The world is full of nuance. Just like whataboutism and "both sides" can be convenient rhetorical devices for people lying to themselves or others, accusing someone of either can be a convenient figleaf for avoiding thinking about the flaws of one's own side.
The fact that Trump won in 2016 obviously overshadowed many things about that election. I didn't vote for him but I can still remember acutely the disappointment I felt during the primaries when the presumptive frontrunners were another Clinton and another Bush. Like out of 300 million people, these will be the choices presented to me? Whataboutism is bad mkay, but two things can also be true at the same time. Nuance.
I'm anything but a fan of Trump, but I think these typical slurs don't really make any sense. Were Trump corrupt and pliable then he wouldn't be doing half the things he's doing. There's tremendous money and influence in opposition to things he's doing that he could easily cash in on if he wanted. By contrast there's basically no 'Let's go invade Iran' lobby outside of Israel, and even 'Israel' misstates that since it's mostly that nut and yahoo they have for a leader.
The one nuance I'd add is that greed and corruption are distinct. Like most politicians Trump is certainly excessively greedy. But I think corruption is when an external power gets somebody to act in a way that they would not otherwise, in exchange for sort of personal benefit. And I think what we have on display here is very much the 'real' Trump. If anything, the half-wit would-be assassins seem to have given him a savior complex, thinking that he's God's chosen or whatever.
So for instance Rubio is 100% corrupt. That only political position he has is regurgitating whoever else's position happens to be politically expedient at the moment. And I got very similar vibes from Kamala with things like claiming she'd do nothing different than Biden did, taking on the obviously poisonous role of 'border czar' under Biden, and so on.
Trump made $1.5B off TrumpCoin. Literally a vehicle for bribery, and we know he made over a billion dollars.
The hell are you talking about. There's "corruption" which is pointing fingers, and then there is "we literally have the receipts of countries paying him off (Qatar), and we have the vehicle he created to do exactly that off the record (TrumpCoin)."
So don't pretend it's like "oh, everyone is corrupt." It's ridiculous. Trump is literally verifiably corrupt.
Wiki has a decent page on what happened to his meme coin. [1] Suffice to say, he definitely didn't make billions off it, or a single billion off of it.
And the entire premise doesn't even make any sense. Say you want a vessel for bribery and as that vessel you choose a completely open and highly visible public ledger that anybody and everybody can track the flow of money through, as opposed to the basically infinite ways to discretely and anonymously transfer wealth in modern times? And then what exactly do you think Qatar wants to bribe him for? Arms shipments that were already skyrocketing under previous administrations?
And then Trump is also directly working against the interests of countries like Qatar by invading Iran, which has somewhat predictably resulted in them getting blasted by Iran which is resulting in them wasting one can only imagine how much in interceptor missiles which tend to run in the millions per pop, which they are now rebuying from the US lol.
There is a lot one can reasonably critique about Trump, but I don't understand how you don't see that being level-headed in your critique is way more reasonable than just spewing off weak and hyperbolic talking points. It makes things partisan because the only people that will agree with you are those who are also partisan, and you end up convincing nobody and effectively just perpetuate the exact system of divide-and-conquer that ensures we keep getting Trumps and Bidens.
> I think these typical slurs don't really make any sense.
Corrupt, pliable and stupid are not slurs.
> There's tremendous money and influence in opposition to things he's doing that he could easily cash in on if he wanted
Is there a Big Solar or Big Wind or Green lobby that's comparable to Big Oil? Is there a huge lobby group for national healthcare? Is there tremendous funding for anti- Big Tech and Data Center movements?
> there's basically no 'Let's go invade Iran' lobby outside of Israel, and even 'Israel' misstates that since it's mostly that nut and yahoo they have for a leader
AIPAC
> corruption is when an external power gets somebody to act in a way that they would not otherwise, in exchange for sort of personal benefit.
See Putin's Russia, the Qataris, Saudis and Emiratis funding the Trump family in exchange for a number of actions such as goading him to war against Iran, desisting from sending American supplies to Ukraine or getting the go-ahead to start a nuclear programme.
Your evidence of Trump not being corrupt is his public whining about high oil prices (a result of his wars). My evidence for his corruption is documented evidence of public transfers of wealth from dictatorships and crony capitalists to his family accounts, or to his businesses.
And you have the audacity to say I'm gish-galloping and that these facts I've stated don't make sense at all. This is truly laughable and I feel sorry for you.
He did do the "can't sell GPUs to Poland*" move when he was on his way out though.
Separating countries into "tier 1" and "tier 2" was a pretty bad look, especially when a bunch of European countries that seemed to have good relations with the US ended up in tier 2. Looked suspiciously similar to the iron curtain.
That doesn't describe the candidates on offer though.
Look, I just want good rational, wise, humane low touch governance without excessive political ideology nonsense. I'm sick of the wars, sick of the lies, sick of the economic yo yo of boom/bust, sick of progressivism and "woke", sick of religion being injected into the conversation, sick of idiot candidates put there by the wealthy. And no, I'm not going to pretend that Joe Biden administration or Kamala was acceptable. Nor am I going to pretend that socialism is really gonna work this time, it's not and will leave most people worse off over the long term.
I realize this might be too much to ask, for but a boy can dream.
I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology.
The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating. It’s not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it into our dreams, at that point we are within ideology.
-- Slavoj Zizek
Or, to slightly simplify: there is no such thing as "without political ideology". What you perceive as such is just a reflection of your own political ideology nonsense.
You're the only one talking about Biden or Kamala. They don't matter when saying Trump is incompetent, idiotic and dangerous. Some other people may or may not also been, yes.
He's also been destroying American hegemony in an impressive speed and depth, weakening it's alliance and control behind anything ever seen, and no this didn't happen under anyone else.
Just to reinforce - as a Canadian, from the perspective of Canada up here... it is insane how much American foreign policy took an extreme uturn with this administration. It's been impressive to see Carney manage to steer away from the black hole that American economic interdependence now is and while we have plenty of our own problems we dodged Trump's efforts to force us into a massive recession.
There have been many reckless American political decisions in the past - but this past year and a half has been an absolutely astounding fall from grace.
He ain't the only one talking about Kamalga or Sleepy Joe, I am, and many others too. Unfortunately political choices for decades have come down to who would be the "lesser of all combined evils". There are many things I abhor about the current admin., but billions of dollars of welfare fraud, a wide open border for illegals and criminals, and sponsoring LBGTQ+ whatever all over Africa is just over the top hideous.
The President doesn't pass legislation. You can vote against socialism in the legislature, and vote against total incompetence in the executive. There was no reason to vote for Trump regarding "no wars" and "no boom/busts" because he's completely full of shit... exactly because he never cared about truth in the first place, which should have been abundantly clear to everyone by now.
That would only be because you chose not to distinguish it. The words differ because the sentiment differs. Both sides are not "the same" manifestly. This does not mean both candidates were not morons.
The fact that you're likening a sparing few narrowly targeted tarrifs to capriciously applied illegal global tarrifs suggests you're not quite looking at things fairly.
> "Both sides are the same" is the last bastion of denial.
This is hyperpartisan bullshit that you obviously wouldn't say if someone were choosing between a red shirt and a blue shirt. If you support some political candidate, defend them on the merits of their positions and capabilities, not by repeating content-free jingles.
Or even worse, based on unexplored counterfactuals: "X" did this, don't you wish you picked "Y"? As if the fact that the red shirt turned out to be flammable means that the blue shirt wouldn't have been. Then when somebody points out that the labels are the same, "whataboutism!"
Even "the last bastion" is just a cynical flourish to associate this sentiment with a saying that has value to people on its own merits.
> cope
And this is twitter/online addiction. With an opposition like this, Trump will be president until the heart attack kills him. Addicted to self-regard.
>This is hyperpartisan bullshit that you obviously wouldn't say if someone were choosing between a red shirt and a blue shirt.
I voted for Dean Phillips in the primary. I'm extremely angry at the DNC. I thought they treated Mitt Romney and John McCain like garbage for absolutely no reason. I would have happily voted for Romney over both Clinton and Trump in 2016. I'm not some partisan hack. That said, it wasn't a difficult choice last election.
Donald Trump is an exceptionally corrupt, delusional, moronic President. He pretends that doing it out in the open makes it okay.
He's literally flying around in a Qatari bribe. This level of corruption and self-dealing is exceptional.
I'd say if I have to chose between a moron and a corrupt moron, I'd say let the whole thing collapse. The "world burning" because one of the two parties can't get elected is a bunch of bs. The whole thing is a sham and trying to get people to vote because the other party is worse just shows how bad you are.
I'm not equating them, I'm literally saying to ignore these parts (most left-wing part of Dems - DSA, most right-wing part of Reps - fascist part of MAGA) of the two parties when comparing. I support DSA, it's the only alternative there is in the USA.
It's a race to the bottom and I understand everyone who does not vote (for one of the 2 major parties) on the condition that they don't give up hope but start to learn and organize for real change.
Race to the bottom can be fixed if we consistently don't buy the lemon. Say there's a candidate who wants 2 genocides and one who wants 7. If we pick the 2, and do that consistently, eventually the other one realises they can win by only supporting 1 genocide, and then the one with 2 loses and realises they can win by supporting 0 genocides. Kicking and screaming, but we get there eventually.
This only works if we consistently vote for the less bad candidate. If we just vote for whoever isn't in power right now, both parties can get worse and still win.
