• RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Last election the choice was between Palestinian genocide and Palestinian genocide. You are smoking crack if you think the oligarchy is ever going to provide you with a meaningful choice to loosen their hold on you through the civic ritual of voting.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        7 hours ago

        You people really are hell bent on reducing the word “genocide” to meaninglessness

      • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at Trump and conclude that he’s infinitely worse

        This line is smoking gun proof that everyone in this thread trying to engage with you is talking exclusively over your head.

          • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            Bro you’ve been reduced to yelling “This is what you wanted!!!” at the people telling you none of this was necessary, it’s pathetic. Every day liberals prove there is no bottom to how low they will go to drown out their conscience and prject their guilt

            Well, you got your “pragmatic” genocide and then some. You got your guy in to stop Trump, and he immediately shit the bed. Hindenburg preceeds Hitler. Here we are again. You’ve learned nothing.

            • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              Bro you’ve been reduced to yelling “This is what you wanted!!!”

              Is it not what you wanted? It’s what you’re advocating for.

              none of this was necessary

              Wholeheartedly agree, but necessary or not, it is inevitable as long as we allow evil people to run the world. Yes that includes Biden and Harris. It also includes Trump.

              Well, you got your “pragmatic” genocide and then some.

              The “pragmatic” genocide didn’t include the “and then some”. That second bit is the one you asked for.

              You got your guy in to stop Trump

              My guy got primaried. No one’s guy got in to stop Trump: that orange traitor still hasn’t been stopped.

              and he immediately shit the bed.

              Ah, you must be talking about Biden. Yeah fuck that guy.

              Here we are again. You’ve learned nothing.

              Here we are. And no, so far I haven’t learned shit. Are you the teacher in this scenario? Cuz so far you’ve taught nothing. My proposal was to utilize your vote - literally that’s it - and so far that’s only attracted propaganda about how doing so won’t get us systemic change. …but like… no shit? You gotta do bigger things than just voting to get that. But still do vote. You know you can do that, right? Voting, and other things? The ballot box doesn’t lock you out of other actions.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                3 hours ago

                Please let the previous election go. It’s over. Nobody here is advocating for or against what’s already in the rear view mirror. And anyway, what we said on Lemmy last year had fuck-all effect on the election. Let’s “optimistically” say we affected 1,000 votes. Trump didn’t win by a hair’s breadth. What we said didn’t materially matter w/r/t/ the election. And that’s not even what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to agitate & educate people to think beyond/outside of the election cycle, and to break people out of myopic electoralism.

              • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                3 hours ago

                All the people advocating for “less evil” always end up destroying their own argument by immediately descending into apologism and denial to defend that evil. I’m not going to “vote for the lesser evil” if doing so turns me into a genocide denying ghoul, which it certainly has for everyone I’ve seen advocating it.

                orange traitor

                Yeah, that’s the problem with Trump: he’s not loyal enough to the nation that you yourself have admitted has a bipartisan commitment to genocide. This is like condemning Himmler for being a traitor to Nazi Germany. Seriously, you just stop yourself from giving up the game: you don’t actually think the Democrats are “lesser evil”, you don’t think they’re evil at all.

          • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            He’s not our man. Previously:

            It’s not wrong to say regulatory capture is a problem, it just doesn’t go far enough. The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

            The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.

            • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              He’s not our man.

              No, he’s not. Despite that, there sure are a lot of folks here who were eager to hand him the keys of the country, and continue to to defend their choice.

              The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.

              Mostly agree, with the caveat that it’s not all pomp and circumstance, only mostly pomp and circumstance. Take genocide for example, which seems to be the theme of the thread: we didn’t get the choice of no genocide, our only options were more vs less. Those are shitty options, but if we have that wiggle room, it’s worth voting for less in order to prevent more. Damage mitigation. Still genocide, still shitty options, but tangibly distinct options.

              We’re given a crumb of freedom - use it. It’s the only official voice we’ve got.

              Fortunately there lots of other options too - everything from shouting into the void like I’m doing here in this thread, to throwing molotovs at Nazis: each tool comes with its own risk-to-impact ratio. Voting is low impact, but it’s safe and (for most people) accessible. It’s the bare minimum.

              There’s a lot of strawman in this thread against the non-existent argument of voting and only voting. I’m with you on that one: that would be fucking stupid. But that’s not what I’m advocating for.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                4 hours ago

                No, he’s not. Despite that, there sure are a lot of folks here who were eager to hand him the keys of the country, and continue to to defend their choice.

                Trump already has the keys. That ship has sailed. If he has a third term it will be through extralegal measures, not the ballot box.

                  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                    3 hours ago

                    Take genocide for example, which seems to be the theme of the thread: we didn’t get the choice of no genocide, our only options were more vs less. Those are shitty options, but if we have that wiggle room, it’s worth voting for less in order to prevent more. Damage mitigation. Still genocide, still shitty options, but tangibly distinct options.

                    Whether it would have been a “lesser” genocide is unfalsifiable. We’ll never really know. But I don’t have the faith in it that you have. I’m not sure what a more competent genocidal administration would have done.

                    Consider what many US Palestinians did: threaten to withhold their votes if Harris didn’t say there was at least some daylight between herself and Biden regarding Gazans. And she wouldn’t even do that much.

                    But that’s how you use the vote, if you use it at all. You use it as leverage. If the Democrats know you’ll “vote Blue no matter who” or “vote Blue no matter what,” then they’ll ignore you altogether, because you’re already in their pocket. You’ve made yourself irrelevant.

              • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                4 hours ago

                Despite that, there sure are a lot of folks here who were eager to hand him the keys of the country, and continue to to defend their choice.

                Mate, everyone told you people that Democrats would lose if they didn’t change tact, but you refused. You were the ones who eagerly handed Trump the keys to the country!

                our only options were more vs less.

                No, you were just a genocide denier when it was your team doing it. It took Trump winning for you to actually admit the extent of the genocide.

                • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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                  3 hours ago

                  Mate, I was one of the people saying Democrats would lose if they didn’t change tact. But I still advocated against Trump. The Democrats handed the election to him on a silver platter. Fucking twice. But I still advocated against Trump.

                  No, you were just a genocide denier when it was your team doing it. It took Trump winning for you to actually admit the extent of the genocide.

                  Also incorrect. I bit my tongue during the election (did I mention the bit about advocating against Trump?) but was and remain opposed to genocide regardless of who’s in power.

                  • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                    3 hours ago

                    The Democrats handed the election to him on a silver platter.

                    Oh, I thought leftists on Lemmy handed him the election. And hear you are now, doing the thing that BlueMAGA keeps telling me made Trump win.

                    Also incorrect

                    100% correct. You’re up and down this thread making the false claim that Democrats were less supportive of the Palestinian genocide.

                    but was and remain opposed to genocide regardless of who’s in power.

                    Except for the part where you will engage in genocide minimisation to defend the Democrats.

      • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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        23 hours ago

        So you knowingly voted to throw Palestinians under the extermination bus, is that it? And you consider yourself to be on the right side of history? And you never considered that perhaps your slavish ideological devotion to following the rules of a fascist political system was slow-boiling you into a fascist?

        Ukranian genocide

        You’re talking about the ten years of ethnic cleansing the Ukranian nazi government was doing to ethnic Russians within its borders, right? You wouldn’t possibly consider yourself to be against genocide while supporting these guys, right? Because nobody could possibly be that deluded, right? Tell me you’re not that programmed.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          So you knowingly voted to throw Palestinians under the extermination bus, is that it?

          The bus was already headed for the Palestinians, and we were well past the point of being able to stop it. I voted to make a last ditch effort to turn the wheel toward the part of the crowd with the fewest people. YOU voted to step on the gas.

          And you never considered that perhaps your slavish ideological devotion to following the rules of a fascist political system was slow-boiling you into a fascist?

          When did I say to follow the rules? I said use all the tools we’ve got - whether those tools are legal or not, idgaf. Voting happens to be legal, so yay I guess, but that’s not why you should do it.

          You’re talking about the ten years of ethnic cleansing the Ukranian nazi government was doing to ethnic Russians within its borders, right? You wouldn’t possibly consider yourself to be against genocide while supporting these guys, right? Because nobody could possibly be that deluded, right? Tell me you’re not that programmed.

          Why would any of that change my opinion of being against killing the people of Ukraine? Russia’s obviously doing some horrible shit, but I’d be against a genocide on them too. Same with Israel or any other nation that’s decided to play the villain - none of that shit justifies attacking their civilians. …is this really a controversial take?

      • mononoke@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 day ago

        Last election was a choice between Palestinian genocide vs significantly more Palestinian genocide + Ukrainian genocide + it’s looking Venezuelan genocide is about to be kicking off + who the fuck knows, we’ve got three more years of this shitshow and that’s assuming we even have another election.

        You are doing the thing right now. The other choice is “none of those things,” actually, and you don’t get that by voting harder because as you’ve just demonstrated you were not given the choice. Is any genocide acceptable to you? The line is never “less genocide,” it is “no genocide.”

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          The other choice is “none of those things,”

          All that does is allow the other voters to make the decision on your behalf - but it’s still a dichotomy. We need a fuckton of systemic change before it’ll be anything else. You can opt out or vote for a spoiler, but until we see that change it’s going to red or blue every time. So why not use your vote for damage control while pushing for real change with your other tools?

          Is any genocide acceptable to you? The line is never “less genocide,” it is “no genocide.”

          What’s acceptable to me vs not doesn’t determine our options. The only line was between ‘more genocide’ and ‘less genocide’. I wish ‘no genocide’ was an option, but that’s not the reality we live in. Given those options, I’ll choose ‘less genocide’ every time. The majority of our voters disagree, and with the help of propaganda like yours, they succeeded - YOU succeeded - in choosing ‘more genocide’. Congrats. Was it worth it?

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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            3 hours ago

            It’s extremely telling that even you “lesser evil” BlueMAGA types can’t being yourselves to actually be honest about what you supported: you have to make up this bullshit white washed version of the Democrats that wasn’t entirely all in on genocide. Clearly even you know the lesser evil position as it actually exists is indefensible.

            • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              It’s extremely telling that even you “lesser evil” BlueMAGA types can’t being yourselves to actually be honest about what you supported

              You’re projecting. Y’all need to get that under control.

              bullshit white washed version of the Democrats that wasn’t entirely all in on genocide.

              Where did I say that? They just don’t have the same affinity for it as Republicans, so between the two, blue team is the wildly obvious choice if you want to minimize the suffering.

              Clearly even you know the lesser evil position as it actually exists is indefensible.

              Correct. The lesser evil is still evil. But contrasted against a greater evil and locked into a dichotomy, the lesser gets my vote despite being indefensible.

              If you had me tied up and held a loaded gun to my head and offered the choice of either pulling the trigger or using it to pistol-whip me, your actions would be indefensible either way, but one stands out as significantly worse than the other, so I’ll choose the pistol-whip. I’ll also be doing other things like trying to fidget my way out of the ties, but I can do that in addition to choosing the lesser evil of a shitty dichotomy.

              • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                3 hours ago

                You’re projecting. Y’all need to get that under control.

                Alright, fuck off. If you’re going to just start sprouting random pre-loaded accusations like this that don’t even apply to the context at hand, I’m just going to tell you to fuck off back to reddit and not read the rest of your post.

                • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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                  3 hours ago

                  pre-loaded accusations

                  They’re called logical fallacies. The one you just used is called a false dilemma. If you don’t like me drawing attention to them, I’d recommend refraining from using them.

                  • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                    3 hours ago

                    Oh my God, is there anything more obnoxious that reddit debate lords that have the Wikipedia list of logical fallacies open in another tab, but never bother to actually learn what they mean, so they just copy paste them like they’re magical debate incantations that win arguments.

                    And no, “projection” is not a logical fallacy, you absolute dumb ass. Accusing people of it to dismiss their argument is though, you fucking idiot. Go back to Reddit, for fucks sake.