mozz

There is a persistent mythology among a certain type of Lemmy user (the type who also doesn't want to vote for Biden) that Clinton was a super-great progressive president and the Democrats moved to the right since then.

I had one just recently who was telling me about how they and all their progressive friends were super happy about how he balanced the budget

It's funny because even leaving Biden out of it, I remember the Carter -> Clinton -> Obama arc, and what progressive and activist people in the mid to late 90s were feeling about it, a little bit differently than that

I'm gonna make up a little bingo card for all the different shill tactics, this one message hits like a third of them all at once

IDK, maybe it's cheating to make up the card specifically with this message in front of me

"Bro there's a guy in the house WHO IS TRYING TO KILL US"

"First off: WHY are you bein so rude right now. I was in the middle of something."

I read up until "both ways". Honestly, I've read enough of these comments before to know what you're getting at.

To recap whatever comes to mind quick: 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, proper labor people at the NLRB leading to all these union gains, domestic manufacturing and infrastructure, massive increases in corporate tax to pay for all that stuff, gains in wages at the low end, reductions in wealth inequality. Biden's doing good.

You might not agree. But, as the nice lady pointed out, it doesn't really matter. He's who we got. Biden's who we got. It's either this guy or death. You wanna pick a better guy next time? Fuckin fantasic, if you wanna get involved with the Democrats or any other party and try to put up someone better, that sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

But the fuckin house is on fire and the kids are still inside and you're out there fistfighting with the firefighters, trying to stop them getting in, and while the whole thing is spreading you're saying I TOLD YOU WE NEEDED THE DIFFERENT INSURANCE COMPANY YOU GUYS ARE ALL FUCKIN UP YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER

Trump is the end of any of these better candidates and better than Biden progress that you say are your goal. He is the end of Palestine and Ukraine. He is the end of Hispanics in the United States; he already put some of them in concentration camps. Some of them died in there, some of their kids died in there, some had their kids taken away somewhere and still don't have them back. He has a detailed plan for how to take over next time, and do much more. He wants to put his political opponents in prison. He wants to make it illegal for the press to criticize him. He wants the military to seize the voting machines. He wants to shoot protestors. He talks about how he shouldn't have term limits. And, if he dies in office, that whole machinery is available for someone else who's maybe not the world's stupidest and most incompetent man to take over, and run it all for real. Like, for real for real.

Quit fuckin twisting it around. I don't care. This tumblr person is right. As pertains to this election, this whole thing of "oo nice try but this candidate's not good enough for me, you should have done better" is a pile of shit, and always has been.

Either say, yes we should vote against the end of the world, or admit that you're pushing for the option that's the end of the world. Quit twisting it around into something else, because that's the choice.

If only there was a post that explained pretty passionately and coherently how Trump wanting to end Democracy and kill a bunch of Palestinians and Ukrainians and Americans, and God knows who else, is objectively more important than all of that

I'm not trying to be an asshole or dismissive or anything, but you are commenting directly under a pretty clear explanation of why not electing Trump is literal life and death, by saying literally the exact type of "but I don't feeeeeeeelllll like it, isn't that important, too" that this person is pretty pointedly discrediting

Here’s a speech Gore gave about Iraq War 2. You don’t need to believe whether or not he would have been in support; you can go back to contemporary speeches and find out whether he would have been in support, and he wasn’t. As you pointed out, it had pretty freaking broad support, so that made him an outlier.

Idk what you mean about “among the staunchest hawks” in the Clinton administration. It’s not the VP’s job to do policy decisions and take part in the debate about what the president’s policy should be (at least not in public). If he was making pro war statements from 1992-2000 that’s a statement of what the Clinton administration’s policy was, not what Al Gore’s policy preferences were.

He was okay with war, in general, in ways that would make him an anomaly for a progressive Democrat today, but not at all at the time. (At the time, we were still doing our own Israel-in-Gaza slaughter and torture operations all over Central and South America with, as you pointed out, broad bipartisan support with 0 of this modern level of protest or debate about whether we should be doing it.) And like I said, he definitely wasn’t brought into the Clinton administration because he was some pro war guy. I honestly have no idea what you’re even talking about with that. Anyway, I showed you the contemporary articles about why people were saying he was brought in; you’re welcome to read them, or alternatively to think what you like about it if you’re committed to your way.

I'm honestly so curious about it. Like, the way they argue sort of implicitly acknowledges that they aren't actually right about the facts, and are just trying to engage in tactics to "win" or claim victory instead of talking about what's really going on. They have to understand that, on some level, in order to be able to do it. And yet, there seem like there are way too many of them and the endeavor would be too pointless for it to all be just troll farms talking to each other every day about how awesome Russia and China are.

Like I really wish that I could push a button and turn off fog of war for a second and see what's actually going on there. Who are you? Who are the propagandists, in which groupings, and how many accounts do they run and which ones? What is everyone's motivation? Where do the people live? And so on.

Almost as if...

I asked one of them randomly earlier what they think of the war in Ukraine, and they don't want to discuss it, just keep talking to me about Joe Biden

Yeah, completely fair. I see what you mean. I think I am impatient and short tempered after talking with a series of not very nice people yesterday and today.

Regardless of that I still think your main point is made up, though. Here and here are some contemporary stories about the pick -- he voted for the Iraq War 1, but that was seen as sort of a surprise given his father's antiwar reputation. His reputation at the time was as an environmentalist and technocrat. It's important to remember that the tolerance for austerity at home and war abroad was a lot greater in 1992 than it is today; it was a much different political landscape. Gore wasn't seen at the time as any kind of hawk in either respect that I'm aware of and rereading the stories from the time I don't see any kind of inkling that Clinton had him on to pander to pro-war people or anything.

notorious draft-dodger

Dude I don't really wanna play the game of "let's pull on this thread and see if a bunch of conservative-propaganda-worldview stuff pops out" again, I've done it like twice in the last 2 days and it sometimes takes a while

But (a) it's like a cat with a laser pointer (b) tbh it doesn't look like this particular thread is all that long

I mean everyone knows we all look down on people who didn't fight in the Vietnam War, and in general who don't do what the federal government wants them to do. Fuckin cowards, what was wrong with them! What do you think? Clinton should have gone over and shot a bunch of Vietnamese people, amirite fellow anti Iraq War person?

"So like 50 assholes just worked hard on getting the guy they wanted, did some fairly basic shenanigans including showing up at an election office and throwing a fit?"

"Yeah. Is bullshit. And they changed the result, and looking back, it changed the whole world."

Press A: "Wow. I'm never getting involved in politics, that's corrupt as fuck."

Press B: "Holy shit. Can we make a bunch of people to go somewhere and throw a fit? Like, what did they do? And it worked, and it made a difference?" "Yeah like a huge one." "Holy shit..."