I want him to do more. Don’t get me wrong. But it is vastly overstating it and in some ways misrepresenting it to say he’s “Team Israeli Fascism 100%.”
His administration done more to dissuade the Israeli government aggression against Palestinian people than any other US President, period. It’s not even close. And his team is arguably the only reason any aid has gotten through to Gaza and has at the very least slowed Israel’s indiscrminate bombardment of Gaza civilians.
It’s not either or except for voting, it’s possible for both of them to be bad on some things. Do we really feel like Biden hasn’t been doing anything to give Netanyahu a pass on slaughtering thousands of children? Really, nothing? We’re just going to watch millions of people get sent to nowhere safe and bombed when they get there, and still even veto calls for a ceasefire, and there’s been fighting a long time so what ya gonna do?
We’ve been talking some about the Serbia air war, and so far nobody has excused Russia for vetoing intervention because Serbia’s their friend and there have been ethnic tensions there for a while. I prefer that a lot to this new “eh, ethnic cleansing happens, not like you should expect the country supplying the money and arms to do anything” position.
Trump is worse. Maybe most presidents have been worse, though that’s not what the current body count suggests to me. But this is more blood than I feel like washing off anyone’s hands and it feels gross to try.
But that’s exactly what the quoted article was talking about. By all means, let’s functionally vote for Mussolini 2.0 because his opponent hasn’t magically ended the conflict.
I’m all for voting for less genocide over more genocide as the right thing to do. But I have enough empathy to understand why that’s a hard sell to people watching communities they might have ties to get annihilated.
And I’m sorry, but you are better than to downplay the violence like this – to pretend that America being any less complicit than it is would be magical. Biden doesn’t have to support this! And he shouldn’t, if nothing else because America can’t afford for him to be alienating voters.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t been following ithe conflict closely for my own mental health. Not because I would turn my eyes away from genocide - I’ve studied it too closely to accept that - but because of what it is doing to otherwise reasonable people. American Jews who I know and are caring, wonderful people have become relentless Islamaphobes. Likewise, while I understand the outrage by Palestinians and their allies, some protesters have gone unquestionably too far in their rhetorhic as well. It just makes me so sad and angry at the same time.
There is no right answer and I’m not sure there is any completely good action. I don’t have answeres, but I know what is 100% guaranteed to fuck everyone over completely. So I’ll ask your forgiveness if I continue to fight for the lesser evil here.
Everyone who can needs to vote Biden for the sake of humanity is a message I completely agree with. It being incorrect to say he is enabling butchery is not. You can say one without the other.
But the first part was all that I was doing, in response to an article except justifying voting against (or just abstaing) Biden. That is the context. Is it fair to ignore that context, or do I need to link every remaining post where I emphasized the second point?
The post I was replying to marveled that Biden was somehow the bad guy for not magically fixing things. That sounded to me, and I think millie too, like it meant more than just whether he is a better choice than Trump, and so that’s what I reacted to. If it doesn’t then I certainly don’t want to argue with you on it.
I am with Duke here. I have seen and heard too much “this is a dealbreaker” and “I can’t vote for him now” kind of statements. I suspect most of us would not have chosen Biden as our first choice, and I am certainly no defending the current genocidal actions of the Israeli government. I am concerned that if we turn this into some sort of bothsidesing, we invite a truly apocalyptic turn of events. I suspect/hope that Biden is applying pressure behind the scenes to minimize the damage, but of course cannot be sure of that. And the only hope Netanyahu has to remain in power is to extend and intensify the current disaster, after his abject fail to respond to the warnings about this attack happening. In short, Biden is not the answer to everything, but he is the answer we have currently.
There’s also a whiff of the bad old “Only the US has agency” thinking here, where the actions of Israel - a sovereign state - are blamed on the US govt, and specifically the Democrats in charge.
Awesome. So to sum up, we have a few thousand dead children and counting, a government that barely cares to conceal its ethnic cleansing, Biden openly supporting them but we hope maybe expressing some real concern about the piling up corpses behind the scenes while he does…and I’m not even allowed to be mad at him about it, at best mildly disappointed.
Sure, you know what, why not? I hate this planet and caring about the people trapped on it is exhausting. If nobody else thinks seeing entire cities destroyed is the sort of deal a world leader should actually care about, why am I letting myself get worked up about it?
If you think that Trump will do better, this is your option. There is no other. Biden or Trump. We can put pressure on the admin to act more in concert with our beliefs, but in the end, we are left with a binary choice. I don’t hate this world, I hate the system that leaves us with a choice like this. No one is saying you can’t be mad, or disappointed with his actions. My concern is folks who are saying that this is the deciding point for their vote. That is a point I cannot support. Trump would not do better, any of the fascists would cut the Ukrainians and the Palestinians loose, in favor of their right-wing allies in Putin and Netanyahu. That’s just a fact. Applying pressure to get the Dems to a more progressive point is good, abandoning them because they are not where they need to be (and they do need to be) is allowing the fascists to take over. And yes, it is exhausting. But I have too many folks that I love whose lives are on the line if Il Douche and his minions take over. I cannot walk away.
I hate to do this. I really, really hate that I have to do this. But I feel the need to speak up.
We’re all affected by what we’re seeing. We are all weary, we are all scared, and many of us are frustrated as hell. Can we please keep that in mind right now, when we post?
While I can’t fault anyone for seeing the next election as a chance to defend their loved ones, I also cannot blame those who are seeing it as a referendum on what we as Americans are willing to tolerate from our politicians and our government as a whole.
And I am quite sure the Republicans are very happy to see us tearing each other apart over it. I know, it hasn’t quite gotten to that point here, but I’ve seen it in other places, and I’m hoping we can avoid here it if possible.
Please, be kind.
We’re still almost a year out from the election, and while I’m fully aware that the most likely result by far is the choice of Biden v Trump, I’m also holding out some stubborn, probably futile hope that things will change within that time. Hopefully the Democrats and Biden will wake up and realize that they were elected to represent us, not the other way around, and moderate their course into something supportable by their constituents.
Time will tell.
While that may be true, it is also fact that much of the ordnance being used in this conflict was manufactured and provided by the United States and its govenment.
Carter is also the only former president to call the situation what it actually is - apartheid.
As much as a failure as Oslo turned out to be, Clinton also made a good faith attempt to move the peace process forward… Getting Fatah to accept that Israel exists and to negotiate with them was a huge step forward, and it’s largely been the far right turn in Israel that has done the most damage to the peace process than anything else. Netanyahu had no interest in a peace process, but preferred the violent status quo and feeding Hamas to ensure that the settlements could continue…
I do agree that Biden is much more interested in a peace process than Trump, and that there is only so much he can do with regards to stopping the blood shed, but I think @milliefink is correct that going behind congress to ship arms to Israel is a huge problem and it does show his own principles on the matter. Biden was a key part of senate delegation to Northern Ireland during the peace process, so we know that he has an interest in peace, but he could do more to put pressure on Netanyahu, I think.
I have been very explicit on this thread that Trump would be apocalyptically worse, and everyone who can should vote for Biden to stop him. I’m just saying that if I were talking to say a Palestinian-American, it wouldn’t be glibly asking “what do you expect from him anyway?” It would be tearfully apologizing that we need them to vote for someone who plainly does not consider it that big a deal if people like them die en masse.
This thread is called document the atrocities, praise the graces. At what point did Trump mean we start pretending there are only the second?
To quote me. I understand and share the anger and disappointment. My objection comes to when we throw up our hands and say “fuck it, burn it all down.” There are atrocities to document, no doubt. And I am very unhappy with how his admin is dealing with this situation. Where I am not is to the point of letting this be the breaking point where nothing matters anymore.
Awesome. So to sum up, we have a few thousand dead children and counting, a government that barely cares to conceal its ethnic cleansing, Biden openly supporting
If there is a better answer, I am all ears. The thought that this can be the issue that gives Trump the Whitehouse scares me shitless. And it could be. There are not that many votes to spare. I don’t know what to do about it. But I can’t help but feel that abandoning the field is not the right choice.
I dont think anyone else here has expressed being at that point either. Including Hamilton Nolan, author of the piece I posted that seems to have started this discussion.
Again, I don’t see anyone here saying we should do that. And this thread is not about Tromp v. Biden. It’s about Biden:
That’s precisely what this thread is for, after all, being critical of biden as well as pointing out the good things his administration has done.
We’re living through hellish times. Things are difficult and frustrating, and there are no good answers to the problems we’re facing, at the same time that there are people pushing to make things measurable worse. I certainly don’t want that “burn it all down” crowd to win out, because that way lies even more suffering. But we absolutely must keep pushing the Democrats into a better direction, or that’s just what we’ll get.
Yeah, that’s one more reason I am disgusted with Biden here. The future of America hangs in the balance, and he is gambling it for this, to stick up for another fascist in a different part of the world.
