It’s not the end-all for me. That’s why it matters. Genocide is bad, and I’m sure we both agree. But imagine you can choose a candidate who supports a genocidal regime or you choose a candidate who supports a genocidal regime and makes being LGBTQ federally illegal, and makes abortion federally illegal, and plans to install a theocracy.
One of those two will be president next year. Period. Choosing a third option will only help Trump, who has a reliable and rabid voting base.
You can choose your own moral logic, but for me I don’t think this argument holds much value.
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For one, it takes it as a given that some of that suffering will happen regardless and we are powerless to do anything about it. We’re not. There is another choice, you’re just not willing to accept it as valid.
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By supporting the system which causes this suffering, you are enabling the suffering. Period. You are saying “We will not oppose you doing these things as long as you’re not doing some other things.” Except of course even those other things are on the table because you’ve already backed yourselves into a position where any amount of evil is acceptable if there is a greater one out there somewhere.
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How can you assign and weigh the moral value of the suffering of any given group against any other? Do LGBTQ rights for the imperial core help the people getting bombed in various countries around the world? Does the legal right to an abortion help the people who don’t have financial access to get one for lack of healthcare? (Remember, in America, a right is only a right if you can afford to exercise it.) How do you even begin to compare the value of any given policy (or lack of policy) to the harm done by living in a surveillance state?
To me, the harm reduction argument is one that says “We are ok with trading the rights of some people for other people and we believe we have the right to make that decision for those groups.” It’s horrifyingly easy to hand wave away the suffering of people you don’t know. But if you were living in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba… actually it’ll be faster if I just link this: https://archive.globalpolicy.org/us-westward-expansion/26024-us-interventions.html
If you were one of the people impacted by US imperialism… would you still make the same choice? Would you still support the US government because a different US government might hurt some US people you don’t know?
How can you assign and weigh the moral value of the suffering of any given group against any other?
Because genocide is bad, but genocide plus other human rights violations is worse. Seems like simple logic, to me. Sucks that those are the choices.
If you were one of the people impacted by US imperialism… would you still make the same choice? Would you still support the US government because a different US government might hurt some US people you don’t know?
- Probably not.
- Yes. And therein lies the difficult choice. It would be much easier if one was obviously better in every way. Real life is much messier, unfortunately, and I can either clutch my pearls and remain “morally pure,” whatever good that does, or I can choose the least bad option. Also, the “different government” would definitely hurt people I know, because that’s what it did previously and that’s what its proponents do currently.
So for me, it’s “choose Joe Biden,” who will be complicit in Gazan genocide, or it’s “choose Trump,” who will be complicit in Gazan genocide and hurt me, people like me, and people I know. If I vote for “third party person” who has zero chance of winning and Trump wins, I will bear the blame for failing to act in my best interest, and my moral purity won’t save anyone. If I vote third party and Biden wins, it will be in spite of me, and I will get to enjoy the benefits of people who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty while also being indebted to them.
And that is not a position in which I wish to find myself.
I’m not saying to vote for a 3rd party. I’m saying that the solution does not involve voting and that the act of participating in such a vote is an active choice to support cruelty.
Voting, to the extent that it does anything, communicates 2 things:
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- You accept the legitimacy of the system. That this is the way you choose to express your will.
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- Your consent for the policies and actions of the government you vote for. When you check the box, there isn’t an optional field where you say “Well I’m voting for this candidate, but I don’t agree with all their policies.” You have given your consent to everything that government ends up doing.
So by voting within such a system, you provide your support for it. You say that you will not otherwise oppose it’s actions. Your choice isn’t harm some people or harm more people. Your choice is whether or not you will make it easier for the government to harm whoever they’re harming. Not only does that government harm people, but it actively works to crush opposition to it. You are supporting the efforts to do that to. You are actively opposing everyone who fights against the system.
More people will suffer every year that the government stays in the hands of capitalists and imperialists. Those people wouldn’t be hurt in the world where we actually did something about that. You can’t just take them for granted as having already been hurt by something other than your decision to continue participating in the system.
