this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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I know whenever a US president tries to legalize marijuana federally and spend a trillion dollars on student loan forgiveness and climate change and more or less doubles the amount of tax Amazon is paying, I'm like "wow, nothing is changing."
I would love a Bernie Sanders person who would do more. Do you know what Trump might do if he wins the election to Bernie Sanders or an activist organization who's advocating for even more systemic change?
Why would cannabis rescheduling matter to someone who thinks the climate has already crossed the carbon-feedback tipping-point and we're a decade away from mass-crop failure?
Why would forgiving a fraction of existing federally-owned student debt matter to someone who believes that capital accumulation is accelerating and locking them into a permanent state of home rental and wage slavery regardless?
If you believe that our current political climate (and the rise of fascism in the US) is a direct result of 200+ years of capital accumulation leading to very real and accelerating economic disenfranchisement of the working class, why would a politician who swears by and protects that system from fundamental change be one you are at all happy with?
'But if you don't help us beat this other guy things will only get worse!' is a pointless plea to those who believe that the system Biden is defending is what is creating the fascist movement to begin with. The people you are trying to reason with are closer to blowing up a pipeline than they are to being convinced that modest incremental change will do anything more than give fascists more time to organize their own movement.
You don't need to share that perspective to understand why those people might find the accomplishments in your list petty and ineffectual.
You're not wrong and neither is @[email protected].
You can both be right. I'm more in the "we're all fucked" doomer camp, but I want to see less harm done, even if it is petty and ineffectual.
Because better outcomes are better than worse ones. Maybe a second term for Biden would enable him to maintain the policies that are planned to remove a billion tons per year of CO2 emissions, maybe even add a little to it, whereas Trump would reverse even those pitifully small gains and actually add to US emissions. Maybe 20 years down the road that little bit is what tips us into a "luckier" (relatively speaking) outcome, avoids a total runaway greenhouse effect that literally kills us all, and we get away with merely mass starvation and the loss of most of the biosphere. But humanity gets to continue after that within the wreckage, having learned an agonizing lesson about the consequences of its actions, instead of being extinguished.
Do you brush your teeth? Why? Why would you need a job, if because with the way the climate is going you may not grow old enough for your money or the state of your teeth to matter at all?
You're not listening. The people you're talking to do not believe we have 20 years.
You don't have to agree with that analysis in order to understand the objections of those who do. Repeatedly berating leftists for critiquing Biden isn't going to persuade them to change their mind.
So is this, like, a one-way thing? Like I listen to their viewpoints but if I say my viewpoint, then it's "You're not listening" and then repetition of the viewpoint?
They're welcome to their opinion. This is mine, including why I think some particular ones of them are shills, and including that if anyone is concerned with activism outside of the system and real change in the United States they should be breaking their back making sure it's not Trump in the fall, because unlike Biden he will absolutely destroy their ability to organize and get anything done, maybe until it's permanently too late to do anything productive for the planet.
You can, of course, think what you like about it. Just stating my take on it and answering your question.
My best organizing years were 2016-2017 and 2020.
Of course not, I just think that pretending that they share the same interests and concerns as you is naive and willfully ignorant of their viewpoint. They clearly understand that you do not share their interests. Bragging about the marginal improvements to the problematic system they are fighting against is the height of hubris, especially if the aim is to actually change their mind.
"Put your concerns aside so that you can work for change when the stakes are lower" is just asking those people to sacrifice the only political leverage they have so that a politician that is ambivalent about their concerns can win re-election. If you're uncomfortable with the threat of their dissent then it is having exactly the intended effect and they should absolutely keep doing it.
I think these people who are working for change will be in a better position to do so if there's an extra billion tons of CO2 per year not getting put into the atmosphere, and if they can protest without worrying if paramilitary forces are going to shoot them with lethal rounds. That means voting for Biden in this election. I'm certainly not telling them to put anything aside while they're doing that.
Protests don't mean anything if it isn't disruptive to people who hold the power. They have a better chance protesting against a politician who isn't going to put them down with lethal rounds and who has a lot to loose right now, rather than against the same politician after they have nothing to loose and a demonstrated history of not giving a fuck about progressive issues, or against a different politician who has no problem putting them down with paramilitary forces.
Protesting against Biden now is the best time and person to be protesting, and threatening to withhold support is as much leverage any leftist will ever have outside of less-than-legal economic disruption.
Yeah, sounds great. I talked about this with respect to Gaza; I think this is a good idea.
We are however all the way back at the full-circle point of, where does making up things that Biden didn't do and accusing him of doing them and so laying some propaganda groundwork for Trump to win the general election fit into that.
I am having a really hard time parsing this one out, and i'm not sure what inaccurate accusations this is in reference to, but I'm reminded of this quote from Malcom X:
Expressing objections loudly is the actual definition of protest, which is effective solely by a function of its potential to damage reputation or public support. A protest lacking genuine threat is nothing more than political self-indulgence.
You might as well be complaining that the protest is too effective, IMHO.
So like two examples would be saying Biden's bad on marijuana policy, or saying he's bad for the climate because he's not doing enough to drag the US government into the vague proximity of something that will enable us to continue existing in 100 years.
Not sure how else to say it. Doing this sounds great. Doing it over things that Biden didn't do, I don't agree with. Attacking him from the left and saying he better pass another climate bill that's 5 times more effective during his second term because what he did isn't nearly enough, sure, sounds great. In combination with trying to give the people who blocked him from being able to do more have some trouble in their elections sounds even better. Attacking him from the nonsense-perspective that he's actively hurting the climate on purpose and using right-wing talking points to make that case, giving him trouble in his election against Donald Trump with no particular way that he could address your concern and thus no productive pressure on him that will produce a good result, that sounds less great. Surely that makes sense?
(I'm not saying that you're doing any of the above things -- just saying what I most firmly disagree with about OP and a lot of the people I've been talking to about this.)
Ok, well, sure, but you can see how these two assertions aren't fabrications about something Biden 'did', it's a statement that he isn't doing enough to address the problem or even mitigate the bulk of the harm those things have.. Right?
I understand you don't like criticisms of Biden because it feels like a threat to his re-election, but that doesn't make those criticisms a fabrication nor does it make them misplaced.
I'm not sure who if anyone has said he's 'actively hurting the climate on purpose', but I see a potential misinterpretation if someone said something about his approval of new oil drilling in Alaska (after campaigning on 'no new drilling contracts') - or approval of new gas pipelines - as an indication of "active" harm to the environment. A huge part of our disagreement exists in a difference of opinion on what 'reasonable' action he could take. And while a case could be made that he's done what he can without threatening US interests, a lot of leftists would say that the US has far too many interests and influences to begin with.
And I think this goes back to what I originally said: liberals are just not in alignment with leftist interests. Leftists give more weight to real climate impact over things liberals tend to give weight to, such as economic growth and GDP or international energy independence or hostile foreign relations. A lot of the reasons Biden doesn't do more are reasons leftists fundamentally disagree with. He is unwilling to take action that harms the system we seek to dismantle, and that means he frequently falls short of any kind of satisfactory result.
Maybe that's why you remain frustrated that we don't recognize his accomplishments; we see them as the continued prioritization of interests that are in conflict with progressive goals.
So on those specific topics: He introduced a bill to legalize marijuana federally, he set free anyone in federal prison for possession, and he requested for the DEA to reschedule marijuana (although the latter isn't real impactful in comparison to the first two). What else would you like him to do? Why does that represent him not doing enough to address the problem and a reason to oppose him specifically?
Scientists estimate that his climate bill is set to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030. He tried to do more, but Manchin and Sinema blocked him, and he tried again and got the 40% version through. Why is that not mitigating the harm? If we posit that he doesn't have a magic wand that he can use to directly alter the behavior of every government agency and company in the US, can we measure his overall impact based on the overall expected emissions in total based on what he did?
Here's one summary of why Biden might have approved the Willow project.
Here's one summary of why he might have approved the Mountain Valley pipeline.
You might look at that and say, well, that's establishment crap, and if he were a good leftist he would have done X, Y, and Z instead of approving those projects. And sure, for all I know you'd be right in saying that. To be honest, I'm not real qualified to say; I'm just showing you what I just found in the news about it. But let me ask this -- do you think that judging his impact on the climate based on an overall reduction in emissions from all of his legislative actions in total is a fair way to judge his impact?
What is climate impact, if not emissions? I haven't said a word here about GDP or anything like that as a way of judging the impact of his actions.
(Edit: Here's a breakdown of the climate bill and its expected impacts)
So... Much... Time.... Probably billable, I'm really starting to wonder who you're a staffer for in DC, or which think tank you work for. Maybe military contractor?
Maybe it takes me less time to type these things than you have as frame of reference
Is that what it says to say on the time card, or is it all digital. If you aren't getting paid for this, you are wasting your talents my friend.
There are campaigns that would love you and enjoy this. But I think you're already working for one, frankly.
In all honesty, the shills started to convince me that it's important enough that I might start volunteering for the Biden campaign or something. If I do wind up doing it, I'll be sure to let you know.
You should, you are amazing. Your arguments are excellent and long form. They are well cited, you clearly read and understand the citations, some of which have been political technical documents.
On top of all that you are maintaining that effort across multiple threads with multiple people. You are putting in pro level effort and pro level time! If you aren't doing that in a targeted way for something like the Biden campaign, that's a waste imo.
Glad you like it, happy to bring the discourse
what if i come up with a really whitty nickname like "ivan" or "big baby"? do you think that would make them change their moral approach?
I have no idea how to interpret this comment.