And I’m being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don’t understand it. Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?
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Those are people who are unable or unwilling to see the forest for the trees.
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I know people who voted neither candidate because Trump was horrible and Harris was pro-choice. Single-issue voters are the death of democracy. Full stop.
Sometimes being a single issue voter happens because people just care that much about that one issue. But there’s a natural tendency for anyone’s decision to come down to one thing. Complex issues are complex, most people don’t know what’s right. But then they do have ONE thing that they consider black-and-white, so that influences their choice. It gives them something they feel they can say to others “I just can’t bring myself to vote for someone who XYZ…”
Because let’s face it: no one wants to hear your entire list of political calculations. People’s choices are absolutely influenced by thoughts of how they’ll justify themselves to the people they know. And having one big pithy thing to say is more convenient than a subtle position based on a score of factors.
Humans are social, emotional, idiosyncratic shortcut machines, not logic engines.
I said months ago that we were going to “single issue” our way to Trump 2.0, and I’ve never ever wanted to be wrong more than when I said that.
Edit: Updated with receipts.
My punk rock lifetime bay area liberal 45 yr old friend voted Trump bc Israel.
I could say something witty or sarcastic, but you’ve probably already thought something along the same lines. I’ll just leave a facepalm emoji instead.
🤦🏻♂️
nearly all the single-issue voters on the right vote in lock-step unison, and have for decades.
democrats and progressives seem to just toss in the towel if they aren’t getting everything they want, right now.
it takes time to build something great, it takes but a moment to destroy it all. welcome to total destruction.
Single-issue voters on the right, single-issue nonvoters on the left.
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And we’ll get to see what the alternative provides. Yay, you won.
No I didnt we lost. We lost our humanity, we’ve lost our shared communities. The fact i had to spend the last year arguing with people that genocide is not fucking okay is evidence of that.
In no fucking way do I consider this outcome a win. There was no winning this election unfortunately and thats precisely the fucking problem. But alas democrats decided committing genocide, arresting their enthusiastic base for protesting, fucking over the working class, and shitting on the people warning them about these issues come voting are winning strategies.
😮💨🤷
And you decided lesser evil wasn’t lesser enough? Now we get greater evil.
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Yep, to all that, and I’ve often grumbled the same things.
“Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.”
Radicals ruin everything.
Thing is you can actually be radical. In a healthy democracy you need some small fringes to exert pressure, e.g. civil right activist groups and so on so that the government isn’t able to just completely ignore portions of the population.
But to be effective as an activist you have to know when to put on pressure and when to unite. Malcolm X or Fred Hampton didn’t go vote for David Duke just because MLK was a pacifist.
This was the wrong time to pressure because as always activists dramatically misread the levels of actual support for their cause and dramatically underestimate how much support the general populace gives the opposition.
Most people don’t even agree on the very basic facts of reality or that such a thing can even exist and that for instance pretty certain observations made using the scientific method aren’t just equally weighed to someone’s opinion, how tf are you gonna expect to convince them of anything? What you gonna write some long post on it? Good luck - they literally cannot read.
Humanity is just a dogshit species. To even agree that we shouldn’t stab ourselves in our proverbial balls with a proverbial milwaukee power drill - it takes like generations and most people are always for the status quo and the worst possible version of everything is the default we have to work from and with, it’s just a cruel joke and it would be more existentially comforting if progress was outright impossible.
It was absolutely the correct time to pressure. Harris/dnc/biden miscalculated.
Huh? You really think that if they caved on Palestine they would’ve won? Most Americans support the guy who wants to impose Muslim travel bans
Imagine thinking someone needs to cave on not being genocidal. Jesus fucking christ.
- students were arrested under their watch, a key demographic for them in a tight race. Students are often motivated canvassers. Their response to the outcry? There must be order. Get bent biden/harris.
- they lost 25 electoral points in two fucking swing states directly related to this. In literal numbers codified in the outcome.
- they completely fucking ignored the economic issues caused by corporate greed. Fun fact kellogs is charging over 100% more for fucking corn flakes than the store brand. CORN FLAKES.
Most Americans support the guy who wants to impose Muslim travel bans.
Sigh. You didnt do well in math did you? Tell me where did the 20 million votes for biden last time go? Trumps numbers are unchanged. Oh right, they didnt show up. 🤔
Never mind the fucking fact most adults dont vote. So no most Americans dont support trump. They just dont think either party is worth their emotional energy. Good job democrats! 🤔
And token handle the rest of your nonsense with the polling numbers.
students were arrested under their watch, a key demographic for them in a tight race. Students are often motivated canvassers. Their response to the outcry? There must be order. Get bent biden/harris.
Yes and most people support that. They see you as more unhinged than the anti-police protestors and think Trump must be onto something with demolishing the DoE if the nation students are protesting for who they see as Islamist terrorists.
they lost 25 electoral points in two fucking swing states directly related to this. In literal numbers codified in the outcome.
Source?
they completely fucking ignored the economic issues caused by corporate greed
Yeah that’s socialism. They already lost the Latino vote by being too socialist. The electorate wants tax breaks for Kelogg’s CEO.
Sigh. You didnt do well in math did you? Tell me where did the 20 million votes for biden last time go?
Some of them probably to Trump.
Trumps numbers are unchanged.
Are you an idiot? You’re implying that these are the exact same people just because the numbers are roughly the same?
Biden convinced a lot of swing voters due to COVID.
Never mind the fucking fact most adults dont vote.
Source?
And token handle the rest of your nonsense with the polling numbers.
Token handle? Like JRR Tolkien? Did you have a stroke?
FYI: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fp2jwdarksy0e1.png
The vote count was roughly the same. Many dem voter swinged to Trump because they want a far-right ethnostate ruled by thugs and criminals.
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The numbers don’t lie.
The Muslim vote in the end stayed literally the same, so did the Jewish vote. Most Americans prolly haven’t even heard of all this shit lol
Only a radical speaks in absolutes
…is an absolute statement in itself.
Only in a two-party system. Locked in a two party system is the death of it. At least introduce multiple rounds, to democratically elect the 2 contestants for the final round…
Only in a two-party system.
So you mean - like the system this election took place within?
- An overly simplistic/naive view of the world. (Not sure what they expect here? Stopping weapons and technology transfer? Maybe the US going to war with Israel to stop the Gaza atrocities? Or are they just expecting something symbolic? If Harris publicly denounced Israel’s actions, would that be enough?)
- Thinking that the US President has more power than they do in reality (Congress and the Courts, checks and balances)
- Some logical fallacies they’ve convinced themselves into believing. False Dilemma Fallacy maybe? https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/common-logical-fallacies
Only a Sith deals in absolutes
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Honestly for a portion of the ones here online, I don’t think they actually care that much about Gaza except as a convenient tool to attack Americans. It’s academic to them. I don’t expect it’ll stop once Trump is in, they’ll just switch to criticizing Americans overall. They’re mostly leftist agitators, and I honestly think they hate moderate progressives the most, since we’re trying to improve capitalism which makes it harder to undermine and destroy.
For people that actually do care, it’s a personal, emotional argument about not being able to feel good about it, which I understand. It’s a sort of trolley problem. If they don’t vote, they kinda just walk away and the trolley runs over a bunch of people, but they don’t have to watch and bear a sense of personal responsibility at that emotional level for being a part of it. It doesn’t actually benefit Gaza, but there’s only so much they could really do anyway.
Maybe if they are young. Its comes up again and again. I voted for ross perot but was lucky it did not effect the election. I mean just the 50 cent gas tax would have been great for the environment given it would have gone into effect in the 90’s as a federal tax. Electronic direct democracy. Increase in education and infrastructure. It was hard not to like his proposals.
If Democrats knew they’d lose for supporting genocide,.they wouldn’t have done it. It’s precisely because blue-no-matter-who voters convinced them that they were invincible that they ended up losing. They thought they could bully the base into voting for them because enough of the base was willing to be bullied and proud of it.
On the other side, Trump is more likely to lose the war on Palestine.
They did know it had a serious impact on likely Dem voters, and likely Independent voters, in swing states, and they did it anyway.
… Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-israel
From July 25 through August 9, pollsters asked voters if and how the Democratic nominee pledging “to withhold more weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians” would impact their vote. In Arizona, 35% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 5% who said they would be less likely. The figures were similar in Georgia (39% versus 5%) and Pennsylvania (34% versus 7%).
Even bigger shares of voters said they would be more likely to support her in November if President Joe Biden—who dropped out of the race and passed the torch to Harris last month—secured a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. In Arizona, 41% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 2% who said they would be less likely. In both Georgia and Pennsylvania, it was 44% versus 2%.
…
Biden dropping out and being replaced with Kamala was an opportunity for Kamala to change the Dem stance on this.
Kamala would have stood a much better chance at winning if she massively broke with Biden and did an about face on Gaza, and there is basically no way her campaign did not know this.
… Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.
They were in a bubble of other blue-no-matter-who media and were assured by the consultants from Clinton’s campaign and the Labour Party that they could ignore those polls.
So really, it would have taken a big enough push from the public that MSNBC became anti-genocide. Hypothetically it could have happened, but the Democratic base is too disorganized to pull that kind of bottom-up messaging coup off.
Nurse bursts in to OR
Doctor!
This new study show that there is a 30% chance the patient will die if you ignore this allergic reaction they may have if you keep pursuing your current treatment plan!
Doctor scoffs
It can’t be that big a deal, if this was serious, the patient’s family would have let me know by mailing me that study with appended handwritten notes from my favorite peer reviewers from JAMA, and a gold star sticker!
But Doctor! It’s not the job of the family to know how to practice medicine, that’s your job! And anyway, I have a copy of the study right here!
Pff, no appended notes, no gold star, ignored.
Patient dies.
Huh, damn, things might have been different if the family had told me how to do my job in the exact, precise manner in which I accept advice. Oh well! Maybe the next patient’s family will figure out the correct way to tell me how to do my job next time. After all, I can’t be held responsible for not accepting information readily available to me… without a gold star sticker!
So how could she have broken with Biden as the current VP?
She sides with Palestine, so she supports Hamas? She doesn’t support Israel? She supports Iran too!?
That’s just the tip of the media iceberg that would have been thrown at her.
Let’s say she does that. Do you think with the numbers that DJT turned out that she’d have gained so much more than she would have lost that it would have made a difference?
Let’s further say that she did, and it was, and she won the election. She’s now thrown a long-term, strategic ally under the bus on the world stage. Not only that, she’ll have to forcibly disarm them, potentially feeding them to the wolves in the Middle East.
How does she politically recover from that? ALL of that?
And please don’t mention “genocide” in your reply. That’s already a know variable in play.
Can you (or anyone) provide a politically viable path through the above ‘top level’ landmines which would have gotten her into the White House and into a position where she could take direct action to stop the genocide?
So how could she have broken with Biden as the current VP?
If elected, I vow to cease all offensive arms and munitions shipments and funding for such to the State of Israel on day one.
What Hamas did on Oct 7th was an outrageous act of terrorism committed against a civilian population, but the response from the Netanyahu administration has caused orders of magnitude more death and destruction against innocent residents of Gaza, and this over zealous military response has enflamed tensions in the region and risks escalation into a much broader conflict.
I will still supply the Israelis with defensive funds for their Iron Dome, we will send them Patriot missile intercept systems, but we will no longer send artillery shells, bombs, ammunition, anything that can be used to further their wildly mismanaged offensive operations.
Further, I will actually commit to setting up and operating a temporary harbor for food and medical supplies to enter Gaza.
… Something like that, blah blah blah, make it clear that all sides in this have some level of culpability for wrong actions and that she will do what she can to minimize the harm the US is culpable for.
Let’s say she does that. Do you think with the numbers that DJT turned out that she’d have gained so much more than she would have lost that it would have made a difference?
IMEU polls in July and August showed roughly that 30% to 40% of likely Dem and Indp voters in multiple swing states would be more likely to vote for a Dem candidate if they did what they could to halt the Gaza genocide.
Would this turn off likely Republicans voters from her? Basically no more than they already were turned off from her. But she would have gained a whole bunch of Dem voters who specifically could not bring themselves to vote for a candidate complicit with genocide.
Let’s further say that she did, and it was, and she won the election. She’s now thrown a long-term, strategic ally under the bus on the world stage. Not only that, she’ll have to forcibly disarm them, potentially feeding them to the wolves in the Middle East.
Nope. You can stop enabling offensive action by ceasing to supply offensive systems and munitions, and still maintain your commitment to Israel’s defense by giving them defensive supplies.
You don’t need to totally disarm the IDF. That would involve going into a ground invasion war against our ally which is obviously insane.
This would not be throwing an ally under the bus. It would be stomping your foot down and reigning in an ally that’s gone on a mad rampage with bombs you have given them.
And please don’t mention “genocide” in your reply. That’s already a know variable in play.
Nah, I’ll use that word, because it is an accurate descriptor. I am not sorry at all if this somehow offends your sensibilities.
That’s a very workable plan. Thank you.
I mean we literally just saw the same kind of thing play out with Ukraine.
The West spent a long time giving them weaponry that could either only or mainly be used defensively, and then slowly over time gave them more and more potent weapons.
Its not like this is some revolutionary new idea.
The US could have started doing this after like month two or three of Israel carpet bombing Gaza, shooting up UN food/aid convoys…
But nope.
Only if you don’t recognize that Trump would be much, much, much worse. And what we see from the election, many can’t seem to see that (in any way).
A lot of people did in fact set aside Gaza until Trump was stopped. As for those that didn’t, they should have listened to Bernie Sanders. I did months ago and went all-in on Dem support. There were multiple times when I wrote up an angry post about US support of Israel and then didn’t post it because I didn’t want to turn a voter into a non-voter or worse a Trump supporter.
I understand their position of never rewarding ethnic cleansing and war crimes though. They chose to make sure the Dems know they would never “settle” for the illegal killing of civilians. The support for Israel made it especially hard for Arab Americans to vote Dem. It’s difficult to support a party that has been in power during the whole conflict yet gives unconditional support for the internationally condemned murder of Arabs.
I’m sure a lot also felt disenfranchised by the bipartisan protest suppression and condemnation. Even in Dem states peaceful protesters were punished, and sometimes pro-Israeli protesters who attacked got away with it. Then there was the whole “vote with us or else” pressure that went on for months. Dissenters like the “uncommitted” voters were insulted by the party that wanted their unconditional support.
So it’s not like it’s completely insane. But as Sanders points out that position only makes things worse and has done so.
You see, IQ is on a bell curve and 100 is the median. That means half of people must have an IQ below 100. At some number, the exact number is debatable, higher reasoning ability diminishes.
The second factor is education/knowledge. Having none, partial, or incorrect information can lead even rational people down the wrong path.
If you combine these, you get what you are observing.
I’ll leave you a quote from Deming… “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it does.” I say this because we need to change something if we want a different result.
“Remember, I’m pullin for ya. We’re all in this together.”
Red GreenActually several percent of people have 100, so higher and lower are each less than 50%. Not to mention there isn’t a huge difference from 90-110 and that range covers a huge chunk of the population.
Carlin was exaggerating for comedic effect.
If you have a particular ideological hang up revolving around the difference between explicit and implicit consent to be governed…
You can view yourself as morally correct for not voting for anyone whom you do not fully support.
Thus you have not given explicit consent to either candidate, or the voting system itself.
Its basically ‘Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote, therefore I am not responsible.’
Its the trolley problem, but you just walk away from both tracks and the lever, and then claim that you did not consciously act to cause any harm, therefore you are guiltless.
…
Unfortunately by this logic it does also mean that you give implicit consent to literally everything your government does if you do not speak out against everything it does that you don’t like, or take some explicit action to countermand.
…
It’s an extremely sophomoric, cowardly and irresponsible stance to take in a situation like this, but there is an underlying logic to it… its just that this logic is ridiculous and absurd.
I think of it exactly in terms of the trolley problem. The whole premise is that if you do nothing (don’t vote) more people die. By flipping the lever, fewer people die but you’ve taken an action that leads directly to their deaths. The philosophical question isn’t just “is it better for fewer people to die” but “in pulling the lever, are you directly responsible for those deaths?”
My answer would be that inaction is itself an action. In this scenario, you have found yourself responsible either way. Suppose you pull the lever, though, to save as many lives as you can… Wouldn’t the ones who die as a result of this have loved ones that absolutely do blame you?
A wise man once said, If you choose not to decide, You still have made a choice
Its the trolley problem, but you just walk away from both tracks and the lever, and then claim that you did not consciously act to cause any harm, therefore you are guiltless.
That’s the fucking point of the trolley problem. How can so many people get here and not fucking understand it’s supposed to present the dichotomy between utilitarianism and deontology. If you have a duty to not commit murder, and pulling a lever murders people, you can’t pull the lever. It’s a valid position.
If deontology is wrong, we should immediately round up every depressed person, kill them, and harvest their organs.
If you are talking about deontology and utilitarianism from two to three hundred years ago…
Maybe your characterizations are accurate.
But uh, in more modern ethical theory…
Both camps have realized that pure adherence to the older forms of these ideas leads to absurdities and moral prescriptions which do not broadly match actual empirical responses to hypothetical scenarios.
As a result, most modern ethical theories are some kind of a hybrid of deontologic and utilitarian principles.
Anyway, let me try to illustrate this with a 'hypothetical' ethical question:
You have 300 dollars. This is your food budget for for 30 days. Say you only eat one meal a day, and if you do not eat at least one meal every 3 days, you will starve to death.
An ethical meal, produced by well compensated and treated laborers, costs $40 dollars.
A non ethical meal, produced by unpaid slave laborers in a far away land, who often die of exhaustion and exposure, costs $10 dollars.
Both meals have equal nutritional value and tastiness.
Does the deontologist decide that any level of harm to people they don’t know is permissible and eat 30 $10 dollar meals?
Or do they decide no level of harm is permissible to others and buy only 7 $40 dollar meals and then starve?
Or do they purchase some combination of $10 and $40 dollar meals so as to minimize permissible harm to themselves and others according to some kind of calculation?
Is the deontologist in this third scenario not employing some kind of utilitarian calculation?
🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺
I believe that Harris had indicated her policy on Biden would’ve been different but I wasn’t entirely sure how.
She could’ve probably said something like “October 7th WAS a terrorist attack and Israel has a right to defend itself. However, there is a difference between defense and suppression” and likely not pissed any sensible people on any side off too much.
That said; My opinion matters very little as I do t have a meaningful connection to the conflict other than hating to see un necessary suffering.
Since no one seems to be taking OP’s question seriously, I’ll take a stab at this. There are a variety of reasons.
Some people feel that voting is offering material support to a specific candidate or system, and they simply cannot bring themselves to do so given the horrors that that person or system is either supporting or failing to condemn.
Others may feel that strategically withholding their vote as a punishment may motivate democrats to take these types of issues more seriously in the future.
Or they may feel that their vote is more impactful in magnifying the voice and power of third parties who offer more meaningful solutions to end the killing, even if they won’t win.
Others still may believe that Trump’s incompetence will accelerate the end of America imperialism and lead to a better global political situation sometime in the future.
Finally, some people feel that voting won’t matter at all and is a distraction from efforts to directly slow or stop the war machine.
I don’t personally endorse any of these viewpoints, but some are relatively serious positions and others are not, in my opinion.
Others may feel that strategically withholding their vote as a punishment may motivate democrats to take these types of issues more seriously in the future.
They never learn though.
They never learn though.
And we’re out of chances for them to do so.
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The best argument I came across went something like this: if we show the Democratic Party that we’ll accept something as horrible as genocide as long as the Republicans are worse, then we’ve completely surrendered our agency as voters.
Powerful statement. It was the most coherent, rational, well thought out explanation I’d seen. It didn’t come off as a condescending lecture on morality, either. I actually considered their argument for a couple days, but ultimately, I decided it wasn’t strong enough to risk another Trump administration.
- Step 1: take a conflict your nation did not start
- Step 2: tear your party apart over a conflict your nation did not start
- Step 3: lose the electoral fight in your nation to trump
- Step 4: ensure the war in that other nation is decided in the way your side did not want it to go
- Step 5: call Joe Biden a genocidal maniac
Maybe I don’t want the people who think this is a valid course of action on my side, since they will sabotage my side. If there is a next election, I want these folks ejected from the party and gone. They can vote for trump if they want, because that’s essentially what they did.
Israel is an arm of the US, Gaza is a proxy war. American presidents bear direct responsibility for the genocide
It is a stupid fucking statement. “If you aren’t perfect on every single issue, then we won’t vote for you.”
