Who gives a shit about guaranteeing Israel’s safety? If they’re relying on the international community for defense, they probably should’ve thought about that before alienating the entire world with their monsterous actions.

From an American perspective, It’s not every day you get a chance to drastically reduce gas prices and all it costs is screwing over some genocidal apartheid state that you ought to be abandoning anyway. A chance like this to both do the right thing and make things easier on the people is a golden opportunity that rarely comes along in politics.

Also Israel/the Jews are considered an enemy of the state by some hard liners in Iran and must be displaced from Israel/Palestine.

Perfect, then we have something they want, and they have something we want. The solution is obvious.

Simply sign a treaty with Iran that prohibits the US from providing military support to Israel in exchange for opening the strait. Americans get lower gas prices, the Palestinian genocide ends, Iranians don’t get bombed, it’s a win-win-win. They won’t close the strait again for fear of the US resuming aid.

Literally all we have to do is say fuck Israel, which they 100% brought about themselves, and frankly them getting fucked is one more win.

Hopefully they don’t confirm anyone at all, even if it means an empty seat for two years.

For a couple of weeks before the 2028 election season starts.

Cool, good thing I’m not then.

With what supermajority?

I’ve seen people use that exact justification for the n-word.

It’s not, you can watch for yourself.

Do you want to be the next senate majority leader?

I made clear that I’m not looking to be the next democratic leader. I’ve been kicking the tires on the 2028 presidential election

Van Hollen said he wasn’t interested because he’s planning to run for president (not an official announcement).

Looking into him he honestly seems pretty good, opposes aid to Israel and supports M4A at least.

Thank you. There are some types like that, who overcorrect or take things too far. That Jank4life guy isn’t exactly the best representative of our instance with his low effort bait, and I have a lot of disagreements with Geneva_Convenience as well. But I have a lot of respect for Cowbee and Diva, for example.

Personally, I would like it if there was a place on the fediverse that was for more formal, academic level discussions, where personal attacks and accusations were strictly moderated on all sides. I think that people act more defensive and rude when they expect the other side to, and it creates a vicious cycle, which can also lead to people adopting “maximalist” positions. I’ve thought about creating a comm like that myself, but I doubt people would actually participate or accept me as an impartial moderator.

How about it?

I agree with that. There’s definitely limits and alliances aren’t always beneficial. I’m just saying that if someone is prepared to help end the war in Iran because of gas prices, ideally they’d have a more humanitarian motivation, and we can call them out for it, sure, and not fully trust them, of course, but we don’t need to be turning away willing hands. And the same goes for the neoliberals. Neither group reliably supports our goals, but on the occasions that they do, cool. There’s a line to walk, I guess.

And it’s worth noting that not every Trump voter is a Nazi (at least not an ideologically committed one), some are just politically disengaged or gullible or they were just more aware of the Democrats’ flaws without seeing the Republicans’. There are certainly some that are ideologically committed and yeah fuck them, we don’t need, like, Tucker Carlson or JD Vance.

I understand where you’re coming from, by under current conditions, with the American people being reactionary, it’s impossible for the left to hold power on its own. That means the only ways of achieving power are to work with shitty people or to convince formerly shitty people to stop being shitty.

What is the path to victory, if we isolate ourselves from the average person?

We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.

Why would Trump sign M4A into law? Reverse Fetterman stroke? Bribery?

You can’t really make deals with Republicans because they’ll just stonewall you, like they did Obama. You’d have to have leverage and I don’t know what kind of leverage you’re picturing.

I do agree that they don’t have the votes for impeachment so it’s pretty worthless. And forcing Trump to veto M4A could be an effective strategy if they go on to run on it in 2028. But it’s not getting through in the next two years with a divided government and no organized mass movement.

I disagree with that. If I criticize western imperialism, it’s often assumed, regardless of what I actually say, that I’m supporting US geopolitical rivals. This has pretty much always been the case throughout history. Call for peace, say, after 9/11, and you’d be accused of supporting Bin Laden. Since the enemy is always painted as the more evil and aggressive party, it means that those who oppose war and imperialism will always get labelled as being the most aggressive and imperialistic. Historically, this was even the cause of the breakdown of the Second International, the split between social democrats and Marxist-Leninists. MLs opposed WWI while social democratic parties across Europe supported it.

And naturally, part of opposing war means refuting blatant misinformation about the enemy, because if the hawks can say whatever they want about them they can naturally make it look like war is an obvious choice. But the moment you start refuting misinformation, for example, the story about everyone in North Korea having to get the same haircut, you are now “defending” or “glazing” North Korea, regardless of any other, more grounded criticisms you might have of it.

For generations, the Western left has allowed such misinformation to run rampant, in order to avoid being associated with states like the USSR, and the result have been disastrous. Historically, unions expelled communists and radicals and did everything they could to appease the US government, and they were gutted anyway. Now, things have gone so far that even conservative liberals like Biden get painted as “communists.” What I said before, criticizing US imperialism, is more than enough for people to label me a communist, a tankie, whatever. Maybe you wouldn’t, but others would. The comment I responded to was specifically looking to “ragebait tankies” by glazing US imperialism.

In my view, we should speak the truth regardless of whatever labels are assigned to us, communist, socialist, red, tankie, pinko, they can accuse us of what they will. Wear whatever label with pride, and you can at least have a chance to define it for ourselves.

You might as well ignore it, or love the word instead, because you ain’t done nothing if you ain’t been called a red

I don’t understand why y’all think it’s some kind of challenge to “bait” us. Really, the easiest way to trigger us is to just drop some racial slurs. It’s that easy. But glazing imperialism or making insipid, ignorant comments about history works just as well.

Bush in 2000 talked about being careful about getting involved in foreign wars and nation building exercises, while his opponent ran as more interventionist. Then he invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the war in Afghanistan dragged on and people got frustrated with the political establishment, Trump distanced himself from that and presented himself as staying out of such conflicts, while his opponents ran as interventionists. Then he attack Iran.

As gas prices soared and the Iran War dragged on, accomplishing nothing, Vance is now distancing himself from it and presenting himself as someone who would stay out of such conflicts.

Will Americans finally grasp basic pattern recognition and realize that Republicans are a bunch of warmongering psychos no matter what they say? Guess we’ll find out.

You just said that it was.

It’s possible to learn things or better understand how and why people think differently from you by talking, to convince or to be convinced, and putting it on the internet doesn’t somehow change that. So I don’t consider it pointless at all.