mozz

mozz , 47 seconds ago

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated 54.1% of 18- to 29-year-olds voted in 2020, which had the highest youth turnout overall of any election in the 21st century.

Average across all ages is 60%

(Credit to @jordanlund)

mozz , 7 hours ago

You made me check to see if Dick Cheney is still alive.

He is, and he has 2 DWIs, and he got 5 draft deferments during the Vietnam War and said about it "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."

mozz , 10 hours ago

"Well as long as they're working full time while inside, at least they can use that to pay for incarceration. It actually does seem fair that they need to be working instead of literally just sitting around, and then that can pay for their right to continue to exist."

"Okay, so we could do that, but also, hear me out for a second"

mozz , 10 hours ago (edited 10 hours ago)

He constructed it a little cleverly: Said that if it was a Republican, they'd be in the electric chair. I don't think it was criminal.

Of course, he also openly tried to have his own vice president killed, and collects non-murder-related felonies like bottles for recycling, and at least so far all of that has been mostly okay of him to do, so I'm not sure how much it matters. 😕

mozz , 11 hours ago

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?

mozz , 15 hours ago (edited 15 hours ago)

Lessons in headline engineering

Another possible headline was "At Morehouse, Biden says dissent should be heard because democracy is 'still the way'" or another "Biden tells Morehouse graduates that scenes in Gaza from the Israel-Hamas war break his heart, too"

Outside of the ceremony, a small number of protestors gathered while the commencement itself did not see any major disruptions.

Last week, Morehouse College President David Thomas said he would rather halt proceedings than have students escorted away for protesting.

"If my choice is 20 people being arrested on national TV on the Morehouse campus, taken away in zip ties during our commencement, before we would reach that point, I would conclude the ceremony," he said on NPR's Weekend Edition.

But, none of that happened -- either halting the ceremony or tackling or pepper spraying any of the people who were draped in Palestinian flags or turning their chairs around.

DeAngelo Fletcher, Morehouse College's valedictorian, closed his address to his classmates by addressing global conflict, particularly the Israel-Hamas war.

"For the first time in our lives, we've heard the global community sing one harmonious song that transcends language and culture," he said. "It is my sense as a Morehouse Man, nay – as a human being – to call for an immediate and a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip."

IDK how much more pro Palestinian than that he got, and it sorta sounds like "both sides." But whatever. Anyway apparently Biden stood up and shook his hand after. Here's the whole video; Biden's part starts at around 1:43:30. Comparing the tenor of the thing if you take a look at it firsthand, against the tenor that's created from reading this particular headline, is a good little window on what they were trying to do by writing the headline that way (i.e. not to inform about what happened), and what ozma was trying to do by posting it here.

I don't actually think it matters all that much what anybody says about Gaza. Biden stopping the weapons shipments, pushing for an immediate cease fire and humanitarian aid, and supporting an ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu would be a good start. I think mostly this commencement speech is notable in that, hey look, (1) there was protest and it was ok (2) you can make things sound way different depending on which aspects you present in the media coverage.

mozz , 15 hours ago

Tracy Morgan, too, has a very important message

mozz , 15 hours ago

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.

mozz , 15 hours ago (edited 14 hours ago)

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.)

mozz , 14 hours ago

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

mozz , 14 hours ago

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

mozz , 14 hours ago

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.

mozz , 13 hours ago (edited 13 hours ago)

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.)

mozz , 13 hours ago

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.

mozz , 13 hours ago

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.

mozz , 12 hours ago

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."

mozz , 11 hours ago (edited 11 hours ago)

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.

mozz , 11 hours ago (edited 10 hours ago)

I notice that this conversation has a very particular type of flow -- Innuendo Studios talked about this in Never Play Defense.

Actually, I went back and looked at it's significantly worse than the example the video constructs. The video's example was dishonest, but the exchange was actually pretty coherent. I think this message is a particularly strong example of the flow you've been doing -- where I say the protestors are right and I'm glad that Biden is letting them speak and hope he will take their message on board because what he's doing right now is wrong, and then you get all hostile while lecturing me that not everyone who disagrees with Biden is a Republican. The Republicans in the video are never bad-faith to that comical a level, although the overall flow of "wild new assertion / coherent response / repeat" is pretty similar.

mozz , 10 hours ago

Chin up boyo! You said you were gonna keep doing this all the way until the election. That's like 6 more months, you can't get all downhearted about it already just about some messages explaining why this one was bullshit too.

mozz , 9 hours ago

I can't open X links; I'm on Firefox and it's fucked on Firefox now and I don't really feel like hopping around on browsers just to keep Elon Musk happy. I'm happy to look at it if you can find it somewhere else. I did search for the quote and I didn't find anything.

You wanna address the thing with the second part of the headline, though? Because I'm not real sure I trust "freedomrideblog" on Twitter and I would want to know more details about how Biden's campaign is using the speech, and all that, but it definitely looks like part of the headline you posted was objectively a lie. No?

mozz , 9 hours ago

You wanna address the thing with the second part of the headline, though?

mozz , 8 hours ago

So we're moving goalposts and just straight-up refusing to answer a simple question about why it seems like the thing you posted was not just misleadingingly framed, but actually false. Sounds good.

I do understand that I haven't been real polite to you and it creates a certain pressure to "get a win" by making some kind of counterpoint. Mission accomplished, I guess. Biden did actually give the speech he was invited to give, even though he's also campaigning and that makes things more complicated in some ways. It's true. You caught him.

mozz , 16 hours ago (edited 15 hours ago)

This is the problem with "ism"s. At whatever point you decide that philosophy X is the answer to everything, you start being wrong about a lot of the world, because whatever it is, there's at least like 30% of situations (and potentially a lot more) that your particular ism actually isn't the answer to.

Libertarianism or anti-imperialism or ACAB or socialism or pro-the-Democrats or anarchist or whatever it is, it's never always the answer. Trying to hold a debate about, well is it philosophy X or philosophy Y that's always right about everything, or any other discussion that feeds into the basic wrong premise, is just compounding the imaginary non-situation-dependent way of looking at it.

Although yes some of them are wrong a lot more of the time than some others.

mozz , 23 hours ago

It’s a bold strategy

mozz , 1 day ago

You got:

1. Ukraine actually attacked Russia, not the other way around
2. It's all the West's fault our country fell apart and all our former colonies hate us

But you forgot:

3. Russia is winning! Basically already won
4. Ukraine = Nazis, therefore Russia = good guys, QED
5. The sanctions aren't working, Russia's doing great
6. No YOU shut up
7. Russia wants peace, we keep having these peace talks where we say let us keep what we already stole and stop shooting us please until next time we feel like taking more, and our perfectly reasonable proposals get met with such rudeness you wouldn't believe, WESTERN SABOTAGE

I can tell these jokes because the US aid package came through. It's definitely not a simple thing and I'm not trying to make light of dying people, but I'm okay with making light of transparent bullshit

mozz , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

They took the guy who led the legendary team that made the search not only work instantly at a previously unimaginable scale, but also freakishly well as far as "finding exactly what you want based on almost any query," back in the late 2000s, if you remember... that guy, when he started pushing back against the people who wanted to fuck up search results to boost imaginary metrics that were theoretically (and, probably, not really) going to make more money from ads, they pushed him out.

This absolutely excellent article goes into detail about the exact moment, if you had to pick one, when Google stopped being a legendary tech company and simply became yet another behemoth coasting on its past successes until the market changes under it and it can't adapt, fades, and takes its place with all the others, all the way back to IBM and DEC. Nothing's changed in a big enough way for it to get knocked back into that obscurity yet, but it clearly will at some point.

mozz , 1 day ago

Lmao

Husband: I'M GONNA PUT ON MY MASSIVE FUR COAT AND STAND LIKE A MANIAC, TAKE MY PICTURE

Wife: He's a fuckin tiresome goofball but honestly he's the best. I'm gonna sit tho

mozz , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Idaho?

Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they're unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians

Brb

Edit: Yeah pretty much

Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.

Fuckin' democracy

They want to get rid of agriculture

you need to drive an electric car

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”

IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there's a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.

I'd be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn't impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that's trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.

mozz OP , 1 day ago

How would I feel about people who are not LBGT+ but claim to care deeply and powerfully about them, so much so that they're advocating for Mike Pence to be in charge of the country, because Biden was okay with "Don't Ask Don't Tell" back in the 1990s and so clearly he's just as bad (or whatever the argument is)?

How would I feel about an LBGT+ person speaking up, in that situation, saying hey please don't do that, I don't like it at all, that actually will make me unsafe in a terrifying way? I would feel like, hey I think I should amplify that person's voice on the issue.

And so, that's why we're here in this post. Hello! Good to meet you.

mozz OP , 1 day ago

Honestly, you can either understand the plain and simple English of what the Palestinian person said that I then linked to, or you can't. If you can't, then it's probably not my place to try to break it down for you, and my effort to do regardless hasn't been working anyway.

So, good luck with your political advocacy. Cheers.

mozz OP , 1 day ago

Giving criticism and resistance to the genocide I'm very in favor of; maybe that wasn't clear so far. Taking the leap into "and that's why we don't need to keep Trump out of power anymore" is the only portion of it that starts to confuse and alarm me.

To your point - can we verify that all of the people saying it's very important not to vote, for the sake of the Palestinian people, are being genuine about where they live and their background and motivations?

'Cause I have some questions about some of that shit, if we're doin' verifying.

mozz , 2 days ago

I had someone tell me that the Uyghurs were getting job training in the re-education camps to set them up for good careers and successful integration in Chinese society, and maybe there were some sinister aspects but on the other hand I don't see the US giving job training to people in Guantanamo or anything, so China is way better.

0% exaggerating or mischaracterizing

mozz , 1 day ago

Who among us has not been the horse, at one point or another

mozz , 1 day ago

40% emissions reductions by 2030

mozz , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Not even remotely enough

This part, I actually 100% agree with.

On the other hand, if the house is on fire, and one firefighter as soon as he gets on scene removes 40% of the gasoline from the garage even with a lot of people trying to fistfight him for doing that much, and the other firefighter says we have to get more gasoline in the house because taking away the gasoline is a Chinese plot to cripple our economy, I would feel comfortable saying that someone on Lemmy who is claiming the second firefighter is actually the superior firefighter is talking pure unadulterated weapons grade bollocks.

Okay, next one: Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of student loan forgiveness. Your turn, go!

mozz , 1 day ago

not enough

wasn't enough

Do you think Trump is enough?

I mean, I don't think Biden is enough either, but using that as an argument for why Trump is better is some Mr. Mxyzptlk logic.

Biden has been the one continuing the Trump trade war shit on China

That's a good point; he spent hundreds of billions of dollars (which he raised by increasing corporate tax) on boosting domestic manufacturing adding like 700,000 manufacturing jobs last I checked, instead of continuing to have everything constructed abroad and rich middlemen keeping all the profits.

The WTO, if you remember those guys, was so angry about how he's running his trade policy that they ordered him to change it back, and his State Department told them to piss up a rope we're not changing a damn thing, representing one more big break he's making with the neoliberal shit that is the recent history of the Democrats. It's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up.

mozz , 1 day ago

Here ya go. It is, of course, a little more complex than I made it sound, but if I wanted to cherry-pick the sides of it that are good for Biden I'd say:

On the job statistics, Biden is numerically correct. However, experts say he should use more caution...

Officials pointed to data showing that it took 30 months — from April 2020 to September 2022 — for manufacturing jobs to return to their pre-pandemic recession peak. That may sound like a long time, but after the recessions that struck in 1990, 2001 and 2007, manufacturing jobs never even bounced back to their prior level after 100 months.

Biden has created "a climate for factory investment that we haven’t seen for generations," including the investments in infrastructure, clean energy manufacturing and semiconductors, Paul told PolitiFact. These are "already paying dividends. You can see from the ubiquitous factory announcements almost every week."

Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a research and policy center in Washington, D.C., agreed that the gain in about 700,000 manufacturing jobs since the pandemic-era low has been unusually rapid.

Not planning to respond to the other part, delving a little into why you're claiming Trump is better exactly?

mozz , 1 day ago

Thank you! I posted it to bestof.

mozz , 1 day ago

It's a good point - the very nature of Democratic politics, where a modest level of rebellion against Biden's bad Israel policies can result in genuine change (although pretty tepid in comparison to what needs to happen). Things like pausing weapons shipments, sanctions on settlers, and setting up aid for Gaza does represent a significant structural difference between them and the Republicans, who are composed at this point pretty much of only "unquestioning followers" in your pretty accurate phrasing, would never have done anything like that, would have openly supported Netanyahu's genocide instead of simply failing to prevent it, and are subject to only isolated hotspots of resistance even in the face of openly fascist or treasonous behavior.

For example, no Republicans resigned from the executive branch because of family separation, or moving the embassy to Jerusalem, or the catastrophic mismanagement of the Iran nuclear deal and the resulting suffering of the Iranian people. It's a good reminder that even when Biden is doing terrible things (like supporting Israel), he's still open to some level of influence from the non-terrible people, while Trump is not.

It's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up.

mozz , 1 day ago

You're right -- spending time debating with someone who's unclear on what Trump did to the nuclear deal and the sanctions regime and the resulting impact on the Iranian people and the stability of the region in general, and assumes that assassinating Soleimani was what I was talking about just because that's all they know about what happened in Iran under Trump because that was the most prominent story in the papers, betraying a lack of detailed understanding of US policy in the middle east and its impacts, might not be a good use of time, because at this point I think the point is pretty much made. It's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up.

Although, there's still time to talk about adding 700,000 manufacturing jobs and strengthening unions in a way that hasn't happened yet under any president post-Reagan, and why that might be a relevant good thing. Did we talk about that yet?

Or family separation? That's actually kind of a hard one to talk about because I tend to get genuinely upset about it, but it's a good window into the different levels of brown people friendliness the two presidents had, if we're not wanting to examine Biden's tepid resistance and compare it with Trump's "finish the job" solution for Gaza?

Oh, also, you absolutely did say Trump was better than Biden in particular significant ways -- here and here.

mozz , 1 day ago

Yeah, so family separation. Trump took an already barbaric system, and made it absolutely catastrophically more barbaric. There are still little kids -- and not a small number of them -- who will never see their families again because they got taken away because their parents committed a misdemeanor, through desperation and from no desire other than just a better life or a chance to live somewhere free from gang violence or poverty, and even when they were following the rules about how to cross over and then request asylum, the best that they were able.

One of Biden's first acts in office was to start a task force to try to find the families for the missing kids, who were at that point still in custody, and reunite them. It wasn't completely successful, because the systems of bureaucracy in their home countries were often chaotic or nonexistent, and the bureaucracy on our end was carelessly disorganized and cruel. But, at least he fuckin' tried.

Immigration in this country is still fairly bad, because it's run by an explicitly racist agency staffed with explicit racists. But, every single proposal Biden's put forth has included some sensible things that objectively need to happen (such as adding judges to the system to help clear the backlog so people aren't sitting waiting to get into the country, or in custody, for absurdly long lengths of time, which is where a lot of the suffering in the current system comes from, when it's not coming from simple racism).

Anyway, the point is that Biden's at least trying to do good things, and then he gets shit for it from Republicans because the system's not cruel enough, and then also shit from "leftists" because the system is still somewhat cruel, ignoring the fact that every single action he's taken has been attempting to make it better than it was, and that all that "leftist" inaction just strengthens the people who are deliberately trying to return it to the "cage full of orphaned and un-cared-for children, people of all ages freezing to death or regularly dying in custody" regime that it was under Trump.

mozz , 1 day ago

If one candidate for mayor was friends with a murderer, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that he'd been protecting his friend the murderer and even sold him the gun, and kept talking about how he was a good guy -- BUT, the other candidate was torturing cats in his basement and also talking about once he's mayor and he has control of the town's police force he needs to start killing or torturing everyone's cats, and also some of the people, I think I would vote for the murderer's friend. If those were the only two options. It's nothing to do with cats versus people. It's what one person does versus what a different person's ally does.

I realize that analogy is not a real ringing endorsement for Biden, but yeah, it's fair; Gaza and Biden's support for Israel aren't real ringing good things about him. But, I do feel it's still very relevant the difference between what Trump did on purpose himself, and plans to continue to do and accelerate the perpetration of, and what Biden's not doing enough to prevent some different person from doing.

mozz , 1 day ago

Let me put it this way: If there was a candidate in this election who didn't want to give weapons to Israel (I mean, if voting for them wouldn't just be functionally a vote for Trump), I'd be on 'em in a heartbeat. In the primary I wrote in Bernie Sanders.

mozz , 1 day ago

I don't think I would recommend loyalty to any American politician. Even for the ones I like, that's just not how I look at it.

In any case though, cheers + all the best

mozz , 1 day ago

This is some Matrix level missing the point.

The point literally couldn't have come at you any more directly, and you still dodged around it and redirected, and doubled down on the pretense that somehow this person doesn't care about their own dead relatives, and you need to instruct them on what's important and what they need to understand and how to look at it, and why they should get on board with your politics, otherwise they don't care about their own dying and suffering people.

mozz , 1 day ago

Sure. So it's not really my place to have this whole conversation, but I already did get involved, and I'm happy to give my input.

The point is that whatever's going on with Biden, Trump is objectively worse on every single metric, including but not limited to the safety of Arabs, Palestinians, and potential victims of the American military in general, at home and abroad.

Someone who cares about dead Palestinians could absolutely try to pressure Biden to stop sending weapons to the IDF, remove Netanyahu to the ICC, or whatever they want to do. Or they could point out that Biden is a monster for continuing the US's war criminal support for Israel, and not immediately denouncing Israel the instant they started blocking food aid or bombing hospitals. Sure. All that makes sense. If any of that is what you're doing, and it sounds like I'm trying to disagree with it, I am not. I actually originally came in this thread complaining about the OP cartoon, because I think most of the Palestine protestors are absolutely consistent and justified and the cartoon is grossly unfair as applied to them.

The very specific and very politically motivated construction from there to "that's why I can't support Biden, against Trump" or "that's why I'm not voting" or anything like that, is endangering Palestinians in Palestine, Palestinians in America, Hispanics in their home countries and in the US, Americans in the US, and many many other people, to an absolutely horrifying level.

This person is, if I am understanding them correctly, objecting very specifically to the second one. They're asking that people stop using the suffering of them and their family and friends to try to promote a particular political agenda which actually endangers them, increasing the chance of a genocide much much worse than what's happening right now in Gaza, while pretending that it's a Palestinian-friendly course of action and they're doing it because they care about Palestinians. They're pointing out that it's a ghoulish and dangerous thing to point to their own dead relatives and then try to use them to excuse a politics which threatens to make a lot more corpses, while pretending that it's on their behalf.

Is that a good explanation for how?

mozz , 1 day ago

if biden is actually even better for Palestinians at all

You have GOT to be joking.

we shouldn't telegraph guaranteed votes to biden and the democrats no matter what they do

This part, I actually agree with. Ralph Nader did a great interview where he was expressing this huge level of frustration with Democratic voters and said more or less, I get the reality, but there is a way to wield your vote in order to get things that you want. You get together a coalition, and you credibly communicate to the person in the election that they can only get all of your votes if they do X, Y, and Z. That puts pressure on them and it can absolutely change policy.

To him, he was saying that he thinks it's criminally silly to just say "well Biden's better than Trump so he can count on my vote." Like I say, objecting to that makes sense to me. By the same token I think it's silly to say "well Biden's not good enough so he can count on not getting my vote even if Trump is 10 times worse". Both of those courses of action are passing up an opportunity to actually influence policy. But stuff like the uncommitted votes in Michigan I thought were a great idea.

I mean that coalition building takes work, and it maybe won't succeed, it's this huge operation where throwing around comments on Lemmy is pretty easy. But it will actually help, if you do it.