mozz

Don't send me shit.

Did you misspell "factual information"? I gave concrete reasons for what I was saying. If that's offensive to your narrative, that's not my problem.

voters feel like they must vote for the DNC candidate despite not liking them

I think that's pretty accurate, yes. I think that's the result of the voters, by and large, having no idea what Biden actually tried to get done and got done. Are you interested in a factual discussion of, what's his record look like? Or just wanting to repeat the narrative and get mad and curse at me when it's questioned?

Fuck, it doesn't even matter how I vote because of where I live and how our broken ass voting system works.

Yeah, pretty much. If instead of shitting on the Democrats in general you'd been talking about how bad we need to reform the voting system I'd be 100% agreeing with you.

I'm sick and tired of people acting like it's the people's job to vote for whoever the Party puts forth instead of the Party being responsible for putting forth a likable candidate. That the onus lies on the voting block, whose job it is to simply cast their ballots for the DNC, instead of the DNC being any fucking bit responsible for selecting a candidate people want to vote for.

Yeah, I feel you on this. I actually do think a lot of this criticism as applied against the DNC in general is 100% accurate in terms of their neoliberal crap and not listening to the ever-growing left in this country.

On the other hand, I think that's kind of the nature of the beast -- any large, wealthy country with a lot of levers of power is going to attract a whole bunch of rich people to try to grab those levers and not do real good things with them. That applies to the Democratic establishment as it does to the Republican establishment (though not to the same degree). I don't think the answer to that though is to sit back and wait until some force comes from outside and resolves that situation and puts forth another Bernie Sanders just on its own initiative -- I think it takes people putting affirmative pressure on the system to move to the left (including yes reforming the voting system and yes a lot of activism outside of the voting system).

I honestly agree with a lot of what I think is the core of what you're saying, in terms of how badly the political machine in general in the US has betrayed the people. No one who lives in the US and looks around once in a while could think any different. I just think less engagement with the system and more cynicism about elements of it that seem to be doing good things is not the answer.

But during the 1980s and early 1990s, fears of a relentless Republican juggernaut pressured those left of center to take a defensive stance, focusing on the immediate goal of electing Democrats to stem or slow the rightward tide.

I wonder what might have happened between 1968 and 1992 that might have led them to do that

In those 24 years there was one Democratic president, who actually was pretty left wing (esp in American politics), who only served one term because he was widely unpopular with the electorate because the electorate in America at the time was a bunch of central-America-bombing Israel-supporting proto Nazis. Remember 1972, when Nixon of all fucking people got 520 electoral votes and McGovern of all fucking people got 17?

I don't think it was just some weird Democratic-party plot to tack to the right. I think it was survival. I actually do think that there's a golden opportunity now, with the way the electorate has shifted, for real lefty candidates to gain much more traction than the neoliberal crap, and I think most of the DNC hasn't figured that out and just gets mad at it instead. Cf Bernie Sanders. But still, that doesn't mean that even back in 1992 they were doing it on purpose to betray the electorate; I think it was the opposite.

True, the last Democrat was really unsatisfying, but this one is better; true, the last Republican didn’t bring destruction on the universe, but this one certainly will. And, of course, each of the “pivotal” Supreme Court justices is four years older than he or she was the last time.

This is about the point where I stopped reading. I was searching for some sort of concrete indication of why they're saying that the Democrats are continuing to tack steadily to the right, when to me the arc of Clinton -> Obama -> Biden looks like exactly the opposite (quick rundown of why: tons of NATO bombing -> some drone strikes -> weak verbal-only opposition to Israel and sanctions on settlers) (or: welfare-to-work -> income inequality is flat at least -> big wage growth at the bottom end and massive increases in corporate tax). But no, they're just repeating the assertion and the narrative, over and over, without explaining (anywhere that I saw) why they are asserting it's that way.

Student loan forgiveness, 15% minimum corporate tax, 40% emissions reductions by 2030, 7% increase in wages at the bottom end as compared with inflation even when inflation is at historic levels, NLRB providing legal backing for union activity for the first time in quite a while

And that's only the shit they got done; what they passed as bills / orders but then the Republicans blocked was actually quite a lot more (much more aggressive versions of most of the above + marijuana legalization as a start)

Also, "democracy might end if Trump gets elected" is not some weird bogeyman; they already stormed the capitol with plans to kill the vice president and progressive congresspeople. The liberal press didn't make that shit up to scare you; I can send you the videos if you want

Now an AI neural network has identified something unusual about a face in a Raphael painting: It wasn't actually painted by Raphael.

I want to see the tests where they fed this thing genuine Raphaels, and not-Raphaels that looked like his stuff to humans, that weren't in its training data, and it got the classification 100% correct.

Hm... I looked over this thread.

I do, actually, in a literal sense see some people pointing out that "both sides," i.e. that Hamas also committed a monstrous crime (which they did). E.g.:

Both sides pick shitty leadership. Both sides are constantly fucking with the other side in a deadly game. However, one side is grossly overpowered relative to the other and is constantly stealing land while committing apartheid.

Yeah, they’re both assholes. Just one’s a shitload stronger and never ever stops fucking with the little guy.

IDK, I can maybe see the case that as Hamas's crime faded further and further into the background it stopped being part of the conversation whereas it had been before. But there's an overwhelming consensus even in that early thread that the main thing is Israel should stop killing innocent people and stealing land.

I came here to say this -- I admire the younger generation. My generation just wanted good jobs, and past the age of about 25, forgot all about what happened to the world or anything like that.

The "Occupy Wall Street" generation for the most part still had the option of good participation in the economy but quite a lot of them rejected the whole premise and got involved in productive protest, to the point they almost got a socialist elected president.

Gen Z as far as I can tell is a lot more fucked than whatever came before them, and is staunchly refusing to play the game of flipping burgers and renting apartments for their whole life. Not like they have much choice but good on them for reacting accordingly, and fuck the haters

I think they're trying to just be deliberately irritating

I literally can't think of a single person I've seen on Lemmy who doesn't care about what's happening in Palestine or doesn't think it is a horrifying genocide.

I have seen a bunch of people say, the point is the genocide under Trump will be much much worse, and our options for this short term are Trump or Biden, so I'm picking Biden. That is an anti-genocide view, not a pro.

You can say that's a tactical error and they should withhold support until Biden starts doing better. Sure, that makes sense. Or, you can say a few other things to pick holes in that viewpoint in some other way. Sure, makes sense. But building this fantasy world where there are all these people around who are okay with what's happening in Palestine is, I think, more or less just a way of assigning cartoonish views to people who don't agree with you because that's easier than engaging with what they're actually saying.

Clinton ushered in the era of the neoliberal democrats, after a series of genuinely good ones like JFK and Carter, and ones like LBJ that might have been murderers abroad but at least were aggressively progressive at home. (I know, JFK killed a bunch of people too)

I'm not saying Clinton was bad necessarily; he was certainly better than more Republicans, but he wasn't a mostly affirmatively good thing like Obama or Biden have been. The pre-internet picture of the world that most voters had was radically more conservative than today's view (in a way that's honestly hard to remember now that non-establishment news is a normal thing). I think as a result of that blinkered view, candidates too far on the left were just getting their ass kicked in the election over and over again, so maybe it was the right thing for him to do to move to the right. But even some of the stuff on that list of achievements is sinister neoliberal shenanigans (more police, less people on welfare after welfare-to-work, etc). Income at the top went up, but income inequality continued to skyrocket under Clinton's economic policies pretty much exactly as it had under Reagan's.

Remember when they created on Facebook an in-person demonstration for Arab rights and created another in-person group of right wingers to go and protest against the Arab demonstration, I guess in the hopes that they would fight

Every so often a little piece of their operation shows in daylight and it's always way more intense than I would have expected

Sounds fuckin great; if you know how to navigate in the direction of the salad please let me know.

In the meantime I do think it makes sense to request the burger instead of telling the waiter to just bring whatever

For Biden it's only an acceptable outcome (for some godforsaken fuckin reason which I won't defend in the slightest)

For Trump, punishing brown people is a core value he makes a priority of. Remember Muslim ban / family separation / moving the embassy to Jerusalem / "finish the job"?