While I’ll agree that even focusing on votes is healthier than constantly worrying about how the terrible guy continued saying terrible things, there are better tactics than that available to us. If folks here want to worry about votes though, I’d recommend things that fight voter disenfranchisement, like ensuring polls have sufficient volunteers, or helping ensure people in line to vote will have enough time, food and water to wait out a long line.

(It should be noted though that it is unlikely he will be convicted, even if the Dems win, so don’t get your hopes too high.)

Did you read my comment? Here, I’ll help you.

I do not want anyone to vote for Trump, vote third party, or abstain. What I want is for them to understand that voting is the minimum they can do, and that they can and should protest the current and future admin’s policies regarding Israel until they stop enabling genocide, regardless of the color of the tie they wear.

Read that paragraph, then try again. Maybe with less antagonism, yeah?

A regular reminder to everyone here that they do not actually have to care what Trump says. You already know he’s shit. Focus on something healthier.

You can absolutely pressure Harris, though. Join a protest.

Trust me, I’m well aware of literally everything you’ve just said. I get told it on almost every comment I make here, and every time people make the same two big mistakes:

1. Limiting their thinking to votes.

2. Refusing to push Democrats left, because they’re scared it might hurt Harris’ election chances.^[1]

I am pushing against #2 in this thread first and foremost, and getting #1 out of your response as a result. Please, understand that I know that Democrats are better than Trump. Everybody knows that, and if you think I want people to vote against Harris you are misunderstanding me entirely.

I do not want anyone to vote for Trump, vote third party, or abstain. What I want is for them to understand that voting is the minimum they can do, and that they can and should protest the current and future admin’s policies regarding Israel until they stop enabling genocide, regardless of the color of the tie they wear.

If we let Democrats scare us with Trump or someone like him every year, nothing will change.

They’ll get better at managing bugs. What we’ll have to watch out for is other shit.

In particular, I’m not keen on the main menu ad for the DLC they slapped on, which stays even if you own the DLC.

And why’s that on us? Why is it our job to toe a party line when said line means killing people en masse?

It’s supposed to be their job to represent us, not our job to kiss their asses. Stop letting the DNC use Trump as an excuse to do whatever they want; if they want to be more electable, maybe it’s on them to adopt a better platform.

Why is someone’s reluctance to vote for your preferred candidate more upsetting to you than said candidate’s choice to platform genocide?

If you’re so worried about Trump being elected, maybe you should push for Harris to adopt better policy so people are more comfortable voting for her, rather than shaming people for not wanting to vote for the lesser of two genocides.

I really don’t think these are the same group of people. From the article:

The strike was ignored in some areas, reflecting deep political divisions in Israel after nearly 11 months of fighting.

Those are the people you’re thinking of, and they aren’t striking.

Organization (protests, unions, joining a local political movement), education (yourself or others), pressuring candidates (call your reps, protests), mutual aid & voter enfranchisement (food banks, clothing donations, volunteering at polling stations, any effort to protect the homeless). All of these are options, and this is just what I can think of off the top of my head. If you’d like, here’s a page with a gallery of 346 nonviolent protest tactics.

Much of America has become trained to think only in terms of a vote – a vote in a system that was deliberately unequal from its founding through to today – to the exclusion of all other action. To say this is suffocating to any effort to enact change is an understatement; it is self-defeating in the extreme, serves only to perpetuate the status quo or worse, and yet time and time again I see so many people who have spent next to no time thinking outside these terms.

Monopolies depend on the government to exist.

I very much disagree but respect a desire to not get into a debate, so I’ll leave it there.

I really don’t know what that means

“Your freedom ends at my face” is a saying used often here to contend with right-wing group’s insistence on “freedom,” often the kind that involves harming others; e.g. free speech absolutism and the “freedom” to spout neo-Nazi rhetoric that advocates for the murder of minorities, or the “freedom” to not get vaccinated and thus worsen a pandemic. A more full version might be “Your freedom to throw a punch ends where my face begins.” The idea is that it is fair to restrict a freedom if it supports the freedom of others — you might not trust governments to determine where those lines lie, and that’s fair, but that’s a separate issue.

Absolutely none of what you just said justifies Israel willfully bombing hostages.

I don’t know if libertarianism courts a different audience in Brazil, but in the U.S. it has a very rabidly right-wing audience who effectively want to tear down as much government as possible, and who view “your freedom ends at my face” as an insult. It’s the ideology of an extraordinarily unregulated market – a true “free market” – which is a monopolistic and wildly unethical disaster waiting to happen.

Anarcho-capitalism, which your username references, is all of that, only more. So you might understand why effectively everyone here is going to treat that with extreme suspicion.

It is, but DdCno1’s been taking a pro-Israel stance into a very, very pro-Palestine site. I really don’t know what else they’d expect besides pushback, honestly.

Why do you think voting is your only option?

It goes to show how I can say something so patently and obviously untrue and sarcastic and yet it still doesn’t register as such. America has developed such a hyper-focus on voting to the exclusion of all other possibilities that it’s basically learned helplessness at this point.

So you believe that erstwhile hostage rescuers have no responsibility to actually keep the hostages alive, then? Because you’re writing apologia for that.

a ruthless movement that would rather sacrifice every single Palestinian man, woman and child than surrender

You know, I’ve no love for Hamas whatsoever, but I can’t help but notice you consider “willingness to sacrifice civilians” to be somehow worse than, say, “actually, literally sacrificing civilians right now.” That’s not a very good look.

with the ICC waiting with handcuffs behind the banner

This implies other countries wouldn’t sooner dismantle the ICC than let it actually do its job, which sadly seems to not be the case.

^{(edit: typo)}