this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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This is literally provably false. Biden, for all his faults, pushed through a student loan cancelation program.
It was blocked by the Trump controlled Supreme Court.
Elections matter. If Trump didn’t put 3 Supreme Court justices in place to block it people would be better off.
Don’t both sides this. It might make you feel smart but it results in harm.
There's an argument to be made that Biden only pushed that stuff through knowing it'd get blocked. Long time tactic by politicians to introduce big things to look good when they know it'll fail, yet it's rarely introduced during times when they had full control.
I mean you can make an argument, but I think the burden of proof would be on you there.
The last time the Dems had control they passed the ACA.
Ooh the ACA!
You mean that Heritage Foundation created Healthcare band-aid that was originally implemented by a Republican governor that bent over backwards to further enshrine for profit private insurers, like United Healthcare, in our perverse deathcare system where the primary issue was the profit motive making American Healthcare unsustainably expensive with the some of the poorest results in the developed world because greed?
That plan Obama instutituted after the people screamed "Please help us supposedly leftwing Obama from this for profit healthcare hellscape! Here have a super majority!"
👏Yeah, that worked a treat, Americans are really satisfied with their healthcare now.
Now go ahead and tell me about how they couldn't whip Joe Manchin into shape so it's all they could do, because there's always an excuse. Decade after decade passes, and the people are told they just need to be more patient. Maybe they'll decide to make an equitable economy and non-exploitative Healthcare in a few thousand years.
Good fucking grift, by both parties. Left and right since Reagan have been little more than a sideshow to distract from class occupation, class subjugation, and class slaughter for profit.
I vote blue out of the tiniest of harm reduction, not hope, because rainbow ribbons are preferable to kids in cages in this dystopia, but don't kid yourself on their social issue bickering, they take the same orders from the same bribers on the economy.
We don't get a vote that would cost the owners significant blood money. They own this fucking place, and all of us.
Btw, I'd just like to drop a friendly reminder that those camps with the kids in cages started under Obama, continued under Trump (duh), and continued under Biden and in fact ramped up, not down, and they'll continue under trump again, I'm guessing, and whoever is after that too, so idk about the "preferable to," seems more like "kids in rainbow painted cages."
Fair point.
What's the problem you seem to have with gay rights here? Going out of your way to label that one party is supporting "rainbow ribbons" seems a little iffy considering all the trans people that are about to get systemically targeted by the right-wing that won an election basically on a smear campaign against us.
I'm saying rainbow ribbons don't feed the homeless trans person dying in the gutter on the street.
I'm saying it's a feel good thing that doesn't materially help them or anyone that needs material help to continue to be alive. Oh, you're starving to death? Well here, I'll affirm your identity and not feed you.
How about giving those trans people universal Healthcare without private insurers denying their claims for profit? Nope. Here's a rainbow ribbon though, because that won't piss off my wealthy bribers.
Acknowledging anyone as they wish to be acknowledged is just basic decency and courtesy. Help your fucking Contituents in a material way is what I'm saying.
The fact that you frame "affirming your identity" as such a pathetic offering shows how little you think of LGBT folks in this context tbh.
Look, I get the anger, but keep your sentiment pointed in a way that doesn't imply that gay people are the enemy soaking up valuable time and resources, or at least listen to us when we say we're uncomfortable with you painting the symbols of our self-determination as cheap tokens to be eschewed from leftism if it wants to help people.
The rainbows aren't hurting anyone.
They aren't a substitute in lieu of governance or political progress either, and are often treated like they are by neoliberals.
"LGBTQ people" are people who need to eat too. Rainbow ribbons aren't hurting anyone, but they aren't edible either.
The American people aren't getting their physiological and safety needs taken care of on Maslow's hierarchy, paying lip service to the top of the pyramid while intentionally letting the base rot away is only patronizing. It's only opportunism.
Its the difference between saying you love someone and being in a position to show them and never doing so. You want to give them credit for the clearly self-serving platitude with no action behind it?
Here I'll do what you've been doing, why do you have a problem with poor LGBTQ people who need more than affirmation if they are to survive?
Gay rights movements generally do not make demands in the form of food.
They do, however, ask for you to actually listen to the demographics you're trying to talk over if you want to help them.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/for-transgender-people-finding-housing-has-become-even-harder-during-the-pandemic
How about housing?
As with anything else, It's more important to care about any group in order of those within it that need the most help to those that need the least.
It's more important for a politician to set policies for poor trans people to have a home and a bed than it is for that same politician to profess their solidarity with their identity on Ellen DeGeneres for a photo op.
What the hell does solidarity mean in that case? Be free to die horribly on the street of exposure as who you are? Wow thanks?
Yes.
Being able to be open about your identity is very important to trans people. This is an important element of people's lives, insofar that even in the face of rejection by traditional society we tend to come out and just face the consequences of it - yes, that includes, for many, rejection by their families, housing and food insecurity, and many other things that are, in effect, downstream of the impacts of lack of acceptance. That's the very reason why it's so important to us. We make the conscious decision to seek acceptance knowing it is futile and in most cases results in these things. It's spitting in the face of trans rights movements to try to insinuate that they should simply pretend to be someone else if it means getting food or shelter.
For most of us, that was already an option that we threw out because the cost was too great. To see people argue on our behalf that we should simply take a backseat so we can eat? Fuck that, we'll figure it out ourselves if that's supposed to be the cost.
It's clear that you care plenty about this stuff, I don't think all that was meant as a disparaging thing.
But you shouldn't paint gay rights movements as being a boondoggle inherently tied to liberal policy. It's (presumably unintentionally) insulting, and definitely paints the picture that you don't care, or that you'd rather side with someone that didn't give a shit about us.
People who don't eat or have shelter quickly don't figure anything out.
They die.
Regardless of identity, some things are universal to the human condition.
I'm also not against a politician celebrating LGBTQ culture. Im completely for it.
...As long as their voting record doesn't stand directly against their interests, and instead align with their claimed advocacy and you probably know problems like homelessness disproportionately effect LGBTQ individuals.
You write a lot of stuff that I don’t think is relevant here. I’ll just say that while the ACA was problematic (ie the public option was stripped out) it did meaningfully improve people’s lives.
Before the ACA pre existing conditions exemptions were a thing. If you find out that you have cancer you suddenly can not switch health insurance providers because they would say that your cancer was pre existing condition that would be excluded.
When your health insurance is tired to your job this results in literal work here or die of cancer entrapments.
That and things like mandatory mental health coverage are some of the things that improved peoples lives.
If you are too young to remember the situation with healthcare in the USA before the ACA that’s fine. But the ACA was a godsend for people. It’s not perfect but it undeniably helped the most vulnerable people.
I'm sorry for using so many words.
Edit: they changed the above post to no longer have this quote.
It’s ok. And yah. I ended up changing it to be more relevant.
lol.
You might be privileged or young enough where you didn’t have to think about it but yah. You could literally sign up. The program was up and running. Many of my friends signed up and were happy and excited.
Only after it was up and running was it shut down. So yah. Biden did push it through. And yah. The Trump Supreme Court did stop it.
And the end result is it didn't happen, so how is he wrong that it won't happen? Supreme Court hasn't changed.
Because Justices will get old and die. Or they'll retire and be replaced by someone younger. If it's a Democrat in the White House, when that happens, we get to push the court leftward. If it's a Republican, it goes rightward. Thomas and Alito retiring and being replaced by someone 30 years younger solidifies a right-wing majority for decades.