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In a sane world with two (or more) viable, comparably defensible, but very different parties it's easy to present how someone that votes for one party or another is fully reponsible for the good and bad results of that vs the opposite, and for someone who can't reasonably be party to either to stay out of it. But it would also be clear that the responsibility is for what's different from the other party. If you're voting for someone that's better for taking care of Americans in need but has a more aggressive foreign policy, or vice versa, you have to own the bad side of your choice as well as take credit for the good side. You at some level have to admit that you picked one priority over the other. But it would be obvious that participation in the system is primarily about endorsing differences between parties, not things that will happen no matter who wins or if you abstain And the same thing is true now, it just manifests differently. A Trump voter in 2016 knowingly chose anything Trump was predictably going to do that alternatives would not. Including cutting taxes, punishing Iran and Cuba to make up for Obama's softness, building a wall at the border, appointing a bunch of far-right judges, and whatever else someone following his campaign would reasonably expect. Even if those aren't why they voted for Trump, they chose him over the alternatives that didn't do that. By contrast, they're not really to blame for Trump keeping capitalism in place, whether they wanted that or not. Hillary and Bernie (he's a capitalist-to-the-core social democrat whatever his branding) would have done the same. None of the three was going to try to abolish the US MIC either, though you can definitely differentiate how they would have changed spending and priorities. Or abolishing drug prohibition beyond marijuana law, whatever's important to you. You can reverse that, go right ahead! Someone who voted for the Democrat in 2016 or 2020 is fully responsible for choosing ways the Democrat would be worse than Trump.* It's just really unsatisfying when you put it that way since it's thin pickings. It's awkward, sure. For example, it's simultaneously true that the Obama years were full of US imperialism and bombing of innocent people in the name of continuing the GWOT, and that there will always and forever be a big U-shape in US-caused civilian deaths between the Bush years and the Trump years. If you, as a time-traveling leftist, had been magically nominated as the Kevin Costner to to ensure or sink the Obama presidency, you would have only had the power to change one of those. *There's absolutely a reason why "Trump is gonna outflank the Democrats from the left" was so popular for so long into the Trump administration despite being abjectly ridiculous, and this is why.
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Oct 29, 2023 07:23
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Bar Ran Dun posted:But now take it back to the polarized national context. In the national context there are fascists on the ballot. That means those votes where fascists are running have predictable outcomes, but only on one side. We can know what happens when fascists are elected. The issue I have with that reasoning is that it encourages elected representatives to do nothing about the growing facism. If I am guatenteed 40% of the vote because a problem exists, but have to actually try to reconcile 40 different 1% voting blocks if it doesn't, the optimal strategy is to do nothing about it.
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Oct 29, 2023 07:29
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The most important marker for determining your personal moral worth turns out to be having the most "don't blame me, I voted for ____" bumper stickers As long as you never voted for a winner, nothing that happened is your fault, total moral purity
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Oct 29, 2023 10:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The most important marker for determining your personal moral worth turns out to be having the most "don't blame me, I voted for ____" bumper stickers In much the same way that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is no ethical voting in democracy. I have made peace with the death and misery my voting has caused, and I accept I am a monster for wearing clothes. If others need to point to the infinite people, tied 1 meter apart on the infinite tracks to justify pulling the lever and condemning an infinite number of people tied 10 meters apart, so be it.
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Oct 29, 2023 10:53
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Hell is filled with voters and non-voters in equal measure. All are guilty, and must be punished for their sin of being born in a Democracy.
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Oct 29, 2023 11:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The most important marker for determining your personal moral worth turns out to be having the most "don't blame me, I voted for ____" bumper stickers It seems the only correct moral stance to take is pacifist isolationism and just ignore anything that happens. Doing anything inevitably makes you responsible. Supporting Israel is supporting genocide. Opposing the Taliban is opposing Afghani civilians. Trading with a murderous regime supports murder. Not trading with them punishes civilians. People seem mostly diinterested in whatever human misery takes place as long as the US is not in some way involved. Half a million people died in Ethiopia and Sudan last year. Haiti has descended into warlordism and low level civil war. No one cares. When the US was more actively involved in the Yemen war people cared a lot about Yemeni civilians dying but now Yemeni deaths are not interesting anymore. If the US disengaged from Israel and ignored the conflict people would rapidly care about the Palestinian people as much as they care about the Ethiopian peoples which is to say not at all.The issue isn't death and misery - it's the moral purity of our representatives and doing nothing while people die is the only safe moral stance.
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Oct 29, 2023 11:06
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Owling Howl posted:It seems the only correct moral stance to take is pacifist isolationism and just ignore anything that happens. Doing anything inevitably makes you responsible. Supporting Israel is supporting genocide. Opposing the Taliban is opposing Afghani civilians. Trading with a murderous regime supports murder. Not trading with them punishes civilians. By this logic doing nothing also makes you responsible for things you could have prevented by biting down and accepting a less than perfect option that could also have prevented negative outcomes elsewhere. It's almost like the world does not regularly serve up easy choices for people to make and folks have to learn to compromise on some things. I'd also point out that isolationism is a fantastic way to get your civilization subjugated or massively hosed up by more malevolent neighbors but I doubt that'd fly with the sort of folks who think it's a good idea. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 13:19
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Owling Howl posted:It seems the only correct moral stance to take is pacifist isolationism and just ignore anything that happens. Doing anything inevitably makes you responsible. Supporting Israel is supporting genocide. Opposing the Taliban is opposing Afghani civilians. Trading with a murderous regime supports murder. Not trading with them punishes civilians. I mean, America could try something like spending all the effort and money currently put to the military on some kind of massive global relief corps-cum-development agency. Imagine how popular and beloved the US would be if they were spending nearly a trillion dollars annually on building infrastructure, providing clean water, running hospitals, clearing up after earthquakes, and so on. Or hell even if the military stays as it is, deploy it to idk enforce a no-fly zone over populated areas being indiscriminately bombed. Establish actual defended humanitarian aid corridors. Protect refugee columns. Physically liberate concentration camps. Keep two sides physically separated and use economic pressures and inducements to bring them to the table to hash out a peace deal. It's not like most of this is stuff America doesn't do to some extent. But much of that is ad hoc, threadbare, or so blatantly favors one side that the gains are seriously hampered. Even so it's not like the only two options are Current US Policy and Hermit Kingdom.
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Oct 29, 2023 13:33
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James Garfield posted:Nobody is even criticizing you for what you think about a politician (which would also be okay, since as you say people can think different things about politicians), people are disagreeing with you over whether or not it's a good idea not to vote. im going to drop this after this post because we been going for pages now, but it's not that i disagree with "lesser of two evils" it's just i include "unless the lesser evil has passed a threshold of unacceptability"
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Oct 29, 2023 14:09
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Same. All electoral politics is Lesser of X Number of Evils, but that doesn't mean the least of the evils is acceptable.
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Oct 29, 2023 17:32
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It's the same for me. I'm not looking for the most perfect candidate. However, the lesser evil right now is still really loving evil and I can't accept that
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Oct 29, 2023 17:36
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Honestly, I look at voting as if my vote is the deciding vote (even though it isn't). It helps keep me grounded and think the repercussions, how it affects others, etc. This is why in 2012, I voted for James Harris. If this would have caused Obama to lose and Romney to win, I could live with my choice. And this is why in 2016/2020 I voted for Clinton/Biden. Because it was more of a vote against Trump than for the D candidate. The difference in policies between Trump and the D candidates was way to vast for me if my vote was somehow the deciding vote.
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Oct 29, 2023 17:42
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I have a question for the non-voters who call Biden evil because of his support for Israel. How do you think any other Democratic president, including Bernie, would handle this situation? Let's say Bernie would stop funding Israel and let's forget that this is ultimately a Congressional decision. Israel would still attack. The $3b in yearly aid is nice, but Israel is a very high-tech economy with a very advanced military with an annual GDP of around $500b, so American aid is a drop in the bucket. Israel, given their politics, and given the history of Jews getting massacred, will always go full-scale HAM as a response to such a terrible attack by Hamas. So Bernie stops funding Israel, maybe breaks ties with them. Now what? It will make it more difficult to get aid into Gaza and the Palestinians will still be decimated. Maybe it will make Israel even more mad. Maybe you will feel better because "at least the party I voted for is not complicit," but the reality of mass death remains the same. I just don't really see a viable solution here that doesn't involve America threatening Israel militarily.
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Oct 29, 2023 17:59
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small butter posted:I have a question for the non-voters who call Biden evil because of his support for Israel. While I'm not a non-voter who calls Biden evil, I think threatening/implementing sanctions on Israel would change their tune pretty quickly.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:02
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Tnega posted:In much the same way that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is no ethical voting in democracy. I have made peace with the death and misery my voting has caused, and I accept I am a monster for wearing clothes. Gyges posted:Hell is filled with voters and non-voters in equal measure. All are guilty, and must be punished for their sin of being born in a Democracy. Owling Howl posted:People seem mostly diinterested in whatever human misery takes place as long as the US is not in some way involved. Half a million people died in Ethiopia and Sudan last year. Haiti has descended into warlordism and low level civil war. No one cares. When the US was more actively involved in the Yemen war people cared a lot about Yemeni civilians dying but now Yemeni deaths are not interesting anymore. - The overextension of foreign influence, particularly in the Middle East, that has resulted in its politics having an inappropriately close relationship with those of the US, - The public's general indifference to thinks that don't directly or secondarily impact the United States, - People's general obsession with Bible Things And those are just the problems with the prominence of the conflict in the discourse - the problems represented by the side we have taken are a much longer list. Ms Adequate posted:I mean, America could try something like spending all the effort and money currently put to the military on some kind of massive global relief corps-cum-development agency. Imagine how popular and beloved the US would be if they were spending nearly a trillion dollars annually on building infrastructure, providing clean water, running hospitals, clearing up after earthquakes, and so on. The idea of the US military engaging with the world that way is a beautiful fantasy to us, but implausible as it is, it's a horrible nightmare to many. We have to make it so that there are decisively more of the former than the latter. World Famous W posted:that was clearly on regards to if ill vote for them, not only about what i think of them If you think something a President is doing is 100% morally inexcusable, and you vote for them because of other issues, and because your vote wouldn't affect that thing, you still do honestly believe that the thing is morally inexcusable. You have not compromised that. You just checked a box on a form. If you want to really feel like you have genuinely expressed an objection to this, you are not going to do it in a voting booth, or by making a big show online about not going into one. FLIPADELPHIA posted:Same. All electoral politics is Lesser of X Number of Evils, but that doesn't mean the least of the evils is acceptable.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:02
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Kalit posted:While I'm not a non-voter who calls Biden evil, I think threatening/implementing sanctions on Israel would change their tune pretty quickly. I'm genuinely not sure it would. The current Israeli leadership seems to be literally bent on deliberate conscious genocide based on religious zealotry (amalekites? Wtf!). Of course we don't know it won't work because it hasn't been tried. But it's clear that lesser behind the scenes interventions are not working (that marine general who tried to talk them out of invading then went "this is all them not us" afterwards). Plus Biden doesn't operate in a vacuum and it's pretty clear from the way Rashida Tlaib has been treated that trying to get anything less than an increase in funding to Israel through congress not only wouldn't work, at least not right now, but would likely making getting anything else done also impossible. Right now there seems to be basically two groups of people who could stop this, the Israeli government collectively and the Americsn government collectively -- that us, the few hundred people at the top of each -- and neither of those groups wants to. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 18:13
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theCalamity posted:It's the same for me. I'm not looking for the most perfect candidate. However, the lesser evil right now is still really loving evil and I can't accept that You can, however, accept a genocide happening because of your decision to not accept that.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm genuinely not sure it would. The current Israeli leadership seems to be literally bent on deliberate conscious genocide based on religious zealotry (amalekites? Wtf!). As far as your last point, I believe a president can implement sanctions without needing congressional approval? Or at least to a certain degree. Of course Biden wouldn't do this, but the poster I was replying to specifically mentioned if the president was any other possible D president. For your first point  No way to know if it would/wouldn't work. But it would make a huge impact on their economy, which I imagine would at least make them think harder about proceeding
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Oct 29, 2023 18:17
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Kalit posted:As far as your last point, I believe a president can implement sanctions without needing congressional approval? Or at least to a certain degree. Of course Biden wouldn't do this, but the poster I was replying to specifically mentioned if the president was any other possible D president. I think, could be wrong, that he could have ordered the UN ambassador to not vote to block UN sanctions. But I expect if he did so the UK would have then blocked them, and also this Congress would probably impeach him for it, because "terrism". There are things he could do but for a major shift in overall policy he'd have to bring the party with him.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:21
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Kalit posted:While I'm not a non-voter who calls Biden evil, I think threatening/implementing sanctions on Israel would change their tune pretty quickly. Yes, they would completely lose the little restraint they have. Edit: any policy that tries to make Israeli response less disastrous to Palestinian people has to, in some shape, address the issue of Hamas responsibility, otherwise it won't be acceptable to anyone who has a chance for governing Israel, never mind the current set of psychos. OddObserver fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 18:23
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OddObserver posted:You can, however, accept a genocide happening because of your decision to not accept that. I don’t vote for people who support genocides so I don’t get where you think I support one
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Oct 29, 2023 18:27
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Ms Adequate posted:cum-development agency Where do I sign up?
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Oct 29, 2023 18:28
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theCalamity posted:I don’t vote for people who support genocides so I don’t get where you think I support one If you stay home in 2024 and that helps Trump win, you'll likely be partly responsible for genocide of Ukrainians.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think, could be wrong, that he could have ordered the UN ambassador to not vote to block UN sanctions. But I expect if he did so the UK would have then blocked them, and also this Congress would probably impeach him for it, because "terrism". Sorry, I should have clarified. Have the US itself sanction Israel, not through the UN.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:33
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OddObserver posted:If you stay home in 2024 and that helps Trump win, you'll likely be partly responsible for genocide of Ukrainians. Uuuughhhhhhhhhhhhh we are actively complicit in genocide this is insane
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Oct 29, 2023 18:33
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If you don't vote for the genocider there will be blood on your hands from the genocide
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Oct 29, 2023 18:35
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theCalamity posted:I don’t vote for people who support genocides so I don’t get where you think I support one If Republicans win in 2024 it will accelerate the ongoing genocide in Ukraine and the US will invade Mexico (probably not a genocide but who knows at this point)
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Oct 29, 2023 18:35
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OddObserver posted:If you stay home in 2024 and that helps Trump win, you'll likely be partly responsible for genocide of Ukrainians. I live in a very red state with a winner takes all system lol. My vote for president doesn’t really factor into who gets to win.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:36
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Gumball Gumption posted:If you don't vote for the genocider there will be blood on your hands from the genocide It's American politics... you're getting some genocide guilt regardless of who you vote for or if you vote.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:36
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Bel Shazar posted:It's American politics... you're getting some genocide guilt regardless of who you vote for or if you vote. Voting to decide if I want to drown in a torrent of blood and misery or a deluge. Currently being told mathematically the deluge is less so my mind has been made up. We've absolutely lost it as a country.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:39
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Xiahou Dun posted:Elections were for parties not people in the Weimar Republic so it’s a moot point. At no point was “Hitler Y/N?” something on a ballot. I like that you use this specific example because "Adolf Hitler? Ja/Nein" literally was on a ballot. It was in 1938 and hence long after they'd taken power, so it was no longer "the Weimar Republic", and also this was in Austria technically asking whether they supported Anschluss, but still  
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Oct 29, 2023 18:43
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Gumball Gumption posted:Voting to decide if I want to drown in a torrent of blood and misery or a deluge. Currently being told mathematically the deluge is less so my mind has been made up. It's like it was built on a native grave yard or something.
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Oct 29, 2023 18:57
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Kalit posted:Sorry, I should have clarified. Have the US itself sanction Israel, not through the UN. Yeah, you might be right, not sure. The overall sense I have right now though (could be wrong!) is that most things Biden could do in the short term wouldn't actually dissuade Netanyahu or his government (because Netanyahu is literally saying the bible commands a genocide), and anything Biden could do in the long term would require a shift in the overall politics of the United States government, not just Biden making a choice. We're all just being held hostage by political inertia and a few hundred assholes.
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Oct 29, 2023 19:02
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Kalit posted:As far as your last point, I believe a president can implement sanctions without needing congressional approval? Or at least to a certain degree. Of course Biden wouldn't do this, but the poster I was replying to specifically mentioned if the president was any other possible D president. The reason this will probably not work is that Israel will decimate Gaza for a few months to meet their political bloodlust goals, stop, and then say "we good?" The only way to force them to stop is to do so militarily.
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Oct 29, 2023 19:11
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Israel gets its bombs from us. I don't know if Biden can threaten to stop supplying weapons to Israel without the consent of Congress, but if he can, that's what he should do. I know it's never happening though.
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Oct 29, 2023 19:19
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FlamingLiberal posted:Israel gets its bombs from us. I don't know if Biden can threaten to stop supplying weapons to Israel without the consent of Congress, but if he can, that's what he should do. I know it's never happening though. Ostensibly Biden is in control of the armed forces, he could withdraw both carrier groups from the eastern Mediterranean if he wanted to.
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Oct 29, 2023 19:27
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mannerup fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Nov 5, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 19:33
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Gyges posted:Hell is filled with voters and non-voters in equal measure. All are guilty, and must be punished for their sin of being born in a Democracy. Everyone ends up in Hell? Sounds like the point system needs to be reformed.
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Oct 29, 2023 19:57
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Ither posted:Everyone ends up in Hell? Sadly, that's what you get with FPTP voting. First Past the Pulpit
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Oct 29, 2023 20:01
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| # ? May 26, 2024 01:07 |
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OddObserver posted:Yes, [without US backing, Israel] would completely lose the little restraint they have. That puts the US in a situation where it must cover itself in the blood of Palestinian children, in full sight of the world, as the only means to possibly prevent further deaths of Palestinian children. That's the result of decades of US policy. Joe Biden played a small but integral part in those decades of policy, but there is little he can do now to reverse its effects immediately or in the short term. theCalamity posted:I don’t vote for people who support genocides so I don’t get where you think I support one Gumball Gumption posted:f you don't vote for the genocider there will be blood on your hands from the genocide Letting Israel twist in the wind, or making sweeping, immediate changes to our diplomatic relations, would absolutely be a political liability, and could directly empower Donald J. Trump - that's not something Biden is imagining. If that wasn't the case, he would be acting differently! Public sentiment is moving in Palestine's direction and that will only accelerate as long as Israel continues their atrocities - I hope both that the sentiment moves fast enough, and that the administration responds to it quickly enough, that the US will put a stop to what's happening soon. I'm not optimistic, though. The funding we're currently sending doesn't have anything to do with Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians - they already have more than enough bombs and goons with guns to kill every last one and level every building in Gaza. It's a mostly symbolic act in the present, that will go towards making Israel's disproportionately powerful military more powerful in the decades to come - should Israel continue to exist in its current form for decades, which, Inshallah, it will not. Bear in mind I would be equally opposed to a genocide of Jews in Israel, because although they are the direct descendents of colonizers, they live where they live... but like, this "Jewish state" thing is clearly not working. Obviously the Brooklynites in the West Bank need to GTFO immediately. theCalamity posted:I live in a very red state with a winner takes all system lol. My vote for president doesn’t really factor into who gets to win. Gumball Gumption posted:We've absolutely lost it as a country. And like I said, that's not something that is done with voting. It's just definitely not something that is done by not voting, or by the Green candidate getting 1.1% instead of 0.8%.
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Oct 29, 2023 20:06
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