States and companies must end arms transfers to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations: UN experts
But hey… What do ‘UN Experts’ know, when we’ve got a proper internet rando to listen to.
Or did I ‘dO mY oWn ReAsErCh’ again…
Let me see if I can find what the New York Times approved opinion™ is…
Sorry, I thought you were here asking a reasonable question with my other reply. If I had known you were like this I wouldn’t have bothered.
Yep. So when you thought I was going to play the part of the meek little student at their teacher’s knee you were happy to respond, but as soon as it was clear I might actually disagree… Instantly I must be a Trump supporter, because literally the only option you can think of that isn’t agreeing with you entirely is ‘Trump’.
It’s pathetic.
it’s reality
Just declaring it to be ‘reality’ doesn’t stand in for an argument. I obviously disagree so if you want to have a discussion you have to forward some rational argument for your view.
Why will withholding a vote when neither candidate is acceptable not stop genocide?
You’ve simply declared that it will, but not given any reasons.
If both candidates are going to continue arms sales, then there’s no difference. The idea that Trump’s going to sell more is silly, there’s no current limit, Israel buys what they need. So the only affect I can have is in the long term.
Here, there’s two options:
Make it clear that genocide does not win votes.
Make it clear that even genocide is not going to dissuade me from voting Democrat and so give them basically a free ticket to ignore voters complety.
The former is the most likely to stop genocide.
Same goes for any other issue.
All the while you vote as if it were a duopoly, it will remain a duopoly. It’s not about getting ‘the least worst person’ into power next month, it’s about the long term value of making it clear to politicians that they cannot simply threaten us into voting for them, that they need to present policies we want in order to secure votes. Anything less and you might as well chuck democracy now. All they have to do is build up the bogeyman again and you’ll vote for them no matter what. In what way is that remotely “for the people, by the people”?
If Kamala wins I’ll talk shit, write letters, donate to causes, protest, and cause trouble from the first day she’s in office until the end of primary season 4 years from now
Why?
Most people in America want to end sales of arms to Israel, don’t want to be complicit in genocide.
And Harris is abusing her power by ignoring that to satisfy a few wealthy donors by threatening you all with Trump if you don’t let her do what she wants.
The only way to stop abuse of power is to stand up to it. If you let her (or her replacements) just frighten you into submission with bogeymen you might as well give up any hope of progress.
I live in a swing state and want to minimize the chances of Koncentration Kamp Kamala from getting elected so I directly supported Trump rather than indirectly.
I could no more vote Trump ‘tactically’ than I could Harris. I think one ought vote according to one’s concience. The whole notion of tactical voting makes a mockery of democracy, if no one could be persuaded to vote tactically there’d be significantly less ‘electioneering’. More like the Nordic model, with way more parties catering to a broader range of political views.
You only have to look at the current Democrat campaign, they barely need a policy at all, they’re running almost entirely on being not-Trump.
The DNC isn’t being run to get Dems in office, it’s a fucking grift where sometimes we do get a Dem in office.
True. And a cushy consulting job, or a few thousand in bonuses seems like an understandable inventive, if a misanthropic one.
But for those who do the footwork supporting such a system, I just cannot see why. What have the Democrats done to deserve such blind obedience? Is being not-Trump just that impressive these days?
If it’s not been posted already…
https://theintercept.com/2024/09/10/polls-arms-embargo-israel-weapons-gaza/
Banning sales of arms to Israel would not only attract a huge proportion of otherwise reluctant leftists, but might even steal votes from Trump as a small but not insignificant number of voters have been fooled by his ‘started no wars’ con. The idea that doing so would lose some key demographic is clearly not supported by the data.
But the Democratic strategists are not idiots. They must know this. So one of two things is the case; the polling is wrong, or the Democrats have absolutely no desire to move leftward on this and are willing to risk a Trump win to hold out on their position.
We can rule out the first because if the Democrats had better poll data they’d share it. Nothing to lose by doing so.
So we’re left with the second.
Odd then that the online vitriol is delivered not to the Democrats for cynically risking a Trump victory, but to leftists for being opposed to genocide.
Oh. I’ve just looked up ‘sea-lion’. Jesus fucking Christ. In one thread we’ve had the argument, from supposed progressives, that;
This is the progressive position now?
This isn’t politics, it’s a fucking religion.
if that “guaranteed” base grows, it provides a voting offset that could allow the candidate to worry less about losing the support of less progressive voters.
Sure.
But why would they? If the base that’s ‘grown’ is guaranteed, then why shift at all? Why not have the new larger guaranteed base, and the less progressive voters. After all, the guaranteed base is guaranteed, you don’t need to do anything to get their votes.
But let’s say they want to risk it for ideological reasons (no evidence at all that this is the case, but for the sake of argument we could assume it).
You’ve still not addressed the two main questions.
How do they know the extra votes came from left-leaning but ‘guaranteed’ voters, and not from voters who really liked their centrist policies?
If they have some way of knowing (polls, focus-groups etc) then why can’t they use that way of knowing to ask about voter commitment, and make the move to the left before the election, why do they need us to actually vote first to find out if we’re in this ‘guaranteed base’?
that’s as much energy as I’m willing to spend on someone who does not converse in good faith.
Ahh. The apocryphal ‘bad faith’. Last resort of failing argument. If in doubt, accuse your interlocutor of arguing in ‘bad faith’ and retreat to the comforting safety of your echo chamber.
Would you like a reassuring copy of the New York Times to read? I’m sure they’ll have an article somewhere about how everything’s going to be be just fine so long as we tick the right box at election time.
You’ve studiously avoided the question no one seems willing to address.
Why would anyone move their policies an inch to the left if they are assured of the votes anyway?
Doesn’t matter if they’re in the primaries, the presidential election or the bloody village mayor. No one will shift to meet the policies of a group whose votes they are guaranteed to get anyway.
Given there are other countries, like the Nordic countries, that have achieved greater quality of life for their people…
Ahh. The Nordics. You mean the countries famous for their coalitions where people vote even for the smaller candidates who suit their preferences to form small elements in a mixed government… Those Nordic countries?
Incidentally, the same Nordic countries that are now facing the same rise in racist populism that evey other country is facing across the globe?
It’s almost as if the problem were systemic and nothing to do with a bunch of leftists not wanting to vote in favour of genocide…
Indeed.
Four step process to uncontested neoliberal corporate bliss…
Local politicians > work way into DNC primary machine
Sounds very cloak-and-dagger. Aren’t these systems largely democratic? If so, why aren’t they caught in the same trap, they have to give their votes to the least worst candidate?
There’s not enough of us yet.
“Yet”? From when? The beginning of the socialist movement? Is there a point in time you begin to question this slow-and-steady policy? 100 years? 1000?
Is there some threshold at which you might begin to look at the utter failure of such a process, it’s total and utter net support for the status quo and start to question who really benefits?
Because if that day ever comes, you might take a glance at the media promoting such a view and the degree to which their owners and sources of revenue benefit from exactly the outcome this policy results in.
But I’m not holding my breath. Experience has taught me that people these days seems quite happy to believe that when powerful forces get exactly the results which benefit them most, it’s most likely to be a completely fortuitous coincide and anything else is just conspiracy theory.
I got the point. Just not the mechanism. It’s all very well to hand-waive vaguely toward ‘grassroots work’, but its far from clear how, under the voting policy in question, this will affect anything.
Let us say our grassroots campaign went really well and we get some great local politicians. Now what?
They advise Kamala (or her replacement) to drop support for genocide? Why would she listen? They’re going to be in no different a position to us, they have to vote in her favour no matter what all the while there’s a worse person on the ballot.
And why would anyone even advise it in the first place when leftist votes are guaranteed anyway? It’d be political insanity to risk loosing the centrist vote for no gain.
So, explain the mechanism. We get a great local politician and she does what…?
Well, if you consider your conclusions to be facts, not theories then what are you doing here? This is a forum for discussing the item in the OP. You can’t discuss facts, they’re merely presented. I fear you have this place confused with a schoolroom. If you want to present facts, write a textbook.
But this discussion isn’t about grassroots or local politicians. Following the logic espoused in the OP you’d turn out in droves to vote for a local politician who offers policies you agree with.
This discussion is about the presidential election and what to do about two candidates who both actively support genocide.
One could conceivably not vote for Kamala and then massively support your local grassroots movement and politicians, or… You could vote for Kamala and then massively support your local grassroots movement and politicians.
Talking about whether or not to vote for Kamala has no bearing on what you then do at a local level.
And if that local-level politician doesn’t offer policies you like, same logic. Why would they ever do so if they’re guaranteed your vote anyway?
What’s at stake here is people actively arguing that we should just guarantee one political party our votes, no matter what their policies are, out of blind faith.
That’s not a democracy, it’s a theocracy.
Your post seems to be attached as a response to mine. Since it addresses nothing in my post, I can only assume this was a mistake?
That’s a reasonable argument, but it leads to some pretty uncomfortable conclusions for democracy.
During our next “leftist organizing for the next several years.”, why would the Democrats budge an inch given that they know all they need to do is hold fast until the last 90 days and we’ll all fall into line and vote for them anyway?
We end up like the boy who cries wolf. All our protest and campaigns mean nothing because our votes are, in the end, absolutely guaranteed. The Democrats can have whatever policy positions they like.
I don’t see how 4 years or 4 days makes any difference. If they are guaranteed your vote come election day, they have no reason to shift policy in order to obtain it.
Yep. You caught me. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights… Famous for their memes. Did you see the one they did with the savvy looking cat… Hilarious…
Still, I must say I’m kind of flattered that you’ve gone to the effort of hacking into my Lemmy instance, finding my identity and then trawling though my internet history to find out what I have and haven’t been posting about for the last 20 years…