After a day and several replies from people. I’ve come to the conclusion that people here are ok with their party and leaders supporting genocide and they attack the questioners (instead of their party leaders) who criticize those who support genocide. Critical thinking is scarce here.
I’m shameful of humanity.
You seem very happy with this democrat government. But would you start hating them if they include policy like ending support/funding of genocide?
that would be good also.
It’s good you finally learned about the Palestinian genocide, but threatening to let conservatives further mangle the country when you have a progressive alternative is selfish and incredibly narrow-minded.
stopping the US from sending weapons will not stop Israel.
they are a third party with plenty of international support and funding that is under no obligation to listen to the US.
The US can stop sending bombs tomorrow, they could have stopped sending bombs months ago and Israel’s military would atill be fully prepared to continue this war as long as they want to, regardless.
you are shooting yourself and everybody around you in the foot for rhe privilege of eating night soil by voting against harris.
And how exactly is not voting doing that when…
Either the Democrats are comfortably winning (in which case we can vote with our conscience), or they’re not (in which case vocal opposition to genocide might encourage them to change policies to garner our vote).
The alternative is that nothing will get them to change policies because they’re not interested in our vote. In which case the whole “turn up and the Democrats will move left” theory is nonsense.
“Either the Democrats are comfortably winning”
Don’t get comfortable in a democracy that works.
people get to vote who they want to vote for.
“The alternative is that…” - the illusion of only two choices comes from your having grown up with a broken democracy.
“In which case the whole “turn up and the Democrats will move left” theory is nonsense.”
this is nonense.
none of this is the neat logic game you want it to be.
in an election, people get to vote for who they want to vote for.
in this election, Harris is the clear better choice for people who are not selfish.
this does not mean that she wins.
And yet…
So presumably it is the “neat clear logic game” you want it to be.
You haven’t answered any of the criticisms raised against your argument.
It’s OK to just disagree with me and explain why, you know. You don’t have to label all opposing arguments as ‘nonsense’ (or misinformation, or ideologically biased, or whatever the latest buzz-term is…). You can just disagree. Humans are marvellous like that, we look at things differently from each other and form different views as a result. We even have this amazing tool ‘rational discourse’ whereby we can dissect those differences. It’s great.
If you think one (or more) of my criticisms flawed, then quote it and point out the flaw. Try it, you might like it.
“So presumably it is the “neat clear logic game” you want it to be.”
no, I literally said it isn’t the clear logic game you wanted to be.
“You haven’t answered any of the criticisms raised against your argument.”
i’ve addressed every criticism I’ve received so far, but if you wrote them to other people or somewhere else then I haven’t seen them.
Go ahead, ask away.
Yes,and then you went on to present a clear logic game of your own (vote for Kamala=good), hence my criticism.
I thought I had but…
If the Democrats are not assured victory (as you now seem to be saying) then why is the anti-genocide strategy supposed to be ‘vote for them anyway’, and not ‘refuse to vote for them unless they change their policy’.
We start from the premise that Democrats need votes (either because they’re losing, or because they don’t want to rest on their laurels). We agree one of these is the case, yes?
So your anti-genocide solution is to just give them the votes they need without asking for anything in return.
The solution @[email protected] suggested, which you’re arguing against, is to negotiate. To use the power we have as voters whose vote they need (or really, really want), to ask for a change in policy in return for that vote.
You haven’t explained why the latter won’t work other than the Democrats not wanting those votes, or not wanting to end the genocide.
If we assume both - the Democrats want to end genocide and want more votes, them why wouldn’t they offer to end genocide in exchange for more votes?
“Yes,and then you went on to present a clear logic game of your own (vote for Kamala=good), hence my criticism.”
you don’t understand the comment and are simplifying its specific conclusion to a fundamental moral rule you can understand that I did not make.
this is your exact same problem I pointed out before, your beliefs are overly simplistic. everything has to be black and white for you, including explanations of shades of gray.
“the Democrats are not assured victory (as you now seem to be saying)”
as I have been saying from the beginning and consistently throughout, nobody is assured victory in an election.
that is how elections work.
"why is the anti-genocide strategy supposed to be ‘vote for them anyway’, and not ‘refuse to vote for them unless they change their policy’. "
it is not.
again, you’re lumping in one thing with everything else for no reason.
If you are a single issue voter, and your vote is determined by the last single year of a 70-year military policy, that’s your limiting judgment.
you have irrationally decided that a prospective presidential candidate from neither Israel nor Palestine, who wasn’t born when US military aid to Israel began, needs to be held politically responsible for all of us history despite its irrelevancy to the issue at hand, the issue of discussion, her clear advantage over the only other significant presidential candidate.
that is selfish and short-sighted, but it isn’t fundamentally wrong because you have that choice as a voter.
refuse to vote for whoever you want to, but closely examine why you are refusing to vote and if it makes sense within your own values (such as they are ), the context of the whole rest of the world or at least the rest of the political landscape.
You’re willing to sacrifice American minority civil rights, climate change, abortion rights, every other progressive policy, to… demonstrate your newly found conscience regarding a third country that you are not part of the electorate of?
that is mind-blowingly selfish and wrong-headed, sort of like deliberately setting explosives and blowing up your family, home kitchen and the rest of the block because a McDonald’s restaurant you just found out about introduced some sort of allergen ingredient into their burgers.
“We start from the premise that Democrats need votes (either because they’re losing, or because they don’t want to rest on their laurels). We agree one of these is the case, yes?”
not at all. you have made up two possible reasons that you can understand out of many.
you are playing in your sandbox, I am observing and gently pointing out the difference between sand and dog vomit.
“So your anti-genocide solution is to just give them the votes they need without asking for anything in return.”
no.
you’re make-believing random assumptions, straw men and limited inevitabilities rather than asking questions.
hip, inconsiderate cynicism isn’t going to get you anywhere with me; sincerity and honesty in discourse is the only way you’re going to move forward.
“…suggested, which you’re arguing against, is to negotiate…”
they literally said " Unless they give in to our demands", they would rry to tank the US in retaliation.
first, that’s unrealistic, as most people don’t have such a limited understanding of the political process.
second, that is not good faith negotiation, That’s impotent crybaby tantrum territory.
set over the backdrop of a meme that maybe took them one minute to put together as all the effort they were willing to expend on their “political ideology”.
“To use the power we have as voters whose vote they need (or really, really want), to ask for a change in policy in return for that vote.”
That’s fine, go for it. You’re attacking the current democrats from the flawed premise that the Israeli military and government is sonehow dependent on US support alone, which is as false as a notion can be, but trying to effect change through voting is a good, solid place to start from.
“You haven’t explained why the latter won’t work other than the Democrats not wanting those votes, or not wanting to end the genocide.”
Yes I have, you didn’t understand the explanation.
equating the current election and all of its complexity with a single half century old policy of mutual political support with a US ally is wrong-headed.
a minority of voters are willing to throw away their country.
these are conservatives.
an even smaller minority of voters, who ostensibly don’t believe in conservative policies, are willing to join the conservatives to demonstrate their outrage toward a political party not any more responsible than anybody else for a separate Nations policy of genocide that has been happening for more than half a century.
I don’t know if you can understand this yet, but your anger toward Israel is a complete non-issue toward the reality of the 2024 election.
If the public display of your newfound conscience is important enough to you to sacrifice all of your other beliefs and the rights of everybody you know and then some, that is your selfish prerogative as a voter.
“If we assume both - the Democrats want to end genocide and want more votes, them why wouldn’t they offer to end genocide in exchange for more votes?”
The answer is in your flawed assumptions. If you’re willing to sacrifice your own and everybody else’s rights because you just learned about what Israel is doing to Palestine, then you clearly aren’t in the right mind to be swayed toward social compassion or your own conscience, since you have not yet developed a conscience.
you don’t have any real beliefs if you claim to care about Palestinian peope but you don’t care about any Americans around you or the society you are a part of.
You have not suddenly become politically aware. You have joined a trend, a fad.
you are an ignorant radical, and it is not worth the trouble or sacrifice for the larger democratic platform, tirelessly fighting for your civil rights, to placate or give in to the selfish demands of an ignorant radical (or a toddler) for the possibility of a small number of votes.
being against genocide doesn’t mean you have to vote one way or the other.
it is one issue among hundreds.
examine all of the issues and choose where to vote.
I strongly support third party voting (called " voting" in democratically free countries).
in this election, one of the candidates, a minority herself (within context) has already made historically significant progress in most of the environmental and social policies important to me.
she is who I am voting for because I have an independent, practical, comprehensive and expanding political understanding and elective ideology. a firm foundation from which to analyze policy and make decisions upon.
you should develop one too.
Tl;Dr
“I’m really clever and have thought through my decision really carefully so anyone who disagrees with that decision must be really ignorant because for some reason it’s literally impossible for rational people to just disagree about something and discuss it.”
Do you have any intention of actually answering the question, or is it all just going to be “you’re so ignorant, you don’t understand”?
Have a read of this paper by David Christensen (Chair of Epistemology at Brown University). https://philarchive.org/archive/CHRDQA
It’s s good overview of the issue we’re stuck on here. You’re taking a strict ‘Steadfast’ position that since you’ve reasoned P, anyone reasoning not-P must be either of lower epistemic status, or have reasoned poorly. But as Christensen shows, most epistemologists recognise that this position is flawed (p.2).
Anyway, have a read, if you feel so inclined. See if any of it makes sense to you, or maybe opens up some epistemological issues you perhaps hadn’t considered.
I think supporting/funding genocide shouldn’t be democratic party policy, it would suit more on far-right. But reality is different. Even after thousands of posts, emails to representatives, cases in court, protests in campuses and rallies. Democrats are eager to support/fund a genocide.
Democratic party has become a far-right party.
incorrect.
democrats are protesting Palestine.
not by writing lazy memes, but by writing the letters, going out in marches and getting arrested like you’re talking about.
“I think supporting/funding genocide shouldn’t be democratic party policy”
meither do democrats.
“Democrats are eager to support/fund a genocide.”
completely incorrect:
you know what’s been consistent for 70 years? despite which party was in power, Israel, a country established specifically to avoid further genocide, was supported with US financial help and military aid.
you still believe the fiction that there are two political parties and that’s how politics works, so you’re operating off that principle.
that is a flawed premise, and so your conclusions are foolishly and falsely diametric.
“Democratic party has become a far-right party.”
this is idiotic.
democrats, especially for the past 4 years, have successfully taken the presidency away from Trump, who actually enacted far-right policies. this is extremely significant and the presidency was taken forcefully away from Trump because of the democratic party promising and then delivering progressive change.
biden and the democrats have also furthered every significant progressive policy more than any President in recent years, certainly more than I would have guessed - civil rights from minorities, legal and social funding for minorities, climate change, on and on to include every major progressive policy; democrats are pro-choice, pro- change, none of these are far right positions.
It’s great that the half a century plus old Palestinian genocide you just found out about outrages you, but the world hasn’t suddenly become black and white because of a piece of knowledge that is new to you.
third party voters are as valid a democratic electorate as the hardline conservative and the hard line liberal ever were.
people get to vote who they want to vote for.
you should find out which policies you actually believe in and vote according to your beliefs.
do you believe in social consciousness? do you believe in personal autonomy? do you believe in taxing the rich? do you believe in social services? do you believe in combating climate change? sustainable technology? Harris has already made material strides in these progressive positions while the other major candidate has actively worked against those policies.
there are two major candidates, one of them is going to win.
you, as a voter, are responsible for which one wins either way.