this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
237 points (71.7% liked)
Memes
1533 readers
1 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Even the people who believe in dissolving capitalism have accomplished nothing but perpetuate the system.
Its that shitty Ben shapiro meme. "You hate the system yet you participate in it, curious?"
Yeah not really many options when you've gotta put food on the table. The change comes from the top down down down Esit: I may or may not be misreading your comment.
The top doesn't have as many options as people think.
Ben Shapiro is dumb and I don't fault anyone who can't bring about a worker's paradise, provided they make an incremental improvement in the lives of others. That includes Biden.
After taking millions of tiny steps forward, we'll eventually get to where we need to be.
Too bad at this rate, the planet will be burnt to a crisp before we get anywhere close to good enough.
No time for baby steps. Perhaps its selfish, but Id like these changes in my lifetime, please.
It's not selfish. People are SUFFERING and DYING. The people who are selfish are the ones who don't want to give up the privilege and luxury they have that is only made possible by the suffering and exploitation of others these reforms would help the most.
That's the biggest lol in history
I think the biggest LOL in history is Main Characters who think they can immediately solve the world's problems. They literally have a 0% success rate.
All of our actual progress has always been incremental.
Meanwhile we are backsliding instead of progressing, in a lot of respects
That's true, but change is always a mix of progression and backsliding. That's another reason why incremental progress is so valuable.
It demonstrates precisely the opposite. All it shows is that change can be lost in a moment. And waiting around for it to strengthen only to then backslide into non-existence is not the solution. If we fought half as hard to build up the nation as the right does to tear it down, we'd be making a lot of progress.
Slowly doing the right thing is not a virtue in and of itself. The only people who want slow change explicitly do not want the change to occur if it disrupts those who use inequality to opress.
Do you think the civil rights movement was fighting for slow incremental change? That was a byproduct of the resistance to equality. They wanted it yesterday.
Everybody wants change yesterday, but they never actually get that. They don't even get major immediate change. At best they get incremental progress.
So when evaluating someone's achievements, you can't hold them to an impossible standard. Someone is not a failure if they were unable to change the past. In fact, they are a success if they deliver the best outcome that is actually achievable. And history shows that outcome is incremental progress.
I think you're misattributing who the villains of progress are. MLK had attributed it to the white moderates that stood in the way of progress. I'm doing the same. The right is not a majority. If the moderates would play ball with the progressives, we could get a lot done immediately, but they refuse.
In order for moderates to play ball with progressives, progressives must be willing to play ball with moderates.
We do... all the time. We put Biden over the finish line, for example. And then yall ask us to do it again while refusing to throw us some bones.
We are happy to compromise, but its supposed to be a give and take. Moderates never give
Leftist support of Biden is why we got mandatory union recognition, student debt relief, and corporate tax increases, all of which were championed by Bernie Sanders but previously had little support from moderates.
I think your definition of leftist is skewed by US media. Nothing listed here is even remotely left leaning. Again, I believe in the dissolution of capitalism. These are all capitalist policies. Unions are only nessessary to combat capitalism on thier own terms, student debt wouldnt exist without capitalism, and taxes wouldnt matter either.
Yall are too narrow minded and are stuck in an industrial era mindset. Remember, US Democrats are right leaning in the rest of the devloped world.
I am comparing Biden's presidency to those of Obama and Clinton. All of those actions taken by Biden represent a significant shift to the left compared to his Democratic predecessors.
Right, and both of those president were arguably less progressive than Nixon. What with the EPA and incredibly high tax rates. Forget about FDR
The historical context is that the Democratic Party moved incredibly far right to combat Reagan era policies and get wins from those kinds of voters.
To put it simply, I think your brain is rotted by US media. I think you lack all of the historical context that's required to have an honest opinion.
If you think Nixon was more progressive than Obama, then you really don't understand American politics.
Nixon did for the environment what Bush did for Homeland Security. He took a bunch of agencies that already existed and were already issuing regulations, and put them all under control of one person who took orders directly from the President. Thus making it much easier for future Republicans, like Trump, to interfere with environmental rule-making.
And Nixon didn't raise tax rates. He signed a tax bill sent by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. It didn't raise tax rates either, but it instituted the Alternative Minimum Tax which everyone ignored until decades later when they realized it had unintended effects on the middle class.
So you just sweep Nixon's accomplishments under the rug because they dont help your point, got it. EZ block. You arent worth either of our breaths.
There are plenty of reasons to not like Richard Nixon, but some of this policy is not the reason.
Nixon's first choice for EPA administrator was William Ruckelshaus.
Years later, William Ruckelshaus was again appointed as EPA administrator. By Ronald Reagan.
So if Nixon is "progressive" because of his EPA, then so is Reagan. They put the same guy in charge.
There is zero proof of that. You would call MLK a main character?
Perfect example. "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
After more than a decade of activism, MLK didn't live to see the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And that law didn't solve the problem of racial inequality.
If you were alive in MLK's time, you would be complaining that he hadn't done enough.
Still wouldn't have happened without direct action, which is ultimately what I'm trying to get at in these comments. People like MLK had to put their asses on the line to make change happen. Had to rally support. Simply voting doesn't really accomplish much. It took Black Americans getting beat in the streets, causing issues for politicians to get the civil rights act past the finish line. You're right that it does take time for progress to happen but without direct action like what MLK did I don't think anything would have ever gotten accomplished.
Sure, I agree that it takes more than voting to make change. My point is that change appears incremental when it is actually happening. Only in retrospect, after many small changes have accumulated, can you see a major shift.