Well, my plan is to jump out of the car (leave the country). But what you do is up to you.

This is a russian/eastern perspective.

No its not. This is the plain western world reality that politicians lie and posture. If you think you can trust what they say then I dont know what to tell you.

This isn't a zero sum game and this isn't about defending a president who can at best be said to have kept the ship afloat and recovered some of the economic damage caused by Trump's COVID response, nor the shitty option B the Dems forced on us without a primary. All of the above can be terrible. That's always an option.

You see one jersey or the other, I saw two jerseys with twice the players on the horizon. The policy is the same now, but in 2024 during the election? When the guy who idolizes war mongers like Putin and who used to read Hitler's speeches before bed (according to the biography of an ex-wife), and who had previously said about the Middle East that he wanted to "nuke the sand into glass" said that he wanted to invade Gaza and put a carrier just off the coast, I fully believed that the strip would be gone and the people who lived there a footnote in the history books written by Israel and the US by now.

Both suck. Both support genocide. But one was talking about accelerating it by an order of magnitude that didn't leave nukes off the table. If they hadn't replaced the big red button in the Oval Office with one that orders a diet coke, he would've slammed it the first chance he got.

The only way to "punish" the Democrats at the time this post was written was to allow Trump to be elected. The OP was advocating that Americans attempt to stop a genocide by performing an action that would make the genocide worse. There were only two candidates in the race with even the remotest chance of winning: Harris and Trump. If the poster hoped Harris would lose then she hoped Trump would win.

Yes. Because what so many folks can't seem to get is that different people are different. And they have different ethics.

This is literally the entire point of the trolley problem. Yes, you can stick your fingers in your ears and say, "always pull the lever for the track with fewer people on it." But that's just not how ethics works. Utilitarian ethics is one way to live life, but utilitarians have this incredibly annoying habit of assuming that theirs is the only valid ethical system, and that you're a complete moron if you follow any other school of thought.

You're demonstrating a utilitarian sense of ethics. One who follows a respect-for-persons belief system would say that the ends don't justify the means. That it's not fine to pull the trolley lever, even if that would result in a net saving of lives. That it's fine to vote to hold people accountable, even if that will objectively result in net material harm. It's not always about the greatest good for the greatest number. Otherwise, for example, we would never put any research dollars into studying cures for rare diseases. Those dollars could always objectively do more good elsewhere.

Hell, even our criminal laws don't follow a utilitarian sense of ethics. You can't legally get out of consequences from killing someone by saying, "this on net saved lives." Even if you can objectively prove it, you're not legally allowed to kill people. It doesn't matter if your murder on net saves lives, you're still a murderer. If a gang kidnaps your two children and tells you, "you must go kill this other one person if you want them to live." If you do that, if you go and kill that stranger to save your own kids? You will be charged and convicted of murder. You're not allowed to kill one innocent person to save two innocent people.

Many people voted against or refused to vote for Kamala because they were trying to punish her and the Democratic Party. Voting is the only way we have of holding politicians and parties accountable. Millions of voters saw the horrific haughtiness and barbarity of how the Democrats acted around Gaza, and they wanted to punish them for it. It was about holding them accountable. It was about justice. Many voted against Kamala to punish her for supporting genocide. And if the likely thing came to pass, if Trump supported genocide as well? Well those voters would vote against him for the same reason. They vote to hold people accountable for past actions, not to speculate on future ones. Maybe not how you vote, but again, people are different and can use whatever ethical system they want in choosing their vote.

Again, you can argue greatest good for greatest number, but that isn't the only system of ethics out there, and it's not even the system that defines the foundation of our legal codes.

Thank you for having and enforcing this rule. It's appreciated!

Honestly, people behaving like Homo economicus is how you get MAGA.

Think about it. Isn't Trump's pitch to voters ultimately an argument in rational self-interest? It's all "I'll make an in group and an out group. You'll be in the in group. I'll pull up the in group while pushing down the out group."

Racism and sexism are rational. Or at least they are rational from those that benefit from them. Think about a white male living in the Jim Crows South. Your life was made soooo much easier by racism and sexism. There were whole career fields where they were the only quarter of the population that were eligible for them. They were automatically in the top quarter of society, simply by their race and sex.

Anti-immigrant zealotry is rational. If you're a native-born US citizen working in the construction industry? Every legal or illegal immigrant being deported would cause your standard of living to soar. Economists would tell you that on net it will harm the economy. But if suddenly the pool of construction workers is cut in half, any US citizen who knows how to swing a hammer is now rolling in dough. That's the rational terror of fascism - every time another group in the "first they came for" poem is liquidated, someone ends up with their property, their jobs, their place in the social order, etc.

You NEED to have a respect for persons built into your ethical framework, or else you can end up justifying evils of all sorts, all in the name of the greater good. Hell, Dr. Mengele slept well every night, content in the knowledge that he was doing the greatest good for the greatest number.

When I go out to brunch between elections, all those shrill leftists just disappear.

Isn't that just Dixiecrats/Dixie Dems then? AKA former Confederates.

I use it because of the extremism of the MAGA crowd, not the conservatism. Not like Horseshoe Theory, but that extremists on the leftist side could have fallen down the MAGA rabbit hole instead under different life circumstances, and that they can show similar behaviors in "purity test" attitudes, etc. Not that they're terrorists like the MAGA crowd, but that they should probably log off and touch grass once and a while.

Not something to be used wildly, but towards those who show 4chan-like behavior.

@WhiskyTangoFoxtrot @anotherspinelessdem It's amazing how many people seemed to miss the obvious last election cycle. Anyone who thought they were doing Gaza a favor by not voting for Harris was criminally ignorant.

@opavader @VetOfTheSeas It's amazing how much people like you downplay the MAGA Nazis and their agenda. I no longer wonder how Hitler rose in Germany.

I know it's not a lot, but when I was doing some UI work on PCSX2, I tried the screen reader Orca on Linux to see what a blind person's experience interacting with the UI was like. It was unusable. There was practically nothing. (Apparently on macOS it was kind of okay, but not because of anything the PCSX2 application was doing correctly.) It was staggering how terrible the experience was; even the tab ordering through the UI elements wasn't enforced, so the element focus was like a game of connect-the-dots darting around the window. We weren't using any – even trivial – accessibility functionality in Qt. To this day, I think most of that still needs to be done, as I only managed with my minimal knowledge to fix some low-hanging fruit (which would hopefully have at least helped a little).

What prompted me to try this? PS2 games are such a visual experience, after all. A fan replied to our Mastodon account saying that 1) he was totally blind from birth, 2) he loved playing PS2 games growing up, and 3) his favorite one was OutRun 2006 (yes, the high-speed racing game). This wasn't a gag; he was visibly blind and detailed his experience. This wasn't a one-off either; multiple users who note that they're totally blind in their bio have followed the account. It really humanized something I'd conceptualized generically as something you should do because it's a good thing to do. The most succinct way to put the lesson I was smacked in the face with was: "If you build it, they will come."

That is, I know for sure that it's not just a formality when I enforce it.

We've seen exactly what happens when you do that, dumbfuck.

How many more people have to die?

It definitely wasn't doing the people of Gaza a favor, but it sure as hell was not giving bibi any more impunity slaughtering civilians.

Say the same to yourself bud. How many more people need to die before you realize the system is the problem, not the people voting. Because it seems y'all only care when it's Americans that die.

Or it could be that the Democrats are so unpopular that a billion dollars can't win them an election. No, you're right, it's because of Russia the Democrats failed to communicate their platform effectively.

@Bytemeister Actually it was. Kamala was one of the few people that actually challenged Bibi.

Liberals: I can fix that voter, I just need to find the right logic combo in my persuasion.

Also Liberals: if voters were rational they would vote for the lesser evil.

Keep lecturing people, I am sure it will work this time around.

This is fundamentally incorrect.

West Virginia for example, almost 70% of the votes went to trump. 533,556 people to be exact. In 2024, they had 1,189,961 registered voters... Do the math, there were 656,405 people that didn't vote for trump. Even in the reddest state in the union (by percentage of votes) trump can still lose if the people who didn't vote for him decide to vote against him.

You fucking say "it doesn't matter unless you're in a swing state" and I say "The only way your vote doesn't matter is if you don't fucking vote."

There are votes this year that can flip Congress. It's happening now. Primaries are now. Go fucking vote for fucks sake.

Update : the numbers are in, and at this time, 3 out of 8 people apparently don't understand basic arithmetic.

Another update : 5 out of 11. The ratio keeps getting worse. I weep for our teachers.

The closest a 3rd party candidate ever got

That is what makes them a "third party," isn't it? When a third party starts doing well enough to win elections, they just stop being called a third party. And that has happened, or we'd be choosing between the Whigs and the Democratic-Republicans.

It's both. The Democrats are incompetent, but it's also true that Russia used their vast propaganda network to influence the election. This isn't exactly some secret.

Holy genocide denial

I can see how people might see voting 3rd party as functionally equivalent to not voting when it comes to one-round FPTP systems, though.
It's better from a deontological standpoint, yes. But consequence-wise it's more/less the same result as not voting, if I understood it correctly.

OBJECTION!

has an objection

username checks out :D

I was pretty pro-Kamala during 2024, but I do not recall that. I recall a Palestinian-American speaker being shut out of the DNC because of her opinion on how a country we were financially supporting was murdering her family. I recall Kamala saying after the election that she wanted to speak out against Israel's genocide, but part of the deal to get Biden to step down was to stay silent. I can for sure day that she would have tried to return to the status quo; a strained and sustained dispute in the West Bank. I think saying for sure that she was standing up to Bibi, or would have taken decisve action against Israel does not match the facts or pattern of behavior.

And when we're assuming, we are making an ASS out of U and MING.

Someone needs to go apologise to Ming.

You are just using the word wrong. It's pretty well established what blueMAGA is, and the words been in use in that form for almost 12 years.

You pretending it means the other half of the Democratic party doesn't make it mean that.

And if being opposed to a genocide is too much of a purity test for you, leave the party. Go be a fascist. We can't win elections with you here.

Okay, so:

• Voting Democrat in the general election is the choice with (edited in: the) least horrible consequences
  and
• Voting Democrat in the general election isn't nearly enough to stop the ratchet-effecting into fascism, and a stand-for-nothing placeholder centrist Democrat president in 2028 will probably just lead to Trump-3/Vance/someone similarly horrible in 2032

are unfortunately both true.

Also, non-MAGA Americans - (EDIT: liberals, not the party leaders) and leftists alike - need better people skills. With infighting like this, Republicans hardly even need to lift a finger.

@Bytemeister I hope the anti Kamala vote was worth the 14 million deaths from US Aid cuts.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was upset by Vice President Kamala Harris' on-camera statement after their meeting ..."It is time for this war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self determination," she said.axios.com/2024/07/26/israel-ne

"lefties refuse to vote for Democrats* for the smallest reason."

probably because the Democrat party is not a Leftist party. Leftists owe the Democrats nothing as the Democrats have long been the center-right party.

Post like these are why i think "vote blue no matter who" are an Israel psyops.

So while they push the less evil narrative that is a plausible, they get to continue their genocide with both parties under their control.

convenient, isn't it?

Kamla Harris was a total mistake of a candidate, she was never going to beat trump

This person is an idiot. The american public gave up on their one chance to influence the outcome of the presidency and fucked it up for everyone beyond comprehension, and are now still trying to push the blame on the establishment. Fuck every one of the sitouts and republican voters. You enabled the orange buffoon and couldnt see the threat he represented. Sometimes, when life gives you a choice between lemons and your way of life being destroyed in a childish tantrum, you swallow the fucking lemon.

Gaza and the world thanks you. Fuckers.

Well i guess that worked out swimmingly for her and her kind, lofl.

They should steer left -towards ice cream.

Insane isn’t it?

The fact Republican voters have been so successful with these principles: vote religiously and vote R bears out the stupidity of these arguments..

Not only that, they prove it in primaries by putting lunatics in for years too.

The evidence is right in front. Just vote, and do it every time.

Also, non-MAGA Americans - democrats and leftists alike - need better people skills.

One of those two groups runs the party and demands that we both vote for them no matter how bad they get, while simultaneously telling us to fuck off.

Why are you whining about these shitlibs who won’t change their view? You won’t get centrist Democrats moving to you. You need to replace these people through primaries.

Is that the excuse not to vote, if you’re in that country? So you got something to whine about?

Aren’t there primaries going on now? If so and you haven’t, why aren’t you voting for or helping out your chosen candidate, one who isn’t a shitlib?

and the democrat party can also be materially supporting a genocide.

If you phrase it that way, they'll take it as permission.

The only way to “punish” the Democrats at the time this post was written was to allow Trump to be elected.

Which is absurd. Centrists don't see a continuation of their only policy as a loss. They see it as an opportunity to blame the left and nothing else.

She did nothing of the sort.

I hope the anti Kamala vote was worth the 14 million deaths from US Aid cuts.

You were happy to have those cuts as long as no one was allowed to vote for someone who would tell your lord and savior netanyahu no.

“It is time for this war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self determination,” she said.

she also said she wouldn't do anything differently from the Biden administration. Which broke the law to sell weapons for a genocide like you wanted.