• S_204
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    6 months ago

    I’m not American, but I am fascinated by the cognitive dissonance it takes for these People who claim to be progressive to chart a path that clearly puts Trump in office while claiming they’re fighting for the very people that Trump has already banned from being in America.

    Trump would be bad for America and for the world, but a part of me wants to see y’all elect him again, just out of curiosity. The stupidity knows no bounds.

      • AbsentBird
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        6 months ago

        The bastard moved the embassy to Jerusalem for fucks sake. He gave more funding to Israel than any other president. Trump would gleefully fund genocide just to hurt leftists and reward his evangelical base.

        • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I think there is anti-Western psyops (I don’t want to say Russian or Chinese because who knows if either or both are doing it) going on with emphasising not to vote Biden and keep calling him “genocide Joe”, even though Trump is far more supportive of Israel in his last presidency. I have seen the rhetoric of genocide Joe and “left should not vote he him for supporting Israel” even in some seemingly centrist comments, which happens to be pro-Russia at the same time and those commenters are suspiciously new, or the account had aged out only to post months later after signing up. This is just too much of a coincidence.

          If this is a Russian psyops, it is obvious why because Trump is ideologically (perhaps financially) aligned with Putin, and Trump being back into the White House will gut the aid to Ukraine. Trump himself said he will force Ukraine to accept the territorial losses from the invasion and threatened to pull US out of NATO.

          Anyone who keeps saying not to vote for Biden because of his support for Israel is either psyops agent or fell into the propaganda, which in turn is only helping the disinformation propagandists.

          • AbsentBird
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            6 months ago

            The left calls him Genocide Joe for supporting Israel, the right calls him Jihad Joe for supporting Palestine. Environmentalists hate how domestic oil and gas production have gone up, fossil fuels enthusiasts hate his investments in renewable energy. So many people in news bubbles that are mad at Biden.

    • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I mean I think most of the time the people who are doing that aren’t necessarily progressives. They’re just people who cared enough to vote before against trump but now just feel like nothing has really happened. Sure things haven’t gotten worse but they also haven’t really gotten better. So they checkout of politics all together cause what’s the point in voting if nothing really changes.

      • S_204
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        6 months ago

        Again, I’m not American, but I can’t believe that any American could claim that. Nothing has changed from Trump to Biden. It’s absolutely obvious there’s been a wholesale change in how America is viewed globally. There’s been a change in the economy for the better and the American president isn’t in the news for saying something foolish everyday.

        It’s crazy that people would say nothing has changed.

        • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Maybe it’s different from an outside point of view but most the people I know haven’t seen any of the benefits of the economy getting better. Inflation, while not rising as much anymore, still has stretched a lot of people thin as prices never went back down and wages didn’t rise to match. So people on the news say the economy is doing better and Biden is doing good but normal people are still having to spend more on essentials, having less to put away to savings than before. I definitely don’t think Trump would do any better at this but I can see why people would check out because of that, it’s yet another situation where both sides fail the people, which causes people to check out cause depending on your state having to take a day off work and stand in line for hours to vote for someone who will do not as bad as the other side is not appealing.

          Another thing as well is that I think in general average Americans can only pay attention to something for so long (look at how we started completely ignoring COVID as soon as the vaccine came around even though it kept spiking repeatedly). So if there isn’t some big draw like the attempt at student loan relief or roe v wade being overturned average people will stop caring and stop following politics. In general the message of vote for Democrats to stop bad things from happening has been starting to burn people out cause bad things have still been happening under Democrats, so they need to start actually pushing through good flashy policies like the student debt relief if they want to get these people to start caring again. (Also this is just all what I think from talking to people who aren’t as interested in following politics as me. I still plan on voting for Biden even though I’m very progressive cause there isn’t much other choice so I’m not advocating for not voting, just trying to reason why average people are checking out.)

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      “The charting of a path that clearly puts Trump in office” is the accusation from those opposing progressive or leftist policy.

      The argument from progressives is “Support of Israel’s genocide is unconscionable and unpopular amongst the American electorate so continuing that support and ignoring the electorate should not be acceptable.”

        • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          There is now an entire generation of young people entering the political world for the first time who are learning just that.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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        6 months ago

        And they’re fucking morons for trying to push that line.

        “I don’t like Biden not being tough enough on Genocide, that’s why I’m choosing the path that makes even more genocide more likely!”

        That is not the position of someone who takes their own causes as seriously as those causes deserve, that is the position of a whiny privileged little shitstain looking for any reason they can find why they’re actually morally superior to you for not being able to be assed to stand in a line for a day at most and check some boxes.

        • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          as seriously as those causes deserve,

          Look, I am not going to ignore that you’re responding to your own made-up quote but I’ll bite: ‘What does the Palestinian cause deserve?’

          No protesting or political leveraging by privileged little shitstains, obviously.

          • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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            6 months ago

            I don’t have a problem with people protesting for Palestine, I have a problem with the people who are obviously going to stop the day after the voting closes.

            What’s needed is to identify the people encouraging Biden’s moves to condition aid to Israel and spotlight them, give them a bigger platform among Biden voters, and to deplatform the advocates trying to counter that encouragement .

            Continued protests, even disruptive protests occupying college campuses, but definitely not responding to a college trying to unfurl the US flag by projecting “Genocide Joe” onto it, there’s a difference between disruptive protest and abjectly unhelpful antagonism.

            • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Fair point. However:

              Biden’s moves to condition aid to Israel

              Do you believe Biden would have ever made those moves without those protests?

              Or perhaps, even, the leverage of people’s votes might have played a role?

              I am not so sure he would have made any move to condition aid without this disruption and threat.

              I mean: Biden was pretty damned adamant against a ceasefire, but called for one less than a month after he got hit with Uncommitted primary votes. So I think there is some kind of relationship there at least worth crediting.

              • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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                6 months ago

                No, leveraging votes on it didn’t do anything but show who was confident that they’d be fine when a second Trump Presidency brought the genocide here too.

                I’ll give you a hint, it is not the Palestinians who also live here in America because we have our own diaspora that also live other places from the homeland.

                My dead kin are not a fetish prop to hand us over to the Trump Brand Morality police because being Arab is now defined as antisemitism.

                I keep seeing that scene from What If where Killmonger murders Stark, “The difference between you and me, is that you can’t see the difference between you and me.”

                First time I watched it I thought it was just Killmonger being meaninglessly vague to platitude his way to justifying his actions, but then I came back online and witnessed the absolute amount of white “leftists” proudly showing their entire asses declaring that they truly could see zero differences between Republican and Democratic administrations and legislative terms.

                These people don’t have a deeply held principal that guides their decision to threaten letting things get exponentially worse. They either have an abject ignorance to what they’re threatening to the people for whom the difference is life and death, or they have an abject cynicism that causes them to see that threat as the entire point to rob the disenfranchised of the chance to define an American progressivism that isn’t led exclusively by bougie white college kids.

                They accuse people who call them out of being “vote karens” but they’re the ones threatening PoC, Religious minorities, Women, and Queer folks to make the DNC’s manager speak with them.

                We would L O V E to see these little snots devise a means of protest that actually puts the consequences on the old white boomercrats who run the party right now. The problem is that they time and time again fucking refuse to do it because putting the work in to become a primary force that can eject party members who step out of line isn’t as satisfying as terrorizing queer folks with “it says “class solidarity” or it gets the Republicans again!”

                BTW this isn’t even the first time this level of cynicism has been employed by the white left, in the 20s and 30s a major strategic goal of the American socialist movement was to attract enough black members that if fighting broke out they’d last long enough as a collective magnet for white conservative rage for the white socialists to achieve some sort of victory scenario. You may have seen similar sentiments in this thread and others like it where especially mask off white “leftists” call for a culling or WWIII or all but outright say that Black folks, women, religious minorities, and queer folks are outside the “Working Class”, basically mask offing on being fascists that use “The Working Class” as an innuendo for “The Race” or “The Nation”

                They don’t see us as partners in solidarity, they see us as meat shields who need to shut up and be grateful they even pretend to care about our interests when they show up for the photo-op rallies and marches, and how dare we use their own language of solidarity to ask them for the herculean labor of standing in line and form filling a ballot, maybe flipping it over to check if there’s public referenda on the docket this year.

                Vote witholding is a tool of privilege wielded by those who know they can ignore the consequences of either outcome. It is Reagan looking his “friend” in the eye and giving no fucks about the AIDs epidemic he was dying from because he knew he was unlikely to catch it himself and that it was a useful political wrench to do what he already decided he wanted to do anyways.

                • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 months ago

                  Well it is perfectly fine to believe Biden would have called for a ceasefire or conditioning aid to Israel on his own accord without any political pressure.

                  • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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                    6 months ago

                    There are means of political pressure that aren’t threatening the cynical welding of one’s own privilege as a hostage taking tool.

    • NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I’ll give my two cents on why I won’t for Biden. Simply put, foreign policy doesn’t matter the president. So for me its about punishing an incumbent to possibly set precedence moving forward that supporting genocide won’t get you re-elected.

      • Donkter@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        If foreign policy “doesn’t matter the president” why are you trying to punish a president over a foreign policy issue. By your logic isn’t Biden not actually responsible?

        • NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Because maybe you can set precedence going forward. So presidents and elected officials will know it’s a red line they don’t step over if they want to get re-elected. Biden is responsible because he can choose not to support Israel but he does. He’s complicit in genocide and apartheid. So have past presidents been.

          • coffeecup
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            6 months ago

            But you’re rewarding a different bad behavior with your inaction. I hope you realize that.

            • NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              I’m not rewarding genocide. Imagine biden gets re-elected, walks right into the white house and says, “guys I can get re elected even after committing genocide. I helped slaughter 30k+ innocent civilians including women and children and it didn’t even change my election chances” yeah no.

              • coffeecup
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                6 months ago

                If you can legally vote. And you help trump win by not voting for the only guy that can beat him, you are helping to enable Trump into office and thus commit a hell lot more genocide.

          • rsuri@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            How would they know that? Why wouldn’t they take the opposite lesson, and assume that Biden losing is because of opposition to perceived liberalism in the Biden administration and support of Trump’s alt-right policies?

            Because that’s certainly what Trump’s gonna be claiming in his victory speech. “Today we won a great victory over the woke leftists who want to poison our blood…”

            • NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Because we have groups in states such as Michigan which are very pro palestine and anti war. If not many vote for Biden then they’ll know. Polls can always be conducted later asking people why they didn’t vote for someone or voted for someone else.

              • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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                6 months ago

                Oh yes, what a fruitful exercize, asking people defined by their refusal to answer an opinion poll to answer an opinion poll!

                This will definitely be top priority at DNC headquarters as Trump begins arresting them for being socialists!

        • NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I’m not sacrificing democracy. I’m simply not willing to vote for someone who’s helped commit genocide. Fyi, people said the same thing about trump last time he was elected but here we are. Democracy in America is already broken.

      • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Bro, that’s not two cents, that’s pocket lint and an old cough drop. Your entire statement is a contradiction.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      because it makes them feel good, and apparently that grants them immunity somehow.

      For the record, i’m not voting, fuck this shit. Yall can fuck around and find out, i’ll just be finding out.

      • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        What childish nonsense. Your answer to this issue is sit it out and go “HAHA, I didn’t vote for him!” and then sit here and complain that things are not getting better for you. The democratic process will not fix itself if you don’t vote.

        • coffeecup
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          6 months ago

          Yea, why even show up to comment here? Look at this edge lord over here folks.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          and then sit here and complain that things are not getting better for you.

          where did you pull this out of your ass from? I literally did not for one fucking second gloat about how my life sucks?

          Actually what the fuck are you smoking

          The democratic process will not fix itself if you don’t vote.

          yeah, i know, i kind of sort of explicitly recognized that in the very last sentence of my post.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’ve manned voting booths in my home country and whilst lots of blank votes are a message, people simply not coming to vote is no message at all since those who feel disenfranchised and do not go vote look exactly the same from the other side as those who are lazy and do not go vote.

        A blank says that a politically aware person who cares did not find any of the choices available appealing (implying that the vote is there for the taking if the right person is on the ballot), whilst not voting just says “Did not appear, probably can’t be arsed to go vote”.

        If you’re really pissed off at the system, go there and cast a blank vote, which is the clearest “none of the above” message you can put on a vote. (Writting “none of the above” on the ballot if it’s a paper one won’t really pass that message because that just makes it an invalid vote, so maybe the one person counting votes that sees it gets it but all that the information that gets passed further is +1 invalid vote).

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          I’ve manned voting booths in my home country and whilst lots of blank votes are a message

          are blank votes even a reported figure? To my knowledge they aren’t significantly reported, otherwise i feel like we would hear a lot more about than we currently don’t. I would understand it if it was a reported figure that people talked about, but it sure doesn’t seem like it. Although given the current environment, people would probably try and claim that blank votes are actually election interference or some shit.

          frankly, this is one of the elections of a democratic institution of all time, judging by how utterly shit this has the potential to play out, i honestly just don’t think i have the capability to give a shit.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            The Mainstream Press doesn’t emphasise them if they’re not significant, probably because as “nobody in this balot represents me” they represent a criticism of the very system were that Press is Mainstream and it’s way harder for mainstream politicians and the politically-affiliated Press to dismiss such votes as merelly “not engaged in politics”.

            Blank vote counts are however formally reported and available, so at the very least you can expect that politicians whose win/lose can be decided by a few percent more or less votes would pay attention to it and be interest in swaying at least some of those pople casting blank votes since they are clearly engaged enough to vote, though voting “none of the above”.

            Around here in my experience they were a fraction of total votes (maybe 1%), but then again I’m in a country were there are around 10 parties with Parliamentary representation, even though the voting system is still a mathematically rigged electoral circles one (though nowhere as bad as the US) so people are far more likelly to find a party that appeals to them and is actually electable.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              6 months ago

              i suppose in the sense of candidacy, it would make sense that it would effect them directly. I’d still appreciate it if it was publicly reported though, as it’s an interesting statistical figure.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          sure, feel free. I literally won’t have done anything at all.

          But feel free. And just for the record, if shit does get fucked to a point where it substantially effects me i’m principled enough to take the out when i’m given it.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              6 months ago

              Glad you could publicly admit you don’t give a rats ass about the rights of others when you can whine about a single-issue that makes you look cool.

              yeah because that’s literally up to everybody else voting? You don’t like it you can vote lmao.

              Frankly i’m concerned about empowering other people to utilize their own rights to empower themselves to be the person that they should be, rather than yelling at the government about the fact that “we don’t have rights” although a very real problem. Not really my space of concern at the moment. I’d rather literally defend someone, over figuratively defending them.

                • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  6 months ago

                  Frankly, if you don’t vote- it doesn’t matter what you’re concerned about.

                  yeah, which would probably be why i’m less concerned about policy and voting, and more concerned about individuals.

                  But your lot likes easy, don’t they.

                  i don’t like easy, i like funny. And this is probably the funniest thing i can think of doing right now on a global scale. Like you said, it’s my loss.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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        6 months ago

        Just announcing your privilege from the hilltops to demand us lowlies who’ll be the ones actually facing the consequences bend the knee to your interests harder.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          your privilege

          my privlege? I mean yeah literally it is my privelege, it’s quite literally a right that i have. Being a citizen of the united states.

          What makes you think i want to be a part of society, engaging with the system? The system fucking hates me. Why should i do anything for it?