this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Thanks for agreeing with me that on the biggest most important issues both sides are the same
Are you conflating corporatism and concentration camps because they start with the same letter or are you really this fucking stupid?
Concentration camps have been a thing for most of the US' existence, have become super widespread in recent decades (as in, the children in cages) and they're completely bipartisan. At one point, there were twice as many children detained under Biden than at Trump's highest.
You might not have known it until now (doubtful) but if I know democrats, you're gonna handwave it away even though you no longer have that excuse. Democrats are no more than the left wing of fascism and so is anyone who treats these abuses as irrelevant distractions from the real issues, that is, the comforts of white people.
Ruining the planet for everyone is worse than anything else and on that issue both sides are the same
It'll be ruined much faster with the red party in control. I guess we are gonna speed run the decline thanks to people like you.
The irony of Biden approving more drilling and selling more protected land than any other president in history makes this comment so freaking funny.
Sure Trump is trying to best Biden on that front, but the fact that a Democrat already had that mantel at all and you have the nerve to comment this is just peak.
If the only options are to keep ruining the world at a steady pace or speed it up then we're cooked anyway (literally)
Driving off the cliff at 95 mph vs. 100 mph, and trying to argue there's a difference
More like driving off with your foot on the gas pedal vs driving off with your foot on the brake.
At least one option has a chance of stopping you from going off the cliff. The other just wants to guarantee you get thrown off the edge.
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/13/1015581092/biden-promised-to-end-new-drilling-on-federal-land-but-approvals-are-up
That's what you're calling a brake
Okay, I'll admit my analogy was a bit flawed. (Oh the joys of staying up much too late and arguing online) Here's a better one:
One is driving off the edge while holding down the acceleration, screaming about how he wants to go faster. The other is holding down the acceleration less, screaming about how he thinks we should go slower but isn't taking his foot off the gas.
If you had to try and convince one of them to stop, or if you wanted to buy yourself the most time before going off the edge, which would you pick?
Genocide bad? Oh my god talk about a lack of nuance 🤓
I get the argument, I really do. I used to make it, too.
But this guy:
Was told 30+ years ago that we desperately need to hit the brakes. He has failed to do so because he's wholly in the pocket of fossil fuel companies, and knows he's among the most insulated from the worst effects of the crisis.
The answer to "which would you rather convince" is that neither can be convinced. One just has to put up a bit of a facade because more of his voters take the issue (marginally) more seriously. If that guy hasn't done it in a generation, why would he do it now?
It's also getting harder to justify the "accelerating less" part when Democrats do stuff like that article describes.
I get that. The problem for me is that this is a systemic issue, and it's something that's going to happen whether or not you as an individual participate, but it will impact your ability as an individual to fight for change.
We have a two-party duopoly. We have two bad choices. One is worse than the other, but neither will save us outright.
But if I'm going to do any kind of action to change that, I'm going to want the most favorable possible party in power. If you want to, say, fund more social programs, you're going to watch Democrats possibly let you implement it, while Republicans will actively strip away what already exists the same day they get into office, then bar any new progress for the length of their term.
If you want to implement a system like ranked choice voting, you don't want a wannabe dictator in power, because he's obviously not going to make that as easy for you.
I don't think the Democrats will actually save us in any way, nor do I think they're currently pushing us in a very good direction overall, but the last thing I want is to increase the chance of someone like Trump staying in office by acting as though the Democrats are exactly equal, because all that will do is make any movement against right-wing policy extraordinarily difficult.
If I want to give myself the best odds of making a change, I want the people most sympathetic, even if only a little more than the alternative, to my cause, and right now, that's the Democratic party, as unfortunate and depressing as that may be.
I also used to make this argument. And for a few decades after Democrats stopped routinely trying to do major things for their constituents (the 60s), it had some merit.
But since the scientific community started really sounding the climate change alarm bells in the early 90s, we've had 20 years of Democrats in charge. They've failed to meaningfully address the issue, and failed to either keep Republicans out of office or implement policies strong enough to withstand Republican attacks. We tried it the way you're suggesting and it hasn't worked.
We're at the point where either Democrats need to be forced to radically change their platform, or the party needs to be destroyed so we can get at least one decent option. It doesn't help that the last 30+ years of inaction means we can't afford another 30 years of making small changes and hoping against hope that some new technology solves the problem for us.
If you can't see the difference between a centrist party and a far-right fascist one, then I hold no hope for your political literacy going forward.
I can see that Biden held twice children at the border at one time than Trump at his highest. I can see that weapons and money to Israel skyrocketed under Biden. I can see that Obama alone prosecuted more whistleblowers than the US had prosecuted in its entire history.
If you only count it as fascism when it starts affecting white people half as much as it was affecting the rest of us then you can't be surprised we consider you just as much of a fascist as them.
In your own source it very clearly outlines that it was not due to a more hostile border policy, but rather an increase in the number of people actually showing up at the border in the first place.
Meanwhile, Trump is not only keeping those people there, but also ending the refugee resettlement program, deporting people to El Salvador without due process, actively spreading misinformation about immigrants, and black-bagging American citizens, including native Americans.
Did Biden do some god awful things? Of course he fucking did. But what Trump is doing (and especially what he says he wants to do more of) is infinitely worse than what Biden did.
And here's the secretary of state chosen by Trump actively expediting 4 billion dollars of additional military assistance to Israel while directly mentioning the fact that it goes against the Biden admin's partial arms embargo.
If you wanted to reduce the amount of aid being given to Israel, maybe start with the party that did something to limit the aid being given to a degree, instead of the one actively adding on even more while repealing the limits.
Yep, that's awful too. Too bad your own source also mentions that "six cases were tried during the presidency of Donald Trump between 2017 and 2021." and guess what? Trump is now actively trying to fire the head of the agency that protects government whistleblowers.
If you can't see the pattern of Republicans just being Democrats but substantially worse, then it's no surprise you pull this "both sides are the same" argument.
Does anybody like the fact that the Democrats are just the watered down fascist party? Of course not. But if you're going to try and better this fucking country, you don't do that by saying "the fascists and the less fascist people are identical, actually" and then ruin your own chances of having a more sympathetic administration by easily allowing the fascists to trick people into thinking they're just like the Democrats, and so more Democrat voters should feel okay with voting for them and their substantially worse policies.
I've said it before to so many people on this platform, and I'll say it again: You do not increase your chances of enacting beneficial changes to this country when you support the larger evil, or act as though the larger evil and the lesser evil are identical. All you do is make it easier for the larger evil to gain power, no matter how much you personally advocate for better policies.
Again, your only recourse is "Trump did it too" that's what I'm saying, jesus fucking christ. They're not staving off fascism, they're taking turns ramping it up in different places. When it comes to migrants and foreigners, their policies are the same; sometimes they change tactics or optics, but the end goal remains unchanged. You're hammering home the same point while saying it proves that democrats are much better. No they fucking ain't.
So... it's okay because he was doing what Trump was doing, but a little less per migrant? There is, then, an acceptable rate of people in concentration camps, Trump was just a bit too loose with it.
I don't give a single shit if they're 10% worse for gringos, they're just as bad and in a lot of ways much worse for the rest of the world. It was Biden who pushed the doomsday clock closest to midnight than it'd been since the cuban missile crisis. It was Obama who ramped up the drone bombing campaign, it was Clinton who ordered Gaddafi killed, it was Biden who drafted the 90s crime bill that made the US the most incarcerated population in the entire world.
Matter of fact, whenever something got incredibly shitty for US citizens, you can flip a coin on whether it was Reagan who did it or Jim Crow Joe.
I make an extraordinarily clear point that Trump is just doing the same type of thing, but substantially worse. I'm not saying "Trump did it too," I'm saying "Trump did it even worse." If I want to reduce the overall harm in a situation, I don't get that by calling every option identical when some are less bad than others.
I don't recall Democrats deporting people to foreign countries like El Salvador without due process while also completely ending the legal asylum seeking processes in this country.
It seems like you missed the part where I explicitly said it wasn't okay, and that it was simply less bad than what Trump is doing. Read my words instead of assuming my opinions.
Just listing off the bad things Democrats have done without mentioning a single bad thing Trump has done in order to justify your moronic both sides argument is ridiculous.
I don't know how many fucking times I'll have to say this. The Democrats are obviously shitty, but that doesn't mean that the substantially worse party is identical.
You can't separate your own emotions against the Democrats from the reality that the Republicans are just the Democrats but even worse, so you resort to saying they're both the same, then provide no sensible solutions other than "the world should be this way... somehow."
If you want to do good shit in this world, don't make it easier for the worst of the two parties to get in power by claiming they're the same as the lesser evil.
If you have two people, one dropping 500 bombs on innocent people, and one dropping 1,000 bombs on innocent people, but both of them could have dropped more, and the one dropping 1,000 says he wants to drop 1,500, then if my goal is to stop the bombs being dropped on people, I don't go "both sides are the same because they're both bombing people," I go "I should do my best to ensure that the one dropping 1,000 bombs is the least likely to stay in power so that I can attempt to convince the people only dropping 500 bombs to drop less."
Does it mean that the one dropping 500 bombs is a good person? Of course fucking not. Does it mean I support them as an individual? Of course not. But if my goal is to stop people being bombed, I'm going to prefer the people already dropping the least bombs, because they'll be the most easily convinced/forced to change.
I'm tired of arguing with people who don't seem to be capable of understanding any level of fucking nuance, so I'll be ending this conversation here. Feel free to argue to the void if you'd like.
Genocide denier
You're seriously trying to use "The Trump admin said Biden was weak on Israel" as an argument that Biden was actually weak on Israel. Do you give so much trust to Trump in other contexts? Or only when it lets you defend genocide
Both parties are ruining the planet, we agree on that, let's leave it there
No because that is only a half truth. You are willfully ignorant of the other half of the equation. One side is measurably more damaging to the US and the world overall. You don't get to "both sides" this.
Biden approved more and more fracking projects and oil exctraction hit record rates. Just because NBC kept saying everything was okay now doesn't mean that it was, some of us were paying as much attention then as we did under Trump, unlike dems.
Ok, go on, show us the measurements
And yet one of them does significantly more to ruin the planet than the other.
If you want the highest possible chance of changing the world for the better, you want a party in power that is the least bad of the options available to you. That doesn't mean that party is good in itself, but it's certainly the best chance you'll get.
If you want to save the climate, for instance, the party that's open to developing more clean energy, even if they still support fossil fuels in some capacity, is better than the one actively dismantling climate regulations, halting clean energy development, and increasing our fossil fuel production to an even higher rate.
Nobody likes this duopoly, but when you live under one, you have to pick the side that will do the least harm in order to implement your own goals to reduce harm further.
This doesn't mean the Democrats are inherently good, but they're certainly going to give you a better shot at improving the world than the neo-Nazis will.
Sure, I've now got nothing left to say.
I honestly thought reddit was bad but the "both siders are evil" morons here are way worse.
"People who hate burgerland are morons" -> thats pretty much all foreigners -> "foreigners are evil we must genocide them" <- yank logic