this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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If the election were between Trump and somehow someone even worse who was calling to nuke the entire area and turn it into glass, then I would absolutely be pushing for Trump. Shockingly, if we are trapped in a horrifying, dystopian version of the trolley problem (which we are), I'm going to make the choice that causes the least damage.
Using another analogy, if you have a badly broken arm, you can either set it and try to keep it immobilized, or you can let it stay how it is and all but guarantee that it gets fucked up even worse as it heals wrong. Voting third party is like saying "I don't like either of those options since they both involve my broken arm, so I choose to pray to the Moon Goddess". There is no option that immediately stops your arm from being broken. You can delude yourself and say the Moon Goddess will magically fix it, but in reality, you are choosing the option that does nothing and makes it worse. Choosing to set your broken arm doesn't make you "pro-broken arm", it's just the only practical choice given a terrible situation.
It does not get worse than genocide. The habit of inventing a hypothetical bigger and harder gun to hold to marginalized peoples' heads doesn't work on this one.
We are not trapped in a trolley problem. You are a human with agency. You can join organizations, you can educate, you can take action. Reducing your political agency to a lever pull for genocide is a helplessness taught to you by the political class because they just want you to vote for them even when they commit genocide right in front of your eyes. They want you to think of Palestinian lives as strategically expendable and that you are actually smart, not racist, for toeing that line. And your compliance with their demands is exactly what ensures they can shove any monster down your throat as a candidate. Harris is complicit in genocide and didn't win a single primary but Dems say, "well, time to fall in line". Dems strategists know that "progressive" Dems do this so they do nothing for them in policy, they just deploy PR goons to vote against every 4 years. Compliant voters enable their own irrelevance.
Though of course, voting is very limited and there is much more to be done.
I refuse to entertain analogies justifying genocide.