Joe Biden is not my favourite Presidential candidate, but I’m not American, so I don’t get to vote for him anyway. I do however seem surrounded by people who say that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and that Biden is a senile, plagerising, neoliberal warlord, and that there is no point voting for him. Or they say that he is only the Democrat candidate because of mysterious machinations by elite Democrats who want everything to stay the same. They neglect the painful fact that he seems to have won more votes than Bernie Sanders, and a lot more votes than Tulsi Gabbard, who despite having gained a mere 2 delegates when last I heard, is supposed by some to be a sure election winner.
In my opinion, these people are following the Republican line which is being directed to ‘the left’, and which I have pointed to quite a lot – that is “there is no difference between the sides”, especially if you look at foreign policy, so you might as well refuse to vote for anyone who could win against Trump. “Go on, be really principled and vote for someone who cannot challenge him, and has no chance of victory.”
However, there are always differences. Sure they are not as big, or as many, as I might like, but if you exclusively focus on the similarities then everything will move further rightward, and Trump will remain.
The differences are important. If I had a choice whether to vote for Hitler or Mussolini I would easily vote for Mussolini. Not a perfect choice, but a choice worth making. If I had to vote between Thatcher and Mussolini, I might be harder pressed because of personal issues about Thatcher, but I would still vote for her and relatively happily. If I had to choose between Thatcher and Trump, I would likewise vote for Thatcher. I would vote for Trump before Hitler, but that is with hindsight for Hitler – no one knows what Trump might do in a second term, and I would be worried, but I’d still vote.
So what I ask is for people on the left to please stop pretending there is no difference between Trump and Biden (this is not a mistake made by those on the hard right who support Trump), and to make sure that Trump does not get a second term. If he gets a second term, he can keep showing us how fragile the laws are when it comes to preventing a President being above the Law, and that is probably not a good thing.
We now know that it is not a problem for the President to make money from policies and position.
We now know a President can escape from an impeachment case even being heard, if he has enough people in the Senate who put victory ahead of principle, and use their legal right not to hear evidence or witnesses to see if there is a problem.
We now know a President can self-declare that charges against them, have no merit and command members of his administration not to testify even when called by the house.
A President can, we now know, refuse to answer questions, brought up by the house, and certainly does not have to be questioned face to face.
We know that attempts by a President to obstruct justice are apparently ok, even if they involve attempts to blackmail a foreign power.
We know a President will not be charged with crimes or frauds, even if the case against them is open and shut, as with running his charities for his personal financial benefit, and even if the crime is admitted by that President in public, as it was with seeking Russian aid to win an election.
We know that there is no problem if associates of the President are convicted of crimes and fraud.
We know a President can pardon criminals, so nobody who has committed crimes with him need fear any charges, provided they keep loyal to him.
We know there is no penalty for a President lying continually, or threatening to revoke, or wildly reinterpret, the US constitution.
Given he did all this in his first term, what will the second term bring?
Ask yourself, do you want more of this? And….
- Do you want a climate policy or not?
- Do you want health care for people or not?
- Do you want to cut social security or not?
- Do you want even more military spending or not?
- Do you want more tax cuts for wealthy people and increases for lower income people or not?
- Do you want somebody who cannot take advice or not?
- Do you want walls around your borders or not?
- Do you want kids separated from parents or not?
- Do you want a President who encourages racism, sexism and hard-line rightist Christianity or not?
- Do you want public education or not?
- Do you want a President who actively campaigns against science and accurate knowledge or not?
- Do you want a President who encourages pollution and poisoning, restarts discontinued harmful projects and champions environmental destruction or not?
- Do you want a President who abuses and threatens everyone who disagrees with him or not?
- Do you want a President who betrays US allies such as the Kurds, and openly prefers dictators to democratic regimes?
- Do you want a President who attempts to financially benefit from his position or not?
- Do you want a President who gets members of his family to work for him, even if they have no experience or qualifications, or not?
- Do you want a President who tries to obstruct investigations into himself or not?
If these things don’t bother you, then I guess keep saying that there is no point exchanging Trump for anyone else and that the Democrats are completely corrupt and watch the Republicans win and win, and the left lose and lose.
Up to you Americans.
Tags: Disinformation, politics
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