Our leaders are hyper-competent when fighting for the interests of wall street, the military industrial complex, the oil and gas industry, the insurance industry, etc.
Powerful moneyed interests are their real constituents. They only pretend to care about the needs of real working Americans when they need votes.
I agree the infrastructure bill is a step in the right direction, but its mostly just clearing the maintenance backlog. Our infrastructure will be upgraded from "crumbling" to "poor". Its easy to forget it, most Americans already have.
Now instead of being 20 years behind China, our infrastructure will only be 15 years behind. As the richest country in the history of earth, we can do so much better than this.
And as for climate, tinkering around the edges isn't meaningful. We are still going full speed ahead towards climate ccatastrophe. We need radical change to save our civilization, and this bill ain't it, jack.
I think it's important to distinguish between good faith criticism, like you are doing, and the people screeching that "I dont believe the 10k number bc its Hamas". The latter is genocide denial, it rhymes with "I dont believe 6m died in the Holocaust."
And yes I agree the fog of war is thick, the initial reports of 500 dead at al-Ahli hospital were overblown and sensationalized.
But I think the safe assumption is that the 10k number is a significant undercount. The health ministry counts corpses in hospitals and morgues. It isn't able to count people buried under rubble, bodies incinerated, corpses strewn across the road outside Gaza City, direct hits that leave nothing behind but pink mist, etc.
Look at it from the other side: Israel has said it launched over 9000 rockets, so if the 10k deathtoll is accurate, then each rocket killed only 1.1 persons on average. This death rate per rocket is very low, especially considering many are launched into heavily populated urban areas.
Did we forget about how Democrats had control of both houses of Congress when Biden was elected, yet still failed to accomplish anything significat?
And Manchin is still head of the energy committee, hes on appropriations and armed services too... If Democrats actually wanted to push back on his obstructionism they would have stripped his committee assignments. They haven't, making it obvious that they want to keep him around as the current rotating villain.
The NRA started out as a well respected advocacy group for hunters rights and environmental protection. Then they were captured by the arms manufacturing industry, so now their only goal is to sell more guns.
And after every major mass shooting there is a significant uptick in sales of guns and ammo, so the arms industry is financially motivated to contribute to the culture of gun rampage.
There was a massive outcry from the world. It sounds like this:
"Its horrible that rockets are getting fired at you! Here is a multi-billion dollar rocket defense system! But if you want the rockets to stop, end your brutal apartheid regime!"
Sadly, the Zionist response is to install the rocket defense system and increase the brutality. Then they smear any critics, including most of the UN and nearly every human rights organization, as biased and antisemitic.
I think you are right, at the start they had noble intentions hidden behind a get rich quick scheme.
But then they all became GME holders, they had a vested interest. So now they act like the shitty video game store in the mall is actually cool and innovative and soon some management changes and NFT nonsense will turn the company around.
In some small way, they became what they sought to destroy.
I would have held onto the moral high ground instead of instantly bombing civilians.
I would do everything I could to rescue the hostages, instead of ignoring them and bombing them.
I would negotiate with Palestinian leadership, offering them a path towards autonomy and freedom from their open air prison in return for handing over every single Hamas terrorist that attacked on Oct 7th.
Of course there is no magic solution. Even if we find the best possible course there will still be bloodshed and deep resentment. But with the current Israeli strategy, for every Hamas terrorist that they kill, they are creating 2 more to take their place.
In American presidential elections we only get to choose from 2 shitty candidates. Many well intentioned voters view it as a zero-sum game; thus any criticism of Biden is seen as pro-Trump rhetoric.
I agree that Trump is worse than Biden, bit this politics-as-teamsports mentality is a race to the bottom.
Judging by policy, I believe the last left-of-center president was Nixon. He finalized the Civil Rights Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency. He didn't do it because he was a leftist (he wasnt) or because he was a good guy (he wasnt). He did it because he was afraid of the massive protest movement happening at the time.
I wish we could apply this same broad based, mass protest energy to every president including Biden. But America(and Israel) has written the modern anti-protest playbook, and it's super effective. Anti-Iraq war, Occupy Wall Street, George Floyd, etc. were all marginalized and crushed.
It sure feels like things will have to get much worse before they start getting better.
Biden tells Israel to "knock it off with the war crimes, Jack!". Then he sprinkles in a little genocide denial and goes back to pushing for a $100billion war package.
What a sad state of affairs we live in that this could be considered a pivot.
Asking for a democratically elected leader to respond to the needs of the people isn't "curing cancer and buying puppies"
And yes Biden is better than Trump, but is that really how low you want to set the bar?
Have some standards, mate.