this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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For the past 50 years, Democrats have been supporting environmental protection laws and Republicans have been against them.
It is equivalent to compare "But Nixon started the EPA" to "Lincoln ended slavery." That Nixon started the EPA 50 years ago is irrelevant to all the following decades where Republicans have been consistently against the environment. It's no different than when Magas say they aren't racist because of Lincoln.
If it's a straight line from Nixon to Trump as you say, then why claim Republicans are environmentalists with Nixon as your example?
I'm not claiming Republicans are environmentalists, but if you want to know why they got so much worse on the environment, the answer is the Ratchet Effect. The thing you misinterpreted as, "both sides bad," explains exactly how we got here. In Nixon's era, environmental issues weren't considered particularly partisan. Nixon, Ford, and Carter all had generally the same outlook on using the federal government to regulate corporations on the environment.
Then comes Regan with a lurch to the right. He tries to de-fang the EPA and hundreds of employees resign en mass. But he's not all bad; he is instrumental in passing the Montreal Protocols, which effectively fixed the hole in the ozone layer, but he's much worse than his predecessors. H.W. Bush was a little worse than that. He continued Regan's deregulation campaign, and while he held several climate summits, he made no substantial moves on the climate.
With Clinton, we can see how the Democrats stopped the Party from moving back to the left on environmental issues. Clinton was, economically, very similar to Regan and Bush, and placed the corporate profits above the environment. He tried to make some progress with the Kyoto Protocols, but it was mostly ineffective, relying on cap-and-trade policies that did little to reduce emissions. Then it was the next Bush, who pulled us back out of Kyoto and was generally worse on all fronts for the environment. Next came Obama, who certainly has a mixed history on the environment. He put us in the Paris climate accords, but also went heavy on coal and fracking, plus approved the Keystone Pipeline. Finally we get Trump, who is a climate change denier and Captain Planet villain, which was interrupted by a brief interlude from Biden, who put us back in the Paris accords for a few years but also expanded American oil production.
Do you see how, over time, the Republicans move farther and farther to the right on the environment? Do you see how the Democrats fail to bring us back to the left when the retake power? That's the Ratchet Effect. Democrats aren't nice environmentalists that just want to fight the evil Republican polluters, they're constantly shifting right with the Republicans. This is true for immigration, the economy, crime, and if guys like Gavin Newsom get their way, it will soon be LGBTQ rights as well. Your binary, black-and-white view on these issues just doesn't reflect history or reality.
The Ratchet Effect is a "both sides bad" meme. It is provably false.
Beaches Act, Oct 2000 Clinton. Pacific National Monument started by Bush, expanded by Obama. Biden Ban on Artic drilling 2024
Democrats push left. Republican push right. There's no ratchet.
And when Democrats have power, they push it to the left. It's not a ratchet. Both sides are NOT the same.
DEI, Roe v Wade, The Environment, etc have all gone right only because voters have given so much power to Republicans to move it right.
OK, first off:
LITERALLY NO ONE SAID THAT. EVEN THE MEME SHOWS THAT THEY ARE DIFFERENT. IT'S NOT THAT THEY ARE THE SAME, IT'S THAT ONE IS SHIFTING RIGHT WHILE THE OTHER ONE IS NOT SHIFTING BACK.
OK, now that that's out of the way...you think Biden was great for the environment because he limited (not banned, limited) Arctic drilling? Then why did oil production go up under him?
There's tons more I could say; the BEACH Act is good, but it's just amends the Clean Air Act to add testing for recreational waters. H.W. Bush did the same thing with the Clean Air Act Amendment in 1990, which effectively eliminated Acid Rain. Reagan and Bush were still both shit compared to their predecessors, but Clinton wasn't significantly different.
You can see it in almost every issue. Crime? Biden championed the crime bill in the 80s that led to mass incarceration. The Clinton's were even more zealous on incarceration (remember Hillary's Super Predators?). Obama did speak out against mass incarceration, but he did little to curb it, and he started giving the police surplus military equipment. The economy? Carter was the one that started distancing Democrats from the New Deal, while Clinton deregulated Wall Street and paved the way for the 2008 crash; Obama response to that was basically the exact same bank bailouts that Bush had been doing, plus some weak regulation that was nothing compared to what Clinton repealed.
I could keep going, but I just don't have the time to keep going over nine administrations worth of legislation, only for you to say, "nuh-uh, here's a single piece of legislation a Democrat passed once." I don't know what to tell you. Look up Overton window, I guess.
One person blocking improvement the other does something bad is both sides bad. Using all caps doesn't change that.
There is a difference between pumping oil from existing wells and wrecking new natural habitats for more oil.
Johnson, Democrat 1963. Too long ago to be relevant which is why I mentioned something newer.
??? Stopping crime is right wing?
We went from rivers so polluted that they caught fire and acid rain dissolving all public art to mostly clean rivers and air. If it was a ratchet we would have continued to go backwards. We would have gone from no gay marriage to criminalized. We would have gone from one river on fire to most rivers on fire. We would have gone from BLM back to segregation. The Ratchet Meme is a lie.
If you don't even know about the racist crime bills of the 80s and 90s then I shouldn't continue this conversation. There are clearly large gaps in your knowledge regarding recent American history. It's not my place to fill those gaps, but I also shouldn't be berating you for them. Good luck.
You are directing the conversation to anything other than the argument that the ratchet meme is a lie.
You picked Nixon earlier. If it was non stop right wing movement from 1974 with Democrats doing nothing we'd be back at segregation and rivers on fire.
American voters put the right wing in power in all branches of the government. They are the ones turning back the progress that Democrats achieved. The knob is going back and forth. It's not a ratchet.
I have given you multiple examples of the Ratchet Effect in American politics, but you lack the basic background to engage with them properly. You should start by looking into the Crime Bills of 1984 and 1994. Good luck.
Give an example from either of those crime bills that is specifically right wing.
Because I don't see lynchings happening anymore. Nor do I see lynchings written into either of those crime bills. I don't even see in the bills where it says minorities are to be arrested in greater numbers than whites.
That minorities are over represented in prison isn't written into the crime bills. That's a problem of systematic poverty in minority communities.
It is. It created disproportionate mandatory minimum sentencing surrounding powdered and crack cocaine, and since crack cocaine was affecting the black community at much higher rates than the white community, this led to a huge increase in the incarceration of black Americans. To be blunt, this is common knowledge, and you should be embarrassed to be missing it.
Black communities asked for the bill. It was written by Black leaders.
"Rep. Bass is right. According to a 1994 Gallup survey, 58% of African Americans supported the crime bill, compared to 49% of white Americans. Most Black mayors, who were grappling with a record wave of violent crime, did so as well. As he joined a delegation of mayors lobbying Congress to back the bill, Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said, “We’re trying very hard to explain to Congress that this is a matter that needs bipartisan support.”"
"In a recent interview Rep. James Clyburn, a member of the House leadership and one of the most powerful African American elected officials, reflected on the reasons for his vote in favor of the bill. “Crack cocaine was a scourge in the Black community,” he recalled. “They wanted it out of those communities, and they had gotten very tough on drugs. And that’s why yours truly, and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, voted for that 1994 crime bill.”"
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-the-1994-crime-bill-cause-mass-incarceration/
Should have kept reading:
Do you see how this demonstrates the Ratchet Effect yet? Conservatives (and Joe Biden) pass a piece of legislation during the Reagan years that causes mass incarceration of black men. Clinton doesn't move us back to the left, but passes legislation that reinforces the conservative legislation. The closest the Democrats get to, "turning the dial to the left," is when Obama gets legislation passed that makes the problem 18 times worse for the black community instead of 100 times worse for the black community, and only after the bulk of the damage is already done. Do you see how even, even when the Democrats, "move us to the left," things are still worse than where they started? That's the Ratchet Effect.
A policy demanded by Black leaders having unintended consequences is not a Ratchet effect.
Yeah, I'm not really interested in your thoughts on the legislation you just learned about from me a few hours ago, but thanks anyway.
I actually lived through it instead of learning "Biden bad facts" from Russian trolls a year ago.
Funny how you are only now not interested in my thoughts after I proved your claim to be wrong.
LOL, you've not proved me wrong, I just don't care to debate, "It can be racist with if black politicians supported it," with a guy who needed me to explain the crime bills to him. I said 5 comments ago that I shouldn't bother with someone so ignorant of American politics, and I wish I'd stuck to that, because this is a waste of my fucking time. I'm out.
The example you gave was Democrats enacting legislation requested by the Black caucus. It is the job of politicians to listen to the citizens. Black citizens asking for laws to help the Black community are not racist by definition. Are you going to use affirmative action as an example of Democrats being evil too? Maybe you should understand the examples you are using instead of repeating Russian talking points.
Percentage of blacks in prison:
1970 41%
1980 46%
1990 53%
2000 36%
2020 32%
https://www.sentencingproject.org/press-releases/new-report-finds-imprisonment-rate-of-black-men-has-fallen-by-nearly-50-since-2000-but-pushback-threatens-continued-progress/
Yes Blacks are still over represented in prison populations. But the crime bill did not increase the number of Blacks incarcerated.
Boy, I know I said I was going to stop, but you're just so wrong all the time and I just can't stop dunking on you. The crime bills of the 80s and the 1994 bill absolutely did increase the number if incarcerated black men. Even when the percentage went down, the population went up. Let's look at those statistics in terms of real numbers:
1970: 328,020 prisoners, 134,488 black
1980 503,586 prisoners, 231,650 balck
1990 1,148,702 prisoners, 608,812 black
2000 1,937,482 prisoners, 697,494 black
2020 1,675,400 prisoners, 536,128 black
Source
So, even if you see the percentage going down, the actual number of black men being thrown in prison was increasing until the end of the Trump years. It's also worth noting that we're only looking at the racist implications of mass incarceration, but all in all, mass incarceration itself is a terrible, right-wing policy that has increased under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Funny enough, the only significant fall came during the Trump years, when the prison population fell 500,000 between 2018 and 2020. I highly doubt that had anything to do with Trump, and imagine it had more to do with Covid than anything else (and potentially state-level legalization of Marijuana), but it again shows that Democrats did little to curb mass incarceration.
OK, I'm really done now. I know I said it before, but I'm really done this time. I'll stop spreading all this, "Russian propaganda," that I became aware 20 fucking years ago when I was in college (damn, those Russians play a long game, huh?). I'm out. Good luck.
Your numbers aren't in the Wikipedia page you linked. Your link did say this: "However, in the 21st century, the incarceration rates for African American and Hispanic American women have declined"
I already linked this article and here are more links: "Imprisonment Rate of Black Men Has Fallen By Nearly 50% Since 2000"
https://www.sentencingproject.org/press-releases/new-report-finds-imprisonment-rate-of-black-men-has-fallen-by-nearly-50-since-2000-but-pushback-threatens-continued-progress/
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji20st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p00.pdf
You gave me percentages. I took the total numbers from Wikipedia and did basic math. Took less than five minutes, dude. Anyway, nothing in the rest of this comment that I haven't already addressed, so I guess we're done here. Good luck.
The wikipedia link you gave doesn't have historical numbers? But it did say Black incarceration declined. Which is the opposite of your claim.
Holy shit dude, the page has the total number of people incarcerated by year. If you can't find it, I can't help you, maybe take a tutorial on how the internet works. Then I took that total and used the percentages you gave me to calculate the total number of incarcerated black people. By doing that, I showed that, despite your claim that, "the crime bill did not increase the number of Blacks incarcerate," even when the number of black people as a percentage of the prison population dropped between 1990 and 2000, the total number of incarcerated balck men went up because the prison population went up. 50% of 10 marbles is less than 20% of 100 marbles, despite being a higher percentage. And, no, despite the one sentence you took out of context about the drop in the prison population (which I've referenced 5 fuckint times now), this article backs up literally every fucking thing I said:
Prison populations have been skyrocketing since the Reagan era. Clinton's actions actually made the problem worse. The subsequent actions under Obama and other Democrats didn't bring us back to anything like the pre-Reagan era and, at best, led to a slight reduction of the prison population and a slight reduction in how over-represented black Americans are in our prison system. Can you please go find someone else to be wrong at now?
Percentage. There are more people alive today than in 1970. The total number jailed has also gone up.
But the percentage of Blacks incarcerated has gone down. I already said Blacks are still over represented. But it has improved since the crime bill. Your claim the crime bill was racist is false.
Jesus fucking Christ. U.S. population in 1970 was 200,000,000 million, 280,000,000 in 2000, that's 1.4 times higher. Compare that to the prison populations I already gave you, and you'll see there 6 times higher by those same years, meaning the prison population grew way faster. I figured this out and wrote this in the time it took me to shit, maybe you could start looking this shit up yourself before you waste my time, especially since some of the sources you cited covered it.
I already said prison population has increased. But on a percentage basis, Blacks are less incarcerated than in the past. Is it racist that there are now far more Whites in prison because prison population has increased on an absolute basis?
Yes there are more in prison. And not even using percentages, prison population has decreased from its peak in 2008.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/
Whelp, since I've already addressed those points, I think we're finally, really done here. Took a long time, but we finally got there! You can go ahead and have the last word if it will make you feel less wrong about everything.
You always say you are done after being proven wrong. Which part of the percentage of Blacks in prison have declined did you not understand? I linked to Black leaders who asked for the bill. I linked Black equality websites that said it has gone down. You linked to Wikipedia that said it went down. Your final dodge was prison numbers as a whole have increased but again your own Wikipedia article shows that even in absolute numbers, it has gone down from 2008. Obama helped. Biden helped. There isn't a ratchet. You it proved yourself.
He said straight line THROUGH Nixon and Trump, not straight line TO Nixon and Trump.
The former implies distinct and self-evident political differences, whereas the latter implies political evolution from one into the other where both politicians have a common set of political similarities.
I can't help but think at this point that we're reaching comprehension issues...
There is a long list of envitroment, social and political laws that Democrats have championed and have happened. BEACHES act, expanding Pacific protected waters, protecting Artic. In social we have gay marriage now. Democrats did NOT do nothing while Republicans moved things to the right. If that were true there would be no gay marriage. If Hillary had been elected the Supreme Court wouldn't be right wing and Roe v Wade wouldn't have been neutered.
The Ratchet meme is "both sides bad".
Both sides are bad. And by that I mean Democrats never represent the Left while routinely allowing the Right to exert their selfishness and greed. They are controlled opposition to frame American politics as a binary, when in reality an entire half of the political spectrum could be represented to widespread approval
American politics are simple. You vote in the primary for the person that represents you. You vote in the general for the party that represents you. Americans chose Trump through voting or abstaining. They are responsible. No one else.
Leftists gave Trump the win in 2016 because Hillary wasn't Bernie. That handed the Supreme Court to the Right Wing. Then leftists handed Trump the White House in 2024 because Harris wasn't pro Palestinian enough. It's face eating leopard time. But my conspiracy is leftist agitators online are right wing shills to get moderates to not vote. Bannon even said he did it.