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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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If he can do nothing then why is this failure demanding to be rewarded with another term when people's lives are on the line? How many times must he and his party fail while blocking any alternative before you admit that this is intentional?
This is one of the most frustrating things.
They really need to pick either "Biden is the only person who can stop fascism" or "Biden literally doesn't have the Blower to do anything"
Cus when they're still saying the second one as fascism rises it makes me doubt the first one.
It doesn't matter if it's intentional (and what does intent even mean when you're talking about so many people), what matters is this is the best result you're going to get out of Democrats at this point. A speedbump on the way to worse things, unless they're doing the worse things already.
So Trump is some genius politician who is able to use the presidency to make the USA a dictatorship but widdle Biden just doin his heckin best in an unfair world, not his fault he couldn’t do even the smallest things he promised.
Your world view requires holding two contradictory thoughts about the power of a president at the same time while mine is far simpler: Biden lied to you.
There is a much simpler and more cogent explanation than your grand conspiracy.
Biden doesn’t actually give a shit about the issues he campaigns on and instead is all about big business and maintaining the corporate oligarchy.
Proof: he didn’t do ANYTHING about this crypto-fascist theocracy you’re worried about so maybe just maybe you should stop believing what he says and start looking at what he does.
And shit is anything this theocracy gonna do actually going to be worse than what Biden is supporting in Gaza? Complete moral bankruptcy. At least the nativist theocrats have an isolationist tendency.
Saying “but Trump will be worse” is nonsense compared to Genocide Joe.
If the theocrats are in charge already, regardless of President, like you believe then why vote for an old fool who has proven incapable of resisting them?
Even if your world view is correct, at best he’s powerless and you should demand someone better or at worst he is complicit and just lying to gullible progressives like yourself to give you the illusion of choice.
How is supporting genocide in Gaza the lesser of two evils?
Own your shame, quit canning your comments.
Joe Biden is literally the one who is running guns to Israelis right now. We know neither party will support Palestine, but we're not delusional enough to pretend that maybe liberals will at some nebulous point down the road.
I feel compelled to add, since you seem particularly dim, that obviously no one here likes Trump. We all want them both to swallow a 12 gauge every day they're still alive.
What's that term you all love, whataboutism?
Biden the one currently supporting genocide in Gaza and using his presidential powers that you tell yourself he doesn’t have to funnel the bombs being used to commit genocide and the fact he lied about student loan forgiveness is a reason to support him?
What the fuck is your world view? How can anything be worse than supporting what is happening to Gaza? Im an evil Trump supporter because I am against genocide? Fucking libs.
Confident. In the zone. Owning these TRUMP SUPPORTERS, the worst insult you can imagine. Thinking they're triggered and you really gottem. Having no idea what anyone is talking about and asking no questions because blind faith in your genocidal oppressors is the only way you understand politics.
Neither do Democrats, they just use that excuse to do their feigned helplessness routine. But more importantly, who cares? "The system" is not holy, it is a nation-state and we should do everything we can to exert our collective power for liberation and human need, not worshipping "norms" or an oligarchy in robes.
Per the Constitution, the main check on presidential power is Congress, actually. The courts could be ignored at any time if the executive wanted to and it would be up to Congress to try and fight it.
However, this is pointlessly hypothetical. Biden et al don't even try to have these fights in the first place. It's not like we're looking at a string of successful and well-constructed policy fights that keep getting derailed at the last moment by the courts. We mostly see excuse making for why there's no attempt or patently foolish policies intended to fail in the courts.
You'd have to list the instance you're thinking of but if it's student debt relief he chose an overtly stupid rationale that was known to be such from the moment it was announced. Lawyers all went, "huh, that's stupid" and then went back to meditating megacorp takeovers.
They shut down Trump repeatedly and kept him more or less within the same strictures. And Trump had great success in social spending using the pandemic. Oh, right, the global pandemic. Something Biden could've used to continue a national emergency to push through these kinds of things rather than what he actually did, which was to support the normalization of disease, a corrupt CDC leadership, and forcing people back to work in dangerous conditions.
There are no rules lol. There's just power and who will enforce their claims. The government ignores "the rules" all the time and avoids repercussions. You will be thrown out of your rental for back rent, with cops pointing rifles at you, during an eviction moratorium, and your hearing with the judge will go terribly for you, despite your landlord, the cops, and the judge all breaking the law.
Anyways, Biden had Congress for half his term and did bad shit with it.
Define authoritarianism without looking it up. Scout's honor.
And thus you are coopted into the system and all your good intentions are funneled into fighting against yourself and the people trying to build the alternative.
A series of faux-wonk stratagems, mostly about nonexistent rules or norms or Kabuki about Blue Dogs or whatever, that are intended to make the audience feel very smart and informed but are actually just PR firm-approved talking points that have been used for 50 years to keep you compliant and money flowing to and from the right people, genociding the "right" people, putting the "right" people's children in slavery and picking through garbage.
At some point you should notice the pattern and read a little more deeply than bullshit liberal talking points.
Anyways it's clear you prefer Reddit brain debate so let's try that. Surely you'll respond to that, right?
I don't care how you vote. It especially doesn't matter for the presidency due to the electoral college and the fact that you are just one person. The point is to understand the nature of bourgeois electoralism and the fact that people have been buying this same line for 150+ years. You're treating it like politics is just a team sport of voting. This is a limited view of the political landscape that is intentionally sold to you lest you begin organizing with your fellow common humans to make demands.
Cool then why are you pissing yourself over Trump? You are maintaining an absurd contradiction by eating up partisan nonsense: presidents are weak babies that can't do anything when they're a Democrat and are dictatorial Hitlers out to take absolute power when Republican.
Issue sweeping executive orders and fight hard for them. Play hardball with the party he is the head of. Democrats actually show you exactly what they can do when they punch left, they just choose not to against their supposed right flank. In reality, they prefer to have that right flank and keep them just at the point of preventing action with plausible deniability so that they don't need to run counter to their donors' interests.
You can't imagine a Democratic leader fighting hard for their promises because you're buying their feigned helplessness routine. But it's not really hard to imagine, is it?
Your anger is directed into spending a bunch of time thinking about how helpless your folks are and trying to explain Civics 101 to a bunch of communists that know more than you about it because you have no idea what people on the left think. And into voting, apparently? Sounds like a self-description.
We organize humans to implement on a more expansive definition of political action that includes workplace organizing, direct action, organizing parties and radical issue-focused groups, and occasionally socialist candidates for office.
What do you do?
This country is already authoritarian and it starts with the dictatorship of your workplace where you get to choose between following orders or risking homelessness. Liberals don't even know what authoritarianism could mean beyond "a bad thing where the government orders bad things to happen" because, in terms of political sophistication, they are children with next to zero knowledge of history or world politics. To break out of this, they need to challenge the narratives handed down to them and begin reading histories and how the world functions.
Absolutely meaningless statements. Biden is an old-school Dem reactionary who made a name for himself by supporting credit card company interests and segregation, then writing the crime bill. He used his position of power in the Senate to launder a case for war on Iraq following the civilian-targeted sanctions the decade prior, helping to wipe out millions of Iraqis. As President he has primarily pulled back social spending, allowed Roe v. Wade to fall without even attempting any kind of fight (Dems want to use it to whip votes like yours), busted the rail strike, continued the full-pressure campaigns to stoke war in Ukraine and genocide in Yemen and Gaza, continued and escalated Trump's provocative policies towards China and Iran, and is even helping build more border wall while continuing large-scale internment and deportation policies, including against refugees. Biden is a right wing reactionary that the party tells you is "progressive" (whatever that means. Respect yourself and don't let them manipulate you like that.
Incidentally, while trying to do the Very Smart lib thing in being strategic by always carrying water for the people that fuck us over and pretend they can't do anything good, consider thinking past a single election cycle. When all you're offered is dogshit and you cheerlead for it, don't be surprised when the people who expect promised things to happen to withdraw their support and consent for you and yours, because they are the people with consistent and reasonable expectations and a far better political strategy. You're actually helping to build the conditions for full-throated fascism by ensuring that the only "opposition" will be one that is easily disposed of and becomes nearly unsupportable by the rest of the population. Joe Biden is the epitome of this and folks hate him. Ask yourself why you're trying to convince them to stop demanding something better. Ask yourself what happens the next election, and the one after that, and the one after that, if you're always backsliding and making excuses for material degradation of people's lives.
Who are you pissed at?
based
wow I can't believe you just voted for hamas
Then he shouldn't have run his mouth. Anything that is promised as a campaign "I'll do this" that can't be followed through on should not be said. Since he did say it, since he did say a lot of shit that he absolutely reneged (like the arch-settler he is) on, I consider him an absolute fraud who doesn't deserve my support even before his carceral segregationism, his strike-breaking, his shouldn't-be-surprising-he's-a-settler taste for genocide, or whoever ends up squaring off with him.
Wym I'm super happy with my new cancer cure
Pretty sure he started his term with control of all 3 branches.
Not the Supreme Court -- you thinking of having control of both the House and Senate?
hm, who's fault was that. Why don't you tell me about Biden's track record with the supreme court?
FRIENDLY FIRE
Don't be a redditor. There's no argument here.
I want him to actually force the opposition to vote and rule against him, rather than just give up prematurely because they might vote and rule against him. And when they do vote/rule against him, just do it again. Over and over until it's clear who the enemies of Americans really are.
Or go farther: just fucking ignore the Court. Go full on "the Court has made its decision, they are welcome to enforce it." What are they gonna do about it?
(He won't do that because it would undermine the legitimacy of both the Legislature and the Court, might collapse the government lol)
Not lying in your campaign promises would be a good start
He resumed student loan payments via fiat and built the weakest case possible for forgiving loans. He is surrounded by climbers that specialize in policy fuckery.
Stop pretending the people you think are your team in the system are all incompetent or, worse, just trying their best. They fail deliberately for material reasons. The things you're saying are their flimsy excuses that you should feel insulted by.
Always remember - Biden personally created the student loan crisis, spearheading the laws that made it impossible to discharge or escape your student loans. The student debt crisis is one of his great policy achievements.
Ever notice that republican presidents are extremely dangerous threats to the entire world and dem presidents are tiny babies who can't be expected to accomplish a thing? Ever notice how whenever the dems have a trifecta, there's always juuuuuuust enough of their own party members fighting them to prevent any action?
Who is going to stop the president from ignoring a court order? Don't forget that the judicial branch firstly just made up their powers of judicial review, and have always relied on the executive branch for enforcement. I bring the up because Undermining the power of the supreme court is in and of itself a positive and democratic end, because the president is at least a little bit democratically accountable, while the supreme Court isn't in any way. To put it another way, an unelected council of lifetime appointees isn't a democratic institution. You are right that this isn't entirely genocide joes fault, the entire bourgeois "two party" regime is to blame. He is just the face of said regime