So many ‘both sides are the same’ memes by Blue MAGA trying to voter shame like they do ever election year. We don’t live in a democracy, we haven’t in awhile. Another example of the plutocracy surfaced today…

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    6 months 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.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      I’ll believe that domestic manufacturing when I see it, frankly. Democrats are big on promising things which haven’t happened yet. Ie how you’re taking credit for lowering emissions 2-6 years into some future presidents term

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        6 months 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?

        • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          I’m not claiming Trump is better, they’re both genocidal, old, sex pests (being generous), and supported by their own legions of unquestioning followers.

          • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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            6 months 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.

            • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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              6 months ago

              At this point after letting Israel run wild it’s hard to give them much credit for finally dialing it back. They could have simply not continued to send weapons, but they chose to do so. Now they show up with ‘aid’ like that somehow makes them not complicit in all the killing that’s already been happening.

              Recall what brash thing Trump did that really tanked the JCPOA? it was assassinating Suleimani with a drone strike. Here you’ve got American weapons being used to murder entire families, and are acting like you’re on higher ground than these other guys because the murder is being done by colonial proxies rather than obviously American hands.

              Can you see why people are a little bit annoyed by that and not consoled by your lectures about how because Biden is ‘less bad’ in debatable ways than Trump he is somehow worth empowering? When your only defense of the slaughter he allowed/insisted on is to expound on how in your imagination Trump is worse.

              You realize that not everybody else resides in the realm of your imagination?

              • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                6 months 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.

                • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  You’re talking like an LLM

                  in link 1 I said that at least Trump can be bullied, because the outcome of the CARES act and other pandemic relief was actually good.

                  in link 2 I said that Trump is better because at least with him in charge even complete drones like you can understand the state he’s a part of is worth opposing.

                  The fact that you opted to gloss over that from my previous statements, and boil it down to “Trump better than Biden”, does not indicate to me you are actually picking up on anything I’m saying beyond looking for an opportunity to regurgitate something about how you view your team as slightly better than the other team.

                  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                    6 months 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.