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.
Remember that in online spaces (and IRL in reality), there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts that will make claims to sway public opinions.
Good point. Although, I would question whether Lemmy is such a place as we really don’t have the numbers to warrant the effort, imo.
We get drug spam and stock spam, no reason to expect that political spam is any less likely.
Lemmy has a huge amount of hardcore lefty’s. If you can get them to not vote, and especially if you can get them to tell their friends not to vote, that is a big win.
Astroturfing/sockpuppeting is dirty cheap to do, so no reason not to try.
You do see some users here that will post continously on about a certain topic repeatedly, with no other opinions. They might be legit, but I have my suspicions.
I disagree - it feels like Lemmy is seeing the same kind of shills that 4chan saw in the last several elections. These bad actors are trying to sway dems to vote third party or not vote at all “in protest” across many small and large online spaces.
It is not currently such a place. I’ve yet to hear a Lemmy admin say otherwise.
Edit to add: Russiagate conspiracy theorists want it to be true so they can simply dismiss voices that contradict their beliefs.
I’ve seen cryptospam, drugspam, generic adspam on here. Why would a political astroturfspam be a conspiracy theory?
yeah, mostly CIA and Israeli bots/paid posters. all of reddit is astroturfed. All social media is controlled by the feds as well. Look into the twitter leaks to see how they do it. Mintpressnews also has great articles about feds in censorship positions in all these social media companies ranging from Facebook to TikTok (100% CIA controlled btw).
Is there any evidence of these CIA/Israeli bots / paid posters?
If somebody makes a pro-Israel post, maybe they just genuinely support Israel (I wouldn’t say that’s my view currently - I think both Israel and Hamas are wrong because both have killed civilians).
Edit: your downvotes aren’t evidence.
Who has killed more civilians?
By multiple orders of magnitude?
This is like “Man, I don’t like the sun and light bulbs, they’re both so bright.”
Yeah like all of these people out here telling me to vote for genociders. There’s no way that real humans would think so little of Palestinian lives, right?
Right?
And who, of those who aren’t mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn’t about to help Isreal with their genocide? Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue. One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.
Suppose you have two buttons. If you press one, it kills someone. If you press the second, it kills two people. If you don’t press the first button, someone else is eagerly waiting who will press the second. Whoever has placed the buttons here, has enough power that neither the buttons nor the other person are within your personal ability to harm at the moment, and you have neither the time nor the popularity to amass enough people to change this before the other guy pushes the “kill two people” button. Your only options are to press one or press neither and allow the second be pressed. If your answer to this scenario is “I press neither button, because pressing the first kills someone, don’t you care about people’s lives!?”, then you are not choosing morality, you are choosing selfishness, because you care more about the notion that your hands will be clean than about the net life saved if you press the button that kills fewer people. In fact, the blood is as much on your hands by inaction if you decide to reject your choice, as it would be had you killed the additional victim yourself.
You know how you can trick a stupid fucking child into doing what you want by presenting them a false choice of two alternatives you’re happy with? “Do you want to go to bed now or after one more show?”
Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue.
What liberal brain rot is this?
Biden is fully engaging with his policy of genociding Palestinians. Harris has said that she will carry on with the policy with absolutely no change.
The fucking dissonance you people walk around with is astounding!
And before you come out with the usual other shit floating around your vacuous head, no, I’m not advocating voting for the shitty pants trust fund rapist.
You people cannot seem to grasp that what is being done in the Levant will be done to you. The DOD had just updated it’s rules so they can use lethal force against you.
It’s coming and you’ll are too fucking partisan to realise that you’re turkeys all voting for Christmas!
And who, of those who aren’t mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn’t about to help Isreal with their genocide?
When you are offered two candidates and both support genocide, including one being an active part of the current one, you can say, “no, never again means never again” and work against both rather than pretending you now have to support genocide.
Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue.
You should believe your lying eyes and see that Biden has gotten your consent for genocide, with Harris helping. The genocide has only ramped up as the election draws close.
There is not worse that can be done. It is full, unequivocal support for basically anything Israel wants for genocide including the weapons and supplies on which they depend to carry out this genocide. If anything, Dems are more effective at this kind of thing, as they secure European support and offer better stipulations to the Israelis around when to escalate and when to play it a little cooler.
Though your electoral logic is seld-defeating anyways. Your consent for the lesser evil keeps you politically anemic and unable to have solidarity with those who need it. You make yourself subservient.
One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.
This is a fantasy.
Suppose you have two buttons.
I am not interested in childish metaphors.
If both of them support genocide, but one also supports banning abortion, the ethical choice is to vote for the one that won’t ban abortion.
If you’d rather wait until a candidate arrives that agrees with you on every issue, that’s fine, but you’ll probably never vote, and in the meantime, by not voting, supporting whichever candidate you like less.
While there’s no honor in the presidency, there is honor in doing what you can to reduce harm, and if you can’t reduce harm to the Palestinians, at least you can reduce harm to American women and girls.
Never again means never again for anyone.
Trying to lesser evil genocide makes you complicit.
Repeat after me: “I am against genocide and will not vote for genociders”.
The comprador government of the West Bank is just that, compradors. You should care about the people who live under a comprador government, yes.
The government of Gaza is led by those taking direct militant action against their genocidal settler colonial invaders. They fight and die alongside their people.
There are, but not on Lemmy, because Lemmy is still much too small to bother with.
Are you a Lemmy sock puppetry expert? Because I am.
Which Lemmy admins are saying there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts? Because I haven’t heard any.
There is the occasional spammer or corpo shill, who is quickly dealt with, and that’s about it.
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.
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 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.
They believe that taking a moral stand against the Democrats, who are supporting Israeli genocide, is worth it even if that means that Trump, who even more fervently supports Israeli genocide, becomes president.
Describe “even more”? In what specific material ways would trump increase support for Israel?
Even calling it “Israeli genocide” is transferring responsibility. “Supporting” is an understatement. The democrats ARE THE ONES DOING THE GENOCIDE. Biden can stop it with a single phone call. Israel is not an independent state; it is a subordinate of the US.
Telling people to vote for your party, a nazi party, at the absolute peak of your depraved inhuman bloodthirst, because the other side might be worse, is the most cynical fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
I genuinely do believe we’re going to look back this time as inexcusable. Right now, Netanyahu’s extreme right flank is now advocating for settlement of the parts of Gaza that have been ethnically cleansed. Specifically, they’re saying that as long as the army stays there for a permanent long-term occupation, that can be the first step to proceeding with settlements.
It’s so much worse than even the Iraq war. I’ve seen by some estimates that the Iraq war displaced 2 million people, and the deaths, before they stopped counting, were between 100,000 and a quarter million.
I think the deaths and displacements in Gaza probably are going to exceed those, and it’s concentrated in a much smaller area, and it’s horrifyingly closer to affecting the whole population.
Simply put there’s no excuse for this moral atrocity.
And here’s the but: I don’t see how a strategic attitude of indifference to who runs the State department brings it closer to an end. And I don’t see that that attitude is one of even pretending to try for an alternative. I do think supporting politicians especially in their Democratic primaries is a positive step. And I do think, as with the Iraq war, galvanizing a sea change and discrediting everyone who is associated with what happened in Gaza is necessary. I believe it is urgent to do something, and the actual channels of aid that can meaningfully do something right now exist entirely outside of party infrastructure of either party. But I also think, for how true that is, using that to lose sight a very real and very serious differences between the parties that also affect human welfare in numerous ways, would be to needlessly visit tragedy upon tragedy. I wouldn’t want to lose American democracy into the bargain, and I don’t think it’s nuanced to be in indifferent to that.
I honestly appreciate the downvotes as a counter of angry people shamed into silence
Good. You should be fucking ashamed.
As I said, I want to personally thank you and your ilk for Trump winning this election.
Congratulations. You let the fascists win to “stick it to the libs”
Yeah the “democrats are the REAL nazis” is tiring when you get comments from the republican hero agent Orange: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/
So when Trump wins and my rights to exist are stripped even further, I’ll be sure to thank you for it
Republicans and Democrats were unable to stop legislation from the Judiciary with Roe v. Wade and later Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Super PAC’s donate multiple lifetimes of dollars to Presidential candidates in a quid pro quo system protected by the first amendment under Citizens United v. FEC. Americans outside the oligarchy will never exhibit their influence.
If oligarchs find your existence icky, they have the power to remove your “right” to exist. You lack the power to prevent it. Instead of thanking anyone, I suggest we take the power back. Punch up.
the most cynical fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
Yes, it’s cynical. It’s based on the jaded belief that democracy is 90% dead, and Americans only get to make one of two meaningful choices.
The opposite belief, which is that America is a democracy and you can vote for whoever you want, is hopeful and patriotic. It puts a lot of trust in the American system. It shows faith that politicians have our best interests at heart, and that it’ll all work out if you just say what you want.
Is that how you want to describe yourself? As a patriot who believes in America? It doesn’t seem to align with your worldview, but it’s what your actions are saying.
I’d rather vote for the party that’s 85% nazi than 100%. And in a world where it’s entirely unrealistic that anyone else can win between past-the-post voting and voter disenfranchisement, that’s the best we’re getting.
This was a meme like 6 years ago, that we’d get to the point that US democrats would accept a candidate that’s 99% pro-genocide compared to the 100% republican one. It’s worked, and now democrats are falling over themselves to defend this genocide and their party’s staunch material support for it.
Keep voting tho, its working great so far. The USA keeps improving by doing the same thing over and over again. /s
holy shit they’re actually doing the 99% hitler meme now, this country is cooked
It’s the Trolley Problem. Many people finding themselves in that problem would say, “Of course I flip the switch, one person is less than five people”.
But if you take a step back it’s reasonable to ask, “WHY did I suddenly find myself in this Trolley Problem? Trolleys don’t spring into existence fully formed like Athena springing from Zeus’ forehead. They are designed and built, piece by piece. The switch was setup by the agency of someone. People were kidnapped and tied down by force. I was placed here on purpose.”
So given that realization it’s also reasonable when told you must choose to say, “Why? You designed this system. You tied the people down. You could have done it differently and instead deliberately did THIS. I had nothing to do with it and I refuse the premise that I must participate in your fucked up game. No matter what happens the blood is on your hands and I refuse to share in your guilt.”
That’s the essential argument. There’s the realpolitik decision to do “less harm”, but you can also reject the fucked up premise.
Lol, living in a world where “anti-genocide” is actually a thing people say is messed up.
I think is actually kind of nice.
I mean of all species living on earth, human is the only species that would consider genocide a bad thing. Some random plant on prehistoric ages would just produce oxygen an cause a mass extinction without sweating it.
And for most human history Humans would actually try to genocide others.
At least now there is people who is anti-genocide. And it’s probably a growing stance.
Humpback whales have been seen interfering with killer whales that are attacking seals or dolphins. Maybe they don’t see it as “genocide” as they don’t have a concept of the idea, but there is at least some evidence of another species upset at, and willing to stop, the killing of another. I think by that logic, if they could understand the concept of genocide, they would consider it a bad thing.
I certainly doubt it. They would probably just be protecting themselves and their own kind.
If a humpback whale have experiences of killing whales attacking them or their offspring probably thought it was a good idea to do as possible to interfere with them. Probably would carry a genocide on orcas giving the chance.
I don’t think it is out of mercy. Mercy is something that is learning growing in a better environment that any animal growing in the brutal natural world.
