Presidents are above the law while they’re in office. This case is unique because it happened before he was in office. The message that will really be sent is “wait until you’re actually president to do would-be illegal shit”.
Still worth handing him a harsh sentence, just to put the orange fascist fuck behind bars, but there shouldn’t be any misconceptions about some true notion of justice here. Trump is just a moron, and didn’t know how to play the game correctly.
20 year olds are not generally getting night terrors from watching disturbing content on tiktok. They’re not losing sleep, or coming away with genuine psychological scarring. We don’t need government regulations to control media content for the sake of literal adults. And children in theory should already have their content moderated by the correct degree by parents, not the government.
It’s just content I find dumb
If you watch anything on YouTube that you don’t think is dumb, there is stuff on TikTok you also wouldn’t find dumb. I don’t use TikTok either, but I think you genuinely underestimate how much content there is, and overestimate how uniform that content is.
Considering the country that runs it (…)
ByteDance already stores U.S user data within the U.S, allows third party firms to scrutinize its data privacy policies far more than any other U.S media group, and has come back with a clean bill from groups like Citizen Lab (a Canadian research lab). No U.S userdata goes to the Chinese government.
Government officials know this, they’re just putting on a show. Leaked phone calls have made this clear, the actual issue is the lack of policing around the kinds of content served. ByteDance is not aligned with U.S foreign policy interests like Meta/Google are. They are more than happy to showcase the horrors of the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel, and that’s having a real impact on the literal more than half of Americans that use TikTok.
It’s clearly against the YouTube T.O.S
Videos against YouTube’s T.O.S of the October 7th attacks have been on the platform since October of last year. They’re much more strict about removing videos showcasing the much larger-in-scale violent acts done by Israel than anything done by Hamas. TikTok isn’t. This isn’t a coincidence, and the U.S needs TikTok to fall in line here.
If they don’t young people will continue to hold extreme views, like bombing tens of thousands of children in an open air prison that has been violating the GCIV since 2007 is somehow problematic. They need the American public to have the understanding that Palestinians are simply human animals; they’re savages that need to be put down. Not unlike native americans.
Towards the end of the culling, when enough of the population has died to no longer pose a threat, they’ll give them small territories like the U.S did with native americans and feign sympathy. Imperialism hasn’t changed.
When we say younger, we might just be talking about different age groups. I imagine 16-30, and in that age range you’re not likely to come away with severe psychological scarring, but you will be deeply upset and that’s a good thing (we shouldn’t ignore genocide, we should be upset by it). Being upset leads to change.
If you’re talking about like 10 year olds watching it, sure I can agree. They can’t really do anything about it. They can’t go out and protest, or advocate for change, or vote, etc. Plus they’re much more likely to have genuine scarring. Issues sleeping, night terrors, trouble concentrating, etc.
As for “that content is dumb”, I assume you’re talking about tiktok in general. And again, for some people it’s definitely not dumb. People get served different things. Tiktok isn’t a platform trying to do good in the world, like any other social media platform it’s trying to drive engagement. However, it’s one of the few social media platforms outside of the U.S media interest groups, and that’s why the U.S is either banning them or forcing them to sell.
The end goal is to censor all of that raw footage of genocide, because it changes views. When you can hide behind rhetoric and not show how horrific the mass bombings are, you get a lot more leeway. That’s good for Israel, and why AIPAC and other Israel lobbies are the main forces behind this push in the U.S. In the end, the ban is bad for humanity (will allow the genocide to escalate without public backlash), but will be good for Israel and U.S elites.
People who go out and counter protest actively have given it more than a cursory thought. They know BLM isn’t advocating for white genocide (okay, most of them understand this. There are some literal nazis/skin heads/white nationalists in the counter protesting groups that believe in The Great Replacement, but they believed this prior to BLM existing).
Yet they still go out and counter protest. It’s not confusion at that point. You can’t go up to an all lives matter reactionary and say “Hey! Did you know BLM doesn’t actually want to murder all white people? Are you a fan of BLM now?” and actually expect any progress.
Yes, genocides are emotional. Watching children being blown up is something that should upset you. That’s actually happening in the real world.
Emotion isn’t the only thing that should inform your decisions, but pretending like you shouldn’t be upset at watching kids being blown up, or begging for their parents, or whatever else have you is just foolish.
Is your argument that a genuine, good faith interpretation of “Black Lives Matter” is “Only Black Lives Matter”?
This isn’t how English works. If I say “I like your mom” to an SO, they wouldn’t interpret it as I don’t like them and instead like their mom. I don’t have to say “I like your mom too”.
Yeah fuck people who are against animal abuse and actually live out their principles.
Like you could at least say “preachy vegans”. This is still problematic, because it ignores that everyone is preachy about issues they understand are immoral (we’re all preachy anti-racists, anti-rapists, etc.)
But just saying “vegan” is wild.
I don’t use tiktok, but some people have unusually based tiktok feeds. They can get direct footage from the genocide happening in Gaza, for example. I never get that recommended on YouTube, despite my very obvious socialist leanings, watching pro-Palestine content, etc.
This is the actual reason tiktok is being banned (if they don’t sell) after the election. One of the largest lobbying groups in America, AIPAC, in probably the most well-funded policy categories (pro-Israel policies) backs most of Congress. They’ve determined tiktok has far too much influence on American youth, and has made the Israel/Palestine divide a young/old divide more-so than a left/right divide.
There’s already a strong correlation between political leaning and age, which is problematic for the future of the fascist movement in America, but this issue falls outside the norm. You’ll find a lot of young conservatives calling for an end to the needless killing of civilians. They won’t call it a genocide because admitting Israel is a genocidal apartheid state is too far for them, but they can at least admit killing tens of thousands of children is not the right path here.
That kind of extremism (e.g not greenlighting any amount of culling of “human animals” Israel feels it needs to do) is unacceptable to the pro-Israel lobby, and they’re not used to getting this kind of pushback from the American public.
As someone who has primarily used spaces, I still use the tab key. I sincerely hope most space users understand that your editor can expand your tab key into spaces, and people aren’t genuinely going around spamming their spacebar 2->16 times for various indentation levels.
There’s a misconception among western intellectuals that emotion and intellect are juxtaposed, that your indifference towards the genocide that is taking place is somehow a virtue. It’s not. It’s your inability to actually comprehend what is going on. If you lived the life of a Palestinian you wouldn’t just be mad, you’d be fucking helpless, and your inability to internalize that and have it impact your view on the world is a common human failing.
If the bombs Israel purposefully dropped on civilians killed someone you cared about, you wouldn’t be on here arguing against people who use the word genocide. People you yourself admit aren’t actually saying anything wrong. You’re trying to move people who are literally just stating facts about the world in an emotionally charged way away from intense language. To what end? Do you actually care? Probably not.
You should develop some empathy. It’s not a weakness.
First time using Wikipedia? There are actually a dozen resources at the bottom. Use those.
Anyway, you didn’t address anything I actually said. You sit back as Israel invades, bombs, and slaughters thousands upon thousands of children for the purposes of wiping out a native people, and you argue about the semantics of genocide. It’s so fucking pathetic, people did the same thing during the Holocaust to try to argue against U.S intervention and it fucking worked, the only reason we intervened was Japan bombing pearl harbor.
Genocide apologists like yourself should go spend a day actually experiencing the fucking genocide, then maybe you’ll have an ounce of compassion. It just sucks having you out here, potentially changing public sentiment away from helping those being genocided. The difference between an indifferent bystander and a genocide enabler is not as large as you’d probably imagine, being the former yourself.
Yeah, want to know why the international community doesn’t call the Palestinian genocide a genocide? Because Israel and the U.S reject it lmfao. You’re such a fucking bootlicker.
The only half-coherent argument that some academics make against the genocide classification is that it’s instead an ethnic cleansing. Nobody (except the U.S and Israel) thinks Israel isn’t trying to exterminate the natives.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation
Yeah, there are some leftists that try drawing the line at silly points like “oh I won’t vote for someone who supports genocide” but really what’s the big deal? Genocides happen, I think they’re kind of fun sounding. I’m thinking about moving to Israel and helping the IDF finish their extermination of the barbaric “human animals”/natives that have infested their holy land. Biden has self-identified as a Zionist many times before, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. I bet he’d take up arms with me against the parasites if he was still fully sentient. He’s definitely trying his best as president to help them finish cleaning up the trash.
Oh, and yeah only Trump is a fascist. None of the above sounds anything like fascism, don’t worry.
/s
You missed the forest for the trees. He failed to get this passed. It’s absolutely fluff to reach to Biden’s failures in a list of his greatest accomplishments.
Obviously I agree on decriminalizing marijuana, but that’s not what my comment or the broader discussion was about.
I don’t know if you genuinely missed the point of my comment, or if you’re just arguing in bad faith.
If your goal is to reinforce the pro-Biden crowd, good job. If your goal is to convince anyone who is anti-Biden, this won’t do.
Fluff has opposite effects for people with different biases. Someone with a bias in favor of what you’re saying reads all the fluff as “yup this is a metric fuckload of facts that weighs in favor of my heuristical understanding of the world”, while others would read it as “this person is obviously reaching and fluffing up the pro-Biden rhetoric, so is any of it impressive?”
I’ll be more concrete in my criticism, you mention both the climate action (materially important and good to mention) and also his failed attempt to pass marijuana legislation. Even bringing up marijuana legislation when the kinds of discussions we’re having are about genocide, climate change, employment, etc. seems out of place, but you bring up a failed attempt to do this comparatively extremely unimportant thing, it reads as you having an immense bias and reaching for anything you can. Same thing with his failure to get proper student loan relief to people.
Essentially the only actual legitimate win he has is the passing of the climate action. Wage growth and unemployment shrinking are parts of natural boom bust cycles, not any executive orders he’s put in place or action signed into law by Democrats.
For what it’s worth I’m not a moderate, I’m a socialist, so I’m not normally the “truth is in the middle of two positions” type of person, but your comment is the exception to the rule, where you’re not spewing out just straight falsehoods but you do have an obvious bias and are fluffing up his achievements more than deserved.
Reducing net profit doesn’t have any impact on pricing in capitalist markets. It’s not like capitalists have some specific profit percentage they are allowed to hit (unless they’re in a very regulated industry like grid or water supply). They want infinite returns, and they’ll increase prices as much as the market allows to generate more profits.
Capitalists don’t look at a net profit of 4.4% and say “yup that’s enough”, but if it were 2.8% they’d say “damn guess we have to increase prices for customers, I really wish we didn’t have to do this”.
They might increase prices as a retaliatory measure. The same way businesses slashed hours as a result of Obamacare. They didn’t have to, but it benefited them to, and they didn’t see a downside.
They might be able to increase prices, blame it on this law, and have people who are aligned politically with them put up with it and maybe even support their business more to “stick it to the libs”. They already do this with things like inflation, blaming it on Biden and then increasing prices far more than necessary.
Democrats won’t respond to a bunch of uncommitted voters beyond just lip service. The genocide will continue, fiscal conservative austerity politics will continue. The best we’ll get is a return to the world of 2015. That’s the absolute best case with another Biden term, and even that is unlikely.
I know the genocide isn’t a big deal for you or other moderate libs, and you’re more concerned with getting America back to its status quo than doing anything that might actually help Palestinians in the future.
The Democratic party caters to mainstream voters
The Democratic party caters to power. They want to stay in power. If enough people vote green who previously voted Democrat, they know there’s something that moved them that way, and they’ll know that some of those voters can be recaptured. You have an incredibly naive and rosey view of bourgoise democracy.
It’s not easier to pull a Trump cultist who has been voting Republican for 40 years, over a person who voted Democrat in 2020 and Green in 2024. It’s quite easy to reason out, and even if you don’t understand this simple fact, Democrats in 2028 will at least, because it’s essentially their full time job to maintain power.
Exactly like you said, it’s not about an idealist movement towards progressivism, that’s exactly why the feedback loop isn’t an issue. When certain material goals are met, progressives are satisfied. It’s not an endless pit of progressive ideals, it’s about actual changes we want to see in Democrat policy. Once those changes are made, we vote Democrat to reinforce good behavior.
The feedback loop spoiler idea only works if there are literally no material goals, only an idealist goal to move towards progressivism. This isn’t how reality works.
Not supporting genocide is a large material goal, and the Israel/Palestine conflict wasn’t at the worst it’s ever been in 2020, but it is in 2024. The material goals changed. In 2020 the biggest issue I was aware of was stopping fascism in America. Now that doesn’t even come close to stopping the ramped up genocide, that happened as a direct result of the endorsement of Israel by the Biden administration.
I would vote for a Democratic candidate that wants to end the genocide. Sure, they can still be a corporate boot-licking liberal. Biden was in 2020 and I still voted for him because the material outcome I wanted was satisfied.
It is not satisfied in 2024. The Palestinian genocide is far more important now, as it’s happening literally faster than any time in history. You claim that leftists have some idealist goal to just move Democrats to the left, so a refusal to engage with these leftists is the only option Democrats have, but this ignores a massive difference between socialists and fascists, socialists are materialists and fascists are idealists.
It’s a disingenuous portrayal of how leftists actually think. I suspect you’re conflating socialist thought with fascist thought either because you’re a liberal or because you’re unfamiliar with socialist theory. Either way, it’s worth getting more educated, the extreme left does not function the same way the extreme right does, and you seem to think it does.
I don’t think the person you’re responding to is a Trump supporter. I think they’re critiquing the vast amounts of political energy people put into supporting and justifying a genocidal state and its leaders.
Your entire comment exemplifies this perfectly. There’s obviously a lot of time and effort you’ve put into forming your electoral views, and you obviously spend a good deal of time going around, at the very least online, trying to inform people how to make better decisions inside the electoral sphere.
This is exactly what electoralism tries to drive in people. The expenditure of political capital within acceptable bounds. Before electoralism/liberal democracies, political capital accumulated and was then spent on strikes, riots, or revolutions. Things that are much more effective at driving change per political capital spent.
There are literally millions of people like you in America that could all immediately stop all your expenditure of political capital and it would make actually no material difference. That’s a beautiful thing about electoralism (for those in power), the thing that matters is the differential, not the total expenditure. This is why “swing states” exist.
I’ll put it into concrete terms, imagine the amount of electorally active individuals in America was immediately cut in half. The population remains the same, but exactly half of the current voting population stops voting. Assume all ratios remain the same. There’d be fundamentally no difference in material outcomes.
Now imagine if all current political capital was spent towards strikes, unions, revolution, or really any form of politics outside electoralism. Doubling or halfing this engagement would be massive. Real material outcomes would be different if there were thousands more strikes. What doesn’t matter is if the voting population is 150 million, 90 million, or 10 million. Only the differential matters, and only for determining a fixed binary outcome.