As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.
Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.
I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.
Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.
Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.
Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.
The USA has several legally binding treaties etc promising military cooperation with Israel. Harris isn’t allowed to break them legally. Any change to this would have to be passed by the house and senate. So it genuinely doesn’t matter what Harris or anyone else wants.
My logic (I don’t live in the us but for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I do) is that if a politician can commit a livestreamed genocide, and they win the election, it signals to politicians that there is no line they can cross that will make their campaign unviable.
It would be more ideal if the Democrats could have been punished for their war mongering years ago, but you never punish your representatives for crossing even the most egregious possible line, then you truly don’t have any power over them and have fundamentally given up.
If tommorow, even 10% of the dems indicated in polls that they would not vote for kamala because of gaza, it would force the DNC to take a stronger stance on the issue because the race is too tight. If this had happened many months ago, the Democrats could have been forced in giving concessions. But the Democrat voter base has made sure that the demmocrat party has no need to give concessions. They have used themselves as meat waves to ensure that the genocide can continue smoothly.
Because I live in one of the many many states were my vote doesn’t matter at all.
What’s the point of casting a worthless vote in favor of genocide?
People here act like we live in some kind of actual democracy lol.
Majority of the people who are saying this are Arab-Americans. They know how bad Trump will be, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of Biden back in 2020. Unfortunately, after a year of witnessing their entire ethnicity being written off as an acceptable casualty in the name of international diplomacy and foreign lobbying, they’ve become numb and just stopped caring. There have been repeated instsnces of Democrats actually silencing them from speaking up as well. They’ve adopted a scorched earth mentality and are deciding to send a giant “fuck you” to Harris and the entire Democratic party.
And the Democrats are also allowing Israel to do whatever they want. There’s not much of a difference between the two on this topic.
There is a difference between them on this topic.
If Trump were in office now, every liberal here would be screaming for the genocide to end and trying to understand how anyone could let this happen.
With Biden in office and his VP as candidate, they are trying to sell you on their candidate rather than working against the genocide.
I’ve actually seen some Muslim American leader (not sure who, maybe the mayor of Dearborn?) saying something like this. At least with Republicans in charge democrats would need to oppose them instead of gleefully supporting the genocide. Not sure how much this logic checks out, but it’s a thing I guess.
The logic definitely checks out. It was far easier to mobilize and educate mainstream liberals under Trump. They have gone to sleep under Biden and become fully accepting of what the administration does. They might say they don’t approve in a poll or something, but get them to leave the house? Only the college students can be mobilized at this time.
this is strangely true? but I can see the feds (who control the media) pivot narratives again where trump is still bad, but what he’s doing is okay because (hasbara such as beheaded babies & mass rape claims, false flag, atrocity propaganda). feds aren’t very intelligent. they do the same shit over and over again.
Yeah, the first time the press core deigned to call him “presidential” was when he launched rockets at Syria. The second time was when he assassinated Suleimani.
I think assuming that people are completely accepting of what the administration is doing, even when they try to voice their opinions in polls, is in bad faith. They simply don’t feel they have the option to not vote. In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election, but the two party system is so entrenched (at the minimum in the minds of voters), that to not vote is seen as the functional equivalent of voting for the other side.
I’m not in the US so my opinion doesn’t really matter, but I do think that political discourse would be much more productive if people would stop talking past each other and dismissing the motivations/logic of the opposing side.
I think assuming that people are completely accepting of what the administration is doing, even when they try to voice their opinions in polls, is in bad faith.
Polls happen because paid pollsters call people and do surveys, then compile the results and format it into something consumable for research, entertainment, or propaganda purposes. Polls are not a reflection of what people care about, they reflect what a few hundred or thousand people answered some questions on a Tuesday.
Polls do not tell you what anyone really cares about, because anyone can say they care 4 out of 5 stars even though they won’t leave their house to do anything for anyone else over a 3 year period.
To get people to care, you have to educate them and provide them with a pathway to build power. That is actually the opposite of what these self-appointed genocide salesmen are doing, where the lesson they teach is, “suck it up and vote for the genocider, you are stuck with what was chosen for us”.
They use the same line every time, just with different issues of the day. It is a focus-group-tested way to convince people that otherwise have a conscience that it is okay to check that little box for that sociopath and hey, “why not tell others to do the same? And maybe even start saying they are wrong and bad for not pushing the sociopath as well. And sure, the whole party is full of such people and they only really listen to capital, but also this is your chance to have a voice.”
They simply don’t feel they have the option to not vote.
So you should tell them that they don’t have to vote for any genocide, just like me.
In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election, but the two party system is so entrenched (at the minimum in the minds of voters), that to not vote is seen as the functional equivalent of voting for the other side.
Uh-huh. Still shouldn’t vote for genocide, let alone tell other people to. It is bad to normalize genocide. Do I need to tell you this? Did you not already know?
I’m not in the US so my opinion doesn’t really matter
I disagree. You are free to develop and share any informed position about any country. And sharing informed opinions is helpful.
but I do think that political discourse would be much more productive if people would stop talking past each other and dismissing the motivations/logic of the opposing side.
That would be nice but it is not exactly a balanced equation on that front; all it takes is for one “side” to be racist and panicking for it to all go off the rails. Such as what is happening right now. Every other reply to my “don’t support genocide” schtick is someone simply making things up and guessing and avoiding what was said. This is because the people who reply are the ones who get the most defensive about their personal morality being questioned, i.e. someone did not accept their support for a genocidal candidate and how dare someone do that to them.
Unfortunately this is literally the only way to agitate. You have to unseat and challenge with a truth that disagrees with the prevailing wisdom. The people that reply will act like absolute pieces of shit at first, but there will also be an audience where some of them go, “huh, that is a good point” and there will be others that start out defensive but then digest and read and move in a better direction.
Finally, you cannot understand societal behaviors without looking at the realities of motivations and tendencies. We are not all independent agents with tabula rasa brains, we are a product of our societies, and yes sometimes those societies are racist and teach you to devalue the lives of, say, black people and brown people and people overseas. And if you cannot recognize that and call that out, you will have a false understanding of how to tackle injustice.
provide them with a pathway to build power
If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don’t see this happening very much. On one side I see people saying “vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies” without actually any clear idea how to do that. On the other side I see “don’t vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win” without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.
It is bad to normalise genocide. Did you not know this?
Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.
All it takes is for one “side” to be racist and panicky…
Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill, but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.
You have to unseat and challenge with a truth that disagrees with the prevailing wisdom
I definitely agree, I think all widespread “truths” should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better. But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side’s viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another. To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being “supportive of genocide” (which is obviously ridiculous), while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being “stupid/ignorant” or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.
Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions. And dismissing people is not a good way of “calling them out”, it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas. If you cannot see the reasons for someone’s beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.
If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don’t see this happening very much.
It happens all the time on a per-organizer basis if you actively do it. The left is currently small but has the capacity to rapidly snowball if it is principled and follows good practices. When you recruit 10 people per year per organizer and 2 of them become organizers, etc etc. And these things will come in waves if you make yourself known and build capacity for onboarding. One year it’s 10 per organizer, the next it may be 50.
My organizations experienced rapid growth under Trump and in Winter-Spring 2024 due to us actively doing work.
On one side I see people saying “vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies” without actually any clear idea how to do that.
Yes this is just a line, they don’t really man it. They can’t even say what their goal is most of the time. They just say “push left”, leaving it vague. And of course they’re really telling you to stop making demands when you have the most leverage, to then give up that leverage by pledging to be a guaranteed vote then make their demands when they have the least leverage and gave already proven that they will vote blue regardless.
This line is repeated constantly because it keeps empathetic voters contained and powerless while also gaining some votes for their monstrous candidate.
On the other side I see “don’t vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win” without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.
Why does the third party need to win? There are many other outcomes to shedding the false consciousness of lesser evil voting. At the moment, I am highlighting liberals normalizing genocide. One outcone is to recognize that this “democracy” is a genocidal sham and you need to work against its underlying forces. Another is to effectively boycott so as to demonstrate illegitimacy of who is elected, which has a long history. Another us to begin creating a voting bloc that doesn’t ounch itself in the face every 4 years and actually makes demands with a credible threat. That voting bloc would also eventually fail because again, this “democracy” is a sham, but those people can then be organized against the genocidal status quo.
Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.
It is not bad faith, it is the truth. Treating genocide like a typical lesser evil you have to accept is normalizing it. It was, allegedly, a red line, and now liberals are falling over themselves to erase that line.
This revelation probably makes you uncomfortable, but it is not false or unfair. You can see it throughout this thread. They try to avoid the topic at first, then speak euphemistically. Try asking them to say this: “I am against genocide and will never vote for a genocider”. Can you say that?
Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill
“Controversial” my ass, I said they were panicking and racist. So much for “good faith”, eh? Don’t whitewash my framings and pretend it is what we are talking about.
but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.
You are being so vague that I can’t even tell what you are recommending. This topic is something you brought up, trying to both sides communication, and what I am telling you is that there is a verifiable imbalance.
I definitely agree, I think all widespread “truths” should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better.
Incorrect. That is fine for internal strategy discussions among people that agree with one another. It is absolutely terrible media and discursive strategy.
There is not a logical base for most political views. That is usually a rationalization for more basic feelings, like status, security, whether you are a good person, whether the bad people are getting what they deserve.
But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side’s viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another.
Because it isn’t about the logical base. I can present concrete facts and demonstrate pure logical contradiction in another person’s arguments and they will simply deflect. Their ego gets in the way, an ego taught to them by a society where having an opinion is important for status and self-worth and every disagreement is about destroying the other side. They will lie, deflect, insult, say racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic things. Having revealed that they have no logical base and are just Himmler Lite, any pretense that you are just going after logic and debate will undermine you and become a trolling session for them.
These are not the people you are trying to reach anyways. It is the audience at the borderline that need that, “oh shit my side is racist and I reject that” kind of push. Again, not about a logical base.
To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being “supportive of genocide” (which is obviously riduculous)
It is not ridiculous you are literally voting for someone doing a genocide and telling other people to do the same. Despite your complaints you have not addressed the clear basis for this claim and are doing that thing right now: deflecting through dismissal built entirely on sentiment, not any logical basis. I should not need to explain to you that “I am voting for a genocider and so should you” is a pro-genocide stance. But your discomfort in your complicity, the threat to you feeling like a good person, means you need to start dissembling.
while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being “stupid/ignorant” or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.
The people dismissing that are repeating canards handed to them by their faction of the political class. They are only needed insofar as the person returns to feeling like they are good and smart for voting for a genocider. You can watch them fall apart in real time when you try to discuss their alleged “logical base”, like discusing game theory and electoral strategy. They were not actually convinced to vote that way because of simplistic half-understood electoral math, they were convinced by allegiance to a political program that aligns with their idea of being a good person. And as bourgeous morality goes, they will then start making personal moralizung arguments, and then they must be reminded they are voting for a genocider.
Then we come full circle and they fall apart. Repeat ad nauseum.
Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions.
Not true. Intentions are not inherently good when the society that crafted them is racist, genocidal, misigynist, etc. Being the product of conditions means the dominant intention can be oppressive and violent. With education they could acquire good intentions. If raised in a less oppresser society, they could have good intentions. But you don’t get to whitewash the bad intentions of those shoring up violence and oppression, including genocide. Those are not good intentions, they ar self-serving corrosive behaviors learned from their social circles.
And dismissing people is not a good way of “calling them out”, it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas.
100% incorrect, certainly when it comes to media and fronts, which is more like how social media operates. The most effective means of agitation is direct callouts, particularly when it comes to reactionary positions that need to be made socially unacceptable.
The person receiving the callout will get defensive, but they do that anyways regardless of how you frame the problem in what they are saying. But now they get to coast by and pretend to be in the right and the audience will also miss this. Over time, that defensiveness can and does lead to change, where many go and do some research and come back in a few months as if they had always held a different position. Online, they might just make a new account. I’ve seen users bullied for their transphobia do this repeatedly, they got less transphobic over time but were still recognizably the same user.
If, on the other hand, someone is already sympathetic and not oppositional, they will let you know this early on. The main thing they will do is commiserate and ask questions. These are the people you can gently correct as they are not just trying to reaffirm their biases - such as to the white race and whose suffering they care about - and status as a good person by retaining them.
If you cannot see the reasons for someone’s beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.
Buddy I have recruited more people than you’ve ever talked to online.
In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election
Checking in from Germany. We have a parliamentary system and ~60 of the population is against the genocide and only ~30% are pro-genocide. And this despite a continuous pro-genocide propaganda by almost all media and politicians. It honestly is batshit insane what the german media is becoming. The whole discurse they produce is basically directly restating IDF statements.
But 90+% of the parliament is pro-genocide. Only one fraction (BSW ~1,4%) is strictly against the genocide (but are assholes in other topics) and 1 fraction is divided on the issue (Die Linke ~4%). Our green party is the most stringently pro-genocide party.
It is honestly really hard to not completly lose trust in democracy itself right now.
Bourgeois democracy has always been like this. It presents itself as representative of the people while using a massive array of capitalist-controlled apparatuses to call the shots. Media, jobs, capital strikes, education materials, think tanks, threats to the government. Their first line of defense is “democratic” institutions with enough structure and hurdles to prevent popular will from directly having influence. And, of course, vigilantes and organized right wing thugs when the former don’t work.
I can definitely empathise with the lack of trust in democracy. I’m holding out some hope that things might change once a newer generation starts to take office, but we will see.
But this failing of democracy just makes it seem all the more important that we as a people try to resist the divisiveness of modern politics and media, as that seems to be a common tool of control used by those in power.
That’s the thing. I see a more likely scenario where the genocide is hindered under Trump. Not because Trump opposes it, but because it would suddenly become fashionable for liberals to oppose it.
If anyone hasn’t already lost their Israel-colored glasses, they’re not coming off.
I think they would continue staying hone, this time out of spite, until Trump ramps something up and they are given permission to care by their political class, who would attempt to coopt the the pro-Palestine movement while still being explicitly Zionist.
Hes gonna genocide better than harris, he guarantees it
nah trump is gonna suck at genocide he’s all talk
There is nothing more you can do to a people beyond killing and expelling nearly all of them.
If the election were between Trump and somehow someone even worse who was calling to nuke the entire area and turn it into glass, then I would absolutely be pushing for Trump. Shockingly, if we are trapped in a horrifying, dystopian version of the trolley problem (which we are), I’m going to make the choice that causes the least damage.
Using another analogy, if you have a badly broken arm, you can either set it and try to keep it immobilized, or you can let it stay how it is and all but guarantee that it gets fucked up even worse as it heals wrong. Voting third party is like saying “I don’t like either of those options since they both involve my broken arm, so I choose to pray to the Moon Goddess”. There is no option that immediately stops your arm from being broken. You can delude yourself and say the Moon Goddess will magically fix it, but in reality, you are choosing the option that does nothing and makes it worse. Choosing to set your broken arm doesn’t make you “pro-broken arm”, it’s just the only practical choice given a terrible situation.
If the election were between Trump and somehow someone even worse who was calling to nuke the entire area and turn it into glass, then I would absolutely be pushing for Trump.
It does not get worse than genocide. The habit of inventing a hypothetical bigger and harder gun to hold to marginalized peoples’ heads doesn’t work on this one.
Shockingly, if we are trapped in a horrifying, dystopian version of the trolley problem (which we are), I’m going to make the choice that causes the least damage.
We are not trapped in a trolley problem. You are a human with agency. You can join organizations, you can educate, you can take action. Reducing your political agency to a lever pull for genocide is a helplessness taught to you by the political class because they just want you to vote for them even when they commit genocide right in front of your eyes. They want you to think of Palestinian lives as strategically expendable and that you are actually smart, not racist, for toeing that line. And your compliance with their demands is exactly what ensures they can shove any monster down your throat as a candidate. Harris is complicit in genocide and didn’t win a single primary but Dems say, “well, time to fall in line”. Dems strategists know that “progressive” Dems do this so they do nothing for them in policy, they just deploy PR goons to vote against every 4 years. Compliant voters enable their own irrelevance.
Though of course, voting is very limited and there is much more to be done.
Using another analogy
I refuse to entertain analogies justifying genocide.
Unfortunately, after a year of witnessing their entire ethnicity being written off as an acceptable casualty in the name of international diplomacy and foreign lobbying, they’ve become numb and just stopped caring.
The craziest part of this to me is that this isn’t the first time this has happened since it’s started like… since the country has been founded. So the fact they’re really still willing to engage politically at all is a pretty good testament to their character, I would say.
This was all laid out in 2020 and we said the fight wasn’t over. We said even if biden won the dems will never be, ‘good enough’ because we all remember Obama. Objectively the best president of my lifetime and catches shit on a number of issues. The dems won’t ever be good enough. The fight can’t end until people learn that politics doesn’t stop when a presidential election is over.
Joe Biden should have been primaried. I said it for 4 fucking years. I will say the same about Kamala. She needs to actually win the fucking primary.
That doesn’t change the course, though. No amount of moral posturing is going to ignite a fire in out despondent electorate. You want a government that works for you. Participate.
See, doing it as a bloc with public visibility I can see. That actually has some chance of swaying at least the rhetoric. But I still think if they actually go through with not voting, they’re voting against their own interests. The right is rabidly xenophobic and loves Israel, the only thing Trump will do to end the genocide is send even more military support.
In my situation, I’m in a solid blue state so I’m voting for a third party to push the country to the left.
If only USA had ranked choice voting, then everyone could do that.
Or literally any voting system with more than two seconds thought put into it
they put a lot of thought into our system; the electoral college was intentional and it’s doing it’s job very well.
it’s meant as a firewall to guard against poor people from getting sufficient political representation. our ruling class uses it today to keep this country conservative.
So playing the first round of Russian Roulette for no real benefit.
Congrats I guess.
This kinda makes sense, I guess that means not a swing state (I’m not American).
Do you have to be in a heavy blue state to do this without fear that if enough people do this it will swing red?
Yeah it’s a strategy that would work in any heavy red or blue state, because there’s an absolute zero percent chance the dems lose my state.
Yes, exactly. If you live in a solid blue or red state, your vote is a drop in the bucket, so it won’t matter if you vote third party. But in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania… in 2016, the number of votes won by Jill Stein was slightly greater than the difference between Trump/Clinton. Ouch! Was it worth it? Did it move the country left?
the strategy definitely wasn’t worth it, but we’re doing it again anyways.
The country did move left under Trump and has moved right under Biden. While your logic on Stein’s influence is flawed, if your goal was to shift the population left you’re basically making an argument for voting for Trump in swing states.
While it sometimes feels like this, it’s because the vocal minorities on the side not associated with the current president are always the loudest political figures.
No, it is because liberals were agitated under Trump and were told to care about women, black people, abortion rights, etc, and mobilize to spaces where they could be recruited for political education. Under Biden, they feel a sense of normalcy and have returned to supporting the equally violent status quo.
Do you understand how voting works?
Do you not understand how the Electoral College works?
Yes and your vote does absolutely nothing in “pushing” the country left. Who taught you that? Please do better research as the future of your country depends on it.
Sometimes being principled in your vote is a good first step towards doing something politically meaningful. Many liberals are chained to the idea that their vote is their political being. And then they go vote for genociders!
That first step of pulling at their chains can lead to further political education.
I would say you have to be the stupidest person on earth to vote 3rd party but I know that Magidiots exist.
You do nothing but enable genocide by voting 3rd party. A Democrat loss in November GUARANTEES the genocide continues. The Republican Party is the party of Israel and they would bend over backwards to give them whatever is necessary to bring back Jesus Christ
I would say you have to be the stupidest person on earth to vote 3rd party but I know that Magidiots exist.
Yep just big dum-dums that won’t support your genocider candidate. If only they were smart like you and supported 98% Hitler!
You do nothing but enable genocide by voting 3rd party. A Democrat loss in November GUARANTEES the genocide continues.
You know Dems are doing the genocide, right? And at the point where they have the most to fear from supporting it, they aren’t even pandering.
You’re the baddies, bud.
The Republican Party is the party of Israel and they would bend over backwards to give them whatever is necessary to bring back Jesus Christ
The Democratic Party is also the party of Israel.
It’s impressive that you’re calling people names while writing polemic that obviously applies to “your team”.
I am not a Democrat. At this point I’m closer to Independent because both parties have gone off the rails over that last decade. However I understand the importance of this election and I understand how our system works. Voting 3rd party does nothing but pull votes from Democrats. It happens EVERY election. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but voting third party doesn’t give you the moral high ground. It just makes you an idiot because not only will your candidate not be elected but more often than not you enable Republicans to win elections based on how our voting system works.
No, go ahead and explain it to me!
@rocci CGP Grey already did.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLej2SlXPEd37YwwEY7mm0WyZ8cfB1TxXa
STV! I’m in!
@rocci I want this as a poll format option in the Fediverse.
They were joking. Also CGP grey didnt cover things like how fptp is influenced by there being multiple branches of government, having the electoral college in the mix, etc.
While it’s a great video its overly simplistic to apply to america. While i believe fptp has to go. You absolutely can vote third party safely without risking trump if the conditions are right and they often are in the us there are few battle ground states where it’s higher risk
@jatone Every video and every model will be overly simplistic when applied to any reality. Every abstraction is a leaky abstraction.
Wow i never knew! Thanks! 🤯
She’s campaigning on building the wall. she’s endorsed by dick cheney and 200+ reagan and Bush admin staffers. we have sent more aid to Israel in the past year than we ever have since Israel was invented. she has stated that her support of Israel is iron-clad. the current admin has broken records for the amount of oil and gas extracted extracted in the past 4 years. she has refused to voice support for the trans people who are supposedly going to be protected by her admin. she has kicked Palestinian people out of her campaign events, while instead parading around Richie Torres, a person who famously has stated multiple times that Palestinians deserve their eradication. her policy page has removed all mentions of medicare for all and paths to citizenship. she has promised to make america’s military the most lethal fighting force in the world.
she has decided that the “moderate conservative” who will never vote for her is more important than all the progressives and leftists who probably would’ve. just like Hillary Clinton and Dale Earnhardt, she’s going to crash into a wall because she can’t turn left.
The U.S. also has a huge defense industry that has made people ridiculously rich at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. Those billionaires are heavily invested in the defense industry, so it’s not in their interests that wars end at all.
This is that “military-industrial complex” that former President Eisenhower warned us about so many years ago. His concern was that the U.S. would become bogged down in an endless series of “forever wars” that do nothing but transfer wealth to the already-wealthy.
Keeping that military industrial complex well-fed is the reason why so many politicians have such a boner for war. Not only to keep their wealthy sponsors happy, but to keep tax money and jobs flowing to their states, which just happen to manufacture war materiel.
Because it’s a far right party. Trump happens to be more far right, but that doesn’t change that fact. I’m not voting for far right, neoliberal, genocidal freaks.
At how many genocides do you draw the line? If the democrats committed a second one along with the Palestinian genocide they are committing right now? You’d again say trump would be worse, vote for Harris. If they committed three? Four? No matter what they do, Trump would do worse, so again you’d tell us to vote for Harris.
I draw the line at a genocide and at everything this neoliberal party stands for. I am not giving that party my approval because it is going in the exact opposite direction of what I stand for. At some point, the lesser evil is too evil.
This was where I was at 6 months ago. They even had the gall to say, “things will shape up as we get closer.” This is an attack vector and no, it will only go away after the election. People who defend the stance who aren’t foreign actors are useful idiots.
I’m going to tell you a secret.
The people who say this, the leftists that threaten to withhold their votes, tend to vote strategically anyways. But threatening to withhold votes is one way to apply pressure to politicians to do things like, say, stop promoting a fucking genocide. And then liberals lose their minds for some reason and make it totally irrelevant. And then we have a genocide that lasts for 75 years and starts world war 3.
people dont seem to see the difference between ending up with a party for which a good chunk of their supporters think that what Israel is doing is a genocide vs ending up with a party for which all of their supporters think not only that what Israel is doing is justified but should also do the same to all middle eastern countries (together with direct USA involvement).
I think there are two major subgroups within this group.
First one is immigrants whose families are from the middle east/Palestine who are rightfully very angry at all the world for doing jack shit about Israel committing genocide. What they have to realize is there are unfortunately only two options going ahead: 1- as it is now, maybe somewhat better in future, or 2- much worse. There is no third option that is going to come out of these elections but one where there is potential for change (potential coming from the supporters mentioned above) vs %100 chance of things going for the worse. Note that I am not talking at all about the candidates themselves at all, just the demographic that generally votes for them.
The second group is probably China or Russia fans who just want to see America suffer by getting Trump elected. These are very short sighted people with whom you cannot really have a coherent conversation with.
Never again means never again, I will not be party to it.
Some people are single-issue voters who don’t care if one side is slightly better, even if still terrible, than the other on that issue. They will gleefully sacrifice everything for taking a moral stand against the slightly less worse party on this one single issue and then claim some sort of high moral ground and how they need to destroy the system via a revolution.
Of course, revolutions involve hard choices, in fact even harder than choosing who to vote in this election, and they also take more effort than getting off your ass and vote, so this revolution will probably never happen but that’s a tiny detail.
The real winners of course are Trump, his MAGA republicans (who, alongside ruzzian bot farms, promote the narrative that both sides equally bad on Israel so don’t vote Kamala) and Netanyahu as a proxy. I mean after all a president who moved the embassy to Jerusalem and actively encourages settlers is better for Israel than one who has surprisingly been less supportive even if still sending weapons and not really doing anything concrete to punish Israel, I mean Netanyahu has multiple times clearly stated he wants Trump specifically because it would make it easier to genocide Palestinians. Not to mention obviously all the other issues pike LGBTQI+ rights, women rights, not losing your right to vote, minority rights, Ukraine, climate change, etc etc those are all very important issues but a good size of these people never really gave a shit about them, in fact a sizeable portion probably doesn’t even give a shit about Palestine, they’d have happily sided with Israel if the US sided with Palestine, and just want an excuse to look morally superior or to promote a supposed revolution to gain power.
doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.
And what if they seem equally likely to escalate the situation?
Trump says he’ll let Israel finish the job. Kamala says she disapproves of what’s happening in Gaza, but will always support Israel and will always provide them with weapons.
Same fuckin’ thing.
