This reminds me of the trolley problem. One candidate wants to kill five people, the other “only” wants to kill one person. No matter what you do, it is guaranteed that one of them will get elected and kill at least one person - but if you try to use your vote to make the lesser evil slightly more probable - you are suddenly complicit.
Even worse - if the kill-one-person wins and kills that person, the kill-five-people candidate’ supporters will be the ones to hold the kill-one-person voters accountable for it. Their candidate would have killed more people, but because he lost the elections he was not able to kill anyone, which somehow makes voting for him more ethical?
You fail to mention the economic status or skin color of the potential victims.
Realistically the kill-five-people Candidate would have explicitly stated that they’d select the “correct” victims for their supporters to rally behind.
Whereas the kill-one-person Candidate would deny wanting to kill anyone in particular, so when it happens everyone is mad, even if their victim is a member of the “other” their opponent explicitly said they’d kill.
Wow that is a mess, but I can’t think of a better way of putting it.
You fail to mention
I did not fail to mention - I chose not to do it. The point of the trolley problem is not to find reason why killing the one person is not really that bad and why killing the five people is so much more terrible than what a simple multiplication implies. The point is to ask if its worth to end up with the greater evil just so that you can tell yourself that you are not complicit.
Something I’ve come to realize in the past few years is that blame and responsibility are just lies that we tell ourselves and each other. There are only our actions, what we can reasonably expect the results to be, and what the actual consequences are. Even if you’re not “responsible” for something, if you know you can prevent it, and choose not to, you have chosen for that thing to happen.
That’s an excruciatingly tortured metaphor. Are you implying that killing only one person instead of five could be worse depending on everyone’s skin color or economic status? Or that it’s worse to kill one person if the candidate tries to deny killing them?
Rereading your post. You’re either saying that or adding nothing to the conversation.
I’m shocked! Are you telling me there are people in real life with whom you can have nuanced conversation?!
Who you vote for says a lot about what your priorities are and what your moral compass is willing to tolerate for what you see as the “greater good.” When you vote for someone, you may not agree with everything they stand for but you absolutely do believe that overall what they stand for is more closely aligned with your political goals than the alternatives.
It doesn’t really reflect that much on you. Like, if my choices were Putin or Pol Pot, I don’t think voting for Putin would say much about my moral compass. Obviously not voting would feel nicer, but feeling nice doesn’t help much when the national average life experience drops to the mid teens.
Equating trump and biden is dishonest. Both in terms of what the average american experiences and at a distant policy level.
Saying “I dont care about things that dont immediately impact me” also says a lot about someones’ moral compass and where their priorities are. There is no belief that doesnt say SOMETHING about a person.
The amount of controversy is this thread is a dead giveaway that some fuckery is going down.
Luckily the amount of actual engagement shows its all just manufactured and there is no real consensus. Anyone forming an opinion based on discourse in this thread needs to step back and interface with real, actual, protesters.
The amount of controversy is this thread is a dead giveaway that some fuckery is going down.
Yep, pushing the bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe WhY bOtHeR vOtiNg narrative is cheap and easy “divide and conquer” propaganda.
In recent history, one side has been shown to benefit over and over again from lack of overall voter engagement - the fascists… I mean republicans, sorry, Freudian slip there.
Voting to keep out an anti-science, anti-education, anti-democracy political cancer = Moral inferiority.
Doing NOTHING and therefore giving the anti-science, anti-education, anti-democracy political cancer the keys to the kingdom to turn it into a gigantic toilet with all of us in it = Moral superiority!!!
You can go into any other left leaning thread on lemmy and it’s crickets. Not even a stray trumpet to say mum.
You go into a Isreal/Palestine thread and it’s a regular dumpster fire.
I’m not saying left leaning people are always on the same side of every issue but in general they are mild mannered and mindful of others. These threads are knock down drag out fights where 100 times some one is accused of supporting genocide when the actual number of people participating in the thread who support genocide is 0. 1-2 maybe if you consider the bad faith actors.
I have a feeling that the people who upvote this meme hate “trump voters” because of their complicity.
No, actually. I view most of the American populace, and indeed the planet’s, as an exploited, disadvantaged proletariat. The folks watching Faux News for 50 years never stood a chance. I so not hate them for it. Theyre still Americans, and I still need to go to work with them, and live in the same society as them. Ive gotten many meager and not so meager gains with righties over the past 5 years. If one of them recants on any one piece of bullshit they formerly believed in, than that is one more piece of bullshit they are not further propagating to their peers, or, more importantly, their children.
I believe that the ideal society is one free from hierarchy. How can I hate anyone for being brainwashed if I truly believe we are meant to be classless?
Always punch up, never down.
Solid take, but have you seen the other replies? A bunch of liberals explaining that trump voters are complicit is “totally OK because it’s so different!” I took this meme to be another castigation of leftists saying they would not vote for Biden because he’s responsible for killing more than 30k civilians in Gaza - our daily vote blue no matter who reminder. Thus any vote for Biden makes you NOT complicit in genocide because it’s not a blood pact, so please vote blue. Yet they will immediately turn around and claim that any vote for Trump IS in fact a blood pact and makes you complicit. It just gets exhausting.
“Leftists” are the Zapatistas in Spain who state as one of their core tenets improving material conditions in the transitory state until the utopia they crave comes into being. If u are a leftist, you will vote for damage control. Voting for the lesser of two evils is not the endorsement of its own evil actions bc the alternative is utter madness. To abstain from voting, to spoil ones vote, these are actions which support the greater of two evils.
When presented with a chouce between lesser evil, and far greater evil, it is not unconscionable to choose the lesser evil, but it is evil outright to choose the greater evil.
To tie into to my initial point, will those who abstain or spoil their votes have my hatred? No! They are merely an exploited proletariat whos actions have been influenced by the enormous web of influence of foreign adversaries as well as our own domestic fascists. I will pity them instead, but I will also reiterate that much like the action of voting for trump is an evil action, their own actions will also be evil, even if they themselves are not evil, but merely misguided.
Voters are not complicit in individual policies, but they are complicit in the broad differences in outcomes that are easily predicted. Trump is, by any sane metric, the greater evil by far, so Trump voters are complicit in bringing more evil to the world.
The choice to vote for a viable candidate rather than a non-viable one doesn’t make anyone complicit in an outcome they couldn’t realistically vote to prevent. Anyone who thinks a candidate other than Biden or Trump can win in November is delusional.
The difference is that Trump’s supporters actively supported his administration, and have been working to push him even further right. Biden doesn’t have the kind of cult of personality and worship Trump has, people willing to storm the capitol to keep him in power, against the democratic will of the people.
I thought of a few ways to respond to this, but I think I’ll just let your comment stand as-is. It’s a good encapsulation of the mindset, thanks.
I do think there’s a nuance to “I voted for this guy, I don’t really want him but it’s the best option on the list” And “I like this guy, I liked what he did, I’d like to see him do it again”
I hear (in real life), absolutely 0 Biden supporters like example #2. I hear (in real life) about 10 trump supporters like #2. Of the people I ask who are Republicans that don’t fall into #2, they instead say something along the lines of “I don’t like abortion and I don’t think democrats are protecting my rights”. Of the Republicans I’ve met that I talk to on a semi regular basis, those people make up maybe 20% of all interactions I have. The rest…well, MAGA
