that makes sense? IDK, maybe not. But that what I said up there is my viewpoint on it. Hope it’s helpful.
Your argument boils down to “they started it” and doesnt matter. All of those posts are criticizing leftists who won’t vote for Biden because he’s supporting genocide by reducing the left’s position to bothsidesism.
establishment-Democrat camp who directs condemnation at someone who’s literally just trying to stick up for the Palestinians, because it makes Biden look bad. That would be punching left, and that definitely happens from Democratic politicians and in the MSM.
What is your point here? That democratic party reps dont post on lemmy? Because this:
directs condemnation at someone who’s literally just trying to stick up for the Palestinians
leftists don’t care about facts anymore than trump supporters do.
all they care about is pushing their boogeyman ideological agenda and shouting down anyone who talks facts or reality as ‘fake news’ or ‘capitalist agenda’ or whatever nonsense phrase they feel makes them morally superior.
It’s hard to say who is a genuine leftist and who is a please-don’t-vote-for-Biden-so-Trump-can-win shill, but if we take e.g. @[email protected] at face value, I think it’s safe to say that they don’t care:
About any given good thing Biden might have done domestically (forget about that, how dare you run around supporting this genocide man)
If Biden personally isn’t doing the genocide (forget about that, how dare you run around supporting this genocide man)
If Trump will probably do much worse genocides both in the middle east and in the United States (forget about that etc you get the idea)
It’s like the Republican-type thing, where only one answer is allowed. If Biden did a good thing, then no he didn’t, because Netanyahu is killing Gazans and anything Biden is doing to try to prevent that didn’t happen and it’s all Biden’s fault and he’s a bad man and I’m going to start to shout if you try to tell me anything about how even if that’s all true then Trump is ten times worse and those are the only two options in this election.
I mean, I kind of get it. Biden is materially aiding in a genocide and it’s easy at that point in the conversation to shut down anything further and say, okay I’ve heard enough. I think the right answer though is to figure out how to put pressure on Biden from the left to at least undo some of the harm he’s been abetting up to this point, figure out how to install better candidates in the future who will undo American’s war-crime-adjacent foreign policy in the future, while also voting for Biden in the election because he doesn’t want 10 genocides like Trump does. However much bullshit is the resistance Biden has been giving Netanyahu up until this point, it’s definitely better than the full-throated support and assistance Trump would give him.
Well, it’s important to consider trajectory. Biden doing small positive changes in a rapidly crumbling Capitalist empire is still negative overall. For many leftists, this minor amount of positive concessions in an ongoing train wreck isn’t enough and can’t be enough.
It’s impossible to look at individual policies in a vacuum, everything is related. We can accept minor concessions as fact while still believing them to be woefully insufficient.
Example: Biden made a massive improvement to the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of which is predicted to be a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. Is that enough? Uh… if it had been by the year 2000, maybe. We’re still facing a guaranteed global catastrophe. We need to keep pushing for more change, right now, and anyone who’s satisfied with what Biden did so far is living in a dream world.
Where I have a problem with it is when someone extrapolates that out to “and that’s why there’s no reason to support Biden in his contest vs Trump, when Trump wants to undo even that much, and when Biden’s climate action was the first big-scale thing any US politician has ever done to make the problem into an actual priority.”
If anything I’m saying sounds like “and so Biden is good enough,” it is not. What I am saying is that affirmatively choosing the Biden solution in this election while also pushing for big improvements in any one of 10-20 additional ways to achieve actual progress sounds like the way to go.
I don’t disagree with your conclusion that Biden is not as bad as Trumo, I just disagree with your framing and methods for reaching out to disaffected Leftists.
The crux of my argument is that opening with minor, insufficient positive changes that come nowhere close to enough just turns these disaffected leftists away.
“Biden took the first big step towards addressing climate change of any US politician ever, and was able to achieve significant success even within our horribly broken political system. While I fully support extra-electoral change (it is 100% needed), I would say that that’s a relevant fact to the question of whether we should spend time shitting on him and only him, as part of our quest to produce positive change in the system.”
Leftist can’t help uselessly shouting nonsense into the void every election year and then disappearing for another four years only to pop back into existence shout more nonsense once candidates have been chosen.
They’re like obnoxious little cicadas that show up every four years to yell at others because they lack the ability to understand nuance.
You offer no realistic constructive ideas to fix anything and just shit all over any topic that you disagree with. There’s a saying that I’ll simplify for you-
Part of the solution, or part of the problem.
You don’t get to not be one or the other. And there has never been a time in history where not voting EVER solved a problem.
So…. know your role.
I probably should speak for myself here when I say that I’m looking forward to your silence come November. Because like in 2020, and 2016, the SJWs and their propaganda disappeared after the election-
which truly shows your intent. It’s not lost on anyone.
I’m punching left. The left has been infected with tankies and agitators. We need their votes but those votes won’t happen until we exorcise the Russians and useful idiots. Compromise doesn’t work, they hate compromise. Complete and total capitulation doesn’t work either because they’re fundamentally being run by people who are interested only in harming America. We need to call out and shame this insanity so we can make the reasonable ones wake up and smell the propaganda.
The fascists want to literally kill you (and me). I just want to shame you into doing the right thing and kicking out the Russians in your midst. If you think that’s equal, boy have I got a work camp for you.
American power only rewards those that don’t threaten it and punishes those that do.
The left is the last hope America has to reform anything in a positive direction, but sadly liberals would rather abide power than join the left and transform our collapsing system into a force of good.
liberals would rather attack leftists than try to work with them.
That’s because liberals know (despite their pretensions otherwise) that leftists threaten their oh-so-precious status quo.
Liberals also know that, when push comes to shove, they are going to need the fascists to protect said oh-so-precious status quo for them - despite their pretensions otherwise.
Nothing liberals do or say is a mystery once you understand that.
Liberals would rather defend genocide than join leftists in trying to force Biden’s hand and gain back leftist voters.
What an asinine statement. There are those of us who understand that Israel is a sovereign fucking Democracy and it’s not our job to police them and literarily throw out everything any and everything else in this insane fight to stop Israel.
I want the war to stop. But I also live in the real world where conflicts exist and it’s not our job to fix everything and everyone. We’ve got plenty of shit to deal with here, and if you want to put any pressure on anything, put pressure on Israelis to handle their own government and foreign policy.
Equating people not thinking that the Israel conflict is our #1 concern that needs to trump absolutely everything else with supporting genocide is beyond idiotic and unkind.
speaking a liberal, i find it’s the leftists who refuse to work with me. and would rather tell me off that i’m anti-trans over not asking them their pronoun rather than find common ground.
also their delusion that minorities are leftist by default. blacks and latinos are moving towards conservatives, because they tend to be more socially conservative than whites.
I think that’s a bit of a strawman, no? I haven’t seen leftists call people transphobic for not asking for pronouns. Misgendering, certainly, but not asking? Haven’t seen that.
i dunno i’m sure those annoying types exist but they are not nearly as common as our fascist uncles insist they are. im around many leftists and havent met one who was as outwardly annoying as some people suggest most leftists are.
well if i’ve experienced that IRL, is it a strawman still? if i call someoen ‘they’ and them blow up at me, because they are a he or a she, am i an asshole?
because apparently leftists think i am. at least the people who did that to me very much self processed themselves as leftists and love to loudly brag about how cool and anarchist they are. as if their political beliefs are nothing more than an aesthetic choice…t
That sounds frankly absurd. It wouldn’t be a strawman, but an unfair assumption that a one-off anecdote is the norm for leftists. Then again, you very well could be transphobic and are leaving out details, who knows.
Someone having firm beliefs they are proud of does not make it an “aesthetic choice.”
Sounds like you need to do some self-reflection and introspection.
This is the biggest thing IMO, liberals would rather attack leftists than try to work with them. All this does, however, is convince leftists that they have nothing to gain from siding with liberals and instead trying to build outside pressure.
Liberals would rather defend genocide than join leftists in trying to force Biden’s hand and gain back leftist voters.
I say this as a Leftist likely voting for Biden: Leftists are going third party because Liberals have been blocking all leftward movement, thus alienating leftists from the electoral process. If you want leftist votes, work with leftists, instead of constantly punching left.
Biden fired the guy who used to run the NLRB, and put in a bunch of actually pro-labor people, who gave lots of material support to all this union activity that coincidentally has been meeting with all sorts of success over the last couple of years.
Biden’s corporate tax reforms swung Amazon’s taxes from negative $1.2 billion per quarter to positive $1 billion when they took effect at the start of 2023, and they’re currently paying $3 billion per quarter, a comfortable amount more than they’ve ever paid before. Here’s this year’s proposal of what he plans to do to build on top of that. Raising corporate taxes was most of how he funded stuff like the infrastructure bill.
I literally do not see anyone “punching left” outside of the mainstream media. No one on Lemmy is out here saying “these damn protestors if only they would shut up” or anything like that. I see a bunch of people punching Biden, and then other people saying hey, what you said is actually not accurate; for as criminal as his support for Israel is, he’s actually the first pro-working-people president the US has had in many many years.
That’s not “punching left,” that’s refuting the punching that is coming inwards towards the person who is right now the only available alternative to full throated, military-seize-the-voting-machines, shoot-the-protestors, fascism.
You just punched left, lol. Telling leftists that extremely minor shifts within the context of a far-right system are good enough actually, minimizes the voice of leftists. You aren’t going to convince a leftist that Biden is good, for leftists, continuing Capitalism and making no efforts to end it is already enough to not consider a candidate to be good.
If you want to move leftists to your side, it’s far more effective to agree with them that Biden has been continuing liberalism and making no tangible leftist movements. Telling leftists that they should actually be celebrating less than the bare minimum further alienates leftists.
Never said that; in fact you’ll find me several places saying that moving further than Biden would be a great idea, and pointing out that one of the big problems with Trump is that he will very effectively end some of the methods that currently exist whereby real leftwards progress can be made in this country.
So we’re moving the goal posts so that Biden has to want to end capitalism before you’ll support him, even against literal Hitler.
Sure, sounds perfectly sane and productive. Sorry for ever punching left by having a different opinion than that.
That’s a funny way of spelling “I have no way to disagree with your factual rundown of good things Biden has done, so I’m going to demand that you agree with me, and in particular cease citing any objective facts for why you think what you think, as a precondition of ‘moving to your side’, because facts are punching left.”
I mean I could be right or wrong on this or anything else. But I’m not planning on just agreeing with you on everything and ceasing hurting your feelings by arguing otherwise, so that you’ll become open to “moving to my side.”
You opened up with some unnecessary pro-Biden stances to attempt to make him seem better, no? As for leftward movement, it’s already impossible electorally, which is why I am voting for Biden. That’s my point, really, you would rather gas up a genocide supporter and enabler of fascism than simply take the correct approach and state that leftward change is impossible electorally.
If leftist change was possible electorally, you would be suggesting people vote for a leftist party, like PSL, but because PSL can’t win we must agree that leftist change is impossible.
Yes, Biden indeed needs to be a leftist of some sort before I give any approval to him. I already said I am voting for him, are you telling me I need to also enjoy voting for a genocidal enabler of fascism?
Listing extremely minor concessions within the context of a country absolutely tumbling into fascism to make it seem like things are improving under Biden and not continuing to get worse is a form of punching left, because the purpose is to silence dissent.
So, I went back and re read your initial message carefully. I actually pretty much agree with it – the Hillary Clintons and Nancy Pelosis of the world have been attacking leftists, blocking forward progress, and then blaming the voters when they lose elections because they are more or less even with Reagan politically. There’s nothing really to vote for there, and not voting for open fascism when the alternative is screwing you left and right isn’t really all that appealing.
The reason I responded the way I did is that Biden actually isn’t at all the same as them. If you look factually at what he’s done, he’s a huge departure from the norm for corporate Democrats. You can believe that or not (or, you can say that abetting a genocide in Gaza makes it hard to like anything he might have done domestically – and pretty understandable, I think, if you say that.)
But I don’t get how citing facts of what’s he done is “unnecessary” or “attempting” to make him seem better. I didn’t like Biden initially, just because he’s a rich white guy who’s worked in Washington all his life. I didn’t expect real good things out of him. Then he started doing all this good stuff, and I started liking him. Surely that’s an allowed way to go about things? Responding to the reality of what someone’s doing as a reason to like or dislike them?
This is a framing that usually comes out of conservatives. I am not silencing your dissent. I am disagreeing with you.
I won’t tell you what to do, but I would politely ask that if you want me to take you seriously, stop saying that I am “silencing dissent” or “punching left” or whatever, just because I am holding a different opinion than you, and explaining why I hold it. Those are very different things. I’m allowed to hold a different viewpoint, and it’s weird to me that you are so vigorous about the idea that it’s violent or inappropriate for me to do so.
My take on that would be that it brings nuance and humanity to those that some auth-leftists want to hate and dehumanize. Pointing out that Biden is not a cardboard cutout of [insert chosen evil diety here] and that he has done good things makes it harder to rationalize digging in. To justify vilifying, “dunking on”, and generally bullying those who would support him (even unhappily) rather than embrace accelerationiam that would load to extraordinary harm of LGBTQ+ people with no concrete data to suggest that it would cause net benefit or leftward motion, while claiming dialectics and opposition to silencing dissent, takes a good deal of cognitive dissonance as is. Being forced to acknowledge that ramps that dissonance up higher.
(Holy long sentence Batman! Sorry about that.)
Just to be clear to auth-left folks (though any state or corpo actors can get fucked), I’m not trying to be sectarian or talk shit. This is honestly how I perceive this. Dehumanizing other leftists (or people for that matter, or hell, even bourgeois dickheads) is not something that has led to positive societal changes in history. Generally, it’s just used to justify unnecessary death and suffering. Suppressing or ignoring data (or lack thereof) is not conducive to making data-backed theses.
Yeah. There are people who are just straight-up evil and trying to hurt people on purpose (Trump is one), but it’s actually very rare, I think, even in political leaders. Mostly I think the destructive stuff in the world comes from people who have a weird reality built up in their head where what they’re doing makes sense.
I see this even in internet arguments. It’s very common that two people will both be saying things that makes sense, but because they both have this caricature built up of the other person and the other viewpoint in their head, they can’t even understand each other and keep talking at cross purposes.
Person A says “How DARE you say that genocide is okay, genocide is NEVER okay”
Then person B says “How DARE you say Biden and Trump are the same, Trump is obviously way worse and we need to vote for Biden”
“How DARE you vote for genocide”
“How DARE you refuse to vote against Trump’s genocide”
And so on. I mean, neither one is really wrong, and yet they’re all angry at each other and each seem genuinely convinced that the person they’re talking to carries cartoonishly wrong views like “genocide is okay as long as it comes from my political allies,” and then they get all bent out of shape arguing against those imaginary views that almost no one really actually holds. And they can’t even listen to the other person for long enough to understand what they’re saying, because I can’t possibly sit here and listen to a pro-genocide person, when I am ANTI genocide, and I just need to fight against this pro genocide person right now.
Indeed. Very few people actively want to do what they think is wrong or “evil”.
I’m not saying that you personally cannot like him. For you, those changes are substantial and good, to the point of justifying support. For leftists alienated by the DNC, this is obviously not enough, which is why I consider it unnecessary.
For leftists, generally, continuing down this descent into fascism that is happening slowly under Biden and rapidly under Trump is unnacceptable.
My broader point here is that if your goal is to get leftists to vote for Biden, trying to explain why you think Biden is good is counterproductive. Instead, explain how leftist change is impossible via electoralism, and that voting for a leftist party like PSL will never materially bring America to the left.
If someone’s mindset is such that it’s unnecessary to talk about what actions a politician has taken when deciding whether to vote for them, I’m comfortable with not being able to appeal to that person.
Honestly my goal isn’t to “get” anyone to do anything. I am trying to communicate the reality I see in front of me. Obviously I hope that that will produce a result and a better outcome in the real world, if the reality I see seems compelling to someone else as a useful model, but I’m not into the idea of trying to move away from “this is how I see it and why” and into something else, to try to engineer a stated result in some other person. They can make their own decisions, as can you.
What are fascist things that Biden has done? How has he moved the needle towards fascism? Maybe this is where some of the disconnect between our views on him comes from.
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That wasn’t the point, though. It’s necessary to look at the actions a politician has taken. The fact that you believe it necessary to “uhmm, akshually” someone who has expressed disapproval of Biden from the left is condescending and counterproductive.
As for the fascist and fasc-adjacent things Biden has done, there are quite a few. Enabling and funding a genocide, labeling protestors as anti-semetic, further entrenching US Imperialism, building Nationalism, and more have resulted in continued cancerous growth of fascists domestically.
In addition to overt actions, it’s important to look at what causes fascism itself. Fascism is Capitalism in decline, a violent assertion of Capital. As the head of state, failing to push back against Capitalism is also failing to push back against it’s decline, and thus is why I say voting for Biden is slow fascism rather than rapid fascism.
The US will inevitably continue down the train of fascism until derailed, which is accomplished via outside pressure. Voting for Biden buys time, but does not prevent fascism.
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Don’t forget, took climate change seriously for the first time a US politician has ever done that, and made a huge priority to pass a massive climate bill that is predicted to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030. It’s too late, but that’s not Biden’s fault, and he started working on it practically the instant he got in office.
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Front page of this very community:
I’ll say it again:
… is not punching left.
Someone from the pro-Biden camp directing some kind of “punching” at someone who hadn’t already brought Biden into the argument themselves, from an anti perspective, would be punching left. Someone “punching” at Biden (which terminology I don’t even really agree with), and then there’s a response “actually here’s why I don’t think that’s true,” is not punching.
Surely that makes sense?
Or, like I said, someone from the establishment-Democrat camp who directs condemnation at someone who’s literally just trying to stick up for the Palestinians, because it makes Biden look bad. That would be punching left, and that definitely happens from Democratic politicians and in the MSM. I’m saying I haven’t seen any of that on Lemmy.
Surely that makes sense? IDK, maybe not. But that what I said up there is my viewpoint on it. Hope it’s helpful.
Your argument boils down to “they started it” and doesnt matter. All of those posts are criticizing leftists who won’t vote for Biden because he’s supporting genocide by reducing the left’s position to bothsidesism.
What is your point here? That democratic party reps dont post on lemmy? Because this:
Is exactly what those posts are doing.
Yeah? Well, you know, that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man.
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leftists don’t care about facts anymore than trump supporters do.
all they care about is pushing their boogeyman ideological agenda and shouting down anyone who talks facts or reality as ‘fake news’ or ‘capitalist agenda’ or whatever nonsense phrase they feel makes them morally superior.
Care to share any examples? What facts do leftists not care about?
It’s hard to say who is a genuine leftist and who is a please-don’t-vote-for-Biden-so-Trump-can-win shill, but if we take e.g. @[email protected] at face value, I think it’s safe to say that they don’t care:
It’s like the Republican-type thing, where only one answer is allowed. If Biden did a good thing, then no he didn’t, because Netanyahu is killing Gazans and anything Biden is doing to try to prevent that didn’t happen and it’s all Biden’s fault and he’s a bad man and I’m going to start to shout if you try to tell me anything about how even if that’s all true then Trump is ten times worse and those are the only two options in this election.
I mean, I kind of get it. Biden is materially aiding in a genocide and it’s easy at that point in the conversation to shut down anything further and say, okay I’ve heard enough. I think the right answer though is to figure out how to put pressure on Biden from the left to at least undo some of the harm he’s been abetting up to this point, figure out how to install better candidates in the future who will undo American’s war-crime-adjacent foreign policy in the future, while also voting for Biden in the election because he doesn’t want 10 genocides like Trump does. However much bullshit is the resistance Biden has been giving Netanyahu up until this point, it’s definitely better than the full-throated support and assistance Trump would give him.
(Edit: Fixed @ link)
Well, it’s important to consider trajectory. Biden doing small positive changes in a rapidly crumbling Capitalist empire is still negative overall. For many leftists, this minor amount of positive concessions in an ongoing train wreck isn’t enough and can’t be enough.
It’s impossible to look at individual policies in a vacuum, everything is related. We can accept minor concessions as fact while still believing them to be woefully insufficient.
Oh, no doubt. Biden’s not nearly enough.
Example: Biden made a massive improvement to the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of which is predicted to be a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. Is that enough? Uh… if it had been by the year 2000, maybe. We’re still facing a guaranteed global catastrophe. We need to keep pushing for more change, right now, and anyone who’s satisfied with what Biden did so far is living in a dream world.
Where I have a problem with it is when someone extrapolates that out to “and that’s why there’s no reason to support Biden in his contest vs Trump, when Trump wants to undo even that much, and when Biden’s climate action was the first big-scale thing any US politician has ever done to make the problem into an actual priority.”
If anything I’m saying sounds like “and so Biden is good enough,” it is not. What I am saying is that affirmatively choosing the Biden solution in this election while also pushing for big improvements in any one of 10-20 additional ways to achieve actual progress sounds like the way to go.
I don’t disagree with your conclusion that Biden is not as bad as Trumo, I just disagree with your framing and methods for reaching out to disaffected Leftists.
The crux of my argument is that opening with minor, insufficient positive changes that come nowhere close to enough just turns these disaffected leftists away.
“Biden took the first big step towards addressing climate change of any US politician ever, and was able to achieve significant success even within our horribly broken political system. While I fully support extra-electoral change (it is 100% needed), I would say that that’s a relevant fact to the question of whether we should spend time shitting on him and only him, as part of our quest to produce positive change in the system.”
“Well now you have turned me away.”
Yeah, I’m comfortable letting that person go.
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Leftist can’t help uselessly shouting nonsense into the void every election year and then disappearing for another four years only to pop back into existence shout more nonsense once candidates have been chosen.
They’re like obnoxious little cicadas that show up every four years to yell at others because they lack the ability to understand nuance.
You offer no realistic constructive ideas to fix anything and just shit all over any topic that you disagree with. There’s a saying that I’ll simplify for you-
Part of the solution, or part of the problem.
You don’t get to not be one or the other. And there has never been a time in history where not voting EVER solved a problem.
So…. know your role.
I probably should speak for myself here when I say that I’m looking forward to your silence come November. Because like in 2020, and 2016, the SJWs and their propaganda disappeared after the election-
which truly shows your intent. It’s not lost on anyone.
I’m punching left. The left has been infected with tankies and agitators. We need their votes but those votes won’t happen until we exorcise the Russians and useful idiots. Compromise doesn’t work, they hate compromise. Complete and total capitulation doesn’t work either because they’re fundamentally being run by people who are interested only in harming America. We need to call out and shame this insanity so we can make the reasonable ones wake up and smell the propaganda.
It’s working, but we might have been too late.
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The fascists want to literally kill you (and me). I just want to shame you into doing the right thing and kicking out the Russians in your midst. If you think that’s equal, boy have I got a work camp for you.
American power only rewards those that don’t threaten it and punishes those that do.
The left is the last hope America has to reform anything in a positive direction, but sadly liberals would rather abide power than join the left and transform our collapsing system into a force of good.
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That’s because liberals know (despite their pretensions otherwise) that leftists threaten their oh-so-precious status quo.
Liberals also know that, when push comes to shove, they are going to need the fascists to protect said oh-so-precious status quo for them - despite their pretensions otherwise.
Nothing liberals do or say is a mystery once you understand that.
What an asinine statement. There are those of us who understand that Israel is a sovereign fucking Democracy and it’s not our job to police them and literarily throw out everything any and everything else in this insane fight to stop Israel.
I want the war to stop. But I also live in the real world where conflicts exist and it’s not our job to fix everything and everyone. We’ve got plenty of shit to deal with here, and if you want to put any pressure on anything, put pressure on Israelis to handle their own government and foreign policy.
Equating people not thinking that the Israel conflict is our #1 concern that needs to trump absolutely everything else with supporting genocide is beyond idiotic and unkind.
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speaking a liberal, i find it’s the leftists who refuse to work with me. and would rather tell me off that i’m anti-trans over not asking them their pronoun rather than find common ground.
also their delusion that minorities are leftist by default. blacks and latinos are moving towards conservatives, because they tend to be more socially conservative than whites.
I think that’s a bit of a strawman, no? I haven’t seen leftists call people transphobic for not asking for pronouns. Misgendering, certainly, but not asking? Haven’t seen that.
i dunno i’m sure those annoying types exist but they are not nearly as common as our fascist uncles insist they are. im around many leftists and havent met one who was as outwardly annoying as some people suggest most leftists are.
well if i’ve experienced that IRL, is it a strawman still? if i call someoen ‘they’ and them blow up at me, because they are a he or a she, am i an asshole?
because apparently leftists think i am. at least the people who did that to me very much self processed themselves as leftists and love to loudly brag about how cool and anarchist they are. as if their political beliefs are nothing more than an aesthetic choice…t
That sounds frankly absurd. It wouldn’t be a strawman, but an unfair assumption that a one-off anecdote is the norm for leftists. Then again, you very well could be transphobic and are leaving out details, who knows.
Someone having firm beliefs they are proud of does not make it an “aesthetic choice.”
Sounds like you need to do some self-reflection and introspection.