More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
The solution requires commitment to building power, i.e. leverage and numbers, gaining a political education, and engaging in action.
What I am suggesting is just the absolute bare minimum, and you all know it: genocide should be a red line and you are complicit if you vote for someone doing a genocide.
Your vote isn’t strategic, either. You are just demonstrating that you will put up with anything and will be ignorable for the indefinite future for them to do these and greater crimes. And by justifying it to yourself, you will fail to take the necessary steps to, in your words, “solve the problem”.
Great intro to philosophy lesson. In the real world, we have the choice between Harris and Trump. You can forget anyone else exists because our election system is broken. If I don’t vote, one of them will still win. Now, without philosophizing, what do we do to stop the violence?
I did not describe anything particularly philosophical.
Oh, so you just mean you are trying to be condescending and pretend I am not being reakistic. Unfortunately for this excuse for why you will vote for someone doing a genocide, I am pragmatic. I criticize your ideas of “strategy”, which are just bog standard lesser evil vote shaming trotted out to discipline Democrats’ empathetic voters every 4 years and suggest you take the first steps towards empowerment by doing the same. My hope would be that them asking you to support genocide would be enough to take that srep., that you could accept that there is not a greater evil than genocide, and that as a good person, you would be an opponent of genocide rather than complicit.
If you want to talk more specifically on being pragmatic when it cones to political power,I would be happy to do so. It is mostly about building leverage, which is basically the exact opposite of your rhetoric.
The system is working as intended.
But in your terminology, would you say it is more broken or less broken than when the Whigs dissolved and an abolitionist party took its place over the issue of slavery? In this scenario, you would be someone saying that you must always vote for the pro-slavers.
Yes, that is true. But are you going to orient yourself in opposition to genociders or are you going to decide on which one to support? I think it should be a red line.
Never again means never again for anyone. What do you think that phrase means?
“The violence” is far too vague for me to give you any real answer. If you mean US support for genocide, then you will need to join groups opposed to the genocide, participate in political education, and build those organizations so that they can make demands and enact material change, such as blockading weapons manufacturers. Or, if you can only understand politics through elections, you can spend your time organizing a principled anti-genocide voting bloc, ideally tied to some material interest. You have no leverage as a voter unless you can credibly threaten to withhold your vote. And your leverage is dramatically decreased when you act as an individual rather than an organized bloc.
Is that practical enough for you?
That was a lot of words that, in no way, answered my question.
It did answer your question but you clearly don’t actually care about the topic. It is just a rhetorical device for you to avoid thinking about your complicity in genocide.
Let me know when you have the courage of your convictions. If it were me, I would be damn sure I knew what I was talking about if there was any risk of me normalizing genocide.
It’s possible to vote Dem and still do all the other things you listed.
It is possible, but it doesn’t happen particularly often. The kind of thinking on display in this thread is defense of a barrier to doing these kinds of actions, from recognizing one’s own lack of political education, from developing a concrete notion of leverage or collective action.
When people do hold themselves to those standards but still hold out hope for Dems, they learn some uncomfortable lessons. The first one is that Democrats make you their opponent and gladly lie about you and will even throw their money and influence behind Republicans instead. Something else that people learn (at least when they are honest with themselves) is that they often don’t really have a concrete idea of how to make demands or build leverage, and so they will engage in actions and spin their wheels. The ones that are not honest with themselves will still claim a victory. The ones that are honest with themselves will engage in productive criticism and development of their political program.
But this is so many steps past what the people here are doing, relying on tired canards shared as memes. I would rather they at least get to the “try and fail” step of becoming politically educated and a force for humanity, but we are stuck at the “defend everything Dems tell us to do” phase.
As someone who is politically active in ways other than voting, I’m calling bullshit. You’re just making assumptions about how other people act, you have no evidence.
Is that so? What else do you do?
After you answer the same question
I have already described some of it throughout this thread. One if the things I do is organize with and among Palestinians to engage in actions and organization building.
Your turn.