They don’t understand that Trump is just as pro-Israel as Biden, if not even more so considering he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
That’s the great part about our democracy: You don’t get to vote for someone who isn’t pro-Israel. Because freedom.
*electoral system
Because of FPTP and the Winner Take All Electoral College, there is a lot of political pressure to only have 2 parties. In a better system (proportional, ranked choice, etc) it wouldn’t break with more than two parties. In fact just reforming the electoral college to be proportional would likely allow 3 parties to exist.
If you look at history the last time there was a viable 3rd party it possibly initiated the civil war by allowing an anti slavery viewpoint to exist (which is good, but if we’d had a better voting system it would have happened earlier and reduced a lot of suffering)
And if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass when he hopped.
We have FPTP, and we’ll have it until I’m cold and dead in the ground.
Electoral system…
Just as I have to watch half the electorate embrace the most asinine BS possible to justify selfishness and hate… it’s not that far out to see people screaming “genocide joe!” at everyone they see, as they turn off everyone and defeat themselves at every chance.
The cool part is focusing all your effort into a camp-out such that your main message is synonymous with homelessness and you self defeat your own goals… all while you call the liberal element genocidal and basically show the world your biggest effort is to sit still while cutting off the liberal nose to spite your face.
Purely hypothetical question for you: If you had a choice between supporting Israel or Biden winning the 2024 election which would you choose?
Can you imagine how dumb it would be to vote for someone who isn’t though?
The only reason I think Trump isn’t pro-Palestine (Russian ally through Iran) is because the war is a good distraction from Ukraine
You have to be pro-Israel as the US but that doesn’t mean you can’t be pro-Palestinian
Being pro-Israel and being pro-Palestine are mutually exclusive positions since Israel is genociding Palestine.
That’s like saying you can be pro Nazi and pro jew.
Yeah Donald “Muslim ban” and “finish the job” Trump is not pro-Palestine only for reasons of distraction.
Palestine (Russian ally through Iran)
Russia isn’t in military allience with Iran. Both Russia and Iran are neighbors sanctioned by the US, forcing them into a business partnership by exclusion.
And Iran isn’t allied with Gaza Palestinians. You’re confusing them with the Yemeni Houthis and West Bank Hezbollah. What you have is Israelis engaging in terrorist acts against both states, then conflating retaliation with cooperation.
Congress is bipartisan pro-Israel. This isn’t even a presidential issue.
Biden just happens to be the guy doing the pro-Israel stuff at the moment, so he’s eating the lions share of the public ire.
“You have to support the Pro-Israel guy because the other guy is pro-Israel and both party leaders are pro-Israel and the cops are trained by Israelis and Israeli businesses have strong ties with the MIC and Big Finance needs Israel to control trade through the Suez and you’re outnumbered and outgunned so quit fighting, just vote for Joe Biden” just isn’t a winning message among progressive voters this year.
Maybe try it again in 2026.
My company buys a specific board from an Israeli company.
We have been working on an in house alternative for a few years now. Now we’re scared to actually perform the switch because of the anti-boycott laws
The thing is: Biden is pro-Israel but also pro-Palestinians. He’s providing aid to Gazans and pressuring Israel to minimize civilian casualties. It’s not great, or even good, I agree - but it’s a whole lot better than Trump who would be pro-Israel and anti-Palestinians. You’d see humanitarian aid end and the US support total war instead of the (slightly) restrained version we’re seeing now.
Biden is pro-Israel but also pro-Palestinians.
Right now it seems like the Biden Administration is trying to pressure Israel not to launch a military assault on Rafah and to allow in more humanitarian aid. At the same time, it has shown an unwillingness to take strong steps to punish Israel or to restrict the flow of aid or weapons to Israel if the Israelis disregard that pressure. How do you understand the strategy now?
I’d call the Biden Administration’s approach “passive-aggressive.” They are angry at Netanyahu, and were even before this. He’s presiding over the most extreme government in the history of the state of Israel. That government and the preceding dozen years of Netanyahu’s tenure are undermining the two fundamental drivers of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, which are shared values and common interests. So, it’s passive-aggressive in the sense that, six months into the war, the Administration has still been unwilling—unable—to impose a single cost or consequence that you and I, as normal human beings, would describe as real pressure.
Unable or unwilling?
Both, but I’ll get to that in a second. There were three levers the Administration could’ve pulled. They’re still available. No. 1 is to end U.S. military assistance. There’s no indication the Administration’s anywhere close to that. It just approved a shipment of two-thousand-pound bombs, and twenty F-35s. No. 2, change the U.S. voting posture at the U.N., either by introducing its own Security Council resolution, or by voting for someone else’s, that is very critical of Israel. It has not done that. No. 3, abandon the whole notion of negotiating the hostage release and simply join the chorus of those in the international community who basically say, “You need to pressure Israel to cease this military campaign.”
And I think it has not done these things
Biden is pro-Getting Relected. And he recognizes that his party is increasingly pro-Palestinian. However, his current policy appears to be a CYA strategy, intended to create the illusion of neutrality while negotiating a path that allows Israel to continue its extermination of Arab people across the region.
As this exterminationist Israeli agenda becomes more undeniable, the job of appearing neutral grows more difficult. And Biden’s decision to (tacitly) back Israel at all costs means risking friendly relations with Turkyie, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. However, he’s staying the course, precisely because he’s banking on a mass expulsion and genocide of Palestinians today will strengthen Israel’s regional position in the future.
Yeah even to expand on that - they don’t understand that everything they don’t like about Biden, they’ll like about Trump less. I mean I have real serious gripes about Biden but it is insultingly stupid to pretend that Trump would be any kind of a solution to those problems.
It seems that many of them know that Trump is worse, but think that sticking to ideals and voting for a non-viable candidate (or not voting at all) is somehow the best course of action. Republicans count on people like that to win. Fascists don’t give a fuck how they get into power, as long as they do.
They don’t just count on it. They actively invade spaces and spread that idea. I’m almost certain the first people saying that about Biden/Israel were right wing trolls, and people on the left actually took the bait and started spreading it themselves.
Republicans count on people like that to win.
Republicans have lost more than one Senate seat because they ran zealous nutbag losers in safe elections and pissed off moderates.
I’m not sure why Democrats get to run pro-war Zionists and Blue Lives fascists, free from the fear that they’ll suffer the same fate.
Yeah but the problem is we live in at least a pro-fascist state if not a fascist state already. So convincing people who realize this to vote for the guy who has been voting for fascist policies for decades (as well as some progressive ones, for those who will say I’m ignoring the “good” he’s done) and is actively supporting genocide not just in policy but in his statements and apparently beliefs is going to be pretty tough. It’s not just about voting “not Trump” anymore, people also want to vote “not Biden”.
They know Donald will destabilize the country and accelerate a collapse. They think that will make room for China to expand.
that sticking to ideals and voting for a non-viable candidate (or not voting at all) is somehow the best course of action.
Taking the “moral high” ground even though it would have a bad result. Sounds like what the DEMs do all the time.
“I learned it from you” -young people probably.
Or they understand that all this apolgetics for the Dems being the lesser of two evils just results in them being the same evil, just four years later. The Dems are still running internment camps at the border. They are still building Trumps wall.
By never threatening them with actual consequences to their power, you give them a blanket check to fuck everyone over for their rich donors. And that is exactly what they did and continue to do.
No they are not the same evil, and it insults the intelligence to pretend otherwise. And threatening the Dems with consequences by giving power to people who are even worse on those issues than them? That does the opposite of what you’re hoping - it encourages that kind of behaviour.
We got to where we are because the right has pulled the window further and further, step by step, for years - and we have to do the same. The system doesn’t just change overnight.
You have to understand that a win for Trump this year is a total win for the far right and a total loss for the left. Anyone pretending otherwise is hopelessly misguided or intentionally stumping for the fascists.
The GOP openly courts antisemites while also supporting Israel. They make sure to have all the awful bases covered.
They need all the Jews to return to Israel and the temple to be rebuilt so Jesus can come back. Of course, that does mean expelling all Jews from every other country Jews are in, but they leave that part out.
Zionism fits neatly into the view that every country should be ethically homogenous.
I knew that sounded wrong and reading your word brought the correct one to mind. Fixed!
And once again, as the foreign trolls that are busy courting our youth want, not one comment in this entire thread mentions that Europe is on the brink of open modernized war should Ukraine fall to vlad “Ukraine is just a stepping stone” putin.
Gaza is a genocide, but that is not the critical geopolitical stage to be paying the most attention to. Once again it is completely ignored that the heads of hamas who attacked israel on oct 7 knowing exactly what they were about to cause are friends of putin.
The Gaza genocide was provoked precisely to pull western eyes from the Ukrainian front where russia was more than underperforming to ensure their victory in a sustained war of attrition.
You want to avoid a world war? You vote for biden whether u do it proudly or do it holding ur nose the way most of the sane will.
The Gaza genocide did not start on Oct 7, much like the Russian incursion on Unkraine did not start in Jan 2022. Both of those are tremendous blights on human rights and should be equally condemned.
Of course, voting for Biden is the only stable option as much as one may lament that it shouldn’t be.
The Gaza genocide did not start on Oct 7, much like the Russian incursion on Unkraine did not start in Jan 2022.
This is very very true, and i didnt mean to imply otherwise. Ive been hating on the apartheid state in israel for a very very long time now, and as someone born in Poland, i need no reminders of the evil the russian state causes both at home and abroad. I highly appreciate the added clarity, i should have been more clear in the first place.
Both of those are tremendous blights on human rights and should be equally condemned.
Theyre both deserving of equal condemnation insofar as both are crimes against humanity, but the one is a much more slippery slope towards more genocide than i think many in the states realize. Russian imperial sentiments towards Poland, Lithuania, and Finland (of the very next in line) have been painfully clear to anyone paying attention to the past 100 years of history, and doubly so to anyone aware of “Foundations of Geopolitics.”
Im not trying to say that the death of one group is worse than anothers, but i am saying that one conflict is a direct precursor to (for the modern age) unprecedented levels of death and destruction.
I am also willing to elaborate that sucking apartheid israels proverbial dick is something the US has been doing since before most of us were born, and that bidens stance on israel is less than par for the course in that hes the first head of state to outright say things like, “maybe israel should hold new elections bc of how fucked up their treatment of Palestinians is.” Thats less than anyone wants or especially needs, but it does show represent more wavering from democratic leadership than one would expect. It also is further proof that the lemmy trolls telling u that the dems are getting more rightwing are full of it. We’re on the cusp of the reins being passed on from the old generation onto the new. I agree biden shouldnt be the choice in a sane world, but a sane world it is not, and we can hope for far more with the boomers coming out of power so long as our democracy isnt just pissed the fuck away.
If what you say is correct, then it would seem that the onus is on Israel to stop the genocide in order to save its European benefactors.
The onus to sane action is on everyone. Israel is in the wrong no matter which way u cut the pie. It does not mean that ignoring whats happening north of israel is validated bc the apartheid state is acting the way it always has.
Or at least Biden to reverse course and admit supporting Israel isn’t worth the possibility of losing the election.
Liberals and moderates love to tell us about the choice in front of us between Biden and Trump. But they ignore the choice in front of them which is supporting Israel or losing the election.
Yeah, October 7th had nothing to do with the war that Israel was performing on Gaza before that. It wasn’t all about Ukraine.
He absolutely is more so. Also, young people have more power to influence Biden because they are part of his coalition. Of course, using this power is tricky because you need to pressure and criticize Biden without actually making him lose. So far I support the pressure campaign but I hope as the election gets closer people will start to realize what an epic disaster Trump term two would be.
He said he would level Palestine.
Not sure what these youngins are reading but he isn’t coy about it.
Are young people really a part of Bidens coalition? Bidens policies and rhetoric have consistantly pushed young people away. The ridiculous speech he gave just a few minutes ago maligning student protestors is emblematic of this.
And it seems like young people have got the message. The last poll I saw had 18-24yr olds voting for Trump at +8%
Historically they have been. I think Biden seems out of touch but I’m not sure I agree with this sentiment overall. That poll sounds dubious but I mean coalitions can change certainly. Trump seems even further from the views I see most young people espousing so I’m not sure why they would move to him but maybe it’s protest vote kind of situation.
Young people are part of the coalition but they’ve never proven to be a reliable part. When the 18-25s vote like the older generations then campaigns will start to take their needs more seriously.
“because you need to pressure and criticize Biden without actually making him lose”
“We need to be toothless about our criticism of Biden” FTFY
The threat of making your candidate lose is the only power you have to shift them.
Next time you’re negotiating for a car, see how much the seller budges after you preceed negotiations with “Now, I am fully committed and happy paying sticker price, but how much can you lower the price?”
Edit: at least have the intellectual honesty to say out loud that Biden could do anything, and you’d still vote for him
The threat of making your candidate lose is the only power you have to shift them.
I mean this is also not really a threat, though. I think realistically biden and trump are both closer to each other than either of them are to this like, eclectic amalgamation of positions that is the “youth vote”. Him not winning isn’t like, still a victory, in that circumstance, but it’s not like, a loss to them in the same way that it would be if they actually had to do all the stuff the “youth vote” wanted. Basically I’m just saying that they, the DNC broadly I suppose, would rather give as little as they absolutely can, while still maintaining a delicate balance of power where they’re the only ones that can maintain the status quo rather than a backslide into total fascism. Going with all the “youth vote” positions, to them, would be as big if not a bigger loss than a slide into total fascism.
Which is to say, I think they’re willing to lose as long as it means they don’t have to really do anything major.
I’m fully committed to lesser evil voting since it’s the only viable electoral strategy. So as long as Biden is better than Trump I would vote for him. I have a hard time understanding why people don’t see that this is the most rational way to vote. If you don’t like it, and I don’t either, then you need to pursue strategies to change it, particularly outside the electoral system. Since these strategies do not conflict with voting I think it’s rational to pursue both actions.
And no I don’t think we need to be toothless. But a lot of people don’t seem to be smart enough to walk the line of threatening to withhold support without actually doing so. I’m not going to go right up to Biden and tell him that’s what I’m doing. He doesn’t know what my strategy is, so it can still be effective.
