I'm a lot less well off than a lot of my friends, and among every group of friends, in addition to my family, I'm known as the borderline communist one.
That said, the events of the last week has had some effects that I had't anticipated. The same people who were posting about how great Bidens policies were leading up to the general election now seem pissed off about not just the Syrian airstrike, but the general lack of inaction on the $2000 checks.
Of course, to anyone on here, we expected this from Joe. But in my circle of late 20's friends who still have a ton of debt to pay off; who assured me that "we can push him left," for those who treated me like a madman for even considering not voting for Biden (I didn't).... The facade seems like its starting to crack.
We were just going to college in 2008 and didnt really follow the news. This last year has been our first real crisis. And the Democrats control everything. I wouldn't expect someone making over 100K a year to be changed by this or anything but it seems like this is different.
I dont even know what my main thesis is, but the fact that Biden approved an airstrike that cost god knows how much money before he gave money to struggling americans seems to have hit a nerve.
@ every "no lib ever learns" goob on this site: you were not born a leftist either. you used to believe some dumbass shit too. not only are human beings capable of change, they're incapable of not changing. unfortunately it's part of our duty to the future that we pull that change in a positive direction.
some people were born leftists. you aren't born indoctrinated into mindlessly believing in the authority of capital, it's a taught behavior. the manufactured tide is strong and the idea that they're 'incapable of not changing' works against us more than it works for us.
I mean yeah but I honestly think anyone who remains terminally braindead lib past 30 is probably a lost cause.
Idk, Obama bailing out the banks broke a lot of liberals brains temporarily at the time, probly same for your friends, they'll get over it and worship him more. The only people whose views I have watched really change due to crisis are a bunch of healthcare coworkers becoming CHUDs because of Cuomo, and also some CHUDs becoming libs because of Trump's bungling of the same crisis.
the financial crisis and its resolution did result in a significant, if not universal leftward shift among American libs. if the managers of the economy hadn't bungled it so badly at every point I doubt you'd be here right now.
Obummer's handling of the crash directly led to the occupy movement which I think some people here underrate the significance of. Bringing it up is also the easiest way to shake libs faith in their leaders. They never seem satisfied with their explanation for why he had hedge fund people in his cabinet and bailed out the banks. People hated that, it's the primary reason that obama lost so much ground after his initial surge.
I don't know; the r/worldnews thread on the Syria bombing was heavily critical of Biden (as far as Reddit goes anyway), and it was popular. That would have been borderline unthinkable under the Obama admin
I'm not expecting people to outright reject everything, but it seems like the cycle isn't continuing as expected...at least, not without some blemishes.
it won't matter, they'll still just vote for the blue team because they can't get the notion that voting doesn't change anything, and even if they do finally get it through their skulls, the media just has to make it look theoretically possible that enough people are satisfied even if it's not true. we're probably fucked for the next generation or two. shit is just tiring.
Hopefully China is able to power through the propaganda and become the city on the hill that libs think the US is. Guess they're pushing against like generations of sinophobia though.
I've noticed the honeymoon period seems to be ending with quite a few people.
In the general the only traction I could get with libs was his hawkish foreign policy I just messaged some reminding them I guessed he would bomb a country before checks went out.
I'm too young to remember the Obama years. Was it anything like this? Did people react differently to drone strikes?
It feels like things are changing. Socialism isn't as bad a word as it used to be. It may just be wishful thinking.
At first there was a lot of discussion about them, Obama's line was that the drones were far more precise and killed far fewer civilians and that drones in combination with an increase in special ops was the future of Iraq and Afghanistan. The libs loved it in contrast to the Bush policy of building bases and being in the middle east in force, and after the draw down and the transition to what the wars look like now people just stopped talking about them (until Obama decided to go back into Iraq after briefly pulling out of the country completely).
The conservatives, meanwhile, screamed that Obama was intentionally losing the war because he was a secret muslim. Now that Trump has basically been waging the exact same style of war that Obama's admin pioneered, perhaps the timbre of the conversation has changed - but I suspect a lot of libs will be satisfied if someone comes out and explains that the process of launching strikes is run by people with college degrees who carefully consider the risk to civilians before authorizing them.
Leftwing perspectives were very niche (most people thought Michael Moore was far left) and people were generally much less politically engaged, which meant that more people were centrists. So it definitely feels like things are a bit better now.
Bush was also objectively much worse than Trump and Obama had run on the 2008 version of Bernie's campaign, so there was more excitement and hope that Obama would be good. It meant that the disappointment was greater, but also took a bit longer to set in. People genuinely believed in him in a way that I don't think was ever true for Biden. Obama was also the first black president, which really did feel like a huge thing at the time (I mean, it is important, even if it is like being the first black mob boss) and it insulated him from criticism in the mainstream (as it still does).
The lack of leftwing voices also meant that the criticisms of Obama were different. It wasn't stuff that liberals might feel a pang of guilt over and have to go mask off as conservatives to defend (like access to healthcare and perhaps not bombing innocent people in the middle east), but instead brainwormed conspiracies about his not actually being American that could (rightly) be easily dismissed. That kind of shit took up most of the air in the room.
early on, everything was justified by a still post 9/11 and bin laden era and only some communities like chapo behind the scenes and some obscure leftists really were against it. it started to change at the end of his second term. most libs really went "huh....maybe...what?" during Trump.
Never underestimate a liberal's ability to stick their head in the sand
It's so funny too. How much of this would people just not give a shit about had they just done a real lockdown and gave us like 5k? The incompetence is amazing.
I've heard this before over and over the last four years, it never sticks, libs have a reset button they push at the end of the news cycle
Would actually be a good thing regarding PRC. Unfortunately, western media is wise to their audience and circumvent this by just repeating their nonsense endlessly.
Sometimes you just need to let the world know that it doesn't take 60 senate votes to go kinetic.
Libs still see CPAC footage. As long as the alternative is Ted Cruz virtue signaling about virtue signaling and telling people not to wear masks they'll still fall right in line for the Dems when the chips are down.
