this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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What makes Trump any worse? I don't understand this mindset at all after the past 4 years.
Yeah, voting Blue isn't harm reduction. We've seen it. There is no reducing the harm or this dying empire
It’s a mixed bag. Trump would be worse for marginalized Americans. He’s going to start controversies over shit like non-cis people using public bathrooms just to distract from whatever grift he is doing at the moment. Not to say Biden is great on that but there is a difference there.
Foreign policy-wise, Trump is more likely to do something insane like randomly bombing Iran one day due to neocons like John Bolton whispering in his ear. Biden also has people influencing him but he has a basic understanding of where the red lines are.
Though, if Trump did bomb Iran, that could actually be “better” (scare quotes doing some heavy lifting here) if it means that America is unmistakably perceived as the baddie and the world unites against America, no more plausible deniability for countries like Saudi Arabia and India to remain on good terms with the US. So in that apocalyptic sense it would be better to let Trump fuck up America’s political relations than to allow Biden to carefully maintain them.
I don’t know why people think Trump is more unstable than Biden on this stuff. Trump didn’t start any wars. Biden has bombed how many new countries in the last couple months? And is now hurtling towards war with Iran?
This isn’t to say Trump is stable or peaceful or anything, he did randomly decide to bomb Soleimani, but Biden has really been trying to prove that actually Trump is only 99% Hitler, I’m 100% Hitler, Jack.
The pentagon ghouls decided to propose it to him hoping he would do it and start an open war with Iran (as opposed to the quiet quasi-war we have with them now)
No president is coming up with these things to do. They just rubber stamp.
Which he then will strategically cross when calculated to be advantageous
Like Ukraine
I mean, Nikki Haley just called to assassinate multiple Iranian leaders while Biden is at least saying let's maybe not start WW3. I have a feeling Trump would lean more towards the former given his track record.
I feel like the whole "Biden started multiple wars" is just repackaged great man theory. The two main wars that started under Biden's watch are Russia-Ukraine and the Israeli genocide. Russia-Ukraine was untenable considering Ukraine never planned to abide by Minsk 2 and everything going on in the middle east, including the bombings, are a result of the Israeli agression in response to the Al Aqsa Flood.
We can get past that and ask who would have a worse response to these, and I think you can argue that the Democrats posing as the "reasonable option" gives them more leeway in the public eye to get away with these atrocities but "Biden started multiple wars" just seems like facile analysis that threatens to give people an idealist understanding of these conflicts.
You have massively downplayed the role of the Biden administration in starting the Ukraine war.
Zelensky was elected in 2019 as the president that was supposed to bridge the feud between ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, and he was overwhelmingly supported by the eastern Ukraine regions where ethnic Russians are the majority. He changed his tune completely after his meeting with the newly elected Biden in early 2021. Nobody knows what was exactly being said but it was pretty clear that the Biden administration had every intention of ramping up the tension in Ukraine.
This was what was causing Russia to sound the alarm. That’s why we had the US-Russia Summit in June 2021. The Russians prepared hundreds of pages of proposal, stated very clearly what their red lines are, and proposed multiple ways of resolving their security concerns. They were willing to compromise. It was Russia’s saying “we’re not joking and we’re taking this very seriously. We want to de-escalate.” This was straight up ignored by the side of the US.
Instead of ramping down the tension, the Biden administration shipped Stingers and Javelins to Ukraine in August 2021, merely 2 months after Russia asked them to take this seriously. This was followed by a 2nd shipment in December 2021. Russia invaded Ukraine 2 months after that.
So much happened in 2021 (and I am really condensing everything here) you cannot just say that the Biden administration didn’t have anything to do with it. It was a very deliberate strategic policy to provoke Russia into a war (the ultimate goal being, of course, to subjugate the EU to American capital).
All fair points. I have my doubts about Zelensky remaining in office as an anti war candidate but the Biden admin definitely at best accelerated that timeline. More so just frustrated with how often the dunk culture can impede serious analysis.
It wasn't random. It was to appease the more bloodthirsty morons in Washington, who got angry when the impending war with Iran got scrapped because Iran proven they are able and willing to defend themselves. Remember how Trump and Pentagon were like 11.59 on war clock and suddenly stopped and shut up about it after Iran shot down that super drone with old Soviet missile? Right after that they even sacked Bolton which lead him to publish hilarious book where he accuse Trump of being the most sane guy in entire Rep party.
But the hawks needed to get the last word so they at least murdered Soleimani, as a treat. Some people maybe believed it will trigger the war anyway, but Iran is more restrained than them so it didn't.
Didn't trump fire Bolton for being a war hawk? Trump is an isolationist, he showed he wasn't interested (or capable) of foreign intervention. No support from the rest of the imperial core, not subtle or patient enough to pull of coupe
not sneaky enough to motivate the American people to nuke Iran and not understanding of the machine of capital to realise why they had troops in Afghanistan
I seriously cannot understand how one can look at the general global reproachment between nations that happened under Trump, because he withdrew the heavy hand of the US empire. Did he do it because he's a nice guy? No he did it because he's a racist who doesn't wanna waste money on all those dirty foreigners and he doesn't understand how the presence of the US is necessary.
He sincerely believes the propaganda we get told (Kim Jong Un is crazy, the people of Venezuela are rising up against oppresive government all on their own, were only in Afghanistan to help the local government)
Far more rapid escalation of violence against minorities domestically. Fascist militias will be given the libidinal privilege to violence by their god head sitting on the oval throne.
Trump was already president and none of this happened. Biden has oppressed Muslims and immigrants equally or greater than Trump. Women lost abortion rights under Biden, who refused to do anything about it like pack the courts or pass a bunch of legislature protecting it
You are getting sheepdogged by hyperbolic fearmongering. Muslims who face a lot of hate under Trump are the most outspoken in boycotting Biden for being a genocidal fascist. What is this liberal crap seriously why do we have to go through this “harm reduction” shit nonstop from you people
Bruh all I'm saying is dont be dismissive of peoples concerns about domestic racial violence. Under Trump those hate groups were marching around proudly. Trump also was the one who appointed the the judges who repealed abortion.
I'm not saying voting for Biden is less wrong or the right thing. But you have to keep in mind that these are real fears that American minorities have about Trump. Bless the american Muslims for standing up against Biden but for the love of god dont demand it of other minorities unless you're one of them.
I am one of them, and the most handwringing pearl clutchers are all white boomer liberals in my experience, MSNBC watchers and radlibs
That's not true, Biden has broken records (including Trump's records) with police funding and killings have gone up since 2020 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1362796/number-people-killed-police-us/
I was talking about fascist militias not the police. You can expect police funding and violence to go up regardless who's in charge.
What's the difference, and how many minorities did larping militias kill during the Trump years?
That undermines your point not mine, also it isn't true, the number of killings per year was stable between Obama and Trump, until Biden came in and killings shot up
Please bother to read context of the thread and understand that I meant to explain why someone might be afraid of Trump being reflected. Not that Biden is actually better or worse in any way.
Fascist street gangs and right wing militias are scarier to the average american than the police. You can argue that its misplaced fear all you want but it doesnt change what people think.
For that matter I doubt that police killings went up because of Biden and not because of knock on economic effects of covid. In this neoliberal political economy the president has all the power in international relations but next to none domestically.
The average American can't be scared of those militias because the average American doesn't think about or know anything about those fascist street gangs
So Biden giving the police unprecedented record federal funding has no effect on their conduct or reach?
Again, this undermines your points, not mine
Trump openly boasted about wanting to deport pro-Palestinian Americans (which he really means Muslims). If you’re minorities living in America it’s a really fucking scary time.
Not to mention all the anti-LGBT agenda that the crazy MAGA Republicans are pulling as well.
What I’m saying is that you get the ghoulishness of Biden and all of the overt racism and emboldened fascism on top of that.
Wait you are being serious? Lmao
I'm kind of confused by him saying for months now that Biden is the more effective racist who's done more to hurt minorities and marginalized groups. But now he's claiming it's actually Trump who's worse for marginalized people.
DISCLAIMER: Honestly this is kind of just a vibes based analysis. God I need to read State and Revolution. I guess i shouldn’t share it? But maybe someone can take the idea and add on to it with more theory, I don’t know.
People don’t understand ratchet theory properly. The point of the Democratic Party is to be a highly popular, slightly better alternative to the Republican Party, which constantly moves rightward. This is to say that it’s basically a national-level form of blackmail which forces everyone left of center to vote for Dems or risk the ratchet turning to the right.
The dismissive, demeaning tone given towards concerns of another Republican presidency is really unsettling because of this. While we shouldn’t stoop to actively voting Democrat, openly pretending that the party that ratchets things to the right wouldn’t ratchet things to the right is only behavior we have been able to justify because it’s easier than explaining how we genuinely need to reject the Democratic Party in it’s entirety precisely because they’re part of the two halves that are keeping any sort of left mass movement from existing in the US in any electoral capacity.
This is to say that a Republican presidency (not specifically Trump, Trump is just some Republican, no worse or better than any other disgusting ratcheting ghoul, or, morally speaking, any Democrat ghoul either) IS something we should be afraid of, but we shouldn’t react to it by being vote shamed. I mean, you can vote however you want for harm reduction or whatever, but that isn’t going to do nearly as much good as building actual physical power.
We should be preparing our meagre organizations and resources to both take advantage of the mass dissatisfaction among disenfranchised people that will surely come into light in this inevitable surge of Republican confidence, and to support and provide mutual aid to those hurt directly by it. There are things we can do, however small, to ease the coming suffering of our comrades (the suffering we’ve already seen coming with various horrific laws and bills!). And we should be preparing to do those things, too.
Yesterday multiple Muslim people were barred from entering a Democratic rally... by the Democrats.
Two days ago, one of the most senior Democrats accused Palestinian supporters of being Russian agents. Most major figures in the party have lined up behind Israel and their genocide.
The Dems have done nothing to fix the Supreme Court, nothing to protect trans people from all of the state bills being passed now, and nothing about the rising homelessness in cities where they have supermajorities.
They're not doing anything worth supporting. It's all just marketing. They really don't care about winning because if they did maybe they would stop saying "We need a strong Republican party"
It has a lot of bad options What's is your point?
Biden winning in the fall is the acceleration outcome bc the right wont accept it and will move to civil war. The center libs will just accept trump and let him do whatever.
The only goal is to collapse the federal government as quickly as possible.
I mean there's a whole list: