“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?
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.
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.
The point is it isn’t really worse. Yet, anyway. He’s only been president for a few weeks so obviously it can get worse.
But right now, Trump is about as bad as every other president. Bad in different ways, of course, but they all belong in prison.
I disagree. No president has ever abandoned a democratic ally to invasion by an imperialist dictator for such petty, malicious reasons.
They might all belong in prison, but that’s like saying a shoplifter is just as bad as a serial killer.
The only reason Trump has this opportunity to screw over Ukraine is because Biden kept the war going. The previous administration pressured Ukraine to keep the war going instead of entering negotiations over territory back when Russia was in a much worse position than it is now.
The reason? At the time it appeared that the war was an opportunity to weaken Russia and let them to waste blood and treasure on an unwinnable quagmire.
Years later all they accomplished was killing more Ukrainians and Russia is stronger than ever. Biden got Ukraine here, even if Trump is the one to finish them off.
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?
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.
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.
This is not fact checking. This is gaslighting. The fact that the USA has been supporting dictators for decades does not change or alter what Bernie is saying.
Supporting manufacturing war against Russia without regards to their security concerns, or talking to them, may have been a necessity in loyalty to Biden. Keeping up the charade is definitely not progressive.
Stop drinking the Russian kool aid. This has literally been the Russian gameplan since they knew they couldn’t beat us in a hot war. Psy-ops to turn us anti-globalist is almost literally verbatim the whole plan.
You can accept that the US has done some shady shit that needs to be criticized and not forgotten about, without totally dumping liberal democracy and spewing straight Russian propaganda
Russian kool aid
It is understandable to be pro-war and a total warmonger because growing up in the United States, all the propaganda we hear and are taught since we are born is done to make us not question or critically think about our imperialist ways.
Growing up and learning the non-propaganda history and other views should shift you away from US military propaganda of liking forever wars and the blind nationalism of bringing “democracy” to Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
shady shit
That is a major downplaying and rewriting of the true history of our country.
Here is a small example of what we do to other countries and the only reason we know about this is due to it being leaked by great people: https://lemmy.world/post/15002828
I suggest reading up on the military leaks and many more independent journalists, fewer legacy media viewpoints; the major ones are Julian Assange and Edward Snowden leaks.
Russian propaganda
You do know that people can come to the same conclusion without needing others to tell us what to think or being tricked into seeing the world a certain way…
I suggest learning about the Uhuru Three and the Uhuru Movement: https://lemmy.world/post/23366029
I got reminded of a song: dead prez - They School | https://lemmy.world/post/26450948
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.