After a day and several replies from people. I’ve come to the conclusion that people here are ok with their party and leaders supporting genocide and they attack the questioners (instead of their party leaders) who criticize those who support genocide. Critical thinking is scarce here.
I’m shameful of humanity.
I too have a nuanced opinion about my voting options and a strong contempt for candidates who talk down to people who are right.
I’m still voting Harris because the only other option wants to see people like me hanged.
Wouldn’t it be much better if no-one gets hanged or genocided? Wouldn’t it be much better if democrats listen to young voters and stop supporting/funding genocide?
Wouldn’t it be much better if no-one gets hanged or genocided?
Have you got a way to make that happen?
Have you got a way to make that happen?
“If we all clap our hands and believe really hard, the majority of the electorate will come around to our thinking inside of the next month!”
I don’t know why we weren’t doing that BEFORE a few weeks before election day. Apparently it’s only viable when there’s a serious risk of fascism. I’m sure these people aren’t just trying to get their favorite fascist in office.
Have you got a way to make that happen?
Yes, that’s what our demand is from the democrat representatives that they should include our demand and stop supporting/funding genocide. (people demand in a democratic nation) If they can save large number of people from getting hanged then they can also stop facilitating genocide. Instead genociders are welcomed to give speeches in U.S. congress.
So that’s a no, then.
PugJesus, I am just asking democrats to not support/fund genocide. That’s it.
And you have no plan to get them to agree to such a demand that doesn’t amount to “If we don’t vote and allow fascists to win, this will somehow be a moral victory for anti-genocide”
We sent posts, emailed the representatives, filed cases, protested (campuses and other places), protested in both major parties rallies. Bernie tried to pass bill to stop funding of genocide. But who listens to Bernie, no one.
And how do you propose for that to realistically happen? Because Trump wants to see entire groups of people dead in this country, deport Muslims, and also turn the entire Middle East into a sheet of glass using nukes.
Myxomatosis, listen man. We do support the democrats on topics when they talk about respect and inclusivity of minorities in society but we also demand that they should not support/fund genocide. It’s our demand from democrat leaders. Is it a wrong demand? You should tell me.
I understand your frustrations. But I refuse to throw my vote away and help Trump. He is an existential threat. My vote isn’t so much for Harris/Walz as it is a vote against Trump.
No fucking shit lol, but this isn’t fantasy, now is not the time to be acting like the threat of not voting will change any policies, because we’re still competing with half the country who wants an extra-genocidal maniac in
Wouldn’t it be much better if no-one gets hanged or genocided?
Wouldn’t it be much better if we lived in a world where asking “Wouldn’t it be much better” magically made complicated and unrealistic things happen. You didn’t even bother to write a decent response, you just jumped straight into a whataboutism.
Y’all are seriously downvoting the “maybe we shouldn’t spend over $22bn a year on weapons used to genocide” post? That really highlights OP’s point.
Finally a sane soul in comments.
Let the guy who wants to do even more genocide into office! That’ll show the genociders!
People really out here wondering how the dems could have such right wing policies while also never showing up during primaries or generals to indicate that moving left will pay anything back.
Fosters electoral climate where the people who at minimum are sympathetic to the genociders are the majority of likely voters.
"Why won’t the dems go against the genociders‽ How dare a major political party adopt policy positions that upset a contingent of voters who have consistently demonstrated they can’t be trusted to show up even when you do take the positions they want as evidenced by how they completely abandoned Bernie during the primaries BOTH GODDAMNED TIMES!!!"
Now to speak as a Palestinian American, your supposed stand for your principals is actively putting my people in even more danger, so quit acting like you’re their ally while you basically use them as a hostage to demand leaders stop letting them be held hostage.
If you think the answer to Dems being soft on Bibi is to let power back into the hands of the guy who handed him West Bank, East Jerusalem, and The Golan Heights on a silver platter, you’re either a covert zionist, or an unwitting agent of them, either way, you need to sit down and shut the fuck up before you get the people you’re talking over into even more danger.
Nu-uh! I said I’m anti Genocide so I can’t do no wrong with my vote! /s
Sometimes I wish I could vote in the US Elections too. They are much more dramatic then ours.
Trust me, drama is worth a lot more when seen than it is when experienced.
I’ll ask the same question i did on the other thread. Why, do disaffected voters have to …
[show] up during primaries or generals to indicate that moving left will pay anything back.
Why not just poll them, or focus-group them, or use proxies like social media?
You seem to have no problem with the notion of leftist groups communicating preferred policies to Democrat strategists, but then seem to bizarrely assume that the only way to communicate a willingness to vote is to actually vote (for a party you don’t agree with).
Tell me… We all go out and vote Democrat. They get into power. How do they now know it wasn’t the support for genocide that won them the vote and go even further next time?
A take I’ve heard that maybe you’ll understand is this:
Leftist organizing in the US isn’t going to change the system 90 days before election day. There’s simply too much momentum with the two party system we have.
So now the situation is, vote for whoever you’d rather have in charge of the country while you do your leftist organizing for the next several years. I know I’d rather do that work under a Harris presidency than a Trump one, for a million obvious reasons.
To do anything else is to simply not understand the reality of the situation.
That’s a reasonable argument, but it leads to some pretty uncomfortable conclusions for democracy.
During our next “leftist organizing for the next several years.”, why would the Democrats budge an inch given that they know all they need to do is hold fast until the last 90 days and we’ll all fall into line and vote for them anyway?
We end up like the boy who cries wolf. All our protest and campaigns mean nothing because our votes are, in the end, absolutely guaranteed. The Democrats can have whatever policy positions they like.
I don’t see how 4 years or 4 days makes any difference. If they are guaranteed your vote come election day, they have no reason to shift policy in order to obtain it.
I’d say then you don’t understand the purpose of on-the-ground political organizing or what it looks like. It’s not about changing the whole system in one go, it’s about radicalizing as many people as possible for a grassroots movement. You use that to get local politicians in power favorable to leftist causes. Then you apply pressure upward.
We’re currently more radicalized as a country than we’ve been since the Red Scare. Just because the progress is frustratingly slow does not mean it isn’t happening.
But this discussion isn’t about grassroots or local politicians. Following the logic espoused in the OP you’d turn out in droves to vote for a local politician who offers policies you agree with.
This discussion is about the presidential election and what to do about two candidates who both actively support genocide.
One could conceivably not vote for Kamala and then massively support your local grassroots movement and politicians, or… You could vote for Kamala and then massively support your local grassroots movement and politicians.
Talking about whether or not to vote for Kamala has no bearing on what you then do at a local level.
And if that local-level politician doesn’t offer policies you like, same logic. Why would they ever do so if they’re guaranteed your vote anyway?
What’s at stake here is people actively arguing that we should just guarantee one political party our votes, no matter what their policies are, out of blind faith.
That’s not a democracy, it’s a theocracy.
You’ve successfully looped back to my first point.
You vote in the current election to get the conditions to do your grassroots work under.
I got the point. Just not the mechanism. It’s all very well to hand-waive vaguely toward ‘grassroots work’, but its far from clear how, under the voting policy in question, this will affect anything.
Let us say our grassroots campaign went really well and we get some great local politicians. Now what?
They advise Kamala (or her replacement) to drop support for genocide? Why would she listen? They’re going to be in no different a position to us, they have to vote in her favour no matter what all the while there’s a worse person on the ballot.
And why would anyone even advise it in the first place when leftist votes are guaranteed anyway? It’d be political insanity to risk loosing the centrist vote for no gain.
So, explain the mechanism. We get a great local politician and she does what…?
At the risk of feeding a sea lion, there’s actually a simple reason a candidate might shift their position toward voters that are already “guaranteed” to vote for them: if that “guaranteed” base grows, it provides a voting offset that could allow the candidate to worry less about losing the support of less progressive voters.
if that “guaranteed” base grows, it provides a voting offset that could allow the candidate to worry less about losing the support of less progressive voters.
Sure.
But why would they? If the base that’s ‘grown’ is guaranteed, then why shift at all? Why not have the new larger guaranteed base, and the less progressive voters. After all, the guaranteed base is guaranteed, you don’t need to do anything to get their votes.
But let’s say they want to risk it for ideological reasons (no evidence at all that this is the case, but for the sake of argument we could assume it).
You’ve still not addressed the two main questions.
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How do they know the extra votes came from left-leaning but ‘guaranteed’ voters, and not from voters who really liked their centrist policies?
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If they have some way of knowing (polls, focus-groups etc) then why can’t they use that way of knowing to ask about voter commitment, and make the move to the left before the election, why do they need us to actually vote first to find out if we’re in this ‘guaranteed base’?
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Oh. I’ve just looked up ‘sea-lion’. Jesus fucking Christ. In one thread we’ve had the argument, from supposed progressives, that;
- Vote your government back in no matter what their policies are, just do so out of blind faith.
- Don’t look things up for yourself, just accept what the authorities tell you without question.
- Don’t ask for evidence or challenge this view, just accept it without question.
This is the progressive position now?
This isn’t politics, it’s a fucking religion.
It’s not a religion, it’s reality and acknowledging that we can’t always get what we want when we want, and sometimes, the best option is harm reduction. You’re going on and on, like voting is always about ideological purity, but it’s not. The current system we have means you can push as far in whatever direction you want during the primary elections, but when it comes down to the general election, there are two viable candidates. The reality is, most third party slates, don’t even have a path to 270 electoral votes. Of the two that do, only the Libertarian Party has ever received an electoral vote, and that was in 1972 because of a “faithless elector,” rather than support at the ballot box. The Green Party? They only show up every four years to make perfect the enemy of better. They’re not serious. That leaves you with Trump and Harris. If we characterize them as cynically as you seem to view them, the choice is between someone that impulsive, vindictive, transactional, and devoid of even being able to pretend to a modicum of empathy, versus someone that isn’t stopping genocide fast enough. Of those two, which one do you think is more likely to exacerbate genocide the most?
Saying you’re not going to vote for a candidate that “allows genocide,” doesn’t mean genocide isn’t going to happen, it just means you get to feel better about yourself rather than inching things toward less genocide that might actually save some lives. So take how you will feel about yourself voting for someone that “allows genocide,” and set that aside, and ask yourself, out of the two, who is going to make it worse and who will make it less worse — because that vote has real life-and-death consequences.
it’s reality
Just declaring it to be ‘reality’ doesn’t stand in for an argument. I obviously disagree so if you want to have a discussion you have to forward some rational argument for your view.
Why will withholding a vote when neither candidate is acceptable not stop genocide?
You’ve simply declared that it will, but not given any reasons.
If both candidates are going to continue arms sales, then there’s no difference. The idea that Trump’s going to sell more is silly, there’s no current limit, Israel buys what they need. So the only affect I can have is in the long term.
Here, there’s two options:
Make it clear that genocide does not win votes.
Make it clear that even genocide is not going to dissuade me from voting Democrat and so give them basically a free ticket to ignore voters complety.
The former is the most likely to stop genocide.
Same goes for any other issue.
All the while you vote as if it were a duopoly, it will remain a duopoly. It’s not about getting ‘the least worst person’ into power next month, it’s about the long term value of making it clear to politicians that they cannot simply threaten us into voting for them, that they need to present policies we want in order to secure votes. Anything less and you might as well chuck democracy now. All they have to do is build up the bogeyman again and you’ll vote for them no matter what. In what way is that remotely “for the people, by the people”?
Are you actually advocating that people shouldn’t have to show up to the political system to get the system to go their way? Like, this is exactly what the primaries are for. Obama wasn’t the preferred party candidate in 2008, it was Hilary, but there was so much primary support from Obama that he won over her. The same could have happened in 2016 or 2020, but young voters predominantly didn’t come out to vote in the primaries.
If you think you should be able to just fill out a poll and turn out in November you fundamentally don’t understand how the system works.
Show up at the primaries for anti-genocode candidates, y’know, like fucking nobody did this year because half the most progressive members of the party got ousted by israeli funded pacs, who’s messaging should have had zero impact on this supposed very dependable voting base that the democrats should really spend more effort listening to.
Wanna know how radicals took over the republican party? They established themselves as a major voting contingent, and then they hijacked all the primaries.
They would laugh in your face for suggesting that the way to push the Republicans towards their goals is to just not vote at all and then loudly declare it was due to insufficient trumpiness. Not even they are that stupid.
Your post seems to be attached as a response to mine. Since it addresses nothing in my post, I can only assume this was a mistake?
It’s extremely interesting that democratic politicians have not only managed people (traditional voters) into believing that this genocide is normal but if you demand or say anything against this genocide then these normal people will attack you instead of asking their party leader “Why is it essential for their party to keep supporting genocide?”
Just completely ignored the spelled put reason for all of this on your way to this comment huh?
Not voting does nothing but say that your opinions are not worth listening to.
That is the entirety of what that action says.
There is no other message that gets recieved.
Because under FPTP, there is no other message the Dems can afford to receive.
The math literally works out that you are either supporting them or that you are not, and that the best spent energy is on consistent voters who are able to be convinced, not on morons who think that saying maybe they’ll vote this time if all of their demands are met by election day with a divided house and senate, swearzies.
To party planners this stunt you’re pulling looks like nothing but Lucy with the football saying you swear you aren’t gonna pull it away this time if they took a run at it like that really old guy did in '16 and '20 before being completely abandoned at the polls.
Dependability and consistency is what gets names on primary ballots that can make change.
You have to show up and do the bare minimum work, consistently, or you are mathematically not worth the trouble of trying to please.
The time to make this stand was in the primary season, and y’all told the democrats that being even low-key anti-genocode is nothing but running at Lucy’s football yet again, after the most vocal members of the progressive flank about it all got knocked out in that stage of the election.
You had your chance to send the message and you fucking wasted it on the “none of the above” bullshit.
You literally saw the knife coming down on the people who were listening to you and instead of showing up for them you stood there and then scratched your head over why nobody’s around who’s listening to you anymore.
Fuck you.
You created the current crop of Dems that have to be convinced even harder now that pursuing a cease-fire is worth anything electorally, and the only reason that’ll even be possible is a once in a century replacement of the candidate for head of the party.
Very very well said and your point about consistency is absolutely true. Someone posted an article a few months back in which young people were threatening not to vote for Biden because of the support for Israel and the first thing to go through my head was, “So basically no change.”
You seem very aware of this, but I wanted to add some numbers in case you or someone else wanted the comparison. The highest 18-29 year old turn out was 2018 at 28% (almost like buyers remorse for not showing out in 2016). In 2014 the turn out was 14% while in 2022 it was 23%.
In 2020 there were 158 million people who turned out to vote and there are an estimated 52 million people in the age group (lets assume they are all eligible to vote). Lets say this group of unhappy progressives accounts for 10% of the turnout and instead of having 28% we instead will get 18%. The difference is 5.2 million votes (28% equals 14.5 million and 18% equals 9.3 million) which equates to about 3% of the total voters if we look at 2020’s general election.
Honestly what I’m more angry about is what happens when you look at the numbers for primaries.
In nearly every instance where a progressive lost the primary, it’s down to these assholes, at this point I am convinced, just looking for any excuse to call the whole thing scuffed so when they inevitably just forget when polling day is they don’t have to feel bad about it.
Bernie could have won both times and ridden in on a progressive tsunami.
He only didn’t because those fucking brats pulled the football, again.
I would be shocked to find a single election where fauxgressives finding any fault to justify having the turnout energy of cosmic background radiation wasn’t the reason an unpopular liberal won the primary, or an unpopular conservative/fascist won the general.
If progressives had even half the energy for showing up that they did for pitching fits about the people that did not doing the revolution for them, we’d have a country that was at least on the track to be what our boomer parents and teachers tried to insist it already was.
Amen, I was so freaking mad in 2016 because I was a big Bernie supporter and I remember reading an article where some college kids had been polled. The kid in question said he wasn’t really fond of Hillary and was thinking of not voting for her. The interviewer asked who he liked to which he said he really preferred Bernie Sanders and was upset he didn’t win the primary. The interviewer then asked if he had voted in the primary and the kid said he had forgotten to go vote.
I think the trick has been to give people a plausible narrative that makes them sound like the clever ones, standard power-play. People love that stuff, myself included, we’re all vulnerable to it. It’s why conspiracy theories work so well, but here, the same psychology is put to use rewarding people for saying stuff that’s obviously morally bankrupt. I think it works the same way a peacock’s tail works in evolution, the idea being that ‘surely no one would say something so obviously awful unless they had a really very complicated and convincing reason’
It’s allowed some of the decade’s worst atrocities to go virtually unopposed.
Is it too much to ask for a meme template that doesn’t DIRECTLY contradict your message?
Or did you mean to imply that single-issue anti-gaza-slaughter voters are the equivalent of star wars criticts being properly annoyed by folk who like melodramatic space opera?
So no actual on topic criticisms?
Fair enough as long as you know why the cop is going to lose the election.
You say that like there’s a world where the cop is not less-bad than the serial rapist.
Honestly, at this point you’re either a pro-trump troll or a trump-like useful idiot. There is little i can say that might change your mind, especially if you’re in the latter group and honestly think the ghosts of gaza will thank you for your performative morality when Trump gives the ok for Israel to go mask-off.
It’s weird world out here, where you are told what to and what not to demand from your representatives and demanding end to genocide is deemed controversial.
Yep. Spot on.
We now live in a world where ‘leftist’ opinion is “Do as your government tells you, don’t question authority, and don’t ask for anything more”.
Anything that isn’t Trump is to be unquestioningly accepted. And they wonder why folk-devils are made…
Step one - set up a few folk-devils who are the embodiment of evil and must be stopped at all costs
Step two - do whatever the hell you like, including funding actual genocide, because “hey, at least we’re not those guys…”
regardless of the genocide(that has been going on for the last 20 election cycles), if you are undecided about the right choice in the 2024 US election, you’re ignorant, selfish or spoiled.
If you are democrat leader then you’ve the chance to win the votes of young, undecided voters by not funding or supporting genocide. You should know that if they vote for third parties in large numbers, then you are in great trouble. Those votes are valuable. Accept our demands and take the vote.
the democrats are already winning the votes of young and decided voters.
they’re the party of personal Liberty, sustainable technology, international cooperation, climate change, minority representation, they’re doing fine on popular progressive issues.
what are you saying is based on a false premise.
also, third party voting is fine. it is what voting actually is supposed to be, as it is in most countries.
you vote for the candidate that most aligns with your values.
If the democrats will ignore our demands and continue their support and funding of genocidal regime then they will lose this election.
the democrats are doing great, especially after the resounding success at the debate.
there is plenty of counter evidence against your whining.
The democrats have a huge following, also, importantly, this is an election.
they could lose anyway. That’s what an election is.
If you want to vote for a third party, go for it, that is how voting works.
given that Harris has already pushed forward momentum on basically every major progressive policy for the past 4 years, you’d be an idiot not to vote for harris and walz if you care about people at all.
“If the democrats will ignore our demands…”
you draw lazy memes and have no valid arguments. it doesn’t sound like you really care about anything.
nobody cares about your pretension.
You seem very happy with this democrat government. But would you start hating them if they include policy like ending support/funding of genocide?
that would be good also.
It’s good you finally learned about the Palestinian genocide, but threatening to let conservatives further mangle the country when you have a progressive alternative is selfish and incredibly narrow-minded.
stopping the US from sending weapons will not stop Israel.
they are a third party with plenty of international support and funding that is under no obligation to listen to the US.
The US can stop sending bombs tomorrow, they could have stopped sending bombs months ago and Israel’s military would atill be fully prepared to continue this war as long as they want to, regardless.
you are shooting yourself and everybody around you in the foot for rhe privilege of eating night soil by voting against harris.
threatening to let conservatives further mangle the country when you have a progressive alternative is selfish and incredibly narrow-minded.
And how exactly is not voting doing that when…
the democrats are already winning the votes of young and decided voters
Either the Democrats are comfortably winning (in which case we can vote with our conscience), or they’re not (in which case vocal opposition to genocide might encourage them to change policies to garner our vote).
The alternative is that nothing will get them to change policies because they’re not interested in our vote. In which case the whole “turn up and the Democrats will move left” theory is nonsense.
I think supporting/funding genocide shouldn’t be democratic party policy, it would suit more on far-right. But reality is different. Even after thousands of posts, emails to representatives, cases in court, protests in campuses and rallies. Democrats are eager to support/fund a genocide.
Democratic party has become a far-right party.
- Democrats cut off funding.
- Israel keeps genociding because they don’t need our help to shoot Palestinian kids in the head.
- Israel-Pac funds Republicans.
- Republicans win.
- Republicans accelerate the Genocide over there.
- Republicans revoke US Citizenship of Gaza protestors here, imprison them in detention camps with other “undesirables”, just like Israel did with Gaza.
- Republicans declare war on Mexico and invade to set up a security zone, just like Israel did with Lebanon.
So in either not voting or voting for the other guy you achieve:
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even more and FASTER genocide
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genocide in ukraine
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genocide at home for everyone in lgbtq
Good job! You solved genocide by not voting Kamala!
So by voting democratic party. We’ll get :-
- No genocide in Ukraine.
- No genocide at home for everyone.
- This is all great, i 100% agree with both points, but why should it be limited. Add third point.
- No genocide of Palestinians.
- But No, democratic party will keep supporting and funding genociders and keep inviting them to give speeches in US Congress.
- They are getting power to keep supporting genocide policy because of large number of people like you who do not question the authority and keep defending them.
So what is your solution??? I like shitting on the dems and pushing them to do the right thing as much as the next guy, but not voting for them is fucking insane.
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too spicy for .world
distantsounds, Not supporting genocide is a controversial take here.
It’s not a controversial take you dipshit, the controversy is you thinking Trump is going to be better, because at the end of the day that’s all it is. And you not responding to anyone giving you actual reasons and instead whining about everyone here being “pro-genocide” or whatever. You’re pathetic, or a teenager who has no idea that America is barely a democracy.
