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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: November 2nd, 2023

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  • It’s the same schadenfreude as Obama bowing to the Saudi King. The rightwing press were having conniptions that the ‘leader of the free world’ could show any deference to a Middle Eastern leader but it was just normal political niceties.

    There are orders of difference between Netanyaho and Putin in terms of future longevity and difficulty in reducing them if that’s what the USA wants to do. Putin is a cockroach. For the foreseeable future he is who you’re going to have to deal with. So any serious leader will always be running a political calculation as to what their position must be. Stein erred and so sweaty commentators are making hay.

    If the Democrats wanted to undermine her position they could easily stop supporting Israel’s psychopathy. Any popularity that Stein might be enjoying would wither on the vine.



  • Counter-counterpoint: the Tea Party was an astroturf movement funded by big oil, big tobacco and the Koch brothers. Given massive amounts of support by media companies (lots and lots of oxygen). With the purpose of taking over the GOP and entrenching their toxic industries and power.

    With the perspective we have now it is clear that their plan was to push Republican supporters over into fascism (not to say that it wasn’t latent within many of them) and reduce the risks of democracy to the oligarchy.



  • 100%? Yes, Citizens United has poured petrol on the ability of large aggregations of money to undemocratically influence election outcomes; and yes some of those aggregations are unconcerned with the wellbeing of American people. But are people that are voicing concerns about AIPAC (given that it represents an appartite state currently brutally escalating a decades old genocide, that wants to silence any political voices that are critical of it) actually antisemitic? Because the comment you rated as 100% seems to be furthering AIPACs goal.

    It’s as if they read about Breonna Taylor’s murder and concluded that black people shouldn’t think that stand your ground laws apply to them but the important lesson is that killing is wrong.














  • And I appreciate your civil attempts at clarifying your stance too. To the degree that I think we’re both talking past each other.

    On my part, even as an outsider to US politics, I have been getting more and more frustrated with a lot of the bullying rhetoric I see on this platform directed towards potential voters that are very concerned about the US’s current complicity in the ongoing genocide. I see them getting talked down to with utter contempt. Being berated by people who insouciantly weigh a potential loss of comforts at home against the real and current killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and the forced famine of hundreds of thousands.

    Now is the only time that they can apply pressure on Biden. Now that he actually needs something from them. But (like MLK’s white moderates) people here are telling them that “now is not the time” and a whole spectrum of worse accusations too. But if the civil rights movement hadn’t agitated and pressed for change decades would have passed before the moderates would have opened their eyes and acted beyond the pale.

    Personally, I agree ostensibly with your calculus (though not with your particular framing of it but it is still a very, very tight call) but if I was a US voter I would be vocally holding my vote hostage until the last moment to make sure that my discontent was given the greatest chance of not being ignored.

    More importantly (and central to this whole discussion) i still believe that people have a right to respectful discourse if they can’t morally make it over the sizable hurdles.

    Which brings me round back to you. You’ve been very patient and civil throughout this discourse even though we have different perspectives. So my ‘beef’ ain’t wit you my friend. Though I do wonder what is your line in the ground that if both of the two main candidates were guilty of something that you’d drop the lesser of two evils calculus and vote for a third party. For me both are terrible choices but the potential for long term democratic, human rights, and environmental protection regression under Trump cannot be underestimated