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I have actually had this argument used against me.
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Who do you think the “someone else” is here? Are you so desperate to scream “But Trump!” at any specific criticism of Harris that you have discarded basic reading comprehension?
You’re doing the thing the meme is making fun of
Even if you’re voting Harris et al., don’t you think they should be called out for supporting genocide? Have you even tried to convince Biden or Harris or your reps in Congress to stop supporting genocide?
Moreover, once they know that they can get enough votes and win while supporting genocide, then they’ll know they can do anything and have enough votes to win. While all paths lead to increasingly fascistic governance in the US, the path you’re advocating is the most accelerationist scenario.
Even if you’re voting Harris et al., don’t you think they should be called out for supporting genocide?
Yes. Full stop.
Have you even tried to convince Biden or Harris or your reps in Congress to stop supporting genocide?
Yes, and not just on the Internet. I am fortunate enough to have some influence, but to be fair Gaza is one of the subjects and not the only subject matter I push for.
Moreover, once they know that they can get enough votes and win while supporting genocide, then they’ll know they can do anything and have enough votes to win. While all paths lead to increasingly fascistic governance in the US, the path you’re advocating is the most accelerationist scenario.
This is a tough one, not gonna lie. First, if it was anyone other than Trump and the guarantee of a fascist dictatorship under his rule (and it would be “rule”) running, I would not vote for Harris. Second, and much more important, is that nowadays I have far less influence than in the past. Ten to fourteen years ago I would have the opportunity to sit and talk with politicians in Texas and I even used to have the occasional chat with Obama whenever he visited Austin. Now I have none of that AND amongst my colleagues in the tech sector I seem to be the only one who cares about Gaza and Palestinians in any measurable form. The ugly truth is that I do not see a good way to enact pressure at the moment. What I do know is that under a Trump administration the complete obliteration of the Palestinian people is guaranteed. Under Harris I could at least make some calls without getting jailed or falling out of a window.
This is a tough one, not gonna lie. First, if it was anyone other than Trump and the guarantee of a fascist dictatorship under his rule (and it would be “rule”) running, I would not vote for Harris.
Then I am happy to inform you that Trump would never be a fascist dictator. There is no crisis of capitalism in this country that requires such a thing, the capitalist class that actually dictates the terms likes the system working exactly how it does now. They are in the heart of empire that provides them with super-profits through financial schemes and militarism.
Trump is rude and hamfisted and reactionary, but he cannot take a seat as a proper fascist because fascism is about restoring capitalist interests under major threat, namely an insurgent left, itself responding to a crisis of capitalism like loss of imperialist status and transformation into a further and further imperialized country.
Unfortunately, the US basically has no left. This is pretty obvious from how well normalization of genocide is going.
But given your statement, so long as you understand, correctly, that Trump will not be a dictator, then you will not vote for Harris, and I assume that you won’t advocate for her, either.
So that really just leaves one question: can you find any fault in my logic on Trump becoming a dictator?
Stupid tankies. Don’t you see the trolley problem clearly proves that genocide is fine
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Tell me again how a Trump administration will save the Palestinians. I haven’t had a laugh in a bit.
You are a genocide supporter. You will never be clean again, and the rest of humanity sees you for the snivelling nazi that you are. There’s no coming back from this.
The last four years have utterly shattered any illusions i’d had left about the true nature of democrats. Me too, blm, covid, yemen, and now gaza. They are serpents.
It almost certainly won’t, but that doesn’t justify voting for a fascist who is exterminating children.
You’re oh so willing to let millions die to get your preferred politician in power, but I bet you’d be singing a different tune of the millions included you and yours.
…that doesn’t justify voting for a fascist who is exterminating children.
100% agree, which is why I am not voting for Trump, the actual fascist, and I am doing everything in my power to make sure he and his cronie do not win, INCLUDING not wasting my vote by abstaining or voting third party. This shit is too important to fuck about.
Do you know who the president is right now while the US gleefully enables the murders tens of thousands of children?
Idk, some old guy who’s not on the ballot. Do you know who’s calling Netanyahu every day to undermine the current administration’s ceasefire efforts?
Ceasefire efforts? Is that what you call vetoing ceasefire at the UN twice?
The “ceasefire” efforts are a bad faith smokescreen. If you follow the claimed contents of the “ceasefire” they are pushing, it is actually conditions of surrender. The purpose of their “ceasefire” propaganda was to coopt the “ceasefire now” rhetoric of those opposed to genocide. Just to inflate my ego a little, I fought very hard locally to avoid ceasefire rhetoric because I knew it was weak and easy to coopt. I, along with my orgs, successfully promoted that we demand an arms embargo instead, and that is the more durable demand being made by these groups (I probably only had a minor impact on this outside where I live).
Anyways, one clue for how the “ceasefire” line is bullshit is that Israel has assassinated the people they were allegedly negotiating with, to Biden-Harris applause.
Genocide is no longer fascist in the liberal lexicon. Obama dropping bombs on the ME and north Africa, the Biden regime giving more money and aid to Israel than any year in its entire history, is now considered an “anti-fascist” option by liberals.
Most of the horrors assigned to fascists, as understood in the liberal canon, had precedents among liberal governments, often on much larger scales. Most genocides around the planet, and most people killed in genocide, were carried out by liberals in liberal democracy. They are the genocides of colonialism, including settler- colonialism, inckuding the genocide of indigenous Americans still in living memory. Nationalism is a liberal campaign, it emerges from capitalism and its primary ideology, and liberals celebrate it constantly. Scapegoating and creating marginalized groups has always been something liberals engaged in, though there has also always been a split between those they consider gauche and unacceptable (and they are the “good guys” for opposing) and those that they find acceptable (they are still the “good guys” for this), like their current siniphobia, russophobia, and islamophobia.
Point is, genocide is making a return in liberal discourse to being something they accept. They already did before and were very racist about it. They just took a break, at least in their PR, after they had their sole actual “good guy” war in WWII and needed to rhetorically distance themselves from Nazis and work around the popularity of the left in Europe after the defeat of the Nazis.
If you give your vote to Kamala Harris you are endorsing the genocide of the Palestinian people.
This is an undeniable fact and no amount of mental gymnastics on your part is going to change that.
Hmmm, you’re using an electronic device, which means you endorse the brutal child labor that contributed to manufacturing that device.
This is an undeniable fact and no amount of mental gymnastics on your part is going to change that.
Hey everyone! Ram here endorses forcing children to mine rare earth metals in third world countries! Shame them for their endorsement of exploitative labor practices
the fact that you thought you made a clever argument is equal parts sad and hilarious
the fascism is coming from inside the house my clown. u are going to vote for the sidekick and supporter of a self proclaimed zionist. She IS a fascist, she supports genocide.
The genocide is being committed now and Trump isn’t president.
He won’t. You have two evil options. Your country is evil.
Why does this have to be about Trump? Biden has been a president for the past year and he enabled the genocide. No one is pretending Trump will be better. We just don’t want to vote for a pro-genocide party be it red or blue. Democrats deserve to lose votes over their support for Israel.
Why do you support a system that repeatedly makes you choose between mega hitler and giga hitler? Surely you recognize that such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it.
That’s a very difficult concept for them to understand. The mental gymnastics I’ve seen them use to excuse or defend genocide has been wild.
By just saying, “I don’t want to endorse a genocide.” sends them into a frothing rage, with arguments immediately fired against the right. They see it as ‘us vs. them’, but fail to see that people don’t want to endorse a genocide no matter the color of the party.
Non-participation is simply letting the greater evil win.
They’re not suddenly going to ditch first past the post because of some protest voters/abstainers.
What would you call a machine that routinely and predictably produces evil outputs with marginal differences between them? How reliable of an evil-producer does this machine have to be before you recognize that the production of a certain type of evil is the machine’s purpose?
Dem supporters have been holding their noses for 50+ years and voting for the “lesser evil”. If that has brought us to this election, where your choice is between “genocide” and “genocide +”, isn’t it obvious that voting for the “lesser evil” just inevitably trends towards the greater evil over time? It is not a successful strategy at mitigating harm.
This guy gets it
isn’t it obvious that voting for the “lesser evil” just inevitably trends towards the greater evil over time? .
What’s obvious is that multiple election cycles of non-participation lead to people who want the greater evil winning the vote more often.
It is not a successful strategy at mitigating harm
Counterpoint: literally any of the things that happened under Trump that Hillary almost certainly wouldn’t have done.
Like nominating three of the judges that overturned roe
We’ve been down that road before
What doesn’t happen is non-participation leading to the abolishion of America’s two party system.
“Over time” being the crucial detail. I’ll take every opportunity I can to buy time to slow the trend toward greater evil. Gives us time to get actual leftists into positions that will actually make them viable presidential candidates.
Those 150+ years of bourgeois “democracy” (IE capitalist dictatorship) got the US to where it is now. Don’t worry tho, keep doing the same thing over and over again, the US just keeps improving. /s
Since you just did the thing they described but without addressing it, let me repeat them.
Why do you support a system that repeatedly makes you choose between mega hitler and giga hitler? Surely you recognize that such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it.
So you’ve stopped paying taxes then? Since “such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it”
It’s those tax dollars that build bombs for Israel. If you’re paying them, you’re paying for genocide.
So you’ve stopped paying taxes then? Since “such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it”
The MIC is funded through financial magic and imperialism. If tax fraud would oppose them, I would probably do it, but it really does not.
It’s those tax dollars that build bombs for Israel. If you’re paying them, you’re paying for genocide.
The “tax dollars” for the bombs are invented out of thin air. However, the people that make the bombs and deliver the bombs and drop the bombs are doing all of those things and we should organize to stymy those efforts.
Because if Giga Hitler wins, then the Overton window shifts even farther, and the next election is between Giga Hitler and Hyper Giga Hitler Zero.
It shifts right under both because the population does not build leverage against either but both Hitlers eschew anything vaguely left.
That’s incorrect.
Biden-Harris is the “Mega Hitler”. It is doing a genocide right now. The party moved right under them.
Except the bottom track loops around to run over everyone else when the Supreme Court decides it wants to hurt more people.
Let’s say the Supreme Court decides to end gay marriage at a federal level and send it back to the states. Harris won’t do shit to help people in red states, she’ll just tell them to vote for Democrats in 2026/2028 but otherwise ignore them.
Controlled opposition parties like the US democrats love to dangle these carrots during election seasons. Roe v Wade in red states was unrolled under Biden, while he held up his hands and said there was nothing he could do about it. But as soon as election season rolls around, they’re suddenly champions of women’s rights. If they were to actually do something about it, they’d no longer be able to campaign on it.
Ukraine? Lol good fuck those Nazis.
The rest? The Dems had 4 years to codify any sort of federal law protecting those groups while states rolled those protections back, and didn’t. So yes by you pretending that voting blue is some sort of moral high ground despite their constant failings in actually protecting queer and trans and black and women’s rights you are choosing to support more death of those people. That’s you. You’re doing that. Congrats I guess?
Also the Dems literally caused the genocide in Palestine by pledging, and supplying, unlimited support to Israel.
Basically this is you
Never think that geocentrists were stupid. They were wrong, certainly, but they were not stupid: while it doesn’t take much intellect to initially conclude that Earth is the center of the solar system, it does take a very great amount of intellect to rationalize away the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
This is not a comment about people who voted or are planning on voting for Kamala Harris — this is an entirely unrelated observation about a completely different topic.
Trans people, LGBT people
Harris just said “I believe we should follow the law” when asked whether trans people should have access to gender-affirming care. This is leaving it to the states, which is essentially banning the existence of trans people in large segments of the country. She does not care about trans people or LGBT people as a whole.
Abortion rights
Roe was overturned under Biden, and Harris has not said she would stack the court or similar. She has said she would sign into law a bill passed by congress to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, but the dems almost certainly will not control the senate with a filibuster-proof majority, and even if they did they’d find some designated bad-guy who would turn coat to stop it (see: Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema). Harris will not do anything to protect abortion rights.
Ukraine
Which will lead to more Ukrainian deaths: the war coming to an end because US aid ceases, or a meatgrinder continuing for years which the Ukrainians have no chance of winning anyway? Which is more important: lines on a map, or actual human lives?
Black Lives Matter
Harris was a prosecutor. She’s a fucking cop. She’s VP of Joe “We have to fund the police!” Biden. She wants to build Trump’s border wall. Harris does not care about black people.
Palestine
Harris fully supports the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Her VP, Walz, has said that Israeli expansion (IE Greater Israel) is key to US interests. They may actually be to the right of Trump on this issue just because Trump doesn’t have any actual political beliefs other than “make Trump richer”, while Harris and the dems are rabid zionists.
Walz, has said that Israeli expansion (IE Greater Israel) is key to US interests
So basically the same view as Trump
but with more decorum
And without outrage from Dem voters
Excellent writeup. If anyone wants sources for some of these, here they are: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq#kamala-harris
I guess both sides are equal then huh
Dems can do a genocide without your opposition, so that us one difference.
I love the faith that the new Cheney DNC won’t turn on any non-muslim or immigrants minority… I’m old enough to remember the '92 campaign’s promises and then Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Welfare “reform” and “The Death of Big Government.” A rightwing DNC is a greater threat than the GOP because the MSNBC and NYT set will applaud them, and the 70% of the DNC base who are partisan sheep will move their own politics to justify the party’s execution of “republican” policy
I’m old enough to remember this week when Trump promised Netanyahu free reign.
I’m old enough to remember today when Israel’s genocide continues with free reign under the current regime and the war criminal Anthony Blinken who will remain in power if Kamala wins and continue his Jewish supremacist campaign to eradicate all other races.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Breaks Community RulesI don’t think “Jewish supremacy” is wrong here, but it’s a slippery term that can easily be taken as anti-Semitic if one isn’t very careful, or even if one is, because Zionists will always look for an excuse to call anti-Zionists anti-Semitic.
Just seems like one should call a spade a spade, it’s not some abstract academic concept, it’s a subgenre of white supremacy
Indeed. “Jewish supremacy” is another subgenre of imperial core chauvinism, like “white supremacy.” It is a settler-colonialist and imperialist ideology. Not every Jewish person is a Jewish supremacist, just as not every white person is a white supremacist.
I’ll believe it when I see it. If Kamala eeks out a win with a popular vote minority strategy like she’s running, a GOP house and senate is baked in, which means no confirmations, so if you don’t want to have an acting secretary of state for four years…
Plot twist: Kamala kicks out
von NeurathBlinken and gives his office toRibbentropPompeo.
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I honestly don’t know, I could see it go either way. Do you think it would have been substantively better under Hillary than Trump 2016-2020?
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You might not say that if you lived in [insert countries where Hillary would have started a destabilizing regional war]
I think Hillary also wouldn’t have set the stage for fascist take over with judge appointments
Why not? Dem appointees do fashy things in a regular basis.
Everyone knows you should never havecaaked RBG to say anything about indigenous Americans.
endangered abortion rights
Dems endangered abortion rights under Obama by not crystallizing them in federal law or doing any fighting whatsoever for the Supreme Court. The overall Dem strategy actually benefits from this precarity. They want to use it to campaign on forever. Hillary was this kind of person.
Remember, under Obama, abortion rights had already been de facto removed in many red states. The Dobbs decision just added clarity to what was already the status quo, giving it ancillary legal weapons.
moved as far backwards on climate
Dems are just as bad on this. They push fracking and greenwashing and Biden has caused a crisis in solar panel availability with a sinophobic trade war. Both Obama and Biden prioritized oil and other fossil fuel production, making the US a better exporter. They just use different weapons to send money to the ruling class. One greenwaages it and the other doesn’t bother. Hillary was lockstep in this.
They are in many ways more effective because they keep you complacent and accepting of scapegoats.
and would have handled the pandemic better.
Biden demonstrably handled it worse. He normalized the ongoing pandemic (yes it is still happening), deconstructed the monitoring apparatus, and ended benefits. What would Clinton have done better?
I like how the trolley meme is peak liberal morality test
I’m starting to think now the trolley problem should be reframed as a catch-22 / false choice / manufactured consent.
Who constructed this trolley? Why are there only two options shown? Do these options actually match reality? etc.
More of an intelligence test. “Do you understand the fact that inaction has consequences?” Helps separate adults from children.
Makes sense. As a grown adult, I also require overly simplistic illustrations in order to grasp concepts.
When you are filtering out the young, the dumb, and those arguing in bad faith, overly simplistic is an excellent first filter. If they can pass that base level filter of rudimentary critical thinking skills, then you can feel free to enter into more nuance and subtlety.
No point in engaging with those who can’t even grasp the simplest concepts.
Seems like a bigger waste of time to just end up engaging with people who can vault over pictures, but can’t handle nuance.
Start the discussion on an intellectual level, and those who can’t grasp it can go read until they’re ready to talk.
Or they can go find someone else who will argue with cartoons or whatever, I’m sure they’ll be happier there.
When it comes to battling fascist-enabling rhetoric, I prefer as comprehensive an approach as possible. In truth, the circle jerk tankies and bad faith actors won’t be swayed by any amount of intellectual engagement. The goal isn’t to convince them, it’s to publicly counter their garbage takes in as simple and straightforward a way as possible, in order to avoid letting sincere but impressionable leftists fall for superficially reasonable looking moral imperatives.
Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.
it’s adorable that you think you’re a leftist little fash
u think voting for california’s ex head pig is gonna keep black people safe from pigs??? how does that work? how does continuing the “i think we can all agree what we need is to found the police” regime make black people safe from pigs?
Also how would republicans be worse than Palestinians than the continuation of a regime currently led by a self proclaimed non jewish zionists.
also also democrats could have and did nothing to protect womens bodily autonomy and they have done next to nothing for lgbtq people or any other oppressed peoples for that matter.
but non of that matters there is regime in power which is genocidal which has done everything in its power to support and aid a genocide, u can either support it or not, that is all.
This basically says that you don’t see Palestinians as people which I am not surprised by anymore.
That, and also they drew the picture in a way that makes genocide of palestinians inevitable. Genocide is not inevitable, no matter how much US democrats think it is, and tell everyone to get in line behind it.
Its so easy to construct trolley problems that have nothing to do with reality, and don’t represent the options actually available, or even the problem / scenario correctly.
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The problem is that Trump would be worse. If Kamala wins, THEN you apply pressure. You don’t help the guy who praises Hitler, and promises to punish his enemies “from within” the day he takes office. This also isn’t the only issue by a landslide, considering Trump wants to dismantle NATO, and defund the support sent to Ukraine.
🤡
Funny you should say that, because I too would very much like to dismantle NATO.
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
I voted for Biden in 2020, what pressure could I have applied to stop the genocide?
You don’t seem to realize that the US/Biden/Democrats have lost the moral high ground a year ago. I honestly believe Biden is a worse criminal than Putin.
If Kamala wins, THEN you apply pressure.
How? This is not the kind of thing anyone that cares about pressure or leverage says. Electorally you have the most leverage, as an individual, before the election, not after it.
Do you ever question what you are told to do by the party?
You don’t help the guy who praises Hitler,
Kamala Harris is supporting a genocide.
and promises to punish his enemies “from within” the day he takes office.
You mean with cops and feds? Maybe violence against and suppression of protesters? Maybe labelling Palestinian solidarity organizations as terrorists? Maybe signing an EO to allow “the military to use " lethal force” on citizens in the US.
Your “good cop” is already doing that. You just approve.
This also isn’t the only issue by a landslide
What’s the issue? Can you describe it?
considering Trump wants to dismantle NATO
That would be an unmitigated good for humanity. Sometimes Dem voters make great arguments for Trump. Good thing we have principles.
defund the support sent to Ukraine
The people of Ukraine suffer due to a decade-long US pressure campaign to use them to harass and bait Russia. After Russia invaded, the people of Ukraine are now used as inputs to a meat grinder because the US’ goal remains to hurt Russia, not help Ukraine. The US escalated in the first place and then scuttled peace talks.
The best thing for the people of Ukraine would be to end the war diplomatically ASAP.
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I’m starting to feel like this genocide straw man is truly their strongest argument. Like, is that going to make me forget the other option wants to turn the country into a dictatorship?
You seriously want to bring up genocide to play a “lesser of two evils” game, when one evil is Trump? GTFO
living the meme dude
Do us a favor and say this verbatim to every Arab and Muslim American you meet. They need to know what liberals and Democratic voters think of them. The issue is clearly not just Biden or Harris being anti-Arab and pro-genocide but an entire party and its base.
Not every muslim or arab thinks alike. Either way though, this is probably not a great subject for a first meeting 😄
I do recognize that the core issue lies deeper. It just doesn’t feel realistic to solve the fundamental problems before the election though. So it’s not unreasonable to reduce the problem to the vote for the time being IMHO.
Why just have genocide when you can have a facial theocracy and genocide? If this is your single issue then you are truly privileged. Peace in the Middle East or all these LGBTQ folks, immigrants, and woman can get fucked. Not to mention anyone living in a blue state who may experience a natural disaster or anyone against regulatory capture by the private sector.
They better solve a decades long conflict with a foreign leader who is closely aligned with the Republican Party or else! Give me a break
Reagan in 1982 did it with a 20-minute phone call to Begin. Biden is choosing to continue the genocide and widen the conflict. Biden could have stopped sending the weapons or could have not vetoed the UN ceasefire twice. It is odd that a year later you still deny Biden’s complicity and that it is in effect Biden’s genocide.
Skirted the rest of the argument pretty well there. Should the rest of the issues be tabled because of your oversimplified view of the regional conflict?
Notice you also didn’t say anything about those LGBTQ folks, immigrants, and women living in the Red States who Harris/DNC say just need to obey the states laws. That’s their entire plan to help out minorities in the USA.
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https://www.advocate.com/voices/kamala-harris-trans-rights
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/why-wont-democrats-kamala-harris-embrace-trans-rights-oped
Oh and it’s not like she’s changed much in 4 years https://19thnews.org/2020/08/kamala-harris-complicated-lgbtq-choice/
And fuck off for thinking everyone who is critical of a shit candidate is Russian. Fucking asshole
First of all, it should not require 1D chess logic for you to have a red line at genocide. That should be enough for you to take pause and be absolutely certain that you know what you are talking about. If you’re dabbling in this, it should mean you just spent at least the last year reading extensively on genocide, history, Palestine, and political power and strategy. And yet you just use the usual , self-defeating, lesser evil talking point. That is how little concern you have for Palestinians facing genocide.
But let’s say you weren’t just pretending to care about strategy. Let’s say you are you ten years from now feeling, correctly, like you did something very wrong and this has led you to be curious about how to build power, so you begin to critically engage with the propaganda you have been sold your entire life. Pretty shameful that you didn’t so it when brown people faced genocide, but here we are.
Your logic is that you must always support your party candidate, who is allegedly some measurable amount better, even while doing a genocide, than the other with any chance of winning the election. You’re just minimizing harm, right?
Well no. What you are doing is taking what little leverage you have in your vote and saying, “I will never stand for anything, I will vote for you no matter what horrible things you do”. And your political class, the one in your faction, is glad for this. You have done what you were told, you have made yourself a suppirter that expects nothing, just a cog in their genocidal machine. Four years roll around and you are somehow surprised that your team has moved farther right, done the same kinds of things, or done them worse, or done more if the worst things. Maybe it turns on trans people, as it is doing in Texas by supporting a transphobic candidate. Or immigrants, which Dems already did. You wonder how we got here and then tell everyone “vote blue no matter who, the Republicans are worse!”
You are making several great points and I thank you for explaining them. I don’t even want to argue against any of them.
I just feel like I’ve seen the USA murder muslims for a decade in the first degree, and now people are getting worked up over a second degree, and consider electing a con artist to prevent it.
I’d rather have a reasonable person in office, that might respond to the public opinion, than someone who is purely focused on their own gain.
The “reasonable person” is an active participant in the genocide. Harris has been lockstep with Biden in his public statements and misleading “ceasefire” rhetoric and has clearly signaled material support for Israeli occupation in no uncertain terms. Harris has not “responded to public opinion”, the genocide is very unpopular, as is military support for Israel. She hasn’t even done any real pandering, which would be easy and cost her very little. There are a handful of very willing Palestinian PR liberals that will gladly get up on a stage and say, “this is tragic but [both sides rhetoric]”. You won’t even get that.
It’s important to understand that politicians do not care about polling like you might want them to. They only care insofar as it serves their strategy, and their strategy is premised on supporting Israel both to feed their own military industrial complex and to prop up the petrodollar and ensure the US dollar is the world reserve currency. They need Israel to destabilize any independent groups in the region that could jeopardize this by, say, daring to have their own foreign policy or nationalizing their resources or shutting down the Strait of Hormuz in response to unilateral sanctions. Israel is a forward base, an attack dog, for US empire. This is why your politicians will not doing anything for you. This is why you don’t even get pandering. This is why they don’t follow “the polls” or “public opinion” on this: it does not align with their prior, and greater, commitments to empire, as filtered down through their donors, the government MIC and intelligence bureaucracy, and the party insiders. This is an important lesson to learn, because they will also come at us with positions that they claim are just “following what people want”, which is almost always something right wing that serves their own interests. They are not consistent about this, it is just cynical PR strategy to launder an agenda.
Re: being a reasonable person, Harris is a former prosecutor and AG that made a name for herself for unnecessary cruelty in keeping people locked up past when they should have been released and for using technicalities to avoid releasing those with exonerating evidence. As a politician, she is an empty suit, adopting policy planks from other politicians and never fighting for them. “It was a debate!” What you can tell from her, however, is that she is self-interested, opportunistic, and never really breaks the party agenda with any coherent vision of her own. That means going all-in on xenophobic Dem rhetoric, playing coy about trans rights (but she’s happy to get photo ops during pride!), and genocide. Expect her, if elected, to not give a shit about you or anyone else and to do exactly what the larger imperialist political bureaucracy wants her to do, all with a smile and an incoherent mealy-mouthed ramble. Expect the trade wars to increase and for yet more US-backed wars and starvation campaigns to ramp up (Yemen has been facing this since Obama).
Harris is in no way less self-interested than Trump, she is just “acceptable” to liberals on a purely aesthetic basis. Her self-interest aligns with the typical liberal idea of what is “okay”, which includes members of Congress being mysteriously extremely rich, getting to participate in insider trading, doing a genocide, being “tough on crime”, lying regularly, having no consistent principals or honestly-stated political program, having no real track record of delivering or pushing for anything at all except what is already fully in line with the party, punching left, and being politely racist.
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