Every time I see someone clutch their pearls over Trump putting kids in cages I remember that Obama and Biden built those cages and the press and Congress knew about it and were good with it because same team
Honestly this is what bothers me the most about any Democratic administration- the utter lack of accountability. I would love to judge on policy pluses and minuses. We don’t live in that world any more
What’s one administration’s unconscionable human rights abuse is the nexts “unfortunate policy choice”, swept under the rug and rationalized away and forgotten until it can be used against the next person not in your tribe
Because here’s the sad damn truth about American politics - it hasn’t been about principles or empowerment or the people or any of that bullshit for a while. It’s solely about partisan power and which wagon you’ve hitched yourself to. That’s it
And as execrable as Trump is - his feet are at least held to a fire. We spent two years investigating a bullshit piss dossier sponsored by partisan opp research. We impeached him over one phone call and Dems got their talking point
But Obama can tell the Russian President he’ll be more flexible on a hot mic moment and the same people are all lmao doesn’t mean a thing. IRS, Fast and Furious, etc- just bumps in the road! Nothing to see here! Nobody buys it
Anyone who tells you Obama’s biggest scandal was a tan suit is so fundamentally ignorant of American history even going back just EIGHT FUCKING YEARS that they’re absolutely not worth engaging. Just shut that shit down
As someone who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, was aching for him to provide an ounce of leadership and didn’t see it, and was the most open to voting Democrat I’ve ever been - accountability matters. The narrative, the story matters
If the only accountability is “how can we hold this official to the most left-friendly standard possible, how can we ensure he checks as many left boxes as possible” then that’s not accountability that’s literally partisanship
A lot of folks have already made arguments that anything to the right of Hillary Clinton is centrist compromise and doesn’t deserve a public hearing. That mindset is not reserved to Confederate statues or LGBT laws. It is held to everything.
That mindset has infected newsrooms, tech boardrooms, corporate PR firms. It’s not representative of the populace, who mostly just wants to live their lives and watch TV and get along with their neighbors
So to summarize- Biden vs Trump isn’t really between two individual candidates, or even two partisan platforms or even about justice or limited government or whatever cause you’re championing. It is quite simply about who is going to be able to get away with shit
That seems anathema to the American experiment- but that’s where we’re at. All of the lofty ideals have been thrown out the window -they were a long time ago. That’s why a statue of Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence but is still problematic, can get pulled down
Historians will note this as THE key turning point in our history. Not based on what old white man wins an election, but on what we ultimately base our accountability upon and on what we base our trust.
Currently our empirical trust in institutions is low. It is solely based on the partisan advantage it confers on our side. This is so fantastically superficial and devoid of facts that not even a disgustingly biased journalism class - who purported to deal in truth- can hide it
