And I’m being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don’t understand it. Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?
If you think there was a genuine argument to not vote for Harris over Gaza war crimes, you were amongst those successfully manipulated by Russia. That argument was entirely of America’s enemies’ making as a means to get Trump elected.
My own argument to these people has been that I’d prefer they go out and cast their (wasted) votes for a third party, rather than simply stay home. A lot of Lemmy disagrees with me on that, focusing on the (true) realization that their third parties won’t get elected.
In this election’s current aftermath, much of the blame has been stating that voters were just lazy or unmotivated. The only thing this message encourages is to repeat more rallies, make more promises by demographics and region so people know to get out and vote.
If you vote third party, it sends a message that you are motivated to vote, but you are not pleased with the current messages of the party. That results in a very different change of action.
Unfortunately, this whole practice is extremely long-term-focused. Many people in this election have been desperate for short-term solutions, like the Ukraine/Gaza wars. Ideally, this kind of reaction would have started in 2016/2020 - but third-party votes have been miniscule in those elections too.
Steelman:
The US is currently a fascist, imperialist state. It has brutalized the global south, indigenous people, and POCs generally since its founding and will continue to do so unless the status quo is disrupted and changed significantly.
The Democratic party supports the same militaristic policies and the same neoliberal economic system that the Republicans do. The primary difference between the parties are various social issues that may make life somewhat better or worse for US citizens, but will never address the core problems of fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. Both parties support and protect the status quo. This status quo only benefits the bourgeois class and rich white people and harms literally hundreds of millions of others around the world.
The Democratic party is the only one of the two major parties that the Left has any degree of leverage over since the Democrats want the Left to vote for them. So, organizing to essentially boycott the Democratic party is a powerful method of protest that could effect real policy change. It is possibly the only effective method of protest left since the US police & surveilance state is cracking down on protests and the Left has no chance protesting violently against the most powerful military the world has ever seen.
The only way to make that threat matter to the Democratic party is to follow through if the demands aren’t met, even - or especially - if it means a second Trump term.
The liberal establishment has ignored and abandoned the working class for decades while dangling the carrot of milktoast social democratic reforms that rarely come to pass, but they blame the same people they abandoned for not energetically voting for them. They say it is a moral imperative to vote for them, but they are incapable of bettering the lives of working class people.
Strawman:
It would hurt my feelings too much to vote for COPmala Harm-us. Plus, Trump would let Putin annex Ukraine. Also, I’d risk touching grass if I went outside to participate in bourgeois electoralism. Gross.
Reality:
You can, and should, do more than one thing. Voting for Kamala is effectively playing defense against outright, full-throated fascism a la Mussolini even if you’d still consider the US fascist - it is clearly worse under Republicans. So vote, play defense, AND organize to raise class consciousness, provide mutual aid, protest when possible, and contribute to socialist causes. Letting Trump win would be a bad move. But, ultimately it is not the Left’s fault that he won. He won the popular vole and the electoral college vote by a large margin - larger than all third party socialist/socialist-adjacent candidates’ votes combined.
This is a great explanation, well done.
Buddy, you haven’t seen American fascism yet. Part of the problem is that people like you scream “fascist” so much that it’s lost it’s power. A fascist like Trump would have never been able to pull this off if that word hadn’t been trivializec.
This was a thread about making the specific argument you’re mad at me for making
Lemme tell the millions of children that have gone through the migrant camps, separated from their family, some of whom have disappeared, that their jailors aren’t fascists. Let me tell the latino women who have been forcibly neutered without their knowledge or consent that they’re trivializing fascism. Let’s go to those who were detained in Abu Ghraib, if any of them are still alive, that their abduction, rape, and torture by laughing US soldiers doesn’t count, it’s what happens to americans that’s worrying.
Honestly, this is the fucking smugness of somebody who knows they’re safe as long as they mask, because they’ve been safe as fascists have massively incarcerated and enslaved black people, as they’ve made ghettos of bipoc neighborhoods, as far right terrorists have shot up black churches and gay bars and lynchings are back on the up and up. Because that was trivial, what’s not trivial is if it can happen to them. Fuck dems fr.
Latinos voted heavily in favor of trump. They seem to want to be victimized.
The ones who voted for Trump voted because they think they’re not talking about them. The horrible violence will be visited upon whomever is to blame, and they don’t know anyone who’s to blame, so they have nothing to fear.
Dems do that shit too, what they’re ok with are death squads in Gaza, Nicaragua, Ukraine, because the Americans orchestrating and perpetrating those crimes against humanity would certainly never come back and apply their knowledge at home, where they live, surely. What’s more american than that?
They believe it because that’s what people have been told to believe.
It should be glaringly obvious that trump’s implied policy that he will let Israel “finish the job” is far worse than the dems poor attempts at negotiating cease-fires or any other moderation on Israel’s aggression.
All the propaganda has focused on the democrat (in)action regarding Israel. Zero on trump’s plans.
That’s what the propaganda machine has been pushing.
That’s what the propaganda machine has been pushing.
And there was a strong push from the Russians.
what moderation ? biden literally told everyone that ukraine is not even getting a paperclip unless we give israel 20 billion as well. he continued saying israel has unconditional support while we were getting footage of pregnant women & kids getting shot at by idf or burning alive in hospital from use of incendiary shells. then harris repeated the same statement on live tv. all this while the working class has been struggling to survive, layoffs everywhere, and price of everything getting doubled.
its not something that can be washed with but that guy will do worse. you can look otherway but dnc basically threatened their voters base with more genocide if not elected. the fact we are even fighting over this instead mass protesting for biden and his administration to be prosecuted shows just how hollow & pathetic the dnc base has become.
There you go again.
Dems bad, who cares if trump is worse.
Well, you’ll get what you wanted when Israel finishes off Gaza and everything else, or starts WWIII when they can’t keep the bombs inside their extermination camp.
You know there’s an entire rest of the world that exists right? A rest of the world that has already started preparing sanctions against Israel if the conflict continues to escalate?
Realistically, we’ve seen this all beat for beat before. Israel treats Palestine as an apartheid state, eventually a group forms to try and resist Israel, Israel crushes that group’s bones into dust for a few years, and then once they can offer no more resistance, Israel returns Palestine to an apartheid state. The pattern has repeated itself several times now.
You’re out of your mind if you think the israel / Palestine conflict stays local to that area under either administration. This is going to literally and figuratively blow up in our faces. Research the concept of “blowback”.
At no point did I suggest otherwise. In fact , I clearly stated WWIII was on the table. Go make up something else I said.
Arguably WW3 started when Russia invaded Ukraine.
yes the 15 millions or so didn’t care that trump is worse because dnc has become bad enough and its not just the genocide in gaza. threatening people make them do irrational things, specially true for us americans.
there is solid basis that harris would have done nothing to reign netanyahu same as trump. she had accepted even larger donation from aipac than biden who was basically emptying our emergency stockpile faster than we can replenish. if anything there’s chance that trumps narcissism clashes with that stooge and he actually does something good for gaza out of his ego.
Uh, I don’t have anything against America as a whole, but saying y’all don’t like irrational things rings pretty fucking false in my ears atm.
It only took 90 years until the majority apparently forgot 1935-1945 completely.
That’s because nobody believes biden/Harris and for good reason. They’re lying, they have just as much of a plan to turn Gaza into prime oceanfront real estate for wealthy NYC metro area zionists with dual citizenship as the republicans. They’ll just paint the bombs with progress pride and blm flags while lying to your face about their intentions and speaking out of both sides of their mouth depending on their audience. It’s sickening. They’re both going to genocide Palestinians, does it really matter if they’re turned to glass in days or in weeks?
Because the standard for Democrats is perfectionism, but the standard for Republicans is “That’s just Trump being Trump.”
In other words, they didn’t think it through, they got suckered by propaganda.
The arguments are as stupid as you guessed.
These are naive emotional people who are dumb as fuck. I know so many in my life and it’s like arguying with a brick wall.
Children still believe we live in a black and white world, democrats are in power now, genocide is happening, they will not vote for them. The concept that both will finance the genocide but another will be much worse is not something they can understand.
You have others that want to intentionally punish democrats for not doing anything. Great in the meantime, Trump will provide a full carte blanche to Nettanyahu in the middle east, he will continue what he’s doing, annex everything without any limits. They were partying in Israel after Trump won.
A third group wants the system to break down because they think if you’re a post collapse society, they will be able to build their utopia.
Yes as dumb idiots living in la la land.
Naïve/entitled people fail to grasp the concept of compromise.
The arguments against voting in the USA sound similar to the trolley problem
Some people wouldnt choose to be the reason of the death of one person even if doing nothing causes the death of multiple people
That just means you value your own ability to evade blame over the lives of real people.
Yeah but also they all die anyway. Nobody is “saved” in this situation. In fact, it’s way worse now.
What’s going to happen in Gaza is going to be horrifying.
It wasn’t horrifying until now? Maybe they weren’t white or part of your propaganda.
This is very american - these Gaza supporters protest the suffering of people thousands of miles away and yet think it is okay to bring suffering to everyone in his/her own street
Almost like they are paying for the people suffering thousands of miles away?
Do you have a brain by any chance?
Yes, this is how I felt. I would rather not choose to vote for the ‘lesser of two evils’ and pretend that’s good. It’s not just Gaza though, it’s corporatism, war profiteering, and terrible policy.
I would rather see the system collapse and possibly die in the process than support another shitty government even if it’s the less shitty one.
That’s a horrible outlook, and I’m sorry you’ve been driven to that point. I understand, as I have been there before.
Now that I’m older, I realize that pulling the lever is the right thing to do as much as it hurts. I don’t think letting apathy win and watching the government go full Fash was the correct choice, but I don’t blame you, or others who decided the same. The system isn’t going to collapse, though, it’s just going to get a lot shittier for awhile.
Before I start let me note that in the end this particular group of people didn’t affect the election. Harris is on the way to losing all swing states. Her failure is much deeper than Gaza policy. Blaming anti-genocide voters for this is just copium.
With that out of the way, you can divide people with this position into two groups: Arab Americans and everyone else. Arab Americans are people who are feeling the genocide firsthand. So, obviously, they tried to appeal to the Harris campaign and get them to move from Biden’s position on the topic. The result: They were either ignored or antagonized by Harris. That led to the abandon Harris campaign in Michigan and elsewhere. Harris considered those people acceptable casualties in her failure of a campaign, and so they were burnt out and the momentum behind the Uncommitted movement and others turned from “let’s save our Palestinian brothers” to “fuck us and Palestine (because let’s face it, that’s basically what Harris was saying)? Then fuck you too”. Harris thew them under the bus and was thrown under the bus in turn. Maybe not very logical, but a very predictable reaction. Harris treated Arab Americans with just that much contempt, and then she and her enablers had the gall to tell the people attending a funeral every other day to “shut up and vote for her”.
Now as for everyone else, it’s a more simple instance of taking a stand against a politician for doing something you cannot accept. Now there is a pragmatic idea here that if you allow the DNC to get away with this they’ll think supporting genocide actually wins elections, or that their electorate are such pussies that it doesn’t matter what they think. Add in the goal of pressuring Harris to drop that policy that was important at the start of the Harris campaign and of course the idea of not wanting to vote for genocide and this was the result.
Of course it’s not all 100% logical, but there is logic here beyond “omg bad guy I no vote”.
Now that the election is out of the way, maybe I can continue talking about this. I held my tongue during the past months, but I think now is a good time to think about this result.
While the result is unfortunate and disappointing, there are sides to it that aren’t all that bad. They pushed towards the right, pandering, and now the voters told them that this isn’t a winning strategy. I think it helps setting them straight for the future.
I think you put it very aptly. Of course it would’ve been best if Harris had won, but at least now we can think about it from a neutral perspective: Had she won despite all the right-pandering and genocide-enabling stances, it would either send the message that pandering to the right works, and the progressives are, indeed, either too small a group to listen to in the future too, or too much of pussies to listen to in the future, too — they’ll toe the line no matter what kind of shitty positions you take.
At least now they know that a change is needed. It’s almost unthinkable to lose to such a weird fascist populist that barely behaves cohesively. They did, by ignoring the progressives. That means something. At least it ought to.
Things don’t often change unless things hurt. If doing shitty things keeps working, nothing changes. But when things hurt, it opens some eyes at least. Forces re-evaluation on everyone’s part.
But that being said, this fucking sucks. Despite all the reasoning we can do to make it feel a bit better, this really should not have happened.
They played this exact same game in 2016 and lost and yet they learned nothing. What makes anyone think they’re going to learn something this time? The DNC needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up to be a proper left party instead of this bullshit center-right garbage that they pretend is progressive or left.
EDIT: And I still held my nose and voted, because I will in fact take anything over fascism.
2016 was easily dismissed because trump was a surprise candidate they weren’t prepared to deal with, Hilary was disliked, and she still won the popular vote. None of those excuses apply in 2024
I’m not hopeful. I’ve already seen centrists and pundits saying that Harris lost because she’s “too progressive” and that Dems need to move further right.
Given Dems’ track record, I’m dreading 2028 is going to be JD Vance versus fucking RFK Jr. or Joe Manchin. At least the only silver lining out of THAT shitshow will be seeing the Democratic Party completely implode after completely alienating their voter base to become a carbon copy of the Republican Party (while Repub voters just keep voting R) and hopefully pave ground for an actual progressive party replace them, but that will hardly offset the horrors of 8 years of unrestrained fascism (assuming the left wins in 2032 🥲)
There will be no more elections, do you guys not listen to what Trump says? The only way to have elections again would be a civil war and guess what, the fascists are the majority so fat chance of that happening
Over our dead bodies friend. See you at the polls like always.
do you guys not listen to what Trump says?
Yes that was one of the many outrageous claims he made.
Who knows which things he will actually try to do, let alone what he’ll succeed at doing.
Even with the house, senate and supreme court tilted right, I don’t see them succeeding on abolishing elections.
Well that’s naive. That has happened in many other countries before, and guess what the USA is not any different from them, so
You’re wrong that it didn’t impact the outcome. MI flipped to Trump directly because of the uncommitted movement. Slotkin won the senate race, but Trump won by a narrow margin. Independent votes and low turn out siphoned off enough to make that happen. Low turn out also directly impacted the results. PA is a different story, but low turn out was true there, too
You’re wrong that it didn’t impact the outcome. MI flipped to Trump directly because of the uncommitted movement.
I mean maybe (I haven’t seen the turnout numbers as opposed to protest/non-voters) but the point is that Harris lost before Michigan even finished counting. She could’ve won Michigan and she still wasn’t winning this, is the point.
Low turn out also directly impacted the results. PA is a different story, but low turn out was true there, too
I mean yeah, because the DNC pushed an unelectable candidate whose position was a mix of “nothing will fundamentally change”, wishy washy non-promises and right wing positions. I doubt even 10% of the 15 million in reduced turnout came from Uncommitted and similar movements. The DNC blew it; it’s that simple.
Michigan and Wisconsin, 25 electoral points. You can’t just lose swing states like she did.
Pennsylvania absolutely over biden economic policies. Screaming the economy is doing great! I wouldnt change a thing! While people struggle to afford groceries isnt going to win you an election.
in the end this particular group of people didn’t affect the election.
Source for that statement?
Look at the votes that came in?
Kamala got 20 million fewer votes than Biden. You don’t think a significant amount of those weren’t related?
So, I’d say that looking at the votes means that it did have an effect.
Trump got a bajillion more votes than Kamala.
We have both cited the exact same number of sources.
What are you talking about? I’m the one that asked for a source, lol.
Some told me tO LoOK At tHe ReSUltS… so I did.
What margin did Trump win Michigan by?
I don’t understand your point. I’m not talking about Michigan. I’m talking about the country.
What margin did Trump win the country by?
How many voters didn’t vote due to the genocide?
How many voters didn’t vote due to the genocide?
About 20 million?
[X]
She lost before Michigan finished counting. She could’ve won Michigan and she would still lost. Source: Subtract 15 from Trump’s EC votes.
It’s the trolley problem. You see a trolley about to kill 5 people. You can pull a lever (vote) and make the trolley only kill 1. In this case, that 1 person is also in the lineup of 5. This distinction makes it obvious the only option is to pull the lever (vote).
They mistakenly believe that by pulling the lever they are complicit in the trolley. That by interacting with the trolley on the trolley’s terms, they are consenting to the trolley’s actions.
I used to believe that too once… Once.
I was disabused of that notion before 2012, but sadly not enough people were.
Inaction is also an action. You’re always playing the game, might as well learn the rules.
No it’s not. Both the trolley problem and the prisoners dilemma are individual event thought experiments.
Real life is different, it is continuous. The rational choice for an individual event can be very different than a continuous one.
Take the prisoner’s dilemma (or game theory) for instance, it is the rational decision (nash equilibrium) to rat your fellow prisoner out but if you have to do it again and again, then the best strategy is to NOT rat out your fellow prisoner (only rat when they ratted you out in the last round).
Reality is often like this, and elections are also like this. It gets complicated real fast.
Voting is an individual event
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I agree that people should’ve voted, but I disagree with this one-dimensional line of thinking. I can see the argument that by voting for the democrats their current behaviour and this fucked up system as a whole is warranted. It’s not as simple as “why not vote, it costs you nothing”. By voting this horrible “democracy” is legitimised and the democrats and the system will not change their approach. The US deserves a democracy that actually allows for representation instead of this duopoly of garbage and more garbage
Not voting doesn’t do anything but make you feel better about yourself. No one in power cares that you didn’t vote. They actually love low voter turnout because it’s an easier demographic to hit
I disagree. The margins seem thin enough that people fed up with either party can absolutely ruin them in the swing states. If you were to disagree with one of the parties, you could absolutely give them a signal by not voting. Preferably such a person would also make very clear why they refuse to vote for a party, because otherwise it’s indeed just lazy and empty.
Again, I think that people who do so are shooting themselves (and everyone else) in the foot. But I can see their motivation.
This is actually a very good comparison, thank you.
Because if it wasn’t Gaza, it would have been another excuse to not lift a lazy goddamned finger and still delude themselves into feeling "morally superior"while sitting on their fat mediocre asses at home.
Before Harris, they also leaned heavily on the “Sleepy Joe” bullshit and “two old white men up for election, who cares”. Once the old “Sleepy Joe” element was removed from the equation, they had to find a way to keep their goddamned stubbornly lazy and ignorant narrative intact.
Now that the election is over, most of these “concerned and outraged” deadweight assholes will never think about Gaza and the plight of its’ people again. And they will keep on feeling smug about themselves.
I know one of those people. they are now angry the left lost… 🙄
I’m not American, and I don’t agree with these people either, but I don’t think that calling them lazy and ignorant makes any sense. In the fucked up democracy of the US it’s clear that the only way to get what you want for the coming 4 years is to vote for the least bad candidate. At the same time I can definitely understand that if you view both candidates was horrible, though one way more horrible than the other, you would feel conflicted about voting for either of them.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Assuming both candidates are still roughly equally “popular”. If both candidates wanted to start a genocide, but one would want to kill only 50% of the amount of innocents that the other would kill, how would you vote? Would you vote for the one who is overall the less bad option, which will in turn make you give your vote for something horrible. Or would you abstain and signal that the democracy as it currently stands has lost your confidence entirely, even if it means that on the short term the consequences might be way worse?
Not voting actually costs the democrats something, and should (if they want to win next time) force them to think how to better represent you next time.
It’s fucked up that your democracy came to this. It has become an annoying game theory dilemma instead of voting for the candidate that you actually believe in. Our system here in the Netherlands is certainly also not perfect, since we have too many parties and too long coalition negotiations, but at least I feel like it represents people way better. Anyone can start a party and capture seat if they represent a large enough niche.
I said the same thing about people like you before the election, and I’ll repeat it again. The laser focus on single issue voters was and will always be mostly an excuse to blame someone else.
To look at it another way, if this one issue actually decided the election, why didn’t Harris change her strategy two months ago? … Maybe it’s because this wasn’t the determining issue. Or it was, and her staff was incompetent. Take your pick.
OP asked for a steelman but good try
It is rich to criticize the Democrats for claiming moral superiority while doing nothing, as a justification for not voting for the candidate who would at least try to put a leash on what Israel is doing to Gaza.
If you want what’s best for a suffering people, you should vote for the candidate not trying to give their oppressors a blank check. All of America is responsible for what the president we chose does next.
This is fucking rich lmao.
You know who I always see busting their ass protesting, striking, aiding their fellow worker? Not fucking democrats, I’ll tell you that. It’s always third parties who get demonized for not voting for a fascist and then told they get what they deserve when they’re out there serving as a shield against the worst of fascist violence. Americans are so politically illiterate it’d be funny if y’all would go down alone and not threaten to burn the rest of us down with you.
This is all that needs to be said on the subject.
its funny, because literally the next post after yours was this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/07/trump-blank-check-netanyahu-war-iran-panetta
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To quote a user from another thread:
Theyre not the ones that need to learn. Voters need to learn DNC is a bunch of wealthy moderates grifting voters.
Don’t worry. Trump won. You’ll hear a whole lot less about Gaza and genocide now.
