sweetpotato

I think you are asking the wrong person, I’m the one saying the Palestinian genocide crosses the line. Although I don’t 100% understand the logic behind this. What’s the threat to cis women?

Although I’m suspecting the answer someone would give you is that it’s because the trans genocide will happen to “us the US citizens” not some Arabs at the other side of the world we don’t really care that much about.

I’m not disagreeing on the facts. The democrats truly are the lesser evil and they truly are very evil. They did awful and Trump will do worse. There should be protests and everything.

All that is good. I don’t know about you, you seem more open minded than the average user here, but most democrat supporters cannot understand the idea that someone can decide whether to vote and what to vote for with a different logic/philosophy - not with different facts.

Most of the time we judge things with a consequentialist mindset, it’s the default for most people. It goes like this: what action out of all the possibilities produces the best results, positive or negative, it doesn’t matter as long as one is above the other? I choose that. That’s very standard but it has problems and there are a lot of philosophers who have criticised consequentialism/utilitarianism. One criticism is what time in the future are you assessing the consequences? It can be a year, it can be ten years. If Harris had won, would the LGBTQ rights be protected more? Yes, but would the democrats become more unhinged in Gaza, as they basically got away with a genocide? Also yes. Would that further move them to the right(because that’s what the oligarchs who fund them want and since they met no resistance), adopting extreme far right policies, like endorsing the wall? So would they in the long term turn out worse and worse? Yes. Someone can argue therefore, that a crushing defeat can maybe help them move to the left even a little bit finally, which in the long term can be more beneficial.

Another criticism is that for a lot of people like I said there is a red line. That’s following the deontological framework, where basically the means justify the end, the opposite of consequentialism where the end justifies the means. I’m not saying one framework is better than the other, I believe both have their merits and can be applied in different contexts. In this particular example where the democrats have done so absolutely horrific on all fronts but especially on Palestine, voting for them cannot be justified. They have crossed too many lines to be justified by the end. That end being miniscule differences, basically non existent on anything other than a handful of social issues.

It’s ok if you disagree, I’m not going to tell you what to believe, the issue is not recognising the different perspective, which is just not going to lead you anywhere. I’m going to keep explaining this and you(or anyone in your place) will keep repeating the same consequentialist argument. It will not get you anywhere cause it’s not a matter of misunderstanding or not realising the consequences, it’s a matter of framework and a matter of ideology at the end of the day.

Biden could be reasoned with then? That’s what’s implied here? 1 year and one month of genocide were not enough to reason with anyone in the democratic party. There was nothing Netanyahu asked for and didn’t get, but somehow it wasn’t bad enough for you people. There ya go

Because the democrats didn’t stand by any values that supposedly differentiated them from the republicans like I explained, but you don’t seem to really care. You can put it on non-voters or third party voters all you want, the truth is that Netanyahu got anything he ever wanted and asked for by the US under Biden and Harris and not acknowledging this is part of the problem. Immigrants got the same treatment under them as well, which I also mention and you don’t really care.

That’s the issue with not having any red line, you will always play by the rules of the far right. And that will make you indistinguishable from them which will alienate the people who want change. They don’t see an alternative to a very very dark situation. In good faith, you would very much understand why endorsing the wall, genocide Gaza and standing proudly by it, supporting Israel unwaveringly, not promoting any substantial progressive economic or ecological policies and in general why having an extreme neoliberal agenda would not compel people to vote for you.

It’s not on the disappointed voters that you people can’t understand what having a red line means. Consequentialism simply does not hold up when the difference are so miniscule and the evil is so big.

I’m really tired of going over this again and again, if you could feel a fraction of the pain the democrats and their oligarchs brought by committing the worst crime against humanity of the 21st century and how the millions of pleas for embargo went ignored this past year and a month, you wouldn’t be asking this.

I feel for your very unfortunate situation, but maybe you should’ve demanded more from your party, instead of putting the blame on people who draw the line at genocide. If the choice is between the number of genocides, maybe we should take a step back and reflect a little because this doesn’t stop anywhere. Next time there will be two, three…

Republicans can go as fascist as they want, but if the Democrats are drugged in this race to the right, they will lose. They endorsed the wall, they did nothing about the immigrants and they 100% backed a genocide no questions asked, ever, what difference is an immigrant or Arab supposed to see from this?

No matter how much you accuse the people who didn’t vote, the truth of the matter is that nothing will change if you don’t demand from your party to stand for some values. For now, they follow Trump moving to the right.

A lot of people don’t understand this honestly, it’s not about intelligence, it’s not even about being good or bad.

The reason we are against him is because he has conflicting interests with the people. He works for the oligarchs, for capital, not for humanity, not for the environment, not even for american citizens.

And my 2 cents on this discussion is that critiquing him for being a convicted felon and about the other cases he is accused of is a really disorienting and weak critique as well. He is not going to make our lives miserable because he is convicted, he is going to make our lives miserable because he is a far right, neoliberal fascist with no respect for human life. And on the contrary, many activists have been convicted of crimes, like Assange, but I’d do anything to have them as president. Having been convicted is practically irrelevant and highly dependent on the crime.

So instead the critique should be targeted at politics, not on personal issues… But then again the fact that the critique doesn’t always focus on politics is indicative a lot of times of the very small ideological gap between the two parties and how none offers any real alternative.

To think that there’s only one issue with the neoliberal democrats is so sad…truly. Don’t mistake focusing on Palestine with that being the only issue. Maybe if they didn’t like the wall so much or had any progressive economic policies or environmental ones, we’d talk about it. They are serving the oligarchs with a few social progressive policies, that’s too little, sorry

No choice would help them and thinking the dems didn’t give Israel everything it wanted is the problem. But that’s what people who don’t really care would say, cause if you cared this entire year, you’d realize this and would’ve noticed the endless pleas for embargo.

Peak White people in the west* humanity

All lives matter type shit. We live in a patriarchy, the least you can do is listen to those most affected, women. Don’t expect compassion if you can’t show it.

Exactly how I am sure poor white people have it bad in this system(and it needs to be addressed), yet those primarily affected by racism have to come to the spotlight, exactly this way men have problems(and need to be addressed), yet those primarily affected by the patriarchy have to come to the spotlight, women.

Conflating one social problem (patriarchy) with others (economic inequality and poverty for example) is harming the cause and it’s disorienting, it’s wrong. When we talk about the patriarchy, the discussion should not be diverted and those mostly affected are women, so we talk about women’s problems and how they experience it. That goes for queer people’s problems as well. It goes for any underprivileged/minority social group. That’s it.

Enough so that I can pay the AC bill during the night, cause healthy sleep requires low temperatures.

Besides that, I will ask for as much as I can get away with.

Depends really. What do you value in your life? What ethical framework do you use? Do you value freedom and self determination, do you value people different from you as much as people of your nationality/race? Or perhaps do you value the Western stability, growth, dominance and wellbeing at the expense of the economic South more? There’s no objective answer, it depends on you and your viewpoint.

If we do away with the propaganda and misinformation we are left with this question. Because the US and Europe would never support anyone for the sake of them being the only democracy in the middle east or fighting terrorists or whatever. If that were the case the US wouldn’t have been complicit with the dictatorships of the gulf countries or any other of the innumerable dictatorships they have established throughout the years in the world. And they would also not be funding the ISIS or other terrorist groups in Columbia, Cuba, Nicaragua and so many other countries.

No dominant organisation in the world like the US state would give a significant amount of money(like it does for Israel) for something that doesn’t serve their material interests, namely the perpetuation and/or increase of their power and influence.

So what do you value? Freedom and dignity for all, or more power for the Western states and corporations (- and whatever religious crap you want to excuse colonising and ethnically cleansing a nation)?

If you see this, it’d save you a lot of time from arguing about every single event of the conflict. If you see every human in the world as equal and deserving of freedom, then you’d see that Israel and the West is bringing these people at the brink of extinction, torturing, killing, humiliating, starving them, expelling them from their land, destroying their vital civil infrastructure, stealing their land and property for 75 years now. And when you see all this (not from Western mainstream media though), you’d recognise the right for armed struggle against a colonizing entity that Israel is. No civilian casualties are acceptable, but the ones affected in 7/10/23 would have to turn against their government for ethnically cleansing Palestinians, bringing them to that desperate point of retaliation, not Palestinians.

Silly and grudge are very interesting terms to describe an illegal embargo that brings millions in the brink of starvation and poverty.

I really hate you people for spewing your propaganda like that.

1. The “worse” part implies the democrats didn’t give Israel everything it ever wanted which is in itself outright propaganda.

2. I don’t know why Ukraine is portrayed like Palestine. Where are they getting ethnically cleansed that I missed? Where is this coming from? Show some respect to the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century for the love of god

3. At how many atrocious policies do you say enough? At how many rollbacks from republicans that the democrats do nothing about do you say enough? At how many genocides do you say enough? If the democrats committed a second one? Trump would commit more you say. A third one? Trump would commit more. A fourth? A fifth? At what point do you draw the line?

https://medium.com/@ashwinjitsingh/the-trolly-problem-utilitarianism-vs-deontology-bd624a8e321e

"If one were to take a utilitarian standpoint, the means are justified by the end, which from a utilitarianist perspective, is the maximization of benefit. Hence, for a utilitarianist, whatever option guarantees the outcome of the maximum benefit is what is moral. Therefore, in the trolly case, a follower of classical utilitarianism would say that it is morally permissible to sacrifice 1 to save 5.

The deontological perspective in contrast, advocates for the means justifying the end. This, for a deontologist, the morality of the action should be based on whether the action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than being based on the consequence. In this light, a follower of deontologism would argue that it is morally impermissible to sacrifice one to save five because making the choice of having to kill someone is inherently wrong."

Someone should make a phase diagram as well. With temperatures on the Y axis and percentage of being gay or straight on the X axis. Like we do fora alloys

Being born wealthy isn’t really optional. It’s actually necessary and a big reason why this system is so absolutely terrible, because the American dream is a capitalist myth to manipulate the masses.

The exceptions are not always exceptions, like the apartheid boy Elon and the 1 in a million that actually is an exception is drilled into our brains by the media like how gambling companies make ads about the people that win the lottery.

Because it’s a far right party. Trump happens to be more far right, but that doesn’t change that fact. I’m not voting for far right, neoliberal, genocidal freaks.

At how many genocides do you draw the line? If the democrats committed a second one along with the Palestinian genocide they are committing right now? You’d again say trump would be worse, vote for Harris. If they committed three? Four? No matter what they do, Trump would do worse, so again you’d tell us to vote for Harris.

I draw the line at a genocide and at everything this neoliberal party stands for. I am not giving that party my approval because it is going in the exact opposite direction of what I stand for. At some point, the lesser evil is too evil.

Bakunin had said that everyone would be obliged to do manual work under socialism(I think I read that in Statism and Anarchy, don’t quote me on it, but it makes sense, someone has to do that, might as well all of us contribute), which is fair.

Also you can never get rid of logistics and factory related work imo, because concentrating the production means and scaling up factories is proven to be overwhelmingly more efficient in producing goods than producing them locally and independently. Producing flour in a big factory reduces the manual labour hours by tens and hundreds of times. So as I see it, these jobs will still be there.

The fundamental difference would be that people would actually work these jobs for like 2-3 hours every couple of days or so. This is because we have the capacity to cover everyone’s needs several times over, that’s how immensely huge our economy is. The west has to scale down a lot the economy cause we are producing way too much, that’s how much we produce. We would be able to cover our needs with so much less work than now.

I genuinely don’t understand how uranium can exist a priori in this argument but lead not? I might be missing something.

You don’t spend millions on data analysts who gather voter data from social media, government data advertisers and other sources, you don’t have photographers, videographers for every public appearance of yours, you don’t have psychologists and communication specialists who decide what you’ll say, do and express with your face. In general, you don’t plan ahead every move you make when people will see you and you don’t control your entire environment, the people you will interact with and what you will see and do every time.

You seem to have a really simplistic/naive view of how politics work at this level with the analogy of an ordinary person you gave. You need to realize that these people have absolutely nothing to do with you or me. These people will never tell you who they are funded by, who are lobbying them, who they owe to, who influences them, who threatens them and why they take most decisions, they will lie, they will hide their wealth, they will hide their ties. The only reason they are able to compete for presidency is the fact that the rich people support them, because their media take their side(channels, newspapers, websites) and their money fund their campaigns. So they will always, necessarily serve their interests, that’s the deal, otherwise they will drop them and go to the next willing politician. This means that the big politicians can never tell the truth.

So with all that said, the fakeness of their campaign reflects the irreconcilable situation they are in, having to serve the 0.1% and having the people as a means to this end.