Comment by alsetmusic
7 days ago
When one party will violate every norm and law to the greatest extent that they can get away with it, it's pretty much impossible to compete with them. I want good things for people. I can't compete with fascists because they will cheat and lie and employ violence. My positive intent is almost impossible to out thwart their dirty deeds if they are willing to break laws / change laws and I won't.
It amazes me that so many people blame the politicians and not the people who elected them.
Well we can’t recall the voters, so there is no point in addressing them. They are a problem because in the US there used to be an FCC rule that said “if you call yourself a news program, you must tell the truth,” and that was overridden by the Supreme Court during Reagan’s term.
No there was never a rule about “telling the truth” the rule was “equal time”. So if one party said “vaccines keep people from dying” and the other party said “vaccines would cause you to grow extra limbs” you had to allow them both on.
Second, it had nothing to do with the Supreme Court. The theory was that the airwaves belong to the public and the FCC has jurisdiction. It never applied to cable channels like FoxNews
Third, the current FCC is going after broadcast networks for not being fair under the rule
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Blaming voters for being stupid is not widely accepted yet.
The voters aren’t stupid. They are actively malignant and cheer what the administration is doing.
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There's only one party and it's color is green. Donors know red or blue doesn't matter, so they give to both.
That's just an unreal characterization that plays into the hands of the "red" team. One side has put up presidents and congressional leadership that worked (mostly, I'm not saying they're perfect) within the traditional framework of the system. The other has put up a president who literally does not understand the meaning of the word "no," expects that everyone will let him do pretty much anything he wants, and a congress that agrees with him. Notably, that side was different in 2000, 1988, 1980, etc. -- not perfect by any stretch, but not this.
The difference matters.
Do you want another authoritarian, corrupt, cult of personality leader like Trump? Proclaiming "both sides" and ignoring nuance like you're doing is how no one gets held accountable for the real harms that are taking place. Please stop holding water for the MAGAs/GOP.
America has had even more corrupt/authoritarian/cult of personality leaders than Trump. They were younger and their brains still worked so they did way more damage than trump too. Most Americans just don't learn much history so can't compare.
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Assuming you're from the USA, your two main parties are exactly like that. The appearances have changed, but Obama drone-assassinating random children on the other side of the world was not much better than what Trump is doing.
Not defending Trump, to be clear, just saying US imperialism and fascism has much deeper roots and that removing Trump is not going to fix any issues the rest of the world has with the USA.
USA government is corrupt, true. Current admin is balls-out corrupt in ways that have a French legislator calling out that impeachment would have happened there. It's shockingly out in the open corrupt, and that's saying a lot because most of the people ripping us off want to be somewhat quiet about it and not draw attention.
I didn't hear about this french legislator, but that's funny given the level of rampant corruption in french government. Nothing new (see also Pasqua, Foccart, etc), but in the past decades the information was not widely available so it was at least possible to pretend not to know.
Much of the government including Macron himself are involved in corruption scandals. Others are involved in rape scandals. Others in fiscal fraud. But you're correct they're not as open about it as Trump is.
Can you point to an objective assessment of Obama's drone policy?
Unfortunately, i don't know of a complete reference resource. I'd be interested if you found one. A quick research later i found this CFR resource [1] which probably underestimates the number of civilians killed.
I remember reports at the time on the Intercept and other media about the entire kill chain. If i remember correctly, the policy was to count anyone who was not proved to be a civilian as an active enemy in the body count. There was this DOD/CIA press conference announcing they made a targeted killing and that their target assessment was mostly based on the individual's height.
Then there's of course Obama famously and publicly joking about his children's lovers suggesting they should behave or would get killed by « predator drones ». [2] Let me know if you dig interesting links on the topic!
[1] https://www.cfr.org/articles/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
[2] https://abcnews.com/WN/president-obama-tells-joke-jonas-brot...
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It was not better, it was less. US imperialism has deep roots, yes, but a large chunk of the world who would tolerate a moderate level of it, don't tolerate this level.
I don’t see any not tolerating it in practice.
A lot of invective, but nothing in practice that really indicates not tolerating.
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I don't think it was less, though only future historians will come up with actual numbers. It was less public, though.
Most of the world never tolerated it. Even when western governments tolerated it, the population did not; see also the huge worldwide demonstrations against the Iraq war.
I think the difference in perception is because the european oligarchy is now being effectively treated as was previously the rest of the world, so they're now taking a stance because they feel threatened, whereas they previously saw themselves as aligned with the US government no matter what.