this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
1393 points (93.6% liked)

tumblr

3449 readers
437 users here now

Welcome to /c/tumblr, a place for all your tumblr screenshots and news.

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Must be tumblr related. This one is kind of a given.

  4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.

  5. No unnecessary negativity. Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean that you need to spend the entire comment section complaining about said thing. Just downvote and move on.


Sister Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FlashMobOfOne 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

It's more accurate to say he made leftist promises, and then turned out to be just another conservative asshole with amazing oratory skills.

[–] Cryophilia 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where Obama stripped gay people of their rights

[–] pjwestin -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

He didn't really do anything for gay rights either. He didn't even support gay marriage until his second term. Gay marriage only became law because of the Supreme Court.

[–] Cryophilia 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Imagine the privilege of someone unable to tell the difference between casual indifference and outright hostility.

[–] pjwestin 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

OK, well what the hell are you talking about? Who, "stripped gay people of their rights?" Because in my lifetime, there have been two major changes in gay rights. One was DOMA, which rejected gay marriage, and was passed by a Republican congress and signed by Bill Clinton. The other was the Obergefell v. Hodges, where a conservative leaning Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. So why is this your litmus test? Why does being ambivalent on gay rights for half his Presidency mean Obama can't be a, "conservative asshole?"

[–] Cryophilia -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't even know where to start with this idiocy

[–] pjwestin 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You just argued that Obama wasn't a conservative based entirely on the fact that he had a, "casual indifference," towards gay rights, but sure, I'm the idiot.

[–] Cryophilia 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. That's centrist, especially for 20 years ago. Republicans literally want to kill all gays. That's conservative.

[–] pjwestin 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

OK, we'll just set the hyperbole aside for a second, 'cause I really want an answer on this...why is gay rights your only barometer for what a conservative is? Like, if I want to lower taxes on the wealthy, cut social programs, increase military spending and ban abortion, but I don't have any problem with gay people, does that mean I'm not a conservative?

[–] Cryophilia 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I just picked the first topic that came into my head. There's really a thousand different examples where Democrats are good or neutral but Republicans are mustache twirling evil.

[–] pjwestin 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

OK, here's the thing; the Republicans are generally mustache twirling bad guys, but the Democrats are rarely good or neutral, especially at the federal level. They have nice rhetoric, but they never live up to it. Clinton gutted welfare, expanded mass incarceration, and ended Glass-Steagall (which directly led to the 2008 housing market crash). Obama abandoned universal healthcare, reneged on his promise to bailout homeowners, and created the largest domestic spying program in human history. Again, even in the topic you came up with, Democrats did literally nothing to advance gay rights, it was the Supreme Court.

It's very tempting to boil politics down to a binary, good/evil choice, especially now that at least half of the Republican party is openly supporting facism, but you can't just assume the Democrats are the good guys. If their voters don't hold them accountable for their broken promises and inaction, the country will continue to slide into this right-wing hellscape we're all facing.

[–] Cryophilia -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If the voters punish democrats for not immediately bringing utopia, it will ensure a slide into right wing fascism.

[–] pjwestin 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You should punish the Democrats when they act like conservatives. If you don't, you don't have ideals, you just like rooting for a team, and you might be happier following sports, not politics.

[–] Cryophilia -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But you don't understand the difference between "not being Leftist" and "being conservative". There's a big gulf between those two.

[–] pjwestin 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You're talking in vagueries and I'm dealing in specifics. Address any of the concrete examples I've given of the Democrats taking explicitly conservative positions or just stop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I cannot believe how patient you've been.

[–] Cryophilia -1 points 9 months ago

No, because as soon as I talk about one you'll just immediately pivot and move the goal posts to something else. I'm not dumb. Getting into specifics is a trap. You just cherry pick things to set a false narrative that's not representative of democratic politicians as a whole.

The end result is that every politician must be perfectly in line with everything you want, with no compromise, at all times, or they're just as bad as the people actually opposing you. Which is why Leftists never win elections. No politician is ever good enough for you because politics involves compromise.

[–] HandBreadedTools 0 points 9 months ago
[–] Gradually_Adjusting 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Heavy sits the crown

I think it might actually be impossible to remain a good person as a president, even if you manage to somehow be a good person who can become president (also rare)

[–] FlashMobOfOne -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The president definitely has to be an asshole to some extent, because it's impossible to make everyone happy in this country.

With that said, we've seen presidents do what they say they're gonna do, even as progressives. We sat through four years of Trump using every possible resource to do the awful stuff he did, and there's no good reason why anyone should look at Biden and expect less than that.

Democrats deserve credit for ruling as conservatives. They reinforced the narrative that voting is pointless, at least in terms of federal elections.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Expecting Biden to rule like Trump is absolutely fucking insane. He ignored or broke any rule that stood in his way, and it got many of his policy initiatives shut down by the courts until he went back and did it the proper way, with the end result being that he was so busy fighting in the courts he didn't have time to do everything he wanted. He tried to exploit his powers to persecute his opponents and got impeached over it. He shut down the government over border wall funding and got nothing for it. The only areas he was actually successful in pushing the boundaries of acceptability were in grifting the government by staying at his properties and charging inflated prices I'm violation of the emoluments clause.

I'm a leftist because I believe government can be a force for good, and because I believe in the rule of law and in fighting against corruption. If Biden or any democrat acted like Trump did, I'd vote them out in a heartbeat.