1
Opposing The Gaza Genocide While Supporting Biden Is A Dishonest, Nonsensical Position
(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
1 points (50.8% liked)
Palestine
843 readers
81 users here now
A community to discuss everything Palestine.
Rules:
-
Posts can be in Arabic or English.
-
Please add a flair in the title of every post. Example: “[News] Israel annexes the West Bank ”, “[Culture] Musakhan is the nicest food in the world!”, “[Question] How many Palestinians live in Jordan?”
List of flairs: [News] [Culture] [Discussion] [Question] [Request] [Guide]
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So you're saying you would prefer Trump, correct? Because if you live in the US, your choice is either Biden or Trump.
No, there are other choices, people have just been conditioned not to vote for them.
May I remind you that the US went through multiple 2-party systems, the current one could be replaced.
My dude, not a single one of the people that has sufficient support right now in the US supports the Palestinian people to the degree I would prefer. All of them would support the Israeli genocide to one degree or another. Trump would be all gas no brakes, and would be pushing Netanyahu to nuke Gaza, and throw all the Palestinians in the West Bank into death camps. Kennedy wouldn't be a lot better. Biden is at least trying to slow Netanyahu's roll a little, even if he's still turning over funding that's been appropriated by congress (which he's both legally obligated to do, and also personally supports).
Palestine has no allies that would support cutting off all aid for Israel that would even be able to win 1% of the vote in the US. That's just the way it is, and it sucks.
On the domestic front, both Trump and Kennedy would be worse for the American people by every single metric, except for the white christian nationalist metric.
So people in the US have a choice. They can vote for the least bad candidate, and hope to minimize the damage as much as possible. Or they can not vote, and claim that they have clean hands when Trump accelerates the genocide, and starts a few new ones. Of course, not voting for the least bad candidate is effectively identical to voting for the worse candidate, but hey, as just don't tell your neighbor that you're the reason that their trans kid couldn't get medical care and ended up committing suicide.
The choice is not to participate in electing a genocidal maniac. It's incredible how difficult this is for some people to grasp.
By failing to help elect one person, you implicitly help the other, far, far worse person get elected.
It's incredible how difficult this is for some people to grasp.
By not making a choice, you make a choice.
By failing to apply any political pressure to a leader participating in a genocide, you implicitly endorse the genocide.
By not applying pressure, you make a choice that you're ok with genocide
By attempting to apply political pressure in this manner, you sway marginal voters away from voting entirely, which results in greater harms than if you did nothing at all. By attempting to apply political pressure, when you're aware that the outcome will be reduced turnout for Democratic candidates, you're making a choice that you're okay with women in the US losing rights to healthcare and reproductive options, and saying that you don't GaF about LGBTQ+ people or any global environmental concerns.
All political choices come with tradeoffs. All actions come with consequences. The consequence here, of getting people to oppose Biden--or just not support him--will be that the speed and intensity of the genocide will increase. Trump favors more and more effective genocide, and Kennedy is a non-starter of a candidate, as is Cornell West (which is a shame, because I like West).
This is the real-life Kobayashi Maru; there is no action you can take that will have the result you want. It's not a moral failing on your part to recognize that this is not something you can control in this way, but it is a moral failing to see the negative consequences of your actions, and choosing to act regardless.
Supporting trump's openly genocidal agenda puts absolutely zero pressure on biden to stop his openly genocidal agenda.