More explanation of how Biden is doing competent work
https://x.com/yair_rosenberg/status/1797085868470988814?s=46&t=N0_fcOKIYYmlCS2e4YShsQ
https://x.com/yair_rosenberg/status/1797087512269033881?s=46&t=N0_fcOKIYYmlCS2e4YShsQ
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When I was in grad school, I had a professor who liked to joke about his snarky restatement of the 3 laws of thermodynamics. His restatement thereof was:
- You canât win
- You always lose
- You have to play
His restatement may have been overly brief, but it was technically accurate. In more physical terms, the first law is that energy is conserved, and thus you canât get more energy out than you put in, perpetual motion is impossible, etc. Thus, you canât win, and you wonât get energy for free or any more than you had to start with. The second law is that entropy (loosely, disorder) in a closed system is always increasing. You can create order, sure, but only by spending energy, and that energy comes by burning something else to the ground. Thus, you always lose (overall). The third law is that absolute zero is unachievable. Could a system achieve absolute zero, it would be so frozen that entropy wouldnât increase, and thus you wouldnât be playing the losing game. But, itâs impossible. Thus, you have to play.
First-past-the-post representative democracy in the US isnât quite as grim, but itâs not much better. You can âchoose not to playâ by staying out of things as best you can, but that doesnât remove you from the game. It just makes you a pawn rather than having any say as a player. You can also try to change the game, but that is difficult and risky. That relies on either very powerful people voluntarily giving up power (which has happened albeit rarely, c.f. George Washington), or considerable violence (from which there is no guarantee of a game thatâs better for everyone, not to mention that youâre likely to get yourself killed if you donât succeed).
But, if youâre on the far left, and you want to play the game, is it true that you canât win and you always lose? Well, to begin with, Iâd hope that as someone who knows theyâre playing the game of first-past-the-post representative democracy as a far left player, also knows that theyâre playing from a losing position. Someone who self-identifies as having an unpopular position should well know that a system that doesnât even require an outright majority to govern is going to cater to plurality popular opinions, and those winning pluralities are not necessarily beholden to unpopular opinions to maintain power.
So, no, I donât think far left opinions should expect to win, but I think itâs good that they play. They can and do succeed at pulling the plurality opinion left either by appealing to leadership that drags their constituency or by appealing to the plurality that drags leadership. Weâve seen this with Womenâs Suffrage, weâve seen this with the Civil Rights Act, and weâve seen this with gay marriage. It may take a lot of time, it may take a lot of effort, and it may take a lot of beatings from cops, but victories can be won. But there are a ton of losses, too. We saw a ton of backlash against the original MA supreme court decision to allow gay marriage, and the electoral backlash that came from it hurt leftist progress a lot. Obamacare saw a purge of vulnerable congresscritters, and Iâm not sure trans acceptance is going forwards at this point.
These fights are good, very good, win or lose, but if it should be lose at some point, itâs time to try again, not to decide âif you canât beat 'em, join 'emâ or to decide to join the fringe trying to flip over the table.
Sure, Biden isnât good enough at listening to the moral rightness proclaiming the humanity of Palestinians, and he seems unwilling to be much to the left of the median American opinion. Yeah, that sucks, but that doesnât mean that Trump is the solution. It means that now is the time to keep dragging the median American opinion left so that either Biden or his successor or his successorâs successor has no choice.
Doing the unpopular but just thing doesnât mean fighting one battle and then deciding that burning everything to the ground is better after all. It means doing the best you can every time you can, even if that means voting for the less shitty option when, at that point, thatâs the best thing you can do. Donate money, protest, vote, argue on the internet, argue over the dinner table, give a marginalized person a hand, call out an asshole publicly or in private. No one instance of those things is going to change the world on its own, but that does not mean that those things werenât worth doing or that violent revolution or capitulation were better options. Sometimes or mostly, you lose. Hopefully always, you try again, because you are in the game.
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Observant Christians and Jews and Muslims who actually take to heart teachings about loving your neighbor and loving your enemies are not hard to find, even if they arenât very loud.
Honest question.
Do you think the US has anywhere close to 90% of things Western Democracies in Europe have? You know⌠universal healthcare, education, drug decriminalization, incarceration rates that arenât exponentially higher than the rest of the world, etc ?
No, of course we donât. You think we get there by making things worse?
You think things could get any worse in the place I live?
Yes, I do. Is birth control currently legal there?
Sure thing bud
But hey, at least the eDem can run on restoring Roe for the next couple decades
Ah, yes, because one thing got massively worse, nothing else could possibly be worse than right now! Now we cane really fight for Euro-style comforts now that we know canât fight for abortion any more.
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Iâll be sure to vote harder in the next âmost important election of my lifetimeâ.
Oh, right, the real virtuous thing is to not do virtuous things.
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We should vote Trump, because then there will be politicians I like who will have so many more issues to restore that they can run on!
True. Thatâs basically my in laws. Theyâre Protestant and very religious. Extremely involved in their church. They also hate Trump. This is in contrast to their extended families many of whom are also quite religious but love Trump.
Iâm not voting for Trump. Thereâs no reason for me to vote for Biden. You and Ikes can go clutch your upper middle class pearls somewhere else.
The real virtuous thing to do is to vote for state sanctioned genocide.
We used to have abortion where I live. The Dems had numerous chances to enshrine Roe as law when they held all levers of power. I wonder why they didnât 
As far as I know, nobody here is voting for Trump. Iâll probably vote for Biden, but begrudgingly. Iâm sure not going to call people stupid for not doing that, though. The only way to stop being taken for granted is to not give your vote away for ~nothing.
Yeah but if you just vote harder theyâll fix it. Just gotta vote hard enough to get them 60 in the Senate! Piece of cake!
this is the thing. when you get the centrist e-dem shitbags saying stuff like âhey this election is TOO IMPORTANT so you gotta just shut up about the stuff you care about this timeâ the immediate response should be exactly this. when it WASNâT the most important election and they had the chance to actually fix stuff, they didnât.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepts invitation to address joint meeting of Congress
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/31/politics/benjamin-netanyahu-joint-address-congress/index.html