In 2020, people believed they were voting for healthcare, defunding the police, emptying the migrant concentration camps, protecting Roe v Wade, etc.
When you fail to do the things that brought people to the polls, and do the things the opposition wants instead, the opposition's voters still won't vote for you and your own voters just don't vote.
Trying to appeal to moderate republicans just lowers your own voter turnout. The republicans will always vote for fascism over diet-fascism.
But no, pointing out these very obvious mechanisms just gets me labeled as an evil conservative Chinese Putin-bot trying to disrupt the election.
dropping out of the race at the convention
The face of the party is infinitely less important than the impact the policies have on people's lives. It doesn't matter if it's Biden or Pete Buttigeig at the front, the dems only shot in hell is to use every power at their disposal short of drone striking Trump and the SCOTUS (maybe) to demonstrate to voters that 1. They want the same thing the voters want (eg, not genocide) and 2. They will actually do those things (no blaming the parliamentarian or norms or some rules you set or fear the SCOTUS might ask you to stop).
Dems could have had Bernie, Warren, Buttigieg, even Klobuchar, but Biden won pretty handily. That’s on people people.
Is it though? The media confusing people by claiming Biden is more electable because his policies are closer to what republicans want isn't on people, nor is every conservative candidate dropping out at once to endorse Biden, while Warren remained in to keep Bernie's share divided (ensuring that none of the popular policies the former Reagan campaigner ran on were actually implemented), nor is the DNC giving Biden debate questions before hand.
No, it's because that's where they counter the <insert enemy of the state department>'s propaganda with truth and facts.
Same reason Reddit's director of policy comes from The Council on Foreign Relations and worked for Madelin Albright. They certainly wouldn't be using Reddit to influence the perceptions of Americans, the primary users of Reddit.
I don't know who you're talking about that believes anything you've claimed, but the people who don't want Biden to send Israel the weapons they're using to carry out a genocide are still angry that Biden is sending Israel weapons, which they're using to carry out a genocide.
If your understanding of geopolitics somehow has you justifying helping Israel blowing up kids in Palestine or Saudi Arabia blowing up school buses in Yemen or american occupiers cause famine in Syria, you've completely lost the plot.
Not blowing up children is more important than American hegemony in the middle east.
And yet Biden continues to send the weapons and money.
It's both malicious and incompetent. No matter how much foreign blood Biden promises spill, republicans will double it. By trying to appeal to "moderate" fascists, they're just demotivating their base, while fascists will vote for the real thing over diet fascism.
This isn't just Netanyahu or his administration, this is most non-arab Israelis. Every time you translate an Israeli twitter post or media, it's like you found a lost page from Mein Kampf
That's complicated. Would you have said we needed to continue supporting Apartheid South Africa's military because there were innocent Boers?
When the Israeli national project is ended, then sure we'll have a responsibility to ensure Palestine respects the rights of all people living in its territory.
No, but also kinda? It's complicated. If someone had the power to help those immigrant children escape, it would be silly to pretend they must endure the continuing injustice for fear they might hurt an "innocent" escaping the concentration camp.
Yes, it is compassionate to oppose a war. Even if you personally don't feel one side is human, you must understand that both sides are going to suffer massive casualties right?
And even if you don't consider either side human, you know we spend billions on keeping South Korea militarized right? We're still paying for that war in rotting infrastructure and schools even if it's not our blood being spilled.
Then again, if I had a nickle for every time I heard someone extol how much they care for the Ukrainian people also say that the war is a wonderful way to kill Russians without spilling a drop of American blood, I'd be able to afford a house. I suspect that you don't care about either side's people or your own beyond how their lives can be spent to defend western hegemony.
Every day we extend this war, more and more people die, statistically mostly civilians. While we are spending billions on bombs, China spends billions on healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
And for what? So that the part of Ukraine that was trying to secede during the civil war has to stay? Because Russia is going to start a war with NATO after spending a hundred thousand lives trying and failing to avoid having most of its population and industry a few hundred miles from a hostile NATO member?
This is in nobody's interest except the shareholders of weapons manufacturers.
I'm not gonna look towards the guy who spent most of his career massacring indigenous people to figure out who deserves what.
zero NATO casualties, half million Russian killed
As thrilled as you are to fight Putin to the very last drop of Ukrainian blood, you have to understand this is sociopathic right?
so until someone pops him there won’t be peace
It's unlikely that would affect the Russian war effort. I'm no expert in Russian politics, but I do cursory research and I'm not aware of any person or party waiting in the wings to take power that would support unilateral withdrawal from the lands its held for like 2 years.
their neighbours wouldn’t have had the motivation to join NATO
Joining NATO is not a defensive move, every single war its fought has been offensive in nature, and to quote Anthony Blinken "You're either at the table or you're on the menu"
For the people in Ukraine, this protracted war is the absolute worst possible outcome. Ukraine will never be a safe country again in either of our lifetimes. The state has had to privatize and sell off public assets like the power grid and take out massive loans. Ukraine will never be a prosperous country again in either of our lifetimes.
As far as black and white conflicts go, there's a country currently dropping 2000 lb bombs on a tent-city of mostly starving children, that formed from refugees of it's earlier bombing campaign, who are mostly refugees of even earlier ethnic cleansing campaigns.
They were fighting right until the day of the election. Zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the fighting, and he ordered them to do so, but the units refused to stand down.
It absolutely is not. Nothing Russia could possibly impose on the people is worse than an entire generation of men lost to the meat grinder and the poverty that follows this kind of economic damage. A quick loss would have a million more Ukrainians living in their homes today instead of displaced throughout the world, and a hundred thousand still alive.
Peacekeeping? Libya had the highest HDI of Africa before NATO's "peace keeping". But it's hard to separate the blame of NATO and just America for arming the factions. Same with the balkins.
True, from the vitriol I've seen directed at Russians living in former Ukrainian territories, it'd genuinely be a toss-up whether they'd go with the guys who invaded and occupied them or the ones who passed anti-russian laws and have banderites talking about ethnically cleansing them in parliament.
There's really no good outcome for anyone involved, and a longer war makes all of them worse.
When you do the math of "Half a million dead Russians, and it didn't cost us a single life", you betray that Ukrainian lives literally do not matter to you and that you consider dead Russians a good thing.
if the majority of Ukrainians actually would prefer Russian rule they’d just stop fighting
That would require the Ukrainian government represents the interests of the majority of people in Ukraine. There's only a handful of governments whose actions are consistently in the interest of and supported by its people. None of them are in eastern Europe.
If Russia has legitimate reasons, why are all the reasons they give for their actions always a bunch of lies?
I'm not saying the invasion was legitimate or justified, those concepts don't even factor into state actors. I'm explaining the things that motivated it.
If they have the truth on their side, why not tell the truth?
They've said over and over that it was over the failure to enforce the Minsk II agreement. But lies are convenient and animating so you get both. Same reason the US media pretended that Iraq had chemical weapons and was involved in 9/11. The populace probably would have been happy to go to war without those reasons, but it makes it easier and increases domestic support for the ruling party.
Both parties agreeing to peace as soon as possible would be ideal, but we only need one party to stop this war. I don't speak Russian and my country is not enabling Russia to continue the war, it's enabling Ukraine to continue the war.
But if I did have psychic powers and could tell Putin what to do, I'd tell him to sue for immediate peace, ideally with the occupied regions having internationally monitored referendums on whether to join Ukraine vs Russia, but ending this phase of the conflict and moving on to the decades of militia violence and terrorism ahead would be worth even giving up that.
You’d happily allow things to degenerate into a decades-long insurgency
We're getting a decades long insurgency whether Russia or Ukraine controls the region. There was an insurgency before the war, and there's sure as hell gonna be one now. Ending the war is the only way we can slow the rate things are getting worse for the people there.
As far as which insurgents, that's much more complicated, you can't just say all insurgent factions are good or bad.
The victims are the people. Every day this war goes on means more victims. The only reason I examine Russia's reasoning is to predict future behavior, moral judgements on Russia or Putin's character have nothing to do with this since the only moral action is what benefits the people.
The alternative is what? Putin just hates the Russian and Ukrainian people so much he decided to create a humanitarian disaster? That he wanted the wealth and productivity of land that currently looks like a WWI battlefield?
Lets be realistic. Putin is an agent of Russia's national bourgeoisie, he wouldn't have power if he didn't offer anticommunism and stability for the oligarchs he depends on.
I genuinely hope this isn't a hot take for anyone here: Social Darwinism is a dumb and destructive ideology and Idiocracy betrays some pretty awful beliefs.
Which is weird because KOTH and Silicon Valley aren't like that.
The original has the guy they resurrected enact a genocide on the 99% of humanity who'd been tainted by dumb genes.
And I mean I'm glad Idiocracy didn't end that way, but it's weird that the original accepts the premise of nazi eugenics, but their only issue seems to be the way it was enacted.
Yes, I wouldn't switch my Russian puppet for a western puppet who'd sell off state assets for pennies and run up a massive debt with the World Bank.
Personally if I was a country, not getting a hundred thousand of my own people killed and million displaced while their survivors are immiserated would be a pretty high priority.
I don't have to pretend bad things are actually good when I do it.
If I was Russia, I'd sue for peace immediately, with the only concession being that people in the Russian speaking regions be given actual, UN-monitored referendums whether to join Russia or Ukraine.
The same is true if I was Ukraine. Every day this war goes on, more people die, statistically mostly civilians.
If the closest thing to criticism they did when it mattered was "maybe it could be done more competently", they're only free in the sense that they're publishing what the state department wants for free.
You should be, look at literally every place we've "supported". Yall are gonna look like Ukraine or Iraq or Libya or Yugoslavia or Somalia if Raytheon and it's politicians get their way again. They'd love nothing more than to fight the PRC to the last drop of Taiwanese blood.
I would be surprised if even those wargames weren't wildly optimistic about readiness of reserve equipment, when we mobilized some marine divisions for Iraq, parts of aircraft that wasn't supposed to fail over the life of the aircraft and were no longer manufactured were failing.
Ukraine is just a buffer from Russia.
Ukraine is a bleeder; the US will continue to provide weapons and training to right-wing elements in Ukraine long after the Ukraine government loses its appetite for war. That was the strategy with Afghanistan in the 80s, and Russia can't retreat from this one since it's right on their border.
My point is that a status quo where reunification remains some time in the distant future forever is infinitely better for you guys than what war would entail.
Thoughts on the Debate: We're doomed.
Trump was a lying liar and Biden was a hoarse doddering old man who got lost mid sentence....
TIL That reddits "most addicted city" is eglin air force base FL ( lemmy.world )
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/s/vMRsaTdMn0
We are a failed species ( applejack.com )
Netanyahu Blasts Biden Admin For ‘Withholding’ Weapons From Israel In Harshest Criticism Yet: ‘Inconceivable’ ( www.forbes.com )
South Korea fires warning shots after North Korea soldiers briefly cross border - CNA ( www.channelnewsasia.com )
EU ministers fume as ‘outrageous’ Hungary yet again blocks military aid for Ukraine ( www.politico.eu )
A large number of EU resolutions on Ukraine are being blocked by Hungary, said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis....
New Doomsday Clock just dropped ( lemmy.world )
Nearly 5,000 Ukrainian Inmates Volunteer to Fight ( www.kyivpost.com )
What Hamas Called Its Female Captives, and Why It Matters ( www.theatlantic.com )
Reading too much into the language seems, at this point, to be less of a danger than reading too little into it....
'Stop threatening Taiwan', its new president William Lai tells China ( www.bbc.com )
Taiwan's newly inaugurated president William Lai has called on China to stop threatening the island and accept the existence of its democracy....