Ad hominem

Flagrantly false. Gaza has been leveled since Biden left. Not leveled vs leveled =/= just as bad.

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.

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.

Correct. But I’m confident the Harris administration wouldn’t have taking the swan-dive that Trump’s did. Same with all the other evils he’s committed outside the scope of genocide: bad under Harris, worse under Trump. Given what we know about the two, that assumption seems pretty reasonable. If you disagree, well like you said, that comes to which candidate we have less faith in. For me, Trump is the obvious rock-bottom worst outcome, but I can’t compare to an administration that never happened, so speculate as you will.

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.

Half correct. Withholding votes won’t get their attention - we’ve seen that play out again and again. Democrats would rather lose than change. If you want their attention and real change, you’ll need to do things other than vote.

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.

No I’m with you there - but it’s hard to discuss that stuff without getting banned; and you can do that stuff while still casting a vote every now and then. I’ve stirred up a lot of drama here by encouraging the use of that tool - this thread is stuffed with mouth-foaming Trump progandists, so proceed with caution. And grab some popcorn - it’s a shitshow, but it’s a show!

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.

Correct. That’s what I’m bitching about.

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.

Which of those are mutually exclusive to voting?

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.

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?

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?

I take it that means you disagree. Well congratulations, your orange man won. Was it worth it?

You’re projecting.

You voted not just for genocide, but to crank the genocide up to the max. “No genocide” wasn’t an option, because our system is shit, so why not at least try for damage control instead of taking the absolute most evil path you could?

You want to waste YEARS of time PER ELECTION of people who would otherwise be doing tangible good in their communities working outside of the genocidal system you cap for.

Which of those actions are mutually exclusive to voting?

Removed by mod

You are spreading misinformation and promoting apathy among those who would otherwise support liberation. You are an ally to our oppressors.

Even if you’re stuck in the cousin-fuckingly-deep south like me, where your vote will almost certainly be washed out by a horde of Nazis: still do it. Especially in smaller elections - school boards, city level stuff, whatever you can get in on. Those are the ones where you can really start to turn the tide. All it takes is for the usual rednecks to start feeling apathetic, and a handful of us bleeding-heart-commie-socialist-hippie-libruls to step up, and BAM, we’ve got a progressive oasis elected in our desert of red. Which still isn’t much, but it’s a foothold.

But it does require us to do the bare-assed minimum amount of effort in support of change, which is to vote.