Whenever I talk to any Democrat supporters, they by-default cheer their Presidents and then I’ve to remind them of their leader’s illegal wars and war crimes. They condemn those acts and they go back to their cheerleading role - Why do they keep forgetting atrocities committed by their leaders? Why do they accept war criminals as their leader?
“AS LONG AS THEY’RE NOT THE ORANGE MAN, WE GOOD!”
Their entire logic.
Gonna disagree with some of the crowd here and say I think those people typically aren’t bloodthirsty/supportive of war. They’ve never believed many examples of inhumanity have been direct consequences of democratic leadership, and some (I have the Gaza genocide in mind here) they’ve never believed existed at all. They’ll see an “expert” voice an opinion that they’re already inclined to believe at present. The “expert” authoritatively cites evidence that they’re not familiar with, so seems legit enough. They’re not going to trust you to have knowledge the “expert” doesn’t, but they’re not interested in holding the discussion with you because they don’t carry the mythical knowledge that would win them the argument. They concede the point ahead of time to avoid conceding after a debate that didn’t convince them. It’s not forgetting, it’s pretending that they agree with your assessment.
A huge factor is how detached we are from atrocities that don’t touch us. I really believe that if one of these people had a friend or family that were affected by this, they would think a lot more deeply on culpability. I lived in Dearborn during the last election and I didn’t get the sense that muslims there were more likely to abstain from voting (or vote third-party) than non-muslims. I know this is partially a function of who I was talking with (mostly academia), but I’m convinced that a big factor was that all of us knew someone in our personal lives that had been emotionally injured by losing family.
There’s a good argument that ignoring atrocities is a moral failure, but I think most of us can relate. There are so many evils in the world today that if I actually spent time to think on even a fraction of them I think I’d be in a mental institution. That recent exposé on the dogs that were trained to rape prisoners, I can acknowledge it’s almost certainly real and that saying otherwise would be an injustice to the victims, but in my heart I don’t actually believe it happened because I don’t feel capable of managing the emotions that would come with accepting it. If you’re already overwhelmed by other aspects of the hellscape you live in, at some point reacting to horrifying headlines by throwing up your hands and booting up a video game becomes a survival strategy.
We are all tired of what-aboutism.
We gotta focus on the present situation.
“We can’t focus on the nazi genocide we all supported, we need to look forward!”
We are all tired of what-aboutism.
We gotta focus on the present situation.
- You, the moment Donitz is appointed President of III Reich
This would be more convincing if they weren’t also doing it during the Biden administration
It’s different for different people. At the end of the day, all the status quo needs to continue is a lack of effective organized resistance, not full support.
That said, from some anecdotal experience: Some of them just don’t care. Politics comes up with my parents a lot. They’re Democrats, but if you talk to them long enough, you realize they’re just functionally Republicans who are embarrassed by the aesthetics of the GOP. The problems they’ve had with people like Trump or Bush have essentially nothing to do with their awful policies and more to do with them looking stupid. They pretty much unquestionably support US imperialism and are depressingly Zionist. Sometimes this seems like it’s down to a lack of historical knowledge, but honestly if you push them on it enough you eventually break out of the loop of America always being the good guy to just a basic “might makes right” and “it’s us vs them” mentality which you’d normally associate with conservatives.
For example, when I’ve spoken to my Dad about Iran, his position ultimately boiled down to “They’re the bad guys. Trump should be attacking them, he’s just doing it in a stupid way that isn’t working.” The fact that the US isn’t merely not waging an effective war, but actively committing war crimes like bombing schools? Unimportant. The fact that we only have the current Iranian government because of previous US meddling? “That was so long ago.” The fact that the last time they were told a country we were targeting had WMDs, it was a lie? Doesn’t even register. When he said someone should do something about them having nukes, I asked if someone should do something about the US since we have the most nukes and he said something like “I’d like to see them try.” The fact that we are currently allied with a literal monarchy in the region? /shrug. When the conversation drifted briefly to Vietnam, he said that either we shouldn’t have gotten involved or we should have done even more. We just didn’t try hard enough to win… There are still children being born in Vietnam with birth defects due to agent orange. But yeah, we totally didn’t inflict enough violence on them.
To the extent that either of them does take an interest in history, it is almost solely through the lens of documentaries glazing the “great men” of our history while ignoring or downplaying their atrocities.
I think my analysis of their kind of politics is that they have enough shame to maintain their ignorance in order to have cover for supporting the things they actually want. You push that ignorance hard enough and the “freedom and democracy” mask slips off to reveal what amounts to little more than support for white supremacy and fascism as long as it doesn’t affect them or make them look bad.
I’m sure there are others that are simply ignorant and could be convinced with enough evidence. I suppose I was one of them. How could I not be? I grew up with the propaganda version of American history where we were the good guys, except for the times when we weren’t, but those are in the past and we’re better now. It wasn’t until near the end of HS that I started getting a more nuanced view of history and once I understood that my politics weren’t actually aligned with my values, I changed. But even then, the effects of the propaganda are so strong that even today, knowing what I know, I just don’t get the visceral reaction to these past atrocities that they deserve. I know they’re wrong, I just am so removed from them that it’s hard to fully empathize beyond a conscious, intellectual level.
There may be more types, but those are my primary experiences. People who are either currently misinformed or people who actively delude themselves so they don’t look like or believe themselves to be similar to the vulgar hicks they view the Republicans as.
EDIT: I also always want to caution against equating the voters with the people at large. The vast majority of the country doesn’t vote. Only some of that is apathetic people. A lot of people are pushed out by deliberate voter suppression tactics. I’d wager that those voters are way more likely to be anti-imperialists, but they don’t get represented by the ballots and media.
The US didn’t just magically turn out this way because everyone wanted it. From the very founding of the country, the system of government that was set up was explicitly designed to limit the influence of popular opinion. You’ve definitely learned about this in school, but it was probably framed to you in terms of “Not letting a majority oppress a minority” without explaining that the “minorities” the founders wanted to protect were white, protestant, land owning men who then turned around and oppressed all the real minorities.
Because they want to forget
I saw ton of people defending the biggest war monger Hillary Clinton here
Hm.
Most people my age support Democrats only in opposition to the current admin.
Almost everyone I know that’s my age fucking hates the democrats though.
But people I talk that are my parents age are more pro Democrat (or MAGA, for that matter).
Just a different experience, maybe I live in a more progressive area.
Sounds fucking frustrating.
US has two party system. You either vote for the seemingly conservative corporate puppet war criminal in camp A, or vote for the seemingly liberal corporate puppet war criminal in camp B.
This and people tend to respond to cognitive dissonance by rationalizing / repressing awareness. I’ve voted for less bad candidate, now I’ll convince myself that was actually a good thing.
Time to vote. Here are your options
The most obnoxious Democrat supporters have their whole ego caught up in being a “good person” by having the correct ideological positions. Admitting that their “team” is full of war criminals would directly challenge their egos and is thus summarily dismissed. They are idealists, and thus disconnected from material reality. They tend to be quite caught up in the notion of “electability” - the idea that they shouldn’t back candidates or platforms they actually want, but those calculated to appeal to the largest number, which is always smack dab in the center of the Overton window, in their estimation. (Of course, ironically, a true socialist platform would have the greatest appeal were not USians so propagandized against it.) I have literally had liberals tell me that though they are not themselves racist, they need a candidate that would be accepted by racists. I think more often than not, they cry “electability” so they have an excuse for supporting a conservative candidate while simultaneously calling themselves “progressive”.
This is to say nothing of the fact that liberalism is a conservative ideology, and that it is more than happy to back imperialism if it means the spoils can subsidize their lifestyle. Or in other words, Democrats will cheer for any war if it keeps their Starbucks cheap and their gas tank filled. They are not anti-war at all. They oppose the appearance of warmongering, but not the actions themselves; they want plausible deniability so they can go back to brunch.
Tl;dr - Democrats are bad people who pretend to be good people and back war criminals because they like imperialism, no matter what excuses they make for it.
I mean it’s the same thing when you confront Republicans about it. Both parties have supporters who just want to support that party, and any logic against that gets them in defense mode
politics as sports will kill everyone
Somewhere along the way we stopped holding them accountable.
It probably started with the Nixon pardon and then continued with Reagan who should have actually been held accountable for his treason with the Iran Contra scandals.
It’s just been downhill since and Trump has taken it to a whole new level of corruption and was crimes.
I would love to see Obama held accountable for his drone policies, Biden for is support of genocide, Trump for everything, W. For his war crimes.
It probably started with the Nixon pardon and then continued with Reagan who should have actually been held accountable for his treason with the Iran Contra scandals.
It’s a thread specifically asking about Democrat leaders, and you name two of the most notorious crooked Republicans to ever hold office (prior to 2016).
in a dipolar political environment you will have two coalitions of the same basic political beliefs form representing more and less extreme versions of the same core beliefs. it is the republicans listed who are associated with the shift rightward in the dipolar political environment, however, the democrats then just… operate in that environment. for example. it was under w bush we got the patriot act, but it wae under obama that all of the government spying edward snowden revealed occurred. the republicans break open some clay pot equivalent of pandora’s box, but then the democrats weild those powers without accountability because no president has been accountable to anyone since the 1970s.
so what do we do about this? to me it seems that the best course is to focus on improving things where you can. generally, that’s going to be locally in your neighborhood. anytime you vote, don’t vote based on one side or the other side being the side for good or the side for evil. they’re ultimately both neo-liberal or neo-conservative wings of the same fascist party. instead ask which candidate is going to make local organizing harder and work to avoid letting them get into office.
Blaming the Republicans for the Democrats is exactly the point the OP is making. Nixon and Reagan didn’t make Clinton rape anyone, order an illegal war, or likely have dissidents murdered. They didn’t make Obama also engage in an illegal war in Libya. Those were choices they decided to make, they had the option to be better.
exactly. both parties fundamentally support and enable eachother. it’s a decision between coke and pepsi. not enough people are aware of ale-8 or are able to get the word out about ale-8 for ale-8 to become viable without fundamental systemic changes to how all of this works. so for the most part, you should be out in the streets normalizing that an annual choice between two cola products is an illusion of choice, and then when you cast your ballot do so with the perspective of what it is on that ballot that gives you more room to have conversations about ginger-ale, orange soda, citrus drink, sassparilla, or even water.
we have a problem in this country where somehow not enough people know the difference between the two parties, and at the same time not enough people know how little that difference truly is. if we want to change this we have to educate people, and if we want to do that we have to focus less on the teams and more on the rules that underlay the sport
i guess not all democrat supporters are historians. we had biases taught at a young age with social studies and stuff. and it’s easier to compare presidents to past ones. kinda why conservatives default cheer trump cause he’s ‘better’ than biden obama etc.
like trump basically started a war, and by the time alls said and done. we’re way too busy doing damage control, reparations, complex PR and stuff. it’s not forgotten but we work on the present.
This is most Americans, no matter what camp they root for, for most of their leaders. And you have plenty to choose from although recently I imagine the Republicans have edged ahead in this depressing horse race. Thank you for rage baiting with us today.
Because for the most part, Americans are bloodthirsty morons.
Because the alternate is literally fascism. Until we do away with first past the post, there are only two real choices. And if you don’t choose the lesser of two evils, then you’re part of the problem and you’re literally responsible for people dying.
“If you don’t pull the lever for genocide then you are literally responsible for people dying.”
From the people who love to invoke 1984, too. Freedom is slavery, war is peace, refusing genocide is endorsing genocide.
This doesn’t sound like you actually believe it, it sounds like you’re trying to project the guilt and shame you feel at being tricked into becoming a nazi by a bunch of geriatric Epstein associates.
The Democrats are also “literally fascism” and your insistence otherwise is exactly the denialism the question is about
The question was about behavior. Imagine if there are 4 children - Voting Blue kills 2 children and voting Red kills 3 children. By voting Blue - we’ve saved 1 child and start celebrating. The problem here is the behavior of cheering such leadership, by cheering we’re burying the core problem of “Child killing” and erasing the acknowledgement of “No child should be killed” ideal from the mind of the masses.
Because voting is specifically a popularity contest, and most people aren’t very politically engaged.
Blue is marginally better than red, in terms of trying to secure conditions where actual action can be effective. Summarizing another commenter, you’re not voting for good vs evil, you’re determining which mainstream option is going to be more difficult to fight against and trying to ensure they don’t win.
I don’t think you can erase the acknowledgement of “no child should be killed” from the masses. The people who already believe that aren’t going to stop, and the ones who don’t aren’t going to start.
But we celebrate saving one child because, again, it’s a popularity contest.
The red voters are pretty stalwart supporters. Their voting habits don’t vary much no matter what their party does. They’ll celebrate killing 3 children because their party tells them that they were the bad kind of children.
The blue voters are much more variable. They like to think of themselves as decent, principled, thinking people. When you inundate them with the child killing, they’re more likely to stay home. And since blue is marginally better for us, that works against our purposes. Ironically, loudly condemning the killing of 2 children makes it more likely that it will be 3 children after the next election.
You’re absolutely right that they’re ghouls who don’t deserve to be celebrated. But we don’t celebrate them because they deserve it, we celebrate them to reduce the chances of getting the worse alternative.
Once the worse alternative is eliminated, and there are better alternatives that stand a chance to win by calling out the lesser evil for still being evil, we should absolutely 100% do that. But until then, I don’t want to demoralize the voters who can help stave off the greater evil until we have a viable alternative, be it an actual leftist candidate with broad appeal or a sufficiently organized revolutionary force.
Once the worse alternative is eliminated,
Which is going to happen when exactly?
What is the lesser of the two evils?
Consideration A: While the neoliberals ignore the empire crumbling around them and act as if they could still subjugate the whole world, the fascists notice the imperial decline and act accordingly.
Consideration B: European puppet rulers bought into the dem narrative that trump is their enemy. Clearly this was only intended to divide & conquer the people, not the rulers, but the puppets seem to be true believers. This forms a rift inside the empire while trump is the face of it.
A makes the neoliberals the choice of empire power reduction; B makes the fascists the choice of empire power reduction.
Yeah. The criticism of Biden in Gaza was valid, but Gaza wasn’t on the ballot in 2024. A Trump election meant US support of more Israeli aggression.
A Harris election also meant more Israeli aggression.
Well. It was on the ballot. It just wasn’t likely to win because it wasn’t an issue considered important by the two major parties. You could have voted PSL or Green or one of the other parties, as over three million people did in the last election.
Besides, by that logic, Israeli aggression wasn’t on the ballot either! Do you think Harris would have stopped Israel from starting war with Iran? The war with Iran was already beginning in 2024 before Trump even got into office. Maybe it would have taken a different form, maybe it wouldn’t have happened this year, but Israel was going to attack Iran and the US was going to follow.
I don’t think Harris would have bombed Iran.
But hey, it is better to do something that feels good than something which affects change, right?
Yeah you really affected change
There was already an economic war on Iran, which was already killing people and destabilizing their government. Harris would have waited a few more years for the economic war to collapse Iran’s government and turn it into a situation similar to Syria, and only then would have started bombing. By then, Iran might not have been able to exert control over traffic through Hormuz.
Harris would have been a better manager of the empire. Instead, we got Trump, who is on track to lose to Iran.
Ahh, so you’re an accelerationist.
Damn, that enthusiasm for"lesser evilism" sure dries up real fast when it might be you on the business end of it
I don’t think you know what that means.
Accelerationism would mean voting for Harris because she’d be a better manager of the empire.
No. Wanting Trump to win is accelerationist because he’s going to cause the empire to fall faster due to incompetence.
You aren’t angry at Democrats for war crimes, you’re angry at them because they are better at governing.
