Try paying attention to how a president actually governs and how they've affected material conditions. If you look at it that way, Trump is at worst the level of Obama (who started 5 new wars), and several orders of magnitude less bad than W or Bill Clinton. Remember, Lincoln project wants to invade Iran/Vz/Russia. Fuck those war criminals
The worst punishment he will face is getting parodied on SNL
And I mean literally parodied, not parodied the way we like to use that word
I might actually start watching if he got [parodied] on SNL
It truly is hilarious. Imagine being a #resistance Boomer who has seen in their lifetime
- Nixon skate on a pardon
- Not a single person face consequences for the lies and war crimes in Vietnam
- Oliver North get off scot free
- Obama give a totally free pass to every Bush admin ghoul and Wall Street banker
- Kissinger still alive
- All the entire media running interference for all those rapes Bill Clinton did
- Etc. Etc. Etc. plus all the imperialism, corruption and war crimes they weren't paying attention to
Who has in short, never seen a wealthy, powerful person brought to justice in their 6-8 decades on Earth (unless you count one of the Enron guys I think getting like a year in jail or something). And after all that rubbing your hands together in glee imagining that Trump is about to receive his comeuppance
A Republican is going down this time! There's no way Drumpf gets away with it this time!
Trump gets away with it
Ah, well, nevertheless
Not to mention that along with maintaining the hawkish foreign policy of Obama, Trump has attempted a coup in Venezuela and his administration backed a successful coup in Bolivia. Even considering foreign policy, Trump is just as bad as Obama and Clinton.
But he also has greatly accelerated the expansion of the police state, has expanded and further militarized enforcement of immigration policy, which has led to more (and crueler) deportations.
Not to mention the current Coronavirus situation, which has killed tens of thousands of people more than if someone like Obama was in charge.
I'm not going to tell you to vote for Biden, because that's just a slower march toward fascism, but Trump has actually led to a materially worse outcome than Obama. I don't know that Clinton would have been better than Trump on foreign policy (likely worse), and I know Biden won't be. Both would likely be a slight improvement domestically, but only very slightly. Except for maybe Coronavirus, where there may have been more sane policies put in place, or at least more sane statements regarding the science around the spread of the virus.
Trump himself didn't really bungle the response though. The reason why the United States has such a terrible response to covid-19 - small businesses that don't want to close, a non-existent public health care system and decentralized state are fundamental. Obama or Clinton or bush would not be able to overcome those problems. California's governor ignoring his own previously stated standards for reopening in doing so early is not Trump's fault. Neither is Cuomo's decision to move covid positive patients back into nursing homes.
No, he absolutely bungled the response.
Any president would have fucked it up, but not every president literally refused to do anything during critical junctures because it would make him look bad. Not every president would gut the CDC and pull out of the WHO as a temper tantrum. Not every president would have refused to cooperate with international offers to test because it would make the rates go up, or fucking steal masks like a god damn pirate. Not every president would be fucking around trying not to extend unemployment, or trying to blame it on China.
Every state is fucking this up, but it's crazy to think this wasn't a terrible response at the Federal level even by those standards.
How much worse he made it is hard to quantify. But he definitely has.
Cutting fucking for the CDC and pulling out of the WHO is meaningless though. Turn off Rachel Maddow lol
Gutting the agency in charge of fighting pandemics when it was pulling its hair out to do something in February is meaningless, got it.
It's big brain time.
What would the CDC do with another billion dollars? Seriously.
Test fucking millions of people?! Contact tracing? More effective quarantine?
Fuck, throw a billion dollars into research or a vaccine attempt?
Have you completely lost your fucking brain and gone full right wing to own the libs?
Yes, some of the responses in this thread are really maddening. Apparently it's a "white take" to say how Trump's platforming of a white supremacist lie about South African farm murders have damaged South African politics.
We literally don't have the supply to test millions of people. We don't have the fucking bench scientists to test millions of people. And the "defense production act" can't manufacture lab techs and scientists. Im making a structural critique of the US response instead of just "Trump bad" and that makes me a right-winger? Lol.
How did these libs make it to the Lemmy? I figured most would have sunk with the Titanic of r/chapotraphouse
What, and Vietnam did? They have a tenth of our resources and did 10,000x more with it.
It is literally right wing shit to think that the United States' Federal Government was unable to do anything about this. That it would be unable to do testing and contact tracing in a way that would significantly have changed the infection rates. That it had no access or ability to seize and command the production and resources it needed to take this pandemic seriously.
It was unwilling and uninterested. To a self destructive degree, honestly. That's true of both parties, but not to an equal extent.
Saying Trump did no worse than anyone else would have is fucking insane. It's to say that the US isn't declining, isn't rapidly deteriorating, and that no one could have done things differently, which just obviously isn't fucking true.
Sure, the US government could have done things better in the abstract. But considering real-world conditions, this virus is a perfect storm for all of the faults in American political economy and social life.
trump's adminstration features insane tea party style grifters, gleeful nazis and bush era vampires looking for middle eastern blood. older, more established repubs might pretend to be annoyed by his attitude but he just gave them and all their industry friends $45 trillion last month.
they are re reving the war engine to aim at china and the handful of even vaguely left latin american countries and theyre pushing tens of million of people into poverty right here at home and even worse, theyre continuing to bolster the insane panopitcon obama and bush built. Like, i dont think you can make such a cut and dry comparison between all of them because theyre all the same class. They all know each other, their toadies are all friends and are working on the same things. They are all working on the project of capitalist destruction and wealth transfer in their unique ways. Only their rhetoric changes.
What is unique though is that idiot rubes are now running the party.
Nationalism and all that shit is just supposed to legitimize the operation and give them their base. You aren't actually supposed to believe it if you're in charge.
It's like Q. I'm sure Trump is happy they exist. I'm sure he's significantly less thrilled that they're starting to get elected.
Uhh not a good take, ignoring the material results of sending in the DH-SS into Portland and trying to overturn protection for LGBT workers is bad. Also ignoring that Trump didn't need to start wars, he could just continue them. Also drone strkes have increased by nearly 4 times under Trump Vs Obama. Oviously fuck Obama the war criminal and send him to the Hauge, but ignoring how Trump has activated the fascists in the USA is not good. This isn't to say vote for Biden by the way, fuck that shithead, voting is useless in the USA at the moment.
You need to look at the big picture, as all presidents work to maintain the status quo and making it a verying degree worse. Like sure, Trump is bad because he maintains the status quo of American empire, but that's what a president literally does. You gotta look at what he's done to make things worse. Fascism had similar, if not worse, rises in popularity in the 90s with nazi punks and the rise of fascist shootings. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? That was because of a neo-Nazi, Bill Clinton a few years earlier announced his presidency at a historic KKK site.
One last question, do American lives matter more than Iranian or Venezuelan lives? Food for thought
No one else would even have attempted to start a war with Iran.
Say what you will about Obama, he did pen the Iran deal and end sanctions. It wasn't a great deal, but Killary probably wouldn't have torn it up.
Plus we don't know if anyone else would have succeeded in Venezuela. Don't erase their agency against empire. And they certainly succeeded in Bolivia, and Trump vetoed the bill that would've ended Yemeni genocide.
He's fucking bad. His "incompetence" is the mostly the result of a long term decline in US power. One which he accelerated, but likely can't be reversed anyway.
About your last sentence, I'm not even American, I was born in and live in South Africa so I don't know in what world I would believe that. I'm just telling you what I see, and that's Trump finding a way to activate the fascists globally in a way I haven't seen before. I know people that never gave a shit about US politics suddenly saying they love trump. It's lead to a rise in white supremacist movements and fascists world wide, you've got le pen in France, Bolsonaro in Brazil, the afd in Germany and the VF+ in South Africa making unprecedented gains in membership and power. This is what makes trump worse, the enabling of fascist rhetoric worldwide as other countries follow the USAs "example".
Trump didn't lead to the rise of Le Pen and Bolsonaro lmao, that shit was happening before Trump even ran for president. This is just a dogshit take that ignores all material reasons that we've seen a rise in fascism.
I'm just going to tell you what I see as I can't speak for others. But in South Africa, after the end of Apartheid white people vote for the neoliberal party, the DA. However after Trump ran it was like a switch flipped in these peoples heads. I'm just going to say this to get it out of the way, but white South Africans are by far the richest group on the country due to apartheid. These people are still rich, and to claim they became fascists due to material conditions is legitimate class reductionism. They saw that it's now okay to be openly racist again and started voting for the VF+, what was considered a joke white supremacist party went from 0.1% percent of the vote to 5%. This is having a negative material impact on society as this party has taken over suburbs and is redirecting funding from communites that need it to their rich white suburbs due to their new influence. It's also caused the neoliberal party, the DA, to take a hard turn to the right and purge their black leader in order to try get their voters back from the white supremacist party, the VF+. Quite a lot of this can be traced back to a foreign influenced propoganda campaign about white farm murders, elevated by the US under Trump as a racist dogwhistle. Seriously there is no material conditions influencing these people to be facist, as I've said white South Africans are by far the richest group in South Africa.
I don't wanna assume things but I think we've found the Afrikaner. This is a very white take
Not Afrikaans lmao, that's the biggest fucking insult you could give a person. I'm legitimately fucking insulted now
No please fuck Elon musk apartheid shithead that stole his wealth from an emerald mine in Zambia
Just going to reply here to tell you to view my comment in response to nicewithit so you can see why I'm saying this.
the answer to "orange man bad" isn't "actually orange man not that bad". you have liberal derangement syndrome.
Anything about how he’s “damaged America’s reputation” is a crock of shit and I don’t care, but his Covid response is killing people and creating insane amounts of poverty.
If damaging America's reputation invites a ton of worse than before ghouls into politics then that's worse as well.
Apparently looking at material conditions mean overlooking material conditions. Like Trump dismantling Obama era labor, climate and lgbt protections. The assault on trans rights. The vilification of immigrants. The tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal. The move of Israel capital to Jerusalem. And now using secret police to take away American citizens.
Fuck you.
From a foreign perspective, Trump is the damage control option, because he's such an incompetent imperialist. Biden actually has experience invading other countries.
Depends on the country, Trump's foreign policy has been much worse for my country than Bidens will be. His platforming of the white supremacist lie of white farm murders in South Africa has done massive damage to local and national politics. However if you're in Venezuela or Iran Trump will be the better choice, as he is too incompetent to coup those countries.
Hedging bets about harm reduction between two openly Imperialist candidates is pointless.
Trump pretty successfully continued the genocide in Yemen. No one else would even have attempted Iran. No one could say whether anyone else would have succeeded in Venezuela. I'm sure he was involved with the success in Bolivia.
The fact that he seems incompetent isn't actually preventing the damage from being done because he mostly isn't involved. The US's abilities in general are declining, regardless of him.
Damn, "dankmemetime" with the edgy, brainlet take. How could this have happened?
FINALLY ONE OF YOU IS SEEING THE TRUTH AND FIGHTING FOR ME. THE OTHER BIDEN IS JUST GONNA TRY TO HIDE THAT HE RAPES WOMEN AND KILLS BLACK PEOPLE. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT I WILL DO IT PROUDLY AND ANNOUNCE IT ON TWITTER. THAT MAKES ME BETTER. CHECK MATE LIBS.
Trump hasn't invaded a single new country, in terms of harm reduction he's been a boon compared to Hillary "lets turn Libya into a slaver's paradise" Clinton
EDIT: HE HASN'T INVADED A SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING COUNTRY. CLINTON AND OBOMBER WERE WORSE
Not for lack of trying. We were almost at war with Iran seven fucking months ago. He's fucked up multiple Venezuelan coup attempts.
Tripping on your own dick on the way to do empire stuff is preferable, but it doesn't exonerate you. Had he succeeded, he would've been worse than his predecessors. And there's still time left.
Preparations for mass deployment is a lengthy process, he's run out of time, Biden will win and this time by the end of next year we will see what 'putting the empire back on track' really looks like
I disagree, it's not going to get back on track.
Trump's incompetence is in surrounding himself with all these losers, but he mostly isn't involved. US power has been waning for some time. And Biden's crew is not any more competent.
We're seeing the rot of empire. I don't see how it recovers from this.
Biden's people will be the same ones who turned libya into a slavers dream and paid Al-Qaeda to conquered Syria and their adventurism will be boosted by the liberal euphoria that will wash over this country in the months after Trumps defeat, Renovatio imperii Romanorum is the name of the game and it will be paid for using the political capital gained from Bernie's and Trump's back to back defeats. The neolibs won themselves a second chance
They're all the same people! The Deep State is real.
Trump vetoed the bill that would've ended the Yemeni genocide. No one else would even have attempted to start a war with Iran.
Arguing about which group of fucking murderers is less bad is completely pointless. All those dead Yemeni kids don't really care.
As for neoliberals getting a second chance, like a 1/3 of the nation is about to be thrown out on the street. No one is giving them a second chance. They're not even going to retake the Senate and they'll be lucky to hold onto the house.
I don't know what happens next, but things aren't going back to "normal."
The deep state is filled with competing factions, knowing which ones are in power is absolutely crucial in comprehending anything that happens in the context of foreign policy, if nothing more than because some of these factions are more competent than others
I don’t know what happens next, but things aren’t going back to “normal.”
Everything's already back to normal
Everything’s already back to normal
Bruh, what? Have you not been looking at the figures? Tens of millions unemployed? At least 35% of small businesses completely wiped out?
I don't know what happens next, but if you're thinking there's going to be some kind of 2008 style complacency, then I don't think you're reading how badly things are falling apart. This is as bad as the Depression, or worse.
And we're at the beginning of this, not the end. I don't know what happens next, but it sure as shit is not going to be "normal." It already isn't.
The new normal has been established, but now we wear masks, its 2009 2.0 2x, a year from now no one will remember covid even if it's still taking out hundreds a day and biden will be giving a speech about how the "Free Venezuelan Army" will bring democracy back to Venezuela
Six months ago, I would've agreed with you. Things are looking pretty fucking wacky now though. I don't think that's gonna be true at all.
I'll mark my calendar. We'll see what happens.
