this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Gay marriage was legalized at the federal level by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The only time a Democrat acted on same-sex marriage nationally was when Bill Clinton banned it by signing DOMA in 1996.
Nixon created the EPA.
If Democrats passed legislation, Biden's achievements couldn't be undone through executive order.
The parties are not the same, especially now that one of them is openly fascist, but you're giving Democrats credit for things they did not do. Also, the meme doesn't say they're the same, it describes the rachet effect, which is an accurate representation of how Democrats behaved on multiple issues. Look at how their economic policies have changed over the last 30 years, or how their views on immigration policies have changed since Trump was elected.
Is there a political community you found on lemmy that understands how this works, like you do. I see way too many Democrat apologists on these popular communities.
Not on .world. I've noticed .world is more of a neoliberal, mostly pro-capitalism instance in general.
Note, I'm talking more about the moderation rather than members.
Okay. I don't understand all the different instances yet. I got instructions from someone on how to navigate it but haven't sat down to try.
Basically all you need to know is every instance has their own admins with their own rules, and often times you will see instances who are focused on a particular group of people, like my instance, for instance, which is for hardcore computer geeks, but where everyone is welcome regardless of whether or not they are even into computers.
I also like my instance because they explicitly choose to not defederate with any instance. I can choose what to block myself, which is how I prefer it.
There are also instances like db0's (former /r/piracy moderator) for example, which focus more on individual freedoms/anarchist philosophy.
I started off on .world for a month until I found my instance.
Well, .world has a lot of users who understand this, but the loudest voices (who are often times moderators) are definitely Democrat apologists. Then again, some of the other instances, like .ml, have the opposite problem, and are full-blown tankie/authoritarian apologists, so it's kind of a, "pick your poison, damned if you do, damned if you don't," situation.
That is absolutely not what I'm saying. I'm correcting objectively false statements you're making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, "full gay rights with marriage," and the meme and OP did not say, "both sides bad." Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
I miss Reddit. R. I. P.
Eh, I saw a lot of the same shit on Reddit. I think you'd have to go back at least 7 or 8 years to find a version of Reddit that wasn't trash.
Nah. I had my feed highly curated to active and sane subs within my interests. It was too good to be true.
Your list supporting Republicans means you must support Trump. right?
I mean you can't have it both ways. Nixon created the EPA, Nixon was Republican, therefore Republican policy is to put the environment first. That's what you are arguing.
Why can't stating facts just be that: stating facts.
Instead, people have to insert imaginations of their interlocutor's position so they can try to dish an "own" before asking them for clarification first.
And we wonder why discourse is broken in today's age
If I said Republicans generally support racist policies, a reply could be the fact that Lincoln freed the slaves and was a Republican.
Stating facts like that isn't neutral. It's the scientific equivalent of picking out one data point from an entire study to argue against a conclusion.
That is absolutely not what I'm saying. I'm correcting objectively false claims you're making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, "full gay rights with marriage," and the meme and OP did not say, "both sides bad." Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
If you have to go back 50 years to find an example of when Republicans were good for the environment, you proved my point.
It's no different than, "Republicans are the party of Lincoln!"
First reply: "Giving Nixon credit for the EPA means you support Republicans and therefore Trump."
Second reply: "NIxon was so long ago he doesn't count."
You can't have it both ways. You can't claim pointing out a good thing Nixon did means I support modern Republicans while also claiming Nixon happened so long ago that he's not connected to modern Republicans.
It's also just factually wrong to say, "it was so long ago, its like saying they're the anti-slavery party." Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy. He's basically the turning point for where the Republicans became the party we know today. He's the reason it's bullshit to point out Republicans are the party of Lincoln.
Those two sentences are in exact conflict with each other. You say "it's too long ago when Republicans were different" isn't a valid argument." Then in the very next sentence you say, "it was long ago when Republicans were completely different."
WTF?
He didn't say that. You did.
He pointed out your hypocrisy when you said that stating the fact that Nixon created the EPA must mean he's a Republican (and a MAGAt one at that), but then turned heel and said that any politicians from 50 years ago don't matter (likely because the political landscape then is not the same as the political landscape now, which is reasonably true - he makes this same point by saying 1860 Republicans are not the same as 1960 Republicans or 2025 Republicans).
You stated he's a Republican, then dissolved your own claim by saying support for past Republicans doesn't matter. You've closed your own logic loop.
No, dude...just...no. You tried to claim that saying, "a Republican founded the EPA," and, "Republicans ended slavery," were the same, even though there was a century of history between those events. More importantly, Nixon is exactly the person you don't want to make that argument about, since Nixon is the very person who pivoted the party towards its modern strategy of using the politics of racial aggrievement to get working-class whites to vote against their self-interests. Going back to the Civil War, or even the early Civil Rights era, things get ideologically murky, but you can draw a straight line between Trump and Nixon.
For the past 50 years, Democrats have been supporting environmental protection laws and Republicans have been against them.
It is equivalent to compare "But Nixon started the EPA" to "Lincoln ended slavery." That Nixon started the EPA 50 years ago is irrelevant to all the following decades where Republicans have been consistently against the environment. It's no different than when Magas say they aren't racist because of Lincoln.
If it's a straight line from Nixon to Trump as you say, then why claim Republicans are environmentalists with Nixon as your example?
He said straight line THROUGH Nixon and Trump, not straight line TO Nixon and Trump.
The former implies distinct and self-evident political differences, whereas the latter implies political evolution from one into the other where both politicians have a common set of political similarities.
I can't help but think at this point that we're reaching comprehension issues...
There is a long list of envitroment, social and political laws that Democrats have championed and have happened. BEACHES act, expanding Pacific protected waters, protecting Artic. In social we have gay marriage now. Democrats did NOT do nothing while Republicans moved things to the right. If that were true there would be no gay marriage. If Hillary had been elected the Supreme Court wouldn't be right wing and Roe v Wade wouldn't have been neutered.
The Ratchet meme is "both sides bad".
Both sides are bad. And by that I mean Democrats never represent the Left while routinely allowing the Right to exert their selfishness and greed. They are controlled opposition to frame American politics as a binary, when in reality an entire half of the political spectrum could be represented to widespread approval
American politics are simple. You vote in the primary for the person that represents you. You vote in the general for the party that represents you. Americans chose Trump through voting or abstaining. They are responsible. No one else.
Leftists gave Trump the win in 2016 because Hillary wasn't Bernie. That handed the Supreme Court to the Right Wing. Then leftists handed Trump the White House in 2024 because Harris wasn't pro Palestinian enough. It's face eating leopard time. But my conspiracy is leftist agitators online are right wing shills to get moderates to not vote. Bannon even said he did it.
I'm not claiming Republicans are environmentalists, but if you want to know why they got so much worse on the environment, the answer is the Ratchet Effect. The thing you misinterpreted as, "both sides bad," explains exactly how we got here. In Nixon's era, environmental issues weren't considered particularly partisan. Nixon, Ford, and Carter all had generally the same outlook on using the federal government to regulate corporations on the environment.
Then comes Regan with a lurch to the right. He tries to de-fang the EPA and hundreds of employees resign en mass. But he's not all bad; he is instrumental in passing the Montreal Protocols, which effectively fixed the hole in the ozone layer, but he's much worse than his predecessors. H.W. Bush was a little worse than that. He continued Regan's deregulation campaign, and while he held several climate summits, he made no substantial moves on the climate.
With Clinton, we can see how the Democrats stopped the Party from moving back to the left on environmental issues. Clinton was, economically, very similar to Regan and Bush, and placed the corporate profits above the environment. He tried to make some progress with the Kyoto Protocols, but it was mostly ineffective, relying on cap-and-trade policies that did little to reduce emissions. Then it was the next Bush, who pulled us back out of Kyoto and was generally worse on all fronts for the environment. Next came Obama, who certainly has a mixed history on the environment. He put us in the Paris climate accords, but also went heavy on coal and fracking, plus approved the Keystone Pipeline. Finally we get Trump, who is a climate change denier and Captain Planet villain, which was interrupted by a brief interlude from Biden, who put us back in the Paris accords for a few years but also expanded American oil production.
Do you see how, over time, the Republicans move farther and farther to the right on the environment? Do you see how the Democrats fail to bring us back to the left when the retake power? That's the Ratchet Effect. Democrats aren't nice environmentalists that just want to fight the evil Republican polluters, they're constantly shifting right with the Republicans. This is true for immigration, the economy, crime, and if guys like Gavin Newsom get their way, it will soon be LGBTQ rights as well. Your binary, black-and-white view on these issues just doesn't reflect history or reality.
The Ratchet Effect is a "both sides bad" meme. It is provably false.
Beaches Act, Oct 2000 Clinton. Pacific National Monument started by Bush, expanded by Obama. Biden Ban on Artic drilling 2024
Democrats push left. Republican push right. There's no ratchet.
And when Democrats have power, they push it to the left. It's not a ratchet. Both sides are NOT the same.
DEI, Roe v Wade, The Environment, etc have all gone right only because voters have given so much power to Republicans to move it right.
OK, first off:
LITERALLY NO ONE SAID THAT. EVEN THE MEME SHOWS THAT THEY ARE DIFFERENT. IT'S NOT THAT THEY ARE THE SAME, IT'S THAT ONE IS SHIFTING RIGHT WHILE THE OTHER ONE IS NOT SHIFTING BACK.
OK, now that that's out of the way...you think Biden was great for the environment because he limited (not banned, limited) Arctic drilling? Then why did oil production go up under him?
There's tons more I could say; the BEACH Act is good, but it's just amends the Clean Air Act to add testing for recreational waters. H.W. Bush did the same thing with the Clean Air Act Amendment in 1990, which effectively eliminated Acid Rain. Reagan and Bush were still both shit compared to their predecessors, but Clinton wasn't significantly different.
You can see it in almost every issue. Crime? Biden championed the crime bill in the 80s that led to mass incarceration. The Clinton's were even more zealous on incarceration (remember Hillary's Super Predators?). Obama did speak out against mass incarceration, but he did little to curb it, and he started giving the police surplus military equipment. The economy? Carter was the one that started distancing Democrats from the New Deal, while Clinton deregulated Wall Street and paved the way for the 2008 crash; Obama response to that was basically the exact same bank bailouts that Bush had been doing, plus some weak regulation that was nothing compared to what Clinton repealed.
I could keep going, but I just don't have the time to keep going over nine administrations worth of legislation, only for you to say, "nuh-uh, here's a single piece of legislation a Democrat passed once." I don't know what to tell you. Look up Overton window, I guess.
One person blocking improvement the other does something bad is both sides bad. Using all caps doesn't change that.
There is a difference between pumping oil from existing wells and wrecking new natural habitats for more oil.
Johnson, Democrat 1963. Too long ago to be relevant which is why I mentioned something newer.
??? Stopping crime is right wing?
We went from rivers so polluted that they caught fire and acid rain dissolving all public art to mostly clean rivers and air. If it was a ratchet we would have continued to go backwards. We would have gone from no gay marriage to criminalized. We would have gone from one river on fire to most rivers on fire. We would have gone from BLM back to segregation. The Ratchet Meme is a lie.
If you don't even know about the racist crime bills of the 80s and 90s then I shouldn't continue this conversation. There are clearly large gaps in your knowledge regarding recent American history. It's not my place to fill those gaps, but I also shouldn't be berating you for them. Good luck.
You are directing the conversation to anything other than the argument that the ratchet meme is a lie.
You picked Nixon earlier. If it was non stop right wing movement from 1974 with Democrats doing nothing we'd be back at segregation and rivers on fire.
American voters put the right wing in power in all branches of the government. They are the ones turning back the progress that Democrats achieved. The knob is going back and forth. It's not a ratchet.
I have given you multiple examples of the Ratchet Effect in American politics, but you lack the basic background to engage with them properly. You should start by looking into the Crime Bills of 1984 and 1994. Good luck.
If you're talking about the Respect for Marriage Act, that was passed a decade after the Supreme Court established gay marriage as the law of the land. The overturning of Roe made Democrats decide that they should codify gay marriage, since they saw how badly failing to codify abortion rights turned out. It also reopens the door for Civil Unions and passed with large Republican support, so I wouldn't exactly call it a huge win for Democrats.
As for the EPA, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but you are absolutely incorrect. Nixon proposed the EPA and NOAA through executive order, and it was later ratified by Congress. It's possible you're referencing some sort of dispute Nixon had with Congress on how they intended to create the EPA, but he absolutely supported it; it was his idea.
What a stupid comment