117
‘They will vote against Harris’: Arab Americans in Michigan desert Democrats over Gaza
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
117 points (78.8% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7163 readers
1047 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh they're really gonna love how Trump handles Arabs
It's like the trolley problem, except instead of the other track having fewer people, it has more, and it just loops back around to run over the people on the first track anyway. We should have sent the trolley on a completely different route decades ago.
Lol wait, this was already posted this thread? Is this just a bot account?
Strawmen belong in fields, not comment sections.
Also: does every ml user have an allergy to pragmatic problem solving?
This is an article about why Arab-Americans are abandoning the Democrats for endorsing and materially supporting genocide, and the response is "Trump would be bad too!" Yea, of course he would be, Harris is so bad that she isn't a solution either.
What do you mean by this?
"pragmatic" problem solving is killing all undocumented migrants to solve the housing and work shortages in the US.
Pragmatic problem solving was the excuse for the necessity of the Holocaust. Pragmatic problem solving is making black people count as two thirds a white person to appease fascists.
Pragmatic problem solving is a liberal appointing Hitler chancellor so commies don't get power and Nazis stop doing violence.
Pragmatic problem solving is behind the worst human atrocities. Let's not pretend it's ever been good.
No average dem is fantasizing about Republicans hurting people. This is nonsense, pathetic, and textbook straw man, all your word salad doesn't change this. We get it, you like Trump, stop with all the games.
You were in this thread though, lmao.
I'm not voting for genocide. In fact I already voted against genocide.
The Dems nor Republicans have a candidate that is against genocide.
So you voted for someone you know won't get elected. So you're ok with the worse of the two between Dem and Rep? Because you had a chance to help prevent the worse of the two coming into office and didn't. Choosing to cast a vote that won't impact the outcome helps literally no one. The Gaza situation is not all that is happening in the world.
I'm not ever going to vote for a genocide, and there is no moral high ground if you do .
But you realize that a Dem or Rep is who will be president. And they won't handle the situation exactly the same. So you're allowing the person who will handle it worse a better chance to be in power. That is literally what you've done. So if the worst happens, the option you could have helped prevent, just know you had a chance to make it less bad and decided your conscious was worth more than people's lives.
There is no better or worse in actively arming and participating in a genocide.
Yes, yes there is. Omfg. Honestly look at this and tell me there isn't.
If there are 3 candidates.
Candidate A wants to spend 100 mil a month arming people to commit genocide.
Candidate B wants to spend 1 mil a month arming people to commit genocide.
Candidate C wants no spending.
It's obvious candidate A is much worse, 100x worse actually. Now if candidate A and B are very close in who will win, while candidate C has 0 chance how can you best help people. Voting for candidate C does nothing. They won't get elected. But voting for candidate B prevents as much death as you are able. By voting for C you are one less vote against A. So if A wins, you've not prevented that in any way and have enabled 100x more death than B. If you want to stop death you need to look at the situation and see how you can have impact. Being overly idealistic can end up hurting you, like voting for C and changing nothing when you had a chance to save lives.
Your hypothetical is false, though, the Dems and Reps have been working together to support genocide. The GOP isn't going to go harder on it than the DNC already have been, because they can't.
There have been no limits on us support to israel so far. They have gotten all they asked for. How could trump possibly give them more? Even if he did, they won't need it, it won't change anything.
Can you show some example of where we have limited israel in anyway? Why wouldnt that continue under Kamala? She won't say she'd do different, in fact she said Israel has a right to defend itself on a national talk show.
Pot meets kettle. So I guess all of that talk about "strawmen" was just projection. Okay. I see what you did there.
Saying some BS like a group of people fantasizes about people getting hurt, yeah that sounds very on brand for Trump and people who follow him.
Also, assuming who someone is voting for is not a straw man lol, might wanna look up the term. And when someone says being pragmatic is bad, yeah, sounds like a Trump voter. Pragmatic literally means: dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. Look it up.
If you think that's bad then you're literally living in a fantasy world of theories and what ifs. Kinda like his tariffs idea or injecting bleach, or a million other stupid ideas he's had.
Lightor at this point I dont even need to read your comments, I just read you name and autmatically skip to downvote.
I see you are now trying to construct a new straw man. You might want to look up the term "projection." Go ahead, look it up.
buddy, half of the comments on this post are libs fantasizing about mass deportations, and acting smug the whole time. they cannot wait to say "I told you so" when the camps get built. stop kidding yourself.
Lol half the comments? Really? I just scrolled and don't see 1 in 2 comments being about fantasizing about mass deportation. Almost like you're being just as hyperbolic as the comic is lol.
Yes, yes they do. Pretty sure it's either a bot farm or dumb ass undergrads...
Ah yes, Leftists must be naive or bots, there's no such thing as an intelligent leftist
You think they're voting for trump? If so, you're even dumber than you think they are
I mean, it's not like there's any other viable candidate. I don't like the two party system but it's what we have and by voting any other way than Harris, it gives advantage to Trump.
Her shitty policies and attitude toward the genocide of people in the Levant is what's giving trump an advantage!
Her shitty attitude towards people calling on her not to support the genocide is what's giving trump an advantage.
She had it in the bag when she called him weird but you can always rely on a democrat to steal defeat from the jaws of victory!
And you know for sure that democrats are going to turn on minorities and leftists once she loses the election rather than face up to the fact that they did everything themselves to avoid winning it.
I will note your liberal dem in this comic also didn't get in the raft through their own inability to take the correct path regardless of the choices of others. which I think is pretty spot on for individuals like yourself.
I think that’s a statement about how other people's shitty voting decisions affect everyone.
Believe me, if I could just choose the president (life raft) myself with no other input, I would.
A more accurate metaphor would be if the raft was uninflated and full of holes.
This except the raft has a bunch of holes in it, is covered in blood, and by setting foot in it you are implicitly giving your consent to fund a genocide on the other side of the world, and then the raft sinks anyways in the last panel.
edit: Bright side, the water may not actually be that deep. At least it's certainly not as deep as the peoples' whom you would have sacrificed by getting on the raft. That's just what people tell you, but they also told you the raft would be perfectly seaworthy in its battered state.
This is question-begging a number of critical elements, e.g. that the "rafts" cannot be influenced by "passenger" input, and that there is only this one, totalizing crossroad of literal, immediate survival.
We can do it too:
You're in a runaway train accelerating toward a cliff and the break only really stops acceleration, it doesn't decelerate. You can sit in the engine room and hold down the break, and you'll live longer, but you aren't changing the fundamental dynamic of the situation, which ends in your eventual death. Conversely, you can jump off the train, surely injuring yourself, possibly crippling yourself, maybe even killing yourself, but it's the only potential way to change the dynamic of being doomed to fall off the cliff.
Does this prove anything? No, it's just a model of how some people think of the problem, not an argument. It would be really obnoxious and disingenuous to present it as an argument.
Maybe we should see if there’s any point of agreement, one step at a time.
Do you agree that either the Dem or Rep nominee will be the next president?
False dichotomy and incorrect question. It doesn't matter who wins the next presidency. the general outcomes will be the same.
will both candidates break strikes when convenient to their corporate overlords? yes. will both candidates continue to drain our economy by not reforming health care/holding corporations accountable? yes. (as demonstrated by harris' unwillingness to commit to keeping khan) will both candidates continue to support israel wholeheartedly? yes.
the only different is the speed of the decline. frankly I'm done emotionally suffering because the national democrats are shit people. you're welcome to your positions and beliefs I just have no interest in supporting them when all they do is cause more harm to my communities. I also live in a blue bastion, harris' will win here regardless of my actions and my local government will more or less prevent the worst of trumps nonsense for my community.
Do you agree that theres no excuse possible for aiding in a far right wing genocide?
No.
Given the restraints (either Dem or Rep will win) the logical thing to do is harm reduction. That is, unless you believe Trump will be better in this regard in which case I don’t think we’ll agree on much.
Now answer mine.
When I said:
This was me saying "It frames things as though losing the election means that all is lost and there won't be future elections."
As I'm pretty sure I explained to you an hour ago in another thread, I think it's an acceptable loss for the Democrats to lose an election to put pressure on them to change or else to establish that they are more loyal to the US project of Israel than they are to trying to win elections or do what voters want or anything like that.
I don't proactively want Trump to win, but I find it totally acceptable since what sets him apart from other Republicans is not that he is especially fascist in the substance of what he is likely to do. It might actually be possible to browbeat me if we had a Tom "throne of Chinese skulls" Cotton or someone as the nominee, he actually represents something that could be totalizing to me, but Trump is just kind of a deranged grifter and Vance is a more even-keel grifter.
So to save us both time, no, I don't think we agree on any points. I wasn't commenting toward that end, I merely wanted to say that the comic is unhelpful.
When you know how FPTP voting works but don’t want to admit what it means ^
Did you even read what I said? I directly acknowledged that the logical implication of my strategy is that Trump is more likely to win the upcoming election because I'm interested in how subsequent elections will be impacted. The calculus of "Always vote for the nearest viable candidate" is liberal dogma, yes, but it's not the only strategy and I find it to be a bad long-term strategy, because it just incentivizes an accelerating rightward drift from the "left" candidate, leaving you with two right candidates.
Despite needing to re-explain myself, I took what you said at face value and not as just being condescending wank, and now I guess I have egg on my face for my trouble.
passenger 1 - "Oh crud. Our boat is sinking. We are in great peril indeed."
captain - "We're going to be okay everyone, just get into this liferaft."
Pulls out liferaft with a huge fucking hole in it.
passenger 1 - "Is this the only liferaft we've got?"
captain - "Yes, but don't worry about the hole, it won't sink and we'll be fine I promise."
passenger 2 - "Hey guys, I have a liferaft over here that doesn't have a hole in it."
captain - "Guys, that's not important right now. Our boat is sinking."
passenger 1 - "Eh, I guess I'll go in that one."
passenger 3 - "Sure me too, captain says we should - wait where's captain?"
Looks up, in the distance sees captain floating away on functional liferaft.
captain - "So long fuckers!"
Passengers board remaining liferaft, liferaft sinks, the passengers die.
Where you fucked up:
You can’t reach the other one with no holes.
One of 2 things is happening with this comment.
You actually don’t know how FPTP voting works.
You’re pretending to not know how FPTP voting works.
Captain represents capitalists falsely promising to fix our problems
Broken liferaft is the false promise (i.e. voting is going to fix our problems despite genocide, imperialism, deporting illegal immigrants, hurting homeless people, fracking, etc)
Fixed liferaft is what actually will save us (i.e. food, housing, healthcare, etc)
While everyone is hyperfocused on who to vote for, the capitalists take the rest of the food/housing/healthcare and everyone else dies.