• Zombie-Mantis
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    8 months ago

    What center?

    Between the Democrats and Republicans? The GOP that wanted to brutalize Pelosi on the steps of the capital? The GOP that laughed when a man with a hammer nearly murdered her husband with a hammer? The GOP that wants to roll back all civil rights to a time before the revolution? The GOP that wants to install a fascist dictatorship?

    Or do you mean the center of where the American public stands?

    The center of what Americans want is a hell of a lot more progressive than you, Nancy.

    • @[email protected]
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      58 months ago

      The GOP that wanted to brutalize Pelosi on the steps of the capital? The GOP that laughed when a man with a hammer nearly murdered her husband with a hammer? The GOP that wants to roll back all civil rights to a time before the revolution? The GOP that wants to install a fascist dictatorship?

      You are ascribing the actions of individuals to the entire group. Not every GOP person is a MAGA person and not every MAGA person would resort to violence like some on January 6th. Please allow for some nuance.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        Not every GOP person is a MAGA person and not every MAGA person would resort to violence like some on January 6th.

        And those that don’t are silent on the face of it (implicitly condoning the behavior) or are shouted down and pushed out of the party. Don’t pretend like the political machine and the voting base don’t support this behavior when they keep putting these people back in office.

        Don’t forget, the GOP was against J6 until they saw the base was for it. Then even the people who could have been in danger said it was ok. So they absolutely support this shit even if they say they don’t.

        Please allow for some nuance.

        In this case, nuance is the excuse used to paper over the support these people have from within the party. Come back when the party machinery and base feel that way, because the individual’s “beliefs” are meaningless due to being a nebulous concept that isn’t supported by their actions.

        Remember, if 10 people are sitting at a table and a Nazi is allowed to sit down, you’ve got 11 Nazis. And until we see evidence of these beliefs actually being held by a sizable amount of them, I’m not going to pretend it exists outside of their fringe.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        The rest of the GOP came out in strong condemnation of those attacks, right? No equivocating, or pretending they were Democrats, or saying they weren’t violent?

        Edit: and the Republicans in the Senate voted to remove Trump from office after the House sent them articles of impeachment about this, right?

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          Again, what did Pence and McConnell do when given the choice to overthrow the republic? I’m not a MAGA or GOP person by any means, nor am I a Democrat, I’m just trying to point out that things are not as black and white as you bullies want to paint them.

          • @[email protected]
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            248 months ago

            The rest of the GOP literally wanted to hang both of them. McConnell didn’t vote to convict on impeachment while equivocating about Trump begin “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day”. These people are cowards, at best.

            • @[email protected]
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              38 months ago

              Sure, they’re cowards, but did they overthrow the government?

              My only point is that you need to treat people as individuals and not put everyone who has ever voted for the GOP in the MAGA camp. There are Republicans who had just enough backbone on January 6th and there are republicans who do not support Trump today. Believe it or not, there are even republicans who support abortion or believe in gay marriage or support sane gun control measures. Everyone everywhere is an individual.

              It’s important to allow people to evolve if they so choose.

              • @[email protected]
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                148 months ago

                On one hand you’re moving goal posts to make them seem good. The bar is not literally overthrowing the government…great… on the other everyone’s tolerance for these folks in the party is just as bad as the bad actors because it enables and emboldens them. This is quite literally how the Nazi’s got into power. Because of people like you.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  No, they are not good, I’m just saying they’re not all the same and they didn’t all commit that particular crime.

              • @[email protected]
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                178 months ago

                Buddy, did any of those individuals in power that you are defending vote to remove Trump when he was impeached for running an insurrection? They didn’t and that is the cover they are providing as their brownshirts terrorize the people.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  I can’t speak for them. However, if they simply wanted to terrorize people they could have just overthrown the government.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  Not sure, my only point is that we will not allow anyone in the party to do so if we claim them to be a monolith. There is in fact a divergence of opinions within the party on multiple topics.

      • theprogressivist
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        8 months ago

        There is no nuance anymore. If you’re actively supporting the GOP at this point, you ARE MAGA, and if you support MAGA, you’re okay with fascism.

            • @[email protected]
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              28 months ago

              All of them did it? We wouldn’t still be standing without McConnell and Pence. As terrible as their policies are they still stood up for the system.

              • theprogressivist
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                308 months ago

                All of them are complicit, yes. It’s not that hard to understand. Go ahead and keep apologizing for them.

                • @[email protected]
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m not apologizing for anyone. I’m just saying they are not all one person and some of them do the right thing sometimes.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  Yes, he did, but that was within the bounds of the law. This person cannot honestly claim that the entire GOP tried to overthrow the government.

              • @[email protected]
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                8 months ago

                We wouldn’t be having this conversation if McConnell hadn’t protected trump every step of the way. He made a heat of the moment call on J6 that you’re praising him for, but his behavior after the fact tells me he regrets his decision.

                Any credibility McConnell gained on J6, he last 10 fold on February 13th.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    If the Overton Window is a real thing then there is no “center” just the context of “i am rich don’t rock the boat”.

    Pelosi Thinking TM is why Bernie would never be president.

  • @[email protected]
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    68 months ago

    We don’t want the center. Her main selling point is that she is not 80+years old. The bar is that low. Nobody gives a shit about policy at this point, it’s gotten that bad. Anything but a geriatric convict.

  • peopleproblems
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    158 months ago

    How about they shut they all shut the fuck up and let them run the campaign themselves

  • @[email protected]
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    468 months ago

    Pelosi is STILL against stock buying bans for Congress because the “free market is for everyone”, meanwhile they get to decide who participates in said free market with advanced warning on news

    • @[email protected]
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      138 months ago

      It is really quite something how Obama almost categorically opted to give up without a fight on virtually every issue. He had to be dragged across the finish line for the ACA and was trying to kill the public option before Lieberman even took that charge up.

      The backroom politics of the Obama years should have primed anyone for what came after.

    • BarqsHasBite
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      8 months ago

      Obama lost the House of Representatives in years 3 and 4. And again in years 5 and 6. Then he lose both the House of Reps and the Senate in years 7 and 8. That was the thanks he got for the ACA. He pushed for progress, got it, and the left voters never showed up for more.

      You want progress? You need to vote and give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.

        • BarqsHasBite
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          8 months ago

          I look at it as a Mexican standoff. The protest left voter is not going to win this Mexican Standoff because the Dems have an out, to go for the center voter. Which is a voter that actually shows up. The leftist has no alternative. Bemoan the two party system if you want, but there is no alternative.

          When the left doesn’t show up, Dems just go to the center even more.

            • BarqsHasBite
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              68 months ago

              Call it whatever you want, when they lose they will go to where the votes are. They have an out in this Mexican Standoff. You don’t.

              • @[email protected]
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                68 months ago

                And as they go to where the votes are, republicans, they should be abandoned by left leaning voters.

                • BarqsHasBite
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                  8 months ago

                  Depends if you want to stop them from going center. They will go where the votes are. When you don’t vote, you tell them to not do anything left ever. “Don’t bother with us, there’s no support over here!” Congrats, it’s the biggest self own ever.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          Honestly, voting for representatives was a hard sell back then but after 2020 young people actually showed up to vote between presidential elections. Uniting the party is easy if all the elected party members are progressives.

        • LasherzM
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          78 months ago

          Walz is the perfect solution for this excuse. He passed progressive policies weekly in the governorship with a 1 seat majority. There are plenty of reasons to be excited about this ballot that are new. You could of course argue the same thing about early Obama, but I trust Walz.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 months ago

            What evidence is there that Kamal will even try to pass an agenda that is similar to what Walz did in Minnesota?

            I think Walz is the most progressive governor in the country and would love to see his policies implemented on a national level. What evidence is there that Kamala’s administration will even attempt to enact those policies? She has been light on policy, with the exception of supporting Israel and building the wall via the bipartisan immigration bill that the Dems are now running on.

            I’m assuming Tester wins in Montana and dems have a blue house and 50/50 senate. But even with that, idk why we would presume she would be as progressive as Walz

        • BarqsHasBite
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          8 months ago

          When do they win? They need all 3 of House of Representatives, Senate, and Presidency to do much of anything. And they’ve had that for, drumroll please, 4 of the last 24 years. Or 6 years of the last 44 years. They basically never win. So they are forced to compromise and then they go to the center to find voters.

          And when they do get all 3, Obama passed the ACA, Biden passed green energy, student debt, drug price control, etc,. And the thanks they get is to then lose the midterm elections. Thanks voters that don’t show up!

          • @[email protected]
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            18 months ago

            Biden did historically well in the midterms tbh. If it wasn’t for gerrymandering and a population capped House, Dems would still have complete control of Congress

            • BarqsHasBite
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              8 months ago

              Yeah but it still kneecaps them. He can’t even do a sweetheart border deal without the House.

              • @[email protected]
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                28 months ago

                Yeah my point is that voters did show up. Dems did historically well in 2022 for an incumbent party

                Its just that the structure of our electoral politics favors rural areas and gerrymandered districts. Which currently means the red team benefits. Which isn’t the fault of recent voters

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        That was the thanks he got for the ACA

        I was paying for health insurance when the ACA was passed. My cost went up and my coverage got worse, and nowadays I can’t afford any coverage at all despite making too much money to qualify for Medicaid. The ACA increased “access to healthcare” but it was an absolute, unmitigated failure - Obama got exactly what he deserved for it.

        • @[email protected]
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          98 months ago

          I make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but my ACA premiums, net of tax credit, are $0. Sorry it hasn’t worked for you, but that’s obviously not the universal outcome.

        • BarqsHasBite
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          48 months ago

          You want [more] progress? You need to vote and give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.

            • BarqsHasBite
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              48 months ago

              Hello Mr Crab! What should we cover today? Oh ok it looks like you’re on a semi-conspiracy that they will “find” aka you are implying create no votes. I think it’s enough to call out the conspiracy. I wonder if that’s enough for this one.

                • BarqsHasBite
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                  48 months ago

                  Ah MrCrab, you are implying that they do nothing, ever, anywhere, that any one of their voters want. Thus the semiconspiracy. As addressed in my other reply, you can’t do everything, everywhere, all at once. Because: Writing up legislation takes time, energy, and political capital. You can’t do literally everything, everywhere, all at once.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        The ACA is a huge black mark on Obama’s legacy. Clinton certainly wasn’t going to push for universal healthcare. She was just a terrible candidate.

        It was just really hard to get excited to pay 1100$ a month for bare bones family insurance. (At the time…it’s closer to 2500 a month today).

        • BarqsHasBite
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          8 months ago

          Oh the most progressive healthcare reform ever is suddenly a bad thing? Fucking lol.

          Want more? Vote and give them consistent and overwhelming victories. 2 years every 16 years is going to be slow. Bump that up champ.

          • @[email protected]
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            98 months ago

            Your first sentence is a joke right? Most progressive health care ever is a misnomer. It was Romneycare rebranded.

            Get a clue

            • BarqsHasBite
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              8 months ago

              It’s a joke if your “black mark” is a joke. Like it or not, it was and is the most progressive healthcare ever, on a federal level if you want to be pedantic. Get a clue indeed.

              Which brings us back to: If you want more, then you have to give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.

              • @[email protected]
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                8 months ago

                In what way was it more progressive than Medicare and Medicaid?

                Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society is the high-water mark of progressive domestic legislation. Nothing in the 60 years since then is remotely close - quite the opposite, actually

          • @[email protected]
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            98 months ago

            Oh the most progressive healthcare reform ever

            In America? That was Medicaid, and was established in 1965 by adding Title XIX to the Social Security Act. The PPACA was the biggest increase in enrollment since it was established, but was by no means universal or even approaching the scope of the original act.

          • @[email protected]
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            38 months ago

            Want more? Vote and give them consistent and overwhelming victories.

            Lucy with the football.

            • BarqsHasBite
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              8 months ago

              Hello Mr Crab! You have graced me with two messages today. What shall we cover today? Oh, that they “take away” something. Ok let’s cover how much power they have had:

              They have had control of all 3 (house of reps, senate, and presidency) for 4 years of the last 24 years. If you to go back further, then it’s 6 years of the last 44 fucking years. If you want more progress, then you’re gonna have to up that!

              Is this where you complain that they didn’t do everything, everywhere, all at once when they had control? If so, then I say that writing up legislation takes time, energy, and political capital. You can’t do literally everything, everywhere, all at once.

              Ok we’ll see how this conversation goes huh MrCrab.

              • @[email protected]
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                28 months ago

                They have had control of all 3 (house of reps, senate, and presidency) for 4 years of the last 24 years.

                And they wasted as much of that as possible. How large does the majority have to be? How long do we have to hold it before Democrats actually keep their fucking promises to someone other than Netanyahu?

                When will Democrats start using the majorities we give them?

                • BarqsHasBite
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                  Yup there is Mr Crab! so I’ll just C+P

                  Writing up legislation takes time, energy, and political capital. You can’t do literally everything, everywhere, all at once.

                  Here’s a very short list of what Biden has done: Green energy, EV investment, union empowerment, student debt forgiveness, marijuana rescheduling and pardons, infrastructure, drug price controls, Chips act, PACT act, etc etc etc. Non-competes banned (by FTC along ‘party lines’). Pardoning people kicked out for being gay. Supporting Ukraine.

                  But you want to suggest they aren’t using the majority to do anything.

                  I wonder if that will suffice for this conversation!

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          Romneycare that didn’t kick into action until 2014. And because state agencies got to rebrand their programs, you had some crazy A/B poll testing results.

          In Kentucky, a new Marist poll conducted for NBC News finds that 57 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable view of “Obamacare,” the shorthand commonly used to label the 2010 Affordable Care Act. That’s compared with only 33 percent who give it a thumbs up – hardly surprising in a state where the president’s approval rating hovers just above 30 percent.

          By comparison, when Kentucky voters were asked to give their impression of “kynect,” the state exchange created as a result of the health care law, the picture was quite different.

          A plurality – 29 percent – said they have a favorable impression of kynect, compared to 22 percent who said they view the system unfavorably. Twenty-seven percent said they hadn’t heard of kynect, and an additional 21 percent said they were unsure.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      never forget he authorized the extra-judicial drone-bombing of an American child.

      Obama is just a character. He is the charming face of the bloodthirsty elite.
      Look at his record

      If he were not attractive and charming people would be treating him like Pelosi

      I’m convinced liberals are really just sneaky centrists. We need to rid the party of neo liberals

  • @[email protected]
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    348 months ago

    Moving to the right and calling it the center is why the “good” party is supporting genocide.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      Israel has the equivalent of Donald Trump at the helm right now. And Hamas staged the equivalent of ten 9/11s, handing a deeply unpopular conservative PM an extension on his political power for the foreseeable future.

      Netanyahu and Hamas both want this conflict to go on as long as possible. Netanyahu because it lets him keep power, Hamas because they want to use the 2 million people in Gaza as a pawn to shift the world against Israel. Their end goal is to wipe out the 20 million people living in Israel, and their own founders have stated that that’s not where it ends. They’re not going to stop until the whole world is under an Islamic Caliphate.

      Hamas absolutely does not give a damn about anyone living in Gaza. And they’ll continue to brainwash and sacrifice the children, either as meat shields when they’re young, or as soldiers when they get older. Israel grants asylum to gay Palestinians that escape from Gaza or the West Bank. Sometimes their families will kidnap them, bring them back and behead them.

      I don’t think it’s pure coincidence they go looking for Pride Parades.

      Terrorists do terrorist things. If we want this to ever end, realistically the only way to do it would be to kill the Hamas leadership in any way possible and somehow undo 20 years of brainwashing they inflicted on the Gaza population. As for Israel, think how racist the average American living in a border state is. How much worse do you think they’d be if Mexico was shooting rockets at our border towns every few days? Even without the rockets, we’ve been messing with South America for a hundred years, making sure we’d never have competition on this side of the pond.

      Are they racist? Absolutely. We’d be way worse under similar circumstances. Can you imagine what we’d do if Mexico invaded Texas and killed 20,000 people and kidnapped another 4000 and took them as hostages?

      The US claimed everything from California to Texas after a war with Mexico. Technically they were here before we were. Should we all pack up and leave too? Why are we expecting folks to do things we’d never do ourselves?

        • @[email protected]
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          28 months ago

          If your argument is that we shouldn’t care because there’s no way to accomplish that in North America, why should we care when a suicidal terrorist group complains they’re being oppressed while they’re trying to kill 20 million people in Israel?

          They got exactly what they wanted. Even the appeal to our humanity in an attempt to get us to stop supporting Israel was planned out from day 1. The end goal of which, is to make it easier to wipe Israel off the map.

          • @[email protected]
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            78 months ago

            Its not, please don’t make assumptions on that little. I’m simply poking a hole in how absurd the overall project is. Its a grift, designed to run in perpetuity because the stated endgame is a pipe dream.

            • @[email protected]
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              You think ending Israel and killing everyone in it is just something Hamas pays lip service to?

              It’s not like every country around them immediately invaded them the moment they were founded, right? Don’t get me wrong, we should never have put them there in the first place. It was the 1950s, nobody else wanted the Jews in their own countries either. But they’re there now. We put them there.

              Hell, the whole reason the region is full of religious fundamentalist freaks is because we made a point of destabilizing the entire region so we could steal their oil without having to pay for it.

              We did that. We put them there, screwed over the entire region and gave the locals an easy scapegoat to project their grievances onto, and after 60 years of it, you want to complain that they’re now too mean to their neighbors so we should leave em out to dry so they can all get killed? While we sit here getting fat off the riches we stole?

              You want to wash our hands of it now? Well that’s convenient. It’s not like we don’t owe everything we take for granted to our ability to print money and force the entire world to buy oil using our currency.

              Honestly, I think we should take a little responsibility. For once in our miserable lives.

      • @[email protected]
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        108 months ago

        I think Israel not running n apartheid state would do a hell of a lot more to change the minds of Palestinians than anything Hamas says

        • @[email protected]
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          We put them there to draw aggro for all the messed up things we do in the region so we can steal their oil.

          They’ve been doing that for 60 years. Every rocket, every terrorist attack they took in that timeframe should have been ours to take. We engineered the whole thing.

          We got all the benefit, while they took all the losses. You want to blame them for being racist to the people trying to kill them every day? When we, as Americans are pretty much the entire reason it’s happening?

          Have you seen pictures of Iran in the 70s?

          We did this. All of it. We don’t get to wash our hands and pretend this isn’t all on us.

          What did Mexico do to us? Guatamala? We overthrow governments for fruit companies on this side of the pond. The idea of US taking the moral high ground on a situation we created is insane.

          If you actually want the moral high ground, know what we should be doing? Campaign to bring the 2 million Palestinians HERE. You think people living in Gaza right now wouldn’t immediately accept an offer to come live in America? And they’d acclimate to secular society a lot faster here than they ever would living in Gaza which has been blown to bits already.

          Sure, we’d have all the problems that we were so eager to inflict on the Israelis. We’ll get bombed, people will die, and we’ll probably finally get our share of the terrorist attacks Israel and Europe have been dealing with for decades. But unlike them, we’d actually deserve it. Last I checked, OPEC isn’t selling oil in Euros.

          Let Israel have the whole thing, and lets see if that changes a damn thing. It’s the LEAST we could do after using them as cannon fodder for the past 60 years. And these performative leftists will actually learn WHY Jordan and Egypt refuse to accept Palestinian refugees. (Hint: It’s called assassinations and coup attempts)

          • @[email protected]
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            78 months ago

            You’re just making complete straw man arguments right now because I never defended the US once in my statement. I said Israel is running an apartheid state and maybe Hamas wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t.

            Yes the US is distinctly involved in Israel and the repression and genocide of the Palestinian people, and has been since 1948. However, that does not take away any blame from the Israelis being a violent apartheid state committing a genocide. And yes, I absolutely do blame them for being racist because Israel was the one who has created the conditions for this and every previous war in the region.

            It is absolutely not unreasonable for people who were living in that land and were dispossessed of their land through no fault of their own, who are currently still being dispossessed of their land, and who are living in an apartheid, as they have been since Israels formation, to fight back against their oppressors.

            By that logic the native Americans should never have fought against the colonialists and the Indians should never have fought back and killed any British. More recently by your logic Ukraine should not have fought back against Russia.

            You have a right and an obligation to fight an invading power.

            • @[email protected]
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              8 months ago

              And we committed genocide against the Native Americans and put the few that were left in barren strips of land no one wanted to fend for themselves.

              Fine, let’s give them back everything first. Then demand others do the same. To this day we impose more rules on the Native Americans than Israel does to Palestine.

              We should pray that Israel doesn’t do to Palestine what we did to the Native Americans because there would be about 500 of them left, and they’d be stuffed into a piece of land the size of a Walmart parking lot.

              And yet… despite the absolutely horrific shit we inflicted on the Native Americans… if your local tribe started kidnapping Americans and beheading them do you think anyone will care why?

              You don’t see the irony in this?

              I’m not saying the Palestinians aren’t justified in trying to take back their lands. I’m saying the Israelis are there because WE carved out that piece of land and told them they could go there. I’m saying WE decided to destabilize the entire region and sowed division so we could steal their oil afterwards. And WE directed the resulting (entirely justified) resentment towards Israel, using them as a convenient scapegoat to take the target off of our own backs.

              We do not have the moral high ground here, and pearl clutching about the Israelis being racist towards people who are trying to kill them (because of us) and trying to say we should cut off all military aid and leave them to die is a morally abhorrent position to take for someone who lived their whole life steeped in the wealth that we extracted from their blood.

              Because if that’s your solution for Israel, applying that same standard to us would mean we’d have to collectively commit mass suicide first. We’ve done a lot worse for a lot less.

              Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones. Our house isn’t even glass. It’s made out of single sheets of phyllo dough.

              And the scary thing is, we weren’t even the worst of the lot. Look at what world dominating empires have done historically and most of them were so, so much worse than us. Hell, look what China and Russia is doing NOW. As horrible as we were/are, just about everyone else who attained this level of power has done worse.

              There is no way to atone for everything we did. But even if you wanted to start, letting 20 million people die in a death-trap we created because it’s no longer convenient for us to maintain it is certainly not the way to start things.

              • @[email protected]
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                48 months ago

                Zionism is a settler colonialism project was able to start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe. Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources. That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.

                Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.

                Ending the current genocide means stopping military support for that genocide. The only way for everyone to live peacefully is a secular One State with equal rights and Right of Return for all Palestinians and Israelis

                • @[email protected]
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                  8 months ago

                  Make your own arguments instead of copy pasting things. It’s lazy, and you haven’t addressed any of my arguments.

                  If you care enough about the issue to have a discussion about it, at least use your own words and arguments that show you at least thought about the issues at hand.

                  I laid out my argument for why we can’t unilaterally cut support to Israel clearly and repeatedly. Least you can do is attempt the same if you want to convince anyone.

      • @[email protected]
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        58 months ago

        Israel is the one that was founded on ethnic cleansing, used the peace process to expand it’s settlements, and is currently engaged in genocide. Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

        Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

        The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

        • Avi Shlaim

        How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

        ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

        One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          I know I wrote a lot and I wouldn’t expect you to read it all, but I addressed this as well, using the US-Mexico war as an example.

          We haven’t given back Texas and California yet. If you invade a country and they take your territory, you can ask for a do-over, but it’s probably not going to happen.

          As I’ve noted, WE created this whole mess. And we shouldn’t expect others to comply to standards we would never accept ourselves.

          If you want to take it a step further, I posited a hypothetical situation where Mexico invaded and killed 20,000 Americans and took another 4000 hostage.

          And what our response would likely be. If you aren’t lying to yourself, you know exactly what we would do, especially if we have someone like Donald Trump at the helm when it happens.

          • @[email protected]
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            48 months ago

            The Zionist Settler colonists were the in invaders, what are you talking about. Are you trying to paint all Arab/Muslims in the region as the same? Or do you recognize that the surrounding countries invaded the newly founded Israel after months of Israel ethnicly cleansing hundreds of Palestinian towns and also for their own interests? Transjordan colluded with Ben-Gurion to acquire the West Bank. Egypt also had their own ambitions. In 1967 Israel started the war in order to gain control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to gain control over all of historic Palestine. It’s been a permanent occupation so the ethnostate that is Israel can continue settlements while rejecting the humanity and citizenship of Palestinians to solve it’s ‘demografic problem.’

            • @[email protected]
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              18 months ago

              I can’t tell if you just aren’t bothering to read what I wrote or if you are just looking for the closest tangentially related thing to copy-paste.

              I just said expecting them to return land when we’re keeping Texas and California is a case of “Do as I say, not as I do.”

              Yes, Israel removed Palestinian settlements. At our behest. We told them that land was now theirs. And the countries surrounding Israel telegraphed invasion plans for days before the six day war.

              Revisionism aside, are you still trying to lay this at the feet of the Israelis instead of ours? We did that. It’s cowardly to try to pretend otherwise.

              • @[email protected]
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                48 months ago

                Israel has been the one doing the settler Colonialism and ethnic cleansing, the fact that the US and other western countries have financially and militarily supported it for decades does not mean that Israel is not the one responsible for it.

                Yes, the US was founded on genocide of the natives and continues to disparage them to this day with reservations. Obviously I don’t support that, they deserve reparations and yes that includes land and financial compensation.

                The Israeli plan to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip were planned for years. That’s not revisionism, 1967 war: Haaretz, Forward . Forcible ‘Transfer’ (ethnic cleansing) is fundamental to Zionism since the 1880’s long before the US had a major role in the region since the 1960s.

                The whole point of the Uncommitted and other anti-genocide movements is to end US military support for the genocide. That’s what is needed to start pressuring Israel to end being an Apartheid State.

                • @[email protected]
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                  8 months ago

                  You say that and yet, we have protests about Israel/Palestine and not a peep about reparations for Native Americans. We killed 99.9% of their population. It’s easy to pay lip service after the fact, it’s done.

                  Guess it’s easier to pretend you care when you don’t have settlements being raided and entire families being scalped. And you killed so many of them that there aren’t enough of them left to complain about their treatment. We know what we did do when that was the reality though.

                  I ask again, what would we do if a tribe went rogue and started doing that now?

                  Do you think we’ve grown over the past 200 years? Think we’d react differently today?

                  Be honest.

      • @[email protected]
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        98 months ago

        Israel has the equivalent of Donald Trump at the helm right now.

        Which is why they have your support. The rest of your screed of genocide apologia just reinforces this.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          Clearly, because reading my comments it isn’t immediately obvious what my political inclinations are.

  • @[email protected]
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    108 months ago

    The "center"from what? The GQP is no longer a valid political ideology, they’ve gone full cult. I doubt it even still matters if you tell them you will consider their proposals, they will still portray her as the devil. Harris should still do the decent presidential thing and help address their problems like those of the border, like Biden tried to do, but she’s obligated to the people and their demands, not their party’s.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    Yes, they do want them, but they are too stupid to understand that so you have to lie to them about the medicine. Progressives need to stfu for a second and win the election. Go sit in the corner and seeth with Hasan about how kamala is a genocidal bitch or whatever, see you in November.

  • @[email protected]
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    258 months ago

    Some progressive ideals are what the average American wants. Many are still very hard sells. What the Dems need to realize is that the political-junkie conceptions of ‘centrist’ and ‘progressive’ mean very little to the ‘swing voters’ they’re trying to appeal to. They don’t want a coherent ideological approach. Not that that seems to stop ‘centrist’ Dem reps from constantly trying to chase policy rightwards.

      • @[email protected]
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        108 months ago

        Hardest ones for the majority are probably landback and reparations. Less hard but still pretty hard for Americans writ large would be a big transition to public housing and mass transit, since for many Americans most of their wealth is in their house value and a huge part of their concept of freedom is in their car. Anything that threatens the suburbs - whether that’s making cities better and cheaper or increasing land taxes to better match the true cost of providing services to non-urban areas - is basically impossible to do in America as it currently exists.

        Defund the police is a hard sell outside of the minority communities that face the worst of what the police do. Reform the police is a little easier to sell to libs, but they’ve been “reforming” the police basically my whole life and the only thing that’s happened is the budget keeps going up and they keep getting more and more military vehicles.

        Less hard but still opposed by the majority is any kind of actually-effective industrial policy. For example compare how China captured 80% of the world’s solar production - by investing a trillion dollars over the past decade directly into green energy companies, some run directly by the state and some run privately in partnership with it - to our own largest green energy investments - which was smaller than our oil and gas investments in the same bill and didn’t create any kind of control over the market at all, just incentives for private businesses to possibly chase after - and it’s clear why we’re falling behind or losing our lead in basically every single sector. But propose that the US Government should take a page out of China’s book and invest directly in production and people will screech at you about how central planning doesn’t work and how the government can’t do anything right.

        It’s like this for policy after policy after policy, no matter how granular you get. Bike lanes? People think those increase traffic. Giving benefits and a minimum wage to Uber drivers? Roundly rejected. Demilitarizing the border and legalizing most of our immigrants? Keep dreaming! Just about the only progressive policy that gets widespread support is Medicare for All, and even that depends on how you word your polling question.

        IMO almost all of what I just laid out is due to a messaging deficit from progressives. We’re certainly in a better place than we used to be - I remember the 2000s when being anti-war or pro-lgbt got you sent to the American gulag - but we need more people and orgs with a national profile pushing for these issues and not immediately folding on them in the name of party unity.

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          Demilitarizing the border and legalizing most of our immigrants?

          These two are in opposition to each other. Selling the public on amnesty for whoever is here already requires a credible plan to prevent more illegal entry.

          • @[email protected]
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            48 months ago

            There is no reason for this is to be case. We could literally just stop enforcing the border right now - fire all border patrol agents, demo every single wall - and things would be fine. The undocumented immigrant crisis is 100% man made, and the purpose it serves the ruling class is that it creates a labor pool that has no legal protections.

            • @[email protected]
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              8 months ago

              Maybe you could explain to the administrators of Kursk how its not important to defend the border 😂

          • @[email protected]
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            28 months ago

            those poll numbers are fucking insane, I had no idea it had gotten that bad. We already have more cops and jails than any other country - what the fuck do people think increasing the budget is going to do!?

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        38 months ago

        Broadly speaking, higher taxes required to responsibly fund progressive programs.

        You have to convince folks they’ll get their money’s worth.

        Particularly rural areas are skeptical, they think they get money taken from them to solve city problems, and even if they might be able to benefit, the program might not be able to reach them.

        So you might have decent luck with medicare for all (though there’s a huge special interest influencing them against that too), but if you wanted big infrastructure and transit plans, they’ll think the government is going to toss money at the cities and do nothing for them. Or worse, they’ll be one of the folks that get eminent domained to bulldoze their home to make way for rail connecting two big cities.

        • nickwitha_k (he/him)
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          38 months ago

          Tax capital gains at equal rates to wages and add additional tax brackets to the top, increasing to a 90% rate. Done.