this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
313 points (82.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43737 readers
1703 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You forgot the other scenario. You talk of not having leverage because of a vote, and yet the other choice absolutely has no leverage at all, and possibly makes things even harder to change.
Let me ask this - would you recommend not voting for either President, but voting on the rest of the ballot? Because telling people to not vote usually implies don't show up at all, and that is part of why nothing changes. Local and state representation can matter more than the President.
Re: your question, I recommend that people consider Palestinians full humans and work backwards from there. I cannot prescribe much more than that outside of recommending they also challenge the omnipresent racist narratives used to manufacture consent for this genocide. That enough to begin a political education.
I don't really care how an individual decides to check their electoral box, I care about your normalization of genocide and application if lesser evil logic in service of a fucking genocide. If some person wants to vote for some loser for Congress, have at it. But let this moment of genocid apoligeticss awaken you politically and to begin challenging these narratives that led you down this path. Read and learn and understand why genocide is in the table, and no it is not because AIPAC is a big donor. Biden was being real when he said if Israel didn't exiat they would need to invent one.
I haven't said anything like, "not having leverage because of a vote". The relevance of leverage is that the entire premise of y'all's framings is that your role is to cheerlead your corronated genocidal candidate and accept anything they do, at least up to genocide. You throw away any concept of your own ability to make demands or organize and subordinate yourself to a genocidal political class. It makes you actively work against those who build leverage as well, you try to sheepdog them back into your self-defeating mindset.
So, having thrown away any real political analysis for building and using power, your vote is really reduced to a reflection of your personal morality. And that morality? To look at Palestinians as subhuman.
Re: harder to change, your electoral logic is already self-defeatjng. What do you think you are changing when your electoral logic is, "fall in line vite blue no matter who" including fucking genocide. Who would ever take you seriously? You think they're going to do anything to "win your vote"? Genocide apologist, they know they already have it. You announced you were giving it to them free of charge, that you will tolerate anything they do and still vote for them, and are actually pressuring others to do the same on their behalf.
You have thrown away any semblance of power or influence, and that is already within the limited confinea of electoralism. We all know that folks who think this way aren't out there working against the party in alternative organizations.
The correct time to express such thoughts is during a primary. We didn't have one because we had an incumbent; it happens.
The better place to have this fight is through congress anyways. They're the ones that actually approve the aid.
Better yet, go talk to the Israel people and get them to vote for someone that stops using our weapons in such an offensive manor. Israel knows that their position is critical to the US interest and their current leaders are happy to exploit that.
Literally, abstaining makes you part of the "party of not voting" and nobody does anything for them, because they don't vote.
There is no wrong time to be against genocide. It is, in fact, your basic duty as a human being claiming to have any empathu whatsoever.
Despite your pretense of knowing familiarity with how the system works, Buden has been bypassing Congress to send weapons to Israel for their genocide. Good ol' JDAMs produced right here in the US of A, even.
Israel is a settler-colonial state whose material interests are deeply tied to the dehumanization and oppression of Palestinians. There is no chance for a grassroots mobilization within Israel against the genocide. They want more blood than Bibi gives them. The most helpful thing for someone in the refion to do is to work directly to against Israel and their own governments' complicity. The US has similar challenges in its material base and society but I am succeeding in my organizing goals here. Every person in the US has a responsibility to work against its war machine.
And Israel is not a separate actor, here. It is fully dependent on the US.
Right, they are actually close collaborators. You should work against them.
You should not vote for genociders or tell others to do so. Whether that means abstaining is up to the individual. I don't really care. But you need to shed this idea that you are fighting the good fight by supporting genocide, you are actively harmful to working for the good of humanity. Instead of sheepdogging for Dems, join the people with empathy and organize against imperialism.
It amuses me how rational you think you are while simultaneously missing the point. The gop will collapse, and then the dems will be the right wing party that they want to be. And the fight will begin anew. Harris shift to the right is a fine demonstration of this.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. When would the GOP collapse? Dems of course want to move right, there is no capitalist draw to the left, if you can call it a left. They would love to be able to manage their party without a "left" flank to handle and pivot fully to nationalism.
When? Im not an Oracle. May take decades. May get worse before it gets better in certain areas. The USSR took a generation to collapse.
Im hoping harris move to the right enough and manages it. So we can split the dem party finally.