Whenever I talk to any Democrat supporters, they by-default cheer their Presidents and then I’ve to remind them of their leader’s illegal wars and war crimes. They condemn those acts and they go back to their cheerleading role - Why do they keep forgetting atrocities committed by their leaders? Why do they accept war criminals as their leader?
I saw ton of people defending the biggest war monger Hillary Clinton here
It’s different for different people. At the end of the day, all the status quo needs to continue is a lack of effective organized resistance, not full support.
That said, from some anecdotal experience: Some of them just don’t care. Politics comes up with my parents a lot. They’re Democrats, but if you talk to them long enough, you realize they’re just functionally Republicans who are embarrassed by the aesthetics of the GOP. The problems they’ve had with people like Trump or Bush have essentially nothing to do with their awful policies and more to do with them looking stupid. They pretty much unquestionably support US imperialism and are depressingly Zionist. Sometimes this seems like it’s down to a lack of historical knowledge, but honestly if you push them on it enough you eventually break out of the loop of America always being the good guy to just a basic “might makes right” and “it’s us vs them” mentality which you’d normally associate with conservatives.
For example, when I’ve spoken to my Dad about Iran, his position ultimately boiled down to “They’re the bad guys. Trump should be attacking them, he’s just doing it in a stupid way that isn’t working.” The fact that the US isn’t merely not waging an effective war, but actively committing war crimes like bombing schools? Unimportant. The fact that we only have the current Iranian government because of previous US meddling? “That was so long ago.” The fact that the last time they were told a country we were targeting had WMDs, it was a lie? Doesn’t even register. When he said someone should do something about them having nukes, I asked if someone should do something about the US since we have the most nukes and he said something like “I’d like to see them try.” The fact that we are currently allied with a literal monarchy in the region? /shrug. When the conversation drifted briefly to Vietnam, he said that either we shouldn’t have gotten involved or we should have done even more. We just didn’t try hard enough to win… There are still children being born in Vietnam with birth defects due to agent orange. But yeah, we totally didn’t inflict enough violence on them.
To the extent that either of them does take an interest in history, it is almost solely through the lens of documentaries glazing the “great men” of our history while ignoring or downplaying their atrocities.
I think my analysis of their kind of politics is that they have enough shame to maintain their ignorance in order to have cover for supporting the things they actually want. You push that ignorance hard enough and the “freedom and democracy” mask slips off to reveal what amounts to little more than support for white supremacy and fascism as long as it doesn’t affect them or make them look bad.
I’m sure there are others that are simply ignorant and could be convinced with enough evidence. I suppose I was one of them. How could I not be? I grew up with the propaganda version of American history where we were the good guys, except for the times when we weren’t, but those are in the past and we’re better now. It wasn’t until near the end of HS that I started getting a more nuanced view of history and once I understood that my politics weren’t actually aligned with my values, I changed. But even then, the effects of the propaganda are so strong that even today, knowing what I know, I just don’t get the visceral reaction to these past atrocities that they deserve. I know they’re wrong, I just am so removed from them that it’s hard to fully empathize beyond a conscious, intellectual level.
There may be more types, but those are my primary experiences. People who are either currently misinformed or people who actively delude themselves so they don’t look like or believe themselves to be similar to the vulgar hicks they view the Republicans as.
EDIT: I also always want to caution against equating the voters with the people at large. The vast majority of the country doesn’t vote. Only some of that is apathetic people. A lot of people are pushed out by deliberate voter suppression tactics. I’d wager that those voters are way more likely to be anti-imperialists, but they don’t get represented by the ballots and media.
The US didn’t just magically turn out this way because everyone wanted it. From the very founding of the country, the system of government that was set up was explicitly designed to limit the influence of popular opinion. You’ve definitely learned about this in school, but it was probably framed to you in terms of “Not letting a majority oppress a minority” without explaining that the “minorities” the founders wanted to protect were white, protestant, land owning men who then turned around and oppressed all the real minorities.
i guess not all democrat supporters are historians. we had biases taught at a young age with social studies and stuff. and it’s easier to compare presidents to past ones. kinda why conservatives default cheer trump cause he’s ‘better’ than biden obama etc.
like trump basically started a war, and by the time alls said and done. we’re way too busy doing damage control, reparations, complex PR and stuff. it’s not forgotten but we work on the present.
Hm.
Most people my age support Democrats only in opposition to the current admin.
Almost everyone I know that’s my age fucking hates the democrats though.
But people I talk that are my parents age are more pro Democrat (or MAGA, for that matter).
Just a different experience, maybe I live in a more progressive area.
Sounds fucking frustrating.
Because government does things that large populaces can’t or won’t do for themselves. Sometimes that’s things like Social Security, regulating companies so they don’t enslave us or dump DDT all over the place, or organizing enough coordinated violence to prevent other, more aggressive governments from coming in and taking over. Sometimes, usually when the people aren’t paying enough attention, it’s horrible things like building Gitmo or supporting Israel.
Ideally, everyone would be well-informed and engaged enough to immediately hold government accountable when it does horrible things in our names, but for a lot of people life is hard, and they’ve been actively discouraged from having that education and engagement, usually by one flavor or another of psychopath who wants to get away with their atrocities and not be answerable to a decently informed and engaged electorate.
Democrats do, on balance, care more about their leaders committing atrocities than Republicans do, but the phenomenon of “I just can’t think about that right now, I’ve got other things going on” is a universal experience.
It’s right to be outraged by this complacency, and I don’t even think anyone is wrong for wanting to disengage from any political party or even politics as a whole in response, but wanting to remain morally pure and wanting to achieve anything of merit within the system we currently have are mutually exclusive goals.
If someone finds politics as a whole, and all of the moral compromises involved, so abhorrent that they don’t want to engage at all, I get it, but they’d really better start looking up how to engage in violent resistance, because change either comes through politics and all of its attendant compromises or through violence, there’s no third alternative.
Because the alternate is literally fascism. Until we do away with first past the post, there are only two real choices. And if you don’t choose the lesser of two evils, then you’re part of the problem and you’re literally responsible for people dying.
The question was about behavior. Imagine if there are 4 children - Voting Blue kills 2 children and voting Red kills 3 children. By voting Blue - we’ve saved 1 child and start celebrating. The problem here is the behavior of cheering such leadership, by cheering we’re burying the core problem of “Child killing” and erasing the acknowledgement of “No child should be killed” ideal from the mind of the masses.
Yeah. The criticism of Biden in Gaza was valid, but Gaza wasn’t on the ballot in 2024. A Trump election meant US support of more Israeli aggression.
Well. It was on the ballot. It just wasn’t likely to win because it wasn’t an issue considered important by the two major parties. You could have voted PSL or Green or one of the other parties, as over three million people did in the last election.
Besides, by that logic, Israeli aggression wasn’t on the ballot either! Do you think Harris would have stopped Israel from starting war with Iran? The war with Iran was already beginning in 2024 before Trump even got into office. Maybe it would have taken a different form, maybe it wouldn’t have happened this year, but Israel was going to attack Iran and the US was going to follow.
I don’t think Harris would have bombed Iran.
But hey, it is better to do something that feels good than something which affects change, right?
There was already an economic war on Iran, which was already killing people and destabilizing their government. Harris would have waited a few more years for the economic war to collapse Iran’s government and turn it into a situation similar to Syria, and only then would have started bombing. By then, Iran might not have been able to exert control over traffic through Hormuz.
Harris would have been a better manager of the empire. Instead, we got Trump, who is on track to lose to Iran.
Ahh, so you’re an accelerationist.
I don’t think you know what that means.
Accelerationism would mean voting for Harris because she’d be a better manager of the empire.
No. Wanting Trump to win is accelerationist because he’s going to cause the empire to fall faster due to incompetence.
You aren’t angry at Democrats for war crimes, you’re angry at them because they are better at governing.
Because for the most part, Americans are bloodthirsty morons.
Reasonable people don’t give a fuck about party loyalty. Your question is antagonistic propaganda and not worth my fucking time. Go do something that matters.
There are party loyalists out there. Unfortunately, they constitute the majority of population and they vote and decide who governs you. Can’t neglect these unconscious/unaware populace.
I despise Democrats (most of them), but the alternative is so much worse, and even the ones I like are pretty flawed. I liked a lot of stuff about Obama, and dislike a lot of stuff about him and the stuff I dislike is fairly major, but he was still one of the better presidents we’ve had as a country.
America is a deeply flawed country, and is getting worse but it’s not because we elected to many Democrats. With the current state of Republicans voting or not voting in a way that will give them more seats at the table is actively making this country worse. Vote with your heart and mind in primaries, vote with your mind in the real election, and most importantly vote. We cannot shift left of people refuse to vote, the right votes, the selfish center votes, the people who want the country to be to the left don’t unless they are passionate of about the politician. We can’t shift left until the left voting block is respected because they will vote every time.
Democrats and Republicans are not the same even if Democrats suck.
Typical democrat
US has two party system. You either vote for the seemingly conservative corporate puppet war criminal in camp A, or vote for the seemingly liberal corporate puppet war criminal in camp B.
This and people tend to respond to cognitive dissonance by rationalizing / repressing awareness. I’ve voted for less bad candidate, now I’ll convince myself that was actually a good thing.
Time to vote. Here are your options
The most obnoxious Democrat supporters have their whole ego caught up in being a “good person” by having the correct ideological positions. Admitting that their “team” is full of war criminals would directly challenge their egos and is thus summarily dismissed. They are idealists, and thus disconnected from material reality. They tend to be quite caught up in the notion of “electability” - the idea that they shouldn’t back candidates or platforms they actually want, but those calculated to appeal to the largest number, which is always smack dab in the center of the Overton window, in their estimation. (Of course, ironically, a true socialist platform would have the greatest appeal were not USians so propagandized against it.) I have literally had liberals tell me that though they are not themselves racist, they need a candidate that would be accepted by racists. I think more often than not, they cry “electability” so they have an excuse for supporting a conservative candidate while simultaneously calling themselves “progressive”.
This is to say nothing of the fact that liberalism is a conservative ideology, and that it is more than happy to back imperialism if it means the spoils can subsidize their lifestyle. Or in other words, Democrats will cheer for any war if it keeps their Starbucks cheap and their gas tank filled. They are not anti-war at all. They oppose the appearance of warmongering, but not the actions themselves; they want plausible deniability so they can go back to brunch.
Tl;dr - Democrats are bad people who pretend to be good people and back war criminals because they like imperialism, no matter what excuses they make for it.
I mean it’s the same thing when you confront Republicans about it. Both parties have supporters who just want to support that party, and any logic against that gets them in defense mode
politics as sports will kill everyone
Somewhere along the way we stopped holding them accountable.
It probably started with the Nixon pardon and then continued with Reagan who should have actually been held accountable for his treason with the Iran Contra scandals.
It’s just been downhill since and Trump has taken it to a whole new level of corruption and was crimes.
I would love to see Obama held accountable for his drone policies, Biden for is support of genocide, Trump for everything, W. For his war crimes.
It probably started with the Nixon pardon and then continued with Reagan who should have actually been held accountable for his treason with the Iran Contra scandals.
It’s a thread specifically asking about Democrat leaders, and you name two of the most notorious crooked Republicans to ever hold office (prior to 2016).
in a dipolar political environment you will have two coalitions of the same basic political beliefs form representing more and less extreme versions of the same core beliefs. it is the republicans listed who are associated with the shift rightward in the dipolar political environment, however, the democrats then just… operate in that environment. for example. it was under w bush we got the patriot act, but it wae under obama that all of the government spying edward snowden revealed occurred. the republicans break open some clay pot equivalent of pandora’s box, but then the democrats weild those powers without accountability because no president has been accountable to anyone since the 1970s.
so what do we do about this? to me it seems that the best course is to focus on improving things where you can. generally, that’s going to be locally in your neighborhood. anytime you vote, don’t vote based on one side or the other side being the side for good or the side for evil. they’re ultimately both neo-liberal or neo-conservative wings of the same fascist party. instead ask which candidate is going to make local organizing harder and work to avoid letting them get into office.
Blaming the Republicans for the Democrats is exactly the point the OP is making. Nixon and Reagan didn’t make Clinton rape anyone, order an illegal war, or likely have dissidents murdered. They didn’t make Obama also engage in an illegal war in Libya. Those were choices they decided to make, they had the option to be better.
exactly. both parties fundamentally support and enable eachother. it’s a decision between coke and pepsi. not enough people are aware of ale-8 or are able to get the word out about ale-8 for ale-8 to become viable without fundamental systemic changes to how all of this works. so for the most part, you should be out in the streets normalizing that an annual choice between two cola products is an illusion of choice, and then when you cast your ballot do so with the perspective of what it is on that ballot that gives you more room to have conversations about ginger-ale, orange soda, citrus drink, sassparilla, or even water.
we have a problem in this country where somehow not enough people know the difference between the two parties, and at the same time not enough people know how little that difference truly is. if we want to change this we have to educate people, and if we want to do that we have to focus less on the teams and more on the rules that underlay the sport
This is most Americans, no matter what camp they root for, for most of their leaders. And you have plenty to choose from although recently I imagine the Republicans have edged ahead in this depressing horse race. Thank you for rage baiting with us today.
Money > Ethics. Its pretty simple, everyone has a price. People will ignore or downplay the shitty things if you keep a certain level of contentment.
It’s the degeneracy into idolism. Idols can do no wrong.
