Mr Biden’s speech is his first major campaign event of the 2024 election season

President Joe Biden marked the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by warning that the issue of American democracy will be “what the 2024 election is all about,” as he runs against former president Donald Trump once more.

Mr Biden, who spoke near the Valley Forge historical site where George Washington and the Continental Army were encamped during the winter of 1777 and 1778, told attendees that they were there “to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”

“This isn’t rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time,” he said.

Mr Biden said his speech, his first major event of the 2024 election season, was “deadly serious,” and about a topic that needed to be raised at the outset of his campaign.

  • Diva (she/her)
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    11 months ago

    I’m all for better systems. It’s just that I have a limited risk tolerance for really dark times.

    really dark times for who exactly? because unless you’re the white kind of person they’re already here

    Unchecked capitalism with a fig leaf of democracy sounds good in theory but eventually you run out of other peoples kids to feed into the blender.

    • @Candelestine
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      311 months ago

      I think you underestimate how much worse everything can, and quite possibly will, get. Unless you believe in some god that protects us, then literally everything is possible. Including a return to attitudes from two centuries ago, where slavery was enforced out in plain sight, with whips.

      That was worse than what we have now.

      One of the worst things we do is try to protect our children from the true horror of how ugly this world really is, and how rare happy endings actually are. This is why it remains so important to fight for real justice with everything we have, because what little progress we have actually made is trying to be stripped from us.

      That said, I fully agree that unchecked capitalism is rapidly returning us to the era of the robber barons, and doing tremendous harm. But the opposite of that bad thing can also be another bad thing, life isn’t so simple that the opposite of bad is automatically good. It’s so much trickier than that in everything but our fiction, and what we really need is some godawfully complex and nuanced middle ground that will make very little sense to most folks.

      Frankly, unchecked capitalism doesn’t even sound good in theory. It relies on humans being rational, which they very clearly are not.

      • Diva (she/her)
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        -511 months ago

        You say we need to protect our children from the true horror of how ugly this world really is, but I’m the one saying we need to stop inflicting the true horrors of how ugly this world really is on the children of Palestine.

        Our democracy is a farce and frankly you are making the case for a deal with monumentally inhuman forces because they promise you, your family and your friends a better life, while they inflict untold horrors around the world in all of our names.

        • @Candelestine
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          111 months ago

          You sound radicalized, I’m sorry to say. It’s all the exaggerated language. Try to remember that every side uses propaganda, it’s not always all true.

          • Diva (she/her)
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            11 months ago

            lmao you’re one to talk concern trolling about how trying to fix things is bad actually is also being a propagandist. For the people that literally don’t care if you live or die.

            • @Candelestine
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              111 months ago

              You don’t sound like you’re trying to fix things. You sound like you’re trying to make things harder by increasing the amount of strife, which furthers the paralysis of the country.

              • Diva (she/her)
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                -111 months ago

                You don’t sound like you’re trying to fix things, you just sound like you’re rationalizing keeping the empire running because it keeps you and yours comfortable.

                • @Candelestine
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                  11 months ago

                  To the contrary, many of us fight against American imperialism, in both its economic and military forms. Don’t expect us to just bow to a different imperial master though, that’s not equality. Just subjugation under a different master.

                  edit to fix a word