These people refuse to acknowledge a step in the right direction. And from bush to obama is an obvious step in the right direction, just wish we didnt do a double backflip with a twist that is trump
I refuse your defeatist nonsense. There’s 3 years left, progressives are making huge inroads into both local governments and the party machinery, and the old guard is being changed out
Even if I were wrong about it, that’s still the only way out. Obama-like means nothing changes, Biden was Obama-like - we didn’t recover from Trump I, Biden just stabilized the new normal and insisted it’s fine now.
We have to demand better, starting now. While we have the time
I don’t think you understand politics or progression.
Your entire take is that Obama just held the ground. We forget we could have had Mitt Romney who would have been just as worse if not far worse a choice than Obama.
I see tons of comparisons, we need better! We need to do better! And everyone is comparing the president how to Obama and the president then to Obama. America did absolutely better picking Obama over Mitt Romney and I am confused as to why we aren’t comparing the president then to the competitor then.
You can disagree with 60 percent of what a president did and argue people on the opposite side are going to react and just push the change back but if you want real change you pick the person that has 40% of what you agree with and you do that time and time again <until it is 50 percent and so on so forth.
Feel how you want but setting here and going, Everyone praises Obama and he did the shit those people complain about is just a dumb ass way of looking at what Obama brought to the table. It took one idiot in office to destroy the good he did and the good Biden tried to hold on to.
Sitting here and spouting nonsense that Obama would still be a worse choice is just a shit view. It would 100% still be better than the fucking moron we have in office now and I would take 40 Obama’s for the next 10 years over 40 Trumps. It is a common sense statement to act self righteous with, “we gotta do better than Trump or Obama.” Yeah, we get it. That is the obvious statement. But to say Obama was a bad choice given the margin of difference between him vs Trump is just fucking stupid no matter where you stand. To say if we had Obama vs Trump and we shouldn’t pick another Obama is stupid because “we have to do better.” That isn’t how shit works either. You pick what is good in the moment.
I am not sure why people suddenly forget the president doesn’t run the whole country when it comes to decision making. So suddenly we start just comparing the presidents but the office in power with the president is a big deal as well.
Obama may have made many decisions the majority of libs are complaining about but the problem is Libs liked him because of what he stood for on the better side of things versus the shit in office now. The Obama standard is the good we had until Trump and that is why it is the still wanted standard because it meant something even with the bad.
So feel how you want but taking the stance of, “we got a do better.” Isn’t a winning case. It is just a statement. Getting people to see some of the good that was done then is what matters and Obama had some of that and that is the point. You have to have something to look at and compare too. Who would you suggest would be better now? How would we do better? Could you help run a country with all of your wisdom? No, Obama would still be 100 times better and I would pick and Obama any fucking day even if it just meant slowing cons down or holding their ridiculous mind set off for a thousand years.
This is such a strange world view. It’s as though you think politics and society are on a linear track and they can only go forwards or backwards and any progress in your preferred direction is preferable because the other direction is diametrically opposed to the only other option which is sliding the train the other direction.
That’s not how any of this works. No, Obama did not move the country in the right direction. Obama continued the violent brutal genocidal policies of the USA, continued reinforcing the dominance of the owners over the workers, and continued the domestic policy of bread and circuses for the working class to avoid unrest.
Romney being worse than Obama would have been LITERALLY the same program with different details.
Obama was LITERALLY the same program as Bush with different details.
I have read your comment and I have determined. This, you are trying to find common ground like one of those people shouting, “guys they are the same they are all bad” and I am here to tell you. Even with what you are saying above is you can feel how you want but you are just wrong. You don’t have to like it but you absolutely are.
Firstly, not all progress is linear. No one here doesn’t agree that progress can diverge or go multiple complicated routes but progress absolutely and 100% can be linear. Seeing it the opposite or trying to come up with some reason progress can never be linear is also wrong. I will give you an example a basic one. Amending bills and rights.
Let’s look at the Miranda rights these protect you from getting tossed in jail if you don’t understand the rights or laws of the U.S. Albeit, it took a guy from another country committing a brutal act for the U.S. to get to a point where it said, “hunh, what if as an American I don’t even know my own rights because they change.” And so we got the Miranda rights --> this right here is linear it is progress forward. Doesn’t matter how many ways you want to sit here and talk about trains and bread and circuses. Now Obama doesn’t have anything to do with the Miranda rights. However, as we speak the current administration and President absolutely are trying to undo the Miranda rights. This protects you, me, and came from a legal case that moved the U.S. forward not backwards. This is absolutely linear progress. Which all sound like BS answers to Obama somehow being equal to Bush when Obama’s presidency was far more complicated than that trying to clean up Bushe’s shit.
So when you talk about progress and you talk about who you would pick.you can absolutely pick people that don’t push progress backwards.i would have picked Biden or Obama or even fucking Bush again over Trump if it meant not picking a piece of shit looking at amending or straight up removing a basic right that moved the U.S. forward.
We can talk about something going on in the U.S. that kills Americans every year. Let’s talk about progress there and Obama is relevant and you should like this one because it is one of those sliders that doesn’t exist. Gun violence.
During Obama’s presidency. Obama tried just changing background checks on guns and just looking at providing statistics on gun violence he tried this on multiple occasions just so people were more educated. Each time the NRA filed a cease and desist. Obama was halted every step of the way he even has a really good talk on it.
This attempt by Obama is a progress and it isn’t exactly linear but it could have had some linear progress. Meanwhile the current administration chooses to do nothing because nothing is wrong. Each time someone tries to do nothing this doesn’t push your figmental train back but it holds the train in place and prevents it from budging forward or hitting a different track to figure something out. This is holding progress and that is the same as pushing it back every time we do nothing to try and figure out how we manage it. The same administration is also shouting on X to kill it’s political competition. This is not the same. The current administration said, “give them more guns” and is now shouting, “kill the political opposition” this is backwards. It’s fucking stupid to sit here and tell me Obama was just as bad as the rest of them or shit to set here and tell me Romney or Bush was just as bad and they are all the same. It is just a defeatist point of view in of itself because it isn’t acknowledging the whole picture or taking ownership of the shit the current admin is doing.
“Obama was literally the same program as Busy” you can sit here and say this because Obama had principals that didn’t move the dial in some direction. But there was 100% linear progress from Busy no matter. How you want to look at it. Progress that things like Obama care absolutely and 100% helped poorer states like I come from but my own state voted against it. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t linear but it was a step in some direction. And now the same administration has changed it because it had a black man’s name on it. Obama and Trump not the same. Obama and Bush not the same.
Progress has all sorts of divergent paths. I get your point but it is stupid to think that their isn’t some linear progress that comes with some of the change you want. You are always going to pick someone that doesn’t have something you want but when it comes to who is in office now and who has been in office I would pick Obama time and time again.
We can look at some of the stuff Obama moved forward.
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Signed into law in 2010, this legislation implemented sweeping financial regulatory reforms in response to the subprime mortgage crisis. --> not linear but good for its time. Current admin is fucking with this. Houses are less affordable than they have been for years. Not progress. So yeah I would Pick Obama here because he figured something out.
Tax Policy: Allowed the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for the highest income earners, while cutting taxes for working families and small businesses, which reduced after-tax income inequality. --> every dem does this but lately it has been a dem wanting to make this move. Meanwhile the current admin is doing exactly what you are accusing Obama of. Reinforcing dominance of owners over workers I believe is how you put it? Doesn’t really seem like the two are the same so far.
Auto Industry Rescue: The administration provided support to the U.S. automobile industry, which helped prevent its collapse and preserve jobs. Hunh another good thing. That the current admin is fucking up with terriffs.
You can spout Obama being shit at attempts to help foreigners crossing borders. I don’t disagree but to think his foreign policies weren’t also an improvement would be a lie this would be one of those complicated processes that aren’t a slider. While border management may not have been good he made progress I would consider linear elsewhere.
Iran Nuclear Deal: Negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and other world powers to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons.
Paris Climate Agreement: The U.S. adopted this international accord in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.
“Cuban Thaw”: Eased travel and monetary restrictions and began normalizing relations with Cuba after decades of estrangement.
Intervention in Libya: The U.S. participated in a NATO-led intervention in 2011.
These all seem like linear progress bars to me while the current admin fucks up foreign relationships. Literally left the fucking Paris Climate Agreement while the world burns. Is siding with Russia. Etc the list goes on. We could get into Obama’s take on Gay rights also a movement forward while the current administration and Bush tried to fight them. Not the same app progress the current administration is fucking up also the sake shit Romney didn’t want.
Not the same and sure I am open to discussing the bad from Obama and maybe the good from Trump. Trump’s take on foreign adversaries like China stealing intellectual property was good his first term. However, he is fucking it up this term. Holding back changes in the automotive industry. Preventing foreigners from going to school where and diversity proves to be beneficial when it comes to progress.
My entire point is this “Obama was no different than the rest” is just bullshit and it always will be. I don’t disagree that a man in a suit is going to be a man in a suit. What will absolutely disagree on is what we see as progress. And I understand not all progress is linear in that complications come from it all. But to sit here and tell me Obama is the same as busy with a different name badge is lying to me and honestly to yourself.
To tell me Obama and Romney were the same and we didn’t pick Romney because they were absolutely not the same is also bullshit. I don’t think you understand politics and why right now more than ever it is important to understand and create a distinction that you pick and choose battles and Obama gets the praise he does because he did make some progress on human rights figured out ways to avoid entire financial crises that Bush created and started for common people. The current administration tears that down more and more each day. Progress isn’t always linear but when you look at moving forward making things easier on people less poor and people with less rights. It is very easy to compare and contrast the differences in progress Obama alone did not do what he did alone and he did do great things all while having policies that were not great.
Kamala’s take on prisons and foreign immigration wasn’t great either but God damn she would have been a 1000% better pick than the shit administration now. And to tell me even she would have been the same would also be shit. Because progress is complicated but Bush wasn’t progressing the way I wanted and the current administration is currently dismantling the process that came from people I do want. There is no ideal president that is going to do everything you want.
This is why I think you are just another bystander shouting “they are all corporate greed and the same.” When in reality what you are saying is understood on the greed part but absolutely fucking nonsense on the being the same part.
Holy shit did you just include the total fucking destruction of Libya, one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, and turning it into an open-air slave market as “linear forward progress”?
This is why we can’t have discourse. You don’t understand history, you aren’t analyzing anything, you’re just trying to take specific events, strip them of context, and force fit them into a narrative structure that makes you feel good.
We can do “linear progress” for all the presidents.
Gee Dubya did a huge amount of good for AIDS prevention and treatment, malaria prevention and treatment, and tuberculosis prevention and treatment. He led the largest expansion of medicare since its creation. He led the Amber Alert system. He led SOX. He created the largest protected maritime area in US history.
We can do this for every president. In your formulation, we would have to take every change every president did and then attempt to build a system of quantification to establish net progressive trajectory. Which is prima facie foolish.
The reality is that there is one project - EuroAmerican empire - and there are multiple constituencies that need to be managed for the project to continue. Domestically, there are two large groups of voters, driven by different psychosocial factors, and these two groups of voters are managed by two parties. Within those two large groups of voters are different subdivisions and these are kept in-group with different politicians within the party.
Outside of the voters we have what effectively are the subalterns. Indigenous Americans are managed first and foremost through violence, then through assimilation. As they become stronger in their resistance, the empire needs to respond. If the empire went full violence, one large group of citizens would resist. If they went full integration and reconciliation, a different group of citizens would resist. It is not measure of progressive politics that Deb Haaland became secretary of the interior but rather a measure of the progress of the resistance to EuroAmerican empire in that it has forced the empire to create some representation. That representation will cause reaction from a large portion of the polity, and it will sharpen the contradictions inside the empire, which will cause backlash and conflict.
This is the context for Bush as well as Obama. There are international constituencies, and they all live under the weight of the empire. Some, like Western Europe, are collaborators - nowhere near capable of resisting th empire, but willing to play the game in order to retain their wealth and way of life. Others - like nearly all of Africa - are neocolonial subjects where wealth has been extracted for centuries and continues to be extracted. For every dollar of aid the West sends to Africa they extract between 7 and 15 dollars. That is important context for any analysis of what people call “progress”. Bush’s contributions to both disease and to Medicaid are concessions to constituencies in exchange for political support and compliance, in order to create the operational space to continue the project of EuroAmerican empire.
And you are proof that this strategy works. Obama expanded the drone program immensely, became the first president to deliberately order the and oversee the killing of a US citizen on foreign soil, collaborated with many of the same political elite that you think are ruining the US today, and yet, you want to fight for the rhetorical space that the Ds need to continue doing it.
You look at Biden’s participation in the genocide against Palestine, in Kamala’s participation in mass incarceration, in their use of solitary confinement on children at the border, on the continued war mongering globally, on the continued use of torture, of their total fecklessness in the face of a clear and present neonazi danger, and you are out here trying to convince people, in your own free time, of the Democratic party’s worthiness of votes, and you are willing to fight against anyone that would say otherwise.
The two parties are obviously not the same, because that would be functionless. The parties are different precisely because they appeal to different constituencies that differ from each other psychologically, morally, economically, and culturally. But they both serve the same program and that program is a terrible, violent, oppressive, extractive, racist, misogynistic, and unsustainable program. There is no resistance to this program in American politics. The resistance only exists outside American politics - in indigenous communities, in budding socialist movements, in global socialist and non-aligned nations.
What you think of as progress in America is nothing more than the management of resistance from the risk of domestic resistance.
But the choice will be Trump-like or Obama-like. There is no “progressive revolution” option at this time.
Complaining about Obama-like is pushing a both sides narrative, which suppresses democrat voters.
If you want things to be less shit, stop doing that.
These people refuse to acknowledge a step in the right direction. And from bush to obama is an obvious step in the right direction, just wish we didnt do a double backflip with a twist that is trump
I refuse your defeatist nonsense. There’s 3 years left, progressives are making huge inroads into both local governments and the party machinery, and the old guard is being changed out
Even if I were wrong about it, that’s still the only way out. Obama-like means nothing changes, Biden was Obama-like - we didn’t recover from Trump I, Biden just stabilized the new normal and insisted it’s fine now.
We have to demand better, starting now. While we have the time
I don’t think you understand politics or progression.
Your entire take is that Obama just held the ground. We forget we could have had Mitt Romney who would have been just as worse if not far worse a choice than Obama.
I see tons of comparisons, we need better! We need to do better! And everyone is comparing the president how to Obama and the president then to Obama. America did absolutely better picking Obama over Mitt Romney and I am confused as to why we aren’t comparing the president then to the competitor then.
You can disagree with 60 percent of what a president did and argue people on the opposite side are going to react and just push the change back but if you want real change you pick the person that has 40% of what you agree with and you do that time and time again <until it is 50 percent and so on so forth.
Feel how you want but setting here and going, Everyone praises Obama and he did the shit those people complain about is just a dumb ass way of looking at what Obama brought to the table. It took one idiot in office to destroy the good he did and the good Biden tried to hold on to.
Sitting here and spouting nonsense that Obama would still be a worse choice is just a shit view. It would 100% still be better than the fucking moron we have in office now and I would take 40 Obama’s for the next 10 years over 40 Trumps. It is a common sense statement to act self righteous with, “we gotta do better than Trump or Obama.” Yeah, we get it. That is the obvious statement. But to say Obama was a bad choice given the margin of difference between him vs Trump is just fucking stupid no matter where you stand. To say if we had Obama vs Trump and we shouldn’t pick another Obama is stupid because “we have to do better.” That isn’t how shit works either. You pick what is good in the moment.
I am not sure why people suddenly forget the president doesn’t run the whole country when it comes to decision making. So suddenly we start just comparing the presidents but the office in power with the president is a big deal as well.
Obama may have made many decisions the majority of libs are complaining about but the problem is Libs liked him because of what he stood for on the better side of things versus the shit in office now. The Obama standard is the good we had until Trump and that is why it is the still wanted standard because it meant something even with the bad.
So feel how you want but taking the stance of, “we got a do better.” Isn’t a winning case. It is just a statement. Getting people to see some of the good that was done then is what matters and Obama had some of that and that is the point. You have to have something to look at and compare too. Who would you suggest would be better now? How would we do better? Could you help run a country with all of your wisdom? No, Obama would still be 100 times better and I would pick and Obama any fucking day even if it just meant slowing cons down or holding their ridiculous mind set off for a thousand years.
This is such a strange world view. It’s as though you think politics and society are on a linear track and they can only go forwards or backwards and any progress in your preferred direction is preferable because the other direction is diametrically opposed to the only other option which is sliding the train the other direction.
That’s not how any of this works. No, Obama did not move the country in the right direction. Obama continued the violent brutal genocidal policies of the USA, continued reinforcing the dominance of the owners over the workers, and continued the domestic policy of bread and circuses for the working class to avoid unrest.
Romney being worse than Obama would have been LITERALLY the same program with different details.
Obama was LITERALLY the same program as Bush with different details.
I have read your comment and I have determined. This, you are trying to find common ground like one of those people shouting, “guys they are the same they are all bad” and I am here to tell you. Even with what you are saying above is you can feel how you want but you are just wrong. You don’t have to like it but you absolutely are.
Firstly, not all progress is linear. No one here doesn’t agree that progress can diverge or go multiple complicated routes but progress absolutely and 100% can be linear. Seeing it the opposite or trying to come up with some reason progress can never be linear is also wrong. I will give you an example a basic one. Amending bills and rights.
Let’s look at the Miranda rights these protect you from getting tossed in jail if you don’t understand the rights or laws of the U.S. Albeit, it took a guy from another country committing a brutal act for the U.S. to get to a point where it said, “hunh, what if as an American I don’t even know my own rights because they change.” And so we got the Miranda rights --> this right here is linear it is progress forward. Doesn’t matter how many ways you want to sit here and talk about trains and bread and circuses. Now Obama doesn’t have anything to do with the Miranda rights. However, as we speak the current administration and President absolutely are trying to undo the Miranda rights. This protects you, me, and came from a legal case that moved the U.S. forward not backwards. This is absolutely linear progress. Which all sound like BS answers to Obama somehow being equal to Bush when Obama’s presidency was far more complicated than that trying to clean up Bushe’s shit.
So when you talk about progress and you talk about who you would pick.you can absolutely pick people that don’t push progress backwards.i would have picked Biden or Obama or even fucking Bush again over Trump if it meant not picking a piece of shit looking at amending or straight up removing a basic right that moved the U.S. forward.
We can talk about something going on in the U.S. that kills Americans every year. Let’s talk about progress there and Obama is relevant and you should like this one because it is one of those sliders that doesn’t exist. Gun violence.
During Obama’s presidency. Obama tried just changing background checks on guns and just looking at providing statistics on gun violence he tried this on multiple occasions just so people were more educated. Each time the NRA filed a cease and desist. Obama was halted every step of the way he even has a really good talk on it.
https://youtu.be/6imFvSua3Kg
This attempt by Obama is a progress and it isn’t exactly linear but it could have had some linear progress. Meanwhile the current administration chooses to do nothing because nothing is wrong. Each time someone tries to do nothing this doesn’t push your figmental train back but it holds the train in place and prevents it from budging forward or hitting a different track to figure something out. This is holding progress and that is the same as pushing it back every time we do nothing to try and figure out how we manage it. The same administration is also shouting on X to kill it’s political competition. This is not the same. The current administration said, “give them more guns” and is now shouting, “kill the political opposition” this is backwards. It’s fucking stupid to sit here and tell me Obama was just as bad as the rest of them or shit to set here and tell me Romney or Bush was just as bad and they are all the same. It is just a defeatist point of view in of itself because it isn’t acknowledging the whole picture or taking ownership of the shit the current admin is doing.
“Obama was literally the same program as Busy” you can sit here and say this because Obama had principals that didn’t move the dial in some direction. But there was 100% linear progress from Busy no matter. How you want to look at it. Progress that things like Obama care absolutely and 100% helped poorer states like I come from but my own state voted against it. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t linear but it was a step in some direction. And now the same administration has changed it because it had a black man’s name on it. Obama and Trump not the same. Obama and Bush not the same.
Progress has all sorts of divergent paths. I get your point but it is stupid to think that their isn’t some linear progress that comes with some of the change you want. You are always going to pick someone that doesn’t have something you want but when it comes to who is in office now and who has been in office I would pick Obama time and time again.
We can look at some of the stuff Obama moved forward.
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Signed into law in 2010, this legislation implemented sweeping financial regulatory reforms in response to the subprime mortgage crisis. --> not linear but good for its time. Current admin is fucking with this. Houses are less affordable than they have been for years. Not progress. So yeah I would Pick Obama here because he figured something out.
Tax Policy: Allowed the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for the highest income earners, while cutting taxes for working families and small businesses, which reduced after-tax income inequality. --> every dem does this but lately it has been a dem wanting to make this move. Meanwhile the current admin is doing exactly what you are accusing Obama of. Reinforcing dominance of owners over workers I believe is how you put it? Doesn’t really seem like the two are the same so far.
Auto Industry Rescue: The administration provided support to the U.S. automobile industry, which helped prevent its collapse and preserve jobs. Hunh another good thing. That the current admin is fucking up with terriffs.
You can spout Obama being shit at attempts to help foreigners crossing borders. I don’t disagree but to think his foreign policies weren’t also an improvement would be a lie this would be one of those complicated processes that aren’t a slider. While border management may not have been good he made progress I would consider linear elsewhere.
Iran Nuclear Deal: Negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and other world powers to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons.
Paris Climate Agreement: The U.S. adopted this international accord in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.
“Cuban Thaw”: Eased travel and monetary restrictions and began normalizing relations with Cuba after decades of estrangement.
Intervention in Libya: The U.S. participated in a NATO-led intervention in 2011.
These all seem like linear progress bars to me while the current admin fucks up foreign relationships. Literally left the fucking Paris Climate Agreement while the world burns. Is siding with Russia. Etc the list goes on. We could get into Obama’s take on Gay rights also a movement forward while the current administration and Bush tried to fight them. Not the same app progress the current administration is fucking up also the sake shit Romney didn’t want.
Not the same and sure I am open to discussing the bad from Obama and maybe the good from Trump. Trump’s take on foreign adversaries like China stealing intellectual property was good his first term. However, he is fucking it up this term. Holding back changes in the automotive industry. Preventing foreigners from going to school where and diversity proves to be beneficial when it comes to progress.
My entire point is this “Obama was no different than the rest” is just bullshit and it always will be. I don’t disagree that a man in a suit is going to be a man in a suit. What will absolutely disagree on is what we see as progress. And I understand not all progress is linear in that complications come from it all. But to sit here and tell me Obama is the same as busy with a different name badge is lying to me and honestly to yourself.
To tell me Obama and Romney were the same and we didn’t pick Romney because they were absolutely not the same is also bullshit. I don’t think you understand politics and why right now more than ever it is important to understand and create a distinction that you pick and choose battles and Obama gets the praise he does because he did make some progress on human rights figured out ways to avoid entire financial crises that Bush created and started for common people. The current administration tears that down more and more each day. Progress isn’t always linear but when you look at moving forward making things easier on people less poor and people with less rights. It is very easy to compare and contrast the differences in progress Obama alone did not do what he did alone and he did do great things all while having policies that were not great.
Kamala’s take on prisons and foreign immigration wasn’t great either but God damn she would have been a 1000% better pick than the shit administration now. And to tell me even she would have been the same would also be shit. Because progress is complicated but Bush wasn’t progressing the way I wanted and the current administration is currently dismantling the process that came from people I do want. There is no ideal president that is going to do everything you want.
This is why I think you are just another bystander shouting “they are all corporate greed and the same.” When in reality what you are saying is understood on the greed part but absolutely fucking nonsense on the being the same part.
Holy shit did you just include the total fucking destruction of Libya, one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, and turning it into an open-air slave market as “linear forward progress”?
This is why we can’t have discourse. You don’t understand history, you aren’t analyzing anything, you’re just trying to take specific events, strip them of context, and force fit them into a narrative structure that makes you feel good.
We can do “linear progress” for all the presidents.
Gee Dubya did a huge amount of good for AIDS prevention and treatment, malaria prevention and treatment, and tuberculosis prevention and treatment. He led the largest expansion of medicare since its creation. He led the Amber Alert system. He led SOX. He created the largest protected maritime area in US history.
We can do this for every president. In your formulation, we would have to take every change every president did and then attempt to build a system of quantification to establish net progressive trajectory. Which is prima facie foolish.
The reality is that there is one project - EuroAmerican empire - and there are multiple constituencies that need to be managed for the project to continue. Domestically, there are two large groups of voters, driven by different psychosocial factors, and these two groups of voters are managed by two parties. Within those two large groups of voters are different subdivisions and these are kept in-group with different politicians within the party.
Outside of the voters we have what effectively are the subalterns. Indigenous Americans are managed first and foremost through violence, then through assimilation. As they become stronger in their resistance, the empire needs to respond. If the empire went full violence, one large group of citizens would resist. If they went full integration and reconciliation, a different group of citizens would resist. It is not measure of progressive politics that Deb Haaland became secretary of the interior but rather a measure of the progress of the resistance to EuroAmerican empire in that it has forced the empire to create some representation. That representation will cause reaction from a large portion of the polity, and it will sharpen the contradictions inside the empire, which will cause backlash and conflict.
This is the context for Bush as well as Obama. There are international constituencies, and they all live under the weight of the empire. Some, like Western Europe, are collaborators - nowhere near capable of resisting th empire, but willing to play the game in order to retain their wealth and way of life. Others - like nearly all of Africa - are neocolonial subjects where wealth has been extracted for centuries and continues to be extracted. For every dollar of aid the West sends to Africa they extract between 7 and 15 dollars. That is important context for any analysis of what people call “progress”. Bush’s contributions to both disease and to Medicaid are concessions to constituencies in exchange for political support and compliance, in order to create the operational space to continue the project of EuroAmerican empire.
And you are proof that this strategy works. Obama expanded the drone program immensely, became the first president to deliberately order the and oversee the killing of a US citizen on foreign soil, collaborated with many of the same political elite that you think are ruining the US today, and yet, you want to fight for the rhetorical space that the Ds need to continue doing it.
You look at Biden’s participation in the genocide against Palestine, in Kamala’s participation in mass incarceration, in their use of solitary confinement on children at the border, on the continued war mongering globally, on the continued use of torture, of their total fecklessness in the face of a clear and present neonazi danger, and you are out here trying to convince people, in your own free time, of the Democratic party’s worthiness of votes, and you are willing to fight against anyone that would say otherwise.
The two parties are obviously not the same, because that would be functionless. The parties are different precisely because they appeal to different constituencies that differ from each other psychologically, morally, economically, and culturally. But they both serve the same program and that program is a terrible, violent, oppressive, extractive, racist, misogynistic, and unsustainable program. There is no resistance to this program in American politics. The resistance only exists outside American politics - in indigenous communities, in budding socialist movements, in global socialist and non-aligned nations.
What you think of as progress in America is nothing more than the management of resistance from the risk of domestic resistance.
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