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[–] 69 points 10 months ago (18 children)

Well, duh, he has to swear on a book that means something to him, preferably a (to him) holy book. How weird would it be if he swore on a Christian bible. not being Christian himself?

The book is not there for our cultural values. It's there to ensure the person swears an oath on something meaningful to them. We just forgot about that because we are used to all sorts of public figures swearing oaths that mean nothing to them.

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  • [–] 30 points 10 months ago* (13 children)

    It truly is amazingly gratifying to see such genuine people as Mamdani & "The Squad" successfully stepping up to make a difference, and enough people actually voting for them to win. It's honestly the only hope I have left in this shithole.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    Fully with you there. A lot of people on the left are rapping on Schumer and Jeffries for being too moderate, and rightfully so. But I think there is a part of their extreme caution (or fecklessness) that comes from having seen more leftist candidates go down in flames in the past.

    Having people like Mamdani, AOC, and others win elections decisively makes a huge difference. They are not perfect, but they move the needle in the right (left) direction.

    It's like the progression from Bush to Trump in reverse.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (9 children)

    my god, you'll make up any number of excuses to avoid the fact that democrat politicians are not on your side. they are on the side of the ruling class. wake up.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    Are we feeling bad about not voting effectively against trump and lashing out defensively again?

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    @CannonFodder @bearboiblake What does "not voting effectively against Trump" mean?

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    If you could have but didn't vote for the only possible competitor to trump who had a chance, ie Harris, then you enabled trump and are complicit in Trump's agenda. And although there are many states when voting had minimal effect, it still affects totals and mandate power.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    @CannonFodder By your logic if I had voted for Harris, I would be complicit in her agenda: the genocide of children in Gaza. Besides, do you really think she wanted to win? She knew that supporting genocide was losing her the support of her base, but she stuck to it like glue anyway. I don't know why she had such a hard-on for dead and maimed children, but that was HER decision.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    Maybe surprisingly, there are a lot of center-left leaning Americans who support Israel. Or at least used to. Yes Harris wanted to win, and yes she believed supporting Israel was the best path. She (and Biden) voiced support for Israel to defend itself. And they voiced their dislike for Hamas. They never called for genocide, but they clearly failed to stop it. There was, and still is, plenty of misinformation out there and at the time of the election, many people were still thinking that the reports of atrocities by Israel were highly exaggerated. Hamas created the entire war purposefully to get tic toc views of people of Gaza getting killed by Israeli - so it seemed likely that they fabricated a lot of 'evidence' also. Whether it was because of this information fog, or because Trump encouraged them, Isreal has clearly gone right off the deep end. I would hope that there is a lot of support to push back significantly against Israel now and a democrat leader would be free to take an much stronger anti-genocide approach. They're never going to go full 'river to the sea' as they have a lot of Israeli supporters who highly value the safety of Jews in Isreal. But the point is, no matter how you look at it, the democrats are always better (although sometimes minimally) on every issue. So given the choice of one or the other it's absolutely moronic to not vote for the democrats. And that's the choice you had in the last election. Spin it how you want, but if you helped to put trump in power, you own it. If you really somehow think the Dems would be just as bad, despite the evidence, then stop complaining and enjoy your trump usa that is the same in your view to what things were a year ago.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    i don't know what you're doing, but I didn't vote for any genocidal or fascist candidates in any election, and I never will

    democrats make fascism inevitable

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Aha! I was bang on.

    Enjoy the speed run to fascism you helped cause.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    i'm not american, but ok, glad you care more about winning than about people fucking dying.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago

    Yes, I care about the people dying because of trump.
    In a perfect world, the U.S. would ditch the Democratic Party too, and move way to the left. But that ain't gonna happen in our lifetimes. The Dems winning is quite possible if people aren't fucking idiots again. And that would be better than what we have now by a long way.
    Don't let perfection distract you from better.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Hate to burst your bubble, but some 'progressive' posters are playing the Both Sides Are The Same Card because Mamdani and AOC haven't called for the US to nuke Israel

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago*

    That's nice. Every group has their extremists that lack a grounded perspective on achieving their goals & thus want to go too far, too fast (or who go out on their own and actually do so, which only serves to drag down the entire group in the end).

    While I agree we need to at the very least force a regime change in Israel, the reality is there's little point in calling for "nuking" them now when there's simply no way it's going to happen. It would only serve to put off more people from Progressives than keeping their current stance of opposition to Israel's actions clear, yet not actually calling them "enemies" worthy of nuking will. When Progressives actually have a prayer of accomplishing something and/or see that even the more "center" constituents have finally had enough of Israel - that's the time to stick their neck out & risk turning off some of their "moderate" supporters on the edge.

    At least that's my best guess as to their thinking, as I'm not even vaguely the type to be good at playing politics.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    If he swore in on a bible, or any other book, they would say he's avoiding a quran on purpose because he doesn't actually want to swear an oath on it

    No matter what he did, they were prepared to complain

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Does he though? When we were sworn in at MEPS, we didn't swear "on" anything. We held our hands up as a group and swore "to" protect The Constitution. Clearly that oath didn't mean as much to many veterans as it did to my friends and me.

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