Nobody on Lemmy likes genocide, as far as I can tell. I saw somebody who was in favor of it a couple days ago, which makes 2 users I have ever seen.
So first a whole bunch of people got up and said, I’m never voting for Biden because he ruined the economy and fucked up on climate change and made marijuana illegal again and did family separation and caused Covid and also personally did a genocide and is super happy about the war in Gaza because it’s exactly what he wanted
Then a second whole bunch of people said hey every single one of those things except part of the last one isn’t true, also, Trump is worse on the genocide piece
And so now the first people are insisting that what the second people said was, “Don’t criticize support for genocide”. That wasn’t the point. The fact that a good bit of what the people in the first group are saying, is wrong, means they get people disagreeing with them, which always gets misrepresented as some lunatic pro-genocide silencing of criticism. But it’s pretty much never a message of “please stop criticizing my genocide guy otherwise Trump might win.”
If you want to express urgency about helping the Palestinians, please do so. Send messages to your congresspeople. Vote “uncommitted.” Go to a protest. Tell Biden he’ll only get your vote if he (X, Y, Z). Any of those things, or something else. Sounds great.
I think the thing you’re hearing is more “I want to end genocide just as much as you do, now let’s talk about how to do it, and also yes how to avoid one that’s 10 times worse that depending on how we go about it might be one of the possible outcomes.” I don’t see why that would be frustrating to hear. And I don’t think it’s at all the same as “please stop criticizing Biden that’s not allowed” or anything like that. Most of the threads on this topic have their most upvoted comment as “Jesus Christ I wish he wouldn’t do that” or something along those lines; this fiction where criticizing Biden for enabling this genocide is at all unpopular is not at all the reality.
I wonder if they think the Palestinians find it very convenient.
Actually, one of them weighed in on Lemmy on this exact narrative, where people are using his dead relatives to justify this one very particular political stance about being reluctant to vote for Joe Biden (and for some reason not to justify getting involved in some electoral or non-electoral way to actually help his relatives who are still alive). He wasn’t about it.
Is it a straw man, though? Just look at the post we’re in. OP, at face value, wants the democrats to win but thinks they’re bungling the odds by supporting genocide. There’s already multiple commenters accusing them of being Trump supporters, as well as at least one commenter I’ve seen so far suggesting that we can’t be critical about this now because the election is too important.
There’s already multiple commenters accusing them of being Trump supporters
Yes, because he framed his point in one particular emotionally resonant way that just maybe by pure coincidence tends to do more or less nothing at all for the Palestinians except hurt them, and by pure coincidence happens to feed Trump’s chances in the election.
The strawman I was specifically responding to was that commenter “you’re a Trump supporter if you call genocide genocide”. I’ve called it a genocide many many times; never got called a Trump supporter. I’ve said Biden is enabling it, said all the Palestinians will be dead by the time he works his way around to real consequences for Netanyahu at this rate, compared the Biden State Department to the Nazis, lots of stuff. I said we should contact our representatives and left some links (not that it did a fuckin thing.) Linked to a Ralph Nader interview where he talked about how to demand concessions in exchange for your vote, to put pressure on elected officials like Biden, particularly as it applies to this genocide. Never got called a Trump supporter.
You know what I didn’t do? Get all emotional about how I really don’t want to vote for Biden now, and suggest a particular framing for the issue that will help Trump, but won’t help the Palestinians. I suspect that if I started doing that, and did it consistently every day from a variety of different viewpoints and combined it with a bunch of other criticism of Biden that wasn’t true, then people might suspect I was a Trump supporter. But I don’t do that. Why? Because I’m not a Trump supporter.
Yes, because he framed his point in one particular emotionally resonant way that just maybe by pure coincidence tends to do more or less nothing at all for the Palestinians except hurt them, and by pure coincidence happens to feed Trump’s chances in the election.
I’ve seen so many tinfoil hat comments from you at this point that I’m sure you must be feeling lonely.
I’m not rooting for a trump presidency. I’m rooting for Biden to stop a genocide, and I believe 1000% Biden will lose on this issue alone if he doesn’t address it.
Will dropping his support for Isreal really get him voters? I’m not sure we can say that. He will loose support from zionists and believe it or not they are the ones that put him in office the first time. We knew back then.
The best and really only thing would to be stop the concerted effort to supress voter turn out. Then again the bad actors aren’t going to stop and the rubes will follow them into the pits of hell. So pretty much, fucked every which way. Enjoy your moral highground while we are all under a mountain of shit.
But also why shouldn’t it? It’s a contemptible thing for him to do (like at least don’t be public about it, that way voters can safely ignore it)
The best and really only thing would to be stop the concerted effort to supress voter turn out.
I could not disagree more, his approval is already the second lowest in modern history. I don’t know about you but I don’t know how to campaign around ‘yea, he’s supporting a genocide, BUT’. nor would I fucking want to! How much shit should I be expected to have to eat just so I can get voters to ignore possibly the most publicly grotesque international policy i’ve ever seen?
We tried ignoring voters in 2016. Sure let’s try that again, see if it works this time
Listen, the dems aren’t anyone’s friends. Just know this problem doesn’t solve itself. You want to be on a path to a better society, yes let it all fall but accept it’s not a humanitarian choice. You want to be on a path to incremental change, keep voting but accept that change won’t happen in your lifetime. You want to be on a path to autocratic rule, vote republican.
Every additional issue Biden ignores he looses a portion of his base’s enthusiasm. Sure, some of these people would never vote for Biden for a bunch of reasons, but everyone has a limit to what they’re willing to concede on, and I have to say that supporting a genocidal project is a pretty big one.
It would be irresponsible if we weren’t sounding the alarms that he’s strayed too far away from his winning coalition. That’s not me being principled (even though it is), that’s me being pragmatic.
Everyone else who’s rallying a couple hundred users on lemmy to ignore that issue is covering their eyes to the oncoming train.
I’ve been on the receiving end of names such as “Genocide Lover” and man is that just exactly what I wish my Dad who went to get cigarettes and never came back would have called me before he left. I agree with you. People for some damned reason seem to be stuck.
The Genocide sucks balls.
Trump sucks balls.
Trump + Power = Genocide Ball Sucking on a whole new level
Biden sucks a bit less balls, though would suck far less if he stepped up and actually condemned the Genocide properly. Currently, Biden’s big balls are on fire.
Like, none of this situation is good. Most of it is malicious and evil on too many levels, and faaaar more complicated than the majority of us realize. At the end of the day we do have three significant immediate problems:
Ukraine and Putin
Gaza and the Genocide
Trump and the GOP
We CAN focus on all of these and it doesn’t have to be to the exclusion, or support/lack-thereof, of the others. Problem is, every time you say “Shit’s bad and this Genocide is evil, vote Biden for the love of God.” Someone comes screaming in with a, “BIDEN?! YOU SUPPORT GENOCIDE?!” and you can’t get a sideways word in.
I think a lot of it is this weird parasocial thing where it’s like you have to “support” a politician to vote for them. With very rare exceptions I don’t “support” any US politician, like I’m friends with them. I just want to get as good an outcome as I can for me and the other people in the world, and I think that’ll come from a combination of choosing better outcomes within the system that’s presented, and working outside the system to try to change it to introduce as much actual democracy into it in the long run as is possible.
I personally think the alternative perspective is a weird one, where politicians and policies are monolithic and unmovable, and challenging them necessarily means damaging the entire system. I was always taught that the strength of democracy was its enabling of negotiation, but you’re suggesting that there’s no negotiation to be had at all.
I think proactively committing to voting for a morally abhorrent candidate (a candidate promoting a morally abhorrent position, if you prefer) is less than submissive, it’s actually giving up the only possible leverage you might have had in order to accept a reality that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s absolutely a choice you are making, and even if you’d feel better if that didn’t make you guilty of ‘supporting’ genocide, i think it’s kind of self-evident.
I think proactively committing to voting for a morally abhorrent candidate (a candidate promoting a morally abhorrent position, if you prefer) is less than submissive, it’s actually giving up the only possible leverage you might have had in order to accept a reality that hasn’t happened yet.
I talked about this - withholding your vote to put pressure on Biden and communicating to him effectively that that’s what you’re doing makes perfect sense to me. I linked to the Ralph Nader article where he talks about doing that.
If I thought Biden read Lemmy and would read my comments and react differently in Gaza, would I do my comments differently, so as to avoid taking the pressure off him that he’s currently feeling? Yeah, maybe. Probably. I don’t think that’s the reality, but if I thought that, I probably would do my comments differently.
I’m just saying how I look at the election. Unless Biden had some sort of mental break that made him start acting worse than Trump in terms of what he’ll do with power, I’m planning on voting for him. If I thought lying about that would create a positive impact in some way, then yeah, maybe I might. IDK. Maybe not. I definitely wouldn’t be as vocal about how ok a job he’s doing, yeah.
Proactively committing to not voting for preservation of American democracy and prevention of catastrophe around the world, because Netanyahu started a genocide and Biden hasn’t caused a revolution in American statecraft by opposing it for the first time in history, doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, though. Why is the genocide in Gaza a red line but preventing a genocide in Ukraine, or saving a million American lives from the next pandemic, or mitigating climate change (to whatever extent we even still can) moving the needle away from billions of lost lives in the not-too-distant future, why aren’t those red lines?
It’s absolutely a choice you are making, and even if you’d feel better if that didn’t make you guilty of ‘supporting’ genocide, i think it’s kind of self-evident.
It seems kind of weird to get all amped up about how great a job you’re doing at not supporting genocide, by doing something that endangers Palestinians specifically but also apparently makes you feel better. I think I linked somewhere to a comment from someone who claimed to be Palestinian American who actually specifically asked Americans not to do this (use his dead relatives as justification for their political stance which was going to endanger him much more along with many of his still living relatives). It’s on bestof if you didn’t see it.
There are lots of Palestinian Americans calling on people to Abandon Biden. One token Palestinian American on Lemmy who disagrees isn’t particularly persuasive.
“If it came down to Trump and Joe Biden, I will vote for Trump. Because it doesn’t get worse than Joe Biden,” a man named Salah told me. His friend, Amad, added, “Biden was supposed to be the peacemaker. The comfort-maker. Instead, he became accessory to the biggest genocide in modern history.”
…
“Imagine thinking it’s a good argument to say to a community that has lost 30,000 people, ‘Watch out for the guy that’s going to ban you.’ You’re really asking me whether I’m going to take a ban or a genocide? I’ll take a ban,” Zahr told me.
“I mean, we’ve literally seen our families and our people being thrown into mass graves. Babies blown to bits. It’s not some far-off thing to us,” he said. “It’s been a struggle to declare our own humanity while mourning for our people being massacred.”
…
The truth is Ahmed was one of the only Arabs I could find in Dearborn who openly admitted they actually planned to vote for Biden in November.
If I thought Biden read Lemmy and would read my comments and react differently in Gaza, would I do my comments differently, so as to avoid taking the pressure off him that he’s currently feeling? Yeah, maybe. Probably. I don’t think that’s the reality, but if I thought that, I probably would do my comments differently.
I don’t think you realize how far reaching popular opinion can spread through social media. I don’t think Biden is reading, either, but if the sentiment that he’ll lose was more widespread, then I think that would absolutely put pressure on him. I also think the complacent stance can reach quite far, which is why it’s frustrating seeing people like pugjesus so militant about reinforcing it and why I think it’s frustrating to you to see me and others agitating action. (It wouldn’t make sense for you to be worried about bad actors otherwise)
Proactively committing to not voting for preservation of American democracy and prevention of catastrophe around the world, because Netanyahu started a genocide and Biden hasn’t caused a revolution in American statecraft by opposing it for the first time in history, doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, though
I’ll tell you what I read into this: American imperialist state action is so ingrained in the democratic party that it is inconceivable to you that they’d let it go, even in the face of a literal fascist taking control. And I think the people you’re talking to here, who’ve felt for a long time that America has been on the wrong side of geopolitical struggle for 80 years, find that to be the most damning part of your position.
It’s inconceivable to wish fascism onto the people of America and the world, but that the democratic party can sooner accept it than consider pulling back the American global apparatus is… well, I guess it makes it hard to root for them, doesn’t it?
It seems kind of weird to get all amped up about how great a job you’re doing at not supporting genocide, by doing something that endangers Palestinians specifically but also apparently makes you feel better
I think what you mean is that it’s convenient, but I obviously don’t see it that way. I think it would absolutely help the Palestinians for the US to stop obstructing justice against Israeli leaders, and I don’t accept the premise that their reality would somehow be worse than it already is if trump was egging Israel on. The UN is already poised to react against Israel, if they cross a lot more lines they’d risk expulsion (along with us). Who knows, but it’s not just about Palestinians, the US has abused its influence across the globe and setting the record straight about what the electorate will tolerate would undoubtedly help more countries down the line, if Biden accepts the critique.
Yours is probably the correct take, or near enough. The U.S., on a sociocultural level, tends to take sides. It’s nurtured into us. Sports is arguably the biggest reason, though throw in the news, social commentary, and a bit of high divorce rates, amongst other reasons, and you’ll have yourself a cake split down some middle. While far more complicated than this simple explanation, the reality is we are divided. This division makes it really difficult to want to agree with someone who doesn’t take your exact stance. Whatever reason justifies such firm footing on shaky ground is further falsely reinforced by those who exist just to rabble-rouse, 2024 Digital Digger Edition; “Our Words Harm”.
It’s become difficult to look at comments stuck in the social node of Biden=Bad or Bust in good faith, because they often don’t discuss and instead tend to yell.
Which really is sad, because we do need to come together.
So first a whole bunch of people got up and said, I’m never voting for Biden because he ruined the economy and fucked up on climate change and made marijuana illegal again and did family separation and caused Covid and also personally did a genocide and is super happy about the war in Gaza because it’s exactly what he wanted
For the record: this is a strawman. You know that saying about Republicans always accusing others of the things they’re guilty of themselves? I would suggest not following the Republican playbook.
I mean, I exaggerated for humor, but people did absolutely say:
Biden ruined the economy
Biden fucked up on climate change
Biden betrayed us by not decriminalizing marijuana after he said he would
“Separating families at the border” got worse under Biden
Trump’s Covid policy was amenable to people steering him the right way whereas Biden cancelled a bunch of the safety things we needed
Biden is the one doing the genocide
Aside from the genocide, the last few were so laughable that it’s easy to conclude I just made them up as a pure strawman, but yes I absolutely had people tell me the un-exaggerated version of them.
Would it be better if I spelled out exactly what were the literal things people told to me instead? Yeah maybe I shouldn’t “joke” in this way if I’m gonna be saying other people are using a strawman.
Migrants who cross the border illegally wait under open skies or sometimes in tents or structures made of tree branches while short on food and water. When the number of migrants was particularly high last year, they waited for several days for Border Patrol agents to arrest and process them.
Gee said there was “significant evidence” that Customs and Border Protection, of which Border Patrol is a part, has physical control over minors at the outdoor locations. For example, CBP vehicles occasionally transport or drop off migrants to the camps and for a time, gave out wristbands to organize migrants by when they had arrived.
“This is a tremendous victory for children at open air detention sites, but it remains a tragedy that a court had to direct the government to do what basic human decency and the law clearly require,” Neha Desai, senior director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement. “We expect CBP to comply with the court’s order swiftly, and we remain committed to holding CBP accountable for meeting the most rudimentary needs of children in their legal custody, including food, shelter, and basic medical care.”
There’s a massive number of people coming in, a big increase, and the Republicans have been blocking increases in funding for the US law enforcement agencies that deal with them (which, the left gives him grief for because increasing funding for ICE means he’s a monster), and increases in the number of judges so there’s not this huge backlog. So yes, there’s a huge number of people and not enough US resources to properly care for them.
I.e. migrants are being left in limbo in inhumane conditions for long lengths of time. However, Biden’s attempted several times to solve that and been specifically prevented. It’s hard for me to see that as something which he is deliberately doing on purpose.
I addressed the thing that you said, which was perfectly fair although I feel there’s a reasonable reason for that situation which isn’t Biden’s fault. The thing the other person said to me wasn’t that, though; it was specifically that Biden had made family separation worse, which is absurd.
So yes, there’s a huge number of people and not enough US resources to properly care for them.
And yet I’m sure they’ll find the money to get it done now that a judge has ordered them to. It’s almost like Biden is actually hostile to asylum seekers.
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats plan to force a vote Thursday on the bipartisan border security package that Republicans blockedthis year, an attempt to flip the script on immigration politics, a major vulnerability for President Joe Biden.
The legislation, negotiated by Republican and Democratic senators, is designed to reduce border crossings, raise the bar for migrants to qualify for asylum and quickly turn away those who fail to meet it. It empowers the president to shut down the border if certain triggers are met. If it becomes law, it would be the most sweeping set of migration restrictions in decades. Biden has endorsed the bill.
The Republicans are calling for more and more cruelty (e.g. raising the bar for aslyum). Biden is trying to alleviate the exact conditions you’re describing, in addition to compromising with them some of the cruelty you’re asking for, and you’re giving him shit for it.
What in your world should he do? Magic a bill into existence that will fix the conditions you’re talking about, without getting it through congress or needing the support of the Republicans?
Why are you saying that weakening his position against the Republicans until things get better is the way for you to solve that problem? Are you happy with the babies waiting outside in the hot sun for months and months until your plan bears fruit, should he withdraw the current bill and go back to the drawing board and them just wait outside until your plan comes through?
Why is Biden always infantilized by his apologists? As if he was completely impotent. He is the president of the United States. In our system, that gives him extraordinary power. He can go to all out war with any country on Earth for 60 days before getting any kind of permission from Congress. If the presidency is such a weak office, why are you so worked up about the prospect of Trump being president? Apparently he’ll need permission from Congress before he adjusts his tie.
Biden does not need an act of congress to not treat asylum-seekers like shit. That is a deliberate choice of his administration. Just like it was a deliberate choice to split up arms shipments to Israel into 100 seperate lots so he didn’t have to report them to Congress.
Cites to the statutes for detention on who and how long, as well as the 2018 Supreme Court decision I referred to, authorizing indefinite detention.
The horrid conditions are factors of other statutes related to budgets and sovereign immunity. I’m sure I can point you to some of the civil lawsuits about conditions so you can trace back the Republican policy of cruelty as it permeated immigration law.
Sure, and other people also had very different criticisms of him than your list that aren’t as easy to dismiss. The strawman is you cherry-picking these to argue against in order to demonstrate some blanket point about people who don’t want to vote for Biden, when only one of these is the actual point of the conversation (and not in the hyperbolized way you presented it).
So yeah, I would 100% suggest not committing a logical fallacy while you’re criticizing others for committing that logical fallacy.
Nobody on Lemmy likes genocide, as far as I can tell
As someone who frequents worldnews from lemmy.world, a sizable amount of IDF apologists who do actually defend genocide show up every week, although they consistently get banned.
There’s also a bunch of wackos on Hexbear and Lemmygrad who will sneer with joy at the idea of Ukrainians getting displaced to never be able to return, although you have to dig in to find them.
This is such a weird strawman
Nobody on Lemmy likes genocide, as far as I can tell. I saw somebody who was in favor of it a couple days ago, which makes 2 users I have ever seen.
So first a whole bunch of people got up and said, I’m never voting for Biden because he ruined the economy and fucked up on climate change and made marijuana illegal again and did family separation and caused Covid and also personally did a genocide and is super happy about the war in Gaza because it’s exactly what he wanted
Then a second whole bunch of people said hey every single one of those things except part of the last one isn’t true, also, Trump is worse on the genocide piece
And so now the first people are insisting that what the second people said was, “Don’t criticize support for genocide”. That wasn’t the point. The fact that a good bit of what the people in the first group are saying, is wrong, means they get people disagreeing with them, which always gets misrepresented as some lunatic pro-genocide silencing of criticism. But it’s pretty much never a message of “please stop criticizing my genocide guy otherwise Trump might win.”
If you want to express urgency about helping the Palestinians, please do so. Send messages to your congresspeople. Vote “uncommitted.” Go to a protest. Tell Biden he’ll only get your vote if he (X, Y, Z). Any of those things, or something else. Sounds great.
I think the thing you’re hearing is more “I want to end genocide just as much as you do, now let’s talk about how to do it, and also yes how to avoid one that’s 10 times worse that depending on how we go about it might be one of the possible outcomes.” I don’t see why that would be frustrating to hear. And I don’t think it’s at all the same as “please stop criticizing Biden that’s not allowed” or anything like that. Most of the threads on this topic have their most upvoted comment as “Jesus Christ I wish he wouldn’t do that” or something along those lines; this fiction where criticizing Biden for enabling this genocide is at all unpopular is not at all the reality.
Actually, one of them weighed in on Lemmy on this exact narrative, where people are using his dead relatives to justify this one very particular political stance about being reluctant to vote for Joe Biden (and for some reason not to justify getting involved in some electoral or non-electoral way to actually help his relatives who are still alive). He wasn’t about it.
Is it a straw man, though? Just look at the post we’re in. OP, at face value, wants the democrats to win but thinks they’re bungling the odds by supporting genocide. There’s already multiple commenters accusing them of being Trump supporters, as well as at least one commenter I’ve seen so far suggesting that we can’t be critical about this now because the election is too important.
Yes, because he framed his point in one particular emotionally resonant way that just maybe by pure coincidence tends to do more or less nothing at all for the Palestinians except hurt them, and by pure coincidence happens to feed Trump’s chances in the election.
The strawman I was specifically responding to was that commenter “you’re a Trump supporter if you call genocide genocide”. I’ve called it a genocide many many times; never got called a Trump supporter. I’ve said Biden is enabling it, said all the Palestinians will be dead by the time he works his way around to real consequences for Netanyahu at this rate, compared the Biden State Department to the Nazis, lots of stuff. I said we should contact our representatives and left some links (not that it did a fuckin thing.) Linked to a Ralph Nader interview where he talked about how to demand concessions in exchange for your vote, to put pressure on elected officials like Biden, particularly as it applies to this genocide. Never got called a Trump supporter.
You know what I didn’t do? Get all emotional about how I really don’t want to vote for Biden now, and suggest a particular framing for the issue that will help Trump, but won’t help the Palestinians. I suspect that if I started doing that, and did it consistently every day from a variety of different viewpoints and combined it with a bunch of other criticism of Biden that wasn’t true, then people might suspect I was a Trump supporter. But I don’t do that. Why? Because I’m not a Trump supporter.
I’ve seen so many tinfoil hat comments from you at this point that I’m sure you must be feeling lonely.
I’m not rooting for a trump presidency. I’m rooting for Biden to stop a genocide, and I believe 1000% Biden will lose on this issue alone if he doesn’t address it.
Will dropping his support for Isreal really get him voters? I’m not sure we can say that. He will loose support from zionists and believe it or not they are the ones that put him in office the first time. We knew back then.
The best and really only thing would to be stop the concerted effort to supress voter turn out. Then again the bad actors aren’t going to stop and the rubes will follow them into the pits of hell. So pretty much, fucked every which way. Enjoy your moral highground while we are all under a mountain of shit.
I have seen nothing but evidence that this fucks him
But also why shouldn’t it? It’s a contemptible thing for him to do (like at least don’t be public about it, that way voters can safely ignore it)
I could not disagree more, his approval is already the second lowest in modern history. I don’t know about you but I don’t know how to campaign around ‘yea, he’s supporting a genocide, BUT’. nor would I fucking want to! How much shit should I be expected to have to eat just so I can get voters to ignore possibly the most publicly grotesque international policy i’ve ever seen?
We tried ignoring voters in 2016. Sure let’s try that again, see if it works this time
They ignore voters every election.
The message isn’t vote this turd in it’s hey don’t be stupid and let christo-fascism take root.
And they wonder why they keep losing to the most incompetent people on the planet.
They wonder, we don’t.
Listen, the dems aren’t anyone’s friends. Just know this problem doesn’t solve itself. You want to be on a path to a better society, yes let it all fall but accept it’s not a humanitarian choice. You want to be on a path to incremental change, keep voting but accept that change won’t happen in your lifetime. You want to be on a path to autocratic rule, vote republican.
Every additional issue Biden ignores he looses a portion of his base’s enthusiasm. Sure, some of these people would never vote for Biden for a bunch of reasons, but everyone has a limit to what they’re willing to concede on, and I have to say that supporting a genocidal project is a pretty big one.
It would be irresponsible if we weren’t sounding the alarms that he’s strayed too far away from his winning coalition. That’s not me being principled (even though it is), that’s me being pragmatic.
Everyone else who’s rallying a couple hundred users on lemmy to ignore that issue is covering their eyes to the oncoming train.
I’ve been on the receiving end of names such as “Genocide Lover” and man is that just exactly what I wish my Dad who went to get cigarettes and never came back would have called me before he left. I agree with you. People for some damned reason seem to be stuck.
The Genocide sucks balls.
Trump sucks balls.
Trump + Power = Genocide Ball Sucking on a whole new level
Biden sucks a bit less balls, though would suck far less if he stepped up and actually condemned the Genocide properly. Currently, Biden’s big balls are on fire.
Like, none of this situation is good. Most of it is malicious and evil on too many levels, and faaaar more complicated than the majority of us realize. At the end of the day we do have three significant immediate problems:
We CAN focus on all of these and it doesn’t have to be to the exclusion, or support/lack-thereof, of the others. Problem is, every time you say “Shit’s bad and this Genocide is evil, vote Biden for the love of God.” Someone comes screaming in with a, “BIDEN?! YOU SUPPORT GENOCIDE?!” and you can’t get a sideways word in.
I think a lot of it is this weird parasocial thing where it’s like you have to “support” a politician to vote for them. With very rare exceptions I don’t “support” any US politician, like I’m friends with them. I just want to get as good an outcome as I can for me and the other people in the world, and I think that’ll come from a combination of choosing better outcomes within the system that’s presented, and working outside the system to try to change it to introduce as much actual democracy into it in the long run as is possible.
I personally think the alternative perspective is a weird one, where politicians and policies are monolithic and unmovable, and challenging them necessarily means damaging the entire system. I was always taught that the strength of democracy was its enabling of negotiation, but you’re suggesting that there’s no negotiation to be had at all.
I think proactively committing to voting for a morally abhorrent candidate (a candidate promoting a morally abhorrent position, if you prefer) is less than submissive, it’s actually giving up the only possible leverage you might have had in order to accept a reality that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s absolutely a choice you are making, and even if you’d feel better if that didn’t make you guilty of ‘supporting’ genocide, i think it’s kind of self-evident.
I talked about this - withholding your vote to put pressure on Biden and communicating to him effectively that that’s what you’re doing makes perfect sense to me. I linked to the Ralph Nader article where he talks about doing that.
If I thought Biden read Lemmy and would read my comments and react differently in Gaza, would I do my comments differently, so as to avoid taking the pressure off him that he’s currently feeling? Yeah, maybe. Probably. I don’t think that’s the reality, but if I thought that, I probably would do my comments differently.
I’m just saying how I look at the election. Unless Biden had some sort of mental break that made him start acting worse than Trump in terms of what he’ll do with power, I’m planning on voting for him. If I thought lying about that would create a positive impact in some way, then yeah, maybe I might. IDK. Maybe not. I definitely wouldn’t be as vocal about how ok a job he’s doing, yeah.
Proactively committing to not voting for preservation of American democracy and prevention of catastrophe around the world, because Netanyahu started a genocide and Biden hasn’t caused a revolution in American statecraft by opposing it for the first time in history, doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, though. Why is the genocide in Gaza a red line but preventing a genocide in Ukraine, or saving a million American lives from the next pandemic, or mitigating climate change (to whatever extent we even still can) moving the needle away from billions of lost lives in the not-too-distant future, why aren’t those red lines?
It seems kind of weird to get all amped up about how great a job you’re doing at not supporting genocide, by doing something that endangers Palestinians specifically but also apparently makes you feel better. I think I linked somewhere to a comment from someone who claimed to be Palestinian American who actually specifically asked Americans not to do this (use his dead relatives as justification for their political stance which was going to endanger him much more along with many of his still living relatives). It’s on bestof if you didn’t see it.
There are lots of Palestinian Americans calling on people to Abandon Biden. One token Palestinian American on Lemmy who disagrees isn’t particularly persuasive.
Slate went to Dearborn, MI:
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I don’t think he was using that example in good faith, frankly. He’s a reasonable guy but even reasonable people get tempted by convenient evidence
I don’t think you realize how far reaching popular opinion can spread through social media. I don’t think Biden is reading, either, but if the sentiment that he’ll lose was more widespread, then I think that would absolutely put pressure on him. I also think the complacent stance can reach quite far, which is why it’s frustrating seeing people like pugjesus so militant about reinforcing it and why I think it’s frustrating to you to see me and others agitating action. (It wouldn’t make sense for you to be worried about bad actors otherwise)
I’ll tell you what I read into this: American imperialist state action is so ingrained in the democratic party that it is inconceivable to you that they’d let it go, even in the face of a literal fascist taking control. And I think the people you’re talking to here, who’ve felt for a long time that America has been on the wrong side of geopolitical struggle for 80 years, find that to be the most damning part of your position.
It’s inconceivable to wish fascism onto the people of America and the world, but that the democratic party can sooner accept it than consider pulling back the American global apparatus is… well, I guess it makes it hard to root for them, doesn’t it?
I think what you mean is that it’s convenient, but I obviously don’t see it that way. I think it would absolutely help the Palestinians for the US to stop obstructing justice against Israeli leaders, and I don’t accept the premise that their reality would somehow be worse than it already is if trump was egging Israel on. The UN is already poised to react against Israel, if they cross a lot more lines they’d risk expulsion (along with us). Who knows, but it’s not just about Palestinians, the US has abused its influence across the globe and setting the record straight about what the electorate will tolerate would undoubtedly help more countries down the line, if Biden accepts the critique.
Yours is probably the correct take, or near enough. The U.S., on a sociocultural level, tends to take sides. It’s nurtured into us. Sports is arguably the biggest reason, though throw in the news, social commentary, and a bit of high divorce rates, amongst other reasons, and you’ll have yourself a cake split down some middle. While far more complicated than this simple explanation, the reality is we are divided. This division makes it really difficult to want to agree with someone who doesn’t take your exact stance. Whatever reason justifies such firm footing on shaky ground is further falsely reinforced by those who exist just to rabble-rouse, 2024 Digital Digger Edition; “Our Words Harm”.
It’s become difficult to look at comments stuck in the social node of Biden=Bad or Bust in good faith, because they often don’t discuss and instead tend to yell.
Which really is sad, because we do need to come together.
I’m not holding hands with a Nazi, and I’m not voting for someone who is doing a genocide. If that makes me a divisive asshole, so be it.
No idea what it makes you. We’ll see soon enough. I just hope that if Trump does win people like you don’t up and go silent.
Either way actually. Whatever our differences, we can all agree that life could be much better.
Cheers to that. I marched in November 2016 and I’ll march in November 2024. I wish I didn’t have to march in May 2024, but it is what it is.
Marching in November does nothing. Active disobedience and (violently) refusing to accept dictatorship from January onward might.
Tell the rest of that story.
For the record: this is a strawman. You know that saying about Republicans always accusing others of the things they’re guilty of themselves? I would suggest not following the Republican playbook.
I mean, I exaggerated for humor, but people did absolutely say:
Aside from the genocide, the last few were so laughable that it’s easy to conclude I just made them up as a pure strawman, but yes I absolutely had people tell me the un-exaggerated version of them.
Would it be better if I spelled out exactly what were the literal things people told to me instead? Yeah maybe I shouldn’t “joke” in this way if I’m gonna be saying other people are using a strawman.
He’s not separating families at the border, but he is keeping children in open air detention camps without sanitation or adequate food and water.
There’s a massive number of people coming in, a big increase, and the Republicans have been blocking increases in funding for the US law enforcement agencies that deal with them (which, the left gives him grief for because increasing funding for ICE means he’s a monster), and increases in the number of judges so there’s not this huge backlog. So yes, there’s a huge number of people and not enough US resources to properly care for them.
I.e. migrants are being left in limbo in inhumane conditions for long lengths of time. However, Biden’s attempted several times to solve that and been specifically prevented. It’s hard for me to see that as something which he is deliberately doing on purpose.
I addressed the thing that you said, which was perfectly fair although I feel there’s a reasonable reason for that situation which isn’t Biden’s fault. The thing the other person said to me wasn’t that, though; it was specifically that Biden had made family separation worse, which is absurd.
And yet I’m sure they’ll find the money to get it done now that a judge has ordered them to. It’s almost like Biden is actually hostile to asylum seekers.
I don’t get it man.
The Republicans are calling for more and more cruelty (e.g. raising the bar for aslyum). Biden is trying to alleviate the exact conditions you’re describing, in addition to compromising with them some of the cruelty you’re asking for, and you’re giving him shit for it.
What in your world should he do? Magic a bill into existence that will fix the conditions you’re talking about, without getting it through congress or needing the support of the Republicans?
Why are you saying that weakening his position against the Republicans until things get better is the way for you to solve that problem? Are you happy with the babies waiting outside in the hot sun for months and months until your plan bears fruit, should he withdraw the current bill and go back to the drawing board and them just wait outside until your plan comes through?
Why is Biden always infantilized by his apologists? As if he was completely impotent. He is the president of the United States. In our system, that gives him extraordinary power. He can go to all out war with any country on Earth for 60 days before getting any kind of permission from Congress. If the presidency is such a weak office, why are you so worked up about the prospect of Trump being president? Apparently he’ll need permission from Congress before he adjusts his tie.
Biden does not need an act of congress to not treat asylum-seekers like shit. That is a deliberate choice of his administration. Just like it was a deliberate choice to split up arms shipments to Israel into 100 seperate lots so he didn’t have to report them to Congress.
In this case, he actually does.
Yeah, that one was some bullshit, 100% accurate.
Now do asylum policy according to Congress and the Republican Supreme Court…
Congress writes the statutes on how people are detained.
Show me the statute stating that asylum seekers need to be kept in open air detention with inadequate food, water, and hygiene.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11343
Cites to the statutes for detention on who and how long, as well as the 2018 Supreme Court decision I referred to, authorizing indefinite detention.
The horrid conditions are factors of other statutes related to budgets and sovereign immunity. I’m sure I can point you to some of the civil lawsuits about conditions so you can trace back the Republican policy of cruelty as it permeated immigration law.
Well, I’m sure you know the law better than the judge who ordered them to improve conditions.
And it’s because of sovereign immunity that had to to happen. That’s statutory law.
Sure, and other people also had very different criticisms of him than your list that aren’t as easy to dismiss. The strawman is you cherry-picking these to argue against in order to demonstrate some blanket point about people who don’t want to vote for Biden, when only one of these is the actual point of the conversation (and not in the hyperbolized way you presented it).
So yeah, I would 100% suggest not committing a logical fallacy while you’re criticizing others for committing that logical fallacy.
As someone who frequents worldnews from lemmy.world, a sizable amount of IDF apologists who do actually defend genocide show up every week, although they consistently get banned.
There’s also a bunch of wackos on Hexbear and Lemmygrad who will sneer with joy at the idea of Ukrainians getting displaced to never be able to return, although you have to dig in to find them.
If you have to vote for him anyway this is an empty threat. And they know it.