I don't think I would recommend loyalty to any American politician. Even for the ones I like, that's just not how I look at it.

In any case though, cheers + all the best

Let me put it this way: If there was a candidate in this election who didn't want to give weapons to Israel (I mean, if voting for them wouldn't just be functionally a vote for Trump), I'd be on 'em in a heartbeat. In the primary I wrote in Bernie Sanders.

Lmao

Husband: I'M GONNA PUT ON MY MASSIVE FUR COAT AND STAND LIKE A MANIAC, TAKE MY PICTURE

Wife: He's a fuckin tiresome goofball but honestly he's the best. I'm gonna sit tho

If one candidate for mayor was friends with a murderer, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that he'd been protecting his friend the murderer and even sold him the gun, and kept talking about how he was a good guy -- BUT, the other candidate was torturing cats in his basement and also talking about once he's mayor and he has control of the town's police force he needs to start killing or torturing everyone's cats, and also some of the people, I think I would vote for the murderer's friend. If those were the only two options. It's nothing to do with cats versus people. It's what one person does versus what a different person's ally does.

I realize that analogy is not a real ringing endorsement for Biden, but yeah, it's fair; Gaza and Biden's support for Israel aren't real ringing good things about him. But, I do feel it's still very relevant the difference between what Trump did on purpose himself, and plans to continue to do and accelerate the perpetration of, and what Biden's not doing enough to prevent some different person from doing.

Yeah, so family separation. Trump took an already barbaric system, and made it absolutely catastrophically more barbaric. There are still little kids -- and not a small number of them -- who will never see their families again because they got taken away because their parents committed a misdemeanor, through desperation and from no desire other than just a better life or a chance to live somewhere free from gang violence or poverty, and even when they were following the rules about how to cross over and then request asylum, the best that they were able.

One of Biden's first acts in office was to start a task force to try to find the families for the missing kids, who were at that point still in custody, and reunite them. It wasn't completely successful, because the systems of bureaucracy in their home countries were often chaotic or nonexistent, and the bureaucracy on our end was carelessly disorganized and cruel. But, at least he fuckin' tried.

Immigration in this country is still fairly bad, because it's run by an explicitly racist agency staffed with explicit racists. But, every single proposal Biden's put forth has included some sensible things that objectively need to happen (such as adding judges to the system to help clear the backlog so people aren't sitting waiting to get into the country, or in custody, for absurdly long lengths of time, which is where a lot of the suffering in the current system comes from, when it's not coming from simple racism).

Anyway, the point is that Biden's at least trying to do good things, and then he gets shit for it from Republicans because the system's not cruel enough, and then also shit from "leftists" because the system is still somewhat cruel, ignoring the fact that every single action he's taken has been attempting to make it better than it was, and that all that "leftist" inaction just strengthens the people who are deliberately trying to return it to the "cage full of orphaned and un-cared-for children, people of all ages freezing to death or regularly dying in custody" regime that it was under Trump.

You're right -- spending time debating with someone who's unclear on what Trump did to the nuclear deal and the sanctions regime and the resulting impact on the Iranian people and the stability of the region in general, and assumes that assassinating Soleimani was what I was talking about just because that's all they know about what happened in Iran under Trump because that was the most prominent story in the papers, betraying a lack of detailed understanding of US policy in the middle east and its impacts, might not be a good use of time, because at this point I think the point is pretty much made. It's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up.

Although, there's still time to talk about adding 700,000 manufacturing jobs and strengthening unions in a way that hasn't happened yet under any president post-Reagan, and why that might be a relevant good thing. Did we talk about that yet?

Or family separation? That's actually kind of a hard one to talk about because I tend to get genuinely upset about it, but it's a good window into the different levels of brown people friendliness the two presidents had, if we're not wanting to examine Biden's tepid resistance and compare it with Trump's "finish the job" solution for Gaza?

Oh, also, you absolutely did say Trump was better than Biden in particular significant ways -- here and here.

Giving criticism and resistance to the genocide I'm very in favor of; maybe that wasn't clear so far. Taking the leap into "and that's why we don't need to keep Trump out of power anymore" is the only portion of it that starts to confuse and alarm me.

To your point - can we verify that all of the people saying it's very important not to vote, for the sake of the Palestinian people, are being genuine about where they live and their background and motivations?

'Cause I have some questions about some of that shit, if we're doin' verifying.

if biden is actually even better for Palestinians at all

You have GOT to be joking.

we shouldn't telegraph guaranteed votes to biden and the democrats no matter what they do

This part, I actually agree with. Ralph Nader did a great interview where he was expressing this huge level of frustration with Democratic voters and said more or less, I get the reality, but there is a way to wield your vote in order to get things that you want. You get together a coalition, and you credibly communicate to the person in the election that they can only get all of your votes if they do X, Y, and Z. That puts pressure on them and it can absolutely change policy.

To him, he was saying that he thinks it's criminally silly to just say "well Biden's better than Trump so he can count on my vote." Like I say, objecting to that makes sense to me. By the same token I think it's silly to say "well Biden's not good enough so he can count on not getting my vote even if Trump is 10 times worse". Both of those courses of action are passing up an opportunity to actually influence policy. But stuff like the uncommitted votes in Michigan I thought were a great idea.

I mean that coalition building takes work, and it maybe won't succeed, it's this huge operation where throwing around comments on Lemmy is pretty easy. But it will actually help, if you do it.

Idaho?

Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they're unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians

Brb

Edit: Yeah pretty much

Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.

Fuckin' democracy

They want to get rid of agriculture

you need to drive an electric car

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”

IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there's a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.

I'd be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn't impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that's trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.

Honestly, you can either understand the plain and simple English of what the Palestinian person said that I then linked to, or you can't. If you can't, then it's probably not my place to try to break it down for you, and my effort to do regardless hasn't been working anyway.

So, good luck with your political advocacy. Cheers.

It's a good point - the very nature of Democratic politics, where a modest level of rebellion against Biden's bad Israel policies can result in genuine change (although pretty tepid in comparison to what needs to happen). Things like pausing weapons shipments, sanctions on settlers, and setting up aid for Gaza does represent a significant structural difference between them and the Republicans, who are composed at this point pretty much of only "unquestioning followers" in your pretty accurate phrasing, would never have done anything like that, would have openly supported Netanyahu's genocide instead of simply failing to prevent it, and are subject to only isolated hotspots of resistance even in the face of openly fascist or treasonous behavior.

For example, no Republicans resigned from the executive branch because of family separation, or moving the embassy to Jerusalem, or the catastrophic mismanagement of the Iran nuclear deal and the resulting suffering of the Iranian people. It's a good reminder that even when Biden is doing terrible things (like supporting Israel), he's still open to some level of influence from the non-terrible people, while Trump is not.

It's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up.

How would I feel about people who are not LBGT+ but claim to care deeply and powerfully about them, so much so that they're advocating for Mike Pence to be in charge of the country, because Biden was okay with "Don't Ask Don't Tell" back in the 1990s and so clearly he's just as bad (or whatever the argument is)?

How would I feel about an LBGT+ person speaking up, in that situation, saying hey please don't do that, I don't like it at all, that actually will make me unsafe in a terrifying way? I would feel like, hey I think I should amplify that person's voice on the issue.

And so, that's why we're here in this post. Hello! Good to meet you.

Sure. So it's not really my place to have this whole conversation, but I already did get involved, and I'm happy to give my input.

The point is that whatever's going on with Biden, Trump is objectively worse on every single metric, including but not limited to the safety of Arabs, Palestinians, and potential victims of the American military in general, at home and abroad.

Someone who cares about dead Palestinians could absolutely try to pressure Biden to stop sending weapons to the IDF, remove Netanyahu to the ICC, or whatever they want to do. Or they could point out that Biden is a monster for continuing the US's war criminal support for Israel, and not immediately denouncing Israel the instant they started blocking food aid or bombing hospitals. Sure. All that makes sense. If any of that is what you're doing, and it sounds like I'm trying to disagree with it, I am not. I actually originally came in this thread complaining about the OP cartoon, because I think most of the Palestine protestors are absolutely consistent and justified and the cartoon is grossly unfair as applied to them.

The very specific and very politically motivated construction from there to "that's why I can't support Biden, against Trump" or "that's why I'm not voting" or anything like that, is endangering Palestinians in Palestine, Palestinians in America, Hispanics in their home countries and in the US, Americans in the US, and many many other people, to an absolutely horrifying level.

This person is, if I am understanding them correctly, objecting very specifically to the second one. They're asking that people stop using the suffering of them and their family and friends to try to promote a particular political agenda which actually endangers them, increasing the chance of a genocide much much worse than what's happening right now in Gaza, while pretending that it's a Palestinian-friendly course of action and they're doing it because they care about Palestinians. They're pointing out that it's a ghoulish and dangerous thing to point to their own dead relatives and then try to use them to excuse a politics which threatens to make a lot more corpses, while pretending that it's on their behalf.

Is that a good explanation for how?

Thank you! I posted it to bestof.

This is some Matrix level missing the point.

The point literally couldn't have come at you any more directly, and you still dodged around it and redirected, and doubled down on the pretense that somehow this person doesn't care about their own dead relatives, and you need to instruct them on what's important and what they need to understand and how to look at it, and why they should get on board with your politics, otherwise they don't care about their own dying and suffering people.

Here ya go. It is, of course, a little more complex than I made it sound, but if I wanted to cherry-pick the sides of it that are good for Biden I'd say:

On the job statistics, Biden is numerically correct. However, experts say he should use more caution...

Officials pointed to data showing that it took 30 months — from April 2020 to September 2022 — for manufacturing jobs to return to their pre-pandemic recession peak. That may sound like a long time, but after the recessions that struck in 1990, 2001 and 2007, manufacturing jobs never even bounced back to their prior level after 100 months.

Biden has created "a climate for factory investment that we haven’t seen for generations," including the investments in infrastructure, clean energy manufacturing and semiconductors, Paul told PolitiFact. These are "already paying dividends. You can see from the ubiquitous factory announcements almost every week."

Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a research and policy center in Washington, D.C., agreed that the gain in about 700,000 manufacturing jobs since the pandemic-era low has been unusually rapid.

Not planning to respond to the other part, delving a little into why you're claiming Trump is better exactly?

not enough

wasn't enough

Do you think Trump is enough?

I mean, I don't think Biden is enough either, but using that as an argument for why Trump is better is some Mr. Mxyzptlk logic.

Biden has been the one continuing the Trump trade war shit on China

That's a good point; he spent hundreds of billions of dollars (which he raised by increasing corporate tax) on boosting domestic manufacturing adding like 700,000 manufacturing jobs last I checked, instead of continuing to have everything constructed abroad and rich middlemen keeping all the profits.

The WTO, if you remember those guys, was so angry about how he's running his trade policy that they ordered him to change it back, and his State Department told them to piss up a rope we're not changing a damn thing, representing one more big break he's making with the neoliberal shit that is the recent history of the Democrats. It's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up.

Who among us has not been the horse, at one point or another

Not even remotely enough

This part, I actually 100% agree with.

On the other hand, if the house is on fire, and one firefighter as soon as he gets on scene removes 40% of the gasoline from the garage even with a lot of people trying to fistfight him for doing that much, and the other firefighter says we have to get more gasoline in the house because taking away the gasoline is a Chinese plot to cripple our economy, I would feel comfortable saying that someone on Lemmy who is claiming the second firefighter is actually the superior firefighter is talking pure unadulterated weapons grade bollocks.

Okay, next one: Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of student loan forgiveness. Your turn, go!

40% emissions reductions by 2030