I have actually had this argument used against me.
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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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.
I like how the trolley meme is peak liberal morality test
I'm starting to think now the trolley problem should be reframed as a catch-22 / false choice / manufactured consent.
Who constructed this trolley? Why are there only two options shown? Do these options actually match reality? etc.
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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.
The problem is that Trump would be worse. If Kamala wins, THEN you apply pressure. You don't help the guy who praises Hitler, and promises to punish his enemies "from within" the day he takes office. This also isn't the only issue by a landslide, considering Trump wants to dismantle NATO, and defund the support sent to Ukraine.
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Funny you should say that, because I too would very much like to dismantle NATO.
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
I voted for Biden in 2020, what pressure could I have applied to stop the genocide?
You don't seem to realize that the US/Biden/Democrats have lost the moral high ground a year ago. I honestly believe Biden is a worse criminal than Putin.
If Kamala wins, THEN you apply pressure.
How? This is not the kind of thing anyone that cares about pressure or leverage says. Electorally you have the most leverage, as an individual, before the election, not after it.
Do you ever question what you are told to do by the party?
You don't help the guy who praises Hitler,
Kamala Harris is supporting a genocide.
and promises to punish his enemies "from within" the day he takes office.
You mean with cops and feds? Maybe violence against and suppression of protesters? Maybe labelling Palestinian solidarity organizations as terrorists? Maybe signing an EO to allow "the military to use " lethal force" on citizens in the US.
Your "good cop" is already doing that. You just approve.
This also isn't the only issue by a landslide
What's the issue? Can you describe it?
considering Trump wants to dismantle NATO
That would be an unmitigated good for humanity. Sometimes Dem voters make great arguments for Trump. Good thing we have principles.
defund the support sent to Ukraine
The people of Ukraine suffer due to a decade-long US pressure campaign to use them to harass and bait Russia. After Russia invaded, the people of Ukraine are now used as inputs to a meat grinder because the US' goal remains to hurt Russia, not help Ukraine. The US escalated in the first place and then scuttled peace talks.
The best thing for the people of Ukraine would be to end the war diplomatically ASAP.
I'm starting to feel like this genocide straw man is truly their strongest argument. Like, is that going to make me forget the other option wants to turn the country into a dictatorship?
You seriously want to bring up genocide to play a "lesser of two evils" game, when one evil is Trump? GTFO
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.
Not every muslim or arab thinks alike. Either way though, this is probably not a great subject for a first meeting 😄
I do recognize that the core issue lies deeper. It just doesn't feel realistic to solve the fundamental problems before the election though. So it's not unreasonable to reduce the problem to the vote for the time being IMHO.
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living the meme dude
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!"
You are making several great points and I thank you for explaining them. I don't even want to argue against any of them.
I just feel like I've seen the USA murder muslims for a decade in the first degree, and now people are getting worked up over a second degree, and consider electing a con artist to prevent it.
I'd rather have a reasonable person in office, that might respond to the public opinion, than someone who is purely focused on their own gain.
The "reasonable person" is an active participant in the genocide. Harris has been lockstep with Biden in his public statements and misleading "ceasefire" rhetoric and has clearly signaled material support for Israeli occupation in no uncertain terms. Harris has not "responded to public opinion", the genocide is very unpopular, as is military support for Israel. She hasn't even done any real pandering, which would be easy and cost her very little. There are a handful of very willing Palestinian PR liberals that will gladly get up on a stage and say, "this is tragic but [both sides rhetoric]". You won't even get that.
It's important to understand that politicians do not care about polling like you might want them to. They only care insofar as it serves their strategy, and their strategy is premised on supporting Israel both to feed their own military industrial complex and to prop up the petrodollar and ensure the US dollar is the world reserve currency. They need Israel to destabilize any independent groups in the region that could jeopardize this by, say, daring to have their own foreign policy or nationalizing their resources or shutting down the Strait of Hormuz in response to unilateral sanctions. Israel is a forward base, an attack dog, for US empire. This is why your politicians will not doing anything for you. This is why you don't even get pandering. This is why they don't follow "the polls" or "public opinion" on this: it does not align with their prior, and greater, commitments to empire, as filtered down through their donors, the government MIC and intelligence bureaucracy, and the party insiders. This is an important lesson to learn, because they will also come at us with positions that they claim are just "following what people want", which is almost always something right wing that serves their own interests. They are not consistent about this, it is just cynical PR strategy to launder an agenda.
Re: being a reasonable person, Harris is a former prosecutor and AG that made a name for herself for unnecessary cruelty in keeping people locked up past when they should have been released and for using technicalities to avoid releasing those with exonerating evidence. As a politician, she is an empty suit, adopting policy planks from other politicians and never fighting for them. "It was a debate!" What you can tell from her, however, is that she is self-interested, opportunistic, and never really breaks the party agenda with any coherent vision of her own. That means going all-in on xenophobic Dem rhetoric, playing coy about trans rights (but she's happy to get photo ops during pride!), and genocide. Expect her, if elected, to not give a shit about you or anyone else and to do exactly what the larger imperialist political bureaucracy wants her to do, all with a smile and an incoherent mealy-mouthed ramble. Expect the trade wars to increase and for yet more US-backed wars and starvation campaigns to ramp up (Yemen has been facing this since Obama).
Harris is in no way less self-interested than Trump, she is just "acceptable" to liberals on a purely aesthetic basis. Her self-interest aligns with the typical liberal idea of what is "okay", which includes members of Congress being mysteriously extremely rich, getting to participate in insider trading, doing a genocide, being "tough on crime", lying regularly, having no consistent principals or honestly-stated political program, having no real track record of delivering or pushing for anything at all except what is already fully in line with the party, punching left, and being politely racist.