Not to be a debbie downer but Tim Walz was in the military for 24 years, including during the Iraq war. He called the national guard on protestors following the George Floyd murder. He supports Israel. He's approved an oil pipeline across indigenous lands that break treaties.
It's weird to celebrate a man who goes against all leftist values
Elbit System, a top international arms manufacturer, who's weapons have been found in Israel, is also located in Tim Walz's state. People have protested for him to divest. Nothing.
Sigh, alright, guess I'm actually going to defend a politician for once, let's do this I guess:
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"Tim Walz was in the military for 24 years, including during the Iraq war" - Half True.
Tim Walz was in the military for 24 years. As a member of the national guard. He was never deployed overseas.
The man left the military in May of 2005 in order to run for public office. The unit of the NG he served with, the 125th Field Artillery, weren't mobilised for a deployment order until July of the same year, and people he worked with have come forward to confirm that one of the reasons he left was because he was morally opposed to the war.
Tim Walz never went to Iraq, the man didn't step onto foreign soil as a military man apart from a brief deployment to Italy in 2003 as part of the security forces during Operation Enduring Freedom. The man himself openly says that he never saw direct combat, ever.
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"He called the national guard on protestors following the George Floyd murder" - This is such a gross oversimplification of the role a state governor plays during times of unrest that it's just fully a misrepresentation.
(It's also a misrepresentation of what the National Guard even is, but that's a whole other can of worms.)
Tim Walz didn't make the singular decision to mobilise the national guard. He did not singlehandedly call the national guard. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, contacted Walz' office on the evening of the 27th of May to formally request the deployment of the Minnesota National Guard to the city.
This request by the mayor was immediately followed up with a written request by the Minneapolis Police Chief, Medaria Arradondo, who sent it through a couple of hours later.
Once that happened, there was no way for Tim Walz to ignore those requests. He was the governor of a state.
Tim Walz did not dispatch the National Guard to the city until the next evening. His hesitation and delay to call in the Guard even once he was formally requested to do so by the mayor of a city is one of the things he was slammed for, and was a black stain on his tenure as governor.
I'm not defending the actions of the National Guard once they were deployed, not by any means, but I am defending the idea that Tim Walz went all in on savage crackdowns when he verifiably did the opposite. In fact, during the strategising phase of the mobilisation, the governor's office filed numerous requests with the city for a list of defensive priorities, so that the guard would be protecting federal property.
But the actions of the National Guard once they were there, were not in Tim Walz' hands. The governor of a state is not a Commander In Chief like the president is.
(What was up to Tim Walz was his decision to make sure the state's Attorney General led the prosecution during the case against the police officers involved in the George Floyd trial, which resulted in the convictions. This move by Tim Walz was praised by civil rights groups.
I'll also point out that his decisions, reforms, and rulings in regards to police brutality were praised by Reverand Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, who said; "We don't want a guy who's wildly radical -- we want someone with an open mind, he has shown that with how he addressed police brutality in his own state,"
And also by Jotaka Eaddy, the founder of Win With Black Women, who said "Governor Walz’s tenure has also been marked by his steadfast commitment to advancing social justice and protecting vulnerable communities and communities of color.")
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"He Supports Israel" - True, completely true. ,But I hate to break this to you; every single institutional "In Crowd" Democrat supports Israel. The Venn Diagram of "Democrats who don't support Israel" and "Democrats who will end up near the White House" has no overlap. I'm sorry.
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"He's approved an oil pipeline across indigenous lands that break treaties." - Also entirely true, and indefensible. Fuck him for that one. Absolutely.
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And finally, "Elbit System, a top international arms manufacturer, who's weapons have been found in Israel, is also located in Tim Walz's state. People have protested for him to divest. Nothing." -
Elbit System isn't located in Minnesota, it's located in Texas, but why let a bit of googling and research get in the way of some good outrage.
They don't list any facilities or operation centers being in Minnesota. I have spent half an hour trying my best to find any evidence of any connection Minnesota has with Elbit System at all, but apart from one single f*cking petition that claims that the Minnesota retirement funds own 10,000 shares of Elbit Systems, but lists no sources for its outrage I can't find anything.
Elbit Systems have operational facilities in Texas, New Hampshire, Alabama, Virginia, and Florida. Their administration offices are in Alabama, Utah, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Maryland.
Those are all also currently Republican states, with the only exception being Maryland.
They are a publicly owned company, this is all information you can find with a bit of simple googling.
But again, hey, why let a bit of basic fact checking get in the way of some good outrage.
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So yeah, there's all that. Jesus Christ, you're all fucking unbearable.
Regarding indigenous issues, I also want to point out Walz's lieutenant governor is White Earth Nation Ojibwe. If Walz gets elected, she would be the first Native American governor of a US state. I can't speak to the oil pipeline stuff, it sounds like that sucks. But it's not like Walz isn't committed to the welfare of indigenous people in the state.
I know this is a little out of left field, but here is Walz's speech at a GIS user conference where he talks about how geographic literacy is important and how the state of Minnesota uses GIS to support environmental and social initiatives.
Minnesota's goal is have the lowest rate of child poverty in the nation. They do this with a tax credit. But you can't get a tax credit if you don't file taxes. So they used GIS to pinpoint to the street level where they needed to target filing initiatives, going door to door in some places.
I'm telling you this because it is a lot of work trying to attack big problems from multiple angles, and it's not always going to be as clean and morally pure as people hope. But it is evident Walz is setting the tone for a state that is trying hard to do right by its residents.
There is no such thing as a morally pure politician that can get things done. It is the nature of politics that sometimes you have to compromise. But that's where the bus metaphor comes in. You use politicians to get you closer to where you want to be, instead of not getting on the bus because it's not going on the path you want it to take.
