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‘They will vote against Harris’: Arab Americans in Michigan desert Democrats over Gaza
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Oh they're really gonna love how Trump handles Arabs
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.
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?
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.
So.. About my supposed false dichotomy and this insane comment that Trump isn't "especially fascist".
Given the torrent of executive orders, attempts to take the purse strings from congress, and seeming preparations to ignore SCOTUS rulings, how accurate do you think this was?
I think that Trump 2 is starkly different from Trump 1. I maintain my interpretation of Trump 1 and happily await someone explaining to me a basis for predicting Trump 2's methodological shift. I personally really struggle to understand it unless it's truly that his brain was broken by losing in 2020 and he became the Joker. Perhaps it's just that the actual fascists finally were able to figure out how to more effectively control him/convince him to cooperate, since he was notoriously unruly and refused to defer to allies who knew what they were doing (and this is part of what made him so much less threatening from a long-term standpoint than he could have been, not that he didn't present problems).
Looking at the context of this conversation (why are you even back here? why did you even remember it? did you think this was a great chance to gloat about how Momala would have made everything okay?) I think it's more productive to try to understand how Republicans generally have taken this hard right shift, and it's not because Trump is a wizard who can make everyone do what he wants, we have seen him come into conflict with the Republican establishment many times before, but they are backing him on a lot of the more fascist policies (with the exception of some of the courts). It's also worth noting that the Democrats, infamously Schumer, are extremely capitulatory to him, and obviously some fascist policy was done under their lead, like with Gaza, but remembering discourse from when I was writing, I can infer that you were arguing that the extermination of just the Palestinians was the lesser evil, so I guess that doesn't matter. Anyway, my original point is that the threat isn't coming fundamentally from Trump, but from the Republican Party and neoliberalism generally, and I see no reason to think that is less true now.
In my personal life, I've actually been really pleasantly surprised to see former "lesser evil" types realize that the Democratic Party needs to be destroyed because they are ultimately collaborators with the Republicans who will never, ever actually solve the problems producing fascist threats (and also do really awful things in their own right). I think they learned the correct lesson from the last several years, but of course diehards remain and will act like this is a moral victory for them somehow, when Kamala was adopting Trump 1 policy and even worse and Dems keep saying "we lost, I guess we weren't reactionary enough" and shifting ever-further right.
I truly hope that one day you realize that the Dems are more opposed to genuine leftism than to Republicans and have and will work to suppress it while protecting the Republican establishment. If you truly hate Republicans and not just Trump in particular, you need to look beyond the Dems and beyond the tip of your nose (a single election cycle).
I mean.. I don't really have to reply to literally anything else here. You're actually insane.
Meanwhile Trump is dismantling the administrative state and appointing yes men to whatever is left. This was better than the alternative? Man, get the fuck out of here.
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.
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.
A dichotomy, yes. A false one? No. I personally guarantee the next president will be either the Dem or Rep nominee.
Save this post and come back after the election. If you believe differently, I will give you very good odds on a bet.
The rest of your comment is common “muh both sides” dog shit.
yawn absolutely false. You have other options. you're just too afraid to exercise them. That's a you issue, you are willing to put up with harris/biden committing genocide and breaking strikes because you're scared of trump. I'm not. and yes, I'm aware of the mathematics behind FTFP. sadly fortunately they dont apply in my state.
You're controlled by fear. I'm not. My state is well insulated from trump and SCOTUS. If democrats and harris want to win they need to enforce the leahy act at a minimum. If harris wants to be the law and order candidate then she needs to move on these issues. she won't sadly but thats a her problem, not a me problem.
You also clearly dont understand 'both sides' critique. there are clear differences between the candidates. harris is clearly superior. she just isn't superior enough to overlook committing genocide and breaking strikes. for you she clearly is. that is a you issue.
Saving this comment for later to come back and say I told you so after either the Dem or Rep nominee wins the presidency.
I mean thats a you goal. I have no issue with harris winning she just wont get my support until she commits to enforcing leahy or keeping kahn. Which the biden/harris admin blinked yesterday on israel. Give it a few more days maybe send your own letter in support of arms embargo to your reps and help get them to do the right thing eh?
Do you agree that theres no excuse possible for aiding in a far right wing genocide?
Are you completely ignorant that there is a centrist genocide being carried out right now, seemingly with your quiet and obedient complicity?
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.
I dont beleive Harris giving Israel a free hand and all the weapons they need to exterminate and starve vs trump giving Israel a similar free hand is a meaningful distinction. Neither do ethnic Arab voters in swing states.
Its inevitable that AIPAC bribes will never change.. Why would they? They will be funding every American election going forward on both sides of the aisle, especially when they are using our own foriegn aid money to bribe us with. This guarantees that the future of American politics will be hand picked candidates from AIPAC, always with truly awful vs slightly less awful, but with everyone supporting whatever Israel wants.
I say NO to that. You should too. Your "harm reduction" is a manipulation to get you to vote for genocide and has been set up by the Israelis to continue their control-by-bribery of America, forever.
You need to take yourself off that crazy train. No one can do it for you. Can you at least ponder it?
I’m not getting an answer am I?
The answer was implicit in what I answered with. You arent considering the greater context.
The meaninglessly short sighted answer is yes, either a dem puppet of Israel will win, or a Repub puppet of Israel will win in this election. And the next election, and all the ones after that.
You and David seem to have a little in common.
We're on to adhoms huh, thats telling.
Nah just “puppet of Israel” reminded me a lot of that article.
Really similar, right? “Both parties are in Israel’s pocket”, “we should totally vote third party”. Really interesting.
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.
A more accurate metaphor would be if the raft was uninflated and full of holes.
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.
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.
na, it just demonstrates the yours/the artists inability to act independently from a group. what have you done to change the voting system? probably nothing. so take your nonsense elsewhere.