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Objection

@Objection@lemmy.ml

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

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"I condemn the antisemitic protests,” is literally a direct quote lmao.

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To be honest, I already wasn't voting for Biden because of his record of mass incarceration, support for the Iraq War, and ghoulish complicity in every major problem the country is facing today. The fact that he's fully and unwaveringly supporting Israel's genocide is entirely on brand and just makes the decision even easier than before. Four years ago, those concerns were the ones liberals were saying you had to hold your nose and look past, now they're not even on the radar anymore and it's moved on to significantly worse things. It's a perfect example of how the democrats move discourse to the right.

The US political system is truly vile in how it effectively brainwashes people into supporting genocide. Even in this thread you can see people defending Israel and saying it's "necessary" for the US to support them, not even sticking to their lesser evilist line but just openly saying it's a good thing for Biden to support them. Once people choose a camp they just end up knee-jerk defending their decision and adopting positions of their candidate to simplify their cognitive dissonance. In some ways, it's worse than a straight up autocracy because of how it manipulates people while still not allowing people any meaningful voice.

Of course the lapdogs of the empire are more than happy to not only adjust their own beliefs into whatever the elites want, but to then browbeat anyone trying to stand against it. Because to them, the positions of our rulers are completely immutable while the moral convictions of voters are up for debate.

What liberals like OP will never understand is that no matter how real the threat of violence towards me is, it will never be enough to convince me to endorse genocide. At least I can go to my grave with a clean conscience, and that's not worth much but it's worth a hell of a lot more than anything Biden would do for me.

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Lmao is that context supposed to change the meaning of the quote somehow? How?

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If not doing anything for someone counts as assistance, then rest assured that Biden will have my assistance.

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Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you with that boot so far down your throat.

I think what you just said is something along the lines of, our ruler, who is actively arming and supporting a genocide that he has the power to stop, is completely blameless, while I, having no power and doing nothing with it, am somehow responsible for the genocide. That the gist of it?

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So then you agree that the fault lies with Biden and not me, cool cool.

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I'm simply obeying what my conscience dictates and I've already accepted all that could entail. No matter what happens, I won't feel guilty about my decision to not support genocide. I hope someday you too can recognize that supporting genocide is wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

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I wonder, am I also enabling, say, cancer? Nothing I’ve done has in any way caused anyone to get cancer, I also don’t have any ability to cure cancer, however, neither of those things seem to have any bearing over my complicity, in your fascinating worldview where simply existing is “enabling” every bad thing to happen.

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The U.S. has been sending money and weapons to Israel for decades.

Yeah, the real problem isn't Biden, it's people who have been in government for decades unwaveringly supporting Israel, like that one senator who said, "If Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region." I forget his name rn but whoever it was, that's the sort of guy who's really responsible for all this.

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This but unironically.

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The problem with the trolley problem is that it makes simplifying assumptions that don't always track to real world situations. For instance, in the trolley problem, what's happening is purely mechanical, whereas with an election, you're empowering an actual person who is able to choose whether or not to kill the people in danger. It's also not a one-off decision, there will be future elections and people will look back at this one to determine what strategies work or don't work, what is and isn't a deal breaker. Furthermore, it's not an individual person making the decision on whether to pull the lever, and many people live in safe states where their vote has no real influence on the outcome. Lastly, the people running are the ones who set up the trolley problem and are ensuring it will keep happening again and again, indefinitely, by opposing any sort of election reform.

So if you want a hypothetical, it's more like: two mad scientists have, together, put you in a cage. Each one has a laser, each of which is powered by one of two hand cranks placed inside your cage. One of them says they want to kill one person with their laser, the other wants to kill five. They both tell you they need their laser to be more powerful to stop the other (while also frequently cooperating). You can choose to power either laser, or you can sit there and do nothing, or you can desperately try to break the cage.

Philosophical thought experiments tell us very little about the real world because they are so reductive, the real world is messy and not so clear cut.

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You can make whatever accusations you like, but it's meaningless if you don't have evidence

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Johnathan Chait is one of those people who postures himself as a centrist lib but manages to come up with the worst, most brain-melting galaxy brained takes that he'd be less annoying if he just admitted he was a chud. He's a vocal critic of "political correctness," wrote an article in 2016 titled, "Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination," once claimed that kids were unironically identifying as attack helicopters, and when he got called out for it on Twitter he doubled down and said it didn't matter if it was true, just if it would be bad if it were true (which was especially funny because it happened hours after The Onion put out a story calling out that exact behavior) and lastly, he once fell for BOFA. He's an absolute joke, a loser, a bigot, and a professional clown pretending to be a journalist.

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What's the point of putting yourself at risk for no tangible benefit?

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Is the possibility of winning you over worth removing someone who is already actively involved? Are you more likely to join a protest if the risks and consequences you face are higher? What about all the people who have already been arrested for protesting recently - has that motivated you to get out and join them?

The fact is that tons of people, especially in the US, love to sit on the sidelines critiquing every protest for whatever arbitrary reason and will insist that they'd be won over if only they did something differently. But then, if they do things differently, they'll just find another reason to complain, because that's all they actually care to do.

I've never understood this prevailing viewpoint you expressed that protests are meant to get more people to join a cause. The point of a protest is to assert disruptive force and to threaten to assert further force. If you see a group of people gathered together doing stuff and happen to think it's cool for whatever reason, cool, sure, whatever. But it's not about you. Protests are not candidates that you decide whether to vote for or not. The point is to communicate to those in power, "We have to capability to get this many people out and organized, and we are going to be a pain in your ass until you give into our demands."

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Are you a Maoist?

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Even if that's true, isn't it better for countries in the global South to have multiple options instead of being forced to accept whatever conditions are imposed on them by the IMF?

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If the majority of Vietnamese didn't want communism, why didn't the anti-communists win even without the US's help? Your narrative is nonsense.

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So you're a Maoist?

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Why on earth would they move left if there's no risk of losing? They want to enact right wing policies because that's what their donors pay them to do.

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You win elections from the center.

That's absolute nonsense. The number of people who are politically engaged swing voters is very marginal. Meanwhile, a full third of the country doesn't vote. You win elections through turnout, and you get turnout by supporting popular policies that actually benefit people.

Alternatively, you can win elections through money, if you can convince the rich that you'll govern in their interests, against the interests of the poor.

The democrats, broadly speaking, prefer to win through the latter method because they get more money that way, but that doesn't make it the most effective method. They just have a loud enough signal to convince people it's the only method.

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Why on earth would you bring up Clinton to support your argument? She did exactly what you described and somehow managed to lose what should've been an extremely easy election. Biden managed to win by a very narrow margin in another extremely easy matchup. Not included in your data set are any candidates who ran more to the left, such as Obama (though he governed far to the right of how he ran).

There's so many more disengaged voters than swing voters that it doesn't matter if swing voters are worth more. Besides, swing voters don't just vote according to a rational policy calculus of centrism. A lot of it is vibes or superficial nonsense.

The dems are not going to magically move left, against their donors interests and the interests they've repeatedly demonstrated they hold, just because they win. Especially if that win comes through unconditional support from the left. They are not your friends, and they don't share your interests. They're careerists pursuing their own advancement.

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In what way?

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Sure, there could be some specific cases where they're correct. But if you can't say anything about elections unless it's generalizable to all circumstances, then you can't say anything about elections at all. I'm speaking generally.

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Hillary Clinton thank you for bringing that up. What do you think the window would be if Hillary Clinton won? Easy, it would be further left. You’re making my case for me.

Instead Trump won and guess what happened to the Overton window? It went off the cliff to the right. And it’s still there because he won and could win again. You’re making this too easy.

It is, in fact, very easy to have a conversation when you're only having it with yourself.

If you agreed with everything I said, do you think that would make you more correct or less correct? That's right, more correct. Therefore I'm right. You're making my case for me, this is too easy, blah blah blah.

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Weird that I wouldn't make sense to you considering I just did the exact same thing you did.

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When did they stop being nuts and what happened to cause it?

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So nothing changed institutionally, and the people now still have the power to do all the stuff the older generation did, and choose not to because they just happen to be better people?

I'm guessing this supposed change happened right around the time when documents would be too recent to be declassified, yeah?

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Are they subject to more scrutiny? What oversight do they have now that they didn't have then? What protections do whistleblowers have when they come out? What consequences do they face if illegal activities are exposed?

Not all of their shady activity was "loud and crazy." The CIA covered up their involvement in Operation Ajax, the 1953 coup against Iran's peaceful and democratic government, until 2013. There are countless examples like that.

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It's impossible to prove because the CIA has the means to cover it's tracks, but there are circumstantial reasons to think that's what happened. At the most basic level:

  • CIA directer and founder Allen Dulles, who's job involved assassinating world leaders around the world, had a major dispute with Kennedy not long before the assassination, which led to Dulles getting fired.
  • Despite the conflict of interests, Dulles was on the investigative committee into Kennedy's assassination.
  • Said investigation involved all kinds of "mistakes," including breaches in the chain of custody of key evidence (the bullet).

The intelligence community had both means and motive to commit the assassination, and the ability to cover their tracks. That's not enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, but it is enough to establish a reasonable possibility, especially considering the absence of serious, compelling evidence.

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Theoretically, sure it's falsifiable. Practically speaking, not really. Intelligence communities, not just of the US but also of any country, objectively have more capability to hide the truth than an average citizen has to expose it, especially when they have decades to have covered it up.

If I write a word on a piece of paper and then burn the paper, then I would have a belief about what was written on it, but that belief would not be practically falsifiable because no evidence exists to prove what was on it. Science cannot reconstruct everything that has ever happened everywhere.

The reason falsifiability is a standard in science is because science is concerned with making accurate predictions about the future. My broader theory is that the intelligence community was acting and continues to act according to it's own agenda, wielding significant power that isn't adequately checked by the civilian government. That's definitely falsifiable. I predict that first off, no president will act against the interests in a significant, meaningful way, and if they did, they would die, and high ranking members of the intelligence community would be placed on the investigative committee and find themselves innocent. If that didn't play out that way, it wouldn't definitively prove that that didn't happen with Kennedy because circumstances could have changed, but it would make it much less plausible (strict falsifiability isn't really how science generally operates, theories just become less likely until they're not worth considering).

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Any "military aged male" killed by a drone strike is counted as an "enemy combatant," even when there's not a shred of evidence.

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"Personal responsibility" is a hell of a way to describe giving yourself the power to kill indiscriminately with no oversight or consequences.

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That's not an improvement.

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Those are some crazy leaps of reasoning. The president isn't inherently "divorced" from anything and boots on the ground are not always the sole alternative as there's also the option of doing neither.

I guess I'm just curious if you think the executives of other countries should also have the power to kill indiscriminately with no consequences or oversight. Would you be applying the same line of reasoning if we were talking about, say, Putin?

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He’s not getting shot at lol of course he’s more Impartial.

Drone operators aren't getting shot at. Drone operator supervisors definitely aren't getting shot at.

US politicians would commit career suicide if they suggested no drone use, because it would mean soldiers get shot.

If the option you want picked is neither drones or boots, how do you suggest the USA divest themselves from wars in foreign countries? If the first black president came out as a pacifist they would have to level every single grassy knoll in the country.

Well, if we agree that the US government is inherently militaristic and that elected officials are powerless against the intelligence community who would murder them if they stepped out of line, then maybe we're more on the same page than I thought. Though it sounds like you're saying Obama was just a figurehead so I still wouldn't say he "took personal responsibility."

It should be noted, however, that there are other options between, "Giving the executive unlimited unconstrained authority to kill anyone they want" and "Not doing any drone strikes ever." I believe it is possible for war criminals to be held accountable for murdering civilians. I believe it is possible to have a system in which one person doesn't have supreme authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

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Whataboutism

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Whataboutism.

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So if two candidates are in direct competition, it's fair to respond to criticism of one by bringing up problems with the other.

Does this logic also hold if you replace the word "candidate" with "country?"

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The only things liberals know how to do are using whataboutism to deflect all criticism of the Democrats by talking about the Republicans, and doing genocide apologia.

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Much of the English speaking world uses liberal to mean its formal definition, for example, the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK.

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Weird, I'm just seeing a bunch of NSA bots.

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What exactly is your plan for changing first past the post?

You could make the case that if the democrats actually supported that, it's worth holding your nose and voting for them in order to open up other options in the future. But they don't support it, because they benefit from it. So basically you're asking the left to keep voting for the democrats unconditionally forever while they don't address any of our concerns and refuse to make any sort of reforms that might allow us to have a voice in the future. How is that a viable path to accomplishing anything?

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If someone gives a sandwich to me and a gun to a person actively trying to murder me, they are not "pro-me"

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I'm going to give you a serious answer even though it's obvious you know nothing about us and don't care to learn.

Accellerationism is stupid and reactionary, and from my perspective Biden seems to be doing a fine job of doing that as it is. Trump is a symptom produced from the policies Biden has spent his entire career enacting. There will be plenty more candidates like Trump, because the material conditions that produced him still exist, and Biden is perpetuating and worsening those conditions.

The US is in decline and that's not going to change regardless of who wins this election. What I'd most prefer is to refocus our efforts domestically in order to address some of the many different crises that the country is experiencing. If we did this, it's likely that China would eventually eclipse the US due to it's manufacturing capacity, but the lives of everyday people would be improved and the country would become more stable and healthy. Whether the decline could be reversed, I don't know, but it would at least be a gradual, peaceful decline.

But that's never going to happen, even a little bit. Instead, our leaders are intent on getting involved in conflicts all over the world while ignoring all the problems at home and allowing things to get worse and worse. The geopolitical interests of the US government are completely disconnected from the interests of the American people.

The US doesn't need to collapse for China to grow. China's strategy for many years has been a policy of peaceful coexistence with capitalist states while it focuses on economic development. And that strategy is proving successful. The only concern is what the US is going to do once it becomes eclipsed as global hegemon, and the concerning thing is that while China manufactures more than the next 10 countries combined, the US spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined. The possibility that the US could start WWIII in an attempt to maintain hegemony by pressing the area where it has an advantage is deeply concerning.

Even if you believe, as you probably do, that Xi Jinping is paying me to run around some niche corner of the internet pretending to be Phoenix Wright - why would China actually want to destabilize the US? They're already winning the peace.

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Well, no one can say I didn't try. If that's the kind of engagement you want,

ahem

objection

phoenix-objection-1phoenix-objection-2 In a court of law, evidence is the only thing that matters! Your baseless accusations are... completely meaningless!

Objection ,
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You have no substantial thoughts

objection

There is a contradiction in this testimony! You literally just called my previous comment a "dissertation" and refused to read it! So it's impossible for you to know if my thoughts are substantive or not!

The defense would like to submit a piece of evidence: this tweet!

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/9500ab84-677f-4792-9ce2-1ad33c8c76b1.jpeg

This doesn't actually prove anything, I just think it's funny!

Objection ,
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You sure showed them! They thought you were being homophobic, when in fact, you were being sexist! Owned!

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