• gmtom@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Nope, I’m active in bringing about change in other ways, through supporting my community, going to protests, organising actual resistance networks, community lobbying, boycotting, direct action and violence where needed.

    But it’s just none of that stops me from all voting in every possible election I can, as it’s still one of the most impactful things you can do as an individual to enact change.

    • freagle@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      This post doesn’t say not to vote. It says not to vote for genocidaires.

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        In the flawed system of the US democracy not voting for one of the two main candidates is functionally the same as not voting.

        It does literally nothing help the Palestinian people at all.

        • freagle@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          The US is not a flawed system of democracy. It’s a genocidal empire designed by the founders to prevent the masses from having any influence over the power of the landed elite. Voting doesn’t do anything for the Palestinians. If you want to help the Palestinians, you have to do something other than voting.

          • gmtom@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            It is both a flawed democracy and a genocidal empire, those 2 things are not mutually exclusive.

            Yes it does. Like you must know the trolley problem right? If voting for the other side stops even 1 death, stops 1 single bomb, then it’s better than not voting.

            • freagle@lemmy.ml
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              2 days ago

              The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment to illuminate moral reasoning. It is not a model of the world. In fact, it is the exact opposite of a model of the world. It is a deliberately forced break from reality in order to isolate the moral reasoning.

              We don’t have a trolley problem here in the US. We have a single genocidal empire with a veneer of democracy for the masses that was never intended, and never has, represented the will of the masses. It was design, from the beginning, to be a conflict resolution mechanism for the elite merchant class and establish legitimacy for their rule. For each mechanism that would have allowed the masses a say in politics, the founders designed a system to prevent it from having an effect. That’s not a flawed democracy. That’s a shell game.

              In The Trolley Problem, you have perfect information about the future, so you can say definitively that making a choice has a specific outcome. You don’t have that in politics. Your claim is that things are better under Ds than Rs. My claim is that Ds and Rs are a continuity of harm that reinforce each other.

              Case in point - the deployment of ICE into major cities. People like to claim that Trump did this and Harris would not have. But no one seems to want to engage with the fact that it would have been impossible for either of them to do so without Obama. Obama created the mechanisms that allowed ICE and BORTAC to be deployed to major US cities. He expanded them immensely. And he literally appointed Tom Homan, the same person Trump has relied on for this stuff. Without voting in Obama, we wouldn’t have had Trump deploying these units to the cities.

              But even more evidence that there aren’t 2 tracks, only one - We all watched Trump deploy ICE and BORTAC to major US cities during his first term. The mechanisms he used to do that were created by Obama. Biden took office and in four years never did anything to reverse or structurally limit the features Trump used. We all watched Trump do it in Term 1. Biden campaigned on reclaiming the country’s soul. Then, instead of doing anything, he simply chose to change the priorities of ICE and BORTAC, knowing full well that any future president could just go right back to doing what Trump had done. And that’s exactly what happened.

              So think about this, right. You and your partner are raising a kid. You and your partner agree that the kid shouldn’t be allowed to mess up the house. Then your partner decides to get into finger painting as an art form. OK… Weird, but fine. And then the kid gets into the finger paints and ruins the house. And you tell your partner that they better stop this, so they clean the walls, but they leave the finger paints in the same place. And the kid gets them again. Are you blaming the kid this time? No. Clearly negligence is a thing. Now, in this family drama, we can pretend your partner is just absent minded after the first time, but if it happens for a decade and every time you try to get rid of the finger paints they stop you and demand you help them clean up the walls and that if you don’t you’re just helping the child destroy the house further, at what point do you stop and realize that your partner is actively obstructing you?

              There aren’t two tracks. There’s one. Bush 2 planned 7 wars after Afghanistan: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. Obama attacked 4 of them. Biden/Harris attacked 3 of them. It’s one track. It’s just genocidal global domination with a blue tie on or a red tie on. The two “tracks” are just PR firms. They know you have a particularly psychology so they pander to you. They say “we’re the only ones worthy of your vote” and then they collaborate to go and kill the same people with the same guns from the same money. They say “we’re the only ones with the potential for a better future, those other people are going to ruin the country and then nothing can be salvaged” and then collaborate to maintain the largest prison and parole system in the history of the world, complete with prison slavery, racialized murder and torture, and the worst outcomes in the world.

              You’re literally watching a sport, with two teams on the field, and telling me “we have to root for one of them” when the sport is literally two teams of white people competing to see who can lynch more dark skinned children.

              • gmtom@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Obama created the mechanisms that allowed ICE and BORTAC to be deployed to major US cities.

                Did Obama use ICE as secret police? Would Trump not have been able to create the same mechanisms?

                Are you blaming the kid this time?

                Super weird and inaccurate Synology, but yes I would blame the kid?

                at what point do you stop and realize that your partner is actively obstructing you?

                So in your apology because the partner is negligent, you might as well just let the kid run the house and do whatever the fuck they want??

                YET AGAIN, you are purposely misinterpreting my poison into something else, so you have something you can actually argue against, because we’ve already established you agree with the point I’m actually making. So now you are just continuing to argue for the sake of arguing because doing so feeds your moral superiority complex.

                You’re literally watching a sport, with two teams on the field, and telling me “we have to root for one of them” when the sport is literally two teams of white people competing to see who can lynch more dark skinned children.

                Another shitty apology, but in that case, if not rooting a team does nothing to stop it, but rooting for one of the teams spares the life of even a single one of those children, then you would have to be either dumb or heartless self serving piece of shit to not do so. So which one are you?

                • freagle@lemmy.ml
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                  2 days ago

                  I mean this is just stunning. You literally cannot imagine that publicly voicing support for, organizing for, advocating for, and browbeating others on behalf of the team lynching one less brown kid might actually be counterproductive to the real work that needs to happen of dismantling the stadium, arresting the players, and abolishing the sport? You think it’s perfectly reasonable to lend your voice, give them legitimacy, give them your time and effort voluntarily, and even attack people who disagree with that position while they are literally engaging in mass murder and somehow you think you’ll be able to simultaneously build the movement that will tear the place down and eliminate it for ever?

                  I mean, I guess fair enough. I wouldn’t work with you if that how you behaved. You can vote for whoever you want, as do I, but you won’t catch me putting effort into defending these people and I wouldn’t trust you to actually do the abolition work necessary if you’re willing to browbeat people for choosing not to participate in the least effective form of civics related to the things that matter most.

                  Do you, boo. Root for them crypto-fascist mass murderers! Save that one kid while the other 50 and their parents, and your neighbors, watch you root for their murderers. If that’s what you think brings about solidarity, I guess you sorta have to, right?

                  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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                    2 days ago

                    It’s like talking to fucking brick wall. You can parctipate in activism as well as voting you fucking dumbass.