Even knowing that Trump was going to actively help Bibi? That’s the thing I didn’t understand: sure, the Democrats were not doing much to stop the slaughter, but from the previous Trump administration we knew Trump was going to actively help.
Yes. Because what so many folks can’t seem to get is that different people are different. And they have different ethics.
This is literally the entire point of the trolley problem. Yes, you can stick your fingers in your ears and say, “always pull the lever for the track with fewer people on it.” But that’s just not how ethics works. Utilitarian ethics is one way to live life, but utilitarians have this incredibly annoying habit of assuming that theirs is the only valid ethical system, and that you’re a complete moron if you follow any other school of thought.
You’re demonstrating a utilitarian sense of ethics. One who follows a respect-for-persons belief system would say that the ends don’t justify the means. That it’s not fine to pull the trolley lever, even if that would result in a net saving of lives. That it’s fine to vote to hold people accountable, even if that will objectively result in net material harm. It’s not always about the greatest good for the greatest number. Otherwise, for example, we would never put any research dollars into studying cures for rare diseases. Those dollars could always objectively do more good elsewhere.
Hell, even our criminal laws don’t follow a utilitarian sense of ethics. You can’t legally get out of consequences from killing someone by saying, “this on net saved lives.” Even if you can objectively prove it, you’re not legally allowed to kill people. It doesn’t matter if your murder on net saves lives, you’re still a murderer. If a gang kidnaps your two children and tells you, “you must go kill this other one person if you want them to live.” If you do that, if you go and kill that stranger to save your own kids? You will be charged and convicted of murder. You’re not allowed to kill one innocent person to save two innocent people.
Many people voted against or refused to vote for Kamala because they were trying to punish her and the Democratic Party. Voting is the only way we have of holding politicians and parties accountable. Millions of voters saw the horrific haughtiness and barbarity of how the Democrats acted around Gaza, and they wanted to punish them for it. It was about holding them accountable. It was about justice. Many voted against Kamala to punish her for supporting genocide. And if the likely thing came to pass, if Trump supported genocide as well? Well those voters would vote against him for the same reason. They vote to hold people accountable for past actions, not to speculate on future ones. Maybe not how you vote, but again, people are different and can use whatever ethical system they want in choosing their vote.
Again, you can argue greatest good for greatest number, but that isn’t the only system of ethics out there, and it’s not even the system that defines the foundation of our legal codes.
In terms of any actual metric, Biden was as bad if not worse than Trump in Gaza, but because BlueMAGA were engaging in mass genocide denial when it was their team doing it, they don’t realise.
One side probably won’t stop it, but they’re on our side so there’s a sliver of a cintilla of a chance we could pressure them into it.
The other side absolutely would not, vocally stated he would help accelerate it, and would laugh in our faces and do even more to accelerate it for no other reason than it made us mad.
The choice should have been obvious, even if I and everyone else would have preferred better options.
The very fact that the Trolley Problem exists as a thought experiment and there is still active discourse over the correct solution should tell you why people didn’t all feel that they had a responsibility to vote for harm reduction. You can’t expect an election that resembles a famously divisive philosophical thought experiment to turn out with everyone arriving at the same conclusion, and it’s pointless to dwell on the fact that everyone didn’t fall in line with what you think is obvious rather than adjusting to the reality and acting accordingly. That means getting candidates elected in primaries that aren’t going to put us in the same trolley problem come time for the general.
That means getting candidates elected in primaries that aren’t going to put us in the same trolley problem
You can also put pressure on candidates mid-campaign to change posture.
I can tell you this, the Venn Diagram of the people itt blaming voters for the Democrats supporting a genocide in 2024, and the people who didn’t want Biden to step down is basically a perfect circle. Its also the same circle which shielded Harris from any critiques on her support for genocide.
I know people who felt that both sides at least tacitly supporting the genocide was so depressing that for their mental health they basically checked out of politics.
No, that response isn’t helpful, but it’s a very real thing that happens to real people. They needed a candidate that cared that people’s lives were ending across the sea, and neither side offered that.
That hurt Kamala’s chances in a very real way, and might even be the deciding factor for Trump’s second term.
While you and I can look at this and go “Wow, that’s not logical, she’s way better than Trump”, the Democratic campaign should have had political scientists and psychologists that knew about this well-documented phenomenon. I imagine they did, and ignored it, because siding against Israel would’ve cost money.
So while it’s true that the choice was still objectively obvious, it’s also completely true that the Democratic campaign absolutely mishandled it, because this isn’t some new phenomenon, and group human psychology isn’t unpredictable. It’s also not the fault of those who didn’t vote because of that.
While you and I can look at this and go “Wow, that’s not logical, she’s way better than Trump”, the Democratic campaign should have had political scientists and psychologists that knew about this well-documented phenomenon. I imagine they did, and ignored it, because siding against Israel would’ve cost money.
D and R parties both need independent voters to win any election. For example, even if every D voted for a D, they would lose without independents voting for them in significant numbers. This has been a political fact for many years.
So… why did the Harris campaign target REPUBLICAN voters (instead of Ds and independents)? They wasted a lot of vital time on that (“He doesn’t need to know who you voted for” etc), and they knew that they would lose if they did so.
She knew it too, Harris isn’t stupid. She took a knee.
I’m not fully convinced the conspiracy is that deep, but also if hard evidence came out saying so, I wouldn’t be surprised.
You don’t have to believe my word, but answer this question. You are a Democratic veteran. You KNOW for a FACT that you need Democratic and Independent voters to win. Simple mathematics demands that you do so to win.
Why, oh why, would you pursue the Republican vote? They’ve never done this before in a Presidential election. It can’t work. It’s never worked before, anyway.
This was discussed openly during the campaign, tons of Republican outreach and advertising with the Harris run… why?
I cannot think of any other reason, I would actually feel a lot better if there was a logical reason, somebody help my troubled mind
I think they sorta reasonably might have thought kamala would be another Bernie, who was pulling republicans from trump during the primaries against Hilary. They thought kamala had that sort of appeal.
It’s not sound logic, but I think someone in politics who doesn’t understand what drew people to Bernie could see the parallels and conclude if they focus on it, they can draw those Republicans in.
yep, and the Dem leadership still support israel no matter what they do. They learned nothing and will try to set up the same voter hostage situation in every vote from now on.
Just because humans are vulnerable to certain psychological effects, doesn’t mean it’s not the fault of those who were effected by them. Humans are also vulnerable to stress eating. That doesn’t remove the blame from fat asses with no self-control.
And this person absolutely should have better self-control, whoever the fuck, sorry, TF she is.
We don’t live in a world of “should”, in the real world of course it is demoralizing and affects the vote turnout.
We all know the US government will back Israel no matter what… and the voters can only punish the incumbent party for doing so.
65% of Democrats don’t want to finance Israel. Two thirds of their own party, that’s massive!
Voter turnout will continue to fall; D and R parties will continue to lose voters (now down to 30% registered voters each) and the Independents will continue to grow (now up to 40% of voters).
Why? Because our major parties ignore what their constituents actually want, and we can only punish one party every term.
The problem then being the electorate. The same group so many here want to absolve. You may not care about politics and want to ‘check out’ but it still cares about you and will still effect you even if you try to ignore it. In that vein elections will still happen and people you agree/disagree with will still be given power over you and your life. No matter how low the turn out a decision will be made with or without your input. Better to do what you can to give that input and make it the most useful it can be, before you get no input at all
The same people in this thread blaming voters for how Kamala Harris ran their campaign were the same ones insisting we had to run Biden as the incumbent, and calling you a bit or a school if you said they needed to be replaced.
We wouldn’t have this outcome if the people who’ve made it their entire identity to blame voters had placed their frustrations with the party and demanded better, sooner, when it could have made a material difference.
If every election is a decision between the lesser of two evils and both evils become more evil over time then harm isn’t actually reduced in the long run. This is why harm reduction is a failing long term electoral strategy.
Perhaps. But that’s not the world we live in. Demanding an electorate to suddenly change in a way it never has and start behaving like Homo economicus is only going to lead to further loses.
Honestly, people behaving like Homo economicus is how you get MAGA.
Think about it. Isn’t Trump’s pitch to voters ultimately an argument in rational self-interest? It’s all “I’ll make an in group and an out group. You’ll be in the in group. I’ll pull up the in group while pushing down the out group.”
Racism and sexism are rational. Or at least they are rational from those that benefit from them. Think about a white male living in the Jim Crows South. Your life was made soooo much easier by racism and sexism. There were whole career fields where they were the only quarter of the population that were eligible for them. They were automatically in the top quarter of society, simply by their race and sex.
Anti-immigrant zealotry is rational. If you’re a native-born US citizen working in the construction industry? Every legal or illegal immigrant being deported would cause your standard of living to soar. Economists would tell you that on net it will harm the economy. But if suddenly the pool of construction workers is cut in half, any US citizen who knows how to swing a hammer is now rolling in dough. That’s the rational terror of fascism - every time another group in the “first they came for” poem is liquidated, someone ends up with their property, their jobs, their place in the social order, etc.
You NEED to have a respect for persons built into your ethical framework, or else you can end up justifying evils of all sorts, all in the name of the greater good. Hell, Dr. Mengele slept well every night, content in the knowledge that he was doing the greatest good for the greatest number.
Absolute nonsense, and the Palestinian Americans who voted ‘undetermined’ en masse during the Democratic primaries to send a message to Biden/Harris knew it too. The party made their choice between the people and an unpopular genocide. They chose genocide.
Hey guess what. The genocide got even worse under harris’ opposition. How did that work out for all the genocide joe non-voters. How have palestinians benefitted under those protest votes/non-votes. Not to mention all the dead iranians that wouldnt be had harris won
What is more the “Democrat are bad because Palestine” was the opposition’s framing. The argumeny was pretty unanimous that the policy on Palestine was going to cost the Democrats the election. The Democrats were bad because they knew full well they were going to choose to lose over changing that policy.
And that’s just tunnel visioning at only the Israeli policy.
If genocide is bipartisan, then the less bad choice is whatever collapses the US the fastest. You wouldn’t try to choose the leader of Nazi Germany based on who’s going to run the holocaust most effectively
Yes, I can see that it would be demoralizing, and it was demoralizing. The Schumer/Biden wing of the Democrats deserves to be cast into the bonfire of the vanities, they are completely useless. And while this might sound sarcastic, I truly believe they have ended their usefulness, if they ever had much.
But we are talking about human beings and their lives. It may not make much of a philosophical difference to compare different stances on this senseless slaughter, but it makes eminently practical sense to save the lives you can. An American Presidential election was not going to produce much of a genocide-stopping president in 2024, and I hope 2028 does better, but there were distinct differences in approach and stance and collaboration with Bibi.
Case in point, look up “Gaza floating pier,” vs. “Trump Gaza resort.” it’s not about philosophical differences when you are starving.
If genocide is bipartisan, then the less bad choice is whatever collapses the US the fastest. You wouldn’t try to choose the leader of Nazi Germany based on who’s going to run the holocaust most effectively
Case in point, look up “Gaza floating pier,” vs. “Trump Gaza resort.” it’s not about philosophical differences when you are starving.
the floating pier from day one was to have israeli guards at the end of it. It was a pretend situation where Israel could have instead just opened one gate into gaza instead for the exact same effect. Its a transparent and idiotic PR game and always was, and evidently you fell for it. Or you’re pushing the same braindead propoganda narrative with a straight face. How was the pier any different than a gate on land?
Fuck demoralizing. People made a conscious choice to screw the United States for ar least 3 more years…all because they were “demoralized”. So how bad are they depressed right now? “I’M DEMORALIZED…SO I’LL DO SOMETHING THAT WILL MAKE IT EXPONENTIALLY WORSE.” Here in the south, we call that “short bus thinking”. Yeah, I called those people the terrible R word…maybe I’ll take it back when they stop acting that way. And I don’t give a fuck. They fucked up. They can own it or cry into their lattes. I REALLY don’t give a fuck about their whining.
Your shitty system will always produce fascism as long as you don’t hold the slightly less fascist party accountable. Last election the dems threw immigrants and palestinians under the bus in the name of ‘appeasing the center’ next election it will be trans people that will lose all political support and some time afterwards the dems will fold on womens rights in their stupid attempt to become the republicans lite edition.
Making logical points weighing up two distinct yet similar stances on genocide is only going to suppress voter turnout.
It’s the same as any other US election. We always have two shit sandwich options forced by the parties. There’s always some absolutely fucked position they’re both going to work towards and it is just a factor of which is less bad.
There have been other genocides the US has supported for decades elsewhere that go one gave a fuck about. The issues in Gaza aren’t new, they’re just more visible right now because of Israeli lobbying, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US.
We always have two shit sandwich options forced by the parties.
That stopped working in 2016. Biden only won because he lied and said he wanted to do a bunch of stuff the left wanted. Harris was a return to “we’re shitty, we love it, fuck you” politics.
Yeah buddy I wasn’t saying not actively working against it was helping it. I meant literally helping it. That Administration was actively arming the Israelis and aiding in the genocide. Super weird that you didn’t know that.
Ok then tell me this, did Bibi like Biden? Did he want Biden to win? Did he think Biden let him do all he wanted? What did Biden say about Bibi in return?
Then you can look at things like Republicans voting to force continued sales of weapons
Its illegal to send weapons or money to a country that is committing genocide. Biden could have simply said he cannot legally support Israel in any way and then just not. Instead Biden chose to lie for Israel aboiut 40 beheaded babies and provide unlimited diplomatic support, going so far as to bomb Yemen for resisting.
Democratic leadership knew this would decrease turnout, they prioritized unlimited support for Israel over winning the election.
Here’s a list of domestic laws that were violated, to say nothing of international law:
The Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive U.S. military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
The U.S. War Crimes Act, which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
The Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
The Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Genocide Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide
Ok then if you’re right why was Netanyahu mad at Biden? Why did he want Trump to win? Because there’s no such thing as unlimited support and then wanting to remove the person you’re getting unlimited support from
This is a russian/eastern perspective. Theater has no effect on real life politics does. They are NOT the same. If you act like they are you are part of the problem.
Pretty trivially easy question.
Biden could have done a lot of things – vetoed funding and stopped running interference for Israel in the UN. And he could have called it a genocide and illegal on the world stage. Biden refused to call it a genocide. He could have called for an international force to stop the killing. He also flew recon missions for the Israelis with US drones over Gaza didnt he.
And “starting a war”? with who, Israel? Are you stupid? That war would last 5 minutes. Biden took massive amounts of money from AIPAC his entire career, and called himself a zionist all the time. Your pretending he had no choice and was simply a victim of circumstance is pure lies. He was massively bribed. A corrupt peice of shit genocide supporter. He would absolutely lose his case and be imprisoned if the US had done the right thing and signed onto the ICC. He belongs in an orange jumpsuit, sharing a cell with trump.
A war with iran. Because trump won we have now killed dozens/hundreds of iranians. People that would not have died if harris had won. So again what would biden/harris have done that would have amounted to starting a war. Are you stupid…
I mean, Trump at this time did say that he was going to put American boots on the ground in Gaza and pave it over to put up a luxury beach resort, so I wouldn’t say that they’re literally the same on this, but it’s a measure between actively supporting genocide and actively supporting and taking part in said genocide through direct military action.
Both parties love Israeli money, one just also happens to be run by a man who would love to wipe non-white ethnicities off the planet and build more towers to his inflated ego where they once lived.
American boots on the ground in Gaza and pave it over to put up a luxury beach resort,
Don’t see much difference apart from the jersey being worn by the settlers murderers and raiders, personally. The policy is ultimately the same.
run by a man who would love to wipe non-white ethnicities off the planet and build more towers to his inflated ego where they once lived.
And I’m sure Joe ‘Fund the Police’ Biden and his sidekick Harris are super concerned about non-white ethnicities. His enthusiasm for keeping the WMD’s flowing mid-genocide and mid-famine really sells me on his supposed empathy for them too.
This isn’t a zero sum game and this isn’t about defending a president who can at best be said to have kept the ship afloat and recovered some of the economic damage caused by Trump’s COVID response, nor the shitty option B the Dems forced on us without a primary. All of the above can be terrible. That’s always an option.
You see one jersey or the other, I saw two jerseys with twice the players on the horizon. The policy is the same now, but in 2024 during the election? When the guy who idolizes war mongers like Putin and who used to read Hitler’s speeches before bed (according to the biography of an ex-wife), and who had previously said about the Middle East that he wanted to “nuke the sand into glass” said that he wanted to invade Gaza and put a carrier just off the coast, I fully believed that the strip would be gone and the people who lived there a footnote in the history books written by Israel and the US by now.
Both suck. Both support genocide. But one was talking about accelerating it by an order of magnitude that didn’t leave nukes off the table. If they hadn’t replaced the big red button in the Oval Office with one that orders a diet coke, he would’ve slammed it the first chance he got.
Even knowing that Trump was going to actively help Bibi? That’s the thing I didn’t understand: sure, the Democrats were not doing much to stop the slaughter, but from the previous Trump administration we knew Trump was going to actively help.
They were selling weapons to enable the genocide you’re downplaying by refusing to call it a genocide.
Yes. Because what so many folks can’t seem to get is that different people are different. And they have different ethics.
This is literally the entire point of the trolley problem. Yes, you can stick your fingers in your ears and say, “always pull the lever for the track with fewer people on it.” But that’s just not how ethics works. Utilitarian ethics is one way to live life, but utilitarians have this incredibly annoying habit of assuming that theirs is the only valid ethical system, and that you’re a complete moron if you follow any other school of thought.
You’re demonstrating a utilitarian sense of ethics. One who follows a respect-for-persons belief system would say that the ends don’t justify the means. That it’s not fine to pull the trolley lever, even if that would result in a net saving of lives. That it’s fine to vote to hold people accountable, even if that will objectively result in net material harm. It’s not always about the greatest good for the greatest number. Otherwise, for example, we would never put any research dollars into studying cures for rare diseases. Those dollars could always objectively do more good elsewhere.
Hell, even our criminal laws don’t follow a utilitarian sense of ethics. You can’t legally get out of consequences from killing someone by saying, “this on net saved lives.” Even if you can objectively prove it, you’re not legally allowed to kill people. It doesn’t matter if your murder on net saves lives, you’re still a murderer. If a gang kidnaps your two children and tells you, “you must go kill this other one person if you want them to live.” If you do that, if you go and kill that stranger to save your own kids? You will be charged and convicted of murder. You’re not allowed to kill one innocent person to save two innocent people.
Many people voted against or refused to vote for Kamala because they were trying to punish her and the Democratic Party. Voting is the only way we have of holding politicians and parties accountable. Millions of voters saw the horrific haughtiness and barbarity of how the Democrats acted around Gaza, and they wanted to punish them for it. It was about holding them accountable. It was about justice. Many voted against Kamala to punish her for supporting genocide. And if the likely thing came to pass, if Trump supported genocide as well? Well those voters would vote against him for the same reason. They vote to hold people accountable for past actions, not to speculate on future ones. Maybe not how you vote, but again, people are different and can use whatever ethical system they want in choosing their vote.
Again, you can argue greatest good for greatest number, but that isn’t the only system of ethics out there, and it’s not even the system that defines the foundation of our legal codes.
In terms of any actual metric, Biden was as bad if not worse than Trump in Gaza, but because BlueMAGA were engaging in mass genocide denial when it was their team doing it, they don’t realise.
Ok, but you see how massively demoralizing this conversation is, right?
Making logical points weighing up two distinct yet similar stances on genocide is only going to suppress voter turnout.
It shouldn’t. It’s basic harm reduction.
One side probably won’t stop it, but they’re on our side so there’s a sliver of a cintilla of a chance we could pressure them into it.
The other side absolutely would not, vocally stated he would help accelerate it, and would laugh in our faces and do even more to accelerate it for no other reason than it made us mad.
The choice should have been obvious, even if I and everyone else would have preferred better options.
The very fact that the Trolley Problem exists as a thought experiment and there is still active discourse over the correct solution should tell you why people didn’t all feel that they had a responsibility to vote for harm reduction. You can’t expect an election that resembles a famously divisive philosophical thought experiment to turn out with everyone arriving at the same conclusion, and it’s pointless to dwell on the fact that everyone didn’t fall in line with what you think is obvious rather than adjusting to the reality and acting accordingly. That means getting candidates elected in primaries that aren’t going to put us in the same trolley problem come time for the general.
You can also put pressure on candidates mid-campaign to change posture.
I can tell you this, the Venn Diagram of the people itt blaming voters for the Democrats supporting a genocide in 2024, and the people who didn’t want Biden to step down is basically a perfect circle. Its also the same circle which shielded Harris from any critiques on her support for genocide.
See people aren’t exclusively machines.
I know people who felt that both sides at least tacitly supporting the genocide was so depressing that for their mental health they basically checked out of politics.
No, that response isn’t helpful, but it’s a very real thing that happens to real people. They needed a candidate that cared that people’s lives were ending across the sea, and neither side offered that.
That hurt Kamala’s chances in a very real way, and might even be the deciding factor for Trump’s second term.
While you and I can look at this and go “Wow, that’s not logical, she’s way better than Trump”, the Democratic campaign should have had political scientists and psychologists that knew about this well-documented phenomenon. I imagine they did, and ignored it, because siding against Israel would’ve cost money.
So while it’s true that the choice was still objectively obvious, it’s also completely true that the Democratic campaign absolutely mishandled it, because this isn’t some new phenomenon, and group human psychology isn’t unpredictable. It’s also not the fault of those who didn’t vote because of that.
D and R parties both need independent voters to win any election. For example, even if every D voted for a D, they would lose without independents voting for them in significant numbers. This has been a political fact for many years.
So… why did the Harris campaign target REPUBLICAN voters (instead of Ds and independents)? They wasted a lot of vital time on that (“He doesn’t need to know who you voted for” etc), and they knew that they would lose if they did so.
She knew it too, Harris isn’t stupid. She took a knee.
I’m not fully convinced the conspiracy is that deep, but also if hard evidence came out saying so, I wouldn’t be surprised.
You don’t have to believe my word, but answer this question. You are a Democratic veteran. You KNOW for a FACT that you need Democratic and Independent voters to win. Simple mathematics demands that you do so to win.
Why, oh why, would you pursue the Republican vote? They’ve never done this before in a Presidential election. It can’t work. It’s never worked before, anyway.
This was discussed openly during the campaign, tons of Republican outreach and advertising with the Harris run… why?
I cannot think of any other reason, I would actually feel a lot better if there was a logical reason, somebody help my troubled mind
I think they sorta reasonably might have thought kamala would be another Bernie, who was pulling republicans from trump during the primaries against Hilary. They thought kamala had that sort of appeal.
It’s not sound logic, but I think someone in politics who doesn’t understand what drew people to Bernie could see the parallels and conclude if they focus on it, they can draw those Republicans in.
yep, and the Dem leadership still support israel no matter what they do. They learned nothing and will try to set up the same voter hostage situation in every vote from now on.
Right? Makes that other comment under this seem more valid.
Just because humans are vulnerable to certain psychological effects, doesn’t mean it’s not the fault of those who were effected by them. Humans are also vulnerable to stress eating. That doesn’t remove the blame from fat asses with no self-control.
And this person absolutely should have better self-control, whoever the fuck, sorry, TF she is.
And some candidates should be able to take a stand against genocide. Too bad you got your way and none were on the ballot.
We don’t live in a world of “should”, in the real world of course it is demoralizing and affects the vote turnout.
We all know the US government will back Israel no matter what… and the voters can only punish the incumbent party for doing so.
65% of Democrats don’t want to finance Israel. Two thirds of their own party, that’s massive!
Voter turnout will continue to fall; D and R parties will continue to lose voters (now down to 30% registered voters each) and the Independents will continue to grow (now up to 40% of voters).
Why? Because our major parties ignore what their constituents actually want, and we can only punish one party every term.
It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
The problem then being the electorate. The same group so many here want to absolve. You may not care about politics and want to ‘check out’ but it still cares about you and will still effect you even if you try to ignore it. In that vein elections will still happen and people you agree/disagree with will still be given power over you and your life. No matter how low the turn out a decision will be made with or without your input. Better to do what you can to give that input and make it the most useful it can be, before you get no input at all
Yeah, they should shut up and love genocide like you do.
The same people in this thread blaming voters for how Kamala Harris ran their campaign were the same ones insisting we had to run Biden as the incumbent, and calling you a bit or a school if you said they needed to be replaced.
We wouldn’t have this outcome if the people who’ve made it their entire identity to blame voters had placed their frustrations with the party and demanded better, sooner, when it could have made a material difference.
If every election is a decision between the lesser of two evils and both evils become more evil over time then harm isn’t actually reduced in the long run. This is why harm reduction is a failing long term electoral strategy.
People preaching harm reduction whose candidates only ever increase harm over the last offering know this. They’re arguing in bad faith.
Perhaps. But that’s not the world we live in. Demanding an electorate to suddenly change in a way it never has and start behaving like Homo economicus is only going to lead to further loses.
Honestly, people behaving like Homo economicus is how you get MAGA.
Think about it. Isn’t Trump’s pitch to voters ultimately an argument in rational self-interest? It’s all “I’ll make an in group and an out group. You’ll be in the in group. I’ll pull up the in group while pushing down the out group.”
Racism and sexism are rational. Or at least they are rational from those that benefit from them. Think about a white male living in the Jim Crows South. Your life was made soooo much easier by racism and sexism. There were whole career fields where they were the only quarter of the population that were eligible for them. They were automatically in the top quarter of society, simply by their race and sex.
Anti-immigrant zealotry is rational. If you’re a native-born US citizen working in the construction industry? Every legal or illegal immigrant being deported would cause your standard of living to soar. Economists would tell you that on net it will harm the economy. But if suddenly the pool of construction workers is cut in half, any US citizen who knows how to swing a hammer is now rolling in dough. That’s the rational terror of fascism - every time another group in the “first they came for” poem is liquidated, someone ends up with their property, their jobs, their place in the social order, etc.
You NEED to have a respect for persons built into your ethical framework, or else you can end up justifying evils of all sorts, all in the name of the greater good. Hell, Dr. Mengele slept well every night, content in the knowledge that he was doing the greatest good for the greatest number.
The side of genocide, oligarchy and fascism?
Nonsense.
Absolute nonsense, and the Palestinian Americans who voted ‘undetermined’ en masse during the Democratic primaries to send a message to Biden/Harris knew it too. The party made their choice between the people and an unpopular genocide. They chose genocide.
Hey guess what. The genocide got even worse under harris’ opposition. How did that work out for all the genocide joe non-voters. How have palestinians benefitted under those protest votes/non-votes. Not to mention all the dead iranians that wouldnt be had harris won
Congratulations on the furtherance of your only goal.
That’s true.
It always does, because both ruling parties exist in service to Israel. And therefore, they have no impetus to do anything but escalate.
Had she been elected we’d be in exactly the same position.
What is more the “Democrat are bad because Palestine” was the opposition’s framing. The argumeny was pretty unanimous that the policy on Palestine was going to cost the Democrats the election. The Democrats were bad because they knew full well they were going to choose to lose over changing that policy.
And that’s just tunnel visioning at only the Israeli policy.
Yeah, the choice was bad or worse, and people chose worse. Life sucks sometimes, they need to grow up.
If genocide is bipartisan, then the less bad choice is whatever collapses the US the fastest. You wouldn’t try to choose the leader of Nazi Germany based on who’s going to run the holocaust most effectively
I don’t want to cut off this gangrene foot because it will be unpleasant. Let’s just wait it out and see what what happens.
This was never a difficult decision and the ones that thought it was are fundamentally simple people.
Yes, I can see that it would be demoralizing, and it was demoralizing. The Schumer/Biden wing of the Democrats deserves to be cast into the bonfire of the vanities, they are completely useless. And while this might sound sarcastic, I truly believe they have ended their usefulness, if they ever had much.
But we are talking about human beings and their lives. It may not make much of a philosophical difference to compare different stances on this senseless slaughter, but it makes eminently practical sense to save the lives you can. An American Presidential election was not going to produce much of a genocide-stopping president in 2024, and I hope 2028 does better, but there were distinct differences in approach and stance and collaboration with Bibi.
Case in point, look up “Gaza floating pier,” vs. “Trump Gaza resort.” it’s not about philosophical differences when you are starving.
If genocide is bipartisan, then the less bad choice is whatever collapses the US the fastest. You wouldn’t try to choose the leader of Nazi Germany based on who’s going to run the holocaust most effectively
BlueMAGA is a parody of itself
the floating pier from day one was to have israeli guards at the end of it. It was a pretend situation where Israel could have instead just opened one gate into gaza instead for the exact same effect. Its a transparent and idiotic PR game and always was, and evidently you fell for it. Or you’re pushing the same braindead propoganda narrative with a straight face. How was the pier any different than a gate on land?
The Gaza floating pier was used to do warcrimes, then dismantled.
As planned.
Fuck demoralizing. People made a conscious choice to screw the United States for ar least 3 more years…all because they were “demoralized”. So how bad are they depressed right now? “I’M DEMORALIZED…SO I’LL DO SOMETHING THAT WILL MAKE IT EXPONENTIALLY WORSE.” Here in the south, we call that “short bus thinking”. Yeah, I called those people the terrible R word…maybe I’ll take it back when they stop acting that way. And I don’t give a fuck. They fucked up. They can own it or cry into their lattes. I REALLY don’t give a fuck about their whining.
I’m glad monsters like you are suffering
Your shitty system will always produce fascism as long as you don’t hold the slightly less fascist party accountable. Last election the dems threw immigrants and palestinians under the bus in the name of ‘appeasing the center’ next election it will be trans people that will lose all political support and some time afterwards the dems will fold on womens rights in their stupid attempt to become the republicans lite edition.
Uhh trans people lost support last election. Or were you not paying attention to all the anti-trans legislation coming out.
Yeah, they had one party fighting against them and zero parties fighting back.
It’s the same as any other US election. We always have two shit sandwich options forced by the parties. There’s always some absolutely fucked position they’re both going to work towards and it is just a factor of which is less bad.
There have been other genocides the US has supported for decades elsewhere that go one gave a fuck about. The issues in Gaza aren’t new, they’re just more visible right now because of Israeli lobbying, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
That stopped working in 2016. Biden only won because he lied and said he wanted to do a bunch of stuff the left wanted. Harris was a return to “we’re shitty, we love it, fuck you” politics.
The US was doing it anyway before Trump2.0
My dad gave me $1 to seed a lemonade stand. Trump’s dad gave him billions.
Our experiences are equivalent.
Imagine comparing a genocide to a lemonade stand.
Not doing much to stop it is a weird way of saying actively helping it.
I see you too are actively helping it then. It’s your own words!
Yeah buddy I wasn’t saying not actively working against it was helping it. I meant literally helping it. That Administration was actively arming the Israelis and aiding in the genocide. Super weird that you didn’t know that.
Ok then tell me this, did Bibi like Biden? Did he want Biden to win? Did he think Biden let him do all he wanted? What did Biden say about Bibi in return?
Then you can look at things like Republicans voting to force continued sales of weapons
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/politics/house-bill-reverse-israel-arms-pause.html
Meanwhile; https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5429072-sanders-resolution-fails-israel-military/
Tell me what Biden could’ve done that wouldn’t amount to starting a war?
Who gives a fuck! You ghouls care more about your fucking parasocial kayfabe character drama than the lives of millions of people
Biden Administration Bypassed Congress on Weapons Sale to Israel
To start with, he could have, uh, not bypassed congress on weapons sales to Israel.
It’s certainly telling what he was willing to bypass congress to do after he couldn’t bypass congress for the agenda he ran on.
Its illegal to send weapons or money to a country that is committing genocide. Biden could have simply said he cannot legally support Israel in any way and then just not. Instead Biden chose to lie for Israel aboiut 40 beheaded babies and provide unlimited diplomatic support, going so far as to bomb Yemen for resisting.
Democratic leadership knew this would decrease turnout, they prioritized unlimited support for Israel over winning the election.
Cool. What’s the source, please?
Also, does it work when we’re the one doing it? And is it strictly genocide or is it general war criming.
Here’s a list of domestic laws that were violated, to say nothing of international law:
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-weapons-to-israel
Ok then if you’re right why was Netanyahu mad at Biden? Why did he want Trump to win? Because there’s no such thing as unlimited support and then wanting to remove the person you’re getting unlimited support from
Who gives a fuck! You ghouls care more about your fucking parasocial kayfabe character drama than the lives of millions of people
Do you understand that a lot of politics is theater? You have to watch what people actually do, not what they pretend.
This is a russian/eastern perspective. Theater has no effect on real life politics does. They are NOT the same. If you act like they are you are part of the problem.
Because Biden’s base was less pro-genocide, so no matter what Biden himself did, strategically the republicans would always be a safer bet.
There was no level of support the dems could offer that would have caused Netanyahu to support them over the republicans.
Pretty trivially easy question. Biden could have done a lot of things – vetoed funding and stopped running interference for Israel in the UN. And he could have called it a genocide and illegal on the world stage. Biden refused to call it a genocide. He could have called for an international force to stop the killing. He also flew recon missions for the Israelis with US drones over Gaza didnt he.
And “starting a war”? with who, Israel? Are you stupid? That war would last 5 minutes. Biden took massive amounts of money from AIPAC his entire career, and called himself a zionist all the time. Your pretending he had no choice and was simply a victim of circumstance is pure lies. He was massively bribed. A corrupt peice of shit genocide supporter. He would absolutely lose his case and be imprisoned if the US had done the right thing and signed onto the ICC. He belongs in an orange jumpsuit, sharing a cell with trump.
A war with iran. Because trump won we have now killed dozens/hundreds of iranians. People that would not have died if harris had won. So again what would biden/harris have done that would have amounted to starting a war. Are you stupid…
You are happy to accept this as long as no one had a non-genocidal candidate to vote for.
What would you call Genocide Joe keeping the WMD shipments flowing, on time, without end, even during a manufactured famine?
This is one issue where both parties are literally the same.
I mean, Trump at this time did say that he was going to put American boots on the ground in Gaza and pave it over to put up a luxury beach resort, so I wouldn’t say that they’re literally the same on this, but it’s a measure between actively supporting genocide and actively supporting and taking part in said genocide through direct military action.
Both parties love Israeli money, one just also happens to be run by a man who would love to wipe non-white ethnicities off the planet and build more towers to his inflated ego where they once lived.
Don’t see much difference apart from the jersey being worn by the
settlersmurderers and raiders, personally. The policy is ultimately the same.And I’m sure Joe ‘Fund the Police’ Biden and his sidekick Harris are super concerned about non-white ethnicities. His enthusiasm for keeping the WMD’s flowing mid-genocide and mid-famine really sells me on his supposed empathy for them too.
This isn’t a zero sum game and this isn’t about defending a president who can at best be said to have kept the ship afloat and recovered some of the economic damage caused by Trump’s COVID response, nor the shitty option B the Dems forced on us without a primary. All of the above can be terrible. That’s always an option.
You see one jersey or the other, I saw two jerseys with twice the players on the horizon. The policy is the same now, but in 2024 during the election? When the guy who idolizes war mongers like Putin and who used to read Hitler’s speeches before bed (according to the biography of an ex-wife), and who had previously said about the Middle East that he wanted to “nuke the sand into glass” said that he wanted to invade Gaza and put a carrier just off the coast, I fully believed that the strip would be gone and the people who lived there a footnote in the history books written by Israel and the US by now.
Both suck. Both support genocide. But one was talking about accelerating it by an order of magnitude that didn’t leave nukes off the table. If they hadn’t replaced the big red button in the Oval Office with one that orders a diet coke, he would’ve slammed it the first chance he got.
“Hitler made the trains run on time”