The comic, to me, shows that there's a lot more at stake than Gaza this election season. Protest voting because Biden hasn't done more will make all those issues, especially Gaza, insurmountably worse.
Netanyahu isn't angling for a Trump presidency because of personal preference.
I appreciate your expression of your view of this comic as it’s genuinely much more good faith than what I feel the artist was going for, like /gen I agree with everything you say here.
Do you mind me asking if you know the source of this? I want to learn more about the artist and see if I am just totally misreading the intent of the work
edit 2: okay yeah i looked thru every comic of his since oct 7, and i just kind of see some minor both-sidesing of the genocide and absolutely no criticism of US or even corporate involvement in Israeli apartheid. so my original judgement of this artist as being kind of a patronizing loser stands.
Well, if you think there’s a lot at stake then I think the best course of action would to start getting things done. If you want to stop protest votes, then why are you yelling at the people who are protesting? They aren’t protesting tiny things, they are protesting the funding of a fucking genocide. Why are you not saying something like “Well, wouldn’t this whole issue have been avoided if Biden started putting pressure on Israel a month or two ago?”
Failing to do shit about gaza and then being like “Hey, I’m less evil over here” is playing chicken with a hand grenade while hoping you don’t notice that they can just as easily put the pin back in.
I think the best way to see this is like this:
the student protestors: “Stop the genocide now”
the anti-protest voters: “Hey, if we do nothing for 6 months and alienate you, its your fault that our inaction caused you to not vote”
You are placing the blame on the wrong people, and just throwing distractions and diversions from problems that could be fixed now to make biden likely to win.
Ok, so how will it get worse? Mass famine? Aid workers dying of thirst? Schools getting bombed? Hospitals getting destroyed? Aid trucks getting destroyed? Mass graves? Mass arrests? Intentional targeting of Palestinian journalists? AI drones targeting all males that are outdoors?
I don't think you understand what this genocide is about. It's not to exterminate the Palestinians, despite what Ben-Gvir wants. It's to make conditions so horrible that they all flee Gaza, before doing the same in the West Bank.
yes, exactly. Netanyahu doesn't fucking care where they go or how they get there, so long as their fascist government can keep up the Kahanist and Jewish Power Party support by not working with Arab nations.
The issue with Palestine can be solved by Biden today if he wanted to. Call that UN ambassador with some different instructions. Throw out some sanctions conditional on getting aid through and a ceasefire done. The other issues in this comic require courts or congress, generally. Is genocide bad? Yeah. Should we stop it? Nah, not today. Voting for a guy who won't stop what's going on because he doesn't have a problem with it feels bad, no way around that.
Instead of a diplomatic avenue, you guys are going to help Trump get elected so he can speed up the process of the genocide of Palestinians, and then you are going to blame everybody but yourselves.
I think there's a non-zero probability that American democracy ends with Trump, and there's very little benefit gained by a 2nd Trump presidency either way.
Biden buys the youth more time to get organized and start restructuring the country. But the youth has to get their shit together, pick better candidates, and vote.
We are at the end of an era, and you can toss out much of the conventional thinking from the past 50 - 70 years. When the millennials and Gen Z finally come together in force they will shape the country how they see fit. The boomer/silent gen majority that we were stuck with for 50 years is gone - all the younger generations have to do is vote for their priorities.
This will happen in one of the next 3 major elections purely due to numbers.
Lastly, the youth needs to understand that voting is about aligning the trajectory of the leadership as closely with your values as possible. You are making decisions now that have long term effects on your quality of life.
If genocide is the only thing you'll listen to then you'll be the last person anyone facing all the rest will consider an ally until their problems escalate to genocide.
I'm sorry, what? I run in anarchist circles. Most that I have met would rather see Cornel win. If Trump won, they're going to be the "armed antifa" showing up to protect drag story hours.
Seriously, Palestinian American here and I feel actually violated for them to be using my kin's corpses as fetish porn for their narrative.
I have family who are Nakba victims that I haven't been able to meet because they put everything into giving my grandfather the chance to escape, people who actually experienced the genocide first hand, and all I can see in these people wielding it as a cudgel to declare they won't vote and nobody else should either is the same white cynical "leftism" that made Nader and Stein become the perfect catastrophes for American democracy.
Here is the single Palestinian cause, Badna N3aesh! We want to live! We want to live, both in the homeland, and everywhere else we may go, and that means you have no right to use our dead to let the ones who would kill us here too into power.
This. It's almost like how a prominent Lemmy dev seems to believe his "struggle" is the same as a former Haitian slave. You want to talk about offensive appropriation to the point of self parody?
The idea that these privileged cynics use the corpses of heroes as a pedestal to push their agenda is absolutely disgusting.
Kinda hard for Palestinians living in Palestine to actually live when biden hands over billions of dollars in weapons for israel to bomb them. Why are you more mad at people opposed to genocide than the ones who full-throatedly support the bombing of Palestinians?
The point literally couldn't have come at you any more directly, and you still dodged around it and redirected, and doubled down on the pretense that somehow this person doesn't care about their own dead relatives, and you need to instruct them on what's important and what they need to understand and how to look at it, and why they should get on board with your politics, otherwise they don't care about their own dying and suffering people.
I wrote one sentence pointing out how biden's actions run directly counter to "we want to live" and then asked a question for clarification. You jumped in and twisted yourself into a pretzel to tell me how much I've missed the point without actually explaining how.
Sure. So it's not really my place to have this whole conversation, but I already did get involved, and I'm happy to give my input.
The point is that whatever's going on with Biden, Trump is objectively worse on every single metric, including but not limited to the safety of Arabs, Palestinians, and potential victims of the American military in general, at home and abroad.
Someone who cares about dead Palestinians could absolutely try to pressure Biden to stop sending weapons to the IDF, remove Netanyahu to the ICC, or whatever they want to do. Or they could point out that Biden is a monster for continuing the US's war criminal support for Israel, and not immediately denouncing Israel the instant they started blocking food aid or bombing hospitals. Sure. All that makes sense. If any of that is what you're doing, and it sounds like I'm trying to disagree with it, I am not. I actually originally came in this thread complaining about the OP cartoon, because I think most of the Palestine protestors are absolutely consistent and justified and the cartoon is grossly unfair as applied to them.
The very specific and very politically motivated construction from there to "that's why I can't support Biden, against Trump" or "that's why I'm not voting" or anything like that, is endangering Palestinians in Palestine, Palestinians in America, Hispanics in their home countries and in the US, Americans in the US, and many many other people, to an absolutely horrifying level.
This person is, if I am understanding them correctly, objecting very specifically to the second one. They're asking that people stop using the suffering of them and their family and friends to try to promote a particular political agenda which actually endangers them, increasing the chance of a genocide much much worse than what's happening right now in Gaza, while pretending that it's a Palestinian-friendly course of action and they're doing it because they care about Palestinians. They're pointing out that it's a ghoulish and dangerous thing to point to their own dead relatives and then try to use them to excuse a politics which threatens to make a lot more corpses, while pretending that it's on their behalf.
That's fair, but I think there's room for disagreement on how to pressure biden and if biden is actually even better for Palestinians at all. After all, biden has been the top supporter of israel for his entire career and is the top recipient of money from pro-israel donors by a huge margin:
So far biden has given israel everything they've wanted or needed. There is the case where he withheld weapons (but not "defensive" weapons) because of Rafah, but by that point israel already has more than enough to level the entire area and biden is already back to moving things forward for future weapon shipments. Clearly biden doesn't feel pressured enough to truly change his ways and I don't know how guaranteeing your vote will add pressure. I'm not saying to vote for trump, I myself will be voting for biden, but I feel like we shouldn't telegraph guaranteed votes to biden and the democrats no matter what they do. That's just a recipe for them taking you for granted and letting them get away with whatever they want.
if biden is actually even better for Palestinians at all
You have GOT to be joking.
we shouldn't telegraph guaranteed votes to biden and the democrats no matter what they do
This part, I actually agree with. Ralph Nader did a great interview where he was expressing this huge level of frustration with Democratic voters and said more or less, I get the reality, but there is a way to wield your vote in order to get things that you want. You get together a coalition, and you credibly communicate to the person in the election that they can only get all of your votes if they do X, Y, and Z. That puts pressure on them and it can absolutely change policy.
To him, he was saying that he thinks it's criminally silly to just say "well Biden's better than Trump so he can count on my vote." Like I say, objecting to that makes sense to me. By the same token I think it's silly to say "well Biden's not good enough so he can count on not getting my vote even if Trump is 10 times worse". Both of those courses of action are passing up an opportunity to actually influence policy. But stuff like the uncommitted votes in Michigan I thought were a great idea.
I mean that coalition building takes work, and it maybe won't succeed, it's this huge operation where throwing around comments on Lemmy is pretty easy. But it will actually help, if you do it.
The balkanization of the left has been a thing since before the Balkans themselves.
Just because someone protests an active genocide doesn't mean they cannot also be upset about what else is wrong in the world.
Divisive cartoons like this, horse race politics, and the straw man argument of the single issue voter are all more dangerous than the youth finding their voice in political discussion.
It's largely orchestrated. Fascists push it because it weakens the left. Leninists/Salinists/Maoists push it because they see it as accelerationist. Which to them is a good thing, because their ideology isn't an improvement over capitalism. They know they can only convince others to adopt it by making things worse, not better. Much the same as capitalism and mercantilism does/did.
He is. Support for Israel is policy, not politics. It's not Biden supporting Israel... it's the entire US political establishment that does.
You might just as well ask Biden to stop the US from being imperialist - no member of the US political establishment would ever do that. Period.
This is why you see liberals everywhere heeding the clarion call to pre-emptively start looking for people to blame when Biden hands over to the GOP (the "bad cop") come November.
No I agree. The establishment is fucked. And If Biden were actually serious about beating Trump (because the stakes are rightfully so high), then he'd Buck the establishment.
Neoliberals would rather have a Dictator Trump than a Progressive Policy. Which is hilarious when the "progressive policy " is just a sign that says "no genocide".
Your "fixing" just changed the meaning entirely to ignore the hard truth you don't care about. And you pretend you're being altruistic, just to be extra disgusting I guess
I have probably one of the more controversial comments on this thread. I plan on voting for Biden, because harm reduction is the best I can realistically do in this federal election, and the other guy is very clearly worse. I encourage you to do the same just based on my own beliefs and opinions. I'm still openly critical of Biden because fuck sitting back and watching a genocide happen and saying "golly, at least he's not Trump". We can and should do better, and if team Biden doesn't like it, maybe they should stop supporting genocide.
I think the issue is the people stating they won’t vote or the ones wanting to let Trump win to “just tear things down.” We don’t have near the numbers or popular will to tear things down and we didn’t have it last time Trump tore things apart. The damage he did is still being felt across the government and people just don’t understand how slowly change happens. It took the right 50 years and billions of dollars to get us here. It’s not going to change with one president or one political event.
I read that before, prolly from one of the gradbears or something, on how they didn't mind Trump winning and going full authoritarian, because that was a chance to "hit the reset button". Now, even with my best will I can read that as 'revolution + new constitution' but I cannot imagine how these people think that shit is going to go down in the USA today.
Maybe I'm just not up to date on the memo, but where did the idea that criticism isn't allowed come from?
I can't think of any president that I haven't criticized. Obama pissed me off immediately forgetting about his promise to close Gitmo or stop warrantless surveillance.
I'm not seeing people saying not to criticize the administration.
What people are saying is holy fuck white supremacist Christian fascists are about to instill a monarch who will hurt many, many people if they can get away with it.
It's a pretty clear and understandable message, and its unprecedented nature over the last few centuries kind of does warrant the volume with which it is attempted to be conveyed to people who say things like "because I don't like what the administration is doing with issue x I might not vote or will vote 3rd party."
Not liking what the administration is saying and saying you don't like it is the very essence of the American experience. But throwing away your vote in this century's equivalent to the election in 1930s Germany is not just tone deaf but an active middle finger to every minority that's going to be persecuted under gold-plated Hitler, Palestinians included.
Personal experience on Lemmy and Mastodon. Even things as trivial as criticizing the Biden campaign's strategy for stuff like hiring high level HRC16 folks and taking their advice as anything more than a joke or their strategy of just telling people who are feeling economic strain that they're actually just confused because everything is great has earned me all kinds of ire and claims that I'm everything from a Russian troll to a Trump supporter. Really, it pains me to see the democrats sucking this hard; I see a lot of familiar themes from '16 developing and it's making me nervous, including how other left voters are giving me shit for having the gall to question the wisdom of the campaign.
If we're going to win, I think it's not going to be by repeating the HRC16 strat of hand waving all criticism with "But Trump! The election is too important!" It didn't work last time, and I don't think it will this time. Besides that, it's kind of disappointing to hear what effectively amounts to "I'd love to be critical of genocide, but the election is too important." I kinda get where they're coming from, but at this rate, there might not be anyone in Gaza left to save by the time November gets here. We'll just have to kick rocks and go "golly, hopefully the next genocide doesn't happen in an election year".
I'm genuinely curious, would you vote for Hitler as a form of harm reduction? Obviously the genocide he did was bad, but say he was running against someone else who was also planning on committing a genocide.
The Nazis put money into infrastructure development, education (granted in this context it was also indoctrination, but there was genuine education being done too), expansion of welfare; better access to healthcare, public works programs, public health policies (though again, muddied with ideas about "racial purity").
Imagine he was running against another pro-genocide antisemite, but who was against all the welfare/public spending mentioned above, and instead wanted to deregulate the economy, causing even more material harm than the Nazis.
Would you be telling people to go out and vote for Hitler as a form of harm reduction? Is there literally no line a person/party can cross that makes them not worthy of a vote; no line that makes the system illegitimate and participation in it/implicit endorsement problematic?
Look, what you're trying to to get at here is that by voting for one party, you're affirming support for their policies. Perhaps the best way to frame this is that this is a little like the trolley problem, in that I can choose to do nothing and let the trolley (the US political system, in this case) run over five people people (Trump stops any finger-wagging at Nettanyahu and probably encourages a similar attack on the West Bank, as well as starts rounding up and deporting anyone with any detectable melanin levels, as well as going all in on climate change on the side of CO2, as well as whatever the fuck else who knows), or I can become a participant and pull the lever to try to make the Trolley run over one person instead (Biden's half ass finger wagging at Nettanyahu). Is pulling the lever problematic? Yes. But I think not pulling the lever is objectively worse.
Agreed on the trolley scenario, but that's not exactly analogous. I'll try to make an analogy that extrapolates the principle of our current scenario to illustrate what I'm getting at.
Imagine there are 3 candidates, two major parties and a third party. Both candidates in the major parties want to nuke the planet to establish an American world government. Our guy wants to nuke 6 billion people, their guy wants to nuke 7 billion people. Polls show that the third party candidate has the same chance of winning as polls in the 2024 U.S election show. The third party candidate is against dropping nukes on the planet to establish a global America.
Do you vote for the one who wants to nuke 6 billion people as a form of harm reduction? Or is there some line that a candidate/party can cross that makes voting third party the best option, despite how unlikely they'll win?
I've voted third party before; it's a fairly meaningless gesture at best, letting the trolley run over five people while still holding the lever at worst. Imo, you're looking at the wrong thing here. In a FPTP election system, you're always going to end up with a two-party duopoly with voters constantly trying to play harm reduction. If you want to have a meaningful impact at the ballot box- to have our third party votes actually count for something, it requires addressing the voting system that creates these conditions. Ranked Choice Voting/ STV movements are growing in the US; I plan on joining the one in California, I suggest you do the same thing.
I understand your sentiment, but I'm curious if you'll actually commit to the principle you are espousing. Would you actually vote for a candidate that wants to bomb "only" 6 billion people over 7 billion, instead of "throwing away" your vote for someone who doesn't want to nuke the planet?
That's a hard thing to answer for me, because it turns into looping arguments about ethics vs game theory. In practical terms, I know that other voters will avoid choosing the third party candidate, so the obvious choice is then re-apply my selection filter to the one of the two likely candidates that kills fewer people. In pure ethical terms, the obvious choice is to vote for the candidate that wants to kill nobody and then spend the rest of my life standing on the side of a road in the nuclear wastes ranting about how other people are bastards. I've been on both sides. In the moment, I choose pragmatism.
But really, the best thing to do is to try and reform our election system. I actually just signed up with CARCV.org before I hopped on here. When I have more time, I'll look at what I need to do to volunteer instead of just signing a petition and joining a mailing list.
I came back to say that your assertion about a two party system never arriving at a "too extreme" position is 100% correct. That's why it needs to be done away with.
I strongly suspect that most of the people on the left are also carrying all the signs on the right
And that the person writing the cartoon is planning move on to targeting the next-least-acceptable sign from the pile on the right, as soon as the one on the left is dealt with. This thing of slicing off segments of dissenting opinion to shut them down one at a time, in separation from their natural cohort of supporting allies, by driving wedges in between them, is fairly normal "advanced fascism from people who know how to get it done on the ground" tactics.
Yeah. I guess I should have paid more attention to the title -- applying it to a "single issue voter" (or, non-voter, I guess) who really is throwing all the stuff on the right in the garbage, in the (incorrect) belief that they're helping the Palestinians, when in reality they're just threatening to make things worse for literally everybody, makes sense.
I just don't think that's most of the people in the tents or carrying the signs. If they had constructed the cartoon to attack all the people on Lemmy who don't want to vote because Biden personally killed all those Gazans and loves that the war is happening, or whatever they are claiming is happening, then that makes sense. But attacking the protestors themselves seems wrong.
Yeah I think OP the artist is doing kind of a visual strawman here, as also mentioned by this person.
I don’t see evidence at all that any significant number of pro-Palestine individuals are single issue voters. Someone made a claim that 3% of democratic voters were single issue, but upon inquiry it turned out to be without source, and that the true number is less than 2% of all voters at the very absolute most.
As of now, I need more evidence to disprove my belief that this post is just an outrageously patronizing false generalization of the pro-Palestine movement.
If Dems we're gonna give you those things, they'd have done when they had all three branches. I vote no for genocide. If some bullshit party fails to meet that, no fucking way can come back and say "yeah but, look at all these failed promises!" Fucking repulsive.
I rewrote my original response and this one is much more tame.
If you don’t vote for Biden, in our system, you are tacitly supporting Trump. You’re a fool if you think that Trump will do better, by any measure. Please don’t be stupid.
The only thing I’ll add is that like 3 of those signs are controlled by the Supreme Court. Which became crazy specifically because people didn’t listen to everyone who said Donald Trump would be the worst president this country has ever had and would flip everything for himself. There’s no way outside of enlarging the Supreme Court, forcing them to put term limits on themselves, and potentially calling a new constitutional congress that could change those things. Having democrats in control of the three branches means nothing if it only happens for 2 years every 78 moon cycles and only when 5/8 planets are in alignment while 3 exists in off-axis parallel (or some weird astrology bullshit).
Having Democrats in control of the entire government means nothing when they are too concerned about being fair and playing nicely with Republicans to move their agenda forward.
If the other guy being a fascist running on a platform of doing fascism isn't enough for you to snap into line, you're a fascist trying to feel moral about being a fascist.
Trump is denying the existence of the 13th and 19th amendments now and you're actually still on about how politicians should have to "earn your vote?"
Tell me you're white without telling me you're white.
Tell me you’re white without telling me you’re white.
You know that upholding and extending this system that props up white supremacy and imperialism hurts POC around the world, right? If you're willing to tacitly support a genocide because you can't imagine doing anything other than fill in a bubble at the voting booth, those amendments are already as good as gone. If those amendments are essentially voided, do you plan on just standing by to let it happen? The shitty people who want power know you're willing to sign off on heinous things if the alternative is worse. The marginalized will continue to fight, die, and become martyrs in history book while people like you would rather act out of fear (justified or not) and let the marginalized fight the same deadly status quo that keeps you comfortable and keeps them threatened.
Tell me you're white without telling me you're white.
See also the part where you compared being able to make a comparative harm judgement to "the right to not be owned by another person and the right to vote while woman might as well not exist anymore!"
Oh, so you didn't catch that I was comparing your justified terror with republicans' unjustified terror and how easily you can both be convinced to do terrible things.
patronizing is exactly the right word holy shit :(
i am not a single issue voter and i’m highly critical of those telling me to utterly ditch the blue vote. but i am very uncomfortable with this portrayal of the pro-Palestine movement and i hope you, the reader, are too
the artist of this should feel some level of shame i think
You're reading too much into it. The cartoon isn't about those who support Palestine. It's about those who make it their only issue. Ending up only hurting themselves and everyone else.
Under a cartoon representation of a quite standard-looking Palestine supporting protester.
“The cartoon isn’t about those who support Palestine.”
What textual or external evidence do you have for this? Genuinely what could I be missing here lmao? Open to correction but this sounds like you are gaslighting urself?
Edit to be very specific: The comic depicts what might be called a “generic” protester. And then puts words in their mouth that are not often heard: “I’m busy.” Not a popular slogan or anything.
There’s one protester, one speech bubble. That’s 100% of the protesters on the page, where the uncommon speech is inserted into the generic. Hence my interperetation that the artist is representing all pro-Palestine protesters here as single issue obstructionist bad actors, which is an obvious non-truth
It's a political cartoon. They're visual generally not textual. So there's at least your first problem of many. Though I think your problems are all of your own design. That you think that represents all Palestinian supporters says more about you than it does about Palestinian supporters.
But let's analyze your own claims using your own required proofs. Where does the textually say anything you've implied?
Hi there, just wanted to mention that visual texts are quite prevalent in rhetorical media (e: of which political cartoons are very much a part despite your strange assertion.) Thank you for considering this perspective. I would appreciate it if you could provide evidence from the visual text or another source to support any alternative interpretations.
An example of my perception: in a political cartoon, a white guy wearing a red MAGA hat might be perceived as representing Trump supporters. There would need to be considerable evidence for me to believe that such a symbol represented a specific subset of that group, of such a kind at least that I do not see here.
I may not engage in further answers to your questions until I receive a response addressing the evidence provided. Thank you for understanding, and I value your perspective.
Edit: I do see that you blocked me. So, that’s excellent :/
Your link has nothing to do with political cartoons. Could you be any more smarmy disingenuous or obvious. You can't even defend what you said. Nor can you admit it. Worse you resort to lemmygrad posting and making shit up. Proving that you're not engaging in good faith. The least you could do is make my name bigger on that image so people would know to laugh and ridicule you quicker.
Single-issue voters are one of the biggest challenges to a functioning democracy. Planks and balance provide depth; a willingness to compromise and work to the greater good.
But that's gone now, isn't it. And when a Palestinian advocate candidate is running for president, who supports pro-choice, affordable housing, and every other liberal plank except they object to green-colored libraries, then fuck them because I have to have my green-painted libraries!
Personally I would guess that the >50% of eligible voters who don’t vote, largely due to systemic disenfranchisement, are a bigger issue.
Another systemic issue is FPTP.
I find any solution to “fix” democracy that attacks/criticizes the individual voter to be barely valid. The solution to a systemic problem is always going to be systemic in my experience.
*Disclaimer: Not well-researched in the field, simply applying my knowledge from other areas to this. I welcome corrections.
I knew what was going to catch an eye. We're taking about single issue voters - would it have been better to compare 2A to genocide? Or anti-choice? Because those are real single choice issues that even better epitomize the issue, and neither is nearly as horrible as what's going on in Gaza; Palestine is just the most recent iteration.
And in this case, the single issue voters are making an insane decision, because he's actively goading Israel on. If you think Biden's weak-sauce response is bad, wait until Trump is in office: he will shift all military and financial support from Ukraine to Israel.
Netanyahu is ignoring Biden not just because Biden isn't taking any substantive action ("strongly-worded letters!"), but because he's knows Biden has every chance to lose to Trump and then he can start building the gas chambers.
People sitting this one out over Palestine are clueless dumb fucks. I hate Biden's continued support of Israel in this - although I understand it as political expediency - but Trump is undeniably a worse option for Palestinians.
Its very telling that you're comparing the Palestinian genocide with painted libraries as if everyone else but you is mindless and can't tell the difference between compromising on something completely serious and harmful to people versus something that's nonsense or less of a priority.
If the other guy being a fascist running on a platform of doing fascism isn't enough for you to snap into line, you're a fascist trying to feel moral about being a fascist.
Trump is denying the existence of the 13th and 19th amendments now and you're actually still on about how politicians should have to "earn your vote?"
Tell me you're white without telling me you're white.
If the other guy being a fascist running on a platform of doing fascism isn’t enough for you to snap into line, you’re a fascist trying to feel moral about being a fascist.
No no, you don't get it, if we let fascism win this time, everything will be better NEXT time!
What’s the worst that will happen? The nation burns in the fires of civil war and millions of Americans die? I don’t see the downside, with all the shit we put the world through, we deserve a good culling.
Terrorist is the language of the oppressor. It’s a meaningless term used by the state and corporate media to generate outrage among the masses. It greatly honors me that you would give me the title that every activist in history has received at some point.
I’m Mexican, not white. As for who gets culled first, probably the people without guns, so that would be Democrats and liberals in general. Leftists are well-armed enough to put up a good fight. Which after being shoved to the side and told to shut up my whole life by you guys, it would very much not be my problem when you come running to us.
What about Republicans denting women healthcare, trying to overturn an election, pandering to an authoritarian who is currently facing a whole stack of felonies he most likely committed based on his bragging about them, and dtoking public anger by encouraginng violence?
Maybe we just want to avoid having the nation state start exterminating anyone who doesn't agree with a fascist MAGA government.
I’m with you in that trump is bad, and I will do what is needed when it comes time to vote to make sure he is not president again. BUT all that you listed is still not worse than the genocide of over 35,000people. All Biden needs to do is stop spending our tax dollars in support of this ethnic cleansing
What?! I know the US healthcare system is totally fucked and no potential president running this year is going to fix it, but when did the healthcare system start using 2,000 pound bombs and begin ethnically cleansing?
It says a lot about your character and what you actually value that you think the way Trump would allow Israel to treat Palestinians is preferable to what Biden is doing.
So brave, unlike the rest of us. Because yes my point was I'd love to choose genocide. Not that they both are horrific violations of human rights or anything like that.
I think that drawing back support for Israel is far more complicated than you folks realize.
But maybe you all have political science degrees and just don't feel like explaining your reasoning? I just know enough to know that is a sticky situation and isn't just as easy as canceling a Netflix subscription or something like many seem to think it is
If Ronald fucking Reagan was able to figure out how to withhold aid to Israel to get them to withdraw from Beirut and Lebanon, I'm sure Biden can. Reagan also allowed 21 UN resolutions against Israel. How utterly embarrassing it must be to be worse than Reagan on anything. I guess all they have to do is say "it's a complicated issue" ad nauseam until you actually believe nothing can be done about actively arming a genocide.
There's a difference in saying "it probably is more complicated than you realize" and "just shut up and accept genocide" but thanks for turning the conversation into this
Sorry I'm not going to "but he's just a widdle guy and it's complicated" when Biden sent over another $1 Billion in arms to Israel today. If trump was funding this genocide right now, you'd be acting differently.
Probably because trump would be wholeheartedly fueling the fucking fire. You know, like what's going to end up happening if people fuck around leading up to this November
The whole point of this imperialist project is to take something valuable from someone else. Why the hell would trump nuke the valuable waterfront property which Jared Kushner (and honestly probably trump himself) wants to buy as well as negatively impact the entire region for the rest of human life on earth? Do you have to escalate to near impossibilities to seem worse than what biden is currently doing? Half a million Palestinians are starving due to manufactured famine and you’d want that trajectory to continue because in a future they won’t be alive for, you would speculate they have it worse. Do you honestly care about their lives or are you using them for political leverage for your own sake?
If you don’t want the threat of another trump presidency, it’s time for you to start joining others to urge biden to reverse course, because you won’t be able to convince me that supporting genocide is a single issue that can be overlooked.
We both know trump will make it worse, and you're advocating for trump whether accidentally or not. It gets harder and harder to buy that people don't understand the two party system, i just have to assume you don't care about actual consequences, only feeling superior. Which your last question hints at.
Do I feel superior to someone who thinks genocide isn’t a non-negotiable? Sure. But the issue here is that biden would rather lose to trump than change course and do the right (and also popular) thing. He might take down the entire Democratic Party with him as well, and then we’re stuck with a single party with trump at the head. Biden’s team knows how unpopular this all is. And with the general theme of elections being “republicans fall in line, democrats fall in love”, biden having a lower approval rating than trump is such a wild warning sign. If Biden loses, the blame will be his own.
You could oppose funding this war but also remain clear that you understand the fact that Trump would be FAR worse.
But you did not choose that. You chose to completely avoid talking about that primary fact in this conversation. You've chosen to pretend all that matters is sending a message.
So what you've created is a situation where you're morally indefensible while claiming the opposite. Your actions will lead to exponentially more human suffering if enough people join you in this misguided asinine Russia-funded propaganda campaign.
So yeah you have no grounds to feel superior. You're the worst: a person who doesn't care about who they hurt, but cares deeply about their own feelings. And you're looking down your nose at people who can see basic cause and effect as though they're scum
What leverage do you hope to impart on democratic leadership if you say “okay okay fine, do a genocide as long as trump isn’t president! I’ll vote for you!” If they know they have your vote, why would they change course?
I have so much more to lose should trump become president than biden. Of course I would be better off if biden was president since I’m queer in a ruby red state. But my comfort and safety isn’t remotely comparable to genocide. If all this is on the line- if trump brings about unfathomable human suffering, if the fate of the country and the entire world is at stake, why isn’t Biden trying harder to win? Why is he doubling and tripling down on this extremely unpopular move?
You might think that it’s propaganda fueled, and you’re right, but I don’t think you’re seeing the entire picture. Of course propagandists will try to inflame existing issues (though I’d argue that genocide in itself is an issue worthy of ire). But if a propagandist decided to deride and chastise those who are against genocide, that is more likely to cause those people to stay home since “it’s essentially giving a vote to trump”. But if they vote for Cornell west or Claudia de la Cruz, they will still likely vote for progressives or even democrats down the ballot. Leftists staying home due to negative discourse around protests and anger against Biden’s actions will cement Republican control not only federally, but locally as well. Both of us likely have an army of propagandists fighting on our sides, so it’d be best to keep that in mind when in these discussions. Biden is likely to lose since this democracy isn’t strong enough to keep trump off the ballot while biden is not trying hard enough to win, but the degree of his loss is what’s to be determined.
The primary fact in this discussion isn’t that trump would be worse- of course he would be. The primary fact is that continuing down this road where one party is always a bit more fascist and huge groups of democrats are now ratcheted so far to the right, they’re being stripped of a moral code and being too afraid to fight injustices that are signed off by their hands, it WILL eventually give us fascism in our lifetime whether it is trump or someone else.
okay then why don't you tell me why "there are multiple genocides happening while biden is president" is a relevant point to bring up in context that helps your case
Minnesota's group is approaching this a smart way, from the local up. They're not spending much time in the high-profile positions; they're tackling local elections. Gets people used to the idea, and they stack higher and higher positions as they're going. It'll take time, but starting at the top and working down is a lot harder.
Same, local approach. There's a specific local city we're targeting the city council etc as well as spreading awareness to the locals that this is even an option. Your average person doesn't know it exists!
Except where it's been implemented. We have had several successes at the local level in Minnesota; we're a long way from the governor, but it's always moving forward, with a win every year and - so far - no screw-ups causing a regression.
Totally irrelevant for this presidential election. Also I'd argue for presidential elections the electoral college needs to go first. The increasing number of presidents being elected with a minority vote is seriously concerning.
I'll preface this by saying that near any voting system, ranked choice voting included, is better than FPTP. That being said, ranked choice voting does have some issues. Some that, arguably, can make it almost as bad as FPTP. To be more specific for this argument, I'll focus on the IRV type. The main negative aspects of this voting system, imo, are that it doesn't satisfy the monotonicity and Condorcet criterions. Regarding this topic, I highly recommend reading this article. It is very well written, and very informative.
The one issue with this way of thinking is that since changing such a fundamental system is typically (and, imo, understandably) quite difficult, one doesn't want to squander the opportunity with an arbitrary decision (I'm not accusing you of making an arbitrary decision, I'm just stating generally), as having another chance is unlikely. Furthermore, experimentation on a mass scale, i.e. country-wide, is generally not a wise idea. One should be firm in their convictions for the decision that they choose to support. It's possible to cause considerable damage within the edge cases.
You’re right, best deliberate about which one is best instead.
Aha, well, up to a point. Certainly worse to be stuck deliberating while society rots away under FPTP. There is certainly truth to your original point of not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Experimentation? New Zealand, Ireland and Australia already stage elections using forms of RCV.
Interesting. I wonder how prevalent the issues were that I mentioned earlier. I also wonder what type of ranked ballot they use. I'll have to look into this more. Would you have any good sources for studies looking at the outcomes of them using that voting system?
