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Comment by thiht | Hacker News Reader

> There's a political duopoly, both parties are obviously, blatantly corrupt

Are you KIDDING? You’re talking about overstating, following with a huge understatement.

Trump sells fucking bibles to schools. Trump launched a shitcoin right before his inauguration. Trump took 1 million dollars per CEO for his inauguration. The corruption scales are off the charts with Trump. You can’t talk about "the lesser of 2 evils" when one of them is a literal wannabe dictator / mafia boss / cult leader. Come on.

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Popular vote disagrees with this.

Popular vote disagrees with the temperature at which water boils.

No it doesn’t. Popular vote just thinks these are good qualities for their president. One of the failures of democracy is letting people vote themselves into an autocracy, and forgetting that democracy must not become the tyranny of a majority.

And apparently this is what Electoral College was supposed to prevent.

No, that's not true at all. The EC was to prevent the interests of more populous states from governing the less populous states.

That's what "tyranny of the majority" is, you're agreeing with them.

No. The EC was meant specifically to mitigate the tyranny of big states over small states, not to thwart a broad coalition of people across the states.

You didn't actually dispute my claim. I notice that you offered no defense whatsoever of Democrats, or other Republicans for that matter.

I wasn't trying to argue about who exactly is the lesser of evils. As I said, the voters might be wrong about who that is. My point was merely that not everyone who voted for Trump, or voted for Harris (or Biden or Clinton), was enthusiastic about their choice. Not everyone was trying to "own the other side". In fact, many people vote primarily based on their beliefs about their personal economic prospects. As a famous 1992 campaign slogan said, it's "the economy, stupid".

It's ridiculous whataboutism to "both sides" here.

The president ran on a platform of brazen corruption and retribution against political foes, and he's following through.

Democrats doing insider trading and other low stakes small ball shit really should not be mentioned in the same conversation.

Unfortunately, you appear to be missing the point. You're focusing on personal corruption, when the main issue is policy corruption. The fundamental corruption of our privately funded political system is that politicians mostly do what their wealthy campaign donors want them to do, and what their wealthy campaign donors want is mainly to rig the system in their favor. This is not "low stakes small ball". It affects everyone. In our system, the voters are mere tools for acquiring power; the power is rarely exercised in their favor. That's why people become disillusioned, and yes, it is "both sides".

If a politician happened to enrich themselves while simultaneously helping the public, then shrug, I can live with that. But the latter part, the most important part, isn't happening.

I think it's time you provided some examples.

> Democrats doing insider trading and other low stakes small ball shit

Er, plus supporting genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and repression of peaceful protest of the same with our tax dollars. Not what I would call "low stakes small ball shit", and not something I will ever overlook or forget.

Democrats had four years to find a strong candidate to beat Trump, or to find a way to hold him accountable. It didn't seem to me like they even tried very hard to do that.

Even after all their 'mistakes', if that's what they were, they could still have handily won the election simply by promising to enforce an arms embargo. They had lots of polling showing this fact very clearly. Over 30% of 2020 Biden voters in battleground states said the lack of an arms embargo would probably affect their vote!

You - and every 2024 Dem voter - might ask yourselves why Democrats would rather hand the Presidency to Trump than stop supplying the bombs killing Palestinians.

Not sure I understand here. Are you suggesting that the new president will cut off arms to Israel? That makes absolutely no sense.

I don’t know why so many people fall into this line of thinking. Supporting genocide is bad. If a person draws a line at supporting genocide, they likely won’t appreciate the difference between Democrats who support genocide while pretending to be sad about it or Republicans who support it with a smile. Genocide is happening regardless of which person they vote for so they decided not to vote or throw away the vote on a third party. It’s really not complicated.

If the Democratic Party leadership were capable of learning, they would ask themselves what they could have done differently to turn out the folks who stayed home. Instead they will blame the left, put their head in the sand and run the same losing strategy next election expecting different results. The fact that democrats are our best defense against authoritarianism means this country is pretty much toast.

The president who achieved a cease fire in the first month, while the previous administration seemingly didn't try?

Previous administration tried hard. Sadly the Israeli PM decided he'd rather wait to see who won the next US election before seriously negotiating.

> Previous administration tried hard.

* Four UN ceasefire vetoes said otherwise.

* Over 100 weapons shipments, including 2,000 lb unguided bombs, said otherwise.

* Using the power of the government to smear peaceful student protesters spoke mountains.

* Biden's repetition of debunked mass rape lies painted a pretty clear picture.

* Constant gaslighting from Blinken, Patel and Miller re Israeli atrocities such as Hind Rajab or the Al Nasr babies said otherwise.

* A firm commitment from Kamala that there would be no arms embargo, "no matter what", said otherwise with crystal clarity.

I find the rewriting of history on this topic deeply disturbing.

His own side was calling him "Genocide Joe" because of his enthusiasm for arming the Israelis. What are you talking about?

> *His own side* was calling him "Genocide Joe"

Source on that?

"Kristin Welker, NBC’s moderator, noted to Ms Ocasio-Cortez during their interview that some activists on her party’s progressive left flank have started using the derisive moniker “Genocide Joe” for the US president." https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

Reddit? Twitter? Mastodon? Facebook?

You can Google the term and find articles referencing it, and a quick search on any social media platform will show usage as well. You can even find it used on HN. You can buy "Genocide Joe" merch on Amazon. People called him that to his face[0].

[0] https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2024/genocide-joe-yelle...

I'm asking specifically about the "his own side"

Also the same person who thinks all the Palestinians in Gaza should go to Jordan or Egypt.

> “The Biden administration isn’t just giving a green light for ethnic cleansing — it’s bankrolling it,” said DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

https://truthout.org/articles/rights-groups-say-bidens-israe...

That article is well over a year old, while Trump made his comments this week.

Correct. A year ago, Joe Biden supported ethnic cleansing, and now Trump supports it.

... And? What is the point you're trying to make here - that there's a 12 month statute of limitations on openly advocating for ethnic cleansing?

> A year ago, Joe Biden supported ethnic cleansing, and now Trump supports it.

How many residents of Gaza ended up in Egypt or Jordan? I rememeber that kerfuffle and basically Egypt and Jordan said absolutely not, and it didn't happen. Trump is a loudmouth, so it's unlikely that he'll follow through on this (fortunately) but personally I count the chances of him doing something like this much, much higher than I did for the other US party (both of whom's policy on Gaza/Palestine has been really bad).

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