this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/politicalmemes
 

i can't even guess as to why they went quiet. not one guess at all. we will never know.

edit: well they're not quiet now once they get called out

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[–] SmilingSolaris -2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Out of curiosity, what wouldn't you be willing to compromise on? If I had a party wanting to kill your mom and dad and another who just wants to kill your dad, would you make that compromise?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Ummm....yes! Of course I would make that compromise! If I have a choice between they both die or one dies, of course I'm taking the choice where one lives!

What wouldn't I be willing to compromise on? Nothing. If I have a choice between bad and worse, I'm taking bad, what kind of lunatic would intentionally choose worse?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

If I have a choice between bad and worse, I’m taking bad, what kind of lunatic would intentionally choose worse?

The vast majority of people would choose worse, at least in some situations.

Philosopher Bernard Williams proposed this thought experiment: suppose someone has rounded up a group of 20 innocent people, and says that he will kill all of them, unless you agree to kill one, in which case he'll let the rest go. Act Utilitarianism would suggest that it is not only morally permissible, but morally obligatory to comply, which Williams saw as absurd. As an addendum, suppose the person then orders you to round up another 20 people so he can repeat the experiment with someone else, and if you don't, he'll have his men kill 40 instead. Congratulations, your "lesser-evilist" ideology now has you working for a psychopath and recruiting more people to work for him too.

Even the trolley problem, which liberals love to trot out to justify their positions, is not nearly as clear cut as they try to pretend it is. A follow up to the trolley problem is, is it ethical to kill an innocent person in order to harvest their organs in order to give five people lifesaving transplants? The overwhelming majority of people say no.

Act Utilitarianism is something that seems intuitive at first glance, but is very difficult to actually defend under scrutiny, and there are many, many alternative moral frameworks that reject its assumptions and conclusions. Liberals don't seem to realize that this framework they treat as absolute and objective - that you would have to be a "lunatic" to reject - is actually a specific ideology, and one that's not particularly popular or robust.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

Good comment, because this was the choice some were asked to make, to degrees ranging from similar to almost literally.

As an educated citizen I openly acknowledge voter abstention or voting Republican is irresponsible in carrying out my responsibility to protect my neighbor.

However I also recognize the incredibly painful and emotionally choking situation some were put in, with no messaging of empathy from either side. I will never blame those people more than I blame the party which failed them. Distribute it 51%/49% even, I don’t care. I’m just sick of the finger pointing and shit slinging against a tiny minority who bore no impact on the election outcome in the first place.

This dialogue, which OP is capitulating to, is perfect fascist propaganda. Find an insignificantly tiny out group, which conveniently happens to be majority Arab-American, and blame them for the violence while corporate interests and ever more racist border politics go unspoken.

[–] MellowYellow13 5 points 1 hour ago

Well fucking said, and pretty disgusting how upvoted the post is.

[–] SmilingSolaris 8 points 6 hours ago

Exactly. It sounds rhetorical, silly and a stupid straw man of sorts. But that's because people don't understand there were people who had to actually make such decisions.

I agree, I voted Kamala Harris and I do wish we could all bite that bullet but I understand that failure to do so is on the campaign who made a gamble that they could never lose voters in a lesser evil campaign. They were wrong. Instead of criticizing that campaign many here want to fight the same people they claim to want to protect. They are turning on immigrants, Muslims, and queer folk and throwing blame at the people they themselves believe they need to win.

I would say "funny strategy" but there is no strategy here. It's online liberals who don't understand what happened and are upset and angry. They just came out of a campaign in which they spent so much of their time justifying the lesser of two evils that they can't even acknowledge that it didn't work and it's the campaigns fault.

My hope is maybe they can stop arguing with us before the concentration camps come up.