this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Biden does not share my view that genocide is bad. If you want to vote for genocide guy because orange man bad, you are devoid of morals. You are a spineless worm, deserving only scorn and derision.
You somehow think "orange man" would be less into genocide? Genuinely? How???
Obviously Trump won't be any better than Biden, but if Biden wants people to vote for him rather than sit home and vote for nobody, he should consider not doing genocide. You know, an elected politician trying to represent their voters? The thing democracies are nominally for?
The choices as they stand right now are:
This sucks.
Oh, I fully acknowledge this sucks. Juuust as frustrated as anybody, friend.
You're the one arguing in favor of continuing to bail water out of a sinking ship like Dems have exploitatively argued for decades. This is your status quo, this is what lesser evils of the past have won you.
Disowning the present circumstances requires disowning every single application of your horseshit political perspective for about 50 years. Under neoliberalism, there have only been two Dem strategies: Republican-lite (e.g. Clinton), or lie about not being Republican-lite (e.g. Obama), and you've won about half the time and gotten us your "lesser evil" administrations, "crisis" after "crisis", and all those "lesser evils" have accomplished nothing but serving up new situations to keep choosing between Republican and Republican-lite.
If you want anything other than a farcical good cop/bad cop routine carried on until the country implodes, your strategy has thoroughly failed, repeatedly, for decades.
You have two options: live in madness and keep trying the same thing over and over again in denial of it having the same result, or accept that the "moderate" path is opposed to you ever getting an improvement, instead of the first step towards it.
Thank you, this bears repeating. Voting for the lesser evil has consequences. These are them. The consequences are here. Blaming those of us who won't vote for genocide is like blaming the people who don't give a homeless beggar $20. Sure, that money could help the guy get a meal today, but he's in that situation due to decades of neoliberal policy. It's ridiculous to heap the culpability for all of that on the skinflint today.
The historical pattern is that pendulum swings and the party in the White House changes after each President. So, there's a good chance of that implosion coming in 2028.
Quick correction:
~~Edit: nice kneejerk downvote. Should've known not to get actual discourse from a hexbear account~~
2 and 3 are the same
FTFY
Yeah it's never worth engaging, they won't ever argue in good faith. They're paid to spread propaganda.
Hexbears don't have the ability to downvote, those are from other lemmy instances.
Really? Huh, TIL. I just assumed it was the person I responded to since it came soon after I posted, but I guess that was presumptuous of me.
Genocide is a deal breaker. Unless democrats create an arms embargo on Israel, zero chance I vote for them
It's a really lazy reduction, too. Biden doesn't spend his days just looking for ways to support genocide. Even if Trump and Biden are "essentially the same" with regard to genocide (they're not), you can treat that as a logically moot issue. Therefore, you have to look at their other points, and in no way is Trump a better option than Biden in that regard, unless you're personally getting kickbacks from the Trump grift mill.
There's what Biden is actually doing vs what people think Trump will do. You think Trump will worsen the genocide - but what does that mean, materially? Biden is already sending Israel all the weapons they want and giving them all the air cover they need politically. What more could Trump do?
Send troops. Enact a draft to that end to "make the libz cry." Send more weapons.
But you're agreeing with my point. If Trump and Biden are essentially the same on this issue, you have to compare the other things about them, and they are not even close to the same on other issues (LGBTQ rights, unions, women's rights, taxes for the rich, etc.). If "supports genocide" is the single issue for you, then you live an immensely privileged life that you don't have to worry about other aspects of governance.
And no matter what you think, thanks to FPTP, those are your two options, because you can't build the momentum needed to upset the upcoming election; you're years too late. Abstention is a vote for the person you like less, so you are left with voting for Biden or Trump, whether you like it or not.
Voting is not a valentine, it's a chess move.
Oh sure let's talk about LGBTQ rights and Women's rights shall we. Under which president was Roe v. Wade struck down? Under which president have abortion bans in many states popped up with complete inaction from the federal government? Under which president have anti-trans laws popped up with complete inaction from the federal government?
My expectations of Trump is we will have a buffoonish worsening of the current conditions of the world. Under Biden we will have a cynical worsening of current conditions. Am I priveleged? Yes, I live in the imperial core. I live in a blue state. I have a stable job. But don't think for a second that I can't see what's happening around me.
This one.
And who put the Federalist Society justices in place who struck it down? Oh, that's right. Donald fucking Trump.
This one.
What powers do you think they have? Laws are struck down by the judiciary, which we've already established has been captured, thanks to Trump.
Here's a question for you: who has been enacting those laws? What is the nature of the legislature in those cases?
None of your gripes here are Biden's fault, unless you're wishing he'd be more authoritarian (fuck that). Trump is 100% to blame for the current state of the law, and helping him get reelected isn't going to help LGBTQ people or women's rights.
Trump is not to blame for the state of the law. The Democrats have had many chances over the years to protect the rights that the Republicans have said out loud, for decades, that they will remove. Time and time again they did not prioritize it. Biden was a senator and then vice president and then president during these opportunities.
Yes they are absolutely his fault. He has been deeply involved in the highest levels of government for decades.
You don't think throwing teenage girls in prison for getting an abortion after being raped is authortarian? How privileged to be able to say that freedoms should be fought for based on your personal opinion of the right way of doing it.
I don't think we share a common view of reality. You seem to be under the impression that State laws are Biden's fault, and his inability to prevent them is also his fault. I don't share that opinion, as I don't see the facts leading to that conclusion.
I think it's not worth continuing this conversation. Have a good day. See you at the polls.
You won't see me at the polls and you can mald over it.
Your ideology calls it authoritarian to not give free-reign to unelected judges with lifetime appointments. You're a joke.
abstention is, quite literally, not a vote for the person you like less.
You are really out of touch. Trump loves imperial domineering, but he generally prefers to avoid boots on the ground because they represent a liability to his image. He will not send volunteers and he knows as well as anyone that it'd be suicide to enact a draft.
Biden does this.
This is where we disagree. I can not use moral relativism when a party engages in genocide. Further, i don't agree that voting for Biden is, as many pro Biden folk argue, a repudiation of Trump.
A vote for Biden (or any representative for that matter), to me, is an implicit acknowlegement i agree with his leadership. An approval and statement that he represents my beliefs and shares, a little, my values.
There is no such thing, in my mind, as negative voting (voting against a candidate). This is not how it works, not how i will not be coerced into thinking it works.
A vote for a representative is a positive action. I will not play a game of "what if the boogeyman tho!?" with a party shown time and again to be against my best interest, to ignore my very life in favor of the pocketbooks of donors...
Now, they ask me to help them stop the boogeyman as they simultaneously stand aside while he strips my right to protest, my right to privacy, rip families apart, refuse my brothers and sisters right to live, and kill tens of thousands.
Voting as you imagine it is nothing but reductive. Worse, venal. Finally, to consider genocide as "logically moot" is not logical. It's fucking gross, and i feel absolutely sorry for you that you've come to this conclusion.
I can only hope you put more thought into this immediately
It's only logically moot specifically because there's only two options. Refusal to participate doesn't change the fact that it will either be Biden or it will be Trump in the Oval Office next year. Choosing a third party will also not change that fact.
When functionally presented with two options, you have to compare them. Any similarities (which I don't agree with the premise that they're the same, but just for the sake of argument) are thus rendered moot. It's not moot in the larger sense of human suffering, but when it comes to LGBTQ rights, women's rights, etc., Trump is the last person to support those issues. Biden is the only way forward if that's something you care about.
How you decide to frame the issue isn't the same for me. I don't share your, forgive me, extreme views of what is happening in the government or society. If voting is only a positive act for you, then it sounds like you've made up your mind. I choose to vote based on other factors, and just like my "chess" falls upon deaf ears with you, so do your impassioned pleas fall upon deaf ears with me.
So there will be no immediate anything. You hope in vain.
This is also not true, which is why i said your idea of what voting itself is reductive. There are of course more than two options this and every election.
Allowing your mind to bend to their narrative, believing that voting is a binary choice is one way their democracy-destroying little game works.
If voting were only two choices, i wouldn't vote at all as you seem to suspect. but it isn't. i will in fact be participating as i have done for 30 years. Just not gonna do it the way you'd like, an imaginary binary election. Before you say it, there is also no such thing as throwing a vote away.
What other options are there?
Ok lol, mask off. Every...ridiculous opinion you have shared? I have heard, considered, and through careful thought dismissed. Before. Long before.
You came here today show your knowlege. Which is limited to what you hear on tv? Cool. If i want to hear a parrot ill buy a bird.
So i don't care if youve just got to get one more smug shot in, hurry and do it then get the fuck out of my face. No blocks homie, just get gone.
Oo, tough little tankie over here. Can't debate anymore, because your position is untenable, so you go to name calling. Classic move. Do the one with that tankie copy-pasta!
withhold your vote as a bloc with the rest of the left. force the dems to bargain with you if they ever want to hold office ever again.
This is simplistic. There are only two outcomes to the upcoming election, but there are countless political strategies, many of which do not treat 2024's presidential election as a totalizing issue. Other people, for example, think that what matters is building a strong leftist opposition so that we can escape the cycle of Republican vs Republican-lite elections, accepting that it means not giving unconditional support to so-called "moderates" for whom genocide is moot. Your logic only makes sense because you are question-begging by framing the question like the future doesn't exist beyond the next four years.
until and unless we collectively withhold our votes and so express real and actual power, the left will always remain powerless. repudiate the democrats or be forever doomed to an endless cycle of voting for the "lesser" evil. (no moral calculus can ever frame a genocidier as the lesser evil - he's so far beyond the moral event horizon that I no longer care to calculate)
And Trump does?
lol
lmao
k
I mean, by virtue of the the fact that Trump will 1000% make things worse in Gaza, literally yes.
You're talking like if you get the option between getting shot in the foot or the face, you'd pick the face just to make a point.
The whole point is saying I'd rather not get shot at all and I'm not going to give any approval to get shot anywhere. Especially when the question is actually closer to where would I like to shoot some random civilian. I'm not going to give approval to shoot them in the foot nor the face.
Cool, by opting out they get shot in the face. But you get to feel better about yourself so congrats.
And you get to order someone shot in the foot (but let's be real, they're going to end up shot in the face regardless face) so congrats on giving the order too I guess
Look, dude, I'd absolutely love for the situation to be better than it is, but the fact of the matter is, it's not. These are our choices. You can pick bad or worse, and if you don't pick, it's going to be worse. You can dream about better options all you want, and if they were available I'd absolutely go for them, but refusing to avoid making the situation worse because you want it to be better is idealistic at best and actively harmful at worst. I'm glad you can feel good about yourself letting the worst come to pass, but some of us are actually trying to do damage control, and that defeatist attitude isn't helping. That's my stance, and I've spent enough time expounding on it. You can take it or leave it, either way I'm done.
Fully agree and I wish the situation was better. I'll keep it on the level, genocide is a deal-breaker for me. I'm surprised it's not a deal breaker for other people too to be honest. And it's awful that our only choices are awful candidates. Really makes you wonder how we got here and I can't help but feel that this a vote blue no matter who bullshit along with Dems always backing incumbents Even when they're terrible has paved the way for our present situation. That's not going to get better unless we do something to change it. We found ourselves in afucked up hole and the first step to finding a way out is to stop digging.
I hope you're right though I guess there's a lot of people that are going to vote for him even though he is enabling genocide, I hope he decides to turn it around and start representing voters.
Well I appreciate you saying so. It just frustrates me how many people are okay with handing Trump the presidency despite how obvious he's made it what a bad choice he is. I don't like Biden either, but at this point I see him as a necessary evil.