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@augieray

"I support this war so much that I'm going to ignore the position of the vast majority of my constituents and party members even though it endangers our chances of re-election in the Fall" is also a take.

@evan @augieray please provide the tiniest bit of evidence that Biden is ignoring the position of his constituents.

This is a straw man, you know it's a straw man, but you're putting it out there nevertheless.

@Amoshias @augieray there is a war.

@evan @Amoshias And there will be more war if Trump is elected.

@augieray @Amoshias I hate Donald Trump, but I don't know if what you say is strictly true. His form of nationalist populism largely withdrew the US from overseas interventions. He did, however, support provocative activities in Israel like moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

@evan @augieray @Amoshias Generic anti-interventionism doesn't stop war. It just lets monsters like Putin do whatever they feel like doing.

@evan @augieray @Amoshias Also, "I don't care if Trump outright murders millions of Americans if he also pulls us out of NATO" is one hell of a take.

@textualdeviance @augieray @Amoshias who said that? I'm just saying, having lived through some hawkish administrations, I don't think that a Trump administration is as likely to find reasons to go to war as, say, the first Bush administration. You make a good point that a less engaged US may result in more wars between other parties, though.

@evan @textualdeviance @augieray so in the past, has Trump lived up to your expectations?

@Amoshias @textualdeviance @augieray whew. Not sure. He was really bad, but we survived as a country, which I wasn't always confident of. I'd say, he was not quite as bad as my worst fears, but he got close.

@evan @Amoshias @augieray "We" survived? And the million-plus COVID deaths due to completely fucked up handling of the pandemic are meaningless, I guess?

Also, I'll remind you that had Democrats not taken the House in 2018, things would have been much, much worse. He won't make that mistake again. Believe him when he tells you he wants to go full dictator.

@evan @Amoshias @augieray There is still a Russia under Putin. Doesn't mean it's not a fucked-up mess with sham elections and violent oppression.

@textualdeviance @augieray So, @Amoshias asked if Trump has lived up to my expectations. I thought about it sincerely, and tried to think back to 2016, and about how bad I expected things to get under Trump, and that they didn't quite get as bad as I was worried they would.

I am not trying to say that Trump was not very, very terrible and that he did, and continues to do, extreme damage to the USA and the rest of the world.

@evan @augieray Let me guess: You're a cishet guy. Probably white. Yes? Because if you don't think loading up SCOTUS with a bunch of theocrats and laying waste to the legal principle of the right to privacy is dire, then it's clearly because you don't think you've lost anything, nor stand to lose more.

Wonder if you'll still feel the same when they ban porn.

@evan @augieray The only reason he didn't is because he didn't have Congress on his side to let him do it. There's a much, much bigger chance of that happening next time. Having SCOTUS in his pocket--especially if they grant him immunity, as expected--will give him free rein to do some unimaginably bad shit. He'll make Putin look like an amateur. The stakes for the entire planet--especially wrt the climate crisis--are the highest they've been in generations. We as a species are fucked if he wins

@evan @augieray Biden isn't perfect. But he's not "let the military loose on US soil to murder dissidents by the thousands" bad.