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 Like “passed tax cuts for top _% of income earning Americans” “repealed gun laws”.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.
Edit: like, you could put the actual campaign goals and summarized impacts and then it would be a real infographic.
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.
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?
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?
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:
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.
I think he was just really happy to be included.
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.
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.
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.
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 !PoliticalMemes@lemmy.world 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?
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
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.:-(
Mu’min wants to know if this is a pro-Biden or anti-Biden comment.
Both!
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!
He sure is sucking zionist dick really hard. Some would say too hard.
“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.
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:
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Eliminating lobbyists
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Capping how much money can be spent on political campaigns
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Capping individual donation sizes
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Capping donation frequency
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Implementing a cardinal or ordinal voting system (such as approval or single transferable vote)
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Making voting more accessible
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Removing the possibility of gerrymandering
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Outlawing political parties
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Making voting mandatory
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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.
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.
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.
Remember how I said the other commentor’s complaints didn’t make sense?
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.
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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.
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I notice the .ml communities are, how to say it, “I’m 14 and edgy”.
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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.)
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Shockedpikachu.jpg
About as blind as Biden is to Palestine.
Right, he is totally supporting genocide of the Palestinian people.
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
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.
other people aren’t voting hard enough
Broke: Republicans
Woke: Democrats
Bespoke: Cum
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
It never left our hearts and minds
? pretty sure I went there on vacation recently
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?
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.
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.
Well that wouldn’t really be a meme then but yeah this meme is kind of shit
With the naming schemes going on for GOP legislation, that would only tell you that they do everything to hide the actual effects under some nice boilerplate names just to help sell it to their constituents, like if people they elect would never lie to them.
Saving Democracy
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.
“But but but vote blue no matter who!”
Give me a fuckin’ break.
How can Biden remove the PM of Pakistan?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
According to one study, the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000.
It’s not a new thing.
Sure, but is there actual evidence Biden ousted the Pakistani PM?
This was reported months after Imran Khan’s accusation toward America and America’s denial of it.
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.
“The era of big government is over” from his 1996 state of the union.
Three strikes laws, too.
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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. 😞
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. <polite golf clap>
Personally attacking me right off the bat. Now that’s a sign of intelligence! /s
So my point is that the Democrats never do what they say they will do. So pointing out that there was an unsuccessful attempt to create a public option doesn’t really undermine my point. It just illustrates it for me. Because the fact remains Obama didn’t not bring universal healthcare to the USA. I wish he had. I also wish he would have closed Guantanamo Bay like he promised. But again the Democrats just say nice things they don’t do them.
I hate the Republicans too. I don’t attribute anything good to them. The I just don’t pretend that the Democrats actually care about working class Americans.
I don’t have a particular axe to grind with Obama but if you need help seeing him as a charismatic individual who works against us on behalf of capital I recommend you look into how he downplayed the lead poisoning in flint Michigan https://youtu.be/AjugN-nUHh8?si=w_PTMd1QXzS47rQW
If you need help seeing the Democrats as a whole as ruthless and against you i recommend you read about their pied Piper strategy https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strategy#:~:text=In Maryland%2C Pennsylvania%2C Colorado%2C,It also might backfire spectacularly.
Good luck rude stranger ✌️😎
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. 🤷
One is moving the Overton window farther to the right. And it’s not like the other one is monolithic. They are forces within trying to do good but they have to negotiate with the institutions in place.
Yep it’s a ratcheting effect. The Republicans moves us to the right and the Dems don’t move at all. Together they shift the Overton window to the right over time. If the Democrats weren’t in on it they would move the Overton window to the left when they come into power but they never seem to. Do you know why that is? It’s because they are paid by the same ultra rich people to achieve the same agendas. The rest of it is a spectacle to keep the powerless fighting amongst ourselves.
Also edit/add: love your user name.
I disagree. If the vote was clear towards the available left instead of a lack of votes, it would have an effect on the parties. It’s the thinking within the democrats that they need to appeal to the right in some way because they vote way more than the left right now.
I mean you’re free to disagree and think what you want, but it seems like the evidence points very clearly in the direction that the Dems have no intention of doing the things they say they will do.
You can believe it’s just a coincidence and that if you vote harder, they’ll do the things you want but history doesn’t seem to agree. 🤷
Regardless of how we get there, I hope we get to a future where the US can actually have good leftist policies. Good luck ✌️
Both sides are rich dudes making rich dudes richer…
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?
Notice I didn’t mention any president. I mentioned a fact, don’t be obtuse.
Don’t deny reality.
No matter who, it is the wealthy who prosper from either party at the expense of everyone else.
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I never said anything different (rude name automod won’t let me say). What’s your actual (rude adjective) problem dude?
One is negociating with what the people want, the other is lying and laughing while doing whatever they want.
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Biden:
- Discontinued American Rescue Plan programs that helped low income Americans like the Expanded Child Tax Credit.
- Did $1,200 payments during covid (-Promissed $2,000)
- Did not actually do meaningful college debt relief (“muh, but the courts” - shut up, the Secretary Of education has the power, he really just doesn’t care about it that much)
- Still kinda sorta half asking the effort via another legal argument
- Cabinet full of corporate ghouls
- Based Lina Khan and NLRB
- Unconditional support for Israel
- Did not deschedule marijuana (“working” on it, believe when you see it)
- Continued monetary incentives and subsidies for anti-union corps
- Left Afghanistan
- No challenge to the Supreme Court corruption
- No real platform for re-election, no interviews, no debate, no primaries
A bunch more.
Trump: Literally nothing good. Just way worse all around.
Leaving Afghanistan was a bad move? Okay, sure buddy.
Probably referencing how poorly leaving Afghanistan went, and the aftermath of it.
Never mind that Trump handed him that flaming bag of shit, and Biden couldn’t have stomped it out if he wanted to.
There was never going to be a clean exit from Afghanistan from the moment the US decided to try to nation build there.
People wanted blood after 9/11, and if we were honest with ourselves about who we really are as a country, after Bin Laden got away in Tora Bora we would’ve leveled Kabul and called it a day, for all the difference it ultimately ended up making. Not saying it would’ve been right, but it would’ve accomplished the exact same thing as what 20 years of occupation did, arguably with less blowback, and it could’ve been done without dragging the rest of our allies into it, but gotta keep up appearances.
Now now now… don’t let facts get in the way of feelings…somebody’s gonna cry
Good or bad, it doesn’t belong in that list. Trump made the decision to leave Afghanistan. By the time Biden had the power it was too late to stay there.
Well shit. I totally fucked up the formatting. Leaving Afghanistan was a definite positive. People who grief him for it also seem to forget that it was Trump who made the agreement with the Taliban and set the thing in motion. Not sure if he would’ve actually gone ahead and fully withdraw though, but at least Biden followed through with it.
Challenging supreme court corruption is Congress job. Impeaching a justice takes a simple majority in the house and then 2/3 in Senate.
Not gonna happen. Not in a corrupt Congress. Only happened one time, nearly 220 years ago.
Removing a member of Congress is also pretty impossible right now. Takes a 2/3 vote.
Could vote out the worst apples. Tough with gerrymandering, but theoretically possible. But that’s a prerequisite to anything else.
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.
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.
Wrong argument. No one is saying they are faultless. They are responding to the both sides argument. The ‘both sides’ argument is a relative argument and oversimplified comparisons they are still clearly the lesser evil. Yes they could improve but this isn’t the argument it’s answering to.
That what I was talking about. This post is a bad faith response to the both sides argument.
OK who let the DNC get a lemmy.world account
Don’t forget deregulation, those fuckers love removing protections for the environment and 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
