Donald Trump offered to weaken climate regulations in exchange for a $1bn contribution from oil company bosses to support his return to the White House
Donald Trump offered to weaken climate regulations in exchange for a $1bn contribution from oil company bosses to support his return to the White House later this year. During a dinner for senior oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago club last month, Trump “vowed to immediately reverse dozens of president [Joe] Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted” if they gave him the money, according to the newspaper. One top priority for the executives, which Trump said they would get “on the first day”, was an end to the freeze on permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, the article notes.
You said that both parties are the same, but also that one is the lesser of two evils, which means that one is better than the other. So are they the same, or is there one party that's better than the other?
"WAAH!! I can't have the perfect candidate so I won't participate and/or throw my vote away on a third party candidate, damning everyone in the process!!"
Some of them are true believers. Some are being edgy because they know it bothers people. Some are bad actors trying to convince others not to vote because not voting always benefits the Republicans.
True, I was just saying that in another thread, when more people vote (of any politicsal affiliation) the statistics say democrats win bigger. I don't remember why it's true but it is. Something to do with demographics.
My personal opinion, backed in part by things I've read, in part by things I've seen, and in part just things I've pulled out of my ass:
Old people have more time to vote so they do it every election and tend to go conservative. Younger people (by and large) tend to skew liberal or progressive because they don't want things to go back to an imaginary time before they were born. They also tend to have college, are working crazy hours to make ends meet, or have social obligations that they feel are incredibly important so they don't go vote unless they feel like something is on the line.
Biden put rules in place to protect the environment. Trump will remove them. How is one not better than the other if the environment is important to you?
I totally get your apathy, but when it comes to the election in November, we have a binary choice that we need to make. When it comes to the election we need to focus on factors relevant to that choice.
I don't like Biden, or most Democrats, and I agree with you that they are fucking us over.
But they are not the same.
Biden won't need to pardon himself when he leaves office (assuming he's alive).
If you don't vote for Biden, you're voting for Trump. When you don't vote, you're voting for the people who say your vote doesn't matter, who say you have no power, who say both sides are the same, and nothing can ever change.
If you wait for the perfect candidate to go out and vote, then you are voting against progress.
Biden's promise is that Trump won't accept election results, and the nation will be plunged into cataclysmic ecocidal fascism.
So why is he spending his time outlawing tiktok instead of truth social if the risk is truly so monumental? Why does Biden seem to care more about allowing trump to run than halting fascism? Why would the democrats rather lose than shift left?
The funniest part is watching liberals try to understand where this discontentment on the actual left is coming from: is it russian bots? Is it maga trolls? Is it Chinese agents? As opposed to the revelation that maybe some people are further left and more apathetic than run-of-the-mill American liberal democrats. Anger at Joe Biden is anything but inorganic.
Marxists weren't warning about the inevitable alignment between fascists and liberals for 200 years for nothing, you know. There's history behind that argument.
Take a step back and understand you are now arguing in favor of perpetuating your ecocidal, genocidal, and imperialist political project at the expense of 32,000 palestinian lives. You are the bad guy. I suspect that 30 years from now when the choice is between democrat who wants 5 genocides and a republican who wants 10, you'll still be screeching about how important it is to vote for 99% Hitler since political analysis for liberals stops at the revelation that 99<100.
when the choice is between democrat who wants 5 genocides and a republican who wants 10, you'll still be screeching about how important it is to vote for 99% Hitler since political analysis for liberals stops at the revelation that 99<100.
So you think supporting an additional 5 genocides doesn't make YOU the "bad guy". Shit you couldn't even get to the level of political analysis that "99<100" is, why the hell should anyone listen to a thing you have to say?
Do you know what we get to see of this "actual left" around here?
Not organizers trying to set up a demonstration in Washington. Not people linking to websites explaining how to mail your governor or the white house with suggested text passages. Not activists recruiting stunt performers to make some artistic display that will get reported in the press. Not people trying to aid the resistance within Israel itself.
All we see is people trying to dissuade the non-fascists from voting.
Fascist Russia's genocidal war on Ukraine is completely masked out. In online spaces held by Marxist-Leninists, aka tankies, fascist Russia is even elevated to be the good guy, with mods deleting dissent. During China's genocide of the Uyghurs, tankies posted Chinese propaganda memes trying to keep their communities supportive of China.
German anti-fascists had a name for such people. Collaborators.
These "don't vote" posts always do the same shtick, too, attacking and blaming liberals (hint: Marx actually admired liberalism), while claiming some true, real, actual left is much better (how? are they all John Rambo? Do we have to wait until the shooting starts?). It just doesn't look very organic, it looks like talking points constantly injected into tankie spaces by Russian propagandists.
Both sides might be bad, but one side is neoliberal and the other side is fascist, give me the neoliberals until we can dismantle the systems that allow both to exist.