Progressive Politics

To fact check the fact check: There doesn't seem to be a list of "dictatorships" on the Freedom house website. Interesting that they're missing a link to that source isn't it? Their point hinges on a listing from some website I've never heard of and they don't link to it? A little sus.

Freedom house does have a listing of countries that are "free", "not free", and "partly free" here: https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores

Note that Israel is considered a free country, and Gaza and the West Bank are listed as "not free". So the methodology of used by the fact checker would consider providing aid to countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey would count against the US while giving aid to Israel would be a positive. Providing aid to Palestine would be a double negative as the West Bank and Gaza are counted separately.

Also note that Ukraine is listed as "Partly Free" so I'm not sure whether the fact-checker is labeling Ukraine as a "dicatorship". Trump called Zelenskyy a dictator, so who knows?

Seems to me the fact checker was just cooking the books to promote a narrative that what Trump is doing is the status quo. Trump is surrendering to a dictatorship that's a threat to a great many democracies. It's not at all comparable to providing aid to a country that has shitty leaders, but shitty leaders that will fight against ISIS and/or al Qadea. If those groups were successful it would not increase freedom in they countries they exist in.

And who knows who the fact-checker is? Elon Musk controls everything on that site.

He just said it supported democracy, not that it didn't ALSO support dictatorships!

"Technically, the United States didn't get bad, it's always been bad! It only got worse!" isn't the flex a lot of leftists think it is.

It’s obviously unclear who actually fact checked Sanders here, but assuming it is indeed in good faith, this is why it’s so hard to mount a resistance to the fascism the US now has in power. There’s countless examples, but more or less they all revolve around (insert name) not being left enough or not being good enough, or in this case, not being honest enough. I don’t even disagree with the countless replies here that are rightfully pointing out that the US has propped up many non-democratic governments all over the world for its own moneyed and geopolitical interests - no shit. And I for one don’t defend it. But as an American myself who’s on the left, I’d gladly take Sanders for all his flaws compared to the bullshit fascist regime my country now has. I just don’t see how shitting on Sanders in this way is truly constructive in any capacity. I should add the caveat- by all means critique him, correct anything false he says- but to totally disregard him as this negative force? To my mind though, this is the so-called Internet left’s favorite pastime- shit talk people actually doing stuff, all while offering zero concrete proposals or actions themselves to make the country better. It’s very easy to sit and post to Lemmy about your self proclaimed radical leftist views, but your views mean fuck all if they never get implemented. Perhaps just sitting in your online echo chamber is all you really want though, so you can feel good about your personal political and social beliefs.

The same people would assert that we shouldn't be meddling in other countries affairs to promote democracy.

I'm not defending our history here - some of it is pretty reprehensible.

Yea, it’s true we suck. We should probably stop sucking so bad.

Who needs the CIA when we have useful idiots that sink any working class movement with shit like this

The good thing about all this is that once Trump is done, and one day he will be done, the next guy who follows can finally build something good from the ground up

Chabging how American elections work, for example, has always been impossible. After this shit show, the pieces that are left will be broken enough to rebuild something good

This is not fact checking. This is gaslighting. The fact that the USA has been supporting dictators for decades does not change or alter what Bernie is saying.

Another nit-pick by the circular firing squad of so-called progressives.

True American Patriots like Bernie understand that the USA was mearly subverted away from the Light of Democracy by malign actors.

Bernie: 250 years the US has supported democracies

Net-a-yahoo: #whatAbout when they supported bad people?

World: uh, them too? You didn't actually refute Bernie's statement.

You can do both. Saying they've supported dictatorships doesn't mean they haven't also supported democracy. It's bordering on being a non sequitur.

Of course they provide for the dictatorships, who do you think put them there in the first place? It's called responsible parenting sweaty 💅

Peak what-about-ism

Bless this old man's heart, I only wish it were true

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Freedom House doesn't label places as "dictatorships." So this is suspect right off the bat. They use a "freedom index."

No doubt the figure from 2015 includes significant support and training to Afghanistan, labeled with a score of 6 out of 100. Does that count as supporting a dictatorship? No.

If we sell weapons to the Saudis to fight Iranian creep, is that supporting dictatorship? Maybe a little. No question of Iran and Saudi, Iran is a much less free and much worse dictatorship. Sometimes that's just how progress looks.

This "fact check" is at best highly misleading, bordering on false.

Dictators are good when they steal resources from the people and share them with us.