Biden presidency and 2024 election campaign

[Magpietothemax]

^ what's funny is that it's the democrats fixation of Trump that's keeping him popular. 90% of the Trump news is Democrat initiated.

^There is alot of truth in this statement.
Biden is flabbergasted that his program of genocide of the Palestinians has not made him popular in the US.
His policies of real wage cuts, slashing social security spending, reimposition of student debt, lifting of all covid measures such as the eviction moratorium, immigration policies virtually the same as Trumps...have created a situation in which Biden is not viewed as any kind of positive alternative to Trump.
Due to the blatant war mongering of the Biden administration in Ukraine, far right republicans can even tap into anti-war sentiment by opposing the Biden administration's massive military assistance packages to the Zelensky government, ie for their own tactical purposes, fascistic Republicans can posture as öpponents of war.
This is how far to the right the Biden Administration is.
It is willing to adopt all of the anti-immigration policies of Trump, provided that the Republicans allow the military finance package for Ukraine to go through.
The Democrats have joined with fascist Repbublicans in condemning all opposition to the genocide of the Palestinians as "anti-Semitic", and attempting to criminalise support for Palestine.
The unions (AFL-CIO) have been working blatantly gtogether with the Biden Administration to call off strikes, and to impose real wage cuts in all industries.
Under such conditions, where official politics is under the stranglehold of two extremely right wing parties, it is small wonder that Trump can take advantage of the idiocies uttered by Biden and other high ranking Democrats

[pietillidie]

^I don't buy that for a second. It's at this juncture where you persistently elide the general (cultual context) and the particular (the individual leader).

In Biden's case, first, there's the default American position. He can be critiqued for not opposing it but he can't be critiqued for reflecting it; he's part of society, not living on Mars. Then, there's his actual individual position, which is not clear. I suspect he would've roped in Netanyahu far more this side of Iraq if he could, though that's just a guess. He might be completely conflicted for all we know.

But the assumption from the outset has to be that normal individuals stand inside society as children of society, particularly a public-facing institutionalist like Biden. Having said that, Biden's opponent is unusual in that he's abnormal and extremely pathological, which gives him an enormous advantage in the current reactionary, populist social media world. And Trump could blow the planet up, so the cost of stopping him is not the simple calculation implied by those who imagine the world can't get any worse; it most certainly can, even if not for Palestinians.

If Biden opposed Israel in a way that would satisfy you, not only would he not have survived politics for five minutes, an electorally even larger group of nationalists, Christian crazies and Trumpists would simply flip their view. So, instead of pretending to care for Palestinians, they would attack Biden for not opposing a terrorist state and backing an ally, and being weak and un-American. Remember, this is no small group given it now controls the GOP. Its views are completely flexible, with 'right' only being defined by its team 'winning'.

Meanwhile, electorates do in many ways get what they deserve. Both the neocon imperialist mainstream and Trumpists are just as complicit in the oppression of average Mo Palestinians in the sense that the outcome for Palestinians reflects both American history and the current instability of American politics.

Whether it's 'elites' or 'classes' or 'power' or 'the people', extremely low-resolution constructs are a mile off capturing the human condition, which is a bafflingly complex product of economic, cultural, geographical, historical, social, familial and psychiatric forces.

The left is clueless about the economy, business and brute power. The right is clueless about culture, social systems, and disciplined thought systems such as science. Meanwhile, all of us are dithering when trying to account for the interplay between the general (society, culture, systems and blocs) and the particular (the self and the local). But we have to at least try to accommodate the full range of factors and be consistent in our analysis.

[David]

Maine has now joined Colorado in disqualifying Trump from running under the 14th amendment.

[What'sinaname]

The Democrats are pathetically predictable.

America is headed for civil war. Regardless of the outcome of the next election, conservatives won't accept a Democrat win in the same was liberals won't accept a Republican win.

[Jezza]

The Democrats are pathetically predictable.

America is headed for civil war. Regardless of the outcome of the next election, conservatives won't accept a Democrat win in the same was liberals won't accept a Republican win.

The way it's going, a national divorce might be on the cards.

[pietillidie]

^The Supreme Court wanted supreme power; now they've got it. The best outcome is for the conservative justices rule out Trump. That means pursuing a sequence whereby he is ruled out by the incontrovertible fact of one or more of his cases, the most egregious being one of the electoral interference cases such as Georgia.

Meanwhile, one of the lesser loonies such as Haley needs to beat him in a primary.

The fact is, he has lived by the sword by using the legal system all through his life, so anyone complaining about the law being applied to him is being disingenuous; he is the architect of his own demise.

Meanwhile, his cult have suspended all commonsense standards entertaining him from the start, while the Christian right has suspended its own belief system to utilise him. He's a serial bankrup, serial liar, fraud, rapist, seditionist and groper whom you would never lend money to, never entrust with a secret, never expect to do anything for the common good at his own expense, and never ever leave your daughter alone with. Everyone and every organisation who associates with him either goes broke and/or ends up in prison.

Sanity and order only lies in him facing the consequences of his own actions for the first time in his entire life. He is an horrific global risk who is only going to become increasingly erratic, as impossible at it might seem.

[Magpietothemax]

The Democrats are pathetically predictable.

America is headed for civil war. Regardless of the outcome of the next election, conservatives won't accept a Democrat win in the same was liberals won't accept a Republican win.

-agreed. There is now the real possibility that the result of the 2024 election will be rejected by large sections of the United States as unconstitutional and illegal.

What will Trump's fascist supporters be capable of in states that bar Trump from contesting the election?

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/1 ... s-d30.html

[What'sinaname]

Biden’s weakness is now going to see China flex its muscle and North Korea is also rattling its Sabre.

Not surprise when the mighty US Navy under Biden can’t even deal with Houthi pirates.

[Magpietothemax]

Biden’s weakness is now going to see China flex its muscle and North Korea is also rattling its Sabre.

Not surprise when the mighty US Navy under Biden can’t even deal with Houthi pirates.

Your entire framework of analysis is an inversion of reality. The aggressor is not China, but US imperialism.

[What'sinaname]

Biden’s weakness is now going to see China flex its muscle and North Korea is also rattling its Sabre.

Not surprise when the mighty US Navy under Biden can’t even deal with Houthi pirates.

Your entire framework of analysis is an inversion of reality. The aggressor is not China, but US imperialism.

I guess you think Ukraine is the aggressor.

[stui magpie]

^

His whole world view is like something from Bizarro world. It would be funny if he didn't take it so seriously.

[Magpietothemax]

Biden’s weakness is now going to see China flex its muscle and North Korea is also rattling its Sabre.

Not surprise when the mighty US Navy under Biden can’t even deal with Houthi pirates.

Your entire framework of analysis is an inversion of reality. The aggressor is not China, but US imperialism.

I guess you think Ukraine is the aggressor.

^In a simpleton's view of history, whoever fires the first shot is the aggressor.
That is why the Israeli government stood down its security forces, knowing that an attack by Hamas was likely, in order to create the impression that Hamas "fired the first shot". Then all the simpletons out there think that Hamas is the aggressor.
Russia fired the first shot by invading Ukraine. All the simpletons out there look at that one fact and think that Russia is the aggressor.
The thought doesn't enter their head to consider what led up to the first shot, because all that counts for them is that one first shot. That is where they start their analysis, and that is where they finish.

[David]

What I find remarkable is how few people on either side seem to recognise that Israel and Russia are broadly similar actors in these two conflicts, whereas Ukraine and Palestine are the colonised neighbours fighting for sovereignty.

Netanyahu and Putin have near-identical roles in their respective countries, too: both clinging on to power by any means over the better part of two decades; both aligning with militarist nationalist forces and religious extremists; both using the courts to degrade democracy and protect their own wealth; both cracking down on dissidents at home and using the spectre of foreign boogiemen over the border to entrench their own power.

Even the respective invasions had similar pretexts: Israel had October 7; Russia had the Maidan uprising and Ukrainian military strikes on separatist-held eastern provinces. Plenty of civilian casualties in each case. Neither of the invading powers acknowledge, though, their own quite recent and ongoing messy and violent activities in those same regions, or how inextricably those supposed first strikes are bound up in those histories.

Yet people on the right and left alike get confused by the fact that the US supports and gives weapons to one regime and not the other, and allow it to affect their own orientations to these conflicts. Surely we should know by now that American alliances only serve their own tactical geopolitical interests and have nothing whatsoever to do with freedom, democracy, human rights or whatever else they give lip service to. We need to see through that and understand the basic principles at play, which are that the aggressor state must stand down, a peace process must be fast-tracked, and the sovereignty of Ukraine and Palestine over their own territory must be upheld.

[Magpietothemax]

What I find remarkable is how few people on either side seem to recognise that Israel and Russia are broadly similar actors in these two conflicts, whereas Ukraine and Palestine are the colonised neighbours fighting for sovereignty.

Netanyahu and Putin have near-identical roles in their respective countries, too: both clinging on to power by any means over the better part of two decades; both aligning with militarist nationalist forces and religious extremists; both using the courts to degrade democracy and protect their own wealth; both cracking down on dissidents at home and using the spectre of foreign boogiemen over the border to entrench their own power.

Even the respective invasions had similar pretexts: Israel had October 7; Russia had the Maidan uprising and Ukrainian military strikes on separatist-held eastern provinces. Plenty of civilian casualties in each case. Neither of the invading powers acknowledge, though, their own quite recent and ongoing messy and violent activities in those same regions, or how inextricably those supposed first strikes are bound up in those histories.

Yet people on the right and left alike get confused by the fact that the US supports and gives weapons to one regime and not the other, and allow it to affect their own orientations to these conflicts. Surely we should know by now that American alliances only serve their own tactical geopolitical interests and have nothing whatsoever to do with freedom, democracy, human rights or whatever else they give lip service to. We need to see through that and understand the basic principles at play, which are that the aggressor state must stand down, a peace process must be fast-tracked, and the sovereignty of Ukraine and Palestine over their own territory must be upheld.

1) It is impossible to determine who the agressor state is without a historical analysis of the years leading up to the conflict.
2) I am opposed to the Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine because this invasion defends only the interests of a parasitic capitalist oligarchy in russia.
Russia has attempted a few times to negotiate a cease fire, but it is the US government which at all times has sabotaged these attempts. It is the US government which is utterly opposed to a ceasefire in Ukraine, and it is the US government which is striving at all times to escalate the conflict.

Trotsky predicted that the world will be faced with the "volcanic eruption of US imperialism" over 80 years ago. That is what we are witnessing today. The most basic principle at play today is that wherever the US is involved (and that is everywhere), it is the major aggressor.

The crucial and fundamental difference between the roles of Netahanyu and Putin is that Netahanyu is the proxy of US imperialism, while the Putin regime is the target of US imperialism, but in either case it is US imperialism which is driving on the conflict.

[pietillidie]

^Do you hear yourself? By god you say some silly things. Hegemons act like hegemons; no one with half a brain needed Trotsky to predict that for them. But then to take that to ridiculous lengths by reducing the entirety of Russian identity to a mere reaction against America is just as absurd, not to mention ethnocentric.

You are addicted to reducing the actions of 8b people to the whim, or reaction to the whim, of 340m people. Have you thought through the numbers? The last time we heard something as unmoored on Nick's it was Muslims taking over the world, despite most of the world not being Muslim.

There is a massive difference between an outweighted influence and a totalising influence. Sure, America is the superpower, but it can't even control Afghanistan, Israel, its southern border or its own population, let alone the EU, Russia, China and the Middle East. Yet there you are reducing a vast world you've seen very little of, and experienced very little of, to the mere desire of the Great Satan.