right now all we care about is empty rhetoric. You’re the prime example of that.

In what world is “stop providing weapons and political cover for a genocide” empty rhetoric?? Do you think reasonable demands automatically become unreasonable or “empty” if the recipient is stubborn enough? Or are you arguing either in bad faith or with very little thought?

Instead of being concerned with engaging and constructing good arguments, you spent half the time criticizing my motivations.

First you claim that I and everyone else on the left only have empty rhetoric and then you complain that I don’t construct more versions of an argument that’s self-evident. Pick a lane to be wrong in, please.

As for your motivations, the only reasons why I ever touched on them was to try and make sense of why you’d ever make such nonsensical arguments in spite of seemingly being capable of reason.

Besides, you complain a lot about me having the audacity to question your motivations after yourself claiming that everyone on the left only criticizes the US participation in the ongoing genocide to dunk on Biden 🙄

Because that’s all we are amounting right now is living up to the meme of ‘hot’ air and no substance.

No need to refer to yourself in the third person. You’re sounding plenty pompous and self-important already.

asinine statements like:

Biden should just pause Israel because Obama was able to reverse Cuba

Another ridiculous strawman. I never said anything resembling that and you know it.

and the moment someone points how stupid this is you went straight to

WHY YOU LOVE GENOCIDE!!!

Again, I did not. Do you want me to leave you and your army of strawman alone so you can have your argument without me interrupting?

and i don’t care if this sounds like tone policing

Nah, Neoliberals like you and Biden DO love yourselves some policing…

I’m sick of the fake moral indignation

There you go accusing me of faking it again. That’s still false and also hugely hypocritical given how much you’re complaining about ME questioning YOUR motivations 🤦

I want people to start thinking about being politically effective and actually changing the discourse towards what can be accomplished

And I want apparatchiks like yourself to stop pretending that everything that your Dear Leader actively chooses not to do is automatically impossible.

Giving up on your principles the moment the authority figures from your “team” resist isn’t being effective. It’s being needlessly submissive and demanding that others follow your meek example is authoritarian bullshit.

Because that would require ridiculously large computer monitors. Much larger than current technology permits.

Olden Times, Roman

Or added serifs to the bottom of them all 😁

I’m a progressive leftie and care about genocide too

Suuure you are! All that talk about the left in third person and automatic defending of the conservative neoliberal Biden was just something I imagined! 🙄

it’s not a magic shield that suddenly grants all my arguments immunity from criticism and also imposes on me the justification to insult everyone that disagrees with me personally.

Holy gigantic strawman, Batman!

You can criticize my arguments all you want, but if you’re not only wrong but also arguing from a place of insulting and belittling prejudice and reflexive apologia, then you should expect to be criticized right back and yes, insulted for your obviously bad takes.

I may or may not have been right about you not really caring about the genocide, but the fact is that you’re acting like it by pretending that Biden’s willing participation in it is a non-issue and that anyone who criticizes him for that has an ulterior motive of “just not liking him no matter what” or whatever you imagine to silence that nagging “could I be wrong about Biden?” voice in the back of your mind.

Nope. The location of the factories was never the point.

The point is what the effects of tariffs would be: they would help the bottom line of Western competitors and nothing else at the expense of Chinese workers and German consumers. It wouldn’t help Chinese slaves in any way.

THAT’S the point. THAT’S what matters.

It seems whatever one says, no matter if evidence proofs otherwise

Dude. You haven’t presented any evidence. You have CLAIMED that there is a car factory in Xinjiang and, rather than waste a bunch of time and energy confirming or disproving your claim, which is irrelevant to tariffs, I reiterated the important part.

continuing with your false narrative and spreading your opinion

I’m not making any false claims (with the possible exception of mistakenly thinking that there’s no car factories in Xinjiang) and the fact that the ones paying for the tariffs would be Germans buying more expensive cars as well as Chinese workers losing their jobs as their employers lose market share is just that: a fact. NOT an opinion.

To quote yourself to yourself, your points in your statement above are false again.

🎵 Come on JB now it’s time to blow doors down!

Even so, tariffs on Chinese cars won’t do anything to lessen the problem of slavery and will hurt Chinese workers and people who want to wean themselves off fossil fuels IMMENSELY.

The two issues of tariffs and slavery aren’t related and that you’re using the former as a defense department the latter is a sign that you don’t have any real reasons not to oppose such destructive protectionism.

It’s like saying that there should be a tariff on American cars because number plates are being made via penal slavery.

🎵 The PIIICKLE of the opera is here! Inside your mind…

Fun* fact: the Spice Girls song Spice Up Your Life was originally called Spice Up Your Pickle and was about encouraging pickle-assisted stabbing.

*read: false

Guess what: Chinese cars aren’t even made in Xinjiang.

Politicians are just conflating two completely unrelated issues to drum up support for eliminating the supply of cheaper in demand products that consumers prefer over the overly expensive choices from the Western owner donors.

We agree that the ethnic cleansing and slavery in Xinjiang is absolutely abhorrent and that workers throughout China should have much better wages and conditions, but this would have no effect on the former and devastatingly negative consequences for the latter.

Is it possible to have a conversation without morally loading every statement

When that conversation is about genocide and the enabling of such? Hopefully not.

I don’t think I’ve attacked you personally in any of my posts, have I?

Not directly, but accusing everyone on the left of not really caring about the genocide and instead just using it as a pretense to attack Biden for the sake of attacking Biden IS indirectly calling me a cynical liar.

I think it’s time to close Lemmy for the day

Sure, just mount your imaginary High Road High Horse and ride away when you don’t have an answer to legitimate criticism of your dismissive rhetoric, baseless accusations, and obvious deflection 🙄

German companies support tariffs on Chinese products

Well, duh! It would be great for the bottom line of the German companies to have less competition.

Awful for the German consumers and the Chinese workers who’d be the ones actually bearing the burdens of the tariffs, though.

That’s decidedly unfun and headhurty for those of us less mathemstically inclined. Also so deep into the theoretical weeds that I’m not sure that “fact” applies…

Breakfast of champions!

Cuba is not equivalent to Israel. In any form or manner.

I never said that they are. I in fact specifically answered your question/assertion by saying so. That’s not side stepping, that’s accurately and honestly addressing your whataboutism.

That’s what started this conversation.

No, that’s the irrelevant direction in which YOU are trying to hijack the conversation.

If you followed any of the left pundits, news outlets, and even social media (including Lemmy) before Oct 7 you would know that Joe was long dead in the water to this demographic

I did and that’s simply not true. I think you’re letting your bias confuse you into thinking that any criticism equals total condemnation and disownment. It doesn’t.

You can latch on to Israel/Palestine as a defining moment for this election but honestly if it wasn’t for this, this group would have found something else to latch on to.

Typical apologist tactic: rather than address the issue, claim that the others are just PRETENDING to care about the brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians with American weapons to have something to criticize Biden for 🤦

Guess what: we DO care, and the fact that you’re more interested in deflecting to your conspiracy theory that the left just wants Biden to fail no matter what shows that YOU don’t care enough about Palestinian lives and know nothing about the left outside of your own cynical caricatures.

Still missing the point:

Of course you’ll have to choose malaria Biden over stage four leukemia Trump. That’s obvious. And also besides the point I’m making.

My point is that, no matter how bad the alternative is, malaria fucking SUCKS and nobody should ever be forced to pretend otherwise.

It’s opinion policing, it’s authoritarianism, and it’s standing in the way of progressing to a point where there’s actually a GOOD choice instead of a bad one and a much worse one every Presidential election.

It’s also not nice to kink measure.