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The Oligarchs Are Not Reading The Room
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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politics
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Stop trying to compare someone who had 1-2 questionable actions to someone who has historically been one of the singular worst people to exist in history.
Your need to somehow appear 'better' than others by criticizing both sides of something just make you look like a pseudointellectual trying to sound smart.
Don't forget the tan suit AND Dijongate. That's already 2!
Or saluting. With a cup! Or that 'terrorist fist jab' of his.
The scandals I swear!
Stop using Trump's bad actions as permission for less bad actions. Trump is fully crap, but neoliberalism isn't going to fix the problems he's making. If you can't admit that, then we can't get any better than whatever the last worst thing was
Nobody is using Trump as permission. What’s up with the whataboutism? We live in a complicated world, of which your ‘isms do not fully encapsulate. If you can’t admit that Obama was better than Trump, you live in a shallow world my friend.
There is a continuous spectrum of wrongfulness. Trump is absolutely, undeniably, much further down that spectrum than any other President. You often hear one of the few accomplishments Trump produced is that nobody says Nixon was the worst anymore. Well… is your argument seriously that there is no difference between Trump and Obama? Why, because of some prejudice against Neoliberalism? Get outta here.
Obama was better than Trump. No fucking shit. Congrats? That doesn't mean that Obama doesn't deserve criticism, or even deserve criticism at the same time we're talking about Trump.
Saying "you can't compare Trump to Obama", however, is shielding Obama from criticism because of Trump's actions. There are degrees, no fucking shit, but they both belong in the Hague for war crimes. Pretending otherwise is part of the problem.
Hmm, maybe I missed something… because you keep acting like the argument is that Obama deserves criticism too. My point is, so what? Should we start criticizing the Grinch too, for all his wrongdoing? How about Regan and Putin — can we bring them into the discussion too?
Did someone here actually say Obama doesn’t deserve criticism? Or, were the people here just focused on current issues?
You really can’t compare Obama to Trump, though. It’s not a good comparison. By doing so, you’re making Obama look like a saint — good job. I think that is actually opposite to your goal. Try instead comparing Obama to someone of similar stature, where it’s obvious that Obama made some wrong choices.
Funny, nobody said that in this thread. Of course you can compare Obama to Trump, and I think all participants here did that. If you're refering to my top level comment, I deliberately phrased it the way I did. Reading comprehension?
You have a system in place that needs changed from the inside. Sitting outside of the system, and pouting that everyone isn't given a unicorn and a free E-bike isn't going to change anything.
Surprisingly enough, I vote in every primary and general election. Just because I don't agree with your "but our guy is better" thinking doesn't mean I opt out. You just need to hold yourself to a higher standard than you currently do. And stop thinking of politics as a team sport. Everyone in the ruling class needs to be held to a high standard, not just the guys wearing the opposite team colors.
Good! You should vote in every election you can. Elections are games-theory in practice. You vote for the person doing the least amount of harm.
I don't think of politics as a team sport I think of politics as an act of pragmatism. You pick the people that will do the least amount of harm to the least amount of people.
That's always team Blue. So make of that what you will.
Yeah, and that's the permission structure I'm talking about. By refusing to hold one side to account so long as "they're the lesser evil", you get the ratchet effect. One team comes in, blows things up. The other team promises to fix it, gets elected, barely changes anything, and then loses again cause the other team correctly calls out that they aren't doing shit. Then the more blowing up of shit occurs.
In the lead up to 2020, Dems ran on a platform of campaign finance reform, addressing health care, addressing covid, and affordability. They failed to address the first, second, and fourth. They technically eeked by on the third, in that they failed in an unspectacular way (COVID became endemic, with a vaccine).
In 2024, after failing to address anything they were elected for, they simply said "we're not as bad as that guy".
After LOSING 2024, their postmortem was basically "We did everything perfect, it's hard for returning parties to win without an incumbent"
Obama is a war criminal and should be in the Hague. Trump is also a war criminal, in addition to a bunch of other fucked up shit, and should also be in the Hague.
Yeah sure dealing with a global pandemic, and the externalities that are directly caused by such a thing, are kind of important before you start doing other stuff.
trump fucking cheated in the last election, so sure, if you're looking at your post-mortem and the dems made lemonade with Biden being forced out then yeah, you're going to say as much.
You fucked up your comparison in that last sentence, so maybe the better part of your comment got lost:
Oh oh no, many more than 2
Sure Jan. Compare trump to Obama. Lets fucking hear it.
Where did I do that!?
You saying "1 or 2" shows me how much you know about Obama's atrocities.
The latter is just an ad hominem that is both inaccurate and irrelevant.
This is like arguing Messolini wasn't bad because Hitler was actually the worse one.
Comparing Obama's actions to Mussolini just shows you have a chronic lack of education in world history.
Not what they were comparing. Saying the relationship between x and y is like the relationship between m and n, doesn't mean that were comparing x to m.
Reading comprehension is important. I will allow that the comparison was made to shock, but that doesn't mean you can miscategorize what they said
You're not 'allowing' me anything. Obama is listed as one of the better presidents the US has had. Comparing him in any way to a tinpot dictator is fucking laughable.
1-2? Like choosing to destroy the wealth of millions of homeowners while bailing out the banks, and deporting millions of hardworking people?
You mean the bailout dubya signed before Obama was even elected? That bailout?
Funny how people blame Obama for the shit Republicans do, right?
Yeah, he just bailed out the auto industry instead. Totally different and definitely not just cronyism pretending to be Keynesian economics, just like bailing out the banks. Wonder why people keep confusing those two things?
You mean the loans the government gave the auto industry that they had to repay? The loans that kept about a million people from losing their jobs?
Sure dude. They're exactly the same. 🙄
Don't forget record drone strikes (at the time) including a wedding
Including on American citizens
Yeah man, using the best tech at the time to limit collateral damage to a minimum is totally a net negative. Lets just bomb places like we used to, that's a much better option right?
I have a better solution. Don't do both of those things. If you think it's justified for some greater good, you're falling for the propaganda.
Yeah sure knowing the dudes killing US soldiers, then eliminating them in the best way possible at the time is totally a bad thing.
Why are they killing US soldiers? Where are these soldiers and why?
They're likely at one of ~800 military bases the empire has around the world that we use as an implicit (and sometime explicit) threat. We do violence so you can have bananas picked by slaves and install governments that will let us fleece the countries.
Those soldiers aren't defending us, they almost never die on US soil. They are there in an offensive capacity.