I hesitate to say that Biden is better than Trump at this point.
I hesitate to say that Biden is better than Trump at this point.
This is not me saying at all that Trump is better than Biden; it's more of an equalization argument that I truthfully can't see a fiscal difference.
It's been well known by people like us that the two bourgeois parties are basically the same, but I never really understood how close they were until the last like, 6 months.
Maybe it's JUST Biden that's super similar. But regardless, I just don't see the difference. He spews nice words about trans rights, workers, all of these good things. But the exact same shit that happened under Trump basically happened under Biden. Funding for genocidal states, proxy war funding, funding police, loss of abortion federal protection, separation of kids and parents at the border, etc.
People keep saying Biden is marginally better, where?
I don't know. I can't bring myself to vote for any of these guys this time around.
The irony is that the Americans are slaves to their electoral system. Liberal democracies are one big, pathetic myth where they make the masses believe that they are the ones in control of the polity and just like they elected someone into a position of power they can dismiss them in later elections.
The discourse that has been happening shows quite a different reality: Americans are treating the elections as if there is no alternative. Even if there indeed was no alternative, they don't bargain with the ones in power, they don't use their vote as a bargaining chip for political change. They are ready to vote unconditionally because they accept their candidate as is.
You don't see democrat voters pressuring the Biden administration to put an end to the genocide in Palestine. They feel uneasy towards what's happening but ultimately they consider themselves to be powerless. Western democracy and constitutionalism have politically alienated the people.
You are not giving Biden enough credit.
Take a look at this:
From 2016-2019, white family wealth had stagnated under Trump. From 2019-2022, white family wealth exploded upwards while black and Hispanic family wealth had remained in stagnation, and that’s just the first 2 years of Biden administration.
In fact, black families found themselves getting poorer under Biden, while the opposite is true for white families:
Source: Federal Reserve
Under Trump, everyone suffered. But under Biden, rich white people are experiencing some of the fastest growth in their wealth in a long time, while screwing the other minorities along the way. That’s the difference between Trump and Biden.
What baffles me is that democRATs cannot produce any viable candidate apart from Biden. Do they have no idea how bad it looks? Even disregarding that Biden is a racist genocidal piece of shit (something that democrats do not care about), he is degenerating neurologically by the day. Looking at him I cannot confidently say that one year from now he will be able to walk and talk at all.
Him proposing to end asylum for migrants is objectively worse than anything Trump did on the border.
He keeps saying there are no conditions on support for Isreal. No lib has been able to explain to me what is way worse than "unlimited unconditional funding"
We are currently drilling more oil than any nation in history anywhere ever.
It's literally just lip service and then when a reporter literally asks "are you planning on doing anything other than having conversations" the press secretary gets pissed
There's no meaningful difference between republicans and democracts because both parties represent the interests of class that holds power in the end. And this isn't just us Marxists saying this, here's what a Princeton study analyzing many decades of US policy concluded:
US elections are just a circus with the sole aim of making people feel like they're participating in the political process. Republicans are a brand curated to appeal to social conservative people and Democrats are a brand for socially liberal ones. The goal is to get people to get invested in issues that don't threaten capital and to fight over them. As Parenti so aptly puts it in Blackshirts and Reds:
Seizing upon anything but class, leftists today have developed an array of identity groups centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and life-style issues. These groups treat their respective grievances as something apart from class struggle, and have almost nothing to say about the increasingly harsh politico-economic class injustices perpetrated against us all. Identity groups tend to emphasize their distinctiveness and their separateness from each other, thus fractionalizing the protest movement. To be sure, they have important contributions to make around issues that are particularly salient to them, issues often overlooked by others. But they also should not downplay their common interests, nor overlook the common class enemy they face. The forces that impose class injustice and economic exploitation are the same ones that propagate racism, sexism, militarism, ecological devastation, homophobia, xenophobia, and the like.
Biden has better aesthetics. No anti-intellectualism, focus on respectability, posturing as progressive etc... in a world where I would buy into US propaganda I'd be inspired by the image that the Dems want to give and I'd be scared and revolted by the image that the Reps have.
But that's all just aesthetics. Libs who urge you to vote Biden are just not seeing beyond PR
I'm not USAyan, but Trump withdrawn troops and said he'd get USA out of NATO. If he delivered, he'd be the most significant political figure for a fight against neocolonialism. I don't exactly know the life within US for US people, but Trump is a significantly good choice for world politics from my perspective. Biden increased poverty death rate in Europe by approving destroying the gas line (I assume he partook based on his public statements) and general poverty suffering. He continues supporting the apartheid and genocide of Palestinians. I find people who wish to vote for him extremely evil, but if your life under Trump was indeed this bad then I can somewhat understand why you don't care about the blight your politicians bring to the rest of the world.
Politics at the national level in the USA is pretty much just aesthetics.
Local politics might be a bit better but the higher up you go the only real differences seem to be how soon the candidate's masks slip.
I hope Trump wins if only because I want to see the liberals suffering and seething. It's hardly adequate karma for the genocide of the Palestinian people but it'll be something and maybe just maybe to someone somewhere it will send the message that supporting an open genocide even in the genocidal settler west is a bit too far. It also wrenches the system back and forth which is good. Forces all those Europeans who've been sobbing about NATO and democracy and liberal values and how evil Putler is to either embrace Trump and look like even worse hypocrites or to distance themselves. It won't be enough to destroy NATO naturally but any tension that can be added is good. Trump doesn't wear the mask of respectability Biden does to the world and that's something too which makes me feel it's slightly more positive if he's president in the long game-plan. Liberals won't be in the streets under 4 more years of Biden, they might be under Trump.
Of course nothing much will change either way. There is no lesser evil, only funny evil pedophile war criminal and not funny evil pedophile war criminal who is hidden by his staff and who make all the decisions for him and give him a veneer of respectability. If you're a Marxist you shouldn't vote for either of them. Vote for a communist on your ballot or do a write-in or don't vote at all for a presidential candidate. Amazingly you can just go and vote on local and state ballot initiatives while not putting anything down on the presidential race.
The only thing I can say is that the republican party might have a slightly harder time at pushing Project 2025 if Biden gets reelected. But the agendas and policies will be the same, and republicans will still control most local governments. And the fact that democrats are roughly equal to republicans in their evilness.
Whenever the party switches everything gets worse. Trump to Biden or Biden to Trump. Either will continue to support genocide and so on. Whoever wins nothing good will happen,
Biden wants to destroy Russia before going to war with China
Trump only wants to improve relations with Russia in order to go to war with China now
Both seem to be interested in going to war with Iran in the next 5 years.
There has been no difference since Carter. Carter was the one who started modern neoliberalism with the idea that inducing a recession would be a good thing to stop run-away inflation, so he worked with the fed to start one.
It went Carter, Reagan, CIA, Clinton. (or, in other words, CIA, CIA, CIA, CIA).
By then, we were cooked, truly no difference in neoliberalism from either party, the cruelty towards the average person domestic and abroad is some sort of special evil.
Edit, in 1963, the CIA was successful in a coupe of the USA, and has been in charge ever since.
Someone I follow(ed) on Mastodon was just trying to shame people who don't vote, because of the idea that "Trump is going to immediately round up all us trans people and throw us in camps if you don't vote Biden!!"
As far as I can tell, the claim seems entirely made up, and it feels almost malicious to be basing that entire decision around the idea that "Trump MIGHT come after ME hypothetically!!" rather than all of the people Biden has already thrown in camps and all of the people in Gaza that Biden has given his unconditional support to genociding
It feels downright selfish to still be pushing that "vote blue no matter who" bullshit for that reason, and they clearly haven't learned shit from 2016 and 2020
They're also still under the impression that people choose not to vote just so that they can "push the Democrats more progressive", when it's basically the opposite, people realize they can't push the Democrats left so they're choosing not to participate in the sham they call a "democracy", but I guess this is one of those people who can only see politics within the confines of the US electoral system
Edit: Not to mention all the other shit people have mentioned as having been actively worse under Biden, it makes it feels especially garbage and selfish that one is still pushing the idea of Biden being a human rights savior
It tend to agree. The closest thing to a tangible delivered-policy difference is the flavour of grandstanding on social issues. Biden might be publically less hostile to certain ethnic groups and the LGBTQ+ community, and more willing to leverage abortion access as a policy. However, I feel like we're in a very "you let it break in the first place" scenario.
These issues should have been solved and locked down decades ago. Of course, we never solved the underlying social and economic tensions, so the public is hungry for scapegoats and targets. We can't blame Blacks anymore (in public) but "Illegal Immigrants" and transgender boogeymen in the ladies' room are an excellent distraction from the rich draining our planet dry.
Both parties dropped the ball there. The GOP used social issues as a wedge, but the Democrats relied on a lot of gossamer-thin legal precedent and social norms to keep everything gkued together- where was the explicit access-to-abortion law, or even constitutional amendment push?
As someone who thankfully doesn't have the awful electoral choice that Americans do (I'm in the UK so although the choice is dire, it's not frighteningly dire), the question I usually ask myself is "Which presidential candidate will result in the fewest deaths?" and, in this case, that seems to me to be impossible to answer.
That said, in terms of "fitness" for office, Biden is literally a candidate who is unfit for office. Just this week he mixed up the border between Gaza and Egypt and spoke of it as "the Mexican border". And he also mixed up Macron with Mitterrand... it's really frightening. What's he going to be like in one year, let alone two or three?
That’s not a very high bar
Trump gave out checks that made life easier for a month or two while Biden said maybe masks and vaccines don't kill you, the virus does.
I legit can't think of a distinction other than that either.
"MUH LESSER EVIL"