mozz

joined 2 years ago
[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (53 children)

My broader point here is that if your goal is to get leftists to vote for Biden, trying to explain why you think Biden is good is counterproductive. Instead, explain how leftist change is impossible via electoralism

If someone's mindset is such that it's unnecessary to talk about what actions a politician has taken when deciding whether to vote for them, I'm comfortable with not being able to appeal to that person.

Honestly my goal isn't to "get" anyone to do anything. I am trying to communicate the reality I see in front of me. Obviously I hope that that will produce a result and a better outcome in the real world, if the reality I see seems compelling to someone else as a useful model, but I'm not into the idea of trying to move away from "this is how I see it and why" and into something else, to try to engineer a stated result in some other person. They can make their own decisions, as can you.

For leftists, generally, continuing down this descent into fascism that is happening slowly under Biden and rapidly under Trump is unnacceptable.

What are fascist things that Biden has done? How has he moved the needle towards fascism? Maybe this is where some of the disconnect between our views on him comes from.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (62 children)

You opened up with some unnecessary pro-Biden stances to attempt to make him seem better, no?

So, I went back and re read your initial message carefully. I actually pretty much agree with it -- the Hillary Clintons and Nancy Pelosis of the world have been attacking leftists, blocking forward progress, and then blaming the voters when they lose elections because they are more or less even with Reagan politically. There's nothing really to vote for there, and not voting for open fascism when the alternative is screwing you left and right isn't really all that appealing.

The reason I responded the way I did is that Biden actually isn't at all the same as them. If you look factually at what he's done, he's a huge departure from the norm for corporate Democrats. You can believe that or not (or, you can say that abetting a genocide in Gaza makes it hard to like anything he might have done domestically -- and pretty understandable, I think, if you say that.)

But I don't get how citing facts of what's he done is "unnecessary" or "attempting" to make him seem better. I didn't like Biden initially, just because he's a rich white guy who's worked in Washington all his life. I didn't expect real good things out of him. Then he started doing all this good stuff, and I started liking him. Surely that's an allowed way to go about things? Responding to the reality of what someone's doing as a reason to like or dislike them?

the purpose is to silence dissent

This is a framing that usually comes out of conservatives. I am not silencing your dissent. I am disagreeing with you.

I won't tell you what to do, but I would politely ask that if you want me to take you seriously, stop saying that I am "silencing dissent" or "punching left" or whatever, just because I am holding a different opinion than you, and explaining why I hold it. Those are very different things. I'm allowed to hold a different viewpoint, and it's weird to me that you are so vigorous about the idea that it's violent or inappropriate for me to do so.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (64 children)

good enough actually

Never said that; in fact you'll find me several places saying that moving further than Biden would be a great idea, and pointing out that one of the big problems with Trump is that he will very effectively end some of the methods that currently exist whereby real leftwards progress can be made in this country.

You aren't going to convince a leftist that Biden is good, for leftists, continuing Capitalism and making no efforts to end it is already enough to not consider a candidate to be good.

So we're moving the goal posts so that Biden has to want to end capitalism before you'll support him, even against literal Hitler.

Sure, sounds perfectly sane and productive. Sorry for ever punching left by having a different opinion than that.

If you want to move leftists to your side, it's far more effective to agree with them that Biden has been continuing liberalism and making no tangible leftist movements.

That's a funny way of spelling "I have no way to disagree with your factual rundown of good things Biden has done, so I'm going to demand that you agree with me, and in particular cease citing any objective facts for why you think what you think, as a precondition of 'moving to your side', because facts are punching left."

I mean I could be right or wrong on this or anything else. But I'm not planning on just agreeing with you on everything and ceasing hurting your feelings by arguing otherwise, so that you'll become open to "moving to my side."

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hi

Biden fired the guy who used to be in charge of the NLRB and installed a bunch of actual labor people, who have been materially supporting these historic union gains the last couple of years

And also invested hundreds of billions of dollars in domestic manufacturing, such that wages are actually going up at the bottom end of the scale for the first time in quite a while, outpacing even historic inflation

And also tried to forgive half a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt, the Supreme Court told him no, and so he used his own authority to forgive around $150 billion of it

And took big action on climate change for the first time in US history ever

And also raised corporate taxes significantly to fund all that stuff

I don't think the issue is that Biden isn't progressive enough, although further more progressive than Biden would obviously be better. It is that the news media in this country doesn't give a fuck about anybody below the $120k/year level and so doesn't report any of that (or generally not as a good thing, in the rare cases that they do). But it still all happened.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 29 points 1 year ago (106 children)

Biden fired the guy who used to run the NLRB, and put in a bunch of actually pro-labor people, who gave lots of material support to all this union activity that coincidentally has been meeting with all sorts of success over the last couple of years.

Biden's corporate tax reforms swung Amazon's taxes from negative $1.2 billion per quarter to positive $1 billion when they took effect at the start of 2023, and they're currently paying $3 billion per quarter, a comfortable amount more than they've ever paid before. Here's this year's proposal of what he plans to do to build on top of that. Raising corporate taxes was most of how he funded stuff like the infrastructure bill.

I literally do not see anyone "punching left" outside of the mainstream media. No one on Lemmy is out here saying "these damn protestors if only they would shut up" or anything like that. I see a bunch of people punching Biden, and then other people saying hey, what you said is actually not accurate; for as criminal as his support for Israel is, he's actually the first pro-working-people president the US has had in many many years.

That's not "punching left," that's refuting the punching that is coming inwards towards the person who is right now the only available alternative to full throated, military-seize-the-voting-machines, shoot-the-protestors, fascism.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Biden fired the guy who used to run the NLRB, and put in a bunch of actually pro-labor people, who gave lots of material support to all this union activity that coincidentally has been meeting with all sorts of success over the last couple of years.

I'm not trying to downplay the hard work that unions have been putting in that have been getting them significant gains in the last few years. But Biden's NLRB has been right there with them negotiating with the companies and giving them legal support which is absolutely crucial.

my third world country can still do better so far.

Wait -- you're not from the US, and deeply concerned with the US election and wanting to weigh in on who needs to win it?

I know when I have some spare time, I like to go involve myself in British elections, or Japanese; I talk on message boards to people from those countries and have all sorts of things to tell them about how they should vote. It's just something I like to do.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

All of these sound like great ideas. Wanting all of them to be able to happen is actually exactly why I'm in favor of making sure Trump doesn't get elected in November.

protests

This will be easier if Trump does not have a loyal police force that will fire with lethal ammunition on protests

unions, strikes

This will be easier if the people that run the NLRB are pro-labor, instead of the guy who broke the ATC strike back in the Reagan days (which was who Trump installed to run it, who Biden fired on day 1)

socialist political parties

This will be easier if Trump's military has not seized the voting machines, and we still have elections, and congresspeople who disobey Trump don't get killed by a mob

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I’m not OP, but Trump attempted more than once to have the National Guard shoot protesters with live ammunition.

There are enough guardrails in place that it didn’t work, but part of what I expect this time around would be the Florida State Guard and similar Neo-brownshirts coming into their own so that he would literally be able to do it.

Also, he had CBP showing up to protests and snatching people without identifying themselves or utilizing the existing jail / police / court infrastructure. It actually took a little time for people to even figure out who were these unidentified big quasi-police grabbing protestors and driving away with them, or where they had taken them.

Biden is, as far as I know, not personally involved in violence against protesters today. Trump was personally involved in violence against BLM protesters, and wanted to increase its severity to lethal force levels.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He also funded infrastructure just a little bit - there was some sort of bill concerned with it that happened

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

You can imagine a better world than Biden. That sounds like a great idea to me. How can I help?

(I mean, aside from in the meantime not electing the guy who wants to kill the protestors working for a better world among many other things that would make him being president a very bad problem.)

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are getting practice for when they will be foot soldiers to roam the streets attacking Democrats in general, or Hispanics, or anyone who challenges or threatens the leader.

I don't know if they know that, or if it just feels right to them now and they know they're with their buddies and they have a strong team they feel good about and don't look into it any deeper than that feeling, but that's absolutely the plan, once things get to that point.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah my shift was this morning learning all about the details of how they come up with the numbers they report in all those polls. This is just entertainment on my own time.

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