183
fixed it
(lemmy.cafe)
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TLDR: comparison is the thief of actually having a good political discussion.
I’m getting kinda sick of this “both sides” discourse.
On one hand, you’ve got a slightly reductionist view that crushes discussion (“Biden and trump are the same, they support the capitalist class”). It also fails to frame the discussion in a way that is actually productive, since saying the jump is a bit big for most people to make, and if you are trying to point out similarities from candidates that are different in some ways you only make it easy to point out whatever differences exist. Rather than discussing the similarities, you are now talking about their differences. Congratulations, you’ve now ruined a potentially useful conversation. Your reductionist view has done nothing to further discussions and now some people hate you.
On the other hand, you often run into whataboutisms. I’ve compared trump and biden in ways that make them similar, and instead of saying “Huh, both of those people have the same fascistic border policy, maybe we should talk about it” it turns into “But think of the children that biden isn’t separating from their families!” Biden’s enthusiastic support of a state carrying out a blatant genocide and trump’s support of the same state is terrifying, but the “Well trump would let them do it faster” is exhausting. No shit the fascist in all categories is gonna support increasing the speed of the genocide. That isn’t the point of that discussion, and it’s obvious to everyone that it is the case. And this constant comparison with trump never lets Biden stand on his own.
Look, i’m gonna be frank and say I hate Biden, if you haven’t already noticed from my writing. i’ve hated him before October 7th, so don’t worry, I’m not only angry about his genocidal enthusiasm. I’m an anarchist and I’m not electoralist, so finding a candidate I like is a minor impossibility. I’m also queer and have queer folk that I love deeply so I’m not making any decisions about hating the one not anti-queer candidate we’ve got lightly.
Ok but some people are really dumb and it is not obvious to them
If you are talking to someone about american politics and they don’t understand that Trump is fascist, and supports more fascist positions than biden, they are either a trump supporter, a troll, or someone that isn’t worth discussing that stuff with.
Or you are thinking they are saying both sides are the same and you aren’t understanding what they are saying. I’m not accusing you specifically of this, but I’ve had many infuriating conversations with people when they are drawing what I said to “hur dur you are saying they are literally the same” when I’m not as a way to thought terminatingly end the discussion or derail it.
Instead of saying what about the “dumb people” just don’t feed the trolls. Leveling the conversation to be troll proof is a losing game
But it's not obvious to everyone. I just made a thread that was filled with people saying otherwise. Another post was made 24 hours ago that was filled with people saying otherwise. There are people in THIS comment section saying otherwise.
You were seeing people say that trump wouldn’t speed up the genocide? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone make that claim in good faith, except possibly in relation to what trump was saying about the war needing to end because of optics, but that’s a whole different can of worms regarding why he is saying it and stuff.
Or were you seeing people say “Why does that matter when the problem should be about the presence of genocide, rather than the rate of it”
Some choice examples:
None of these are saying trump won't speed up the genocide.
The first one is probably the worst take, not gonna lie. While I love the first and third sentence, since it points out a campist tendency people tend to have, the rest of the take is genuinely bad. Accelerationism is a terrible ideology. The second one is dubious, and the rest are hard to judge without context.
I think you should read the last one again.
This isn't a both sides take. Sure, it is comparing both sides, but the thing that makes it difference is they are arguing about the absurdity of the lesser evil argument whether or not it should even be considered valid.
I think that there's an important takeaway in that. At what point is arguing about who has the better pro-genocide policies a waste of time? Instead of working towards change, it is just enforcing apathy and powerlessness.
Also, that last one is a better phrasing of what I said earlier: "Why does that matter when the problem should be about the presence of genocide, rather than the rate of it”
If you are seeing that as problematic, I'm genuinely concerned.