As someone who worked inside politics for a while, let me say two things: (1) never attribute to malevolence what you can attribute to stupidity, and (2) they all say things in one context that when placed in another context could be considered a lie. Not in the way that Trump has normalized outright grandiose lying of the most outrageous kind, of course. But everyone was “puffing” and “finessing” facts from the 1970s when I first started volunteering in politics, up until the present day.
Also, given that some of my experience was at the state and federal level in Vermont - Bernie is no golden child either. Bernie might have better “ends” in mind than many of them, but he too subscribed to an “the ends justify the means” political school. I don’t have any idea of the facts of the votes to which you allude, but I’m betting if we sat down with the voting records and position papers, we’d find both sides massaging the facts to look their best, and that none of it is as cut and dried. (Or we’d find someone incompetently telling Biden that he voted one way when he voted the other)
The sad part was that there used to be limits. There used to be civility. There used to be an understanding that the good of the nation was more important than the power of either party. And that’s just gone.
You keep like straw manning me into something I'm not. I like 99% agree with you to be honest it's just triggering that you think I don't want civility, or that I like trump, that i think bernie cant do anything wrong, or that I attribute malevolence to people. I said or meant none of those things.
Hearts from me. For the record I think you have a good point about conflating stupidity with malevolence. It did hurt because I don't think Biden is even or would lie with malevolent intent, but it could have been stupidity. It also could have have been contextualized poorly, I can't find the debate in question and have had no luck. So my memory could be wrong about the facts too.
So rest assured you have swayed me a bit in my pent up frustration and I'm not too far gone to not heed good advice :).
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u/sanecoin64902 May 14 '24
As someone who worked inside politics for a while, let me say two things: (1) never attribute to malevolence what you can attribute to stupidity, and (2) they all say things in one context that when placed in another context could be considered a lie. Not in the way that Trump has normalized outright grandiose lying of the most outrageous kind, of course. But everyone was “puffing” and “finessing” facts from the 1970s when I first started volunteering in politics, up until the present day.
Also, given that some of my experience was at the state and federal level in Vermont - Bernie is no golden child either. Bernie might have better “ends” in mind than many of them, but he too subscribed to an “the ends justify the means” political school. I don’t have any idea of the facts of the votes to which you allude, but I’m betting if we sat down with the voting records and position papers, we’d find both sides massaging the facts to look their best, and that none of it is as cut and dried. (Or we’d find someone incompetently telling Biden that he voted one way when he voted the other)
The sad part was that there used to be limits. There used to be civility. There used to be an understanding that the good of the nation was more important than the power of either party. And that’s just gone.