Given that most of the world hates Dona;d Trump nearly as much as I do, it’s not surprising that America’s standing in the world has increased greatly now that he’s out of the White House.
The Washington Post sums up the results of recent polling:
Trust in the U.S. president fell to historic lows in most countries surveyed during Trump’s presidency, according to Pew.
Under Biden, it has soared. In the 12 countries surveyed both this year and last, a median of 75 percent of respondents expressed confidence in Biden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” Pew found, compared with 17 percent for Trump last year. Sixty-two percent of respondents now have a favorable view of the United States vs. 34 percent at the end of Trump’s presidency.
So, good news, right
Not according to J.D. Rucker at the Liberty Daily, who takes aim at the polls in a post titled “Foreign Favorability of Biden Skyrockets and Mainstream Media Pretends this is a Good Thing.”
As Rucker sees it, this is because Biden is kind of a sucker; and people in other countries think they can basically just kick him around.
President Trump’s departure from the White House has been met with joy by the international community. It’s not because they have supreme confidence in Joe Biden’s ability to make America strong. It’s because they know that, like Barack Obama, Biden will weaken America. The international community loves this. They love a United States President who panders to their demands like Obama and Biden. They love an America with leadership that is “woke.” In other words, they love it when America is on the decline.
Biden’s America-last policies have already resonated with the international community, according to a new poll by Pew Research. This bodes ill for the United States as Biden’s skyrocketing popularity among foreign nations means they realize just how much weaker America is right now.
Yeah, that’s just not how any of this works. Foreigners hated Trump because he was making the world a more dangerous place, throwing out years of diplomacy with Iran, weakening NATO and other international bodies, allowing himself to be bamboozled by anyone willing to flatter him, from Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-Un. I could go on and on. It’s no wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight under Trump. It’s going to take a lot of work on Biden’s part to even begin to undo the damage Trump did to our country and the world — and it’s not clear when and if our allies will be able to fully trust us again.
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Here’s a PSA for people in the US seeking to transition; Planned Parenthood can offer help:
https://gehayi.tumblr.com/post/653817336765235200/thathippiegamer-pinkwhiteandblue-guys-im-on-t
It doesn’t count. The only foreigners that count are Netanyahu, Putin, and Kim, and we’ve already got thumbs up for Trump from two out of three.
@Surplus to Requirements
What problem are you having, exactly, that you think will be solved by changing that header?
As far as I can tell, all that the “cache-control: max-age=600″ header does is tell your browser that it should ask for a fresh copy of a page that’s in its cache if you try to load it again (hitting refresh, navigating forwards and backwards, etc.) after 10 minutes or more have passed. If the copy on the server and the copy in your cache are the same, the server just tells your browser that the cached copy is still good and your browser should just load that up instead of downloading the page again.
The 10 minute limit makes sense for pages that are actively being commented on, so you can actually see the new comments if you refresh the page. Otherwise, depending on your settings, the browser could just keep loading the cached version which wouldn’t include new comments.
@Dalillama:
The North Korean missiles don’t necessarily need to be reliable. They have nukes, so all they have to do is get off one lucky shot and six million South Koreans, 25 million Tokyo residents, or similarly will have a real bad day.
@Nes:
The problem is that adding that header has made it very slow to catch up this site. Previously, after checking the current thread I’d walk back through recent ones with the “back” button. The initial back navigation would be very fast and wouldn’t load any changes yet. Then I could scroll down to near the bottom, with the last comment or two displayed and then the bottom navigation stuff, and hit “reload”. This would have two effects.
Now, it reloads immediately, which ruins both of those things:
There is now no way to catch up each day that is reasonably fast, reasonably low effort, and guarantees I don’t miss anything new.
I am surprised that this place isn’t up in arms about the change. Doesn’t every regular here use a similar method to catch up, impacted by this change in the same ways? I can’t think of any other method that is proof against missing anything (well, except if a thread gets necroed and that comment gets pushed off the bottom of “recent comments” during the night or something. I can’t think of any way to reliably catch that short of skimming every single thread on the entire site every day, not just checking the most recent 10 or so).
@Dalillama
Your bothsidism is bullshit. we should not pretend the centrist democrat is the equivalent of the wannabe Mussolini. The US just narrowly missed the mark for being a literal fascist state through trump nearly getting a mob to lynch congress.
And fuck this attempt to wave away the transphobia promoted under Trump’s administration through some class-reductionist talking point about the lack of universal healthcare
Biden by virtue of simply not promoting the idea of trans people are crazy or perverts is better for trans people than Trump who was actively hostile was.
And if Trump had succeeded I’m 100% percent sure he’d be worse for everyone who isn’t a white cis straight male.
@Surplus to Requirements
Ahh, okay, that makes sense. I guess the only thing I can offer is a workaround. Firefox has an offline mode that should skirt around the “contact the server” phase and only load pages from the cache.
To enable it, you’ll need your menu bar visible. If it isn’t, right-click around near the top – the tab bar or blank areas near your address bar should work – and enable it in the context menu.
Once you’ve got your menu bar visible, click on File, then tick “Work Offline” near the bottom. Navigate to whatever page you want, wherever on the page you want, then untick “Work Offline” when you’re ready to reload the page.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a pain, but hopefully it should do what you want. Just don’t forget to go offline again before navigating to a new page.
@Jon
Your bootlicking is pathetic.
A centrist Democrat who has sworn to maintain fascist policies remains a fascist, even if he’s not uncouth about it.
The US is a warmongering, genocidal police state*. We already are a fascist state, and the pretense of fair elections doesn’t change it anymore that it does anywhere else.
(Also, there was never any chance the chucklefucks who had a tantrum on 1/6 could have pulled off a coup. Symbolic gestures are not existential threats (see also Al Qaeda, Daesh, etc.)
Your cishet ass isn’t the judge of official transphobia in the States. There’s many Federal policies that fuck us over (one of which is why I can’t get a passport), and reversing a specific minor piece of jackassery doesn’t change that.
The lack of universal healthcare in the US has nothing to do with class, it’s 100% about racism. Same with the Drug War, which Biden also has a long history of supporting. Indeed, all the calls for “bipartisanship” are dogwhistles: the bipartisan consensus that Congress used to share was white supremacy
The guy who wants to shoot you in the head isn’t as bad as the guy who wants to put you through a woodchipper, but that doesn’t make him your friend.
*US police murder thousands of people a year, not to mention that they steal more annually than all other criminals combined. We have more people in prison than the PRC (in proportional and absolute terms), our treatment of Black and Indigenous people continues to be genocidal, and we spend nearly half our budget (more than the next 10 most militarized nations combined) on commiting war crimes.
@Daliama
Your bootlicking is pathetic.
You are the type of leftist who’d be so full of their own sense of Purity that they’d rather see Hitler come into power than sully themselves with voting for a liberal.
“A centrist Democrat who has sworn to maintain fascist policies remains a fascist, even if he’s not uncouth about it.”
Sure if protecting lgbt rights, racial minorities from voter discrimination, reproductive rights and having a more left wing centered policies than the previous administration sure.
But who cares about most of that stuff?
“The US is a warmongering, genocidal police state*. We already are a fascist state, and the pretense of fair elections doesn’t change it anymore that it does anywhere else.”
The far-right really loves lefty-doomers like you, you know. “It’s all so pointless no need even need to participate in elections” and then only fascists get in power and proceed to dismantle an already fragile democracy as it is.
”Also, there was never any chance the chucklefucks who had a tantrum on 1/6 could have pulled off a coup. Symbolic gestures are not existential threats (see also Al Qaeda, Daesh, etc.)”
The “chuckfucks”? You mean the mob who beat and injured dozens of police officers in their attempts to get congress, some of which, were armed and planned on literally “arresting” members of congress?
Yeah sure just downplay what the mob trying to overturn an election result by attacking congress because liberal bad.
Hey if Pelosi got speared or stomped to death it would be just a meme eh?
“Your cishet ass isn’t the judge of official transphobia in the States. There’s many Federal policies that fuck us over (one of which is why I can’t get a passport), and reversing a specific minor piece of jackassery doesn’t change that.“
I am cis but I’m also bi so you’re half right there lol.
Does the US have major problems with systemic transphobia, homophobia, sexism and racism? Yes.
Now should people be actively trying to fix those problems? Of course.
Should they simply fail to see the difference between the far-right party and former President who actively tried and are trying to scrap away any vintage of democracy? Fuck no. That wouldn’t actually have any possibility of accomplishing anything but swelling ones own ego.
The lack of universal healthcare in the US has nothing to do with class, it’s 100% about racism. Same with the Drug War, which Biden also has a long history of supporting. Indeed, all the calls for “bipartisanship” are dogwhistles: the bipartisan consensus that Congress used to share was white supremacy
Ah okay you’re not a class reductionist. Just an lefty whose obsessed with their own purity politics.
The guy who wants to shoot you in the head isn’t as bad as the guy who wants to put you through a woodchipper, but that doesn’t make him your friend.
The fascist who wants to be an actual dictator and has a party actively working towards restricting the voting rights of everyone who isn’t of a specific ethnicity(white) is worse than the centrist who isn’t.
You are the type of leftist who’d sneer at any inclination that Hitler, or Mussolini, or any actual fascist who came into power in the early twentieth century could be that bad.
Like you’d go ”These nazi fellows may be terrible but Weimar Republic isn’t a saint either.” And then sneer at any inclination that it’d be worth participating in an election in order to keep the Nazis from power. It wouldn’t make that big a difference to the Jews, other ethnic minorities, women’s rights, etc etc.
Because liberal bad.
“US police murder thousands of people a year, not to mention that they steal more annually than all other criminals combined. We have more people in prison than the PRC (in proportional and absolute terms), our treatment of Black and Indigenous people continues to be genocidal, and we spend nearly half our budget (more than the next 10 most militarized nations combined) on commiting war crimes.”
Hmm, I do black and indigenous have more recourse to address these problems with administration that’s not trying to cap their electoral influence.
Every time people like Jon comment on this site, I do a double take and check that I’m not on GameFAQs
@An Impish Pepper
I’ll be honest I have very little knowledge of what you’re referring to. I had to look it up.
Though from my experience gamer circles’ politics often promote this bothism bullshit or skew right.
So I’m guessing the political rhetoric in this thread decrying pretending Biden is equal to the fascist who nearly and still trying to become the country’s dictator would be popular there.
@An Impish Pepper
I can pretty much hear his posts… and smell the Bud Lite, too.
@Jon
Wow you are putting a lot of words in Dalillama’s mouth.
So, personally I (trans, disabled, Jewish, fucking tired) am glad that we replaced Trump with Biden, on the level of “choosing our enemy”, harm reduction, stuff like that. And also personal things, like IDK, not seeing more of my friends die from a completely uncontrolled pandemic and its fallout. But you really have to admit Biden is still awful. He’s refused to walk back on genocidal Trump policies, backed Netanyahu in a massive escalation of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, loves cops as per usual, is not even considering taxpayer funded healthcare or further stimulus payments… And also he’s a known rapist, and gets handsy with some huge percentage of the women and girls he interacts with, and you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think that doesn’t filter into his policies.
And, and, and: continuing to ignore the threat of far-right takeover of the govt, and seeking compromise with fascists who want us dead. We’re going to be very lucky if there isn’t another Trump in 4 years.
And foreign policy? Forget it. Even our progressives treat the rest of the world as disposable. Remember the Vietnam war? “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” LBJ probably did more for racial equity than any other President in the 20th century, and still couldn’t imagine treating people in Southeast Asia as human beings.
You talk like we should be grateful for Biden and his pals, but they’re not even doing the barest bare minimum. The gratitude is unearned.
@Dalillama
I have to respectfully disagree with you re the 1/6 coup attempt, as the mob pretty clearly had inside help, both from Republican Congresspeople and from Capitol police.
I know my two scents doesn’t matter much but it was actually really hard voting for Biden knowing I was voting for a creepy groping rapists. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to vote for trump. so yeah jon, I’d rather have a leader who isn’t a prevert rapist. I don’t care if someone protects lgbt rights and controls the pandemic. Those are the bare minimum a leader should be doing. Biden isn’t good just because he isn’t trump.
Cyborgette, seconded or thirded or…yeah. Jon, I’m a cis straight Muslim Canadian, and I’m also fucking tired. Like I said earlier, and a few people have said, “better than Trump” is not a high bar. He may be better on trans issues domestically as you said, though Dalillama made the excellent point that
It is nice not to have a ranting white-supremacist-supporting demagogue as the spokesperson of the country next door to me, but the USA needs a lot more change than that.
How is it both-sides-ism to say that one politician is better than the other but still sucks in a number of very important ways? I’m serious. Voting Biden in was the right choice given the choices available. He still needs to be held accountable for his actions, though, and to be pushed to take good actions in future.
@Jon
What the others said, although they still understate the case. The default state of the US is a nightmarish dystopia, and the Biden administration plans to keep it that way. Your position of being happy because the bad orange man isn’t on your stories anymore shows your position of privilege better than anything else could.
@Cyborgette
That doesn’t constitute sufficient groundwork for a successful coup. The absolute worst-case scenario there was that the mob would kill several members of Congress and then get massacred by responding security forces. Absolutely nobody involved in that goat rodeo (and I include the likes of Roger Stone or the Qanon caucus in Congress) has even a fraction of the organizational skills needed to actually pull of a coup. They could barely manage to get a dozen buses together to help ship in jackasses.
I was on a work trip in Tennessee a few years back, doing some trouble-shooting at a customer site. One of the people in the back had already made it pretty clear he was no Trump fan, and at one point when it was just the two of us in the back he asked us what Canadians thought of Trudeau. (This being about a year after he was first elected.)
My response was “About the same as a lot of Americans thought of Obama a year into his run… he talks a good game, but he’s not the game changer we thought we were voting for.” And I stand by that response today.
Part of the problem, of course, is that it’s not just Biden himself, it’s that there are multiple folks who really are ‘Democrats In Name Only’, they’re people who would be just fine with the Republicans except they ‘re running in districts that pretty much only ever elect Democrats. The whole attempt at a new Voting Rights Act is held up because of folks like that.
At least in Canada we have an explicitly non-partisan group controlling the elections and the drawing of the riding boundaries. It could still be a hell of a lot better (multiple attempts at better voting systems have been talked about and then either quietly buried from on high or killed by referendum after a blatantly biased ad campaign) but at least we don’t have the people running for re-election being the ones drawing the lines.
The U.S. version of representative democracy was very much a prototype that did not expand well past its original design, and needs an overhaul that it’s not going to get because it’s already too late to have a rational discussion about it.
@Jenora Feuer:
I never expected Trudeau to be a game changer. I have my doubts that even an NDP government, were we by some miracle to get one, would be a game changer.
I don’t know what would be a game changer at this point short of armed revolt, in any part of the world where capitalist rent-seekers currently have an iron grip.
@Surplus
A general strike has a much better chance of success, and also has notably easier logistics.
Nah. I remember the Winter of Discontent. Mass strikes in both the public and private sectors, shortages of everything. Seems just what you’d want to tip into a revolution.
Wound up getting us Thatcher the following May and two decades of Greed is God capitalism. Not willing to try that again.
@Cyborgette
Again not very familiar with Gamefaq specifically. Don’t think what I’ve said so far in regards to trump and Biden not being equally bad or Trump being worse would be especially popular based on my experience of how gamer circles often operate.
My issue wasn’t that someone was complaining about Biden. Hey I have my issues with the man as well. For example I found the “you ain’t black!” If you don’t vote for me comment gave a sense of entitlement and racism, he sponsored draconian crime bills that militarized the police and got a lot of people(particularly black/brown) people locked up far longer than they should have been.
I am not automatically against the concept of someone being critical of Biden. I am against acting like he’s equivalent to the would be dictator and that the harm he would do to America and minority groups is equivalent to Trump.
“How is it both-sides-ism to say that one politician is better than the other but still sucks in a number of very important ways? I’m serious.
Its not nor was that the basis of my argument.
@Dalilama “What the others said, although they still understate the case. The default state of the US is a nightmarish dystopia, and the Biden administration plans to keep it that way. Your position of being happy because the bad orange man isn’t on your stories anymore shows your position of privilege better than anything else could.”
It seems like you’ve given lip-service to agreeing with more nuanced and better sounding takes whilst still advocating the same reductionist, simplistic, lefty doomer spiel on how Biden=Trump but with a blue colorant with the US already as bad it could be.
So why even participate in democracy? The far-right and democrats? Same diff.
We’re already a fascist so why not just let the open actual fascists like the Qanuts take over lol.
I am not against people talking and complaining about and trying to combat the systemic racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, still prevalent in society.
I am against the type of delusional nihilism you’re preaching that only serves to demotivate people on the left from participating in elections.
Also still really trying to downplay the attempted insurrection huh? Nice more reason for the far-right to love lefties like you.
I think it’s possible that more than seven members of congress would get killed from getting stomped or stabbed, or tased etc.
possibly more would if the security forces just started mowing people down.
It’d be a very ugly situation if most of a Trump’s prime political opposition was well killed.
@Jon
Sweet suffering Satan man, use blockquotes; it’s the button labeled B-QUOTE above the text entry field. Or at least paragraph breaks fucksake.
That’s what I said, yes. The worst case scenario was a bloodbath in which several members of Congress and all the attackers were killed. That still wouldn’t have put Trump back in office, or even delayed the certification by more than a day or two. There wasn’t and isn’t any possibility of the US political system being overturned. That’s rather part of the larger problem, given that the Electoral College and the Senate explicitly exist to ensure continued white supremacist domination of the US government. The US government doesn’t need to be overturned to continue committing two genocides (fucking address that point, you coward), or assisting in dozens if not hundreds overseas genocides, not to mention the lesser atrocities. Once again, symbolic gestures are just that: gestures. They are a short step up from thoughts and prayers.
Call me a cynic, but I get the feeling that they’d be just as distrustful of a hypothetical socialist/left-wing president as they would be of Trump. The international community’s true goal (such as it is) is protecting the status quo at all costs, even when it’s blatantly obvious that said status quo is unsustainable.
@Jon
Oh no, it could be a lot worse, and is looking fair to get a lot worse. The Biden administration is actively helping to make things worse, if not as fast as Republicans do.
I’d love to. The US, however, isn’t a democracy and never has been. You can tell by little details like an actual majority of the population not having any vote even de jure let alone de facto, the antidemocratic nature of the electoral system (see above), and the fact that polls have shown strong majority support among eligible voters for various sorts of infrastructure and economic programs for multiple generations, without any of that actually happening.
Most of the Democratic party are far-right by any standards but those of American electoral partisans. That’s one of the reasons we keep getting a white supremacist police state even when we vote for healthcare and education. Almost nobody we can vote for even pretends not to want to murder foreigners in job lots.
Ok, first, lol at the idea that the Left gives a dormouse’s turd about US elections. Second, have you ever studied US history outside of your primary schooling? (This is a rhetorical question, btw. It’s blatantly obvious you’ve done nothing of the sort)
@Daliama
Hmm I made note of your recommendation; I’m choosing to forgoe it because spite.
It annoys you so I’m going to keep doing it whilst I interact with you.
Now having said that you’re bullshiting when you’re trying to put a cap on the amount of people in congress who’d get killed at 7 as the only reasonable worst possibility. The number could be much higher especially if the police start gunning down the mob of thousands rioters. 7 members congress of being killed and all the rioters being killed was not the the worst possibility.
Nearly all of congress killed along with the rioters is.
Stop trying to downplay the attempted insurrection. It’s not just a symbolic gesture to kill members of congress.
Yes neoliberals bad. Biden bad. Attempted Fascist coup worse. Fascists worse. This is should not be hard.
”Oh no, it could be a lot worse, and is looking fair to get a lot worse. The Biden administration is actively helping to make things worse, if not as fast as Republicans do.”
Yep, to the first half.
roe v wade about to be beheaded lol.
But you know Clinton was also a neo-liberal shill who wouldn’t have pushed for Medicare for all.
Most pregnant women don’t want abortions, and really the lack of universal healthcare prevents people from getting a ton medical services they need anyway. So would have voting for Clinton made a difference. Same thing different paint lol.
“I’d love to. The US, however, isn’t a democracy and never has been.”
Again I have to say; the far-right loves lefty-doomers like you. Downplay the threat of their actions(both side bad just different color! ) and actively discourage people with progressive politics to seeing a point in participating in the democratic process to try effect change.
Hell you’re even regurgitating the talking point of the US not being a democracy; the same talking point they try to justify suppressing the voting rights of nearly everyone who isn’t white or dismissing their increasingly anti-democratic stances.
That the US is not a democracy.
“You can tell by little details like an actual majority of the population not having any vote even de jure let alone de facto, the antidemocratic nature of the electoral system (see above), and the fact that polls have shown strong majority support among eligible voters for various sorts of infrastructure and economic programs for multiple generations, without any of that actually happening.”
Yep most of this is just a “progressive” tinted way to say the us is not a democracy because America is not a “pure democracy”.
To be clear America is not a pure democracy. Americans don’t all get a vote on every single bill or measure.
We are a representative democracy where our representatives may and often do fail to vote along the lines on what is mostly popular at a given time.
Yep the electoral college is an unfair system set up by wealthy white men who only trusted men like them to pick the President. Now having acknowledged those things what you’re saying is bullshit.
The standards you’ve chosen to that would be used to disqualify a democracy could/would disqualify practically every country.
”Most of the Democratic party are far-right by any standards but those of American electoral partisans. “
Eh not really. More center right by most of the developed world’s standards.
“Ok, first, lol at the idea that the Left gives a dormouse’s turd about US elections.”
I’m sorry my pure lefty, not everyone on the left is as doomy as you and content to rave about various negative impacts around the US’ systemic homophobia, sexism, and racism and ever increasing class struggles but not engaging with its fragile democratic system in order to well address any of that.
I admit the left-wing elements in other countries may not be absorbed into the outcomes specific US elections as much as their own.which isn’t unreasonable.
Now having said that; You haven’t offered anything reasonable that could affect any progressive change you’ve just cried the pointlessness of it all in the US.
Hey police are needlessly killing a lot black and brown men.
Hey the environment on reservations are deplorable and beneath the dignity of human beings and the government and businesses still work to rob Native American tribes of the few bits of land they have left.
Okay do you want to do something meaningful about that? Pressure state political leaders at the state and federal leaders to address these issues?
No? Just want to point to it as an abysmal and leave it at there and be applauded for being a enlightened realist whose above it all lol.
“There wasn’t and isn’t any possibility of the US political system being overturned. That’s rather part of the larger problem, given that the Electoral College and the Senate explicitly exist to ensure continued white supremacist domination of the US government.”
Eh if the rioters kill most of the leadership of Trump’s opposition the following election probably would be easier to win or at bully election officials into breaking the law for him.
@Jon
Here’s a quick reading list to help bring you up to speed so you can actually have a meaningful opinion on the topics under discussion:
A People’s History of the United States– Howard Zinn
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee-Dee Brown (not the movie)
Lakota Woman-Mary Brave Bird
The New Jim Crow-Michelle Alexander
Kicking Away The Ladder-Ha-Joon Chang
Debt: The First 5000 Years-David Graeber
@Jon
I’m just wondering, but are you a centrist or right-leaning, by any chance?