I’m just saying most left people I know who want to reign in the excesses of US hegemony care about US military adventures in the Middle East, or interventions in Central America, or immigration policy, or neoliberal trade restrictions against weaker economic powers… it’s highly unusual for the second thing on the list to be this particular European military alliance that is highly consensual and pretty productive for everyone who’s a part of it, and which is targeted almost entirely (now that it’s not the late 1990s anymore) at one particular big geopolitical power that they don’t have any particular love for any more than they do for the US. If we were talking about reigning them in back when they were bombing the fuck out of the former Yugoslavia, then yeah I wouldn’t bat an eye at it, but… I’m not saying it’s impossible that someone from the left managed to authentically arrive at the conclusion that out of all the possible awful things the US does on the world stage, NATO’s the urgent problem that needs to be torn down. But I think in comparison to the other obvious explanation, it seems a little implausible, quite honestly.

I learned today that Cornel West thinks the world would be safer without NATO. I won’t say that’s the only geopolitical opinion he felt strongly enough about to issue a press release about, but I had to go six months back to find another one, which makes a total of two that I’m aware of.

“Let’s not support Israel while they kill Palestinians,” of course, is honestly a pretty sensible and congruous number one… “why NATO is bad” and Ukraine, on the other hand, is a very surprising and unusual one to be number 2.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what the right move here is. It’s a shitty situation. “How Democracies Die” talks about it in quite a bit of detail, but basically, in the unfolding collapse of a democracy, there’s a terrible temptation to start eroding democratic norms “in kind” in response to their eroding from the fascist side, but this is a mistake. You have to keep fighting on the tilted table without trying to tilt it back, because eroding the norms of behavior plays right into the fascists’ hands and those democratic standards are horrifyingly hard to get back once you’ve broken the seal.

But, that being said, keeping in mind that this is satire to make a point: I don’t think Biden should have Trump assassinated, or anybody. I do think that it would be a little more directly on the nose if he, as an official act, had Seal Team 6 ambush all the justices that voted for this (as an official act of course), take them with hoods over their heads and in ziptie cuffs to an undisclosed location, and then put up on YouTube the video of someone asking them a few questions in a bare concrete room in that undisclosed location, requesting that they clarify that this is really what they meant. Sort of bring some reality to what is the door they are trying to open, on a personal level, to them. Because I am 100% serious when I say that that is 100% very literally the door they have chosen to open. Sort of a “Let’s close this door back up tight, right brother? Unless you are sure you want to open it? Really, like really for real sure with no backsies?”

Here is his more complete statement on it.

Judging by the number of people who showed up at the Stormy Daniels trial the army is pretty understrength.

I won’t say they are not dangerous but I think there’s like a couple thousand of them that are actually ready to go to war at this stage, which if it doesn’t grow, is nowhere near enough

I think Godwin’s Law died out around the time the actual Nazis came back. It’s actually sort of difficult to talk about some elements of politics and media in the present day without referring to the historical parallels, and one particular parallel is absolutely significantly more parallel than the others.

But you don’t have to justify to me, man. You can abandon the conversation at any point you feel that that’s what you want to do. All the best.

I didn’t even know about this

I watched one of his speeches at random just to see what the guy was about and TL;DR I wasn’t impressed and I would not be at all surprised to learn that the Republicans are trying to trick leftists into getting behind him. But I hadn’t heard that he also dislikes NATO. That seems like a weirdly specific and incongruous stance for him to take, given how extraordinarily nonspecific was a lot of the stuff he was saying when I watched him.

Yeah. Those guys I’m fine with. I was around in the 90s, man; you don’t have to tell me that the Democrats don’t have my back.

My point is that that subset doesn’t spend all their time on political forums picking on the DNC. Their time on the internet in my experience is spent in anarchist / activist forums or just on other, non political things; their not caring about electoral politics is a lot more universal and they don’t get all amped up talking about it or want to spend all their time on it (and specifically spend all their time on criticisms of only one of the parties, a lot of which are sort of made up and weird if you look at them closely.)

Stop climate change, stop killing Palestinians, economic justice for working people

There are various strategies you could use for any of the three, with various levels of timeframe involved and chance of success and all, but “let Trump come to power” is not a real good solution to any of them, to me. “Stop supporting the Democrats until they suddenly decide to start supporting them” also seems weird to me and unlikely to succeed. People have been not caring about politics (with every righteous reason) for quite a while now, and it doesn’t seem to have made the politics or the level of leftism progress in the equation any higher, to me.

What, you mean those guys that looked at Bernie Sanders and Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker, and said naw we want the guy with the crazy hair who is absolutely guaranteed to be unacceptable to the American electorate, to be the spokesman of the Left and specifically in this presidential election and we want people to take the world’s most bizarre strategy on his behalf which will NOT cause him to win or advance any leftist cause but MIGHT get Trump elected and destroy any large number of leftist causes

And, also, are totally uninterested in any leftist causes more strategic or logical than this weird and counterproductive single quixotic stand in this general election

You mean those guys WEREN’T trying to win the election for leftist causes, like they said they were?

That’s nuts man

I don’t even think they stand to benefit. I think when he blows up the US their assets will lose value, and depending on how bad it gets they may start having to hang out in some other safer country like a Russian oligarch spending all his time in Western Europe.

I think it is just pure force of habit at this point, like “Biden’s gonna tax the rich fuck him let’s get behind this disaster instead.” I mean, it worked for other disasters like Reagan or W, but I think they haven’t really absorbed how big a disaster Trump 2 would be.

The half a trillion dollars worth of student loan forgiveness passed.

A few things about this, It didn’t pass. It never came to a vote. It was an executive order. Centrists didn’t want it.

Wait, hang on. I may have misunderstood you.

If your central thesis is that Democrats in congress are mostly an uninspiring pile of centrist bullshit, and that Biden has to contend with them as well as the GOP in order to get progressive things done that he is trying to accomplish, then I will 100% agree with you. I thought you were including Biden in the centrist fakery.

Your description of getting behind Democrats because you wanted good things to happen, only to see the reality that comes to pass be mostly watered-down corporate-friendly garbage, sounds pretty accurate to me. It sounded like you were blaming that on Obama and Biden, instead of Manchin and the Republicans, is why we are disagreeing. But if you’re saying we need to get rid of the GOP in congress, and replace Manchin and Sinema with actual liberal people, as the solution, I will 100% agree.

Biden, in the only surprise of his presidency so far, listened to progressives on student loans

IRA? NLRB with teeth? Trillions of dollars worth of corporate tax increases? Those were not surprising to you?

And I just got to the paragraph where you call me Goebbels. Conversation’s over. Godwin.

I said that super confidently asserting something which seems to me to be the opposite of true, and relying on the assertion itself to be the explanation of why people should believe it, is a Goebbels tactic.

Like I say, I actually agree with you about the massive gap between what Democratic presidents get done and what they should be getting done. Where it falls apart for me is where to assign the blame for that.

Yeah

1. Biden got a ton of good stuff done, but even if you don’t agree with that, there is no possible way that an adult human being with any level of political awareness can claim that Trump wouldn’t be an objective disaster on an absolutely globe-spanning scale, or that we should do anything in this election than vote for whoever isn’t Trump. It’s like one of those video game puzzles that’s so clear and simple that it seems like there must be more to it. “Do you want to open and find out what’s in the box? Or for me to thrust this running chainsaw into your coccyx?” “What’s in the box?” “It’s a friendly cat, but why do you need to ask?”
2. Biden at the debate looked old as fuck and that’s a problem

It’s sorta boring when you just lay it out, but IDK how anyone could disagree with either of those

It is fascinating to me that the “Biden is in HUGE trouble in the election because of the debate” narrative is so unanimous in the media

In a way that “Trump is in HUGE trouble in the election because of his felonies” was not in any way

Even though from the tiny amount of polling that has apparently happened, the second one was a bigger deal to the electorate than the first one

Curious

Philly is also the city that violently chased the Patriot Front out when they tried to do a march, like literally just set on them whacking them with big sticks sending them packing back into their U-Haul van and driving away shamefully. Like Han Solo unhesitatingly shooting at Vader the instant he sees him sat at the dinner table for his big betrayal speech. Be like Philly.

The presidency is such a weird position. It’s like you’re kind of the boss, but you’re also kind of an employee. There’s a whole staff of people telling you where you have to go and what rules you have to follow, and you’re constantly getting shit on in public for your job performance, and everything bad that happens practically anywhere in the world is at least partially your fault. You can literally call the biggest military power in the world on the phone and tell them who to kill and (subject to certain restrictions), they’ll just go and do it, but you’re not allowed to drive a car.

It’s just bizarre. Like a lot of the American system, I actually really like the way the system is set up, for as weird as it is.

Fascinating. It sounds like your theory is that the Democrats floated the public option and the BBBA, just so they could go through an elaborate ruse following by killing it on purpose after months of work and preparation, only to introduce second weakened iterations of both of them (the ACA and IRA) which still did massive amounts for the country, and they went through all that just so their second version could… look wimpier by comparison to the initial version they shot down on purpose, maybe? IDK.

I’ll say this: If the average when put together, of brand X plus the Republicans actively trying to blow up the Washington Monument or kill all the Guatemalans or whatever the fuck, like a bunch of Batman villains, is a little trickle of sustained significant progress, I would say that the contribution to the average of brand X is probably significant and positive. To me. I wouldn’t look at that as a “well I guess there’s no difference between the two, and the lack of progress is DEFINITELY the Democrats’ fault, citation trust me bro” situation.

By way of example: The half a trillion dollars worth of student loan forgiveness passed. It got done. It was on the books, and then the Supreme Court told them no you can’t do that. Are you saying Biden controls the Supreme Court in secret and he passed it knowing it wouldn’t really happen? I feel like I’m stepping into some kind of Q universe where that’s exactly what you’re going to say, like John Roberts is Hunter Biden in a silicone mask or something.

The shit Democrats passed is nothing in the face of things they ran on and didn’t pursue.

The shit Democrats passed in the last few years is:

• 40% predicted reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2030
• $150 billion worth of student loan forgiveness
• Big increase in working class wages even comfortably exceeding historic inflation
• Huge corporate tax increase to pay for all that

That’s off the top of my head; people have made these massive lists of accomplishments but sometimes it’s hard to tell which ones are substantive. All of those to me are pretty substantial.

I mean, I do commend you on coming up with a framing that makes it pretty easy to say “yeah but what about all the things they DIDN’T do” like the existence of some good thing that would have been theoretically possible somehow invalidates getting some particular good thing done in the real world. And also I commend the framing where you’re asserting SO FIRMLY Goebbels-style that anything they’re failing to accomplish is deliberately on purpose and definitely not the fault of the party that’s in lock step voting down things they are trying to accomplish. Your presentation is such that it’s easy to fall into “well he MUST know what he’s talking about, he is so confident in his presentation that that wouldn’t be clearly just completely made up.”

Both fairly solid arguing techniques. Bravo.

(Oh also recovering from Covid as if it hadn’t happened which basically no other 1st world economy has been able to do)

(Also, did the Democrats float the public option? I remember a bunch of left-wing people at the time talking about single payer, but I don’t ever remember it ever being acceptable to the Democrats and no one really hoping for it, just saying fuck this would be so easy if our country’s government wasn’t so awful but I hope we can get some health insurance of some description at least.)

Dude you gotta try harder than that; you’re just teeing me up to talk about the climate change bill and the ACA and all that other stuff and just go into more depth about everything I already touched on

Just say “but Biden invented bad Israel policy” or “Genocide Joe” or “blue MAGA” and then call it a day after making some kind of flippant comment; anything still in the realm of factual (implying that literally anything I said wasn’t a thing that happened) is gonna be a losing conversation for you

Oh, I know. I am just stating the message for the rest of the people.

The bad faith folks used to have these epic debates with me back and forth but I think they have mostly stopped doing that and I am heartened to think that maybe they decided that trying to say anything I was saying wasn’t true was an obvious losing battle and they were hurting their cause by even making the attempt.

You’re half right

Going forward from Clinton I think it goes, president by president:

• Budget surplus and great GDP (fuck the poor tho)
• ACA, attempts at gun control, the occasional drone strike as a treat
• Unions, working-class wages, climate change

I think as far as the Republican side it’s pretty much always been “more for me and my immediate friends,” yes. The Democrats have pretty reliably attempted to pursue policies which are trying to benefit “the country” though, with increasingly working class aligned definitions over time of who it is that represents “the country”.