This one affirms our convictions so it must be true

Most of the people here would still vote for Biden if he was wheelchair bound and communicated with a bell zipp-tied to his armrest like Tio Salamanca.

The question isn’t “is he better than trump”, it’s “will enough people be motivated to go vote for a candidate that’s slipping into a waking coma?” and every day that Biden opens his mouth in front of a camera like tonight he looses more people who don’t give a fuck about politics.

There is no good news from this debate. If the democrats have a single other option to replace Biden on the ticket they should do it now or else ensure a trump presidency.

Voters giveth, voters taketh away.

And most people in that audience didn’t actually watch the debate live, but will have Biden’s biggest blunders blasted at them on repeat for the next 5 months.

Do you think lemmy.world/c/politics is a good representation of the american electorate?

I guess… I am still very skeptical the profit margin even if some people do end up paying for the storage. We’re talking about petabytes on petabytes of data… How many people need to pay a cloud subscription fee to pay for the overhead of the servers?

Idk. This is super suss to me but again, I am clearly not the target market for this service so maybe I don’t have a firm grasp of the landscape.

Biden’s 2030 projections are not aggressive enough and are at-odds with trade relations with the largest green energy manufacturer on the planet and with the multiple large-scale military conflicts we are actively fanning. I’m assuming their 2030 projections do not account for the millions of pounds of explosives being set off in the ME and in Ukraine.

It’s like a pack-a-day smoker whining about their doctor not praising them for loosing weight from dieting, even though their diet is one of those cayenne pepper and lemon juice cleanses. Like, good job with loosing 50 pounds, but if you don’t stop smoking like a chimney you’re still gonna die of a heart attack.

I get that we want to feel good about our political outlook but holy fuck now is not the time to be celebrating.

It cannot be that profitable to have just a bunch of random data on their servers. I have so much junk and random bullshit on my drives, it would take a week of labor just to clean my shit well enough to use it for AI training and as soon as I got any notification about cloud space being full i’d turn syncing off - i sure as hell wouldn’t fork over any money for a subscription. This is such a big bridge to burn, and the server overhead must be massive… I just don’t understand how they could possibly think this is a good business decision.

Idk, maybe i’m just too deep into privacy/FOSS/selfhosting headspace to see things clearly from the normal-consumer standpoint but I just do not understand this. I really wish someone would leek an internal conversation at one of these companies that explains the big-picture strategy with this move.

Lmao

Lol, OK so what if this messaging was the state department’s way of undercutting anti-israel sentiment so that they could protect their interests in the middle east from domestic opposition?

If only israel had prior knowledge, they could have taken defensive action

Maybe in a particular light, but I’m personally of the opinion that intellectual property and patent law is antithetical to good social policy… so idk. Ideally we’d all benefit from the knowledge and ingenuity of all mankind but in a capitalist economic world-view there’s no place for egalitarianism so…

If they can take the same tech and make it better/produce it cheaper then I think that’s great, go nuts.

But that’s obviously just me.

People shit on China all the goddamn time here but they’ve done a prolific job becoming the tech and manufacturing leader in a handful of decades.

Blame it on tech espionage if you want but there’s a reason the US is deadset on targeting Chinese imports, and it’s hardly for any of the security reasons they might be tempted to claim it to be. The US is about to be left behind and it’s noones fault but our own.

This has to be a copypasta

then there’s not a lot of point in us talking

Yup, I’ve been there for a while bud.

Look, I’ve written and shelved a few responses to this already, but I wasn’t being coy when I said I think we’ve run this conversation bare. I’m having a hard time contending with what seems like willful rejection of my critique of your framing - which is fine, it’s your political world-view and I can’t possibly expect to change it in a day. It just seems there’s an insurmountable disagreement that we can’t get past, and the longer we talk the more exaggerated we’re getting about the other’s perspective and we’re not getting any closer to an understanding than we already have.

Here’s a problematic exchange:

Me:

I do not post memes ‘against voting for biden’, though I can understand interpreting it that way since I am mocking the essentialist and attitude that suggests it is the only thing that matters (I don’t mean anyone has actually said this, but the extreme sentiment conveyed certainly makes that implication clear). That attitude isn’t just short-sided, it is actively hostile toward critiques and agitation against democrats, who on their own routinely use it to rally support without offering real progress (anyone who pays attention to politics year-round might notice that these oppositional crises never really subside)

You:

I am very confident that I never suggested that voting was the only thing that mattered. Someone saying that voting does matter is in no way saying that it’s the only thing that matters. I think you will be hard pressed to find even a single comment on Lemmy saying that voting is the only thing that matters.

The misconnect:

“I never suggested that voting was the only thing that mattered”. I know, that’s why I said “I don’t mean anyone has actually said this”. My point is that all political activity within this frame of view is interpreted through that electoral lense, and I’m pointing to that framing as not just problematic but the actual target of pretty much all effective agitation. That the spectrum of political action must fit through this narrow opening of election day is necessarily a rejection of the use of dissent outside of it. Your objection to and suspicion of bad-actors is a reflection of this, too: even honest critique from reputable sources is suspect of over-the-line provocation simply because the intent may be to distort public opinion away from voting for Biden in november, even if the substance of that provocation is acknowleged as fair. It is that idea that is the subject of my critique, but instead of addressing that problem you fall back to shit like this:

“When they say “yes Gaza sucks please can we get a better president in the future but in the meantime also Trump is 10 times worse for Gaza among many other things”

You say you can’t see how this statement revolves/hinges around electoral essentialism, but I don’t think that’s true. I think (notice that I am stating an opinion and not a statement of fact) you do see it, but you believe it is the essential predicate to all agitative action that follows, which is a fair feeling (as i’ve acknowledged). Having acknowleged that perspective, I’m offering a challenge to that framing: that electoralist lenses collapse political negotiation into a partisan binary (you are either working for this electoral outcome or that one), and it functionally rejects activity that falls on the wrong side (e.g. critiquing Biden is fine (good even), so long as the intent is still to help him defeat trump, or at least that the intent is not to hurt his chances).

I have repeatedly stated my opinion that effective protest is only that which implicitly threatens that electoral coalition. It seeks to sow discontent with the policies on-offer to put pressure on representation, and it isn’t just yelling at the representative, it is an act of cleaving some portion of that base off so that the candidate must choose between their own goal of winning or relenting on the position being protested for.

Protest is necessarily hostile toward the electoral political calculations, and by gatekeeping valid protest to activity that fits within that frame neuters its ability to push for change. Fostering tension is the goal. It seeks to be present in every political discussion about that candidate, lingering as an ominous and threatening presence that makes not just that candidate squirm and feel unwelcome, but all of the moderates who work to support them, too.

You are wildly mischaracterizing what I actually think, to the point where you’re saying things I strongly disagree with (e.g. voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden) and then attributing them to me.

No, I fucking haven’t. I am not attributing words as coming straight from your mouth, I am presenting you with what I think your underlying assumptions are. You have not literally said “voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden”. What you have done is rhetorically narrow the acceptable forms of dissent to that which fits into this electoral binary. Your method of identifying ‘bad-faith’ argumentation revolves around how or if that dissent is intended to effect electoral outcomes. I have become a broken record, repeating the same words endlessly:

effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions, effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions, effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions

The conversation I would like to have with you is, we need better outcomes than Biden, how do we get there.

I’ve said this repeatedly, but sure, I will say it again. Political agitation involves being a relentless-fucking prick. It means dominating every political conversation with the shit you want changed, raise the issue until it cannot be ignored, and absolutely do not allow it to be dismissed as irrelevant noise or covert opposition. It involves being so relentless that their only reprieve is to forcibly remove you from the space you are occupying. That is what I am doing and what I think you should be doing too, and this is why MLK castigated white liberals as the single greatest hurtle toward black liberation. Their obstruction is defined by that line they simply will not cross, and it is the goal of agitation to drag those people up to the line and push their complacent asses over it.

When you say things like ‘why are you bothering people here with this, we agree with you’… Emphatically, no you fucking don’t.

Oh god could you imagine

I just don’t think any of these things are happening

Lmao, I mean… Disagree? Look, it’s right here even

When they say “yes Gaza sucks please can we get a better president in the future (lol don’t bother me right now i’m busy) but in the meantime also Trump is 10 times worse(electoral essentialism) for Gaza among many other things so let’s not elect him, also let’s go to the Palestine protest this Saturday(what about right here and now? why does that seem to be intentionally left out here)” and you scream in their face “GENOCIDE JOE, GENOCIDE JOE, DON’T TRY TO SILENCE MY DISSENT”(lmao what do you think a protest is?) you’re producing no benefit for leftism in this country.

Fuckin… Look man, if you don’t see a problem in just that first sentence I don’t think you’re trying.

I think we’ve run this line of argumentation through, we’ve circled back to some of the stuff we started with and frankly your effort here is clearly declining. As fun as this was I really don’t feel like pulling references from earlier in the conversation. And holy hell, we’ve had this argument before, don’t you remember?

Do you think that the Communists in 1932 who were fighting the SPD, instead of Hitler, accomplished progress by sowing discontent against the status quo?

I’m sorry lol, I’m just not interested in having this conversation again. You’ll say ‘the SPD split the vote because they were too stubborn to join the KPD’ and then i’ll say ‘sure but the SPD was reacting to the same conditions that cultivated the NSDAP in the first place’ and then you’ll say 'i agree but stopping the nazis was more important ’ and then i’ll say ‘but they didn’t stop them, they let them in, and also even if they had if they didn’t address the conditions that lead to the NSDAP then they wouldn’t ever really stop them so the KPD should have joined the SPD’ and then you’ll say ‘yea I agree with that but they had the majority so they didn’t’ and i’ll say ‘and they didn’t stop the nazis, I thought we were trying to learn from this example not rationalize what ended up happening’

LMAO though at you claiming i’m being overdramatic and then immediately turn around and compare my light agitation to helping the nazis rise to power. Holy shit did that conversation devolve quickly.

Just expressing leftist agitation isn’t it. Like I was recommending slrpnk to somebody recently, sort of like yeah they hate voting sometimes, IDK, but whatever, they are good people.

I’m sorry that I seem to keep misunderstanding. I still think encouraging that speculation at all is problematic but I won’t push the issue more, I think i’ve made my opinion clear.

So your intent in posting memes against voting for Biden is to spur the reader to get involved in leftist action? What would they start doing, to improve the state of the country? I’m not trying to be dickish by asking that, I’m genuinely asking.

• I do not post memes ‘against voting for biden’, though I can understand interpreting it that way since I am mocking the essentialist and attitude that suggests it is the only thing that matters (I don’t mean anyone has actually said this, but the extreme sentiment conveyed certainly makes that implication clear). That attitude isn’t just short-sided, it is actively hostile toward critiques and agitation against democrats, who on their own routinely use it to rally support without offering real progress (anyone who pays attention to politics year-round might notice that these oppositional crises never really subside)
• I think driving a wedge between those who seek to enforce support for a candidate and discourage dissent (including discouraging the propagation of news coverage that is unflattering to that candidate to a point that is threatening to consensus opinion, or launching crusades against those who are insufficiently emphatic about the need to vote) is the first and likely most important step in agitating change, especially when that candidate is actively engaged in wildly unpopular (at least in present company) oppressive genocidal activity. Protest simply cannot be effective if it is expected not to mount a serious challenge to consensus opinion among moderates, and that absolutely includes here.

I realize that this would appear to be counterproductive to a less black-pilled progressive, but I simply do not believe even democrats have any intent to address crucial issues in a way that challenges or threatens the overall capital and imperial structure on which the US has been built (this encompasses my critique of incrementalism, because incrementalist proposals always fall short of challenging those ingrained macro structures i believe are fundamental to truly addressing our active crises). I suspect our support of Israel is one of those issues, I also think climate change and campaign finance and election reform are as well (I already know you disagree with me about incremental climate change progress under Biden, we don’t need to get into it here). And I believe without a hint of doubt that none of them will ever be addressed without anything less than even the mildest of discomfort among comfortable liberal democrats.

To drive progress we must sow discontent against the status quo, that much has always been clear.

If what they were spreading was bullshit, the posts themselves would have been removed for breaking misinformation rules.

If what they were spreading was biden’s own shit so that you had to smell it instead of ignoring it, I think he was doing you a service and you should be thanking him.