Does it? I’m sort of having a hard time believing that the cops were holding back until the Biden admin to use their new toys. I also sort of doubt that rolling out new toys for the Portland PD was a day-one priority for the Biden admin.
You can obviously tell me how I interpret your posts, but you’re not right.
1 Like
Why can’t you allow people to be critical of Biden?
1 Like
I’m sorry, I honestly have no idea what your point is.
Trolling.
But whatever. This has gotten to the point where it’s untenable for me to continue because I’m a mod imo.
I’m banning myself from this thread.
Incrementalism from the left has been pretty close to a total failure over the last 40 years. I’m not an absolutist either. But how about we try and make some real progress rather than just trying to undo whatever the GOP has done when they had power.
Of course we are better off with Trump. If that is your metric of success then that is fine. Mine is far different from that. And no i don’t expect Biden to FIX EVERYTHING ON DAY ONE. The problem is he is openly against many progressive policies. We don’t need to BE PATIENT and WAIT AND SEE. He has already told us.
4 Likes
You would prefer he didn’t undo those things? This is where I get confused by this position.
Absolutist isn’t a good word but I couldnt think of a better one to counter incrementalist.
I’m glad he did some good things? I’m frustrated he has no intention of taking on many of the bigger problems? I don’t see how that is a remotely confusing position.
1 Like
That’s totally fair. I am too.
Incrementalism vs revolution.
I do believe in compromise, but my idea of compromising is to win on some issues and take the L on others instead of trying to get a partial win on everything. For example, I advocate being willing to have no change in the foreign policy establishment in exchange for serious victories on a few domestic issues. I know that’s a trade some people wouldn’t want to make, but I would.
1 Like
That’s a much better word. Thanks.
I think the biggest issue I have with being disappointed in Biden at this point is the fact that the smoke has in no way cleared. Right now there’s a lot of good old fashioned backroom political dealing going on and the quality of leaks like like 3% of what it was on Tuesday.
So far I like the actual actions I’m seeing from the Biden administration. Am I concerned that they are going to sell us all out? Of course. But I’m still hoping that they won’t, and will continue to hope until the smoke clears and I see what’s actually happened.
I agree that you’re almost certainly not going to think they’ve gone far enough. I don’t agree that what they are going to do will automatically fit the label of selling us out.
This is weird spot in the timeline with a ton of possible outcomes. I have no idea what is going on and politely neither does anyone else here.
1 Like
Not entirely. Family separation was started by the Trump admin and Joe has already started dialing back some of Trump’s more horrifying immigration policies. I’ll agree that he’s not going far enough, to be clear.
1 Like
This is where the conversation breaks down. You read boredsocial as saying it was enough when he clearly wasn’t making that claim in any way. He is predicting a future when it might be enough. Not claiming that time is now.
I’m not totally fine with being called names just don’t hide it behind bs terms like centrist. If you think im a piece of shit just say it. Don’t try and cloak it with obviously false terms like centrist. But also defend it. I have no respect for the jfc posts. Call me out and defend it. You might even convince me. It happens with regularity.
That makes sense. My bad.
Its not hard to predict a Biden administration.
Whats going on is there will be more environmental reform but not enough to keep us from driving off the cliff we are headed for. We are screwed there. And i mean really screwed. Incremental change will end earth as we know it not to far off in the distant future.
There is already talk of increasing troop levels in the Middle East from dems so it looks like that may be worse under Biden than trump. I highly doubt we will stop our participation in the Yemen genocide or any change in our dealings with the Sauds committing it. Our endless wars look like they will continue.
Immigration will be better but there will still be some truly evil policies most of which will be ignored since its dems doing the caging. Hoped trump would wake people up to those evils but that will be unlikely and most wont notice those policies. My guess there will be less calls for reforms to that system now like during the Obama administration.
There wont be police and justice reform in any meaningful way and Biden himslef said he will throw more money at the problem. Our militarized police state looks like it will get bigger. Maybe even with new powers to deal with domestic terrorists which will mostly be used against the lefts protesters well people with flex cuffs trying to overthrow they US government get slaps on the wrists because they are respectful to law enforcement.
Healthcare will be better but there will still be tens of thousands who needlessly die in the richest country which has ever existed on earth.
Biden is better on some things sure, maybe worse on some, but saying we cant know until we know is off. Dems have a long history and predicting want they will do is not hard. They will give window dressing on the titanic all well telling progressives we need to go slow.
1 Like
So you agree that there’s absolutely no chance that it’s going to be enough because evil will not be eliminated from the world in the next four years.
There’s not going to be a magic wand solution and you know that. These things aren’t one problem they’re thousands of small-medium problems that combine to get us where we are.
Some version of the stuff that bothers you is still going to exist five hundred years after all of us are dead (if there are humans left). Hopefully that stuff will be smaller and hopefully our species will fade ending life on earth. Expecting more is a mental health leak IMO.
You realize how shitty things were a century ago right? Two centuries ago? Three? Heck most of the rest of the world made quite a bit of real tangible progress over the last 50 years even if the US didn’t by almost any yardstick you might choose (except the environmental ones which were the trade off)…
I’m with you about where we are but I’m not with you on the context. I say that as someone who just found out that he probably has COVID after playing as close to a perfect COVID game as he reasonably could without ruining his marriage… for damn near a year. I had to make it another week and I was going to be at the same risk level as you more or less. If Donald Trump had 5 more IQ points and had just let the professionals handle the fucking vaccine rollout I would have made it. Seriously.
Because I also say this as a guy whose great great grandparents fled pogroms in Europe and a horrifying famine in Ireland… and on the other side whose grand parents escaped the coal fields of Eastern KY by the border with TN. Things have been getting better. Not for everyone and not at the same speed, but in the aggregate they are getting better.
We are living through a very momentous time in human history. Probably not the worst idea to zoom out a just a little bit and look at where we are on the graph. It sucks… but it used to suck even worse.
I’m hopeful that Joe Biden will continue being Joe Biden… which is to say that his ideology will remain finding wherever the center of the Democratic Party is and planting himself there. Which is why today’s Joe Biden is pretty far left of 90’s Joe Biden or 80’s Joe Biden. I’m not arguing that he’s a good person, but people expecting him to fix every problem that exists systemically with a wave of a magic wand… that’s not very realistic and it won’t happen.
The only question that matters right now isn’t even ideological… it’s strategic and tactical. Are the Democrats serious about ‘bipartisanship’ or not? If they are it’s very bad and if they are just trying to setup optics that they did everything they could before pulling the plug ASAP that’s very good. The right answer is probably going to be in between. That’s the only thing that’s actually in play that matters.
2 Likes