no need to write an essay or anything

some libs and baby leftists are kinda baffled by the trump banter here and don’t know what’s serious and what’s irony

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        I haven’t even seen the show, and I’ve maybe heard the audio one time, but I see your comments so often that “no more half measures Walter” in a deep gravelly voice is now a common thing in my internal monologue lmao

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      It’s like, if the goal is the collapse of America, he’s probably the best bet yeah? If shit collapses he’ll probably get executed anyway by his own base of psychopaths.

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        if the goal is the collapse of America, he’s probably the best bet yeah?

        This assumes that fascism isn’t effective as capitalism’s immune response, but I’d argue it is.

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          Yeah, but the competentish fascist we were afraid of turned out to be Robinette Brandon. Covid ended, wars accelerated, he’s doing that faux-populism thing, new levels of state persecution of minorities, elections looking less legitimate than ever, jingoistic nationalism.

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          Its not. It only heigthens the contradictions. Take it from someone who was born in a corporatist state. That type of regime is extreamly fragile.

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          I don’t know if I’m an accelerationist, but I just think the US needs to collapse before better things are truly capable of happening

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            The insistence that Republicans and Democrats are literally exactly the same is incredibly myopic, obviously disprovable, and therefore just ruins the ability for the left to recruit amongst the most marginalized people in society because they see you saying “the group that actively wants to genocide you is the same to me as the one that doesn’t”. You could very easily use the actually correct rhetorical and political argument that the Democrats are incapable and disinterested in protecting marginalized people, but obscuring the difference between that disinterest and the most reactionary segments of society serves the nihilistic needs of pseudo-reactionary accelerationists. Why should I be surprised given you are literally advocating for a fascist in this thread.

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              No, the DNC is worse. They more efficient at blocking leftward movement. The GOP is evil. But destroying the DNC is a requisite for progress. I am not advocating anything. I am posting. This is all meaningless. Are you afraid I am going to start some red brown alliance here? All the tankies will rise us as a unit to swing electoral numbers? If we had the power to do anything that wouldn’t be it.

              • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                No, the DNC is worse. They more efficient at blocking leftward movement. The GOP is evil.

                And the GOP constantly aggressively moves everything to the right. Or does that not count? Does the dissolution of public schools, women’s rights, and queer rights not matter to you? DNC sits in the passenger seat, but the GOP is driving.

                And you are discussing politics on a political forum so fuck off with “oh you can’t hold me accountable for anything I say when I think the US should elect a fascist”. You expressed an opinion and your opinion is that of your average Republican.

                • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  The gop is evil of course. However the DNC is a fundamental part of facilitating the GOPs evil. They make sure no effective forces can be marshaled to stop or undo the GOP. In your analogy the GOP is at the wheel and thr DNC is at the pedals. Because this is America they are driving to get a burger. If the gop is going to get into an collision than the DNC is obligated to press the breaks are they not? If the do not press they breaks when they could thrn they are enabling the behavior

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      I wouldn’t she’d a tear if Trump tripped and broke his neck, or if he finally got devoured by his son Bannon or someone Merced him, but if I am to answer who I think would lead to the best situation globally between Trump and Biden, I’d pick trump any day. The man is incredibly incompetent and isolationist. Couldn’t even coup Venezuela.

      • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        It’s so outrageously non-materialist to think the US’s grip in Latin America is weakening because of Trump, and not because of the line decline of empire, China as a countervailing force, and the resilience of the Latin American people putting to use the lessons learned from prior US meddling. Biden also hasn’t done much of anything in LA because the the US generally is no longer capable of it. The president isn’t planning this shit personally. They aren’t even deciding to do it or not. The only choices they get to make are erratic single strikes. Like Trump killing Soleimani and nearly starting war with Iran. No biggie, though, right? Orange man funny!

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          I don’t think that South America is seeing leftism bloom because of Trump, I think they’re seeing it because of the work of south Americans. I think the south Americans work was easier under Trump - As you yourself said “the decline of Empire”. He was much worse at administering the American empire, which accelerated it’s collapse.

          Trump killing Soleimani was wrong and I don’t think I’ve at any point said anything to the contrary? It was also something that wasn’t widely supported, which fucked up soft power further. The war didn’t escalate because of Iran, and Iran was able to keep tensions low because Trump was an incompetent buffoon incapable of whipping the rest of the west and the media in line.

          • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            “the decline of Empire”. He was much worse at administering the American empire, which accelerated it’s collapse.

            How on earth you think the president meaningfully administers the empire, I have no idea. The empire is collapsing because of long historical trends and the inefficiency of its structures. Not because of Trump.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              Again I don’t think it declines because of a single person. I do however think that the executive person has a lot of influence on how the us manages. There is a reason so many staffers were freaking out because key positions were unmanned more than a year after Trumps inauguration. They were freaking out because he did not follow security briefings, because he mishandled diplomatic engagements and because his cabinet was constantly shuffling. Pretending like these thing were inconsequential seems “ubmaterialistic” to me.

    • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      I think a lot of the confusion comes from how people here derive amusement from his stupidity, whereas with Biden and Obama the contempt was more open (because they weren’t clownishly, openly stupid, just malicious or more run of the mill incompetent)

    • raven [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      To anyone in future linking this comment or thread as evidence that we are not trump-anguish supporters, also note that this here is the second highest up-beared comment on the site.

  • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    I think everyone has cleared up that we don’t actually like Trump. We hate all US presidents. But i wanted to explore a real split that happened when he got elected between people who are still libs, and people like me who were libs but reevaluated my received ideology, in large part due to his election.

    Trump getting elected completely invalidates everything libs believe about this country. Myth of meritocracy, shattered. The belief that the “good republicans” will come back, the faith in the electoral system, etc.smashed.

    When something like that happens, a real thing happens that invalidates your world view, your ideology, there’s two ways it can go. One way is reevaluating those beliefs, and the other is doubling down on them.

    To double down, you have to view the real thing that happened as an abberation. It can’t be integrated into your worldview it has to be refuted. So what did libs do? Immediately after the election there was, “well maybe he won’t take office, the electors could save us”. They retreated into a belief in their electoral system. Next they moved onto the Russian conspiracy belief, because it would expunge the record of our electoral system. “If Russian interference happened, then theres nothing wrong with the electoral process!” And they needed nothing to be wrong with the electoral process, because its the only mechanism they have that allows them to believe this is a democracy. Of course, then theres a series of things, the Mueller report/Mueller worship, the hollow ceremony of impeachment.

    If you reevalute the system, you integrate reality. You realize that Trump is not an aberation. Trump is the norm, just far more grotesque. Every president is a war criminal whose purpose is to further an imperialist, white supremacist world order. It doesn’t matter if they are civil, or have “merit” (whatever that means), or if they’re the first black president. They’re the figurehead of global system of exploitation.

    For me personally, i hadn’t become a communist yet, and Trump winning was something that made it clear that the recieved ideology i was operating under was clearly wrong and had to be evaluated. At some point, and for whatever reason people who become communists, or anarchists, or whatever left tendency from the starting position of received American ideology have to reevaluate the world from usually a combination of catalysts.

    I think a lot of this shows why theres so much acrimony between us and libs. We invalidate their world view. The thing that allows them to believe they live in a democracy, one that is more democratic than other nations, and freer (libs may except other western nations as free, or even superior, but they chauvanistically know they are better and freer than the global south or any AES).

    And many of us are frustrated because we already know what they believe is wrong, because many of us believed it! And we learned it was wrong by integrating the realities we’ve witnessed into our understanding of the world.

    That’s probably why some libs think we like Trump, because we don’t share the view that he’s an aberration, or uniquely bad. He’s just a republican. And they can’t accept that

  • vertexarray [any]@hexbear.net
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    Definitely not. He’s an odious fascist, or he would be a fascist if he had any sort of ideological commitment to anything other than drawing attention to himself. The fact that he was elected at all is a monumental condemnation of the USA. He just has the soul of a problematic Florida drag queen in there, which makes him a tremendous poster.

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    The thing about leftist opposition to Trump that seems to confuse liberals is not that we think Trump is awful (everyone here does), but that we think there isn’t as much daylight between him and people that liberals actually like (say, Obama) on the awful<->not awful continuum that liberals want us to believe. The crass, blatant incivility isn’t what we have an issue with (and the fact that it’s what seems to bother liberals the most is something we frequently poke fun at), it’s the widespread murder and immiseration of innocent people. Consequences, not intentions; substance, not tone.

  • Trump is a grotesque monster, but he’s hated by libs not for vile actions, but because he was rude. We don’t value civility here, so we can laugh at him when he’s funny, but he and every living American president deserves to be tried in The Hague

    • Millie@lemm.ee
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      See, this is why I don’t trust y’all. How can you pretend to be leftist when to you the fundamental difference between Trump and any other political administration is literally just that he’s rude.

      How is it that nothing else, from the rights of workers and of oppressed minorities to the protection of the environment to access to health care and education, means anything?

      If none of that means anything more than being rude or not, you’re not a leftist. You’re a cosplayer.

      • makotech222 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        from the rights of workers

        Who crushed the rail strike

        of oppressed minorities

        who let roe v wade expire

        protection of the environment

        how many oil drilling licenses were given out in the last 4 years

        access to health care and education

        lol

        All presidents are bad, and all advance the cruelty of the previous president. Are we still ignoring covid? are we still imprisoning people at the border?

        • raven [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Who was a vocal supporter of segregation?

          Democrats and Republicans exist as two parts of a rightward political ratchet system. Biden as VP was only run because he was the more right wing counterbalance to Obama’s “radical socialist agenda” We get one cheeto-man in the white house and suddenly Biden is the “most pro labor president in history”? Come the fuck on.

      • Zoift [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        His policies and the continuation of them under Biden are no fundamentally different in scope or malaciousness than any other previous president. Trump is the most exagerrated symptom of American political rot, not a new disease process.

        • Millie@lemm.ee
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          For that: see the other comments in this thread. Bunch of people basking in the privilege of their rights not being directly threatened. Give me a fucking break.

          Ain’t a leftist to be seen.

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            excuse me, what? I’m not white and I’m transgender. my ability to exist in public is under direct and immediate threat. this is a deeply offensive comment not to mention the excusal of the imperialist policy of quite literally every American president and their impact on people elsewhere around the globe or the direct explanations you’ve received about how little has changed in the transition from trump to biden. miss me with this “I’m the only real leftist” bullshit, liberal.

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            The Democrats refused to fight to protect Roe V Wade. That would have been popular even with conservatives. There could have been no real downside. What makes you think they will do anything to protect you when the time comes? You are one of the people best positioned to see how much of it is just a show.

              • Good thing Biden is fighting so hard for trans rights! Plus he codified Roe so people have control over their bodies, and freed the children in cages and the prisoners in Guantanamo bay and compensated them for being tortured for 20 years, and he gave the people of Afghanistan their money back preventing mass disease and famine

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                what has biden done to stop states from legislating away our ability to exist in public spaces? rights aren’t real. either we take power and force the state to recognize our humanity or we’ll get wiped off the face of the earth. the sooner you libs realize that and the fact that the dems aren’t allies, the sooner we can get that done.

              • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Trans rights - they’re right to even just exist is under threat. The comrades on hexbear take that seriously, it’s an extremely trans friendly space.

                If you want to make a harm reduction arguement for strategic voting for dems in key swing areas, i get it, I’d even agree more than likely. But to pretend like the dems are actively allies, are actively defending trans rights, or for that matter actively doing anything materially different than republican admins is another thing.

                You say you dont trust us because we don’t view Trump as uniquely different from other admins. We don’t but why should we? What us the unique difference?

                • Millie@lemm.ee
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                  My right to exist. I’m a trans woman who is very aware that I may need to flee the country in the next few years depending on where things go. I’m extremely aware of the attacks on my life and my access to the medication I need. This shit is not abstract for me.

                  There’s a very big difference between having lipservice support from the federal government while living in a state that’s literally one of the best places on Earth to transition, and hoping said state will protect me from a federal government that’s actively hostile.

                  Are federal Democrats actively allies to trans people? Eh.

                  Are Massachusetts Democrats? You bet your ass they are. We’ve got more rights than trans people in most of the EU. We have informed consent, mandatory insurance coverage for trans health care, actual legal protection from discrimination.

                  You act like there’s no difference, but I’m literally better protected here than I would be anywhere outside of like maybe like the Netherlands.

                  I’m not in this to act like a high school child, I’m in it because people want to fucking wipe me and everyone like me out.

              • ToxicDivinity [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                I’m sorry that I didn’t make assumptions about your identity before you offered them. If you could clarify you position instead of giving snarky one sentence responses that might help.

                for example: what are the dems doing for trans rights? can you give any specifics?

          • Believe it or not, there are other countries in the world besides America. Most of us are internationalists, in that are goal is the liberation of all people. By that view, there is very little difference between trump and Biden. Both are warmongering ghouls who preside(d) over an empire that brings untold suffering to millions of people

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            You know who’s really been threatened? All those people Biden deported using Title 42, a Trump era policy, Biden even doubled Trump’s deportation numbers in less than half the time and even now, miss me with that fake ass “lesser evil” nonsense, you libs are just as regressive and disgusting as the Trumpers

          • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Wow a liberal calling a bunch of minorities and transgender people privellaged because their telling the liberal their lives didn’t get better under a democratic president.

            Better actively try to silence the voice of the actually oppressed and continue to insist anybody who doesn’t enthusiastically support the president who has done such outreach as “give ma a break, I’m serious I have no sympathy” is just privellaged or a liar.

            You realize you’re literally ACTUALLY doing all the things you just said we have to vote for Biden to stop right.

            Kinda seems like you’re proving the point that the only real difference is when a dems president libs start telling people not to complain because it makes them look bad.

            Like how Dejoy being head of usps was a huge scandal the entire time Trump was in office, whatever happened to that guy after Biden threw him out on his ass day one?

      • Here’s one more difference between trump and other presidents: he was less harmful than bush and probably Clinton and Obama. Clinton was responsible for turning the Democratic Party into the neoliberal garbage it is now, bush killed hundreds of thousands of people and devastated multiple countries, and Obama oversaw one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the poorest to the richest the world has ever seen

          • Absolutely. All of them have so much blood on their hands and I will celebrate their deaths with glee. It will be a small pleasure compared to the countless lives they extinguished and cast into poverty but it’s all I can expect when it comes these monster

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            Yeah, Obiden killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in a war that started under Obama and mostly concluded under Biden, not because of Joe’s humanitarianism, but because Saudi and Iran made some kind of peace deal.

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        How has Biden meaningfully and systemically improved any of those items? A small tax credit to pell grant recipients who have 3 or more children is not systemic. Trying halfassedly and failing to forgive student loans is not systemic. Giving everyone $600 is not systemic.

        Please give meaningful, concrete examples of systemic items that Biden has resolved? Systemic is the key word here. I’d love to hear what you think Biden has done to systemically address literally any of the items you laid out in your post as leftist ideals. Because you’re right, they are leftist ideals. It’s just that the Biden admin and the entire Democratic party hasn’t done a single thing to solve any of the systemic issues behind those items.

      • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        they’re saying the only difference between him and any other liberal. you forget that imperialism and white supremacy are the defacto policy of the US government, regardless of the views of any president.

      • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        Rights of workers: Biden literally busted Unions. Come on man biden-alert

        Oppressed Minorities: Biden quite literally continued Trump’s migration policies when he first entered office. There have been some marginal improvements, but as someone who worked directly in migrant communities and legal aid during the time, I can confidently say his policies have been nearly indistinguishable to the masses of people hurting and need help. There are administrative changes he could make with the wave of a pen to make the process easier, but there’s no desire for it in the actual rooms of power within the Democratic party.

        Plus, Biden and other mainstream Dems fought against defund the police almost harder than the right wing did. Funding for the most oppressive institution in this country has increased dramatically. biden-harbinger

        PLUS the fucking democrats never codified Roe v Wade despite having all 3 branches of government.

        Protection of the environment: Driving off a 100 foot cliff at 60 mph is quite frankly just as bad as driving off at 75 mph. The Democrats engage in soft climate change denialism. They say vapid shit like “believe the science,” but then completely ignore what the science says we have to do which is stop fucking drilling for more Fossil Fuels and switch as fast as possible to renewables. Instead we get weasely promises about investing in green technologies that may or may not actually work out of one side of their mouths, and a dramatic increase in fossil fuel production on the other. They’re just green washing their anti-environmental ambitions so useful idiots feel warm and fuzzy.

        Access to education: you’re going to have to point to something you think is good, because I literally can’t even begin to imagine what you’re thinking is going well in this regard.biden-forgor

      • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        How were any of the things you listed helped by Biden being in office? Are any of those things better in this country now that he’s gone?

        We don’t support him, he is awful on all these aspects, but so are all US admins, because they all serve capital.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        the fundamental difference between Trump and any other political administration is literally just that he’s rude.

        Every single other president in history is a war criminal murderous bastard.

        The libs didn’t like this war criminal murderous bastard because he made it incredibly obvious while doing it, when the operating procedure is supposed to hide it behind a layer of ““professionalism”” (liberal culture).

        All of them are bastards, barring none. All of them are responsible for the countless deaths of thousands upon thousands of people all over the world. They’re all murdering bastards of empire reaping hell upon the entire world.

        You just ignored it until this particular one made it too obvious.

        How is it that nothing else, from the rights of workers and of oppressed minorities to the protection of the environment to access to health care and education, means anything?

        Lmao absolutely none of these involve foreign policy. It’s very telling that you’re a nationalist who is ok with the hell america reaps everywhere else. Let’s go through them one by one though eh?

        Workers rights - lol, like any president in history has ever been pro workers, including Biden who broke the rail strike

        Minorities - lol, like any president in history has ever been pro minorities

        Environment - lol, lmao even

        Health - lol dems have always been great on health right? That’s why america still has no fucking healthcare system. Fuck me how naive are you?

        Education - 21% of americans are illiterate

        It’s fucking wild that you people only attribute this to republicans, you’re completely fucking blind to the fact that the ruling class owns both of these parties and that they use them both to continually fuck you over while somehow fooling dipshits like you into thinking one half of the capitalists is good actually if only it weren’t for the mean half of the capitalists. Fucking open your eyes for fucks sake.

        May as well throw Chomsky on the crimes of every US president here too since it’s relevant.

      • BlueMagaChud [any]@hexbear.net
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        is this a bit? no “other political adminstration” in the fourth reich has done anything about those things except use the empty promises to garner votes in this potemkin democracy. use dialectical and historical materialism or shut the fuck up

          • BlueMagaChud [any]@hexbear.net
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            I agree, but I use the term for the hegemon’s salvaging of what was left of the third reich for nato, merely a chronological distinction

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        Because every POTUS oppresses and murders minorities, destroys the environment, denies healthcare to millions who desperately need it, demonizes immigrants/foreigners, and perpetuate a capitalist system that is going to destroy us in pursuit of the Almighty Dollar™. Trump is not unique in this regard and he will not escape the terror anymore than any other Washington ghoul. He just also happens to treat reality like his own personal ongoing TV series and luckily for us it’s more “That’s My Bush!” than “House of Cards”. It’s objectively more entertaining than anything boring beltway insiders have to offer.

      • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        If you’re concerned about the environment, I think you could make the case that the Obama/Biden administration literally has the worst environmental record in the history of human governance.

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        How is it that nothing else, from the rights of workers and of oppressed minorities to the protection of the environment to access to health care and education, means anything?

        Get back to us when Dems do anything about any of that?

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This will echo what others have said: I think Trump was a horrible president, and him being of the capitalist class means I oppose him in a political economy sense. However, the stuff that he did that was bad was bog standard Republican shit: any other Republican would have also cut taxes, deregulated industry, and installed far right whack job judges. And I also think Democrats have done horrible shit; better/worse comparisons are mostly useless as they brush over specifics.

    However, I do think he’s fascinating, both in that he may be the perfect reflection of the American political body, and because he highlights fundamental contradictions in nominal American liberal and conservative politics that causes both his detractors and supporters to be extremely neurotic about him. He represents what liberals profess to be the ideal (coastal, urban, private school educated, Ivy League grad, made his money in NYC real estate; shit, any big money Dem donor clicks at least three of those boxes), and what conservatives profess to hate (urban, non-religious, elitist, arrogance), yet the former hate him and the latter love him.

    For liberals, it’s that he exposes the lie that elite education credentials stewed in urban culture must always produce socially progressive and competent technocrats, which is why they steadfastly insist he’s some Manchurian Candidate Russian plant because they need to see him as an abnormality and not reflective of the gross underbelly of the meritocracy. For conservatives, he exposes that for all their rhetoric they really love the idea of elites and hierarchy and being lessers to the titans of industry and the state. They just don’t want those titans to be brown, Jewish, or female. So they need to built a weird, cultish mythology around him as an ubermensch, anti-elite elite as to keep up the illusion of them being against hierarchy. All this neurosis is both highly illuminating, and really fucking funny.

  • Jenniferr [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Folks, the bourgeois, they’re no good everyone is saying it. All these workers, very handsome workers come up to me and say, Comrade Trump there is a specter haunting Europe, and you know what, they’re right. These bourgeois are very nasty people very very rude and very unfair to the workers. They are stealing our surplus value and no one is doing anything about it. The proletariat comes up to me everyday and says, Comrade Trump will you lead the revolution? And I gotta turn to them and say, Look the instruments of capitalism will be used to bring about its destruction believe me you gotta trust me on this one. The means of production, obama never wanted to seize them. Well guess what? I’m seizing them. Landlords? They’re done for folks. Everyone told me they said, Comrade Trump you won’t be the vanguard of the revolution and they would laugh, the media laughed the democrats laughed, guess whose laughing now?

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Looking forwards to the day he dies gargling on his own lung fluids.

    Also looking forwards to the day every other war-criminal-president of america gargles on their own lung fluids, which is all of them.

    The ones that are already dead should be exhumed and tossed into the ocean.

    EDIT: May as well throw Chomsky on the crimes of every US president here too since it’s relevant.

    If celebrating their deaths is too much for you then you’d hate to know that about 35% of the UK throws literal street parties every year celebrating Thatcher’s slow painful death. Problem with that? Too bad. Too bad.

    You liberal civility wankers have no idea what a real left looks like, and all of you would be tory shits if you lived here.

  • Mindfury [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    because everyone’s added the very clear answer that I agree with, I’ll add the bit that’ll really get the reddit refugees going:

    Trump is a liberal. You are closer to Trump in beliefs and actions than we are.