Hi @freemo
I saw you claiming that you prefer Trump to Biden for US president, which surprized me as I was under the impression that Trump is so bad for democratic & rule of law standards that no reasonable person valuing these things could support him. I also saw you point out some anti-Trump propaganda that was just factually wrong, so you seem to be knowledgeable in that matter. Since I am now wondering whether my views are just a result of such propaganda I was hoping you could verify some of the things that led me to my conclusions.
I am not a US citizen and this exercise is mostly for anti-propaganda calibration purposes for me. You seem to enjoy this kind of discussion, but I know that you are a busy man, so I won't assume a lack of response to have big significance. I will still be grateful for any you give.
Thread follows, ordered by a combination of severity and how sure I am of specific claims.
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@timorl One thing to be clear of before we get into any real detail...
I do **not** support trump. I feel he is the lesser of two evils, and not as bad as Biden, but marginally so at best. I also don't subscribe tot he idea of a two-party system."
So if you ask me who i support the answer would actually be Jo for president not Trump. Trump is just who I would pick if i was forced not to vote for a third party and had to pick Biden or Trump and had no other choices.
Always happy to give a thoughtful response though and happy to address each of your concerns.. though keep in mind I may not default to assuming trump is innocent in all cases.. Trump has done a lot of things I don agree with...
@timorl Also before we get into the point for point, perhaps a good place to start is for me to mention the reasons I dislike Biden and that scare me. After that I can address each of your concerns around Trump to contrast this:
1) biden started his career based on a lie about his education that surfaced only after he got into office, turns out he didnt go to schools he claimed to and was at the bottom of his class and didnt get the grades he claimed either
2) He also started his career opposing desegregation efforts. His first decade or so of his career was focused on keeping blacks and whites in separate schools under the claim he did not want to see white schools turned into a "jungle" by introducing black students (his choice of words).
3) He supported and took part in the murder of US citizens without due process, one of the biggest scandals of the Obama administration.. murder.. worse yet in one case it was a 16 year old boy and american citizen part of the drone murder scandals.
4) Kamala is a cop who has a horrific history of abusing blacks and minorities during her career.
5) Kama spearheaded and passed SESTA one of the worst abuses on women and sex workers to date
6) Has a clear case of rapidly progressing dementia. Trump does not, he is just a moron which isnt much better but at least it wont progress as it is with Biden.
7) Kama has an abusive record towards Trans men and women as well passing and supporting bills that deny trans their medication when in jail and leading to suicide and other trauma as a result.
8) Hell she even attacks parents where she supported sending parents to jail as a consequence for home schooling their own children.
9) Finally lets not forget what Biden said at his acceptance speech about wanting to force-drug the american population with a vaccine that hasn't been released yet and was rushed through all the normal FDA safety checks. He said he wanted to require vaccines certificates people would have to show if they are on the streets. We are literally talking about this guy supporting mass drugging on a population without their consent and at gun point.
@freemo Thanks for all the responses, I'll try answering all of them in their respective subthreads.
1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 are not really differentiating between Biden/Harris and Trump/Pence, since finding equivalent problems with the other pair is trivial. (I would like use this moment to offer my deepest condolences with regard to your overall political system.) Moreover, at least 2, 4, 7 are in such clear opposition to the current Democratic party positions that they are extremely unlikely to be repeated.
9 sounded to me as an exaggeration and I cannot find anything reasembling that statement. Even right-wing sites only admonish him for not completely ruling out the idea, so I'm not sure where you got it. (Non right wing have some interviews in which he claims that he wouldn't want the mandate to be federal and only take any action if the vaccine was approved by the FDA, so much different to what you said.)
Concerning 6 I'm very _very_ skeptical towards any claims of health problems of candidates. This seems to be a standard practice by Cambridge Analytica et consortes, which seems to work unusually well for some reason. I encontered it first with Hillary Clinton, who, as we all know was only months from death in 2016 due to pneumonia (afaik she's still doing fine) and later with Bronisaw Komorowski, who literally had a rapidly progressing case of dementia (since you might not know – previous president of Poland; as of now doing fine, although he lost the election). I can go deeper into the CA connection if you want, but it's mostly my suspicions based on relatively flaky evidence, so it probably shouldn't convince you. Anyway, claiming a candidate is very sick and creating video evidence of the "fact" seems to be common recently.
3 is actually a very strong argument, I wasn't aware of the fact (US citizens also being victims of the drone strikes) earlier (although the phrasing you used did not make looking for more information easy – most sites that revel in the word "murder" are so right-wing they tried very hard to avoid giving any details about the people targeted and justifications for targetting them, for obvious reasons). All the facts surrounding the case make it somewhat less clear than the way you presented it, but it's definitely a very bad thing. Thank you very mich for pointing it out.
@freemo Why is that quote hard to find then, even on right-wing sites? And why are you concerned with this singe occadion if he seems to have made clear that his policy is different later?
I didn't claim the murdering of citizens had equivalents (the closest I can think of is the way the pandemic was handled by the administration, but that is much different at least formally, if not morally). However transgender rights definitely have equivalents – the easiest to find was the new "don't ask don't tell" policy in the army which effectively bans them from joining and locks the door on the closet for the ones already there. If we want to look further in the past and for Pence, then there is the handling of the AIDS epidemic (huh, that's a surprizing pattern I didn't notice before...), and it's harder to find a thing with worse impact on the LGBT community in the US historically.
In the videos I saw he seemed slow the way older people sometimes are, but not really suffering from dementia – I had contact with both and they seem much different. However obviously I don't know him personally, so if you have stronger evidence from personal interactions then I cannot argue with that.
@timorl #9 was clearly and explicitly stated in his acceptance speech at the DNC. I added it because I heard him say as I watched that speech.
I dont really find anything trump has done that even comes close to the points listed for biden.. I dont recall him ever using his political power to murder us citizens without due process for example. Nor can I think of any acts trump has passed or try to pass that comes anywhere even remotely close to the level of harm to minorities women and LGBT as those I listed from Biden/harris... Its hard for me to see how Trump can be comparable at all to those 9 points honestly.
6 is my personal opinion. though keep in mind biden is a personal friend of the family. He has been over my family home for dinner and spent the night. so I may have more of a personal insight in this regard than may be obvious from simply watching him onstage. But considering he often doesnt know where he is, seems confused, and says strange things, I think, at least to me, his failing mental health is obvious.
Your welcome and its been a good conversation all around.
Keep in mind all this was about how biden and trump sucked, we havent even touched on the good parts of both, which is half the equation too.