“Technically, the United States didn’t get bad, it’s always been bad! It only got worse!” isn’t the flex a lot of leftists think it is.
What’s wrong with the message “We should be doing better, not worse”?
Seems preferable to the “hurt people who also want the things I have” that seems the core of conservatism.
What’s wrong with it is it’s normalizing Donald Trump. Like, actually pointing at Trump and saying “this is normal.” US democracy is on life support, and calling this business-as-usual is like telling people there’s nothing to see here while he yanks and tugs on the plug.
I’m not sure I understand.
Saying “We can do better than Trump/Fascism/Corruption/Kleptocracy” seems far from normalising the current state?
Saying we can do better than trump/fascism is not what the OP is implying. The op is implying what were are doing now is the same as what we have done before. We can acknowledge that we’ve done bad before, but now it’s for sure way worse. I agree with Bernie that now is way worse than before
Left doesn’t push this, right (or fake left ML) pushes this to same-sides left.
https://lemmy.ml/post/26685482/17035018 Since your neonazi friends at #politics have blocked me from responding to comments of my own post here it is:
More cheap talk and no action.
Action without the “talk” means very authoritarian military like structure, where commander decides and everyone down the ladder/pyramid execute the decisions.
Talk must precede agreement and agreement must precede action for collective action. Individualist decision and action is a fascist wet dream of that something ever was done. Society has no interest in what an individual does, unless it is one in a high position of a hierarchy affecting society.
I’m sorry, I cannot trust content from ML, as that instance very much wanted Trump to win.
That can explain why I am being blocked :)
What has this to do with “lefties”?
A dictatorship and dismantling everything inside the country and destroying relationships with allies can’t be good either wayOr do I miss something?
The point is it isn’t really worse. Yet, anyway. He’s only been president for a few weeks so obviously it can get worse.
But right now, Trump is about as bad as every other president. Bad in different ways, of course, but they all belong in prison.
I disagree. No president has ever abandoned a democratic ally to invasion by an imperialist dictator for such petty, malicious reasons.
They might all belong in prison, but that’s like saying a shoplifter is just as bad as a serial killer.
Bidens genocide in Gaza is far worse than this. These selective standards are all over the place.
Democrats really think they can put the mask back on after taking it off.
Let’s compare Trump’s Ukraine policy to Biden’s Ukraine policy: It’s worse.
Let’s compare Trump’s Gaza policy to Biden’s Gaza policy: At best, it’s the same. More likely, it’s worse.
Who’s being selective?
It worse. Israel is blocking all aid, with full Trump support. Also, Trump-Gaza. He really doesn’t give a shit about civilians in Gaza.
The only reason Trump has this opportunity to screw over Ukraine is because Biden kept the war going. The previous administration pressured Ukraine to keep the war going instead of entering negotiations over territory back when Russia was in a much worse position than it is now.
The reason? At the time it appeared that the war was an opportunity to weaken Russia and let them to waste blood and treasure on an unwinnable quagmire.
Years later all they accomplished was killing more Ukrainians and Russia is stronger than ever. Biden got Ukraine here, even if Trump is the one to finish them off.
The only reason Trump has this opportunity to screw over Ukraine is because Biden kept the war going.
Some DARVO shit right here.
DARVO shit would be blaming Ukraine, which is what Trump does.
I’m blaming the imperial power that provoked the war in the first place and then stopped negotiations from taking place and never gave Ukraine enough aid to actually win outright. The plan was always to hurt Russia, not help Ukraine. They’re the victims in all this.
The US has a lot of responsibility for the war going on this long. All presidents are criminals.
I’m blaming the imperial power that provoked the war in the first place
So, Russia?
Russia was not justified in its invasion, but let’s not pretend the goal is just to steal land. They need a buffer state from NATO or it’s only a matter of time until they get the Libya treatment. This is to protect Russians, unfortunately Ukrainians got used as pawns to threaten them when their government was overthrown by a Western coup i.e. imperialism.
No president has ever abandoned a democratic ally to invasion by an imperialist dictator for such petty, malicious reasons.
Well now hold on, we did that to the Kurds in… Wait, nevermind, that was also Trump.
We have not only abandoned democracies (many of which were more democratic than Ukraine), we have actually been the ones to destroy them. Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, Operation Condor targeting every democracy in South America, genocide in Indonesia, etc, etc. Trump’s stance on Ukraine is, at worst, not doing enough to protect a democracy from external threats, but America has frequently been the external threat democracies need protection from. Don’t you see how that’s worse?
Hm. I think we can agree that “flexing” and “ooooh, we told you so” and “look at our superior moral high ground, isn’t it moral and amazing” isn’t exactly material to make friends in a political debate.
The problem is to formulate a political common ground position that so many people can agree on, that it’s trivial to support it. And it should be very clear that “they nazi, don’t pay attention to our goals btw” isn’t good enough. Even if it’s bernie saying it.
The problem with formulating that position is also, that it’s hard to even bring the attention and time investment that is required for listening to people or to read an argument, if you don’t trust the person making the argument. So a “hold on, we’re going to get to the good point in 20 minutes” isn’t good enough either.
Starting with something is obviously wrong like “we have always been the good guys” will destroy what little benefit of the doubt people may bring to the table. And it’s not material to build that common ground.
So, try to read the “we told you so” not as a petty attempt to rub something in, but as a “this situation being wrong has been our position from the start, let’s get to the real argument, please”.
And that actual real argument can’t be an appeal to the long, honorable, just and democratic history and patriotism, because that kind of rhetoric is what got us into this mess in the first place.
There is this mental pattern, that people look for the weakest argument and “destroy” their opponent and “win”. We’re not interested in the destruction, but we’re also not going to support bad arguments. It takes effort to overcome, because doing that is fun.
tl;dr Bernie made a bad point here. Let’s acknowledge that it was bad and move on.
Except one does not contradict the other. The United States has supported democracy, it’s just that that support is razor thin.
If we are playing silly semantics then Russia is a “democracy” as well and Trump is supporting “democracy”.
When you say Russia is more of a democracy than the US, I think that’s more of having no standards than playing semantics. They are both oligarchies, and you are basically living up to the lack of standards that is your namesake, the mockery of geneva conventions. ml users be ml users.
Are we in the same conversation or did the LLM start hallucinating?
Nothing silly here. “Fact checker” twisting Bernie’s words. Sad to be corrected yourself?
This is not fact checking. This is gaslighting. The fact that the USA has been supporting dictators for decades does not change or alter what Bernie is saying.
Yes it does. Supporting countries that happen to be democracies as well as supporting countries that happen to be dictatorships according to your national interests is far different from supporting democracy as a goal.
Supporting manufacturing war against Russia without regards to their security concerns, or talking to them, may have been a necessity in loyalty to Biden. Keeping up the charade is definitely not progressive.
Stop drinking the Russian kool aid. This has literally been the Russian gameplan since they knew they couldn’t beat us in a hot war. Psy-ops to turn us anti-globalist is almost literally verbatim the whole plan.
You can accept that the US has done some shady shit that needs to be criticized and not forgotten about, without totally dumping liberal democracy and spewing straight Russian propaganda
You can do both. Saying they’ve supported dictatorships doesn’t mean they haven’t also supported democracy. It’s bordering on being a non sequitur.
If the US ever supports democracy, it is purely by accident.
Where we read “democracy”, they read “economic benefit” or “geopolitical benefit”. As far as I’m aware, any “democratic movement” that the US has ever supported has been either to get rid of a not sufficiently capitalist regime (whether or not they were democratic), or for some other geopolitical strategic reason.
I haven’t heard of a single example of the US supporting a democracy purely for democracy’s sake. Sometimes it just so happens that the goals of supporting democracy and getting rid of pesky regimes that pose an economic or strategic obstacle align.
Not to mention that the US has been involved in regime change of many democracies over the last 80 years because they weren’t sufficiently friendly to American companies or didn’t support American strategic goals strongly enough. This is open, well-documented history. The CIA admits to many of the ones which were done at least 50 years ago.
Here is a list to get started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
It is to own the winner.
No you can’t. You cannot say you support racial equality while holding a BLM sign one day and attending a KKK rally the next.
Removed by mod
Exact same thing but you are too hypocritic to admit it.
How can I have made a straw man argument when I didn’t even make an argument!?
If I give you a dollar and I give Steve a dollar, I’ve supported you both.
Your example is also wrong. BLM and KKK are organizations. You absolutely can support both organizations by giving them money. It makes you a hypocrite and means you don’t believe in equality. But when has anyone claimed the United States isn’t hypocritical?
Steve and me are entities. Democracy is an ideology.
You cannot support an ideology while also supporting its polar opposite.
Yes, I can, if I choose to be a hypocrite. I can push for both.
Picture a seesaw. Polar opposite sides. Raising one lowers the other. We can support both sides with bricks to make it a table. Both sides are supported. But neither shows progress.
I think we’re disagreeing on the word supported.
Peak what-about-ism
Peak virtue signalling.
Even if you disagree with what that guy wrote it’s not in any way virtue signaling. Like brother what?
its whataboutism to point out a flaw in ones argument?
Whataboutism is: “You said x but what about y?” Which doesn’t make x any less valid or problematic.
Implying that the US chooses foreign support on the basis of democratic principles is misleading at-best
It’s like me telling my doctor that I have a glass of wine a day, even though I also have a bottle of whiskey a day.
Who needs the CIA when we have useful idiots that sink any working class movement with shit like this
If a working class movement needs to lie and gaslight people into American exceptionalism it is not a working class movement.
Unfortunately sanders is one of our better actors within the institution. Many leftists would have been happy and welcoming of a sanders administration for 2 terms. FDR was also partially aligned with fascists but as far as presidential administrations go he did the most for the working class that anyone ever did(thankfully he was elected for 4 terms) sanders however flawed he may be would have been as close to a new age fdr as we were ever going tk get and this is why the dnc shot themselves in the foot and disgraced their electorate. The democratic party is a center right party so yes bernie sanders is a little too close to center to be a real leftist and he compromises too much with centrists and conservatives but this is the only way to get things done within a partisan class dictatorship we have.
But since the dnc made it clear they would rather move to the right and attempt to court conservative voters rather than move even a centimeter to the left they made it crystal clear the only way to remedy the rot and corruption of corporatist control in our political system is a full on revolution/ class war which has been waged against the working class for the last 5-6 decades at least.
I’m a big Sanders supporter and totally get where youre coming from, but facts are facts. Bernie is right a ton of the time. He can be wrong once in a while without it damaging his reputation. When someone’s wrong, they should be called out regardless of whether you agree with them the rest of the time.
I am not saying he is never wrong. Im just saying he is one of the better representatives we have. Im very far left and i regularly describe my political ideology as saying i’m so far left I make Bernie Sanders look like Newt Geingrich. But I would have been much happier with our society if we just got finished with 2 terms of a Sanders administration as opposed to the garbage we were stuck with because of the billionaire wall street military and prison industry profiteer owned neo liberal DNC’s deliberate self sabotage. But we still have to listen to delulu neo liberal democrat party supporters falling in line and blaming voters/ ignoring the reality wven thiugh the democrats chose to move further to the right and court republicans even accepting endorsements from the Cheney and bush families. They will do anything to ignore the reality that our presidential elections are most definitely rigged by financial influence just like the rest of our political system. FDR was somewhat slightly fascist aligned but he was the best president our country has ever had. And we can see that sanders is also flawed in similar ways but sometimes we have to weigh the pros and cons. Im not saying vote for the lesser of tw evils but rather that sometimes the good ideas and policies a candidate has can outweigh the negative aspects of their record/ political platform/ideology.
Anyone that meets the working class where they are to build class consciousness in terms they understand are building the working class movement.
But I guess we can nitpick and siphon the air out of any sort of potential for progress by doing the work of fascist apologists. Jailing and killing socialists will really bring about the perfect revolution we need
Accepting reality is fine. Gaslighting and covering for an oppressive system is not. Especially since this supposed movement has failed to make any gains with its endless compromises.
If the movement is only beneficial for the empire and not its victims I care little for it.
This is an example of where you can slightly tweak it to say “America is supposed to have…” and the entire problem is sidestepped
You know what Bernie is saying. I agree he can be more direct in this day and age. Anyone who has paid attention to Bernie understands he knows the system is broken
This is the correct take. Idealism is fine, but proclaiming that the ideals were already practiced, when in fact they were not, does not further the cause.
In fact it will only delude people into thinking it is not an area which needs improvement.
Are non yanks allowed to factcheck Sanders’ pro USA propaganda?
Parroting nationalistic myths is an occupation of Fascists, not of those in working class movements.
Nationalistic delusions of grandeurs are part of the foundation for guys like Trump ending up winning elections.
Sanders should know better.
Another nit-pick by the circular firing squad of so-called progressives.
True American Patriots like Bernie understand that the USA was mearly subverted away from the Light of Democracy by malign actors.
Gaslighting from fascist twitter users more than circling firing squad. Definitely took an opportunity to try to dig at the GOAT.
Solid theory. The right does love to trawl through history looking for failed authoritarian regimes to soy over.
Yeah, I also seen a lot of fascists making fake progressive accounts to boost “cancel culture” against the left, that also regularly drop a lot of dogwhistles, especially after each successful campaigns.
Obama’s human rights record is abysmal. Sure he did a lot of good things too, but not closing Guantanamo, ramping up drone strikes etc negate all of that good. I’ve written him a couple of letters with all of this in detail to which he has yet to respond (no surprise). Instead he’s doing voice over work for shitty documentaries on Netflix.
Yeah Obama hasn’t written me back either!
wtf
You must be so happy that your sitting president is such a humanitarian.
This may come as a surprise for you but you can be against something or someone without being for something or someone else.
Ooh, are you protesting what-aboutism on a what-about reply? Seems a tad bigoted, no?
When trying to hold your leaders to a higher standard gets you downvotes. Classic.
The downvotes are for the whataboutism
I don’t disagree. But holding both sides of the aisle to a certain standard doesn’t have to be whataboutism, though. It’s possible to look at government’s behavior as a whole without deflecting in the name of your particular side.
In this case though, it’s a community note on xitter, so it’s definitely there as whataboutism
Sounds like you are on crack, and happy about it.
For the modlog, the comment is made by a user named crackhappy. Also, hi, downvote brigade.
Lol.
Obama hasn’t been president for nearly a decade.
And there are a lot of things to criticize him about, but he legitimately tried to close Guantanamo, and was blocked by Republicans (and possibly some Democrats?) over and over.
Bernie Sanders voted against Obama’s attempt to “close Guantanamo,” because all he wanted to do was close the specific location while keeping the prisoners and practices going in other locations, possibly on US soil which would’ve provided firmer legal precedent for it.
It’s obviously unclear who actually fact checked Sanders here, but assuming it is indeed in good faith, this is why it’s so hard to mount a resistance to the fascism the US now has in power. There’s countless examples, but more or less they all revolve around (insert name) not being left enough or not being good enough, or in this case, not being honest enough. I don’t even disagree with the countless replies here that are rightfully pointing out that the US has propped up many non-democratic governments all over the world for its own moneyed and geopolitical interests - no shit. And I for one don’t defend it. But as an American myself who’s on the left, I’d gladly take Sanders for all his flaws compared to the bullshit fascist regime my country now has. I just don’t see how shitting on Sanders in this way is truly constructive in any capacity. I should add the caveat- by all means critique him, correct anything false he says- but to totally disregard him as this negative force? To my mind though, this is the so-called Internet left’s favorite pastime- shit talk people actually doing stuff, all while offering zero concrete proposals or actions themselves to make the country better. It’s very easy to sit and post to Lemmy about your self proclaimed radical leftist views, but your views mean fuck all if they never get implemented. Perhaps just sitting in your online echo chamber is all you really want though, so you can feel good about your personal political and social beliefs.
Yes, the difference being that the fascists want to use the counter-arguments to do even shittier things. “We’re a shitty country, so you libs don’t get to tell us we do good things sometimes, we’re the greatest country ever! Get out of the way so we can do objectively shittier things!”
I should add the caveat- by all means critique him, correct anything false he says
Great, that’s what we’re doing here, so no problem.
You did leave out the part connected to that where I added, “but to totally disregard him…”. A number of comments here are just essentially “Bernie sucks and is a Dem shill” in so many words. If that’s a genuine opinion of Bernie, so be it, and I know I won’t sway any opinions on Lemmy. But my sincere ask is, how can we channel our general leftist / progressive agreements into something tangible rather than political philosophy debates online? Again, be it Bernie or DSA or Working Families Party or whatever- you name it- there’s always voices on the farther left who want to tear them all down, claiming they’re not good enough, but these same critics typically don’t present real world alternatives or proposals. And if this wasn’t obvious enough, as a person who respects Bernie and appreciates him, I find it frustrating that people can so easily throw away all of his positives and focus only on his negatives.
Maybe you should respond to the specific comments you take issue with? The OP and most of the comments are more focused on the fact-checking.
Of course they provide for the dictatorships, who do you think put them there in the first place? It’s called responsible parenting sweaty 💅
arewethebaddies.gif
He just said it supported democracy, not that it didn’t ALSO support dictatorships!
Dictators are good when they steal resources from the people and share them with us.
Whether technically correct or not (as I don’t know anything about this topic), what’s going on right now is insane, and if weapons were being sold to baddies under Obama, that also sounds shitty. So seems like any time is a good time to reflect upon how much power USA’s militarily-industrial complex possesses.
In any case, you guys need to do better.
