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Biden wasn't really the center of a political movement though, and I think Democrats were a lot more willing to call him out for things like the Hunter pardon. At most, I saw people quietly understanding of Biden breaking with principle to protect family, though I still got the sense there was general disapproval for the pardoning on the Left.
As a third party voter, I have been disgusted by both parties, but I really do think the dynamic is that Obama and Biden did X, and Trump is doing X^2, as /u/lollol put it. It creates a weird dynamic, because I'm happy to condemn them all and say that Trump is still worse in most cases (even if his actions aren't totally unprecedented), but it feels like a lot on the Right are in the position where they both need Trump and are happy that he's punishing the people that they hate, and so they're unwilling to engage in more than light critique with hedging like, "the only difference is that Trump is doing what everyone always did out in the open."
The reason you believe that Trump is doing x^2 is because of a dishonest and biased media environment. It is not because Trump is worse.
Where are the criticisms for Biden? Honestly, where are they? Where are the people denouncing the pardons? Calling for them to be overturned, or for the pardoned people to be strung up on things they haven't been pardoned for? Where, in other words, is the action? Where is the demonstration of these values applied to anyone other than Trump? Because I no longer trust anyone who applies standards to Trump due to repeated lessons teaching me otherwise.
You Are Still Crying Wolf.
I mean, the Trump crypto scandal and conflict of interest web related to it alone dwarfs literally each and every similar corruption scandal of the Biden administration put together, just on the basis of plain facts of the people and timing involved...
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It kinda hard to take "You are crying wolf!" seriously when said wolf has finished off half of the sheep and is starting to eye the shepard.
I mean, did he not start another retarded middle eastern war, another retarded trade war, put a retard in charge of HHS, blow the deficit into the stratosphere? On top of that, he's doing his level best to raise gas prices past peak biden, and beat bidens record on inflation.
Those are all real, undeniable facts. I don't think the "biased media" is sneaking out at night and changing the price at the gas station or launching bombing raids on Iran.
You are, of course, referring to the person that abolished minimum age recommendations for trans hormone treatments and surgeries, right?
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I wanted RFK in office, and I wanted the trade war, so if that's a wolf, then sign me up, I love wolves now. No, the wolf is the fascist strongman that has never come, not MAHA or Chinese tariffs.
The Iran war is Israelf leading the US by the nose, again, still. I would love an anti-Israel president, but not so much that I'll support and anti-white candidate.
The deficit. Ha, what a fun joke. Nobody gives a shit about the deficit, and we've barely pretended in the last ten years. Also funny that Harris would somehow be different, or better, on the deficit. That's just baked in, nobody will ever vote to stop giving away free money. That's simply the failure of Democracy. Given that, I'll take what I can get elsewhere.
The dishonest media only cares about this shit when it's Trump in charge, then they get completely silent when Democrats are in charge. So yes, all your stuff is real, and it really gets blown out of proportion when it makes Republicans look bad, and it gets smothered when it makes Democrats look bad. That's the media bias I'm talking about, and that's the crying wolf.
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I am not "still" crying wolf. I didn't really start being truly, deeply worried about Trump until April 2025.
Before that, I had convinced myself that Trump 1 hadn't been that bad, that despite the weekly outrage articles from the mainstream media, he had mostly governed as any Republican would have. But I really do think Trump 2 has been different.
I mean, I commented this a year ago.
Trump 1 really wasn't that bad. A core message of Trump's 2024 primary campaign was that Trump 1 not being that bad was a mistake that only Trump 2 could fix.
FWIW, I read Trump as a wolf after his response to the 2020 election results.
The big problem is that the rest of the world has to suffer due to Trump 2. If he was only destroying his own country by now I'd long since have made peace with the fact that the US is a democracy getting the government it deserves and it is not for the rest of us to save it from itself. A bit like those nature documentarys where no matter how terrible the thing which is happening, the cardinal rule is that you don't intervene. But alas we don't have that luxury.
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I suppose we are in agreement then. The democrats do not have any moral high ground to criticize Trump, and given how eagerly every single institution in the world threw themselves behind the Democrats and against Trump, it's not just the Democrats who have eroded their own high ground. Everything, every criticism, turns into a partisan complaint, and can be dismissed as partisan complaint because there is no other ground on which to complain.
Yeah, almost as if four years of bullshit lawfare will change a man. Almost as if eroding your credibility to attack your enemies might empower those very same enemies, and remove any restraints they once had.
For me, I don't want someone to govern as a republican. I learned in July 2024 that everyone to the left of Le Pen considers themselves interchangeable, so I've taken them at their word. There is no center, there is only pro- and anti- migration. It's hard for me to care about anything outside of this, and any criticisms I have of Trump come from where he has strayed from this core issues (like in Iran).
In other words, I cannot spare this man. He fights.
It's incredible to me that you can write this with (presumably) a straight face. Really? Really? The infamously prone to squabble center, left, and far left? Consider themselves interchangeable? What? I presume you're talking about the assassination attempt but I not only don't see what specifically you'd be referring to but also fail to see how this translates to "there is only pro- and anti-migration" as if the two things are directly linked.
In the sense that there's a rounding error of liberals that are really, truly willing to oppose progressives and leftists, they're interchangeable. They squabble, absolutely, but no one to their left is an enemy.
They'll fire a Mexican construction worker for making the OK sign, while thinking odious weasel Hasan Piker is the future of the party. Racism is fine as long as it has a progressive gloss. Advocating for violence is okay as long as it has a progressive gloss. Having a full-on Nazi tattoo and saying women are responsible for getting raped is peachy if there's a D next to your name, but god forbid Elon move his arm in a silly way.
And if massive fraud by and benefiting their client groups is discovered.... move to cover it up
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I do not think the Matthew Yglesias wing of the Democrats see Hasan Piker as the future of the party.
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Please, tell me what conclusion I am meant to draw when competing parties conspire to not contest elections so that they, between them, keep out a third party.
What that looks like to me is everyone to the left of Le Pen in agreement that they're all substitutes for one another, that they're all functionally interchangeable, and that it doesn't matter if it's communist or centrist.
Yes, the fact that they're infamously prone to squabble, yet worked in perfect synchronicity when it mattered, reinforces my conclusion. If they were really different, they would have squabbled, but they're not, and they were faced with a genuine threat, so they dropped the game and played serious.
I'm talking about the French Election in 2024, which is why I mentioned Le Pen by name.
Les Republicains, i.e. the remnant of the traditional French centre-right, did not consider everyone to the left of Le Pen interchangeable. They refused to withdraw from three-cornered left-LR-RN second rounds where they were in third place, did not endorse either side in two-way left-RN runoffs, and allowed individual LR politicians to endorse FN candidates in such cases. That is how you behave if you think the left (not just the communist left, but a broad left alliance including communists) is as obnoxious as Le Pen.
Even Macron's liberal Ensemble did not withdraw from three-cornered left-ENS-RN contests where the left candidate was a communist.
I don't think that the communist left, the non-communist left, and the liberals forming a popular front against "fascists" means that they consider themselves interchangeable - it just means that they think Le Pen counts as a fascist. If Le Pen really was a fascist, then forming a popular front against her would be the right thing to do according to all three groups' stated values.
It means, to me, that there are two sides: pro migration and anti migration. All other issues are secondary to the real issue, and therefore all parties will align on the topic of greatest importance.
You're making my point for me. Anyone who believes this is the right thing to do is confirming that there are only two sides, and only one issue.
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