I don't watch cable news and I don't pay attention to Jeff Teidrich or whoever so I don't know where this bullshit is coming from. At least one person responding is nominally anti-genocide, so I don't think that's the reason. Another came back with something about the funding bill for FEMA as if it's a gotcha.

What's their logic?

  • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 month ago

    stop sending money and weapons and troops to Israel, and send emergency aid to communities hurt by the hurricanes.

    Unfortunately, these are two completely separate pools of money. The USA could stop all military aid to all countries across the globe tomorrow and the freed up money could not be redirected to the communities impacted by the hurricanes without an act of Congress which, thanks to Republicans, just said no to doing that.

    • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Ok I get that they're different funds, different bills, whatever. I don't really care how the sausage of the federal budget gets made, just the results. Stafford Beer said "The purpose of a system is what it does." And right now the American system of government is to kill people in the Middle East. The same Congress said "meh, not right now" to disaster relief, and "hell yeah!" to genocide. I don't see a lot of daylight between the two parties on the issue of genocide.

      I'm also inclined to agree with Eisenhower on this one:

      Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

      • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 month ago

        To stay focused on your original question, this is why people think statements comparing disaster relief to genocide is a Republican talking point.

        The conversation has shifted from who voted for or against providing federal assistance to how the US uses its military and the genocide being committed by Isreal. Without trying to take a side on either topic, this sort of misdirection is the purpose of such statements.

        • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          I was never talking about who voted for or against providing federal assistance

          • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
            ·
            1 month ago

            To keep this on topic:

            You asked why people say that it is a "right wing taking point" when you say "it's fucked up that more money is going to Isntreal than to hurricane relief" and the answer is that you are using a topic Republicans don't want scrutinized as you counter point thus directing the conversation away from what Republicans are trying to avoid. You could have used health care, education, VA benefits, or something more ambiguous. Instead you use an active topic that could erode Republican support and steer the conversation away from a Republican sore spot and towards a Democrat sore spot.

            That is why some people are calling it out as a "right wing taking point". I'm simply trying to answer your question.

    • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
      ·
      1 month ago

      the-democrat

      "What can we do? The system we created and maintained only guarantees that we pay for war."

      Generations of democrats have worked to bring us here. The century since the Russian Revolution could've been spent reorienting the economy away from supporting wars on behalf of private capital and instead towards elevating the lives of workers. Democrats chose to be part of the cold war instead. They're shooting misses at weather balloons and fabricating genocides in China. These are people that don't care if you live or die. They're not regretting that they can't do better emergency response. Grow up, nerd.