this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If a genocide is going to occur regardless of the vote, then the vote doesn’t matter.

Do you think that more people in Palestine will suffer if trump is elected?

[–] TokenBoomer 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Hypothetically, I think there would be no difference than what is occurring now. The rhetoric from his administration would be more belligerent though. If you take the genocide out of the equation, Biden is clearly the better choice. Unfortunately, it is part of the equation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Ah, see that's the assumption where you differ from most other folks in this thread.

The base assumption made by others, backed by trump encouraging a fast victory for Israel , as well as other GOP politicians with similar calls are signs that trump would press on the accelerator hard.

His commitment to Israel is in stark contrast to how he's treated other longtime American allies.

Lastly, let's not forget his infamous Muslim travel ban.

[–] TokenBoomer 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Trump and the other Republicans will say a lot, but they aren’t going to act any different than what Biden and Blinken are already doing with Palestine. The only difference is the symbolic language the Democrats use to assuage their voters. What are they going to do, send more arms and money faster?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Trump and the other Republicans will say a lot, but they aren’t going to act any different than what Biden and Blinken are already doing with Palestine

Muslim travel ban, Golan heights, and Jerusalem recognition + US embassy adoption there suggests that there are real world acts that the administration would do differently to me, what do you think?

What are they going to do, send more arms and money faster?

Precisely, afaik he doesn't give a shit about the people of Palestine, he's more worried about Israels bad PR and wants them to end it fast.

EDIT: just to check, did you read the JNS article? It's pretty bad, and he spells out exactly what he wants to do... A small excerpt is below.

“On day one, we’ll restore our travel ban. We had a travel ban because we didn’t want people coming into our country who really loved the idea of blowing our country up,” he said. He called the ban an “amazing success.”

“We didn’t have one incident in four years, because we kept bad people out of our country,” he claimed.

“I’ll also be implementing strong ideological screenings for all immigrants coming in,” he said. “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you’re not going to be getting into our country.”

Trump also said he would cancel student visas of Hamas sympathizers.

“The college campuses are being taken over, and all of the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests this month, nobody’s seen anything like it,” he said. “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”

...

As president, Trump would “put every single university and college president on notice,” he said. “The American taxpayer will not subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers on American soil.”

That last bit is actual government thought policing.

[–] VictoriaAScharleau 1 points 5 months ago

bill clinton signed the recognition of jerusalem and the embassy move. all trump did was stop delaying it.

[–] TokenBoomer 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The, “Biden is bad, but Trump will be worse,” argument is tired. It’s not working, and may be actively making voters dislike Biden more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's definitely not working, but all evidence I've seen suggests it's right.

Do you agree with me that "Biden is bad, but trump will be worse" is a correct statement?

I think the tiredness you're referring to is a result of people voting emotionally and not logically, or just being exhausted with this whole shitstorm.

[–] TokenBoomer 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You seem to have honorable intentions, but these exchanges are argumentum ad nauseam.

If you have to tell people why they should vote against Trump, instead of why they should vote for Biden, then he’s already lost.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm starting to suspect that the arguments seem as nauseam because I'm trying to reason people out of a decision they didn't reason themselves into - i.e. they're voting emotionally, and not logically. Inconvenient questions get ignored, and we're left with very surface level arguments.

I particularly saw some users comments reflected in this excerpt in the retrospective voting article you shared:

In his classic book “The Responsible Electorate,” the late Harvard University political scientist V.O. Key Jr. suggests that judging a president’s or his party’s performance in office presents a perfect opportunity for the voter to play “rational God of vengeance or reward.”

Perhaps they're voting this way to try and recapture efficacy in a world where they feel they have very little.

[–] TokenBoomer 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You seem genuinely interested in this topic. One I spent a considerable time researching last year and left me disillusioned. A study that may help is from professors Adam Dyne and John Holbein: Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes. It’s quite a read but demonstrates:

Our results suggest that voters may struggle to truly hold government coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear to be largely out of the immediate control of political coalitions.

Simply put, in large elections with millions of people, our votes count very little.

# An Expert Explains Why Your Vote Won't Matter

His study: The Brennan–Lomasky Test of Expressive Voting: When Impressive Probability Differences Are Meaningless

We should still vote. It matters for local elections, but when it gets to the state level and higher, the impact of our votes have little to no effect.