mozz

Quick question, who's "we"? Pretty much everyone I see use the term "blue MAGA" seems to mean by it, all the Democrats.

Or are you saying the Democrats as a whole are cult-like just as much as Trump's MAGA?

Yeah. It's a big shame. I read Lawrence O'Donnell's book about 1968. It's so fucking sad. I couldn't finish.

And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system -- basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures and covered in blood, not "just" pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them -- I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn't even recognize.

Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I'm really hoping that 2024 isn't a repetition of the same fascist takeover that's enabled by it, because now we're much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall when they came to light, they're all legal now.

Back in the Clinton/Bush era 20 years ago when he said that, I actually think it made quite a bit of sense. The Democrats were a lot more corporate-friendly (dropping corporate tax instead of raising it like Biden did, boosting the WTO instead of telling them to go fuck themselves like Biden did), and the Republicans weren't trying to kill their political opponents or put minority groups into literal concentration camps.

I'm not even gonna comment on "'they' keep scrubbing it from YouTube."

I sorta had a feeling you wouldn't make even the slightest effort to defend that bullshit you had said.

politicians are not your friends

No, politicians are not at all your friends. What you mean when you say "support" for Biden or that Biden betrayed us, or that thing shills sometimes say about "falling in line behind" the Democrats and how they don't want to do it, is very weird to me.

Nobody in politics is your friend. The government is just a big, corrupt, very dangerous machine. It runs on money and propaganda and defense contractors, and sometimes good things come out of it and sometimes bad things, and Biden is one little cog in that machine. That's why I'm comfortable saying good things that Biden did, or that he's doing a very bad thing by enabling a genocide -- I'm not viewing either of those as a statement of my "allegiance." It's just, like, hey I am a free person and here is how I am viewing the world and what the truth is.

Ralph Nader did an excellent interview talking about productive ways to push the Democrats to the left, and how upset he was at Democratic voters who were throwing away an opportunity to get some concessions from the Biden administration in exchange for their vote. His viewpoint makes a ton of sense to me.

Your viewpoint -- sort of based on emotion, this sort of teenager mentality like "YOU'RE DEAD TO ME NOW I'LL CALL UNCLE TRUMP TO COME OVER AND BURN THE HOUSE DOWN BECAUSE WHO CARES YOU BROKE MY HEART" coupled with a lot of the sins you're accusing him of actually being things he didn't do, is just weird. Like, if you want to push Biden left, fuckin go for it man. Sounds great. But if you've decided that if Trump comes to power and nukes Iran and makes being gay illegal and puts all the Hispanics in camps and cancels the next election, that's just the price the country will pay because Biden said this wrong thing about racism and it was so hurtful to you and he's definitely a bad person and that good person / bad person is even relevant to how to vote, then okay sure. I won't tell you not to. But I don't think you should pretend that I'm the one treating my politicians in a strange parasocial non sensible way.

I know that if I was a Palestine protestor, and President Biden was going to speak, and the college said that they would immediately just end the ceremony if things got too out of hand, I would immediately think "Well that definitely wouldn't be a good outcome. I better quiet down; I was going to have this big protest, but if it'll end the commencement ceremony entirely, then I won't, because that would attract some attention to the cause I'm trying to promote. It might make the news or something. I'm scared of that outcome and wouldn't want it to happen; that threat is effective."

Your conclusion makes perfect sense that the crowd was mostly filled with people who were seething with contempt for Joe Biden, but cowed into obedient sitting-facing-towards-him by the threat that if they made too much ruckus, it would successfully disrupt the event.

I don't think you're a Trumper/Republican because you don't support Genocide Joe. I think you're a Trumper/Republican because the way you don't support him doesn't make any fucking sense. You criticize him for things he objectively didn't do, and you offer no particular solutions that would seem to lead to a better outcome for those of us who live in the US and want it to do less killing here and abroad, and the only solution that you seem to offer -- refusing to vote for him and offering an endless drumbeat of propaganda about him -- has an excellent possibility of leading to a catastrophically worse outcome for everyone. Including Palestinians. And, you're so vocal and consistent in criticizing him -- and only him -- for such a big variety of things real and imagined that it's hard for me to take away any possible conclusion than that you're trying to make sure he doesn't get elected.

It's possible that you're simply a very confused leftist. IDK. But that's my take on it. I note, also, that the story linked to also explicitly contradicts the headline, in terms of when students left ("walked out") from the ceremony:

Several students walked out of the graduation ceremony while Biden was presented with an honorary degree following his speech, CNN reported.

So they stayed to listen to him speak, and then walked out in protest when he was done speaking? This is impossible, to me, to read as anything other than a deliberate propaganda construction built on people leaving to go to the bathroom or something. IDK, maybe I'm missing something.

(Edit: Also, when I said the protestors were awesome and it's good that they let them protest, because it's a message Biden needs to hear because he is wrong, and then you immediately pretended that I had said the opposite and started lecturing me about how legitimate it is to disagree with Biden, I honestly didn't even notice because I'm sorta numb to that kind of thing at this point.)

Hey, quick question unrelated to that obviously insane thing you just said: You posted a while back about how upset you were Joe Biden betrayed everyone, after he promised to decriminalize marijuana, and then didn't do it even though he could literally do it at any time he wanted and that's just one more example of him being shit. I listed out the things he had done (basically: federal pardons for possession, telling the DEA to reschedule it, and putting a decriminalization bill through congress), and then I asked you what else you would like him to do.

I think your post got removed as misinformation right after that, so I never got a chance to hear the answer. What else was it that you wanted him to do? That he could do literally any time, that you were upset that he betrayed everyone who voted for him by not doing?

Surely, since your goal is to push Biden left, not to just oppose him at every turn and make sure he doesn't get elected, you are interested in non-propaganda information and discussion on topics like this.

Ha ha ha, yeah it's (suddenly starts crying)

Don't forget, he also has a photo of 2 students facing away from Joe Biden and all the rest sitting facing the normal direction

Good for them. They're standing up for what they believe in, and I agree with them, and I definitely think that this type of thing has some impact on Biden's policies. Although at this rate, all the Palestinians will be dead before he works his way slowly and gradually around to the idea that maybe he'll have to do more than a sternly worded phone call with Netanyahu in order for the killing to stop.

You'll note that, because Biden bears little resemblance to the monstrous authoritarian caricature you try several times a day to paint him as, he and the college (who I'm sure talked with him about this exact issue, beforehand) both made no effort to "crack down" on them, and in fact he explicitly called out their protest as a good thing, during his speech.

(My point wasn't that the headline was a direct lie, but an example of engineering a single true fact by blowing it up and warping it to create a slanted picture of reality in the reader's mind. That's why I sent the full unedited video, as a way of contrasting it with a single event or a single picture taken from the perfect angle. I actually can't visit X video links since Elon fucked things up, but if you want to send me some non-X videos I'm happy to take a look at those, too.)

(Edit: Actually, I think the thing that they walked out as he gave his speech might be an actual lie. According to The New York Post, which seems to be the source for ozma's photo, it sounds to me like the students who left stayed through Biden's speech and then left during a later part when he was still on stage.)

I'm legitimately surprised that so few of the trolls have hit on the idea of coming in being fake pro-establishment. Like if there were more people here being super pro-Israel and doing the "Hamas is lying about casualties" "what on earth is Israel supposed to do, not defend themselves" talking points, to provide some justification for all the other trolls claiming that Lemmy is filled with pro-genocide-ers and they're just doing their part sticking up for the unrepresented Palestinian viewpoint -- I think if I were running an influence campaign I would probably sprinkle in some of those people, too.

I think "of course Joe Biden is dogshit, we all agree on that of course, but by God you better sit up and salute when he's around, signed, your friendly Lemmy authoritarian person, fuck the protestors" is a likely candidate for one of those. If this is genuinely how you look at it though, have you considered reaching out to some of the shills and seeing if maybe you can get paid for posting this stuff? I think this would be a good tactical addition to what they're doing.

Tracy Morgan, too, has a very important message