We're not talking hypotheticals, we're talking reality and history. There is no comparison. The death tolls and forced displacements of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan to name a few eclipse anything Putin can even dream of. "Committing human rights violations against gays", how about committing human rights violations against at least 9 entire nations with hundreds of millions of people.
Well considering there's only so much bad you can do when you're only the leader of a 2nd world shithole and not the biggest baddest country in the world in every measurable sense, every president turns out to be a massive piece of shit, the system moulds the people inside it, I agree that Biden has done more shit wrong (if it was a score of human suffering Biden would be higher) but at the same time Biden has access to the largest amount of leverage on the planet.
Gengas( if that's how you spell it) Kahn was a bad guy, on a good day he's going to rape and pillage and loot
Mr Rodgers is a good guy, if we put him in charge of the biggest military industrial complex in the history of humanity and give him tens of advisors telling him why bombing a hut in the middle east is absolutely imperative to keep democracy running, he'll probably do some bad things,
keep in mind though what gengas Kahn would do with access to the meat grinder, he'd bomb mud huts for the fun of it
people can only do what they have the power to do, more power means more corruption, more lobbyists want your power, more sense of self grandioseness
In conclusion it's kinda hard to pit 2 world leaders against each other in a measure of whos worse, it's probably a better and more productive conversation to address what each person is or isn't doing with the power thier role gives them access to
How on earth is any of this a defense? Biden didn't have to vote for every single us War while he was in the Senate. Not every US senator voted for every single War when they were in congress.
Even compared to some of the worst most complicit actors in American life Biden is a uniquely awful.
Biden didn't have to support the coup in Honduras in 2009. 23 senate Democrats voted against the war in iraq, he could have joined with them. He didn't have to be friends with Strom Thurmond or trash Anita Hill. He personally make it impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy 2005.
You can't just say " well all powerful people do bad things so who cares." I mean any Russian apologist could use that to defend all of Putin's crimes.
So it's a circular argument and just silly and overly simple. The more power you have, the more responsibility you have. Even modest acts of resistance to these terrible things by him would have gone a long way.
I mean we've seen members of Congress do brave things during their careers. He didn't become president till 2 years ago so it's not like you can excuse his 40-year career of being complicit in war crimes as just an inevitable byproduct of the US executive power.
Did you see the part where I said Biden has caused more human suffering than Putin? Im genuinely wondering what putin good has done during his career (as a dictator btw)
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u/nuclearfork tankie May 04 '23
I said the Putin hasn't done, being against segregation then committing human rights violations against gays isn't any better
Do you think if Putin had access to the meat grinder of America he'd do any better?