You’ve explained to me your philosophy on what these words mean and how they apply a sufficient number of times; I don’t need to hear it again. I am asking a specific factual question. Just firmly repeating your worldview is not going to lead me to suddenly start to agree with it. You must normally have these discussions with very suggestible people or something if you expect it to work that way.
What specific policies has Biden done that made specific factual things in the world worse? This isn’t like a gotcha; I’m expecting there to be a real and somewhat-valid answer. I have my list of good things he’s done, but I wanted to hear your list first and genuinely hear you out. I thought that you were engaged enough in the topic that we’d actually be able to talk about it with that as the starting point, but I’ve given you a couple of chances now and you’ve just been trying to berate me with your worldview instead, so maybe not.
What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
Let’s start over, we are clearly talking past each other. I’m going to list a set of assertions that I believe, as a leftist, that are common among leftists.
-
Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
-
Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
-
By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
Following the previous 3 statements, we can look at Biden. Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
I’ll add: I advocate for voting for the lesser evil. What my original comment was about, however, was getting liberals to understand and accept that they face a fundamentally different set of electoral issues from right wingers. Right wingers are fascists, and have openly fascist candidates to vote for. The GOP is actively appealing to the far-right. The DNC, however, is appealing to the center-right, and feels entitled to the votes of leftists because they aren’t as far-right.
That’s the key! Because the DNC is content with maintaining the Capitalist status quo, in the eyes of leftists, the DNC will always be a lesser of two evils. Even an extremely competent DNC would still be an extremely competent liberal Capitalist party, and would still be the lesser of two evils.
Does this make sense to you?
Yeah. Pretty much everything in your second part, I agree with. In particular:
Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
Pretty much this, I would agree with, and I think we’re on the same page in terms of needing to vote for him as the lesser of two evils while urgently trying to find some kind of better solution for the future before the end of the world comes (or, comes more than it already has).
- Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
- Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
- By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
So this is a significantly bigger discussion… I actually don’t think capitalism itself is bad. The fire analogy is actually really good, to me. Capitalism is a powerful tool, you need it in order to do things that are useful to get done, but if it gets out of control it’s incredibly dangerous. You need to have strong protections to keep it contained so it can do its job without taking over. Right now, in the US, it’s not contained, so a lot of the harm you’re talking about (increasing disparity) is entirely accurate.
Probably that viewpoint is gonna be popular with more or less nobody, and maybe you will reclassify me again as a liberal because of it, but you asked what I thought so that’s what I think on a sincere basis.
I think most people in government in DC are corrupted by corporate money. The Republicans have sort of lost the plot of even trying for coherent governance that’s good for anybody, rich or poor, but most of the Democrats are working diligently on behalf of the rich people. It’s a massive damn problem. I don’t think that’s because of “liberalism” in any abstract sense, any more than the Republicans are working for “small government”; I think it’s just open corruption. I think you would have to fix the influence of money in politics to even be able to talk about governance in terms of systems of belief or principle. Which is probably a lot of what you mean in terms of tearing down the systems of liberalism that are currently in charge of everything, so I suspect there’s a lot of overlap between how we see it on that score too, although maybe the labels are different.
Alright, thanks for the good-faith response. You’re correct, your belief in Capitalism being a useful tool that needs to be harnessed and contained, over actually needing to transition to a Worker-owned economy, is what separates what I am referring to as leftists and yourself. You can consider yourself a leftist, but I would probably classify you as a liberal or a Social Democrat (probably closer to a SocDem than a liberal, which is essentially a centrist).
The fundamental difference here is that leftists (as I am referring to, and will further refer as italicized to save time) have analyzed Capitalism and believe it to be fundamentally unsalvageable, only band-aids and stop-gaps to slow the fundamental issues like The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or fundamental exploitation.
Your viewpoint is extremely common among Social Democrats, and that aligns very well with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Definitely far more preferable than liberalism, but it’s also important to realize that leftists consider Bernie to be a compromise at best, and not an actual restructuring of the economy.
What you analyze as money corrupting in politics being the root cause of issues, leftists would also point to rising disparity even in Social Democracies like the Nordic Countries. It’s slower there thanks to Worker Empowerment via strong unions, but still continues to rise. You agree with leftists that money in politics is bad, but you seem to believe this is a policy issue, and not a fundamental consequence of Capitalism, which is what leftists tend to believe.
Is this a fair explanation? If we look at your view of liberalism and Capitalism in general, we can see that, yes, Biden is more in line with what you want than what leftists want. For you, Biden is more of a question of competency, than direction, whereas for leftists, the direction itself is bad.
Do you see what I’ve been saying now?
Why does anyone need capitalism to get anything done? Are you saying nothing got done for all of human history before the 19th century? How does that work?
caging kids at the border, for one.
allowing russia to invade ukraine isn’t exactly a highlight.
he lied to me about a $2,000 check
he broke a union strike
i don’t follow everything the man does because frankly i think electoral politics are a sham, but you can’t possibly think he’s made the world better.
