I'm with you on what the meme is trying to say, but the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track and running over everyone.
Hitler's government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
[...]
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. "We ignored Hitler," he said. "We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all."
They thought of the government as "They." The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
Similarly, MLK saw "the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" as the biggest impediment to civil rights.
The bottom line is that being secure enough in your position in society to think you don't have to engage in politics, or that you can afford to vote your principles instead of tactically, is itself a form of privilege. Those sorts of privileged people think themselves neutral or uninvolved or maybe (in the case of professed leftists refusing to vote Dem as a protest) on their own third side, but the reality is that they are the right-wing authoritarians' greatest ally every single time.
You're not wrong about the primary, but you are wrong to conflate the primary with the general election when it's the latter that we're talking about here.
The POTUS, from the party most opposed to civil rights act, is who signed it into law, very much so a white moderate more devoted to order. So, I'm gonna take a stance and say MLK was wrong about that one if that was his take before he died.
That's not how it went, though. It's, in fact, the opposite of how it went. Hitler had relatively little popular support, but full support of the industrial elite. It's blaming the people for the crimes of the elite. "They abdicated their franchise" no, fuckface, half of them voted communist. "We ignored Hitler" no, fuckface, you put him in power because you thought he'd be malleable.
I'm not surprised Heinlein bought it, though. And I'm not surprised people here are buying it.
Your math is wrong. You wouldn't be cancelling out the greater evil with the vote for the lesser evil, so its actually twice as bad (or 4x what you were thinking).
What a sad misunderstanding of a quote literally describing state enforced genocide. I mean, this is how it starts. Both sides would kill Palestinians. Can't do anything about it I guess. Oh well, best not put my foot down and take a principled stand here.
I think that accepting that some groups, like Palestinians, will just be oppressed no matter what is what leads to things like the Holocaust. Saying you can't afford to take a stand on your principles today and draw a line in the sand, but maybe you will tomorrow leads to the situation Martin Niemoller found himself in. It may be too late already, and making a stand won't make a difference, but it's never too early.
And what happens when a significant chunk of the electorate does that? I bet all those poor Palestinians will really feel good about Israel being given the green light to bomb them harder because a bunch of people protested and got a dementia riddled fascist elected.
These posts are just virtue signalling, because there's never any forethought of what happens after the election to the people being discussed. You can speak from a place of privilege and moralize about the choice you're making, but you're pushing the same tactics that the republicans and alt-right push: don't vote democrat.
I don't like that I have to vote for Biden, but I actually want to minimize the harm being done to people, not just talk about it on the internet. Crazy concept.
These don't-vote-for-Biden weirdos don't understand that it's wrong to use the idea of a minority to push your political interests in a way that hurts that minority.
If a significant portion of the electorate did that, Biden would be on the phone this minute applying all possible pressure to stop what is happening. Instead they are playing chicken with your vote. Children died today and every day for the past 8 months because a political party is betting that you'll vote for them anyways.
Again, the original issue I raised is that it's cruel to quote a man lamenting the fact that he and others like him didn't do enough soon enough to stop the Holocaust. That same behavior is happening right now. But it's fine. We just have to accept it. A few losses for the greater good. I'd bet you don't have any Palestinian friends, but if you do, please let them know I'm the one who's privileged and see what they say.
As someone who for the first time did not vote in 2016. I started voting in the Bush era. I fully agree, no action leads to fascism apparently. Don’t do what I did because I was pissed that Bernie was cheated out of the nomination. Vote or Trump will be back in office.
Doesn't matter where the track leads if the trolley can't get to it. It could lead to rainbows and sunshine, but that isn't where the trolley is headed because there is no possibility that someone other than Trump or Biden is elected president. A few cry babies voting third party won't get some third person elected. A vote for the third track is a vote for a track that will not be ridden.
I'm guessing the joke is that third party voters ignore the trolley about to go down one of two paths, instead deciding to stand next to a short piece of track connected to nothing with no trolley on it, so they can pretend the imminent disaster happening on the other track isn't real
And there's also a contingent of people on the trolley who are trying to get it to slow down, working their asses off to improve long term actual outcomes in the real world, whether related or not to the little lever, and the guy standing next to the empty disconnected track is claiming to be one of them and saying you must be against them and how dare you, you person-running-over-enabling monster, if you say anything against his strategy.
This is why I, as an autistic person, think internally using a sort of infinite mechanical analog diagram sheet thing.
Physical analogies are beautiful for how quickly they can convey a concept. Those disconnected tracks are a great representation of the third party voting situation we face, the “throwaway vote” problem.
Funny thing is, that's what's called a controlled derailment. It's the engineering answer to the situatuon, if the situation were real and not a contrived philosophical dilemma.
You'll have to be more specific about what blowing up the train maps to in real life before I can tell you whether or not doing so would also kill a shit ton of people.
But to keep it in metaphor, there are also innocent people riding the train and blowing it up would kill them, too.
Most of them, sure. But killing them with any kind of regularity would have a number of knock-on effects that would severely decrease many people's quality of life.
If your friend has a brain tumor, you don't point a gun to their head and shoot it out. You find brain surgeons and have them remove it under controlled conditions. Supposing you can't find a brain surgeon, it would still be better to learn brain surgery yourself and do a careful and thorough job than it would be to just shoot your friend in the head and hope for the best.
It's close enough to the tracks that it would hurt the hostages, and the wreckage would probably have enough momentum to hit them anyway.
This is a good analogy actually. Blowing up the train would feel good, but that isn't going to stop the momentum, and it's unfortunately virtually impossible to outright stop it's momentum at this point. All that blowing up the train would accomplish is sending fiery wreckage towards the middle track.
Well, in context of philosophy being taught in class you would then change the prompt to a harder question. You would also debate whether the person who makes the decision is in fact responsible and how that dynamic changes when the prompt changes.
So maybe you have to choose between 2 men only half as happy or handsome or one fully formed magical man with magic hands.
What if the train magically transforms regular men into new men? What if they were opposed to the transformation before it happened?
Conversely, what about if it magically creates men causing potential overpopulation? What if the men it created morally oppose the tram, but more than half the local population feel like it is necessary to run no matter what?
You can pretty much run this thought experiment forever, so far we've been going for 57 years.
Which, of course, they don't. It's a vanity vote. They want to pretend they have actually done something without actually having to do anything of consequence.
If we're interpreting their "third option" as a voting strategy and not convincing Biden to step in and stop the genocide, we can at least implement Approval Voting so that they can vote for all the "no genocide" candidates without having to worry that doing so could somehow backfire. Then, if they want or need to, they can cast a strategic vote to differentiate between different magnitudes of genocide.
No, you can't. You do not have the power to implement Approval Voting, and nobody who does have the power wants to do it. So it's not gonna happen, at least not in the short term. Right now, anybody who wins has to win in an environment of First Past the Post. Nobody capable of doing that currently supports Approval Voting, so right now it is effectively not on the ballot.
This is what I mean about "hav[ing] a viable strategy." Magically wishing Approval Voting into existence ain't it.
Well the strategy is to work your way up from the local level because:
It's easier for people to make change at the local level, Fargo and St. Louis have already done it.
Politicians tend to work their way up the ladder, and will be more open to using the system at higher levels if they already proved they can win under that system.
You have to remember that any real social change takes years, even decades of organized to realize. We didn't go from Jim Crowe to the civil rights act in a fortnight, it took big organizations applying decades of pressure in multiple different ways.
If you want to be a part of the solution, join an organization dedicated to improving things. It doesn't have to be the one I linked, but Election Science is the one working on approval voting. Local elections are such that one highly motivated person can build and run the organization to flip their local election laws, it could be you, but it won't happen overnight.
Great. That is a state issue, so pay attention to your state government, vote for state representatives that support better voting methods, and contact your state representatives to push for reform.
As someone else pointed out, those in power are unlikely to change the voting system to reduce their own power. However, you really start at the local level with referendums, and work your way up. First, it's easier to force change at the local level and second, politicians working their way up will be less hostile to changing to approval if they've already shown they can win under that system.
Apparently we can't in 2024. They didn't hear us in 2016. They won't hear us now in 2024. Maybe two Democrat juggernauts losing the presidential election to Trump of all people will convince them.
The problem is that we don't. If you're not in a "swing" state, all the votes in the world for Joe Biden are meaningless. Win California by another million votes. Win it by another 10M. Have every single eligible voter in California turn up and vote for Joe Biden. He still loses the EC when the SCOTUS tells Arizona to stop counting ballots the minute Trump is in the lead.
Also like what the fuck…I guess we have to kill Palestinians no matter what.
We have to keep sending money to Israel because its the means by which we control the Suez Canal.
Except... the Houthis have control over the back end of the canal so long as they're able to scare off shipping in the Gulf of Adan. So now we're endorsing a genocide just for shits and giggles.
It's almost like two organizations have totally monopolized US politics. It's a billion dollar industry, and they'd both rather alternate losing to each other and keep their seat at the table than let anyone else play the game.
Because of a shitty situation set up by countless past people and events completely out of your control you have to make a choice here. And in my mind, it's not even a difficult choice. Yes, either option will support Israel, that's a given, but there is no third option so it might as well not even be a factor in choosing a candidate.
If you want more parties and to remove first past the post then you need to elect the party who supports those stances. That is one of your two options. Real fucking simple.
It’s interesting how much the vote DOES resemble a trolley problem. Generally, the only real point in favor of not pulling the lever is “You’re killing someone, it’s immoral to get involved. Life shouldn’t be in your hands.”
Which is still setting aside all the conscious choice by other human beings that IS happening come election season. Probably the biggest way it diverges is that a trolley is moving under its own “natural” momentum. In reality, it’s as though some Nazis are pulling the trolley along the track to the 5 people.
If that third track were an option the trolley problem would never have existed. If there really is a third track in the real-life situation, then the trolley problem is not a good analogy of that problem.
Sadly, in this election there is no third track and we are forced into choosing the lesser of two evils.
If you want a third track, push for ranked choice voting!
So, why do some blue states want to continueusing FPTP voting? Why continue using a voting system favored by Republicans? In states controlled by Democrats, there's no Republican opposition hindering electoral reform efforts.
FPTP favors whichever party is currently in power in a two party system. Solid blue states don't want to switch because it makes their hold on power less secure. Same reason as Republicans in red states.
I swear I hear this regardless of how close we are to the next presidential election. Can we maybe focus on some of the other races on the ballot? I would love if we could get a Congress that was actually able to make good things happen, instead of trying very hard to do nothing so bad things don't happen.
Yeah, the focus on winning the presidency ignores the down ballot, small market and "off-cycle" races, and, to get to fillibuster-proof majorities, those races are the ones that need to be won. Berating progressives in urban areas to vote for moderate liberal candidates for president is not exactly harm reduction.
Electoral systems is a pretty nerdy topic (despite how important it is for who gets power), so it is not an issue the typical voter cares for. Therefore there is not enough political capital for such large reforms to be taken on by politicians.
Guys, I don't know what's going on in the world and their wars. I just want a president who isn't abhorently evil. Do we have to revolutionize to find that 3rd option orrr?
I assume your "abhorently evil" comment is based off support of the genocide in Palestine (which is a completely reasonable thing to describe as abhorently evil, I'm just being clear about my premise).
In which case, sorry, bad news, you can't have that. Your options this time round are genocide supporter or genocide supporter. Somewhere down the line, years from now, the US electoral system may have been sufficiently reformed to make third parties viable. But this year that's not going to happen.
So that decision is completely out of your hands. But here's what you do get to decide; you can have an outright fascist, leading a party of outright fascists who have openly publicised their plans to turn your country into a fascist theocracy. Or you can have the guys who strengthened workers rights and went after major companies for union busting, hit Microsoft for $20 billion in back taxes, had the FBI raid a major landlord for illegal price hikes, brought antitrust lawsuits against Amazon and several other large tech firms, and secured billions in aid for Ukraine in their fight for their freedom. And that is literally just a tiny sampling of the good things that Biden's government has done.
I don't even see how that's a choice. One of these two options is clearly and manifestly better than the other, no matter how disgusting it feels. A vote for Biden is not an endorsement of his position on Gaza. It is a tactical choice, nothing more. And if nothing else, its a tactical choice that will prevent the fascists from filling even more seats on the supreme court.
It sucks, but those are the only options. Sometimes life just be like that.
This guy gets it. I don't see how this is so difficult to understand. Not voting is essentially skewing the vote towards the diaper-wearing Nazi-Clown you once already had for a president. Vote for the least evil party, it's all you can do.
But what if I am a bad faith actor that only pushes the "no moral choice" position because I want to ensure that the fascists take power? Better yet, what if my Russian paycheck demands it. Then what do I do?
Are you forgetting about all the registered Democrats who voted uncommitted in the 2024 primaries? Not everybody who hates Biden is a Russian troll bud.
I'm certain ballots with good options are unavailable absent a revolution, but if we tried under present conditions we'd likely only get worse governance and maybe destabilize the global balance of power catastrophically.
Thank you! We may eventually have to but revolutions do not have certain outcomes and we face a second problem that in general will require a mechanism for global cooperation which is hard to do when the state with the military, cultural, and economic influence the US currently has plunges into chaos
You realize why the Ashley Biden rape showers with grandpa suddenly became nearly mainstream news and will suddenly go away if Biden does what he's told?
If that's how it is then we've already lost. People who would make up stories like that would rather take the mask off and destroy democracy then let us get in their way.
And the third track has buffers at both ends, is covered in weeds and somebody has stolen some of the sleepers to make a nice planter for their garden.
These posts are basically calling on leftists to support a genocide. I'll vote for Biden, but I'd also punch him square in his rich white Zionist jaw if I was given the opportunity. That's how American democracy works. The U.S. doesn't deserve a pass for supporting genocide, even if it's an election year.
half mental preparations of who to blame if Biden ends up losing.
Lol you're projecting. You all plan on blaming us despite failing to respect our seat at the negotiation table. We made it very clear: we don't vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates. You all thought you could fuck around and ignore our boundaries. You're watching us stand up and walk away from the table talking like you still aren't about to find out.
I swear, the best part about threads like these is that you're all so used to not even reading the opposing arguments that at this point you can't even tell eachother apart.
This really sums up things pretty well I think. On one hand there’s the democrats, trying to minimize the damage, on the other hand- there’s conservatives trying to cause as much of it as possible. And on the other hand….
Wait.
There can only be two hands!
That must mean that the third track can only exist in a suspended state of logic and should be dismissed as irrelevant.
Yup. You also get the middle track when you show up to the 2020 primaries and think to yourself "I'm gonna vote for a geriatric procorporate establishment white man. This is the best decision for me and everyone else will have to accept it because the alternative is Trump."
Lemmy was literally developed by communists and it feels like every other person here is a socialist.
I think I've only ever seen a few people on here call themselves liberals, and that was in the confused American version of the term, I've seen liberal used as an insult infinitely more.
Supporting Biden or Ukraine or Israel also does not immediately equal Liberalism, and I have no clue why yall have been treating it like it does.
Yes, liberals will not call themselves liberals. Much like NIMBYS would never call themselves NIMBYS. Especially ones trying to convince leftists to vote for a procorporate genocide supporting trash of a candidate.
As one party loses power it changes strategy to regain it, as one party gains power it is able to differentiate more amongst different ideologies within the party. If this goes far enough it can cause one party to fade to obscurity and a new party to emerge. There is no perfect candidate who represents everyone perfectly, you pick the candidate that is closer to the place you'd like to be. Also, third party votes work much better bottom-up vs top-down. Statistically no amount of crazy upset will cause a third party to actually win the top position despite no groundwork being done. Support third party candidates in small races where small grassroots efforts not funded by major political action groups are actually likely to make a difference. Then when you get a good candidate, organize and vote to see them advance to higher positions. It is batshit lunacy to expect third party candidate votes to matter in a presidential election when we don't even have a single third party state governor, zero third party national representatives and only 4 independent senators, none of whom even represent a third party, and none of whom are presidential candidates this election (let alone viable ones). Campaign for and support third party mayors, city councillors, comptrollers, sheriffs, union representatives. You have a very real shot with them and if enough people do that and enough of them move up to higher positions, then that party can start to swing some weight around at a higher and higher level.
Edi: Oh, and if you don't see an option in your local elections, run or encourage others to do so!
That's like saying you can get to zero by choosing the line climbing away from zero the slowest.
Relative Left is not the same as Absolute Left and it will never be actually move to the Left if the thing it's relative to keeps going even more to the Right.
This is why one of the most worrisome thing in the current Democrats is that their electoral strategy is almost purely one of relativism - they almost entirely stopped selling themselves on the good of the things they do and pretty much only sell themselves relatively to Trump.
A "not as bad as the other guys" strategy is not the same as wanting to be the "good guys".
That’s like saying you can get to zero by choosing the line climbing away from zero the slowest.
It's not like saying that at all. You've completely misunderstood my meaning.
The dems are "climbing away from zero slowly" because they're trying to woo voters from the republicans as the will of the voting public moves to the right. If everyone votes for the dems the republicans will need to shift their policies to the left to pursue the voters. The dems in turn will need to move further to the left to differentiate from the republicans.
I mean, beautiful, lovelly and well meaning, but totally ignoring that both Democrat and Republican politicians (who, after all, are but humans in an environment telling them "greed is good" and who for the most part seem to believe it) are motivated by primarily by money and for them votes are but a means to an end (4 more years with their hands in the kind of power that can be used to make very wealthy, very thankful friends).
I think you are projecting yourself (IMHO a person driven by principle and with a political ideology) into the kind of people who are experts at the dirty business of playing politics and getting fat checks from donors and concluding that they would do what you would do in their position, even when the last 3 decades of politics in the US indicate the very opposite.
Some politicians in American might indeed be principled (Sanders almost certainly is), but most seem to be just highly skilled manipulators driven by personal upside maximization.
Highly skilled manipulators driven by personal upside maximization aren't going to start working for the common good instead of making choices with the power they are entrust which will make them very wealthy and very thankful friends, if they think the Left are suckers and the leftwing vote is guaranteed if they use the usual lies.
You're dead right in that politicians are greedy assholes.
They want to win elections and to do that they need votes.
What would the republican party do if they'd lost miserably in every election in the last decade? Obviously they would shift their policies to the left in order to be more popular.
What would the democrats do if the republicans moved to the left? Obviously they would have to move further to the left to minimise the votes lost to the republican party.
As the population votes on the left, political policy moves to the left. This seems so plainly obvious to me.
Democrats only put forward a slightly more leftie candidate either after they lost an election or after they came very close to losing one. Republicans haven't put forward a more leftie candidade ever, even when they lost elections.
Sure, in a theoretical America were 80% of Americans were unshakeable convict lefties, it would make sense that both parties turn Left if they lost too many votes because that would be were 80% was that those people, being unshakeable in their political convictions, would not buldge from them.
However the Left in America is but a small minority and both parties have decades of actual proof that it's perfectly possible to keep the Left small with the right kind of propaganda because that's what they've done, again and again and again - the American political "center" isn't way to the Right of that in most of Europe by chance and wouldn't be moving even more to the Right not just in America but everywhere because people's political convictions are unshakeable and unchangeable.
Further, if there is one thing Trump has proven is that it's absolutelly feasible to move a huge fraction of voters even more to the Right when they were already very much into the Right (i.e. from Reaganism to pretty much Fascism).
Your entire theory is anchored on the idea that the electorate doesn't move, it's the politicians who move, when everything in History and even Present day, not just in Politics but even Marketing, not just in Democracy but in Authocracy, shows that the vast majority of people are incredibly easy for those who have control over a suficient fraction of the Press to push in the direction they want them to go.
(FOX News would not have the influence it has in American politics if people's political convictions were unshakeable).
Add that factor to your thinking and it makes a lot more sense that the crooked politicians looking for a payout from doing politics for very rich people would favour using propaganda to convince people that doing what's best for the rich is the right thing to do or that the fault of the problems in America is entirelly of immigrants so all the real solutions are around immigration ("and ignore all the tax cuts for the rich and deregulation I'm doing over here") rather than moving to were people were politically and doing what people wanted instead of what's best for the rich - the propaganda option works and guarantees that the mainstream politicians who chose to shift the electorate with propaganda instead of moving to were the electorate is, keep leaving politics far more wealthy than they came in.
Look around at Politics in American since at least Reagan and what I described in the paragraph above is exactly what has been happenning and is still happenning.
I’d generally agree, but the problem is that this particular instance is much higher stakes than most elections.
Generally speaking, the worst case scenario would be someone like John McCain taking the reins instead of Obama. I didn’t agree with McCain about a lot of things but he was a generally honorable guy who wanted to do the best for American democracy.
Now we have a group who is polling to win and outright saying “America needs a dictatorship”. If they get their way, it could be the last election we ever have.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. Not everything has been successful, and in many cases efforts got watered down so they could pass congress. However, Obama and Biden have pushed for some pretty serious left wing talking points. Some examples off the top of my head:
-Medical reform
-Student loan forgiveness
-Renewable energy initiatives
-Marijuana rescheduling
-Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military
-Immigration clemency with DACA
Compare that with Bill Clinton, whose strategy explicitly was to place himself midway between liberals and conservatives
McCain was a conservative and I don't agree with his policies but compared to today's Republican Party, he was a knight in shining armor. He spoke and acted in good faith, at least.
How do you get electoral reform when no one you vote for gets elected, and everyone who does get elected has no reason to pay any attention to your opinion?
I like that, as a nation, we are admitting that we'll enable the killing of innocent children. It's important to be honest with ourselves about who we are as a country.
I'm just excited for Trump to win and "Those stupid leftists who didn't vote for Trump" to be the cause, when all the conservative/centrist voters Biden picked up in 2020 abandon him in 2024 over the economy or Hunter Biden's dick or his emails.
Yes, the US government's policy is and always has been to support genocidal Israel. That's why Palestine is on both tracks. There is absolutely nothing voters can do to change this any time soon. You should be focusing on who you can save, rather than who you can't.
Which is weird because I didn't mention voting. America's been doing this shit since before I was born, let alone since before I could vote. It's in our bones.
You don't get to vote to not kill children here. Just how many children we kill and how bad we pretend to feel about it.
And I actually agree with the link: Vote for the person you want to be your enemy. If it's gonna be a frail old man I'll take the one who's not a fascist. But I've given up on ever being happy about the choice, or ashamed of my country.
It's debatable if morality is even "inherent" to existence. I'd argue morality is a relative construct, but that's besides the point.
I was speaking in regards to the options presented. And as such, I know of no amount of genocide that could be called "moral". Thus my correction to your assertion, as the options presented only allow for "more or less genocide".
Modern Leftism: Standing off to the side and doing nothing while watching a trolley plow through a crowd of people and then laying down judgment on the people that are actually doing something to save as many people as possible.
Or we're just demanding the Democrats at the very least, the minimum really, don't support a genocide. The bar is so low it's in hell. If Biden can't clear that it's because he doesn't want to.
The electoral college indeed sucks. But it's a moot point because leftists will never get off their high horses to actually vote not matter what the system is.
Modern Leftism: I don't want to have a senile, racist, rapist, right-wing, war criminal, genocidair as president that will continue building a border wall and arming and funding genocide.
Liberals: BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED HOW MUCH WORSE IT WOULD BE IF HE HAD AN ORANGE SPRAY TAN!!!! TANKIE SCUM!!!!!
Can you tell me which pro-Palestinian advocacy groups informed your opinion? Clearly you follow many people who are doing the work, and are not some online ghoul saying civilians had it coming, so I'd love to learn more.
The Palestinian movement is fundamentally compromised. After October 7, it was imperative that as many Palestinians as possible denounce Hamas to make it clear that Hamas doesn't represent them.
Unfortunately this didn't happen. Sure a few people here and there said a few words against what Hamas did. But it's not the consensus among pro-Palestinian groups that what Hamas did was wrong.
This means that Hamas is currently inseparable from the Palestinian movement. Which means the Palestinian movement is not a non-violent resistance movement. At almost every protest you can see people cosplaying as Hamas. There are some even saying October 7 was justified. It is a violent movement which tolerates genocide, as long as it's their side doing the genocide.
The Palestinian movement simply doesn't have the moral high ground. It's now mostly about rationalizing why the genocide that occurred on October 7 was justified by claiming Israel is committing genocide and using "both sides" style logic. If both sides were actually committing genocide then a rational person wouldn't support either side. But we see pro Palestinian groups rationalizing the genocide Hamas committed which makes their false claims of Israel committing genocide a moot point. Even if Israel were committing genocide it doesn't make the nature of the present day Palestinian movement any better because Hamas committed genocide and Palestinians are unwilling to abandon Hamas.
It's largely a hate movement now. Hatred makes people feel strong, but in reality it just makes people stupid. It's why these movements ultimately fail. Too blinded by hatred to to make rational decisions about what's in the movement's best interests. Do you think the movement becoming more antisemitic every day is going to make it successful? Do you think denying the antisemitism will convince anyone outside this group? Nope. Stupid things are being done in hatred by the Palestinian movement right now.
And that's why the Palestinian movement will fail. Too much hatred making people act stupid. Even if there were a Palestinian state tomorrow it would be a failed state. Too much hatred and therefore too much stupidity to make things work.
I hope someday Palestinians can see what their hatred is doing to them. Then a Palestinian state could work. But I don't have much hope that it will happen in this generation. It doesn't matter if the hatred is justified or not. Hatred will always make people stupid and stupidity will always result in failure.
I hope this post gets a lot of tankie comments. They’ll be flockin’ to a blockin’
Heh. See, cause. It rhymes. So.
The one yesterday had that commenter who was all “what’s this? Oh it took me a second cause I blocked all the tankies” and that’s when I realized I forgot to block lemmy.ml. Now that that’s done, it’s just onsie-twosies. It’s a bright, bright sunshiney day.
The American system of elections is old and it is apparent the Founding Fathers had no Idea as to how the game theory of elections would play out. Worse, they even picked a system of government that was more prone to a two party system than the United Kingdom due to the direct election of the Executive and the inbuilt separation of the Executive and Legislative branches.
Israel, as genocidal as it is, has a system which encourages minor parties to get elected. There are 16 parties elected to the Knesset out of 120 total seats. However, Israel has a unicameral legislature, there are no individual districts or constituencies, and the legislature selects the head of government.
If your point is that the American system is fucked, we all know. We've known for decades. We're trying to fix it, but progress is basically nonexistent, because every politician who is currently elected benefits from our fucked system. Trying to get to a parliamentary system, like most developed real democracies, is almost entirely out of reach. Just getting ranked choice voting is like pulling teeth, and we'll have to create a brand new party to have politicians free from corporate interests.
I will have to fight all my life to enact positive change in this country, all because a bunch of rich white assholes who came to power long before I was born have stolen my future from me. Don't belittle us, mourn for us and never, ever repeat our mistakes.
It's also a legitimate request to be fair. I don't really have time to explain the entire political situation of the US and why it's not viable to change it through individual voting to this person, but they clearly don't understand enough about it if they're making silly remarks like this.
Its crazy how both parties are heavily invested in killing Palestinians.
Also crazy how Democrats take no credit for persecuting BLM, despite the fact that Obama's FBI was neck deep in that shit for two years before he left office.
The only way Biden will stop genociding Gazans is if there are electoral consequences for him, and you're asking us to not give him any electoral consequences.
How is voting for a marginal unknown 3rd candidate going to upend the US electoral system, I'm so curious...
Instead of dreaming look at the general population. How many people who vote do you think actually care about this. Sure they might not like the politicians but do they actually want to change the system? I don't think so.
You know the real solution to the trolley problem that is used in real life? Purposeful derailment. You let the front wheels go down one side, then flip the switch, and the back wheels follow the other path, which derails the trolley.
It either kills everyone, or saves everyone. And then you can figure out a better option as you untie your rail prisoners.
The let it burn and start over crowd are in this third category. The vote for Mickey Mouse crowd is not.
One of the people you can vote for, will throw the trolley and start a revolution. The other will maintain the status quo, which is shit. A useful idiot, is still useful.
I've seen the writing on the wall for a while. I've divested and left. I am now waiting for the collapse and the quicker the better so the split of the nation and restructuring can start. Limping along on life support is not helping.
I have never heard of this and it sounds insane. You wouldn't kill everyone or no one, you'd probably kill everyone and the people on the train too. When I look up purposeful derailment the only incident I find is that crazy guy who crashed two trains into each other for fun killing some spectators.
Edit: hey more googling. You could argue it happened once and calling it a "trolley problem " is generous. The incident I'm finding was a runaway train in Australia. A runaway train is a lot different and usually they don't try to fix them like that, but by applying the brakes. It's also worth mentioning it was a "controlled" derailment and not just some guy flipping on Deja Vu as he sees if he can emulate initial D. There was no one in the area. Also in general I feel the trolley analogy has long fallen apart at this point.
Why are you blaming the voters for not choosing the lesser evil, instead of blaming the dems for forcing them to make that choice in the first place?
Stop supporting and enabling the fucking genocide, then it's a no-brainer for everyone. And with so many other people's lives at stake as well as the Palestinians, how dare the dems play chicken?
Oh look, a tankie linking a psy-op. What a surprise.
I don't care what a random group says about Palestine when they claim to represent them. I have no way of verifying their integrity, and none of the people I know who have the skills to do so have recommended any to me. So I need to assume anything you link isn't genuine.
I came to my opinion after speaking with Palestinians not an "advocacy group". People who I am able to see, hear, and who's pain is clear in their voices and the tears on their face. People who are resigned to their best option in a man who's betrayed them less than his rival would.
I am autistic. For years the most popular advocates for people like me was Autism Speaks who openly talked about "curing" us. Advocacy groups are often a sham, and I don't trust them. Honestly, neither should you; it says a lot that (if you're sincere) you haven't figured that out.
It is well known that a number of states sow division in the populace of their enemies to weaken them. Does polarizing hot button issues do that? History says it does.
Does Palestine matter to them? No. Does polarizing the populace of the enemy matter to them? Yes. Are either of the organizations linked above tools of states that would like to harm America? I don't know. Could they, or similar organizations be used that way? Sure.
I used to wonder if there was any line that people wouldn't cross with lesser-evilism, but now that I've seen all these takes just openly being like, "Yes, we're doing genocide, and if you break ranks over that, not only are you a bad person, but your behavior is only possibly explainable by you being a foreign agent or a conservative in disguise," and honestly it's pretty validating to know that yes, I was right all along that accepting that line of reasoning would lead to complete insanity with no limit on how extreme it could get. Like I've never voted for a major party presidential candidate because of that sort of thing but even I never expected the discourse to reach this level, and now that I've seen it play out I'm very glad I decided to distance myself from it. This is what zero principles does to a mfer.
It's really hard to see. Hearing that it doesn't matter that Biden supports Israel's genocide in Palestine because Trump would too is a bad take. It mattered to the thousands of people that have died. It matters to their families. It matters to their friends. So many of Biden's bad policies are just unforced errors. He doesn't have to be an unappealing candidate. He chooses to be an unappealing candidate. If he loses to Trump, that will be why. It'll be 2016 all over again. The genocide in Palestine is Biden's equivalent of just not setting foot in Michigan. And they'll blame voters, primarily independents and leftists (they already are), just like Hillary did, but ever think about what they could have done differently or better.
It's not a trolley problem, and even if it were the consequences of greenlighting democratic support for genocide are not fully represented appropriately in this image.
We all know what happens if the Republicans get in - they do what they want, and what they want is fervent, unquestioning support of Israel, and to continue trampling on the rights of millions of minorities.
That's where the Trolley goes if the leftwing can't agree on what it wants to do.
While I agree that you're right in stating that the long-term consequences of allowing democrats to get away with this aren't properly laid out, what's the alternative exactly?
You could argue to vote an independent, but if everybody disagrees on which independent to vote for, then you fragment the leftwing and the Republicans get a free lunch.
You could argue to refuse to vote to teach the democrat party a lesson, which sounds nice, but every lost vote against the Republicans only helps bring them closer to victory.
If you've got another idea, then by all means go ahead, but those are the two I hear over and over again.
Except communicating to Democratic leadership that this is acceptable moves us to the right, not to the left. I think it's time we all admit at least that we're past pretending Democrats are going to reform themselves without any meaningful pressure, no?
How far to the right do we let the DNC use fear to push us before being "left" only in relation to the extreme right doesn't cut it? If genocide is not where you draw the line what the fuck will be?
Voting or not voting by itself will not move democrats to the left. That can only be achieved by organizing. In the meantime, keeping republicans out of power is worthwhile.
Again, I agree with what you're saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
Both realistic outcomes of the election involve the US government continuing to support this genocide in one way or another - that's why OP's meme is drawn out like it is, because people arguing your exact viewpoint seem to think there's some magical third track everybody else has missed that sidetracks this issue entirely.
Everybody loses this election no matter what happens, but I guarantee you the loss will be worse with the Republicans in the driving seat.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
There will never be a perfect time to draw the line, because the DNC will always play chicken with its own base as long as that continues to get them elected, they will always be putting us in that position of choosing between their fascist lite pick and the gop's fascist. The only weapon we have that they care about is our ability to deny them power. They don't care about protests, they don't care about articles and letters, debate or polls or anything, as we see none of that changes their behaviour. They care about money and access to power.
So, the solution is to starve them until they realize the party simply can't sustain itself on non-existent maga swing voters. It can't leech enough "moderate" conservatives to survive. They need to be brought to the understanding that their route to power is not to be Alt Republican, it's to be progressive and anti-fascist.
People can say the DNC won't care and it will never work that way, but we've seen a real example from history that starving parties works. When Republican support was waning in the 1950s and 60s, the Republicans went out hunting for a new demographic to sustain them. That's what the Southern Strategy was. Granted they were going in the opposite direction, but the Democrats can be put in the same position and since the GOP already occupies all the white racist territory, Dems have very few other places to hide from Millenials and GenZ.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that's the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
One, that is a very long way of saying the idea you're bringing to the table is don't vote - and I've already said what I think about that.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that's the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
Two, that's a bit of an understatement considering just one highlight of Trump's last presidency was rigging the SCOTUS towards being openly corrupt and against the people for literally decades to come.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
Yeah, I did see that section, but given that a "corporate" candidate is already the democrat nominee, that also amounts to not voting in this election - or voting for independents, which I have also made my opinion known on - so there was no point in talking about that.
It's funny you say the philosophy is simple when strategic voting requires multiple layers of analysis and voting for bubblegum ice cream just amounts to what feels good. You can't bring yourself to accept the reality of the situation, so you pretend like the problem is easy to solve if you just ignore it. That's truly simple minded. Pathetic projection on your part.
It's not strategic if the outcome of either option in the binary you present is fascism. You're not "saving" anyone on either of the tracks in the narrow political world you paint.
Hitler was appointed by Hindenburg, who was pressured by conservatives and capitalists, also the NSDAP was the strongest political party in both elections of 1932.
Without the substantial support for the NSDAP initially, there would have been no reason to appoint Hitler. The idea was that Hitler and his NSDAP could create a strong and lasting conservative government, a plan that would not have been suggested without their electoral success. Therefore, the support for the NSDAP in 1932 was the key reason Hitler became Chancellor. Paul von Hindenburg distrusted and despised Adolf Hitler as an unqualified upstart but felt compelled to appoint him as Chancellor due to political pressure and the unstable situation.
Specifically, he was appointed chancellor by the guy the SDP backed. How anyone can look at that and blame the KPD for running the only anti-Hitler candidate is baffling.
Hitler did not have a 50% majority but the NSDAP was the strongest party, giving them a lot of leverage. If his opposition had been more unified, he wouldn't have had a chance at becoming chancellor.
So you admit that the problem is a moderate party half-assing elections because they think they can coast on not being "other guy". Democrats help trump because they'd rather have fascism than threaten the bottom line of their rich donors. How do you think it got this bad in the first place? Did you think democrats were the bastion of progress?
The Democratic Party is largely conservative and reactionary. There are some progressive elements because progressives have nowhere else to go. The US election system is fucked and undemocratic. It needs to change.
Still, not voting for Democrats achieves absolutely nothing but costing them a vote they need against the literal fascists of the Republican Party.
Yeah, the problem is a moderate party half-assing elections because they think they can coast on not being "other guy". The SDP help Hitler because they'd rather have fascism than threaten the bottom line of their rich donors. How do you think it got this bad in the first place? Did you think the SDP were the bastion of progress?
The old saying about not learning and being doomed to repeat history really is depressing when you see it happen in real time.
What lesson? That the rich and powerful will eventually make every society circle the drain and fighting it off just delays the inevitable?
Or is your intellectual take giving a free pass to the most powerful in society and saddling those with the least amount of power with the bulk of the responsibility?
Why should he "care about Muslims" any more than any other group? Would your opinion be the same that he should care about Christians? Jews? Buddhists?
The president of the USA is supposed to care about Americans.
Also Biden is not even slightly anti-abortion, wtf. Biden is a Catholic and would not personally choose to abort a child of his own, but as the President he supports the right to choose in service to the office and not to his personal beliefs.
This is what it means to be President, to do what is right for the people even if it goes against your own opinions. Did Trump really lower our expectations that badly?
Since he unwaveringly supports the Zionist regime because they're Jews, it seems reasonable to conclude that his support of some ethnicities but not other makes him a racist.
I do agree that the POTUS is supposed to care about Americans (independently of ethnicity).
That is however not what Biden is doing - he's favoring some over others based on ethnicity (and money, like the vast majority of US Presidents).
Since he unwaveringly supports the Zionist regime because they're Jews, it seems reasonable to conclude that his support of some ethnicities but not other makes him a racist.
He supports Israel because they're our only real ally in that region of the world. It almost doesn't matter what they do, we'll continue to support them on that alone unless and until we get another significant ally in the Middle East.
Sending 2000lb bombs - well known for their massive collateral effects and hence innocent civilian deaths when used in an urban area - to a nation that's bombing a city and had by then already killed tens of thousands of civilians there, is well beyond merelly "supporting" them and well into supporting the Genocide itself.
Merelly "Supporting an Ally" that's doing what Israel is doing would at most go up to the US vetos at the UN Security Council and even that would only go so far and by the 10000th dead children would have changed from veto to abstention.
The smartest "Ally supporting" move for the US would've been to turn absolutelly neutral at around the 2nd or 3rd month of the Genocide.
(PS: This last one is actually what we saw with all other nations out there which saw Israel as allies, so most Western nations except the US, UK, and Germany - after the 7th of October, when pretty much all of them came out supporting Israel, as over time it became more and more clear that the Israeli actions were not defense but outright Genocide, they turned from supporters to in most cases absolutelly neutral and in some cases against them. Merelly "Supporting an Ally" is what the likes of France did, not what the American Biden Administration did).
The damage that this shit is doing for American soft power around the World must be immense - not even Trump managed to project in the minds of the well-educated the World over the impression that the US willingly and knowingly gives Genocidal nations bombs to murder children with.
As far as Muslims, I am responding to the people on the tracks in the meme. Biden has been vocally anti-abortion for most of his career, he is only trying to walk that back in the last few years. Even then, best case scenario, he is refusing to try to make progress on that issue to use it as a mobilization issue. If it is not an issue of legislation, but only the Supreme Court reversing the precedent, then you have to keep voting Democrat for a generation before progress can be attempted. That is what it means to be Democrat.
No, Biden did a number on me. It showed that Democrats and Liberals have absolutely no principles or beliefs. They are fine with a senile, racist, rapist, right-wing, war criminal, genocidaire president as long as he has a D next to his name and doesn't have an orange spray tan. Now Liberals think it is not fascist for ICE to put more people in concentration camps, the president to continue building the border wall, ignore human rights agreements to turn away asylum seekers, arm and fund genocide, continue interventions in the middle east, etc. It laid bare that all of the Liberal's objections to Trump were based not on principles nor positions, just that it was Trump doing it.
How am I wrong? Was it Trump that passed the COPS expansion, using federal funds to make sure police got funding expansions without local input, didn't Biden say that his Catholic faith meant that he was anti-abortion, and wasn't Biden's position on the Senate Council of Foreign Relations make him the Democrat with most input and culpability on how the war on terrorism was carried out? Were Muslims served by Biden's sanctions on Afghanistan, starving the people, as petty revenge for him following through on Trump's planned withdrawal not working out. Just excluding the point that Palestinians are Muslims and most Muslims care about Palestine. Did Biden stand up for trans rights or is his only saving grace not vocally cheering on the Republicans, and instead just try to avoid taking a position on that because Democrats don't actually want to fight for things or defend positions.
Go outside friend, and talk to people near you about these issues. Diversify where you consume amljd discuss information, online is prone to echo chambers.
Understand that nobody is immune to propaganda, including yourself.
Is it the "only Democrats have agency" thing? Democrats are responsible for their choices but Republicans, they're just like a fire that burns man it doesn't know what it's doing.
I could say the same thing of the self proclaimed progressives saying the dems should have done something in the total 4 years since then they've had trifecta control, not even including the filibuster.
You knew the redcaps would kill it first chance they got, why did you let them get the chance by not voting against them?
What was so much more important to you than women's health that not even the open and active threat to it was enough to motivate you to the herculean task of standing in a line and pushing some buttons?
You asswipes are always on about how you're the only ones who take fascism seriously in this country, and then whenever you're given the chance to show it by doing the basic minimum to keep them out of power you balk and make demands like it's suddenly a distant nightmare instead of the life threatening reality of the people you karen at to get the party's manager for you.
I'm with you on what the meme is trying to say, but the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track and running over everyone.
Because that's where the third track leads.
Yep, not voting is unironically pretty much the same as voting for the party you least want in charge.
Because you're making it that much more likely.
Don't throw away a right that your ancestors fought for, as it may result in future generations no longer having that right.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
Similarly, MLK saw "the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" as the biggest impediment to civil rights.
The bottom line is that being secure enough in your position in society to think you don't have to engage in politics, or that you can afford to vote your principles instead of tactically, is itself a form of privilege. Those sorts of privileged people think themselves neutral or uninvolved or maybe (in the case of professed leftists refusing to vote Dem as a protest) on their own third side, but the reality is that they are the right-wing authoritarians' greatest ally every single time.
Lol imagine thinking "moderate white" doesn't perfectly describe the majority of people walking into the 2020 primaries and voting for Joe Biden.
You're not wrong about the primary, but you are wrong to conflate the primary with the general election when it's the latter that we're talking about here.
Lol so I'm "radical" in the primaries when I don't vote for Biden but I'm "moderate" in the general when I don't vote for Biden?
That's not how labels work sir.
The POTUS, from the party most opposed to civil rights act, is who signed it into law, very much so a white moderate more devoted to order. So, I'm gonna take a stance and say MLK was wrong about that one if that was his take before he died.
That's not how it went, though. It's, in fact, the opposite of how it went. Hitler had relatively little popular support, but full support of the industrial elite. It's blaming the people for the crimes of the elite. "They abdicated their franchise" no, fuckface, half of them voted communist. "We ignored Hitler" no, fuckface, you put him in power because you thought he'd be malleable.
I'm not surprised Heinlein bought it, though. And I'm not surprised people here are buying it.
It's funny that both democrats and third party voters will look at your comment and think you're on their side.
Well, mathematically it’s only half as bad.
-1 lesser evil +1 greater evil
Vs.
-1 lesser evil +0 greater evil
Your math is wrong. You wouldn't be cancelling out the greater evil with the vote for the lesser evil, so its actually twice as bad (or 4x what you were thinking).
0 lesser evil +1 greater evil
Exactly.
There is unfortunately no option to wind up with a non-evil result, your only options are greater evil result or lesser evil result.
By voting 3rd party you didn't reduce the chance of greater evil result, AND you didn't increase the chance of lesser evil result.
Well, I didn't intend on voting for Trump but, fine, you've convinced me.
Hey, as long as you vote. Everyone should vote.
Yes, you of course weren't already going to do that. 🙄
Like so?
Also, let's have 'im on the track too.
"Oh, no, I'm not in any of those groups on the track, so I can safely not vote and have a clear conscience as it crushes everyone!"
Then they came for me...
"All men were created equal"
IS SLAVE STATE
always jave been coming for us.
What a sad misunderstanding of a quote literally describing state enforced genocide. I mean, this is how it starts. Both sides would kill Palestinians. Can't do anything about it I guess. Oh well, best not put my foot down and take a principled stand here.
Who's next?
You think that Republicans wouldn't support genocide against anyone they consider to be their enemy?
I think that accepting that some groups, like Palestinians, will just be oppressed no matter what is what leads to things like the Holocaust. Saying you can't afford to take a stand on your principles today and draw a line in the sand, but maybe you will tomorrow leads to the situation Martin Niemoller found himself in. It may be too late already, and making a stand won't make a difference, but it's never too early.
And what happens when a significant chunk of the electorate does that? I bet all those poor Palestinians will really feel good about Israel being given the green light to bomb them harder because a bunch of people protested and got a dementia riddled fascist elected.
These posts are just virtue signalling, because there's never any forethought of what happens after the election to the people being discussed. You can speak from a place of privilege and moralize about the choice you're making, but you're pushing the same tactics that the republicans and alt-right push: don't vote democrat.
I don't like that I have to vote for Biden, but I actually want to minimize the harm being done to people, not just talk about it on the internet. Crazy concept.
These don't-vote-for-Biden weirdos don't understand that it's wrong to use the idea of a minority to push your political interests in a way that hurts that minority.
If a significant portion of the electorate did that, Biden would be on the phone this minute applying all possible pressure to stop what is happening. Instead they are playing chicken with your vote. Children died today and every day for the past 8 months because a political party is betting that you'll vote for them anyways.
Again, the original issue I raised is that it's cruel to quote a man lamenting the fact that he and others like him didn't do enough soon enough to stop the Holocaust. That same behavior is happening right now. But it's fine. We just have to accept it. A few losses for the greater good. I'd bet you don't have any Palestinian friends, but if you do, please let them know I'm the one who's privileged and see what they say.
As someone who for the first time did not vote in 2016. I started voting in the Bush era. I fully agree, no action leads to fascism apparently. Don’t do what I did because I was pissed that Bernie was cheated out of the nomination. Vote or Trump will be back in office.
Doesn't matter where the track leads if the trolley can't get to it. It could lead to rainbows and sunshine, but that isn't where the trolley is headed because there is no possibility that someone other than Trump or Biden is elected president. A few cry babies voting third party won't get some third person elected. A vote for the third track is a vote for a track that will not be ridden.
It could be a little model trolley track going in a loop with no trolley on it.
Oh, maybe. I assumed it was two different people, but yeah, that makes sense.
It makes sense because you can see that the track exists and is better, but there’s no way to actually get the train onto it
Okay, but the guy at the controls needs to be the swing vote on the SCOTUS.
I'm guessing the joke is that third party voters ignore the trolley about to go down one of two paths, instead deciding to stand next to a short piece of track connected to nothing with no trolley on it, so they can pretend the imminent disaster happening on the other track isn't real
And there's also a contingent of people on the trolley who are trying to get it to slow down, working their asses off to improve long term actual outcomes in the real world, whether related or not to the little lever, and the guy standing next to the empty disconnected track is claiming to be one of them and saying you must be against them and how dare you, you person-running-over-enabling monster, if you say anything against his strategy.
This is why I, as an autistic person, think internally using a sort of infinite mechanical analog diagram sheet thing.
Physical analogies are beautiful for how quickly they can convey a concept. Those disconnected tracks are a great representation of the third party voting situation we face, the “throwaway vote” problem.
Funny thing is, that's what's called a controlled derailment. It's the engineering answer to the situatuon, if the situation were real and not a contrived philosophical dilemma.
This guy gets it
The Biden approach
You'll have to be more specific about what blowing up the train maps to in real life before I can tell you whether or not doing so would also kill a shit ton of people.
But to keep it in metaphor, there are also innocent people riding the train and blowing it up would kill them, too.
Propaganda of the deed is a powerful message
Yeah, if you made a habit of doing that we'd end to with more deaths and a lower quality of life overall.
Most of them, sure. But killing them with any kind of regularity would have a number of knock-on effects that would severely decrease many people's quality of life.
If your friend has a brain tumor, you don't point a gun to their head and shoot it out. You find brain surgeons and have them remove it under controlled conditions. Supposing you can't find a brain surgeon, it would still be better to learn brain surgery yourself and do a careful and thorough job than it would be to just shoot your friend in the head and hope for the best.
People like op.dont care and are bad faith trolls
You say that as if you're not a liberal pretending to be a leftist.
You say that as though you're the arbiter of what's "left" and what's not.
Call us whatever you like. We don't vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates.
Cool, have fun with apathy, I hope it magically results in a revolution.
I hope your strike blocking, genocide supporting candidate magically results in more workers rights and less genocide.
The plan fails, the top track gets removed due to terrorist activities, and even more things are on the remaining track.
(If you ask me: Jan 6 should have had even more consequences for republicans, but they like to bend the rules to their own benefits)
You first.
It's close enough to the tracks that it would hurt the hostages, and the wreckage would probably have enough momentum to hit them anyway.
This is a good analogy actually. Blowing up the train would feel good, but that isn't going to stop the momentum, and it's unfortunately virtually impossible to outright stop it's momentum at this point. All that blowing up the train would accomplish is sending fiery wreckage towards the middle track.
This is why accelerationism is stupid.
That would just stop time itself
Well, in context of philosophy being taught in class you would then change the prompt to a harder question. You would also debate whether the person who makes the decision is in fact responsible and how that dynamic changes when the prompt changes.
So maybe you have to choose between 2 men only half as happy or handsome or one fully formed magical man with magic hands.
Magical hands always
What if the train magically transforms regular men into new men? What if they were opposed to the transformation before it happened?
Conversely, what about if it magically creates men causing potential overpopulation? What if the men it created morally oppose the tram, but more than half the local population feel like it is necessary to run no matter what?
You can pretty much run this thought experiment forever, so far we've been going for 57 years.
Yes
I enjoy the self insert character of Zach in panel 4.
WEINNERSMITHHHHHHH
That's only an option if you have a viable strategy for accomplishing it.
Which, of course, they don't. It's a vanity vote. They want to pretend they have actually done something without actually having to do anything of consequence.
It's an expression of privilege.
If we're interpreting their "third option" as a voting strategy and not convincing Biden to step in and stop the genocide, we can at least implement Approval Voting so that they can vote for all the "no genocide" candidates without having to worry that doing so could somehow backfire. Then, if they want or need to, they can cast a strategic vote to differentiate between different magnitudes of genocide.
No, you can't. You do not have the power to implement Approval Voting, and nobody who does have the power wants to do it. So it's not gonna happen, at least not in the short term. Right now, anybody who wins has to win in an environment of First Past the Post. Nobody capable of doing that currently supports Approval Voting, so right now it is effectively not on the ballot.
This is what I mean about "hav[ing] a viable strategy." Magically wishing Approval Voting into existence ain't it.
Well the strategy is to work your way up from the local level because:
It's easier for people to make change at the local level, Fargo and St. Louis have already done it.
Politicians tend to work their way up the ladder, and will be more open to using the system at higher levels if they already proved they can win under that system.
You have to remember that any real social change takes years, even decades of organized to realize. We didn't go from Jim Crowe to the civil rights act in a fortnight, it took big organizations applying decades of pressure in multiple different ways.
If you want to be a part of the solution, join an organization dedicated to improving things. It doesn't have to be the one I linked, but Election Science is the one working on approval voting. Local elections are such that one highly motivated person can build and run the organization to flip their local election laws, it could be you, but it won't happen overnight.
Yes, we need to change the way we vote before voting for POTUS can really move away from a binary choice.
Great. That is a state issue, so pay attention to your state government, vote for state representatives that support better voting methods, and contact your state representatives to push for reform.
That doesn't change this trolley problem.
As someone else pointed out, those in power are unlikely to change the voting system to reduce their own power. However, you really start at the local level with referendums, and work your way up. First, it's easier to force change at the local level and second, politicians working their way up will be less hostile to changing to approval if they've already shown they can win under that system.
Step one: Stop rewarding genocide with votes. 🤷
I agree, now how do we go about making everyone else see it too?
Apparently we can't in 2024. They didn't hear us in 2016. They won't hear us now in 2024. Maybe two Democrat juggernauts losing the presidential election to Trump of all people will convince them.
They'll just blame the leftists they cant stop attacking then use it as an excuse to move further right yet again.
The problem is that we don't. If you're not in a "swing" state, all the votes in the world for Joe Biden are meaningless. Win California by another million votes. Win it by another 10M. Have every single eligible voter in California turn up and vote for Joe Biden. He still loses the EC when the SCOTUS tells Arizona to stop counting ballots the minute Trump is in the lead.
We have to keep sending money to Israel because its the means by which we control the Suez Canal.
Except... the Houthis have control over the back end of the canal so long as they're able to scare off shipping in the Gulf of Adan. So now we're endorsing a genocide just for shits and giggles.
It's almost like two organizations have totally monopolized US politics. It's a billion dollar industry, and they'd both rather alternate losing to each other and keep their seat at the table than let anyone else play the game.
Its an enormously lucrative game, so who can blame them?
you blame us for going along with it and blame those who shame anyone who points out that we don't have to go along with it.
Because of a shitty situation set up by countless past people and events completely out of your control you have to make a choice here. And in my mind, it's not even a difficult choice. Yes, either option will support Israel, that's a given, but there is no third option so it might as well not even be a factor in choosing a candidate.
If you want more parties and to remove first past the post then you need to elect the party who supports those stances. That is one of your two options. Real fucking simple.
No. I do not vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates. Real fucking simple.
You will elect a much worse one by not supporting a much better one.
That's their goal.
It’s interesting how much the vote DOES resemble a trolley problem. Generally, the only real point in favor of not pulling the lever is “You’re killing someone, it’s immoral to get involved. Life shouldn’t be in your hands.”
Which is still setting aside all the conscious choice by other human beings that IS happening come election season. Probably the biggest way it diverges is that a trolley is moving under its own “natural” momentum. In reality, it’s as though some Nazis are pulling the trolley along the track to the 5 people.
If that third track were an option the trolley problem would never have existed. If there really is a third track in the real-life situation, then the trolley problem is not a good analogy of that problem.
Sadly, in this election there is no third track and we are forced into choosing the lesser of two evils.
If you want a third track, push for ranked choice voting!
FPTP favors whichever party is currently in power in a two party system. Solid blue states don't want to switch because it makes their hold on power less secure. Same reason as Republicans in red states.
You're factually correct, and I support your long term goal, but it's not something we can achieve by November.
I swear I hear this regardless of how close we are to the next presidential election. Can we maybe focus on some of the other races on the ballot? I would love if we could get a Congress that was actually able to make good things happen, instead of trying very hard to do nothing so bad things don't happen.
Congress might also have been able to get more done if there was a filibuster-proof majority for more than several months in the last several decades.
I do vote for the most progressive person available in the primaries tho.
The fact that we even need a filibuster proof majority to get anything done is yet another glaring example of how fucked we are.
Yeah, the focus on winning the presidency ignores the down ballot, small market and "off-cycle" races, and, to get to fillibuster-proof majorities, those races are the ones that need to be won. Berating progressives in urban areas to vote for moderate liberal candidates for president is not exactly harm reduction.
Sorry, media is now handled at the national level so covering local and state races outside of ones that get clicks isn't profitable
Electoral systems is a pretty nerdy topic (despite how important it is for who gets power), so it is not an issue the typical voter cares for. Therefore there is not enough political capital for such large reforms to be taken on by politicians.
I'm assuming the third track being entirely disconnected and therefore not a real option is intentional.
Either way, accurate
Guys, I don't know what's going on in the world and their wars. I just want a president who isn't abhorently evil. Do we have to revolutionize to find that 3rd option orrr?
Pretty much. It's against the interest of both parties to have more options because both are near-guaranteed to lose power if there were more options.
I assume your "abhorently evil" comment is based off support of the genocide in Palestine (which is a completely reasonable thing to describe as abhorently evil, I'm just being clear about my premise).
In which case, sorry, bad news, you can't have that. Your options this time round are genocide supporter or genocide supporter. Somewhere down the line, years from now, the US electoral system may have been sufficiently reformed to make third parties viable. But this year that's not going to happen.
So that decision is completely out of your hands. But here's what you do get to decide; you can have an outright fascist, leading a party of outright fascists who have openly publicised their plans to turn your country into a fascist theocracy. Or you can have the guys who strengthened workers rights and went after major companies for union busting, hit Microsoft for $20 billion in back taxes, had the FBI raid a major landlord for illegal price hikes, brought antitrust lawsuits against Amazon and several other large tech firms, and secured billions in aid for Ukraine in their fight for their freedom. And that is literally just a tiny sampling of the good things that Biden's government has done.
I don't even see how that's a choice. One of these two options is clearly and manifestly better than the other, no matter how disgusting it feels. A vote for Biden is not an endorsement of his position on Gaza. It is a tactical choice, nothing more. And if nothing else, its a tactical choice that will prevent the fascists from filling even more seats on the supreme court.
It sucks, but those are the only options. Sometimes life just be like that.
This guy gets it. I don't see how this is so difficult to understand. Not voting is essentially skewing the vote towards the diaper-wearing Nazi-Clown you once already had for a president. Vote for the least evil party, it's all you can do.
Then you all should have voted for someone better in the 2020 primaries.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
I think the choice is really: Does America deserve the lesser evil?
But what if I am a bad faith actor that only pushes the "no moral choice" position because I want to ensure that the fascists take power? Better yet, what if my Russian paycheck demands it. Then what do I do?
Are you forgetting about all the registered Democrats who voted uncommitted in the 2024 primaries? Not everybody who hates Biden is a Russian troll bud.
I'm certain ballots with good options are unavailable absent a revolution, but if we tried under present conditions we'd likely only get worse governance and maybe destabilize the global balance of power catastrophically.
Thank you! We may eventually have to but revolutions do not have certain outcomes and we face a second problem that in general will require a mechanism for global cooperation which is hard to do when the state with the military, cultural, and economic influence the US currently has plunges into chaos
We can have it for the low price of demanding it. Tell the Democrats you won't vote for Biden if he doesn't stop supporting the Israeli genocide.
You realize why the Ashley Biden rape showers with grandpa suddenly became nearly mainstream news and will suddenly go away if Biden does what he's told?
If that's how it is then we've already lost. People who would make up stories like that would rather take the mask off and destroy democracy then let us get in their way.
Oh, I didn't say it was made up. That diary seems to be real.
this one is actually really funny, i like this one.
Good shit.
stop the trolley, dumb fucks 😂
Fuck me this comment section is toxic
And the third track has buffers at both ends, is covered in weeds and somebody has stolen some of the sleepers to make a nice planter for their garden.
The point would be to at least get something out of Biden. Not just to give up without any demands. Bluffs and all that.
These posts are basically calling on leftists to support a genocide. I'll vote for Biden, but I'd also punch him square in his rich white Zionist jaw if I was given the opportunity. That's how American democracy works. The U.S. doesn't deserve a pass for supporting genocide, even if it's an election year.
Nah, they're half slacktivists convincing themselves they're making a difference, half mental preparations of who to blame if Biden ends up losing.
Lol you're projecting. You all plan on blaming us despite failing to respect our seat at the negotiation table. We made it very clear: we don't vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates. You all thought you could fuck around and ignore our boundaries. You're watching us stand up and walk away from the table talking like you still aren't about to find out.
I swear, the best part about threads like these is that you're all so used to not even reading the opposing arguments that at this point you can't even tell eachother apart.
Yes, we're not interested in arguing. We won't vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates. Nothing is going to change our minds.
Support ranked voting with fairvote us.
This really sums up things pretty well I think. On one hand there’s the democrats, trying to minimize the damage, on the other hand- there’s conservatives trying to cause as much of it as possible. And on the other hand….
Wait.
There can only be two hands!
That must mean that the third track can only exist in a suspended state of logic and should be dismissed as irrelevant.
Build some rail ya lazy bums!
Why doesn't do the more popular and morally right thing to do and simply stop shipping weapons to Isreal?
Fun fact. You don't get the bottom track without demanding it. You end up on the middle track if you negotiate on human rights.
Yup. You also get the middle track when you show up to the 2020 primaries and think to yourself "I'm gonna vote for a geriatric procorporate establishment white man. This is the best decision for me and everyone else will have to accept it because the alternative is Trump."
Amusing to see commenters who think Biden primary voters are reading forums on Lemmy and are still venting their grudges 4 years later... 🤣
Where do you suppose all the people who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries congregate?
Definitely not on one of the most marginal, leftleaning comment boards that is lemmy
Liberal yes, left leaning? Doubtful.
Lemmy was literally developed by communists and it feels like every other person here is a socialist.
I think I've only ever seen a few people on here call themselves liberals, and that was in the confused American version of the term, I've seen liberal used as an insult infinitely more.
Supporting Biden or Ukraine or Israel also does not immediately equal Liberalism, and I have no clue why yall have been treating it like it does.
Yes, liberals will not call themselves liberals. Much like NIMBYS would never call themselves NIMBYS. Especially ones trying to convince leftists to vote for a procorporate genocide supporting trash of a candidate.
That bottom track should a circle or cliff to demonstrate it goes nowhere.
As one party loses power it changes strategy to regain it, as one party gains power it is able to differentiate more amongst different ideologies within the party. If this goes far enough it can cause one party to fade to obscurity and a new party to emerge. There is no perfect candidate who represents everyone perfectly, you pick the candidate that is closer to the place you'd like to be. Also, third party votes work much better bottom-up vs top-down. Statistically no amount of crazy upset will cause a third party to actually win the top position despite no groundwork being done. Support third party candidates in small races where small grassroots efforts not funded by major political action groups are actually likely to make a difference. Then when you get a good candidate, organize and vote to see them advance to higher positions. It is batshit lunacy to expect third party candidate votes to matter in a presidential election when we don't even have a single third party state governor, zero third party national representatives and only 4 independent senators, none of whom even represent a third party, and none of whom are presidential candidates this election (let alone viable ones). Campaign for and support third party mayors, city councillors, comptrollers, sheriffs, union representatives. You have a very real shot with them and if enough people do that and enough of them move up to higher positions, then that party can start to swing some weight around at a higher and higher level.
Edi: Oh, and if you don't see an option in your local elections, run or encourage others to do so!
I've been trying to explain this in all these threads ad-nauseum but no one seems to get it.
Basically, if more people vote for the left-most party everyone's policies move to the left.
That's like saying you can get to zero by choosing the line climbing away from zero the slowest.
Relative Left is not the same as Absolute Left and it will never be actually move to the Left if the thing it's relative to keeps going even more to the Right.
This is why one of the most worrisome thing in the current Democrats is that their electoral strategy is almost purely one of relativism - they almost entirely stopped selling themselves on the good of the things they do and pretty much only sell themselves relatively to Trump.
A "not as bad as the other guys" strategy is not the same as wanting to be the "good guys".
It's not like saying that at all. You've completely misunderstood my meaning.
The dems are "climbing away from zero slowly" because they're trying to woo voters from the republicans as the will of the voting public moves to the right. If everyone votes for the dems the republicans will need to shift their policies to the left to pursue the voters. The dems in turn will need to move further to the left to differentiate from the republicans.
That sounds like whishful thinking.
I mean, beautiful, lovelly and well meaning, but totally ignoring that both Democrat and Republican politicians (who, after all, are but humans in an environment telling them "greed is good" and who for the most part seem to believe it) are motivated by primarily by money and for them votes are but a means to an end (4 more years with their hands in the kind of power that can be used to make very wealthy, very thankful friends).
I think you are projecting yourself (IMHO a person driven by principle and with a political ideology) into the kind of people who are experts at the dirty business of playing politics and getting fat checks from donors and concluding that they would do what you would do in their position, even when the last 3 decades of politics in the US indicate the very opposite.
Some politicians in American might indeed be principled (Sanders almost certainly is), but most seem to be just highly skilled manipulators driven by personal upside maximization.
Highly skilled manipulators driven by personal upside maximization aren't going to start working for the common good instead of making choices with the power they are entrust which will make them very wealthy and very thankful friends, if they think the Left are suckers and the leftwing vote is guaranteed if they use the usual lies.
It's not wishful thinking. It's just obvious.
You're dead right in that politicians are greedy assholes.
They want to win elections and to do that they need votes.
What would the republican party do if they'd lost miserably in every election in the last decade? Obviously they would shift their policies to the left in order to be more popular.
What would the democrats do if the republicans moved to the left? Obviously they would have to move further to the left to minimise the votes lost to the republican party.
As the population votes on the left, political policy moves to the left. This seems so plainly obvious to me.
Democrats only put forward a slightly more leftie candidate either after they lost an election or after they came very close to losing one. Republicans haven't put forward a more leftie candidade ever, even when they lost elections.
Sure, in a theoretical America were 80% of Americans were unshakeable convict lefties, it would make sense that both parties turn Left if they lost too many votes because that would be were 80% was that those people, being unshakeable in their political convictions, would not buldge from them.
However the Left in America is but a small minority and both parties have decades of actual proof that it's perfectly possible to keep the Left small with the right kind of propaganda because that's what they've done, again and again and again - the American political "center" isn't way to the Right of that in most of Europe by chance and wouldn't be moving even more to the Right not just in America but everywhere because people's political convictions are unshakeable and unchangeable.
Further, if there is one thing Trump has proven is that it's absolutelly feasible to move a huge fraction of voters even more to the Right when they were already very much into the Right (i.e. from Reaganism to pretty much Fascism).
Your entire theory is anchored on the idea that the electorate doesn't move, it's the politicians who move, when everything in History and even Present day, not just in Politics but even Marketing, not just in Democracy but in Authocracy, shows that the vast majority of people are incredibly easy for those who have control over a suficient fraction of the Press to push in the direction they want them to go.
(FOX News would not have the influence it has in American politics if people's political convictions were unshakeable).
Add that factor to your thinking and it makes a lot more sense that the crooked politicians looking for a payout from doing politics for very rich people would favour using propaganda to convince people that doing what's best for the rich is the right thing to do or that the fault of the problems in America is entirelly of immigrants so all the real solutions are around immigration ("and ignore all the tax cuts for the rich and deregulation I'm doing over here") rather than moving to were people were politically and doing what people wanted instead of what's best for the rich - the propaganda option works and guarantees that the mainstream politicians who chose to shift the electorate with propaganda instead of moving to were the electorate is, keep leaving politics far more wealthy than they came in.
Look around at Politics in American since at least Reagan and what I described in the paragraph above is exactly what has been happenning and is still happenning.
Holy shit someone with a brain.
On lemmy? Probably just swamp gas.
I’d generally agree, but the problem is that this particular instance is much higher stakes than most elections.
Generally speaking, the worst case scenario would be someone like John McCain taking the reins instead of Obama. I didn’t agree with McCain about a lot of things but he was a generally honorable guy who wanted to do the best for American democracy.
Now we have a group who is polling to win and outright saying “America needs a dictatorship”. If they get their way, it could be the last election we ever have.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. Not everything has been successful, and in many cases efforts got watered down so they could pass congress. However, Obama and Biden have pushed for some pretty serious left wing talking points. Some examples off the top of my head:
-Medical reform
-Student loan forgiveness
-Renewable energy initiatives
-Marijuana rescheduling
-Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military
-Immigration clemency with DACA
Compare that with Bill Clinton, whose strategy explicitly was to place himself midway between liberals and conservatives
That's how bad the situation is: McCain is an example of someone who wanted to do the best for American democracy.
McCain was a conservative and I don't agree with his policies but compared to today's Republican Party, he was a knight in shining armor. He spoke and acted in good faith, at least.
How do you get electoral reform when no one you vote for gets elected, and everyone who does get elected has no reason to pay any attention to your opinion?
In my state, ballot initiatives to change to ranked choice or approval voting, ideally with expanded multiple winner districts.
He needs a little lever that's not attached to anything too.
Pakistan got the CIA coup treatment under BIden's term, so this meme is already wrong.
I like that, as a nation, we are admitting that we'll enable the killing of innocent children. It's important to be honest with ourselves about who we are as a country.
Yeah but only when it's politically convenient.
And with your support we can make sure we never have to admit it again
I'm just excited for Trump to win and "Those stupid leftists who didn't vote for Trump" to be the cause, when all the conservative/centrist voters Biden picked up in 2020 abandon him in 2024 over the economy or Hunter Biden's dick or his emails.
I'm not gonna hold my breath
Yes, the US government's policy is and always has been to support genocidal Israel. That's why Palestine is on both tracks. There is absolutely nothing voters can do to change this any time soon. You should be focusing on who you can save, rather than who you can't.
Yes this meme is made of meme
voting is not an enabling maneuver
Which is weird because I didn't mention voting. America's been doing this shit since before I was born, let alone since before I could vote. It's in our bones.
You don't get to vote to not kill children here. Just how many children we kill and how bad we pretend to feel about it.
post was about voting dawg, lame and boring goalpost moving come on now
I didn't mention voting in my post. At all.
And I actually agree with the link: Vote for the person you want to be your enemy. If it's gonna be a frail old man I'll take the one who's not a fascist. But I've given up on ever being happy about the choice, or ashamed of my country.
good lol i didn’t expect you to disagree, i was just providing additional information but you got weird about it
Democracy TM
Whatever happens, we're all dead. The only question is whether, along the way, we act in a more moral or less moral way.
Ftfy
Existence is not inherently immoral.
It's debatable if morality is even "inherent" to existence. I'd argue morality is a relative construct, but that's besides the point.
I was speaking in regards to the options presented. And as such, I know of no amount of genocide that could be called "moral". Thus my correction to your assertion, as the options presented only allow for "more or less genocide".
That Pakistani flag is very ironic considering how Biden organized the coup there.
laughs in STV
Modern Leftism: Standing off to the side and doing nothing while watching a trolley plow through a crowd of people and then laying down judgment on the people that are actually doing something to save as many people as possible.
Or we're just demanding the Democrats at the very least, the minimum really, don't support a genocide. The bar is so low it's in hell. If Biden can't clear that it's because he doesn't want to.
Modern leftism is bound by the electoral college.
Also First Past The Post voting
The electoral college indeed sucks. But it's a moot point because leftists will never get off their high horses to actually vote not matter what the system is.
Modern Leftism: I don't want to have a senile, racist, rapist, right-wing, war criminal, genocidair as president that will continue building a border wall and arming and funding genocide.
Liberals: BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED HOW MUCH WORSE IT WOULD BE IF HE HAD AN ORANGE SPRAY TAN!!!! TANKIE SCUM!!!!!
You must be mistaking the blue conservatives for people that are left of center.
Can you tell me which pro-Palestinian advocacy groups informed your opinion? Clearly you follow many people who are doing the work, and are not some online ghoul saying civilians had it coming, so I'd love to learn more.
The Palestinian movement is fundamentally compromised. After October 7, it was imperative that as many Palestinians as possible denounce Hamas to make it clear that Hamas doesn't represent them.
Unfortunately this didn't happen. Sure a few people here and there said a few words against what Hamas did. But it's not the consensus among pro-Palestinian groups that what Hamas did was wrong.
This means that Hamas is currently inseparable from the Palestinian movement. Which means the Palestinian movement is not a non-violent resistance movement. At almost every protest you can see people cosplaying as Hamas. There are some even saying October 7 was justified. It is a violent movement which tolerates genocide, as long as it's their side doing the genocide.
The Palestinian movement simply doesn't have the moral high ground. It's now mostly about rationalizing why the genocide that occurred on October 7 was justified by claiming Israel is committing genocide and using "both sides" style logic. If both sides were actually committing genocide then a rational person wouldn't support either side. But we see pro Palestinian groups rationalizing the genocide Hamas committed which makes their false claims of Israel committing genocide a moot point. Even if Israel were committing genocide it doesn't make the nature of the present day Palestinian movement any better because Hamas committed genocide and Palestinians are unwilling to abandon Hamas.
It's largely a hate movement now. Hatred makes people feel strong, but in reality it just makes people stupid. It's why these movements ultimately fail. Too blinded by hatred to to make rational decisions about what's in the movement's best interests. Do you think the movement becoming more antisemitic every day is going to make it successful? Do you think denying the antisemitism will convince anyone outside this group? Nope. Stupid things are being done in hatred by the Palestinian movement right now.
And that's why the Palestinian movement will fail. Too much hatred making people act stupid. Even if there were a Palestinian state tomorrow it would be a failed state. Too much hatred and therefore too much stupidity to make things work.
I hope someday Palestinians can see what their hatred is doing to them. Then a Palestinian state could work. But I don't have much hope that it will happen in this generation. It doesn't matter if the hatred is justified or not. Hatred will always make people stupid and stupidity will always result in failure.
Please listen to the victims of the genocide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4
What is equivalent of derailing here?
I hope this post gets a lot of tankie comments. They’ll be flockin’ to a blockin’
Heh. See, cause. It rhymes. So.
The one yesterday had that commenter who was all “what’s this? Oh it took me a second cause I blocked all the tankies” and that’s when I realized I forgot to block lemmy.ml. Now that that’s done, it’s just onsie-twosies. It’s a bright, bright sunshiney day.
yoink!
At least on the default website, blocking instances doesn't mass block the users, fwiw. Mileage may vary on alternate apps.
So far so good on voyager
Good to know!
Because a party that does one genocide surely won't do another.
They will do genocide for just one day.
Yeah but jumping the track makes you complicit in what happens on the GOP train line Also nice try Ivan!
Thats crazy how every government only has two parties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
damn and every government got that?
Every government that this meme is relevant to, yeah
oh but not every government. meaning its possible to have a government without first past the post.
...yes? Duh?
Thats what im sayin but everyone here will tell me its impossible
it’s possible, hope this helps
Yes and there's many places where it exists
Some states here in the USA. Electoral reform is possible at the state level!
The American system of elections is old and it is apparent the Founding Fathers had no Idea as to how the game theory of elections would play out. Worse, they even picked a system of government that was more prone to a two party system than the United Kingdom due to the direct election of the Executive and the inbuilt separation of the Executive and Legislative branches.
Israel, as genocidal as it is, has a system which encourages minor parties to get elected. There are 16 parties elected to the Knesset out of 120 total seats. However, Israel has a unicameral legislature, there are no individual districts or constituencies, and the legislature selects the head of government.
Mainly UK and its derivatives... (USA, Canada, Australia 😄)
If your point is that the American system is fucked, we all know. We've known for decades. We're trying to fix it, but progress is basically nonexistent, because every politician who is currently elected benefits from our fucked system. Trying to get to a parliamentary system, like most developed real democracies, is almost entirely out of reach. Just getting ranked choice voting is like pulling teeth, and we'll have to create a brand new party to have politicians free from corporate interests.
I will have to fight all my life to enact positive change in this country, all because a bunch of rich white assholes who came to power long before I was born have stolen my future from me. Don't belittle us, mourn for us and never, ever repeat our mistakes.
Wild how electing politicians that benefit from the system hasnt fixed the system yet.
Please refrain from speaking on topics that you have no understsnding of
Mean-spirited comment. Downvoted... 🙄
It's also a legitimate request to be fair. I don't really have time to explain the entire political situation of the US and why it's not viable to change it through individual voting to this person, but they clearly don't understand enough about it if they're making silly remarks like this.
Its crazy how both parties are heavily invested in killing Palestinians.
Also crazy how Democrats take no credit for persecuting BLM, despite the fact that Obama's FBI was neck deep in that shit for two years before he left office.
👏
The only way Biden will stop genociding Gazans is if there are electoral consequences for him, and you're asking us to not give him any electoral consequences.
Absolutely insane democrat-mental-gymnastics
Would they have the US still being a two party race no matter what in 2100? In 2200?
Yes, they would.
Capitalists hate competition
How is voting for a marginal unknown 3rd candidate going to upend the US electoral system, I'm so curious...
Instead of dreaming look at the general population. How many people who vote do you think actually care about this. Sure they might not like the politicians but do they actually want to change the system? I don't think so.
You know the real solution to the trolley problem that is used in real life? Purposeful derailment. You let the front wheels go down one side, then flip the switch, and the back wheels follow the other path, which derails the trolley.
It either kills everyone, or saves everyone. And then you can figure out a better option as you untie your rail prisoners.
The let it burn and start over crowd are in this third category. The vote for Mickey Mouse crowd is not.
It kills the trolley passengers.
The reality is you're a actually on the rails, a billionaire is controlling the trolley, and the passengers are all ruling class.
You can vote for who controls the trolley. The trolley has a brake but they won't use it because there are profits to be had.
Derailment is the only thing that will bring about meaningful change.
One of the people you can vote for, will throw the trolley and start a revolution. The other will maintain the status quo, which is shit. A useful idiot, is still useful.
I've seen the writing on the wall for a while. I've divested and left. I am now waiting for the collapse and the quicker the better so the split of the nation and restructuring can start. Limping along on life support is not helping.
I have never heard of this and it sounds insane. You wouldn't kill everyone or no one, you'd probably kill everyone and the people on the train too. When I look up purposeful derailment the only incident I find is that crazy guy who crashed two trains into each other for fun killing some spectators.
Edit: hey more googling. You could argue it happened once and calling it a "trolley problem " is generous. The incident I'm finding was a runaway train in Australia. A runaway train is a lot different and usually they don't try to fix them like that, but by applying the brakes. It's also worth mentioning it was a "controlled" derailment and not just some guy flipping on Deja Vu as he sees if he can emulate initial D. There was no one in the area. Also in general I feel the trolley analogy has long fallen apart at this point.
Says who?
Isn't that just multi-track drifting?
Why are you blaming the voters for not choosing the lesser evil, instead of blaming the dems for forcing them to make that choice in the first place?
Stop supporting and enabling the fucking genocide, then it's a no-brainer for everyone. And with so many other people's lives at stake as well as the Palestinians, how dare the dems play chicken?
Okay, I will minimize genocide as much as possible by voting for Biden.
Can you link some of the Palestinian advocacy groups who are asking us to vote for Biden, since you're definitely listening to them?
https://uspalestiniancouncil.org/latest-action/arab-american-agenda
Oh look, a tankie linking a psy-op. What a surprise.
I don't care what a random group says about Palestine when they claim to represent them. I have no way of verifying their integrity, and none of the people I know who have the skills to do so have recommended any to me. So I need to assume anything you link isn't genuine.
I came to my opinion after speaking with Palestinians not an "advocacy group". People who I am able to see, hear, and who's pain is clear in their voices and the tears on their face. People who are resigned to their best option in a man who's betrayed them less than his rival would.
I am autistic. For years the most popular advocates for people like me was Autism Speaks who openly talked about "curing" us. Advocacy groups are often a sham, and I don't trust them. Honestly, neither should you; it says a lot that (if you're sincere) you haven't figured that out.
Can you link me the evidence that led you to confirm it's a psyop? The AAI co-signed the letter, so I assume they're part of the psyop?
Even better, can you link me a pro-Palestinian advocacy group that isn't a psyop?
"They're actively trying to make me reconsider my stance on genocide" = shady psy-op by an evil power that wants to control the world?
It is well known that a number of states sow division in the populace of their enemies to weaken them. Does polarizing hot button issues do that? History says it does.
Does Palestine matter to them? No. Does polarizing the populace of the enemy matter to them? Yes. Are either of the organizations linked above tools of states that would like to harm America? I don't know. Could they, or similar organizations be used that way? Sure.
So every Pro-Palestinian group is a psyop, got it.
Where are you obtaining your information on the genocide?
I used to wonder if there was any line that people wouldn't cross with lesser-evilism, but now that I've seen all these takes just openly being like, "Yes, we're doing genocide, and if you break ranks over that, not only are you a bad person, but your behavior is only possibly explainable by you being a foreign agent or a conservative in disguise," and honestly it's pretty validating to know that yes, I was right all along that accepting that line of reasoning would lead to complete insanity with no limit on how extreme it could get. Like I've never voted for a major party presidential candidate because of that sort of thing but even I never expected the discourse to reach this level, and now that I've seen it play out I'm very glad I decided to distance myself from it. This is what zero principles does to a mfer.
It's really hard to see. Hearing that it doesn't matter that Biden supports Israel's genocide in Palestine because Trump would too is a bad take. It mattered to the thousands of people that have died. It matters to their families. It matters to their friends. So many of Biden's bad policies are just unforced errors. He doesn't have to be an unappealing candidate. He chooses to be an unappealing candidate. If he loses to Trump, that will be why. It'll be 2016 all over again. The genocide in Palestine is Biden's equivalent of just not setting foot in Michigan. And they'll blame voters, primarily independents and leftists (they already are), just like Hillary did, but ever think about what they could have done differently or better.
Simplistic philosophy for simplistic minds.
It's not a trolley problem, and even if it were the consequences of greenlighting democratic support for genocide are not fully represented appropriately in this image.
It is a trolley problem for leftwing voters.
We all know what happens if the Republicans get in - they do what they want, and what they want is fervent, unquestioning support of Israel, and to continue trampling on the rights of millions of minorities.
That's where the Trolley goes if the leftwing can't agree on what it wants to do.
While I agree that you're right in stating that the long-term consequences of allowing democrats to get away with this aren't properly laid out, what's the alternative exactly?
You could argue to vote an independent, but if everybody disagrees on which independent to vote for, then you fragment the leftwing and the Republicans get a free lunch.
You could argue to refuse to vote to teach the democrat party a lesson, which sounds nice, but every lost vote against the Republicans only helps bring them closer to victory.
If you've got another idea, then by all means go ahead, but those are the two I hear over and over again.
Except communicating to Democratic leadership that this is acceptable moves us to the right, not to the left. I think it's time we all admit at least that we're past pretending Democrats are going to reform themselves without any meaningful pressure, no?
How far to the right do we let the DNC use fear to push us before being "left" only in relation to the extreme right doesn't cut it? If genocide is not where you draw the line what the fuck will be?
Voting or not voting by itself will not move democrats to the left. That can only be achieved by organizing. In the meantime, keeping republicans out of power is worthwhile.
Again, I agree with what you're saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
Both realistic outcomes of the election involve the US government continuing to support this genocide in one way or another - that's why OP's meme is drawn out like it is, because people arguing your exact viewpoint seem to think there's some magical third track everybody else has missed that sidetracks this issue entirely.
Everybody loses this election no matter what happens, but I guarantee you the loss will be worse with the Republicans in the driving seat.
There will never be a perfect time to draw the line, because the DNC will always play chicken with its own base as long as that continues to get them elected, they will always be putting us in that position of choosing between their fascist lite pick and the gop's fascist. The only weapon we have that they care about is our ability to deny them power. They don't care about protests, they don't care about articles and letters, debate or polls or anything, as we see none of that changes their behaviour. They care about money and access to power.
So, the solution is to starve them until they realize the party simply can't sustain itself on non-existent maga swing voters. It can't leech enough "moderate" conservatives to survive. They need to be brought to the understanding that their route to power is not to be Alt Republican, it's to be progressive and anti-fascist.
People can say the DNC won't care and it will never work that way, but we've seen a real example from history that starving parties works. When Republican support was waning in the 1950s and 60s, the Republicans went out hunting for a new demographic to sustain them. That's what the Southern Strategy was. Granted they were going in the opposite direction, but the Democrats can be put in the same position and since the GOP already occupies all the white racist territory, Dems have very few other places to hide from Millenials and GenZ.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that's the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
One, that is a very long way of saying the idea you're bringing to the table is don't vote - and I've already said what I think about that.
Two, that's a bit of an understatement considering just one highlight of Trump's last presidency was rigging the SCOTUS towards being openly corrupt and against the people for literally decades to come.
You clearly didn't read it then, we're done here.
Yeah, I did see that section, but given that a "corporate" candidate is already the democrat nominee, that also amounts to not voting in this election - or voting for independents, which I have also made my opinion known on - so there was no point in talking about that.
It's funny you say the philosophy is simple when strategic voting requires multiple layers of analysis and voting for bubblegum ice cream just amounts to what feels good. You can't bring yourself to accept the reality of the situation, so you pretend like the problem is easy to solve if you just ignore it. That's truly simple minded. Pathetic projection on your part.
It's not strategic if the outcome of either option in the binary you present is fascism. You're not "saving" anyone on either of the tracks in the narrow political world you paint.
You're reducing things to a single issue and have the gall to say my political world is narrow. You're unreal.
Literally. How do people like this exist
Image fully representing the consequences of any voters in the US deciding to "greenlight genocide":
Lol neoliberals are stroking themselves about how clever this is and just out of view there was another choice back in 2020.
But they like to ignore the fact they voted for a geriatric, procorporate genocide supporting candidates in the 2020 primaries.
Hey look, Americans handwaving their genocide
Oh look, a fascist who likes to pretend they aren't.
Which pro-Palestinian groups do you listen to? What are the Palestinians saying that really strikes a chord with you?
You've posted like 30 comments here.
31
Just wondering why you're so invested in telling people not to vote for biden.
I'm invested in telling Americans to listen to Palestinians.
Hitler didn't win. He was appointed Chancellor by the big parties as a compromise and abused that power.
Hitler was appointed by Hindenburg, who was pressured by conservatives and capitalists, also the NSDAP was the strongest political party in both elections of 1932.
Without the substantial support for the NSDAP initially, there would have been no reason to appoint Hitler. The idea was that Hitler and his NSDAP could create a strong and lasting conservative government, a plan that would not have been suggested without their electoral success. Therefore, the support for the NSDAP in 1932 was the key reason Hitler became Chancellor. Paul von Hindenburg distrusted and despised Adolf Hitler as an unqualified upstart but felt compelled to appoint him as Chancellor due to political pressure and the unstable situation.
Then it's still not analogous because the Democrats and Republicans routinely go 50/50 in the US.
Specifically, he was appointed chancellor by the guy the SDP backed. How anyone can look at that and blame the KPD for running the only anti-Hitler candidate is baffling.
Hitler did not have a 50% majority but the NSDAP was the strongest party, giving them a lot of leverage. If his opposition had been more unified, he wouldn't have had a chance at becoming chancellor.
So you admit that the problem is a moderate party half-assing elections because they think they can coast on not being "other guy". Democrats help trump because they'd rather have fascism than threaten the bottom line of their rich donors. How do you think it got this bad in the first place? Did you think democrats were the bastion of progress?
The Democratic Party is largely conservative and reactionary. There are some progressive elements because progressives have nowhere else to go. The US election system is fucked and undemocratic. It needs to change.
Still, not voting for Democrats achieves absolutely nothing but costing them a vote they need against the literal fascists of the Republican Party.
The old saying about not learning and being doomed to repeat history really is depressing when you see it happen in real time.
What lesson? That the rich and powerful will eventually make every society circle the drain and fighting it off just delays the inevitable?
Or is your intellectual take giving a free pass to the most powerful in society and saddling those with the least amount of power with the bulk of the responsibility?
Biden is anti-abortion, anti-BLM, doesn't care about muslims... Not saying the tracks are equal, but it is definitely not as one sided as this.
Why should he "care about Muslims" any more than any other group? Would your opinion be the same that he should care about Christians? Jews? Buddhists?
The president of the USA is supposed to care about Americans.
Also Biden is not even slightly anti-abortion, wtf. Biden is a Catholic and would not personally choose to abort a child of his own, but as the President he supports the right to choose in service to the office and not to his personal beliefs.
This is what it means to be President, to do what is right for the people even if it goes against your own opinions. Did Trump really lower our expectations that badly?
Since he unwaveringly supports the Zionist regime because they're Jews, it seems reasonable to conclude that his support of some ethnicities but not other makes him a racist.
I do agree that the POTUS is supposed to care about Americans (independently of ethnicity).
That is however not what Biden is doing - he's favoring some over others based on ethnicity (and money, like the vast majority of US Presidents).
He supports Israel because they're our only real ally in that region of the world. It almost doesn't matter what they do, we'll continue to support them on that alone unless and until we get another significant ally in the Middle East.
Sending 2000lb bombs - well known for their massive collateral effects and hence innocent civilian deaths when used in an urban area - to a nation that's bombing a city and had by then already killed tens of thousands of civilians there, is well beyond merelly "supporting" them and well into supporting the Genocide itself.
Merelly "Supporting an Ally" that's doing what Israel is doing would at most go up to the US vetos at the UN Security Council and even that would only go so far and by the 10000th dead children would have changed from veto to abstention.
The smartest "Ally supporting" move for the US would've been to turn absolutelly neutral at around the 2nd or 3rd month of the Genocide.
(PS: This last one is actually what we saw with all other nations out there which saw Israel as allies, so most Western nations except the US, UK, and Germany - after the 7th of October, when pretty much all of them came out supporting Israel, as over time it became more and more clear that the Israeli actions were not defense but outright Genocide, they turned from supporters to in most cases absolutelly neutral and in some cases against them. Merelly "Supporting an Ally" is what the likes of France did, not what the American Biden Administration did).
The damage that this shit is doing for American soft power around the World must be immense - not even Trump managed to project in the minds of the well-educated the World over the impression that the US willingly and knowingly gives Genocidal nations bombs to murder children with.
As far as Muslims, I am responding to the people on the tracks in the meme. Biden has been vocally anti-abortion for most of his career, he is only trying to walk that back in the last few years. Even then, best case scenario, he is refusing to try to make progress on that issue to use it as a mobilization issue. If it is not an issue of legislation, but only the Supreme Court reversing the precedent, then you have to keep voting Democrat for a generation before progress can be attempted. That is what it means to be Democrat.
No, Biden did a number on me. It showed that Democrats and Liberals have absolutely no principles or beliefs. They are fine with a senile, racist, rapist, right-wing, war criminal, genocidaire president as long as he has a D next to his name and doesn't have an orange spray tan. Now Liberals think it is not fascist for ICE to put more people in concentration camps, the president to continue building the border wall, ignore human rights agreements to turn away asylum seekers, arm and fund genocide, continue interventions in the middle east, etc. It laid bare that all of the Liberal's objections to Trump were based not on principles nor positions, just that it was Trump doing it.
OK Pippi Wrongstocking, neat take
How am I wrong? Was it Trump that passed the COPS expansion, using federal funds to make sure police got funding expansions without local input, didn't Biden say that his Catholic faith meant that he was anti-abortion, and wasn't Biden's position on the Senate Council of Foreign Relations make him the Democrat with most input and culpability on how the war on terrorism was carried out? Were Muslims served by Biden's sanctions on Afghanistan, starving the people, as petty revenge for him following through on Trump's planned withdrawal not working out. Just excluding the point that Palestinians are Muslims and most Muslims care about Palestine. Did Biden stand up for trans rights or is his only saving grace not vocally cheering on the Republicans, and instead just try to avoid taking a position on that because Democrats don't actually want to fight for things or defend positions.
Go outside friend, and talk to people near you about these issues. Diversify where you consume amljd discuss information, online is prone to echo chambers.
Understand that nobody is immune to propaganda, including yourself.
Is it propaganda that Biden loves cops and supports Israel?
Roe v Wade sends their regards.
This
the decision that Blue did absolutely nothing to protect even though they knew full well Red would kill it any chance they got?
"Terrible things that Republicans do is actually Democrats' fault" is a fun level of victim blaming
Is it the "only Democrats have agency" thing? Democrats are responsible for their choices but Republicans, they're just like a fire that burns man it doesn't know what it's doing.
Is the guy with the bowtie supposed to be the people on here calling everone "lib" or the people on here calling everone "tankie"?
I could say the same thing of the self proclaimed progressives saying the dems should have done something in the total 4 years since then they've had trifecta control, not even including the filibuster.
You knew the redcaps would kill it first chance they got, why did you let them get the chance by not voting against them?
What was so much more important to you than women's health that not even the open and active threat to it was enough to motivate you to the herculean task of standing in a line and pushing some buttons?
You asswipes are always on about how you're the only ones who take fascism seriously in this country, and then whenever you're given the chance to show it by doing the basic minimum to keep them out of power you balk and make demands like it's suddenly a distant nightmare instead of the life threatening reality of the people you karen at to get the party's manager for you.
Big Bridal Shower at the Gay Bar Energy.
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance, instead of making us speculate on it.
So deep.