this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Neither of us can convince someone whose friends had their asses beat by cops at a university protesting Biden's action. Only Biden can do that, by ending the genocide.
When dems lose for not doing the things they need to do to get elected, are you going to blame the dems for not winning what should be an easy election by just doing the things the people want him to do, using all the means at his disposal, or are you going to blame every single voter in the US for not voting for a party that shows nothing but contempt for them?
I notice a certain slight tendency in your comments to talk about China, implication that aid for Taiwan was "bought" from the US congress by someone, tendency to delve into the details of tariffs and suchlike.
Quick question for you: If I protest in China against a Chinese policy I don't agree with, what happens to me?
(This isn't a whataboutism -- China doing something doesn't excuse the US police from doing a much milder version of the same thing. I don't think they should be beating or arresting protestors here either. I'm just curious how universally you apply this concern for protestors who had their asses beat.)
Quick Answer: You can just google "site:scmp.com (or any other english language chinese news site) protestors"
You could probably find much better data if you googled the chinese word for protestors, but then you'd have to translate the results.
Even when the government wants to shut down protests, such as in HK, it's 100x more gentle than the US is. Think of how many people getting run over by cops we saw in 2020. I didn't see a single child get domed with a pepperball in Hong Kong.
Faaaaascinating
Also, look at all the happy Uyghurs leaving their re-education camps after the Chinese government helped boost their job opportunities. Sounds great.
Yes, that is 100x more gentle than how the US deals with terrorism. Abu Garib was not giving people job training and setting them up with careers.
Bro, it's not a fuckin contest
I'm not in favor of Abu Ghraib, or Guantánamo, or the Uyghur detention camps, or the genocide in Gaza. From my point of view as a person who likes human rights, it's actually not really that complicated to say that I'm not in favor of any of those things. It wouldn't even occur to me to bring up one of them as a defense for any of the others, because I would have no reason to want to defend any of them.
This is exactly why I wanted to ask you that seemingly unrelated question. I was curious whether you were an overall pro-human-rights person who came organically to your viewpoint about not wanting to vote for the Democrats, or whether that "of course I hate that Palestine protestors in the US are being abused" -- a pretty sensible view, tbh -- came alongside some other views which were incongruous and surprising, and wouldn't commonly be encountered in a person who has strong feelings about human rights as they pertain to domestic US politics.
Sounds like I got my answer.
(Edit: Oh, not that this is the point, because (1) as I said it's not a contest (2) it is actually a little unfair to compare Hong Kong's mini-insurrection against peaceful US Palestine protests -- but Hong Kong protestors absolutely were shot in the head with nonlethal rounds, shot with live ammunition, given brain injuries and broken bones, sexually assaulted, and in some cases had their eyes shot out. Maybe they can get together with the BLM people who had eyes shot out and the lot of them could start working out how we can get these assholes out of power please.)
My take on any enemies of the US is uncritical support; the only impact the US will have on those people is further immiseration, thus to criticize them as an American living in America is to carry water for imperialism.
It's why you see people get more worked up about Iranian oppression than Saudi oppression, despite Saudi Arabia being dependent on US military aid to oppress it's people. The context of you, and American, hearing about gay rights in Palestine is to support further oppression of the Palestinian people.
Also, I want to circle back to this for a second. Doesn't this mean that we maybe shouldn't take your advice on how as voters to approach the presidential election?
Or does your "enemies of the US get uncritical support" stance come in conjunction with a "the US election is very important to me and I have some criticisms of the Democrats but they're purely meant from a constructive helping-the-country-get-better point of view" viewpoint on electoral politics?
Yeah, there is a discrepancy, I should be voting for the candidate that would lead to the quickest and least violent destruction of the US, but I live here and I can't give up the admittedly absurd hope that despite all evidence, the US will just you know, stop it, without a revolution or anything.
There is a difference in what libs and I consider "helping-the-country-get-better" is; I feel helping the country get better at imperialism is a bad thing, they don't.
Conversely, I feel helping the country get better at improving material conditions for the working class at the expense of the capitalist class to be good, where libs do not.
So if a third party won the presidency someday, and the US turned against Israel, you'd uncritically support Israel?
If the US stopped being the core of imperialism, of course I'd have to reevaluate.
No, no, if they were still the core of imperialism. I don't think that's likely to change any time soon. But if voter sentiment in the US turned so aggressively and permanently against Israel that cutting off military aid to Israel became a huge campaign issue, and then it happened, and Israel went absolutely on a tear of anti-US realignment and made an alliance of survival with the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Or something like that. It's a lot more plausible than other things that people are talking about, like legalizing weed or abolishing the FBI and DOJ.
If that happened and the US still had a mostly-unchanged-otherwise foreign policy, would you uncritically support Israel because they'd become an avowed enemy of the US?
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also US puppets though.
But yes, I would support the US decolonizing its own puppets.
The uncritical support is right 99% of the time, there's been a handful of weird historical flukes where the US accidentally ends up on the right side of history, such as WWII and briefly supporting Rojava against ISIS (which is really a wash, since they created the context that lead to ISIS, then supplied ISIS with trucks and weapons).
That wasn't the question.
Would you uncritically support Israel, if they had a falling out with the US and started criticizing the US? Getting no military funding from us anymore, and getting up at the UN and calling out the US and giving criticism and making friends with countries that were avowed enemies of the US (while still killing Palestinians exactly like at present)?
I feel like you're saying you would, but I want to make sure I'm hearing you right.
It gets more complicated when US is on both sides or the same side as one of its enemies; eg, China supplying weapons to US puppets Indonesia and Philippians against their maoist guerillas.
But yes, in such a world where the US was openly taking action against one of their puppets, I'd have to support it, and be critical of whoever is supporting them.
It would be one hell of a historical fluke though.
They kinda have been, historically, in the late 40s, the USSR sent them some weapons, and more recently, they had warm relations with Russia and China.
Hey, thanks for being honest. I wish all of you guys would lead with that.
Have you seen literally every single military action the US has taken since WWII?
If you assume the US is on the wrong side, you'll end up with the right answer every time. They supported the fucking Khmer Rouge until 1993.
North Korea good because US bad? Seems a bit reductive.
It's not a fight between good and bad nations in my mind, it's more about the struggle of people everywhere for liberation, justice, and equality. I'm pretty skeptical of most military actions since WW2 around the world. Such a destructive waste of human potential.
No, US's opposition to North Korea is bad. It doesn't make North Korea good, but I'm not going to criticize within the context of America, since the only use of that criticism is to support further sanctions or military actions against the people of North Korea.
Sure Biden has messed up with the protesters, but the Republican nominee Trump, would have had you shot.
Considering his cabinet has stated they actively had to dissuade him, several times, from simply ordering military elements to "gun down" protestors during the Floyd protests in 2020...yeah.
"what should be an easy election" <- this is how we know you are campaigning for Trump. There is no such thing as an easy election. Since 1992, Democrats have won the popular vote in 7 out of 8 elections, but that didn't stop Bush from beating Gore, or Trump from beating Clinton.
lol, all your type does is talk about dems dems dems, not a single word about Republicans or how much worse they have proven to be when they are in office.
Trump said he would help Israel end the genocide, I guess that's what you want after all, right?
Oh, so you're still under the delusion the DNC did nothing wrong, and it's the voters who were wrong for not voting harder.
Look at it this way: The democrats can change their own policy. They cannot change the psychology of the masses. No matter how much you yell at people for pointing it out, facilitating genocide, restarting student loans, letting Texas keep their child drowning fence, standing around while states ban abortion, are bad for electoral outcomes.
The republicans are psychopaths whose policies are bad for the material conditions of 99% of Americans. This has been true forever, but here we are, with dems somehow right of Richard Nixon. You have to have absolute dogshit policies for it to even be close, and that's exactly what got us here. "Well trump might have restarted student loan payments but worse" isn't gonna convince someone who is building up credit card debt now because they can't balance rent, food, and student loan repayments.
I'm not under any delusions. ANY political party wielding power is going to make decisions that help some people and hurt others. It can't be helped it's the nature of power itself.
I'll repeat, the Democrats have won the popular vote 7 out of 8 times since 1992. They have the more popular policies on their side, and only have to fight rhetoric like yours. What are you doing to help change the Democratic party, hm? Tea Party and MAGA have each managed to get their fucknuts into power and change the direction of the Republicans towards fascism. What's your plan, how does whinging in comment section trying to create voter apathy towards the Dems do anything but put Trump in office?
In life, you have two mutually exclusive options: you can be right about something, or you can be effective. So you go ahead and keep on being the rightist guy in the room. The people who focus on being effective will manage to work around you.
The dems are on a trajectory to lose the election. Your tactic of pretending otherwise is both wrong and ineffective.
I am not trying to create voter apathy, I am trying to create anger to encourage people pressuring the dems to do the things they need to do to win.
my student loan repayments are currently $0 due to the SAVE repayment plan. the threat i currently face as a borrower in repayment comes from states suing the Biden admin in federal court to stop affordable repayment.
i see your propaganda. i hope others see it for what it is as well.
Sure but when Trump becomes president and you start to realise what you’ve done, don’t expect any help, sympathy, or even basic human decency.
Dems lose? We all lose. You people seem to forget you're fucking everyone. Your feelings don't matter, outcomes do. If you know Trump wins in this scenario, and you know there may be no more free elections, how does this "force the Dems to learn for next time?" Braindead ideological bullshit. You're a fucking cult.
Why the hell are you coming at me then? I can't control the dems policies, nor can I change the psychology of muslims to vote for a guy who is facilitating genocide. Nothing I say would convince someone who is struggling to pay rent because their student loans were resumed by executive order.
The only thing either of us can do is pressure the dems to do the things they need to do to get elected. If Biden stops the genocide, then I could tell muslims "Hey, if you don't vote Biden, Trump will resume it", and college grads "Hey, if you don't vote Biden, Trump will resume loan repayments", and women "Hey, if you don't vote Biden, Trump's gonna remove your right to bodily autonomy" but I can't do that because he doesn't give me shit to work with.
One fucking Google search and this was the second link: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
That's nice, but it's really hard to convince someone to vote for the person still pushing the knife deeper into them. Stopping further damage done via gaza and student loans are an absolute minimum. I'm not even expecting him to pull the knife out, let alone do something to heal the wound. The bar is underwater when I have to set it at "Not actively making your personal material conditions worse". "Yes he's making things worse for you and will not stop doing so, but some of the things he did aren't objectively bad" is not gonna win an election.
Also some of those were objectively bad, such as increasing militarism and oil production.
That's not even the main point. You said elsewhere:
I don't know man. I think you wanna think through that discrepancy at some length. I'm pretty doubtful that you're sincere about what you're saying. Sorry.
If you actually are an American and this is actually what you believe, then you should know that I carry the same absurd hope that you're talking about that the US can do better things. If you want better outcomes for the people inside the United States and less evil done in its name on the world stage, I think there are actually some good ways you can work towards that outcome.
He restarted loan repayments. Every dollar paid on every loan he didn't forgive is the knife going deeper.
No no no, I'd have to support the US against Israel. My fault, "I'd have to support it" was ambiguous, it could have been referring to the US's opposition to Israel or Israel.
No he didn't. The relevant quote is, "But this time is different. The debt ceiling bill’s statutory language will tie Biden’s hands. Barring a new national emergency, he will no longer have the statutory authority to extend the current student loan pause."
The thing that actually was in his power to do -- forgive balances -- he did. And, when other parts of the federal government cancelled his order to do a massive forgiveness, he did smaller forgiveness packages that added up to around $150 billion so far.
Got it. Makes sense. So what made you change your mind? What's different about Israel if they were an enemy of the US that would make you not support them (in a way that you would some other small middle-eastern country that was an enemy of the US)?
I didn't, the "oppose the US and you'll be on the right side" heuristic only describes the end result, the core is still anti-imperialism. That is a weird scenario where the US is incidentally opposing its own imperialism.
Same with the US opposition to ISIS after they supplied them with weapons and trucks and personnel they trained and radicalized to fight Assad.
Same with the US opposition to Nazi Germany after they supplied them with materials and weapons to crush the communist at home and in hope they'd go after the USSR.
Interesting
Who do you support in the Ukraine war? Who would you support if the Chinese military invaded Taiwan?
The US government is made of many, many parts and conflicting goals and interests. The actions on student loan forgiveness are one small example, but the same applies even to big actions like what to do with Nazi Germany.
If there was a faction of the US government that was opposing Nazi Germany the whole time, and a faction of it that was supporting the Nazis even during part of the shooting war, is it fair to say you'd support the faction that was fighting the Nazis and oppose the faction that was supporting the Nazis? Or would you assert that the faction that was opposing the Nazis the whole time didn't exist or things didn't happen that way?
Re: Ukraine, I oppose the US's actions. More specifically, I support peace at any cost; every day the war goes on, and every bomb we send there, is a bad day for someone, statistically mostly women and children. The region will never be safe again in our lifetimes. Literally anything would be better than what we're seeing now. I have significant criticisms of Russia, but right now they would only serve to support more needless deaths.
Re: China. Assuming eventual, peaceful reunification was off the table due to US machinations and not invading meant a hostile state being used to launch hostile actions within PRC, I'd have to support it. The alternative is another Ukraine.
This is correct. We're getting into weird hypotheticals and counter-factuals. I'm more comfortable with things that actually happened.
There were Americans who opposed the nazis before 1941. During the mccarthy era, they were smeared as "preeminent anti-fascists" meaning "these people weren't opposed to the nazis when we thought they were the answer to communism, that must mean they're secret communists".
Such a world where they were strongly influential, America might have taken different actions that had different results for the people living there and the heuristic wouldn't work so well. But we don't, and it does.
Have you read any Gerald Horne? The Counter Revolution of 1776 and The Counter Revolution of 1860 do a good job of showing how it's baked into the US's DNA.
Fascinating
Very fascinating. Can you give me some examples of some of these people? I know people in my family who were against the Nazis have all these stories about how they were shunned by their neighbors, harassed, all these bad things had happened to them, because they were against the Nazis too early. Anyone with a native understanding of US history is real familiar with it.
You can just ask questions if something doesn't make sense, I'm happy to fill in any gaps. The RoC was secured on Taiwan by the US toward the end of the civil war for the purpose of future regime change and very explicitly used for this purpose until Nixon. We're talking about a country that dropped a bunch of lamas into Tibet in the 50s to restore their theocratic slave regime and supported terrorists in Xinjiang.
That's pretty standard when you look at the way the US enacts regime change.
It's late and I'm tired, I can search some examples from the HUAC or w/e where pre-1941 opposition of nazi germany gets smeared as pro-communism another time.
I'll be waiting eagerly for you to enlighten me
It's obvious you didn't even read one sentence of the link. I know you and the troll farm have a job to do with your "Genocide Joe" rhetoric, but we're tired of it and don't want you here.
Except I referenced multiple things in that link; 3 of them were increased militarism, 1 was that oil production in the US had increased. Those are objectively bad things.
I would argue domestic production of oil is a generally good thing, or at least neutral/balanced thing.
Yeah, we need to get away from oil, and we need more green generation, but that takes a long time. There's a quick win in producing more domestically, by not having to import oil from halfway across the world, and also reducing foreign dependence for energy.
Problem is, last I heard, we are exporting most domestic oil now.
No, it's not neutral, as oil prices increase, the incentive to invest in green energy decreases. There's a reason US cars gas efficiency was abysmal until the oil embargo incentivized gas efficiency.
Oil prices should already be higher as it is. It costs roughly $4.40 just to recapture the CO2 that gets emitted from 1 gallon of gas. Gas should be closer to $10/gal (to capture the carbon emitted, and to pay for renewable subsidies, and the market price of oil itself).
But who would that hit? All of the expenses of higher fuel get sent down the consumer in the end, who is already getting squeezed for every cent.
That's why I didn't mention oil price at all. That's a very delicate issue all of its own. How do we severe our dependence on fossil fuels entirely, while also not destroying the economy? Not just the fatcats but every day folk too. The people with gas cars, and stoves, and clothes dryers, and hot water, and heat, that all would need to be retrofitted to electric. That's a huge expense. I don't think most Americans are in a place to buy a new car, today, because gas is suddenly $10/gal...and even less so because in this universe, ICE cars are entirely useless so there's no secondary market and no trade-in value. Let alone replace their appliances and HVAC.
We have to have more carrots for renewables and more sticks for fossil fuels...but too many sticks will collapse the whole damn thing. Not to mention carrots for public transit and walkable/bikable communities and everything else we should have in "the best and most advanced country in the world". We're a disgrace. We're not even the best and most advanced country in America. God damn koolaid turned sour.
Also keep in mind that personal use of fossil fuels isn't even one of the biggest sources of GHGs. That's still behind commercial transport/shipping and animal agriculture. It needs to be reigned in, but there are far bigger fish to fry.
That's why I focussed more on the drawbacks of international transport of oil. It takes energy and GHG emissions to get oil across the world. And there's a substantial risk to an environmental disaster along the way. The closer it is, the lesser risk of environmental disaster.
There's other ways we can relieve the consumer, such as removing the tariff on Chinese EVs and other green technology so they can afford it. Instead Biden is quadrupling it. Naturally Trump is already promising to raise it further so anyone who likes tariffs are going to vote Trump anyway, and anyone who wants a cheap EV just sees Biden raising the tariff.
Like Biden's border policy and foreign policy, it's morally wrong, but more importantly, every effort to appeal to "moderate republicans" is just electorally stupid. The fascists aren't gonna vote for diet fascism when they can have the real thing.
The Chinese government is heavily subsidizing the costs of those vehicles, both directly and through their labor practices. By exporting them to the US at a price-point that includes Chinese subsidies, it is an economic attack on our automotive industry. The Chinese government is basically paying half the cost of the car and the net effect would be to destabilize our domestic auto industry.
Put another way, it is not possible to have a car, made with fair labor practices, at that price, without direct government subsidies.
For the administration to not levy a tariff is essentially akin to bending over and taking their economic offense up the ass.
Apologies for citing Bloomberg, but it's the data they're citing that matters here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-02/us-europe-gripes-on-china-overcapacity-aren-t-all-backed-by-data
China's export prices for passenger vehicles have been increasing since at least Covid. If they were dumping/selling at a loss, we would expect it would decrease.
They sell for half the price domestically as they do rebranded in Europe because there is a strong domestic subsidy, but America has that too.