[jmyeet]

I understand the point you're making about blind devotion to Trump but the reality is that Biden is not free from blame here, in four ways:

1. Trump in his first term created the Abraham Accords that directly contributed to the genocide that has since happened (by excluding Palestinians from the process). Biden did not reverse any of that because he is an avowed Zionist;

2. Trump blew up the JCPOA that sought to include Iran in the international community for really no reason than to please his donors, particularly his biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who are also avowed Zionists. This was an Obama-era deal and part of me is convinced that Trump blew it up simply because it had Obama's name on it. Biden of course did not reinstate it;

3. Trump blew up energy markets in 2020 with the disastrous OPEC deal he made in June that created the inflation shock of Covid. Biden quietly went to MBS to get him to increase oil output. He refused. Biden said nothing. He absolutely could've waved a very big stick to get MBS to change course here, notably by threatening arms shipments; and

4. The so-called "bear-hug strategy" following October 7 set the stage for everything that's happening now. At any point in the last more than a year of his term, Biden could've ended that conflict with a phone call. He did not because, again, he is an avowed Zionist. That both emboldened Israel to drag the US into the Iran war and also was a key factor in the Democrats losing the 2024 presidential election although I'm not actually convinced we'd be in a vastly different situation had Kamala won (eg [1]).

US foreign policy is surprisingly uniparty.

Oil is good for business because it's good for war. It's also why we don't have major investment in renewables. As this article put it, nobody goes to war over a solar panel [2].

[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/8/kamala-harris-says-...

[2]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...

[nikau]

I can't understand the logic behind party A did something, and then blame party B for not undoing it.

Not everything is a simple ctrl-z, and the blame lays squarely on who implemented it.

[lowbloodsugar]

A mugger stabs your friend and runs off. They are bleeding out. You do nothing. That’s what he’s saying. The fact is Biden did nothing to prevent this. Including not locking the fucker up. Not stacking the Supreme Court after the Ginsberg shitshow.

[mittensc]

> They are bleeding out. You do nothing

There are a lot of people that do not know what to do.

There are also wounds that you can't really do anything about without hospital. (internal bleeding?!)

The funny thing is, as analogies go, here the friend tells you to bugger off because of israel and tells the mugger to come back and help him... mugger stabs him some more

[itake]

I hear you, but I really don't want the government flip flopping every 4-8 years on policy.

"stuck in the past" vibes vs making progress

[lowbloodsugar]

“I do not like flip flopping, so I’m gonna be a fascist too.”

[itake]

Who are you quoting?

I've voted democrat in every election since I was 18.

[jmyeet]

It's called the ratchet effect [1]. In our modern political paradigm, conservatives torch the economy, introduce heinous policies and give massive tax breaks to the wealthy until their popularity drops enough that Democrats get voted in and... do nothing. This has several names such as "controlled opposition" and the "mirage of dissent" [2].

As an example, take the current Iran war. There's very little opposition in establishment politics to the actual war. What you get instead are process objections, such as the president not consulting Congress. Objecting to the process is a way of appearing to be in opposition without being in opposition.

This was ultimately why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election. "Trump bad" isn't a platform that people get excited for. People are asking "what are you going to do about it?" and her answer was... nothing. It was the culmination of years of what's been called "lesser evil voting" or "harm reduction voting". Democrats have adopted a platform of just not being quite as bad as the Republicans, probably because they have the exact same donors. And millions of voters stayed home in 2024 rather than vote for the status quo.

So back to the JCPOA, Biden should've done something but did nothing. Because he likes what Trump did. He agrees with it. And so do most Democrats. That's the point.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_effect

[2]: https://ia800503.us.archive.org/5/items/mirage-of-dissent-th...

[iamnothere]

Not helped by both parties uniting wherever necessary to freeze out outsiders (socialists, libertarians, or even liberal reformists). Anything to preserve the status quo.

[Sabinus]

I'd be interested to know when the Democrat party drove out liberal reformists.

[iamnothere]

Any time someone actually proposes effective reforms, they get frozen out. The status quo is all about symbolic action and posturing. This often gets framed as a “culture war” issue but for some reason the party old guard always ends up on the side opposing change, no matter who it is.

[jquery]

Other than Dems having a super majority for a few weeks with Obama, when was the last time they were “voted in” at a national level?

Biden did a pretty good job cleaning up after Trump. Was he perfect? Not even close. But Dem primary voters had the option of more progressive candidates and instead they circled around Biden. Did donors try and engineer a Biden win? Sure. Were voters obligated to go along with their scheme? Also no.

The blame for our situations rests squarely on the shoulders of the American people, who have been living so insulated from the consequences of their votes that they entertained a guy like Trump, twice.

[jmyeet]

First the super majority isn't a constitutional or even legislative barrier. It's simply a Senate rule. Rules for the Senate are established at the start of every Congress. There's no reason why the Senate couldn't simply eliminate the rule.

Republicans like the filibuster because they can force through most of what they want under reconciliation, which only requires a simply majority, and they can block Democrats with a minority. Democrats like the filibuster because it gives them an excuse to do nothing. Because a lot of what Democrats want to do isn't filibuster-proof.

Also, the filibuster once meant that you had to stand up and hold the floor to block a vote. Now we have a silent hold since the 1970s. If you for some reason believe in needing 60 votes to end debate, why not at least adopt the earlier interpretation that requires someone to stand at a podium? Because Democrats don't want to do anything. That's why.

Biden had four terrible decisions in his presidency:

1. Appointing Merrick Garland as AG. He's another establishment Democrat that didn't want to do anything, really, particularly not prosecute the insurrection that took place. He was embarrassed into doing so by the January 6 Committee. He basically lost 2 years of potentially prosecuting the administration;

2. His Israel policy, particularly the bear hug strategy and especially not ending the genocide;

3. Not raking MBS over the coals for not ending the Trump 2020 OPEC deal, wich exacerbated the inflation price shock; and

4. Running for re-election.

It's worth adding that the only reason Biden was the candidate was because the DNC was scared Bernie Sanders would be the candidate so they fixed the race in South Carolina thanks to Jim Clyburn in particular. Everyone dropped out of the primary and got rewarded with Cabinet posts, etc (eg Pete Buttigief as DoT Secretary). Except one. Elizabeth Warren stayed in to split Bernie's vote.

As for blaming the voters, I 100% disagree. The party leadership has repeatedly engineered situations to give the voters terrible choices and rely on lesser evil voting. After the 2017 election, the DNC got sued and argued in court that they had no obligation to stay neutral. That was a political promise not a binding promise. Basically, they argued that they were free to overrule the will of primary voters with superdelegates and manipualting of funds by then DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who when exposed and was forced out, just went and joined the Hilary campaign.

Voters stayed home in the millions in 2024 (vs 2020) because they were given no choice. They're not responsible for that. The candidate is. And if you end up being angry about Kamala losing, blame her for having a terrible platform, not the voters who decided a slightly better candidate was the only available choice.

[jmward01]

No comment on the points you made, but thanks for the article No One Goes to War Over a Solar Panel' was a good read.

[aaronsung]

>The so-called "bear-hug strategy" following October 7 set the stage for everything that's happening now.....Biden could've ended that conflict with a phone call. Both sides have been preparing for the conflict for decades. The bomb that the US used to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, the GBU-57A/B MOP, began development in the early 2000s[1]. Iran has long supported the Houthis, who have been attacking Saudi Arabia, a key US ally in the Middle East and one of the main suppliers of oil to the West. Iran has been the major competitor to the US, or even the West, for a long period of time. Oct 7 is just a trigger point, like the Sarajevo assassination was the trigger point of WW1.

> Trump blew up the JCPOA that sought to include Iran in the international community for really no reason than to please his donors Indeed, a few of the US allies in the Middle East, like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, as well as Bahrain, expressed concerns over the Iran nuclear deal[2].

We are entering a critical point in time, where Western civilization may not dominate the world anymore like it did for the past 300 years. There will be a lot of instability, though a lot of people fail to recognize that and are underprepared.

[1] https://www.twz.com/air/gbu-57-massive-ordnance-penetrator-s... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/5/9/world-leaders-react-...

[bayarearefugee]

Oh, I'm not exactly a huge Joe Biden fan. I just think it is ridiculous that nobody "on the right" calls Trump on using him as a universal scapegoat for everything as we continue to fumble into an economic situation that Trump is consistently actively making worse.

I think Biden did manage to enact some good domestic economic policy in a tough political environment, but in addition to everything you pointed out that I agree with he obviously should have stepped aside for the 2024 election long before he did and his decision to nominate Merrick Garland for Attorney General will be seen as one of those history book moments of very high consequence in the fall of an empire (assuming we have legitimate history books in this future).

Plenty of blame to go around for many Democrats here for both the fact that our disastrous foreign policy is, as you've said, uniparty, and also their fecklessness and early boosting of the whole Trump project in 2016 (because they believed he would be easier to beat than the other Republicans) did a lot to set all of this in motion.

[itake]

edit: if you're going to down vote, at least explain why my news articles are incorrect.

Are down voters saying Trump/Biden should let the provisions expire?

---

On JCPOA, many of the critical provisions had pending expiration dates by this time [0] [1] and re-negotiation needed to happen again anyways.

Obama kicked the can down the road and Trump/Biden needed to provide the next kick.

[0] - Jan 2026, the limits on the types of centrifuges expire. Jan 2031, quantitative nuclear limits expire (enrichment ceiling).

[1] - https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-10/news/iran-nuclear-de...

[rexpop]

How is this not a total nonsequitur from the parent thread??

[UltraSane]

"he is an avowed Zionist"

What exactly do you mean when you say Zionist?

[ryanwhitney]

I believe they're referring to when Joe Biden said "I am a Zionist."

[UltraSane]

What did he mean then? Israel exists as a Jewish state so I really don't know what people mean when they say it.

[piva00]

Zionism can be both the nationalist movement for making Israel a Jewish state as well as the interpretation that such a movement is inherently colonial and racist.

So Zionism for Israelis might just mean "we support and advocate for a Jewish state in the land of Israel" which also includes two-state solutions but it can mean "we are a colonial and ethno-religious racist state" to the ones being displaced by the movement (like Palestinians).

[UltraSane]

Using the same word for two completely different things is very confusing.

Also the Arabs took the land from the Byzantine empire in the 7th century AD.

[piva00]

> Also the Arabs took the land from the Byzantine empire in the 7th century AD.

A historical event from 1300 years ago is a bit irrelevant to contemporary issues.

[jmyeet]

It's this [1]. From 1986:

> If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one

It's lying about working on a ceasefire [2][3]. It's sending more and more weapons to Israel afer October 7, going so far as to split them into up to 100 smaller packages to avoid the need for Congressional approval [4].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2HZs-v0PR44

[2]: https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-biden-admin...

[3]: https://truthout.org/articles/former-top-biden-spox-admits-i...

[4]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-us-quietly-approved-mor...

[Cyph0n]

Your analysis will be downvoted, but it is absolutely spot on. One day, everyone will always have been against this.

[frm88]

One day, everyone will always have been against this

This is a very insightful book, highly recommend.

[lovich]

> At any point in the last more than a year of his term, Biden could've ended that conflict with a phone call. He did not because, again, he is an avowed Zionist.

No he could not have. Israel has been a contentious ally for the US, especially while a Democrat has been POTUS because they are actually independently capable of supporting themselves and have their own internal economy and military industrial complex.

The relationship between the United States and Israel started with us(The United States) peeling them off of USSR support in the late 60s[1], and if we abandon them they will either go it on their own or find another ally who has interests in the region due to oil still being important.

Biden as a representative of the United States had leverage over Israel, but not such complete control that he could just call Netanyahu and demand and end the war and have that be done with.

And that's not even getting into whatever the fuck you mean by " ... he is an avowed Zionist" [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_and_the_Arab%E2%8...

[Cyph0n]

You can argue all day long, but at the end of the day, the US has immense ability to exert pressure on Israel, starting with withholding UNSC vetoes.

The Biden admin pulled no levers whatsoever. On the contrary, it went to great lengths to cover for a genocide that it was aware of. This admin will be part of the history books, but not in a good light :)

[lovich]

> ... US has immense ability to exert pressure on Israel, starting with withholding UNSC vetoes.

You are 100% correct on this. That does not however mean they have the ability to end a war in one phone call

> The Biden admin pulled no levers whatsoever.

This is incorrect. Biden tried to constrain Netanyahu and did shit like making the pier to deliver aid to the Palestinians. Netanyahu responded by snubbing Biden and giving a speech to the Senate instead.

I am generally anti Israel as the nation because I believe they have been a shit tier ally who feels free to fuck around in our elections with no remorse, but acting like we had the ability to force them into actions they didn't want, without using military force, is fucking ridiculous.

Again, I think they are a piss poor ally, largely because they will not work with us, and that is largely because they have the ability to operate independently and utilize that ability constantly. If we got rid of any dependence on oil I would say fuck the whole region because every state there is in a competition over who can be the biggest assholes to us, with the possible slight exception of Jordan, and I cage that claim because I only know a decade or two of their history in relations with us and honestly mostly because one of their kings wanted to be in star trek so bad he got a spot as an extra, which implies some level of agreeing with our values.

[matwood]

Thank you for your comments. In short, it's complicated. The other piece which you didn't mention that other people bring up is cutting off the 4B-8B in military aid to Israel. In the past that might have given the US more leverage, but Israel has a 700B GDP economy now - they don't need that aid to buy weapons. The aid the US sends just ends up back in the US economy, and keeps Israel from buying arms from China.

[Cyph0n]

> In short, it's complicated.

No, it is not. The US has the power to sanction entire states & cut them out from the global banking system overnight. Look at what Cuba has suffered for daring to oppose the US.

> but Israel has a 700B GDP economy now

That would mean shit if the country is sanctioned and its leaders declared persona non grata. South Africa was similarly quite powerful, but when you’re reliant on Western backing and integration, existing as a pariah state is not a sustainable position to be in.

[lovich]

Yea, but that’s not a single phone call from the president. I know we’re getting closer and closer to an Imperial Executive every year but we definitely weren’t there under Biden.

[jmyeet]

Israel isn't independently capable of doing anything. When Israel was created it was a poor backwater. France and the USSR were early allies. I mean Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty and killed ~34 American servicemen in the 1960s. It's widely suspected that Israeli spies or sympathizers stole weapons grade uranium from the US (ie the NUMEC Affair). But this all changed after the Six Day War in 1967 and Israel became an American imperial project to destabilize an oil-rich region, to stop Pan-Arabn Nationalism.

But the history has always been that the US could order Israel to do whatever it wanted from Eistenhower telling Israel to get the hell out of Sinai to Biden telling Israel to knockj it off in Gaza in 2021 [1] and plenty in between (eg US involvement in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 led to Moshe Dayan telling Golda Meir they had to stop because the Americans said so, basically).

The parallel for this is apartheid South Africa. That regime collapsed when it became clear that domestic political pressure was forcing the US to withdraw support. The exact same thing would happen in Israel. Israel gets billions in direct aid and, more importantly, the military is completely dependent on US arms shipments and weapon systems.

If Biden had told Bibi "we're going to stop arms shipments if you don't stop this" it would've ended immediately.

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/19/biden-tells-israels-netanyah...