A career State Department official resigned from her post on Tuesday, saying she could no longer work for the Biden administration after it released a report concluding that Israel was not preventing the flow of aid to Gaza.
Stacy Gilbert, who served as a senior civilian-military advisor to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), sent an email to staff saying she was resigning because she felt the State Department had made the wrong assessment, The Washington Post reported, citing officials who read the note.
The report was filed in response to President Joe Biden issuing a national security memorandum (NSM-20) in early February on whether the administration finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons do not violate either American or international law.
The report said there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel on several occasions had used American-supplied weapons “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but said it could not make a definitive assessment - enough to prevent the suspension of arms transfers.
The Democrat’s strategy to appeal to their base really seems to be, “Look, we’re not as bad at the other guys.” And they really aren’t realizing that that isn’t enough, because it’s not just about Israel/Palestine anymore. I really don’t think the people who are also repeating this party line (including the ones on Lemmy) are realizing how out of touch this sentiment is especially the younger Millennials/Gen Z.
I’ve seen my friends get attacked, arrested, and get criminal records from the university encampments and protests, and nothing was done to protect them. In their eyes, Trump would never protect them, but neither did Biden or any other Democrat in power. How can they be trusted to protect the people in the future? Seen from this lens, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that there might be people out there who find voting for Biden unpalatable.
I’ve been saying for a long time that Democrats basically sell themselves on the idea that you should be afraid that the Republican might win, and vote for them to prevent that. Sometimes they get something done, often only after compromising heavily, but for the most part that’s not the message they’re selling on.
To put it another way, if someone asks you why they should vote Dem instead of third party, the answer isn’t about how great the Dems are and why they deserve your vote it’s about why you should be scared that the GOP might win. It didn’t work in 2016 because most didn’t actually think Trump might win and it did in 2020 because they knew he could.
It might work this time (I’d give it better than even odds, even given the Israel/Gaza stuff is going to hurt Biden some), but eventually it won’t and when it fails and we get another GOP president the Dems won’t win another election for a while - either we immediately fall into Christo-fascist super-Nazism and there are no more elections where we could vote for Dems or we don’t and Dems are at a loss on what to do for votes.
Our current political structure and the two party system makes even the best politician look feeble.
I’m not sure how to do it but represent.us proposes to fix it in the near future (if we all bought in, I suppose).
One thing that sticks out on that sit is that whether all of voters agree or very few of us agree on a policy there’s about a 30% chance of the policy becoming law.
It goes without saying that the rich and corporations benefit from the current system. It will be tough to change. And makes our system pretty pathetic in practice.
It’s one of the first modern democracies and as a result, I think needs a major update. It’s way too hard to get things done, filibustering is too easy, money has an outsized influence on politicians and elections due to lobbying, there’s no real way to recall certain powerful leaders (from the President to Congressmen to judges), lifetime appointments were an interesting idea but terrible in practice, and all the compromises made for slave states, including the Senate and electoral college, need to go. When are the devs going to put out a new patch?
Oh, and gerrymandering needs to be stopped. Almost forgot that one.
Pathetically, that’s what Republicans said for the 4 years Trump was in office. “Please overlook his faults, a Democrat would be worse!”
Mother should I trust the government?
If nobody is going to protect you, maybe pick the one who’s not promising to deport you.