He just said it supported democracy, not that it didn't ALSO support dictatorships!
The same people would assert that we shouldn't be meddling in other countries affairs to promote democracy.
I'm not defending our history here - some of it is pretty reprehensible.
A lot of it is pretty reprehensible. That being said, in the last 150 years, every single time that the US goes isolationist, we've had a world war.....
It’s obviously unclear who actually fact checked Sanders here, but assuming it is indeed in good faith, this is why it’s so hard to mount a resistance to the fascism the US now has in power. There’s countless examples, but more or less they all revolve around (insert name) not being left enough or not being good enough, or in this case, not being honest enough. I don’t even disagree with the countless replies here that are rightfully pointing out that the US has propped up many non-democratic governments all over the world for its own moneyed and geopolitical interests - no shit. And I for one don’t defend it. But as an American myself who’s on the left, I’d gladly take Sanders for all his flaws compared to the bullshit fascist regime my country now has. I just don’t see how shitting on Sanders in this way is truly constructive in any capacity. I should add the caveat- by all means critique him, correct anything false he says- but to totally disregard him as this negative force? To my mind though, this is the so-called Internet left’s favorite pastime- shit talk people actually doing stuff, all while offering zero concrete proposals or actions themselves to make the country better. It’s very easy to sit and post to Lemmy about your self proclaimed radical leftist views, but your views mean fuck all if they never get implemented. Perhaps just sitting in your online echo chamber is all you really want though, so you can feel good about your personal political and social beliefs.
Yes, the difference being that the fascists want to use the counter-arguments to do even shittier things. “We’re a shitty country, so you libs don’t get to tell us we do good things sometimes, we’re the greatest country ever! Get out of the way so we can do objectively shittier things!”
I should add the caveat- by all means critique him, correct anything false he says
Great, that's what we're doing here, so no problem.
You did leave out the part connected to that where I added, “but to totally disregard him…”. A number of comments here are just essentially “Bernie sucks and is a Dem shill” in so many words. If that’s a genuine opinion of Bernie, so be it, and I know I won’t sway any opinions on Lemmy. But my sincere ask is, how can we channel our general leftist / progressive agreements into something tangible rather than political philosophy debates online? Again, be it Bernie or DSA or Working Families Party or whatever- you name it- there’s always voices on the farther left who want to tear them all down, claiming they’re not good enough, but these same critics typically don’t present real world alternatives or proposals. And if this wasn’t obvious enough, as a person who respects Bernie and appreciates him, I find it frustrating that people can so easily throw away all of his positives and focus only on his negatives.
Maybe you should respond to the specific comments you take issue with? The OP and most of the comments are more focused on the fact-checking.
Yea, it’s true we suck. We should probably stop sucking so bad.
Who needs the CIA when we have useful idiots that sink any working class movement with shit like this
If a working class movement needs to lie and gaslight people into American exceptionalism it is not a working class movement.
Unfortunately sanders is one of our better actors within the institution. Many leftists would have been happy and welcoming of a sanders administration for 2 terms. FDR was also partially aligned with fascists but as far as presidential administrations go he did the most for the working class that anyone ever did(thankfully he was elected for 4 terms) sanders however flawed he may be would have been as close to a new age fdr as we were ever going tk get and this is why the dnc shot themselves in the foot and disgraced their electorate. The democratic party is a center right party so yes bernie sanders is a little too close to center to be a real leftist and he compromises too much with centrists and conservatives but this is the only way to get things done within a partisan class dictatorship we have.
But since the dnc made it clear they would rather move to the right and attempt to court conservative voters rather than move even a centimeter to the left they made it crystal clear the only way to remedy the rot and corruption of corporatist control in our political system is a full on revolution/ class war which has been waged against the working class for the last 5-6 decades at least.
I'm a big Sanders supporter and totally get where youre coming from, but facts are facts. Bernie is right a ton of the time. He can be wrong once in a while without it damaging his reputation. When someone's wrong, they should be called out regardless of whether you agree with them the rest of the time.
I am not saying he is never wrong. Im just saying he is one of the better representatives we have. Im very far left and i regularly describe my political ideology as saying i’m so far left I make Bernie Sanders look like Newt Geingrich. But I would have been much happier with our society if we just got finished with 2 terms of a Sanders administration as opposed to the garbage we were stuck with because of the billionaire wall street military and prison industry profiteer owned neo liberal DNC’s deliberate self sabotage. But we still have to listen to delulu neo liberal democrat party supporters falling in line and blaming voters/ ignoring the reality wven thiugh the democrats chose to move further to the right and court republicans even accepting endorsements from the Cheney and bush families. They will do anything to ignore the reality that our presidential elections are most definitely rigged by financial influence just like the rest of our political system. FDR was somewhat slightly fascist aligned but he was the best president our country has ever had. And we can see that sanders is also flawed in similar ways but sometimes we have to weigh the pros and cons. Im not saying vote for the lesser of tw evils but rather that sometimes the good ideas and policies a candidate has can outweigh the negative aspects of their record/ political platform/ideology.
Anyone that meets the working class where they are to build class consciousness in terms they understand are building the working class movement.
But I guess we can nitpick and siphon the air out of any sort of potential for progress by doing the work of fascist apologists. Jailing and killing socialists will really bring about the perfect revolution we need
Are non yanks allowed to factcheck Sanders' pro USA propaganda?
Accepting reality is fine. Gaslighting and covering for an oppressive system is not. Especially since this supposed movement has failed to make any gains with its endless compromises.
If the movement is only beneficial for the empire and not its victims I care little for it.
This is an example of where you can slightly tweak it to say "America is supposed to have..." and the entire problem is sidestepped
You know what Bernie is saying. I agree he can be more direct in this day and age. Anyone who has paid attention to Bernie understands he knows the system is broken
This is the correct take. Idealism is fine, but proclaiming that the ideals were already practiced, when in fact they were not, does not further the cause.
In fact it will only delude people into thinking it is not an area which needs improvement.
Parroting nationalistic myths is an occupation of Fascists, not of those in working class movements.
Nationalistic delusions of grandeurs are part of the foundation for guys like Trump ending up winning elections.
Sanders should know better.
This is not fact checking. This is gaslighting. The fact that the USA has been supporting dictators for decades does not change or alter what Bernie is saying.
Yes it does. Supporting countries that happen to be democracies as well as supporting countries that happen to be dictatorships according to your national interests is far different from supporting democracy as a goal.
"Technically, the United States didn't get bad, it's always been bad! It only got worse!" isn't the flex a lot of leftists think it is.
What's wrong with the message "We should be doing better, not worse"?
Seems preferable to the "hurt people who also want the things I have" that seems the core of conservatism.
What's wrong with it is it's normalizing Donald Trump. Like, actually pointing at Trump and saying "this is normal." US democracy is on life support, and calling this business-as-usual is like telling people there's nothing to see here while he yanks and tugs on the plug.
Left doesn’t push this, right (or fake left ML) pushes this to same-sides left.
Another nit-pick by the circular firing squad of so-called progressives.
True American Patriots like Bernie understand that the USA was mearly subverted away from the Light of Democracy by malign actors.
Gaslighting from fascist twitter users more than circling firing squad. Definitely took an opportunity to try to dig at the GOAT.
Yeah, I also seen a lot of fascists making fake progressive accounts to boost "cancel culture" against the left, that also regularly drop a lot of dogwhistles, especially after each successful campaigns.
Solid theory. The right does love to trawl through history looking for failed authoritarian regimes to soy over.
Bless this old man's heart, I only wish it were true
Well this thread is ample proof on why you can't trust American "leftists"/"progressives"/etc.
The jingoism runs deep and there is no low they want drop to to defend their country and their golden idols.
You could just admit that Sanders can be wrong, but so many just chose to go "actually, he is not wrong, the US sometimes supports democracies instead of dictators."
Except one does not contradict the other. The United States has supported democracy, it's just that that support is razor thin.
You can do both. Saying they've supported dictatorships doesn't mean they haven't also supported democracy. It's bordering on being a non sequitur.
If the US ever supports democracy, it is purely by accident.
Where we read "democracy", they read "economic benefit" or "geopolitical benefit". As far as I'm aware, any "democratic movement" that the US has ever supported has been either to get rid of a not sufficiently capitalist regime (whether or not they were democratic), or for some other geopolitical strategic reason.
I haven't heard of a single example of the US supporting a democracy purely for democracy's sake. Sometimes it just so happens that the goals of supporting democracy and getting rid of pesky regimes that pose an economic or strategic obstacle align.
Not to mention that the US has been involved in regime change of many democracies over the last 80 years because they weren't sufficiently friendly to American companies or didn't support American strategic goals strongly enough. This is open, well-documented history. The CIA admits to many of the ones which were done at least 50 years ago.
Here is a list to get started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
This kind of rhetoric is why peDon won. americans are useless, don't count on any of them to stop fascism.
Of course they provide for the dictatorships, who do you think put them there in the first place? It's called responsible parenting sweaty 💅
Obama's human rights record is abysmal. Sure he did a lot of good things too, but not closing Guantanamo, ramping up drone strikes etc negate all of that good. I've written him a couple of letters with all of this in detail to which he has yet to respond (no surprise). Instead he's doing voice over work for shitty documentaries on Netflix.
Yeah Obama hasn't written me back either!
wtf
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