• queermunist she/her
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    10 months ago

    No True Scotsman fallacy coupled with a completely a historical view. Bernie has been a major part of the party for a very long time. The man is an imperialist through and through. He’s very useful to them as a Democrat, specifically, he’s useful to attract progressive voters and they can always throw an election by the way they manage him. Very few people in the party are like that. Hillary is like that for them too, though less progressive and more violent. But all they have to do is treat Hillary badly and alienate a huge amount of voters.

    This is like accusing an Welshman of being a Scotsman. He literally isn’t a Democrat. That’s his whole brand and his function to the party.

    He is a major part of the party and certainly a useful idiot, but because he literally isn’t a Democrat isn’t allowed to be an important part of the party. His job is to be a sheepdog and shepherd us back into the polls for Democrats, he isn’t supposed to actually lead the party.

    Also… are you implying they treated Hillary badly and caused her to lose on purpose? That’s a pretty wild accusation lol

    No it wouldn’t have. Because general voters don’t elect party leadership, and the president doesn’t suddenly become the head of the party. The party would have been fine ideologically. Their problem was that Bernie would hurt their donors.

    That’s a contradiction. If the party was fine ideologically then Bernie couldn’t hurt donors because that runs counter to their ideology.

    Bernie would certainly hurt their donors, and that itself would fundamentally change the party because it would change who the financial backers of the party are - but you’re also ignoring how Trump very clearly changed the Republican party (yes, I know Republicans were always fascists, but they were cryptofascists before they stopped hiding behind dogwhistles). The very demographic base of the party changed because of who the president was, and now those “”“respectable”“” Republicans that Democrats love so much are on the outside of the party’s base. Bernie, if he had been allowed to win, would have changed the voter base and the financial base. They’d rather lose than have that.

    This is all a ridiculous hypothetical, of course, because Democrats would rather lose than let Bernie win. But that’s it! They didn’t want Hillary to lose, they really wanted her to win - but they wanted her to win with her unpopular platform that caused them to lose. Her platform wasn’t intended to lose, though, and they didn’t give her an unpopular platform to make her lose. You’re really putting the cart before the horse here.

    They would rather lose than stop doing the genocide.

    It certainly looks that way, but that doesn’t mean they want to lose for its own sake. I’m not sure what you’re even arguing here.

    It sounds like you’re saying that Biden supports the Zionist’s genocide literally because he wants to lose. As if this is a wedge issue that Democrats inflicted on themselves intentionally because they don’t want to be in power anymore.

    • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      It sounds like you’re saying that Biden supports the Zionist’s genocide literally because he wants to lose. As if this is a wedge issue that Democrats inflicted on themselves intentionally because they don’t want to be in power anymore.

      No no, I’m saying the genocide is more important than winning. And if he has to lose in order for the genocide to continue under Trump, then they want to lose.

      • queermunist she/her
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        10 months ago

        I see what you’re saying now, but I think they want to win and also continue supporting genocide at the same time. They’re actually ideologues that really believe they can have their cake and eat it too. They don’t actually want to lose and will be very surprised when it happens.

        In order for them to actually be planning to lose it would require a lot of people to secretly agree to lose. I don’t think that’s happening. I think those people are delusionally confident and actually really believe they’re going to win. Maybe I’m underestimating their intelligence lol

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Nah, you’re too credulous. The parties collaborate. Winning and losing is just part of the game. The small people care. The leaders golf together, vacation together, etc. They collaborate in the management of empire. No one actually cares who wins and loses. If they cared, they would behave differently.

          • queermunist she/her
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            10 months ago

            What you’re talking about is exemplified by Bush v Gore, when the Supreme Court decided the election it was Gore that happily conceded because he and Bush were just having a friendly competition. That was before the empire began its decline, what used to be collaboration between friendly rivals is turning into infighting. The partisanship we see is actually a side effect of deeper troubles.

            • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              Fundamentally disagree. The political theater is not showing a deep divide between agents. It is reflecting the deep divide between voters.

              • queermunist she/her
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                10 months ago

                That’s certainly still true to a degree, but the way the US’s political system is set up means that the True Believers of the theater bullshit are now the ones getting elected. They get elected to city, county, and state level offices as well as the federal House. It hasn’t gotten to the point where the brain rot has reached the Senate (yet), but every level below that is filled with up-and-comers who really believe the partisanship is real. The old guard of the empire is all in their 80s and dying off, these younger politicians are completely disconnected from realpolitik because they grew up in the neoliberal End of History. That’s why we have shit like Texas having a showdown with the feds over the border lol

                • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  Transmission of empire happens in universities, in big business, and in the halls of power. The new guard has gone through that process just like their predecessors. That their behavior is more erratic, again, speaks to the psychology of the voters more than the psychology of the officials.

                  • queermunist she/her
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                    10 months ago

                    Their predecessors cut their teeth on the Cold War, this new cohort did so on the War on Terror. Rather than having experience competing with a world power, their only experience is in colonial management. It’s like how the Zionist army only has experience managing the occupation and has no experience in actual warfare. They’re ideologically similar, but their actual professional experiences are far different. Psychology is irrelevant imo