• the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Even if Trump and Biden are "essentially the same" with regard to genocide, you can treat that as a logically moot issue.

    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

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
      ·
      8 months ago

      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.

      I can only hope you put more thought into this immediately

      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.

      • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        It's only logically moot specifically because there's only two options.

        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.

          • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]
            ·
            8 months ago

            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.

            • Telorand@reddthat.com
              ·
              8 months ago

              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!

              • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                8 months ago

                your position is untenable

                -Guy insisting that other people support Isreal's doomed genocidal war for the sake of a visibly decaying fascist who's about to lose the election, while capitalism continues to boil the planet.

          • silent_water [she/her]
            ·
            8 months ago

            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.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        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.

        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.

      • silent_water [she/her]
        ·
        8 months ago

        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)