this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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My point is, it's easy to spin up a big narrative by picking individual points.
Biden said, "Hey, this is horrifying, people are coming into the country trying for asylum and then being treated like criminals, if they get picked up before they can turn themselves in / if they fuck up the process / because they technically broke the law anyway because that's what the process told them to do." And so, he created a formal way for them to communicate with CBP before needing to enter the country or find someone physically.
Is that process perfect? Absolutely not. Does that mean that extensive nitpicking about privacy issues and whatnot about that process suddenly represents a really good argument about why it was horrifying for him to create the app? Is it relevant at all, honestly? No, it is not.
You can just always use this stuff as a way to attack any Democratic politician at any time. If Biden had made the whole signature effort of his campaign to reform immigration and get rid of all the horrifying inhumanity he inherited from his predecessor, then you would be giving him shit for failing to act on climate change or working people's issues. Instead, he did the opposite: Went to bat in a huge way on those two things, and got some small but significant gains, and so we're here talking about Gaza and immigration and everything he fucked up.
Honestly, I just don't really want to go point-for-point back and forth through dueling essays. That's why I just linked the Wikipedia page. Anyone reading this can go read the page, and then compare the picture it paints to the picture you just painted, and see why you're spinning up some kind of determined effort to make him look bad on this issue.
If you want to complain about stuff he did wrong, sure! Let's rap. If you want to spin it up into backwards-land and cherry pick some things to make it look like that's all that happened, he fucked a bunch of stuff up on purpose, all these human rights organizations hate Biden overall instead of on those individual decisions, then I'm going to offer you the change to take a step back, read the article for the actual complete picture, instead of getting in this towering link-stuffed waste of time slap fight with you.
you're accusing me of "spinning a narrative"...and then in the very next paragraph you spin a narrative of your own:
Biden created the CBP One app. yeah. great. is that all he did?
no. he mandated that using the app was the only way to apply for asylum.
quoting again from Amnesty International's report, emphasis added:
if you want to defend Biden from criticism, have at it. but you need to actually understand the criticism that's being made.
the criticism of CBP One is not that Biden created an app, it's that he mandated use of the app.
he made it so if you didn't use the app, you were presumptively ineligible for asylum. the burden of proof was on the asylum-seeker to show why they couldn't use the app.
you're spinning a narrative here. I don't think you're doing it consciously, but it's still spin. you're talking entirely about creating the app and not at all about requiring the app.
trying to dismiss this criticism as "nitpicking about privacy issues" is spin.
even if the app was perfect, even if it was bug-free, even if it had no privacy concerns - mandating it as the only way to apply for asylum violates international law.
if you think Biden violating international law is fine, because he's doing it with good intentions and not maliciously, just be honest about that. it would save a lot of time.
ummmm...yeah?
I think it's fair game to criticize any politician, of any party, if they do something bad.
do you disagree?
do you think Democrats should be immune from criticism?
do you think Democrats should be only criticized about policies if they make them "signature" issues of their campaign? because that's what this suggests to me:
do you think you're the gatekeeper of what criticism is "allowed" and what isn't? of what is "good faith" and what isn't?
you started this thread by talking about people on the left who "don’t want to understand details".
I brought up details.
then you moved the goalposts so fast they broke the sound barrier.
because now you don't want to talk about details. you just want to talk in broad strokes. read the wikipedia summary. look at the whole picture of everything Biden did. the details aren't really that important. disagreements over details are a "towering link-stuffed waste of time slap fight" apparently.
Yeah, pretty much. Put it in context, then talk about details and complain about them when they're wrong. Doing it the other way around, picking individual details and then using the specific ones you picked as a reason to conclude things about the whole of what his intent was, seems wrong to me.
you keep talking about Biden's "intent", and that seems to me to be the root of what we disagree about (or rather, what you're misunderstanding about what I'm trying to say)
I didn't say anything about Biden's intentions, until you brought it up:
you have a gigantic false dichtomy here - making things worse on purpose vs making them better. there's a gap in the middle, of making things worse unintentionally, which is the point I've been trying to make this whole time.
you seem to be arguing "Biden had good intentions, so even if he did some bad things, you should give him a pass because he had good intentions"
I've been disagreeing with that, and you seem to be misinterpreting that disagreement as me claiming "Biden had bad intentions".
what I've actually been trying to get across is that Biden's intentions don't matter. they're ultimately unknowable, so arguing about them is pointless.
the purpose of a system is what it does. if Biden's actions as president resulted in good outcomes, they were good actions, regardless of whether he had good intentions or not. and likewise, if his actions resulted in bad outcomes, they were bad actions, regardless of good or bad intentions.
if you want an example that is more removed from the emotions of present-day politics, look at Bill Clinton signing the "crime bill" in 1994. we can recognize it had bad effects. we can talk about those bad effects. we can do that without trying to retroactively read Bill Clinton's mind 30 years in the past and try to figure out what his "intent" was.
the lesson for present-day politics is that Republicans have bad intentions, and that's sufficient reason not to vote for them. but a Democrat saying "hi, I have good intentions" is not sufficient reason to vote for them. the bar must be higher than that.
and if a Democrat campaigns on good intentions, and then gets elected and does bad things, "but they had good intentions" is a bullshit excuse.
Not even slightly. I'm saying that he made the situation and outcomes better, and also tried to make it better than that, but failed at some of what actually should have been done.
(And yes, I can pretty much feel the talking-point response to that coming... whatever, I'm familiar with them at this point lol)
You seem very interested in telling me what I am saying, instead of just listening to what I'm saying.
OK, so Biden made things better across the board. he could have made some things even more better, but wasn't able to. and he at least didn't make anything worse.
is that an accurate summary of what you're claiming?
because if so, we need to get back to those details you claimed I don't care about. the ones you've never actually responded to on their substance:
are you familiar with the etymology of "talking point"?
so when you call my replies "talking points", are you aware of the connotation that implies? that you're basically accusing me of not responding authentically as myself, with my own opinions, but instead getting direction about what to say from someone else, and I'm just repeating it.
if that's something you actually want to accuse me of, you should be honest and say it more explicitly.
if you're not trying to accuse me of that, calling my replies "talking points" is kind of an asshole thing to do.
we're entering "every accusation is a confession" territory...
because if you actually read what I said, notice I phrased it as "you seem to be arguing". that was intentional. I'm listening to what you're saying, and trying to tell you "here's what your argument is coming across as" because I do actually care whether I'm understanding you correctly or not.
meanwhile, instances in this thread where you've been trying to tell me what I'm saying:
Mostly. I wouldn't agree with "he didn't make anything worse," because US immigration post-2001 is a terrifying hell run by horrible people, and it would be hard for anyone to lay hands on it in any way without making something worse in the process. But yes, aside from that, it's accurate.
Because I'm not interested. I already laid out what I thought about this: Looking at the whole of his impact on immigration is a way better way to analyze his overall impact on immigration than extensive Lemmy bickering, and I think you're focusing in on details as a way to distract from the idea of looking at the overall.
Okay, fair enough. That previous paragraph is what I'm saying.