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?
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?
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.
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.
Stupid tankies. Don't you see the trolley problem clearly proves that genocide is fine
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
Excellent writeup. If anyone wants sources for some of these, here they are: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq#kamala-harris
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.
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.
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!"