"One fine day in 1991, an ambitious senator named Joe Biden introduced legislation declaring that telecommunications companies "shall ensure" that their hardware includes backdoors for government eavesdropping. Biden's proposal was followed by the introduction of the Clipper Chip by the National Security Agency (NSA) and a remarkable bill, approved by a House of Representatives committee in 1997, that would have outlawed encryption without back doors for the feds."
The man is an authoritarian, him playing an absent minded nice man of advanced age and his empty SJW phrases don't change that. You can get real glimpses of the personality like him "losing patience with the unvaccinated" lately.
I actually believe that he is absent minded man of advanced age... Which makes whole USA political system even funnier from outside. Only if they didn't have nukes... Not that he doesn't deserve full punishment for all the crimes he has commited.
Biden is indeed a dangerous authoritarian who has worked tirelessly to erode civil liberties for decades. Even his VP is a prosecutor who started her career by ending a deferment program and ratcheting up prosecution of non-violent crimes.
It's hard to define someone in a phrase, but I just view him as a half-bright grifter with backers. The backers are the people to be angry at. His views on civil liberties are probably more taking the easy road (or easy money) rather than being for or agin'.
His appeals for tougher sentencing and weakening privacy have been consistent since the late 70s, and have outlived their popularity even with the kinds of people who fund him. He put a lot of work into what became the Patriot Act for over a decade before it became a reality. Very few politicians stick to something for so long and work so hard to get there. I'm inclined to believe that his actions demonstrate his revealed preference, as the Austrian Economists would say.
In fact, it would have been politically expedient last summer for him to say the 1994 crime bill was a mistake in hindsight, but he did the opposite. I think this is who he really is.
I also do not care for Biden, but, "the most loathsome human being we've ever elected President," is ignoring history.
There isn't a single president where unpleasant facts about their actions are not documented-- there wasn't a single pure and good president of the united states-- ever, nor even one who did not engage in activities which could be described as "loathsome".
Starting with George Washington who lead an insurrection on behalf of rich slave owners (to protect slavery) and murdered those who would not join his cause. A man who had his dentures made from human teeth torn from the faces of men he had enslaved.
Jefferson, who raped his slaves and enslaved his own children.
Lincoln, "the great emancipator" said, "If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it..." A man that went on to engage in genocide against the indigenous of what is now the United States.
Reagan who engaged in drug dealing to support illegal wars of aggression and his far-right death squads who tortured and murdered many thousands. A man who was instrumental in the genocide of 250,000 indigenous in Guatemala.
But, Johnson wins the prize for greatest single mass murder event, supported by a president, since the genocide of the indigenous in what is now the US. After the far-right dictator, Suharto came to power in a US backed coup. The US under Johnson provided surveillance information used to find and murder, millions of Indonesians who were guilty of the thought crime of belonging to the "wrong" political party (even far-right apologists acknowledge at least 500,000 murdered, but 1-2M is more credible).
Carter who armed and trained the mujahadeen to overthrow the liberal government that arose in Afghanistan after the 1978 revolution (under this left government, Afghan women had equal rights and universal suffrage and the literacy rate had soared). The funding, and arming of these jihadis was continued by Reagan and "pappa" Bush. Yes, the same ones that defeated the US military over the last 20 years. During the US occupation, Afghanistan was tied as second worse place to be a woman giving lie to any noise about US intervention being to improve the status of women.
"Baby" Bush who engaged in illegal wars of aggression against nations who had nothing to do with 911, but who the far-right e.g., the Heritage Foundation had long wanted to overthrow and in its place create a place free of any regulation that would prevent the rich and powerful from abusing those with less money and power-- they even had a plan ready for the invasion when the opportunity presented itself. "Baby" Bush who's regime engaged in illegal, immoral, and reprehensible torture, and displaced and murdered millions.
Every president in the history of the US has committed official, "loathsome", acts that would have landed an ordinary citizen in prison or the gas chamber.
> Starting with George Washington who lead an insurrection on behalf of rich slave owners (to protect slavery)
This is absolutely ahistorical. None of the planners of the revolution ever documented this as a motivation. Some were even abolitionists. The British Slavery Abolition Act wasn't until 1833 anyway. On top of that, Dunmore's Proclamation which offered freedom to loyalist slaves was almost 8 months after the war started, so that couldn't have been a motivation.
[edit] I don't have a stake in deciding which president was the worst or in defending Washington per se. I'm only addressing the particular historical claim which is pretty straightforwardly false, as far as I can tell.
[edit 2] I would challenge anyone downvoting this to find historical evidence to the contrary.
Are you serious? The fact checker and history professor from the politico article calls it an overstated claim.
> Both sets of inaccuracies worried me, but the Revolutionary War statement made me especially anxious.
A number of other prominent historians have leveled the same criticism.
I'm not making any general claims about the revolution, or the politics of the moment as they relate to the telling of American history. But I am saying that the claim that it was motivated by the desire to preserve slavery is unsupported. This is the mainstream historical opinion.
> This one will have to wait to find more authoritative scholarly sources. But, I accept that it is controversial and possibly in question
It isn't controversial, it's completely without evidence. There is not a shred of evidence is presented. The linked essay from the 1619 Project picks up with Jefferson in 1776, a year and a half after the war started.
I hear you, and you’ll see me pushing back in somebody’s Tobin the rest of the thread, burning think there’s some nuance here. If we viewing as a piece of activism and not history then I think it becomes interesting. I think it’s also useful to consider the work apart from the public persona of NHJ who is something of an internet troll.
Puncturing the nationalist myth surrounding the revolution and founding is I think worthwhile. It was after all a violent revolution, carried out by people who disagreed strongly with one another. There are contradictions in the founding that at the same time could be troubling an inspiring. Deifying the founders does them a disservice. I thinking some sense their project was about separating the state and power from personalities.
They were flawed people but accomplished something incredible. I’m against the sate conceptually, but they did a lot to bring governance closer to people.
Sorry about the wall of text. I tried not to favor anyone's "side".
As for America hating. No. Those who are uncritical of their government are doing no one any favor. E.g., if we had more people speaking up critically against US policies abroad, 911 probably would never have happened.
It will be the uncritical patriots who will allow America to be lead to ruin.
I could go through each point, but let's start with Lincoln, you only took half the quote, what he said was:
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
The rest of your propaganda falls apart just as easily.
You talk like someone from the 50 cent army or a useful idiot who believes the nonsense.
I added the ellipse to indicate there was more to the quote (originally, not an edit). The remainder of the quote doesn't affect the message at all. The message is that Lincoln was not ideologically for emancipation at the beginning of the war. He was pragmatic about it. All he cared about was keeping the union intact. If he could have won the war without freeing a single slave, he would have done so-- his own words.
There is nothing false in any of what I wrote. There is one thing that is controversial since he wasn't convicted, but there is a great deal of evidence supporting Reagan selling crack cocaine to fund his illegal wars and death squads. Please go through point by point, if you allow yourself, you will learn something and possibly change your position.
edit: added, "originally not an edit" for clarity.
Look, Regan was a hack, and a criminal but there's no evidence of the CIA selling crack, it's a conspiracy theory. John Kerry in 1986 tried to prove that it happened [1] but the committee never found evidence. They did point to funding of the Contras who in some cares were themselves involved in trafficking, but that's it. There's no solid evidence. You could point to the reporting by the San Jose Mercury, but it's mostly circumstantial.
Now it could be sort of true if you squint and tilt your head, but it's far from conclusive and the narrative of "Reagan selling crack cocaine" is totally unsupported.
edit - I'm more or less an anarchist and think that the state is evil, so a lot of what you're saying fits my priors really well. hat said, I think it's important to come armed with facts when criticizing power and the state. When we make overblown or false statements, it undermines the case.
“CIA did not inform Congress of all allegations or information it received indicating that Contra-related organizations or individuals were involved in drug trafficking,” the inspector general’s report found. “During the period in which the FY 1987 statutory prohibition was in effect, for example, no information has been found to indicate that CIA informed Congress of eight of the ten Contra-related individuals concerning whom CIA had received drug trafficking allegations or information.”
This complicity of the CIA in drug trafficking is at the heart of Webb’s explosive expose — a point Webb makes himself in archival interview footage that appears in Levin’s documentary.
“It’s not a situation where the government or the CIA sat down and said, ‘Okay, let’s invent crack, let’s sell it in black neighborhoods, let’s decimate black America,’” Webb says. “It was a situation where, ‘We need money for a covert operation, the quickest way to raise it is sell cocaine, you guys go sell it somewhere, we don’t want to know anything about it.’”
This is a false choice, they can both be awful along different axes. Biden however has a MUCH longer public record of bad policy decisions. Biden's crime bill from 1994 and the Iraq war which he supported caused more human misery than anything Trump had the opportunity to do in 4 years, all prior to the recent election. For all of his faults and criminality, Trump was mostly bluster and didn't actually do very much while in office, mostly it seems like he play golf and watched TV.
In many substantive ways, Biden has continued most of the previous administrations policies. Sure, he's temperamentally different, but still
a doddering old fool stuck in the politics of a previous era.
You're making Trump out as being way too harmless.
Trump led our society straight into Covid denialism, and subsequently vaccine denialism. The root has been there, but the main power of a politician is to lead people, and he led the mainstream right into solipsistic "skepticism" of what would otherwise be pretty straightforward topics.
Trump is also directly symbiotic with reactionary groups that aren't criticizing our society to improve it, but rather to drag us back to the stage when their simple minded prescriptions were useful. As a libertarian, it's easy to explain away many of the other criticisms through different priorities, tradeoffs, relativism, media sensationalism, etc. But those two stick in the absolute sense.
Like every high level politician they're both terrible people, but Biden at least serves the corporate status quo that is the backbone of the country - the "deep state" if you will. I fully support Wikileaks et al, and I wish CIA/NSA/etc were disbanded and prosecuted. But as a self-interested American I'd rather the "deep state" continue causing global mayhem for economic gain, than to have a civil war at home (sorry). If you value global stability you probably should too, despite how disgusting it is.
The way I see it, 2022 is going to be a barometer and 2024 will be the jury verdict on our society. If people have come to see the destructiveness of Trumpism, the conservatives (democrats) will gain ground, and the incumbent power structure can continue sauntering on as it's slowly usurped by technology (ideally p2p rather than big tech middlemen, but that's orthogonal). Whereas if disenfranchised people continue to put performative dissent above rational self interest, the radicals (republicans) gain ground. They'll continue to create more elective crises that drive even more disenfranchisement (hello last 50 years of trickle down inflationism), and we're solidly in a death spiral.
And let's be entirely honest. It is not like policies vary from one administration to next. Many border policies were already in place before Trump and so was surveillance and so on. In general humanity loses every time.
Your bogeyman largely did nothing for four years. Actually sorry, he was the first politician anywhere in this country to guarantee women basic human rights in prison (he federally guaranteed that women in prison have access to sanitary products not through commissary, which is a priviledge that can be taken away).
Biden has been a trainwreck for 50 years. Barack Obama himself said "never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up" and that's exactly what the man did in Afghanistan, which might be the worst diplomatic blunder in our history. Our allies are extremely unhappy with us right now.
Your bogeyman largely did nothing for four years. Actually sorry, he was the first politician anywhere in this country to guarantee women basic human rights...
The theocrats he nominated for the Supreme Court will be there for decades, ensuring that no women without the resources of, say, a Trump family member, will be able to maintain control of their own bodies.
Your shortened, incomplete quote of what I said takes me out of context completely. But you're not refuting the actual point that I made, you're going on some tangent.
Also the "theocrats" that he's appointed to the Supreme Court haven't even towed his line on any major decisions they've had to vote on and basically have completely stabbed him in the back if you take things from his sides' perspective.
But you're not refuting the actual point that I made, you're going on some tangent.
Your actual point was that Trump "did nothing for four years." I refuted that point. Three SCOTUS seats occupied by religious ideologues aren't "nothing."
