Almost every single response in this thread has been misinterpreting me and putting words in my mouth. Let me make this clear. I am not saying that just slowing it down is sufficient. I am saying that none of us know how to stop it immediately or we already would have done that, so while we try to figure that out, buying a little time is a good idea. Maybe it fails to produce results, which would be tragic, but maybe, just maybe, if we don’t give into defeat before we even try, we can actually stop it. Slowing it down means time to organize, time for Israel’s reputation to degrade, time to do something about it.
Except the context of this is in response to Democrats who are making the criticism of “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good” and lambasting lefties for “purity testing”. They always leave out the word “genocide” though in these complaints and left-punching rants.
So saying “yeah that’s right, let’s settle for the harm reduction” is essentially saying “yeah ok we’ll settle for Zionist Democrat politicians to “slow” the genocide” despite those genocidaires having 0 intention of stopping or slowing the genocide. It’s all fake and left-punching, that is the context you are walking into obliviously and getting mad at people for “putting words in your mouth”. No, we are responding to the years long dialectic with the left-punchers. You are the one that is not paying attention and entering mid-conversation.
Liberals and Democrats fundamentally don’t understand that they are not “good”. They are shit and evil scum. They are not the “lesser evil”.
I’ll agree that a huge chunk of the democratic party, most especially at the apex of power in the party, are shit stains, but I think democrats get a lot of leeway to do what they do because people continuously vote republicans into office, so they don’t really have to cater to their base because their base thinks the republicans are even worse. If a lot of the leftists and other nonvoters who typically abstained from voting opted in instead, we might starting seeing democrats win more often, and if people are less scared of republicans getting into office, democrats have to start actually responding to their base’s demands. Keep in mind that low voter turnout almost always favors republicans, so simply by increasing the portion of people who actually cast votes, we weaken the republican party and push the democrats towards actually having to answer to people.
Is it a perfect solution? God, no. Is it all we should do? Absolutely the fuck not. But democrats are only so effective at keeping us from pulling to the left because most Americans on the left (of their political spectrum) are too busy focusing on preventing even more drift to the right. If elections and votes didn’t matter, the republicans wouldn’t spend so much damn time and energy on disenfranchising voters and gerrymandering.
Of course not. It’s a small piece of what we should be doing overall. No election is going to singlehandedly fix anything substantial. We should participate anyway so we can choose who we’re putting pressure on through other means.
The point people are trying to make to you is that democrats cannot be trusted to slow down genocide. We don’t believe they’re capable or willing of doing that. We don’t believe there’s much difference between the Republicans and democrats. We don’t believe in the distinction you’re making, which is that Republicans can’t be reasoned with, but democrats can possibly be reasoned with. We think that both parties will follow a path of genocide regardless of external pressure or public sentiment.
The point people are trying to make to you is that democrats cannot be trusted to slow down genocide.
Correct, the democratic party will not stop Israel of their own free will. I’m not convinced they can’t be forced to, though. Hell, if republicans hated supporting Israel enough, the republicans could be forced to, too, but republicans love it, so not happening. The issue here isn’t so much their default stances as it is the fact that a large enough portion of the base is upset with them that we might be able to force them if we collectively tried instead of just giving up and assuming it’s impossible.
Your plan to force Democrats to “slow down” a genocide they’re causing is to promise to vote for them no matter what, especially when they’re doing genocide.
The biggest reason Democrats keep getting worse is their competition, not the fact we vote for them in spite of deep flaws. Every time the Republicans win, Democrats insist they need to court centrists and move right. Every single time America proves they’re willing to elect someone even worse, Democrats take that as a sign to degrade further.
Republicans pull the US political spectrum to the right while Democrats act as a one-way ratchet preventing us from sliding back to the left. Like any ratchet, though, they’re not an effective tool for maintaining heavy tension/torque/whatever long term. The process only works when Republicans consistently come alone and pull to relieve the pressure. If that stops happening, Democrats start failing at their jobs like a ratchet put under too much strain and breaking. And that would be trivial if more people voted. Republicans are highly dependent on gerrymandering and voter suppression to maintain power, so if leftists overcame their electoral defeatism and actually voted for someone who has a strong chance of winning, we could start making that a reality.
Well, compared to the Republicans who encouraged it, who invaded Iran, who gave Israel room to invade Lebanon, who seized Maduro out of Venezuela, who are potentially preparing to invade Cuba… Yeah. It was probably the better option. And my point is that the election is about choosing who we can put pressure on, not on singlehandedly fixing everything at the ballot box.
Instead, they lost, Republicans did all the same and more, and so they released the election autopsy, admitted Gaza was the reason they lost, and started to pivot, right? Nope. Your plan to withhold your vote didn’t change their mind, and now Republicans are doing as much or more.
See, you cannot address the obvious contradictory nature of your rhetoric. You can only deflect to repeating the original false rhetoric in a way that obfuscates it.
You’re not saying anything that is your own idea whatsoever. You are merely acting as a conduit for Zionist Democrat messaging in the 2024 presidential election, somehow never updated based on the facts of what has transpired before and after.
“Slow down” the Democrat-sponsored genocide by promising to always vote Democrat. Really think through what you are saying, or really, what was told to you by others to say and think. Analyze it. Ask yourself: in what ways does it not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did these ideas originate and what purpose do they serve?
The reason you are opposed is because you are carrying water for genocidaires and are using exhausted logic that every person on this instance is intimately familiar with and rehashed for months and months, often directly working against Zionist democrats to shut us down.
The reason you feel that words are being put in your mouth is because they were put in your mouth by liberal Zionists and you haven’t thought about their actual meaning.
“Slow down” the Democrat-sponsored genocide by promising to always vote Democrat. Really think through what you are saying, or really, what was told to you by others to say and think. Analyze it. Ask yourself: in what ways does it not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did these ideas originate and what purpose do they serve?
Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but I think the democrat party can be forced in a way that the republican party simply cannot. If we leave them to their own devices, of course nothing will change. If we just vote them in, sit on our hands, and hope for the best, yeah, you’re right, Gaza is just as fucked as they were beforehand. But enough of the democrats’ base is upset over the issue that they just might be able to be forced to come to the table. Republicans, though, can’t even give a shit about the brown people they live next to, let alone ones on the other side of the global with different beliefs. It’s not about thinking that electing the democrats will magically fix it. It’s about nudging the odds in our favor at every available opportunity so that, eventually, it adds up to enough to make a difference.
The reason you feel that words are being put in your mouth is because they were put in your mouth by liberal Zionists and you haven’t thought about their actual meaning.
Or maybe I just haven’t given into the cynical defeatism everyone here has. I don’t expect to work miracles with a ballot. It’s a small angling for a better position so that the next step is more successful. It may not be a big difference, but fuck, it takes an hour or two once a year at most in the vast majority of jurisdictions. One of either the republican or democrat candidate will be elected because a first-past-the-post voting system guarantees that outcome. Elect the closest thing you can get to what you want and then hold their fucking balls to the grill top until they give it. Take the hour or two away from whatever you were doing that you think is more productive, then go right back to it.
You demonstrated the exact opposite. Rather than address what I said, including the issues with your logic, and showing any kind of critical analysis of “vote for the genocidaires to reduce genocide”, you just repeated yourself about how voting for Democrats is smart and that you will, through unstated mechanisms, make them do what is right by sacrificing the only leverage you have, electorally.
Your logic is not smart and did not listen to what I said. It is party PR to get people to be complacent. It is not what the actual advocates against the genocide of Palestine tell you to do.
I think the democrat party can be forced in a way that the republican party simply cannot.
Let me preview 90% of the rest of your response: you say this 5 different ways and yet provide zero mechanisms or coherent logic for how it actually happens. The only thing you can mechanistically list is the part where you vote for Democrats - those responsible for the hot genocide in Gaza - unquestioningly and without reservation, with no use of leverage at any point.
I wil not respond to those bits point-by-point because they don’t deserve a point-by-point response. They are not serious ideas by a serious person advocating for a serious action. THey are the excuses of someone who wants to believe that their personal inactivity on this issue is excused because voting Democrat like they did is actually smart and good and don’t criticize me I’m a good person that likes brown people (except when my boy Biden kills them that’s fine if it’s done politely and he’s “working for a ceasefirre”).
Or maybe I just haven’t given into the cynical defeatism everyone here has.
No, I recognize what you’re saying because it’s utterly unoriginal genocide apologia from 2-3 years ago. Its purpose was and remains to excuse genocide when done by Democrats and to ensure that you and others feel good about doing so. This is also why you ignore basically everything I and others say to you.
I actually do organizing work on this topic and have done since long before October 7. You can shut the fuck up about defeatism, both in that I never give up on Palestine (and fuck you for lying about that) and because I know you don’t do shit, given your ignorance of this topic.
I don’t expect to work miracles with a ballot. It’s a small angling for a better position so that the next step is more successful. It may not be a big difference, but fuck, it takes an hour or two once a year at most in the vast majority of jurisdictions.
Are you still just talking about voting and meaningless platitudes about how things then just happen later?
One of either the republican or democrat candidate will be elected because a first-past-the-post voting system guarantees that outcome.
See, it doesn’t matter what I say. You just start ranting about how the two party system works as if it’s relevant to anything I have said. Let me help you: I understand electoralism better than you do. We were all liberals here once. Your presumption that you need to explain FPTP is arrogant and only reveals that you fundamentally do not understand who you are speaking with.
Elect the closest thing you can get to what you want and then hold their fucking balls to the grill top until they give it.
By promising to vote for them no matter what! Boy you sure to have their balls held! Hold em! Be tough! They’re so scared you might vote for them even harder and keep telling everyone else to do it too!
Take the hour or two away from whatever you were doing that you think is more productive, then go right back to it.
Vote for genociders, says AHemlocksLie! It only takes an hour or two! I’m convinced.
Fine, I tried to speed things up a bit because I have a deluge of notifications over this, but let’s go back to it.
You’re not saying anything that is your own idea whatsoever. You are merely acting as a conduit for Zionist Democrat messaging in the 2024 presidential election, somehow never updated based on the facts of what has transpired before and after.
“Slow down” the Democrat-sponsored genocide by promising to always vote Democrat. Really think through what you are saying, or really, what was told to you by others to say and think. Analyze it. Ask yourself: in what ways does it not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did these ideas originate and what purpose do they serve?
Yeah, as you present it, it doesn’t sound like it makes any sense. In the greater context of the US political environment, though, I think it makes sense. What happens every time Democrats lose to Republicans? Democrats use it as an excuse to court centrists and move to the right. So if every loss pushes Democrats to the right, not the left, how exactly do you expect to push them left by costing them elections? In what way does that not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did ideas of electoral defeatism originate, and what purpose do they serve?
Let’s look at this the other way around. Democrats lost, and it was very likely expressly because of Gaza. They wrote up an election autopsy on why they lost. They then released that report, admitted they were wrong, and pivoted to supporting Gaza, right? Right? Yeah, about that, didn’t happen. We just continued it while also starting shit in a bunch of other countries.
The reason you are opposed is because you are carrying water for genocidaires and are using exhausted logic that every person on this instance is intimately familiar with and rehashed for months and months, often directly working against Zionist democrats to shut us down.
Or maybe it’s because things got worse when we elected Trump, with invasions of Iran, Venezuela, potentially Cuba, and giving Israel a chance to go at Lebanon. In exchange, we got a spike in violence after his inauguration followed by a “ceasefire” where things just slowed down, and I’m much more inclined to ascribe the ceasefire to global backlash over Trump. I’d fully expect Trump to do everything he could to take credit once it became inevitable, though.
The reason you feel that words are being put in your mouth is because they were put in your mouth by liberal Zionists and you haven’t thought about their actual meaning.
There’s not much to say here other than I disagree, but I’ll include it to avoid being accused to ignoring anything again.
With that, moving on into this post.
It is not what the actual advocates against the genocide of Palestine tell you to do.
Who do you mean when you say “actual advocates”, and what strategies are they recommending? This is too vague for me to really address, but it sounds potentially useful to know.
Let me preview 90% of the rest of your response: you say this 5 different ways and yet provide zero mechanisms or coherent logic for how it actually happens. The only thing you can mechanistically list is the part where you vote for Democrats - those responsible for the hot genocide in Gaza - unquestioningly and without reservation, with no use of leverage at any point.
Well hey, that leverage got used anyway, so let’s look at the results: tried to withhold the autopsy report, didn’t admit Gaza was a problem for them, didn’t try to pivot at all. But at least we got involved in Iran, Venezuela, potentially Cuba, and helped Israel get into Lebanon. Is that the success you hoped for? Because it kinda sounds like you won nothing and helped make things worse.
They are not serious ideas by a serious person advocating for a serious action. THey are the excuses of someone who wants to believe that their personal inactivity on this issue is excused because voting Democrat like they did is actually smart and good and don’t criticize me I’m a good person that likes brown people (except when my boy Biden kills them that’s fine if it’s done politely and he’s “working for a ceasefirre”).
Get the fuck over yourself. I’m not okay with any of it. Thinking that things would be better under Democrats isn’t a glowing endorsement of them. Like I’ve already said here, Democrats move right when Republicans win elections. We should not just vote them in and hope all is well. We should choose who we think is more susceptible to being pressured, and then heap as much pressure on them as possible through whatever means you think will be most effective.
No, I recognize what you’re saying because it’s utterly unoriginal genocide apologia from 2-3 years ago. Its purpose was and remains to excuse genocide when done by Democrats and to ensure that you and others feel good about doing so. This is also why you ignore basically everything I and others say to you.
Sure, totally that and not the fact that we knew things would get even worse under Trump, like with the multiple invasions and abduction I’ve already mentioned.
I actually do organizing work on this topic and have done since long before October 7. You can shut the fuck up about defeatism, both in that I never give up on Palestine (and fuck you for lying about that) and because I know you don’t do shit, given your ignorance of this topic.
I could have phrased that better, so I’m sorry for the impression it gave. I did not mean defeatism on the topic of Palestine. I meant defeatism on the topic of elections.
You’re right that I don’t get to do as much as I’d like on the topic. Unfortunately, life has put significant constraints on my opportunities to stay well informed and participate. I try to get exposure to non-corporate news, I try to join protests when they’re close enough and I have the time, but just staying fed and housed takes up an absurd amount of my time. Despite that, I try when I can. And when I end up discussing it with a bunch of people who profess to care deeply and know what must be done, I don’t get genuine suggestions for how to help or anything like that. I get verbally abused and accused of advocating for it. I’m here with an open mind and trying to engage in good faith when I’ve received dozens of responses, taking the time to read and respond as best I can to almost every single one, I’ve probably responded to closing in on 20 comments with 20+ notifications remaining, and so far, only one or two have tried to actually engage and provide information. The vast majority have only tried to make me feel like an idiot for disagreeing. I’ve learned a little about the situation as a result of it, but most of what I’ve learned is that Hexbear is full of bitter assholes who will pile on to verbally abuse me for disagreeing.
Are you still just talking about voting and meaningless platitudes about how things then just happen later?
I never said things just happen later, and I explicitly said to do it and then go do whatever you think is most effective. This is the type of thing I’m talking about when I complain of people putting words in my mouth. They avoid things I explicitly said to make it easier to belittle me and what I’m saying. The point was never to stop doing what’s most effective. The point was to elect whoever of the available candidates will be most vulnerable to those effective things. Everyone here is so sure they know the Right Way that I’m not even gonna try to say what that is, but whatever you think it is, one of the two potential victors is more vulnerable to that than the other. I think Democrats would be easier to break overall compared to Republicans. I don’t think either will be easy to break, but that’s all the more reason to push the odds in our favor by influencing who we’re trying to break.
See, it doesn’t matter what I say. You just start ranting about how the two party system works as if it’s relevant to anything I have said. Let me help you: I understand electoralism better than you do. We were all liberals here once. Your presumption that you need to explain FPTP is arrogant and only reveals that you fundamentally do not understand who you are speaking with.
Or maybe I’m just not intimately familiar with every community on the internet. I saw a post, I made a response, turns out everyone here has a very particular set of views, which is becoming more and more apparent as I work through the dozens and dozens of responses I got. I didn’t seek out Hexbear to start shit with a specific community. I can stumble across your posts if anyone in my instance subscribes to the community, and you may think it arrogant to point that out here on Lemmy, but I’d remind you you seem to have forgotten there are ways to find yourself commenting here without intimate familiarity with the community norms.
But I appreciate the arrogant insistence that anyone who disagrees with you clearly just fails to understand the topic as deeply as you do.
By promising to vote for them no matter what! Boy you sure to have their balls held! Hold em! Be tough! They’re so scared you might vote for them even harder and keep telling everyone else to do it too!
Realistically, we should be voting in primaries, too. That’s the best way to influence the Democrat party, especially if Republicans are failing to provide an actual opponent. If the biggest threat to a candidate isn’t from outside the party, it must come from within, and their biggest fear becomes losing the primary. If we make it crystal clear that a push to the right is intolerable, suddenly, trying to court centrists and fleeing Republicans is suicide. Instead, every time we get pissed at Democrats, what do we do? We elect a Republican. What do the Democrats do in response? They see moving right as viable and do so.
But I appreciate the arrogant insistence that anyone who disagrees with you clearly just fails to understand the topic as deeply as you do.
See, you just can’t stop lying. Straw men to play the victim, over and over. You came here in ignorance, you admit to having no organizing experience on this topic and failing to keep up and you demonstrate this plainly, which is why I extracted this from you: you were not behaving in accordance with that reality.
Just be honest.
Realistically, we should be voting in primaries, too.
lmao holy shit you think this is insightful.
That’s the best way to influence the Democrat party, especially if Republicans are failing to provide an actual opponent.
Is that so? Have you ever run a primary campaign? Do you know elected socialists? What are their experiences? What can they accomplish? What is their relationship to the party?
If the biggest threat to a candidate isn’t from outside the party, it must come from within, and their biggest fear becomes losing the primary.
Wrong on both counts. Their biggest fear is losing position and status within the party apparatus and as you can see, this easily survives election losses. This is why they will lose elections instead of move left on key topics. A primary is only disruptive to some climbers. And when they do perceive that threat, which was always present even when Republicans win every other election (you still believe their lies about needing to move right implicitly), their response is to fight if with their entire apparatus. To punch left. So to the extent that losing a primary is feared, it does not translate into a left shift. That is not how the party works. The nominal moves left are individual politicians (alleging to be outsiders) winning those primaries instead. The party reacts to them, even moves right in response.
If we make it crystal clear that a push to the right is intolerable
Intolerable? Didn’t you promise to vote for them in the general regardless? Do words mean anything to you? Champ, you tolerate genocide.
suddenly, trying to court centrists and fleeing Republicans is suicide. Instead, every time we get pissed at Democrats, what do we do? We elect a Republican. What do the Democrats do in response? They see moving right as viable and do so.
I try to get exposure to non-corporate news, I try to join protests when they’re close enough and I have the time, but just staying fed and housed takes up an absurd amount of my time. Despite that, I try when I can. And when I end up discussing it with a bunch of people who profess to care deeply and know what must be done, I don’t get genuine suggestions for how to help or anything like that.
You barge into an enti-genocide space promoting genocidaires and whine when you are criticized for bad faith behavior after receiving tons of responses trying to help you understand. You reply to those responses by digging in your heels and demanding sources and repeating your original false claims ad nauseum. The fact that you think you aren’t the problem here is itself the problem. No humility in the face of knowing your own political naivete, happy to make excuses and blame everyone else, while you still belabor falsified talking points and ignore what people write to you.
You would not be useful in a pro-Palestine organizing space. You haven’t learned to decenter yourself or accept criticism and would drag everyone around you down. Politics is not about you. To quote a great thinker, “get the fuck over yourself”. You will only be useful when you can subsume yourself to the cause, and that includes prioritizing learning about it and developing correct opinions on it. This isn’t a hobby or a media franchise to argue about on the internet, it’s not Superman vs. Batman, it is a world historical project to end unfathomable oppression.
I get verbally abused and accused of advocating for it
See, you still don’t understand why people have written you off. No responsibility taken. You fundamentally don’t understand how to speak or act and are still reacting purely defensively. This is why I have given up the pretense of respecting you: you were acting like this long before anyone was directly pointing it out. Basically everyone gave you leeway - at first.
I’m here with an open mind
You have demonstrated the exact opposite. You are intransigent, deflect from criticism of your ideas, and lead with condescension. You have a false self image.
and trying to engage in good faith
Clearly this is not the case. You seem to not even recognize evasive bad faith behavior even when it is laid out for you specifically and with examples. Your response, even then, is continued evasion. You have to take responsibility eventually or you’ll always have these experiences.
Responding to comments does not make good faith by the way.
taking the time to read and respond as best I can to almost every single one, I’ve probably responded to closing in on 20 comments with 20+ notifications remaining,
That’s not very many. This… demonstrates good faith? Personally, I think good faith is about responding germanely, taking feedback seriously, and not being dishonest in interactions.
and so far, only one or two have tried to actually engage and provide information.
This is a lie. I’ve seen at least six or seven and I’m not even trying to keep count. I’m one of them. You have a pattern of trying to ignore correction, including with specific examples, and trying to cling to the original falsehoods and repeat them as nauseum. Again, you need to spend time reading not replying one by one. It’s clear your focus is on rescuing your bad and harmful ideas comment-by-comment target rather than developing understanding.
The vast majority have only tried to make me feel like an idiot for disagreeing.
You should feel like an idiot for disagreeing, your ideas are bad and harmful, they aren’t your item, and you’re publicly doubling down on them over and over again. That’s a foolish thing to do. At no point were you forced to open your yapper and do any of that.
Now, if we focus just on the original sin of saying some bad and harmful ideas, you’ll see that the direct responses are correcting you. They explain how and why you are wrong. It is only after you double down and act like you need to be convinced (as if you knew anything in the first place) and did no research of your own and seemingly have no actual interest in the topic beyond “vote for genociders” that the disrespect piles on. And it’s not unique to this comment section, you also exhausted the patience of others discussing Ukrainian neo-Nazis where, again bathed in liberal talking points and the associated ignorance, your proceeded to engage in bad faith, treat your own baseless claims as the default truth and demand explanations and citations from others lest you withhold your agreement (oh no!).
I’ve learned a little about the situation as a result of it, but most of what I’ve learned is that Hexbear is full of bitter assholes who will pile on to verbally abuse me for disagreeing.
Yes it’s our fault that you promoted genociders and responded in bad faith to correction. If only we had responded with patient explanations first! Oh wait. We did and that didn’t work either.
Sounds like a you problem.
I never said things just happen later
Yes you did. You were extremely vague about what happens later, so I am describing this accurately. Despite me prompting you five or six times and explaining why you have nothing to actually do after promising to perma-vote for Democrats no matter if they do genocide, you still have nothing and refuse to address why you have nothing. You just deflect over and over again.
and I explicitly said to do it and then go do whatever you think is most effective.
It is amazing that you think this is a different plan from “and then things just happen”.
This is the type of thing I’m talking about when I complain of people putting words in my mouth. They avoid things I explicitly said to make it easier to belittle me and what I’m saying.
No, I accurately described what you’re saying: you have no plan for after voting for Dems no matter what. This vague hand waving lets you pretend otherwise, but we know very well that you don’t even care about the political project, you don’t actually think about how the changes would actually happen, and yet you pretend to be explaining how they do.
The point was never to stop doing what’s most effective. The point was to elect whoever of the available candidates will be most vulnerable to those effective things.
No, the point was “vote Blue no matter who” and then you don’t really have any actual thoughts. You think things will just happen after that. Somehow after giving away leverage you will gain leverage. But you don’t know how. You say they will be moved left, pressured, forced. But you don’t know how. That’s not your priority. You haven’t thought about it. And when I correctly point this out, you aren’t honest about it.
Everyone here is so sure they know the Right Way that I’m not even gonna try to say what that is
You don’t even know what it is, and there is still variety here so it’s not just one thing. See, you are still fibbing and trying to save face. Just acknowledge ignorance when you have it. People who do know things can easily clock a fibber. You aren’t actually saving face, you’re building a bad reputation.
but whatever you think it is, one of the two potential victors is more vulnerable to that than the other.
Your thinking is to devoid of mechanism that you believe Democrats are always more vulnerable to every single possible means of opposition than Republicabs. Literally. This is your impregnable belief system, it does not require evidence or coherence or logic.
I think Democrats would be easier to break overall compared to Republicans. I don’t think either will be easy to break, but that’s all the more reason to push the odds in our favor by influencing who we’re trying to break.
See how you pointlessly repeat your original claims and beliefs? Do you not even recognize the irony in repeating this in response to what you quoted? Do you not see the irony in hand waving about what actions are taken after voting for Blue No Matter Who? You’re just proving me right.
Or maybe I’m just not intimately familiar with every community on the internet.
And yet you have assumed we don’t know electoralism and repeatedly try to explain it despite it being quite obvious that we’ve heard this all before. I’ve told you repeatedly that we have. Yet you can’t stop yourself from trying to place yourself in the lecturing position, completely pointlessly talking about FPTP as if it addresses anything we’ve said (it doesn’t). You’re really just navel gazing, repeating your own understanding to shore up your own confidence, but it’s condescending and demeaning to the people directly in front of you.
Like I keep saying: shut the fuck up and read. You don’t know who you’re talking to or what you’re talking about. Until you realize this you cannot learn and be less harmful.
I saw a post, I made a response, turns out everyone here has a very particular set of views, which is becoming more and more apparent as I work through the dozens and dozens of responses I got.
This is seemingly your first experience with the left. This is how little you understand politics. So why are you still arguing?
I didn’t seek out Hexbear to start shit with a specific community
Your claims and behavior would be wrong and unacceptable regardless of context, though I’m sure you’d find plenty of agreement in genocide tolerant liberal spaces.
I can stumble across your posts if anyone in my instance subscribes to the community, and you may think it arrogant to point that out here on Lemmy, but I’d remind you you seem to have forgotten there are ways to find yourself commenting here without intimate familiarity with the community norms.
Why am I supposed to care about this? Community norms? When did I say anything about community norms? Your bad behavior is bad in any space.
Fine, I tried to speed things up a bit because I have a deluge of notifications over this, but let’s go back to it.
Poor baby.
Yeah, as you present it, it doesn’t sound like it makes any sense. In the greater context of the US political environment, though, I think it makes sense.
So yet again you are going to avoid critically analyzing your logic and just repeat your vague handwaving stories than deal with the contradiction. You can’t acknowledge the fundamental self-defeat aspect, you have to avoid discussing it. See, this is dishonest behavior.
What happens every time Democrats lose to Republicans? Democrats use it as an excuse to court centrists and move to the right.
They also say that when they win. Time to reach across the aisle and get things done, right? You need to expand your thinking to actually consider the alternative because your post hoc ergo propter hoc is cherry picked. The reality is that Democrats always want to favor their bourgeois machinery, their donor networks, their media access and relations, their think tank and NGO graft network, and the personal professional mobility built into that system (party climbers). And this applies a filter for who has power and what they do with it.
What happened in Nevada when DSA DemSoca electorally gained nominal control of the party? Do you know?
So if every loss pushes Democrats to the right, not the left, how exactly do you expect to push them left by costing them elections?
You’re again confusing me for someone who thinks electoralism and “pushing Democrats left” is viable. I am simply pointing out that your rhetoric is self-defeating and illogical and that if you did want to push Democrats left you wouldn’t subscribe to the theory of throwing away all leverage by promising to vote for them no matter what. You have clearly never tried to make anything happen electorally nor analyzed your inevitable policy failures.
I’ll remind you that your logic is to have literally no situation in which you don’t provide a Democrat support, at least so long as you don’t believe anything is worse than genocide. And somehow, through the magic of storytelling, this becomes a political strategy for you and “the left” because the demons that fight you every step of the way will become less focused on opposing you when their alleged right wing opposition needs less attention. Because again you cannot spell out what happens next and how.
In what way does that not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did ideas of electoral defeatism originate, and what purpose do they serve?
You still haven’t answered those questions by the way. And they don’t actually apply to me. Just be honest and stop deflecting.
Let’s look at this the other way around. Democrats lost, and it was very likely expressly because of Gaza.
It is marginally because of Democrats doing genocide. That tipped the scales to a degree that you can attribute the loss to it in a “if they had those voters they’d probably have won”. But Democrats lose for a much larger host of reasons that accumulate socially over time and breadth of political life. The pro-Palestine voting bloc is nascent, it’s barely organized, it’s not very disciplined, it’s full of fools who think they can “change the system from within” because they either do not understand it or stand to fund their nonprofits through proximity to the party. So it’s marginal.
It is, however, useful to understand that Democrats preferred to be genocidal than win the election. And that’s who you say to vote for no matter what. Then you get prickly when it’s pointed out that this makes you an advocate for genocidaires.
They wrote up an election autopsy on why they lost. They then released that report, admitted they were wrong, and pivoted to supporting Gaza, right? Right?
See you belabor this straw man re: withholding votes because you don’t know how to seek knowledge or understanding. You falsely presume I have your same misunderstandings of the party and electoralism. You’re projecting that into me and really just arguing with a less politically incompetent version of your own politics, not mine. But this doesn’t elevate your even less competent logic to be better than the alternative I’ve dangled in front of you.
Yeah, about that, didn’t happen. We just continued it while also starting shit in a bunch of other countries.
It’s almost as if there’s a strong political continuity regardless of whether it’s a D or R in power. Do you wonder why that is?
Or maybe it’s because things got worse when we elected Trump, with invasions of Iran, Venezuela, potentially Cuba, and giving Israel a chance to go at Lebanon.
You’re just deflecting again. No, that is not why you are opposed here, which is what you are supposedly responding to with this retort. You don’t even make sense. You just avoid. Go back and actually engage.
There’s not much to say here other than I disagree, but I’ll include it to avoid being accused to ignoring anything again.
There’s plenty you could say. You could, if you don’t understand how this could be the case, ask why I perceive that. You could explain your disagreement, though you’d probably have to ask questions first. But you’d rather avoid understanding.
Who do you mean when you say “actual advocates”, and what strategies are they recommending? This is too vague for me to really address, but it sounds potentially useful to know.
Those who organize for the liberation of Palestine from imperialist settler colonialism occupation and genocide. There are many organizations that do this. It’s not really vague, you are just unfamiliar with this topic. You confuse your ignorance for a communication problem.
Well hey, that leverage got used anyway, so let’s look at the results: tried to withhold the autopsy report,
See you don’t even read responses before replying so you belabor useless talking points I’ve already addressed. When will you start reading and stop talking so much? Organize yourself.
to pivot at all. But at least we got involved in Iran, Venezuela, potentially Cuba, and helped Israel get into Lebanon. Is that the success you hoped for? Because it kinda sounds like you won nothing and helped make things worse.
So the Democratic Party would rather lose the election than stop supporting genocide. What does that tell you about how well your strategy of actively throwing away leverage and then doing nothing will work? At no point has this made you think, “gee, these people are in power in the party and so opposed to this they’d rather lose the election. Maybe I need to think about what keeps them, nevertheless, in power in the party”?
Get the fuck over yourself.
Nothing in what I said is egotistical or self-promoting, it was simply critical of your empty proclamations of caring about brown people while advocating for their genociders. And clearly it struck a nerve.
I’m not okay with any of it.
You are an open advocate for the people genociding brown people. You’re proud of it. You think it’s smart and condescend towards others about it.
Thinking that things would be better under Democrats isn’t a glowing endorsement of them.
I already told you exactly what it is and “glowing endorsement” isn’t anywhere to be found. See how you have to invent criticisms that are easier to respond to than what was actually said? You aren’t coping with the reality.
Like I’ve already said here, Democrats move right when Republicans win elections. We should not just vote them in and hope all is well.
And yet, again, your only conception of left electoral power is to vote for Democrats and then everything else kind of just happens with hand-wavy “force” and “demands” with no mechanism. Your logic is to throw away leverage and only then will things happen, somehow. You’re very light on the details of the other steps because you haven’t thought about them. I know this. You know this. This is because you are parroting the logic of the genocidaires’ party, cynical logic to disenfranchise their voters and keep the money train a-rollin’, and they don’t want you to really think about how the rest of the steps would work so they don’t spell it out for you.
We should choose who we think is more susceptible to being pressured, and then heap as much pressure on them as possible through whatever means you think will be most effective.
“Force”. “Pressure”.
With what? You still can’t even think of what you’d actually do once you have promised to always vote for them.
Sure, totally that and not the fact that we knew things would get even worse under Trump, like with the multiple invasions and abduction I’ve already mentioned.
Yes that is part of the early genocide apologia. An immediate pivot to lesser evil rhetoric even in the face of your politicians doing genocide. I recognize your rhetoric because I’ve seen it scores of times for 2-3 years. There is nothing to doubt about this.
I could have phrased that better, so I’m sorry for the impression it gave. I did not mean defeatism on the topic of Palestine. I meant defeatism on the topic of elections.
I am actually pointing you towards less incompetent electoral strategy so you can eventually learn its many failure modes and why, and more proximally, stop saying ridiculous bullshit we’ve all heard a thousand times.
You’re right that I don’t get to do as much as I’d like on the topic. Unfortunately, life has put significant constraints on my opportunities to stay well informed and participate.
No investigation, no right to speak. Shut up and ask for opinions and advice because you don’t know anything, you just repeat cynical party propaganda.
PS poor sharecroppers informed themselves by candlelight after 14 hour days so cry me a fucking river for trying to excuse your proud genocide apologetic ignorant proclamations. You always have the option of shutting the fuck up.
Democrats use it as an excuse to court centrists and move to the right. So if every loss pushes Democrats to the right, not the left, how exactly do you expect to push them left by costing them elections? In what way does that not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did ideas of electoral defeatism originate, and what purpose do they serve?
Can you demonstrate this with data or something? I know that DSA members have been getting elected all over the place since Democrats started losing to Trump with 90% of all DSA members being elected since 2019. I also know that taking money from AIPAC is increasingly seen as politically toxic and elected Democrats are condemning Israel’s genocide.
I’ll do you a favor and not do any of the things you are accusing others of. I will simply correctly identify your sniveling cowardly apologies for what it is: Genocide apologia.
Others were too generous to you so I am here to tell you in the most respectful way I can to go fuck yourself.
Unless you’ve got something constructive to say, I’d like to invite you to gargle my balls. I came in here trying to engage on the topic in good faith with a chance to learn something from others who may know more, but the vast majority of people just want to verbally abuse me for daring to have another opinion.
Almost every single response in this thread has been misinterpreting me and putting words in my mouth. Let me make this clear. I am not saying that just slowing it down is sufficient. I am saying that none of us know how to stop it immediately or we already would have done that, so while we try to figure that out, buying a little time is a good idea. Maybe it fails to produce results, which would be tragic, but maybe, just maybe, if we don’t give into defeat before we even try, we can actually stop it. Slowing it down means time to organize, time for Israel’s reputation to degrade, time to do something about it.
Except the context of this is in response to Democrats who are making the criticism of “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good” and lambasting lefties for “purity testing”. They always leave out the word “genocide” though in these complaints and left-punching rants.
So saying “yeah that’s right, let’s settle for the harm reduction” is essentially saying “yeah ok we’ll settle for Zionist Democrat politicians to “slow” the genocide” despite those genocidaires having 0 intention of stopping or slowing the genocide. It’s all fake and left-punching, that is the context you are walking into obliviously and getting mad at people for “putting words in your mouth”. No, we are responding to the years long dialectic with the left-punchers. You are the one that is not paying attention and entering mid-conversation.
Liberals and Democrats fundamentally don’t understand that they are not “good”. They are shit and evil scum. They are not the “lesser evil”.
I’ll agree that a huge chunk of the democratic party, most especially at the apex of power in the party, are shit stains, but I think democrats get a lot of leeway to do what they do because people continuously vote republicans into office, so they don’t really have to cater to their base because their base thinks the republicans are even worse. If a lot of the leftists and other nonvoters who typically abstained from voting opted in instead, we might starting seeing democrats win more often, and if people are less scared of republicans getting into office, democrats have to start actually responding to their base’s demands. Keep in mind that low voter turnout almost always favors republicans, so simply by increasing the portion of people who actually cast votes, we weaken the republican party and push the democrats towards actually having to answer to people.
Is it a perfect solution? God, no. Is it all we should do? Absolutely the fuck not. But democrats are only so effective at keeping us from pulling to the left because most Americans on the left (of their political spectrum) are too busy focusing on preventing even more drift to the right. If elections and votes didn’t matter, the republicans wouldn’t spend so much damn time and energy on disenfranchising voters and gerrymandering.
one day you will shed yourself of this useless liberalism that constrains your mind and limits your imagination. The solution is not electoral.
Of course not. It’s a small piece of what we should be doing overall. No election is going to singlehandedly fix anything substantial. We should participate anyway so we can choose who we’re putting pressure on through other means.
The point people are trying to make to you is that democrats cannot be trusted to slow down genocide. We don’t believe they’re capable or willing of doing that. We don’t believe there’s much difference between the Republicans and democrats. We don’t believe in the distinction you’re making, which is that Republicans can’t be reasoned with, but democrats can possibly be reasoned with. We think that both parties will follow a path of genocide regardless of external pressure or public sentiment.
Correct, the democratic party will not stop Israel of their own free will. I’m not convinced they can’t be forced to, though. Hell, if republicans hated supporting Israel enough, the republicans could be forced to, too, but republicans love it, so not happening. The issue here isn’t so much their default stances as it is the fact that a large enough portion of the base is upset with them that we might be able to force them if we collectively tried instead of just giving up and assuming it’s impossible.
Your plan to force Democrats to “slow down” a genocide they’re causing is to promise to vote for them no matter what, especially when they’re doing genocide.
it’s an unfalsifiable orthodoxy. the worse the democrats get, the more the left needs to vote for them and support them to ‘pull them to the left’.
The biggest reason Democrats keep getting worse is their competition, not the fact we vote for them in spite of deep flaws. Every time the Republicans win, Democrats insist they need to court centrists and move right. Every single time America proves they’re willing to elect someone even worse, Democrats take that as a sign to degrade further.
Republicans pull the US political spectrum to the right while Democrats act as a one-way ratchet preventing us from sliding back to the left. Like any ratchet, though, they’re not an effective tool for maintaining heavy tension/torque/whatever long term. The process only works when Republicans consistently come alone and pull to relieve the pressure. If that stops happening, Democrats start failing at their jobs like a ratchet put under too much strain and breaking. And that would be trivial if more people voted. Republicans are highly dependent on gerrymandering and voter suppression to maintain power, so if leftists overcame their electoral defeatism and actually voted for someone who has a strong chance of winning, we could start making that a reality.
Well, compared to the Republicans who encouraged it, who invaded Iran, who gave Israel room to invade Lebanon, who seized Maduro out of Venezuela, who are potentially preparing to invade Cuba… Yeah. It was probably the better option. And my point is that the election is about choosing who we can put pressure on, not on singlehandedly fixing everything at the ballot box.
Instead, they lost, Republicans did all the same and more, and so they released the election autopsy, admitted Gaza was the reason they lost, and started to pivot, right? Nope. Your plan to withhold your vote didn’t change their mind, and now Republicans are doing as much or more.
See, you cannot address the obvious contradictory nature of your rhetoric. You can only deflect to repeating the original false rhetoric in a way that obfuscates it.
You’re not saying anything that is your own idea whatsoever. You are merely acting as a conduit for Zionist Democrat messaging in the 2024 presidential election, somehow never updated based on the facts of what has transpired before and after.
“Slow down” the Democrat-sponsored genocide by promising to always vote Democrat. Really think through what you are saying, or really, what was told to you by others to say and think. Analyze it. Ask yourself: in what ways does it not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did these ideas originate and what purpose do they serve?
The reason you are opposed is because you are carrying water for genocidaires and are using exhausted logic that every person on this instance is intimately familiar with and rehashed for months and months, often directly working against Zionist democrats to shut us down.
The reason you feel that words are being put in your mouth is because they were put in your mouth by liberal Zionists and you haven’t thought about their actual meaning.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but I think the democrat party can be forced in a way that the republican party simply cannot. If we leave them to their own devices, of course nothing will change. If we just vote them in, sit on our hands, and hope for the best, yeah, you’re right, Gaza is just as fucked as they were beforehand. But enough of the democrats’ base is upset over the issue that they just might be able to be forced to come to the table. Republicans, though, can’t even give a shit about the brown people they live next to, let alone ones on the other side of the global with different beliefs. It’s not about thinking that electing the democrats will magically fix it. It’s about nudging the odds in our favor at every available opportunity so that, eventually, it adds up to enough to make a difference.
Or maybe I just haven’t given into the cynical defeatism everyone here has. I don’t expect to work miracles with a ballot. It’s a small angling for a better position so that the next step is more successful. It may not be a big difference, but fuck, it takes an hour or two once a year at most in the vast majority of jurisdictions. One of either the republican or democrat candidate will be elected because a first-past-the-post voting system guarantees that outcome. Elect the closest thing you can get to what you want and then hold their fucking balls to the grill top until they give it. Take the hour or two away from whatever you were doing that you think is more productive, then go right back to it.
You demonstrated the exact opposite. Rather than address what I said, including the issues with your logic, and showing any kind of critical analysis of “vote for the genocidaires to reduce genocide”, you just repeated yourself about how voting for Democrats is smart and that you will, through unstated mechanisms, make them do what is right by sacrificing the only leverage you have, electorally.
Your logic is not smart and did not listen to what I said. It is party PR to get people to be complacent. It is not what the actual advocates against the genocide of Palestine tell you to do.
Let me preview 90% of the rest of your response: you say this 5 different ways and yet provide zero mechanisms or coherent logic for how it actually happens. The only thing you can mechanistically list is the part where you vote for Democrats - those responsible for the hot genocide in Gaza - unquestioningly and without reservation, with no use of leverage at any point.
I wil not respond to those bits point-by-point because they don’t deserve a point-by-point response. They are not serious ideas by a serious person advocating for a serious action. THey are the excuses of someone who wants to believe that their personal inactivity on this issue is excused because voting Democrat like they did is actually smart and good and don’t criticize me I’m a good person that likes brown people (except when my boy Biden kills them that’s fine if it’s done politely and he’s “working for a ceasefirre”).
Are you still just talking about voting and meaningless platitudes about how things then just happen later?
See, it doesn’t matter what I say. You just start ranting about how the two party system works as if it’s relevant to anything I have said. Let me help you: I understand electoralism better than you do. We were all liberals here once. Your presumption that you need to explain FPTP is arrogant and only reveals that you fundamentally do not understand who you are speaking with.
By promising to vote for them no matter what! Boy you sure to have their balls held! Hold em! Be tough! They’re so scared you might vote for them even harder and keep telling everyone else to do it too!
Vote for genociders, says AHemlocksLie! It only takes an hour or two! I’m convinced.
Fine, I tried to speed things up a bit because I have a deluge of notifications over this, but let’s go back to it.
Yeah, as you present it, it doesn’t sound like it makes any sense. In the greater context of the US political environment, though, I think it makes sense. What happens every time Democrats lose to Republicans? Democrats use it as an excuse to court centrists and move to the right. So if every loss pushes Democrats to the right, not the left, how exactly do you expect to push them left by costing them elections? In what way does that not make sense? What is the real conclusion? Where did ideas of electoral defeatism originate, and what purpose do they serve?
Let’s look at this the other way around. Democrats lost, and it was very likely expressly because of Gaza. They wrote up an election autopsy on why they lost. They then released that report, admitted they were wrong, and pivoted to supporting Gaza, right? Right? Yeah, about that, didn’t happen. We just continued it while also starting shit in a bunch of other countries.
Or maybe it’s because things got worse when we elected Trump, with invasions of Iran, Venezuela, potentially Cuba, and giving Israel a chance to go at Lebanon. In exchange, we got a spike in violence after his inauguration followed by a “ceasefire” where things just slowed down, and I’m much more inclined to ascribe the ceasefire to global backlash over Trump. I’d fully expect Trump to do everything he could to take credit once it became inevitable, though.
There’s not much to say here other than I disagree, but I’ll include it to avoid being accused to ignoring anything again.
With that, moving on into this post.
Who do you mean when you say “actual advocates”, and what strategies are they recommending? This is too vague for me to really address, but it sounds potentially useful to know.
Well hey, that leverage got used anyway, so let’s look at the results: tried to withhold the autopsy report, didn’t admit Gaza was a problem for them, didn’t try to pivot at all. But at least we got involved in Iran, Venezuela, potentially Cuba, and helped Israel get into Lebanon. Is that the success you hoped for? Because it kinda sounds like you won nothing and helped make things worse.
Get the fuck over yourself. I’m not okay with any of it. Thinking that things would be better under Democrats isn’t a glowing endorsement of them. Like I’ve already said here, Democrats move right when Republicans win elections. We should not just vote them in and hope all is well. We should choose who we think is more susceptible to being pressured, and then heap as much pressure on them as possible through whatever means you think will be most effective.
Sure, totally that and not the fact that we knew things would get even worse under Trump, like with the multiple invasions and abduction I’ve already mentioned.
I could have phrased that better, so I’m sorry for the impression it gave. I did not mean defeatism on the topic of Palestine. I meant defeatism on the topic of elections.
You’re right that I don’t get to do as much as I’d like on the topic. Unfortunately, life has put significant constraints on my opportunities to stay well informed and participate. I try to get exposure to non-corporate news, I try to join protests when they’re close enough and I have the time, but just staying fed and housed takes up an absurd amount of my time. Despite that, I try when I can. And when I end up discussing it with a bunch of people who profess to care deeply and know what must be done, I don’t get genuine suggestions for how to help or anything like that. I get verbally abused and accused of advocating for it. I’m here with an open mind and trying to engage in good faith when I’ve received dozens of responses, taking the time to read and respond as best I can to almost every single one, I’ve probably responded to closing in on 20 comments with 20+ notifications remaining, and so far, only one or two have tried to actually engage and provide information. The vast majority have only tried to make me feel like an idiot for disagreeing. I’ve learned a little about the situation as a result of it, but most of what I’ve learned is that Hexbear is full of bitter assholes who will pile on to verbally abuse me for disagreeing.
I never said things just happen later, and I explicitly said to do it and then go do whatever you think is most effective. This is the type of thing I’m talking about when I complain of people putting words in my mouth. They avoid things I explicitly said to make it easier to belittle me and what I’m saying. The point was never to stop doing what’s most effective. The point was to elect whoever of the available candidates will be most vulnerable to those effective things. Everyone here is so sure they know the Right Way that I’m not even gonna try to say what that is, but whatever you think it is, one of the two potential victors is more vulnerable to that than the other. I think Democrats would be easier to break overall compared to Republicans. I don’t think either will be easy to break, but that’s all the more reason to push the odds in our favor by influencing who we’re trying to break.
Or maybe I’m just not intimately familiar with every community on the internet. I saw a post, I made a response, turns out everyone here has a very particular set of views, which is becoming more and more apparent as I work through the dozens and dozens of responses I got. I didn’t seek out Hexbear to start shit with a specific community. I can stumble across your posts if anyone in my instance subscribes to the community, and you may think it arrogant to point that out here on Lemmy, but I’d remind you you seem to have forgotten there are ways to find yourself commenting here without intimate familiarity with the community norms.
But I appreciate the arrogant insistence that anyone who disagrees with you clearly just fails to understand the topic as deeply as you do.
Realistically, we should be voting in primaries, too. That’s the best way to influence the Democrat party, especially if Republicans are failing to provide an actual opponent. If the biggest threat to a candidate isn’t from outside the party, it must come from within, and their biggest fear becomes losing the primary. If we make it crystal clear that a push to the right is intolerable, suddenly, trying to court centrists and fleeing Republicans is suicide. Instead, every time we get pissed at Democrats, what do we do? We elect a Republican. What do the Democrats do in response? They see moving right as viable and do so.
See, you just can’t stop lying. Straw men to play the victim, over and over. You came here in ignorance, you admit to having no organizing experience on this topic and failing to keep up and you demonstrate this plainly, which is why I extracted this from you: you were not behaving in accordance with that reality.
Just be honest.
lmao holy shit you think this is insightful.
Is that so? Have you ever run a primary campaign? Do you know elected socialists? What are their experiences? What can they accomplish? What is their relationship to the party?
Wrong on both counts. Their biggest fear is losing position and status within the party apparatus and as you can see, this easily survives election losses. This is why they will lose elections instead of move left on key topics. A primary is only disruptive to some climbers. And when they do perceive that threat, which was always present even when Republicans win every other election (you still believe their lies about needing to move right implicitly), their response is to fight if with their entire apparatus. To punch left. So to the extent that losing a primary is feared, it does not translate into a left shift. That is not how the party works. The nominal moves left are individual politicians (alleging to be outsiders) winning those primaries instead. The party reacts to them, even moves right in response.
Intolerable? Didn’t you promise to vote for them in the general regardless? Do words mean anything to you? Champ, you tolerate genocide.
Goddamn you just can’t stop repeating yourself
You barge into an enti-genocide space promoting genocidaires and whine when you are criticized for bad faith behavior after receiving tons of responses trying to help you understand. You reply to those responses by digging in your heels and demanding sources and repeating your original false claims ad nauseum. The fact that you think you aren’t the problem here is itself the problem. No humility in the face of knowing your own political naivete, happy to make excuses and blame everyone else, while you still belabor falsified talking points and ignore what people write to you.
You would not be useful in a pro-Palestine organizing space. You haven’t learned to decenter yourself or accept criticism and would drag everyone around you down. Politics is not about you. To quote a great thinker, “get the fuck over yourself”. You will only be useful when you can subsume yourself to the cause, and that includes prioritizing learning about it and developing correct opinions on it. This isn’t a hobby or a media franchise to argue about on the internet, it’s not Superman vs. Batman, it is a world historical project to end unfathomable oppression.
See, you still don’t understand why people have written you off. No responsibility taken. You fundamentally don’t understand how to speak or act and are still reacting purely defensively. This is why I have given up the pretense of respecting you: you were acting like this long before anyone was directly pointing it out. Basically everyone gave you leeway - at first.
You have demonstrated the exact opposite. You are intransigent, deflect from criticism of your ideas, and lead with condescension. You have a false self image.
Clearly this is not the case. You seem to not even recognize evasive bad faith behavior even when it is laid out for you specifically and with examples. Your response, even then, is continued evasion. You have to take responsibility eventually or you’ll always have these experiences.
Responding to comments does not make good faith by the way.
That’s not very many. This… demonstrates good faith? Personally, I think good faith is about responding germanely, taking feedback seriously, and not being dishonest in interactions.
This is a lie. I’ve seen at least six or seven and I’m not even trying to keep count. I’m one of them. You have a pattern of trying to ignore correction, including with specific examples, and trying to cling to the original falsehoods and repeat them as nauseum. Again, you need to spend time reading not replying one by one. It’s clear your focus is on rescuing your bad and harmful ideas comment-by-comment target rather than developing understanding.
You should feel like an idiot for disagreeing, your ideas are bad and harmful, they aren’t your item, and you’re publicly doubling down on them over and over again. That’s a foolish thing to do. At no point were you forced to open your yapper and do any of that.
Now, if we focus just on the original sin of saying some bad and harmful ideas, you’ll see that the direct responses are correcting you. They explain how and why you are wrong. It is only after you double down and act like you need to be convinced (as if you knew anything in the first place) and did no research of your own and seemingly have no actual interest in the topic beyond “vote for genociders” that the disrespect piles on. And it’s not unique to this comment section, you also exhausted the patience of others discussing Ukrainian neo-Nazis where, again bathed in liberal talking points and the associated ignorance, your proceeded to engage in bad faith, treat your own baseless claims as the default truth and demand explanations and citations from others lest you withhold your agreement (oh no!).
Yes it’s our fault that you promoted genociders and responded in bad faith to correction. If only we had responded with patient explanations first! Oh wait. We did and that didn’t work either.
Sounds like a you problem.
Yes you did. You were extremely vague about what happens later, so I am describing this accurately. Despite me prompting you five or six times and explaining why you have nothing to actually do after promising to perma-vote for Democrats no matter if they do genocide, you still have nothing and refuse to address why you have nothing. You just deflect over and over again.
It is amazing that you think this is a different plan from “and then things just happen”.
No, I accurately described what you’re saying: you have no plan for after voting for Dems no matter what. This vague hand waving lets you pretend otherwise, but we know very well that you don’t even care about the political project, you don’t actually think about how the changes would actually happen, and yet you pretend to be explaining how they do.
No, the point was “vote Blue no matter who” and then you don’t really have any actual thoughts. You think things will just happen after that. Somehow after giving away leverage you will gain leverage. But you don’t know how. You say they will be moved left, pressured, forced. But you don’t know how. That’s not your priority. You haven’t thought about it. And when I correctly point this out, you aren’t honest about it.
You don’t even know what it is, and there is still variety here so it’s not just one thing. See, you are still fibbing and trying to save face. Just acknowledge ignorance when you have it. People who do know things can easily clock a fibber. You aren’t actually saving face, you’re building a bad reputation.
Your thinking is to devoid of mechanism that you believe Democrats are always more vulnerable to every single possible means of opposition than Republicabs. Literally. This is your impregnable belief system, it does not require evidence or coherence or logic.
See how you pointlessly repeat your original claims and beliefs? Do you not even recognize the irony in repeating this in response to what you quoted? Do you not see the irony in hand waving about what actions are taken after voting for Blue No Matter Who? You’re just proving me right.
And yet you have assumed we don’t know electoralism and repeatedly try to explain it despite it being quite obvious that we’ve heard this all before. I’ve told you repeatedly that we have. Yet you can’t stop yourself from trying to place yourself in the lecturing position, completely pointlessly talking about FPTP as if it addresses anything we’ve said (it doesn’t). You’re really just navel gazing, repeating your own understanding to shore up your own confidence, but it’s condescending and demeaning to the people directly in front of you.
Like I keep saying: shut the fuck up and read. You don’t know who you’re talking to or what you’re talking about. Until you realize this you cannot learn and be less harmful.
This is seemingly your first experience with the left. This is how little you understand politics. So why are you still arguing?
Your claims and behavior would be wrong and unacceptable regardless of context, though I’m sure you’d find plenty of agreement in genocide tolerant liberal spaces.
Why am I supposed to care about this? Community norms? When did I say anything about community norms? Your bad behavior is bad in any space.
Split comment again
Poor baby.
So yet again you are going to avoid critically analyzing your logic and just repeat your vague handwaving stories than deal with the contradiction. You can’t acknowledge the fundamental self-defeat aspect, you have to avoid discussing it. See, this is dishonest behavior.
They also say that when they win. Time to reach across the aisle and get things done, right? You need to expand your thinking to actually consider the alternative because your post hoc ergo propter hoc is cherry picked. The reality is that Democrats always want to favor their bourgeois machinery, their donor networks, their media access and relations, their think tank and NGO graft network, and the personal professional mobility built into that system (party climbers). And this applies a filter for who has power and what they do with it.
What happened in Nevada when DSA DemSoca electorally gained nominal control of the party? Do you know?
You’re again confusing me for someone who thinks electoralism and “pushing Democrats left” is viable. I am simply pointing out that your rhetoric is self-defeating and illogical and that if you did want to push Democrats left you wouldn’t subscribe to the theory of throwing away all leverage by promising to vote for them no matter what. You have clearly never tried to make anything happen electorally nor analyzed your inevitable policy failures.
I’ll remind you that your logic is to have literally no situation in which you don’t provide a Democrat support, at least so long as you don’t believe anything is worse than genocide. And somehow, through the magic of storytelling, this becomes a political strategy for you and “the left” because the demons that fight you every step of the way will become less focused on opposing you when their alleged right wing opposition needs less attention. Because again you cannot spell out what happens next and how.
You still haven’t answered those questions by the way. And they don’t actually apply to me. Just be honest and stop deflecting.
It is marginally because of Democrats doing genocide. That tipped the scales to a degree that you can attribute the loss to it in a “if they had those voters they’d probably have won”. But Democrats lose for a much larger host of reasons that accumulate socially over time and breadth of political life. The pro-Palestine voting bloc is nascent, it’s barely organized, it’s not very disciplined, it’s full of fools who think they can “change the system from within” because they either do not understand it or stand to fund their nonprofits through proximity to the party. So it’s marginal.
It is, however, useful to understand that Democrats preferred to be genocidal than win the election. And that’s who you say to vote for no matter what. Then you get prickly when it’s pointed out that this makes you an advocate for genocidaires.
See you belabor this straw man re: withholding votes because you don’t know how to seek knowledge or understanding. You falsely presume I have your same misunderstandings of the party and electoralism. You’re projecting that into me and really just arguing with a less politically incompetent version of your own politics, not mine. But this doesn’t elevate your even less competent logic to be better than the alternative I’ve dangled in front of you.
It’s almost as if there’s a strong political continuity regardless of whether it’s a D or R in power. Do you wonder why that is?
You’re just deflecting again. No, that is not why you are opposed here, which is what you are supposedly responding to with this retort. You don’t even make sense. You just avoid. Go back and actually engage.
There’s plenty you could say. You could, if you don’t understand how this could be the case, ask why I perceive that. You could explain your disagreement, though you’d probably have to ask questions first. But you’d rather avoid understanding.
Those who organize for the liberation of Palestine from imperialist settler colonialism occupation and genocide. There are many organizations that do this. It’s not really vague, you are just unfamiliar with this topic. You confuse your ignorance for a communication problem.
See you don’t even read responses before replying so you belabor useless talking points I’ve already addressed. When will you start reading and stop talking so much? Organize yourself.
So the Democratic Party would rather lose the election than stop supporting genocide. What does that tell you about how well your strategy of actively throwing away leverage and then doing nothing will work? At no point has this made you think, “gee, these people are in power in the party and so opposed to this they’d rather lose the election. Maybe I need to think about what keeps them, nevertheless, in power in the party”?
Nothing in what I said is egotistical or self-promoting, it was simply critical of your empty proclamations of caring about brown people while advocating for their genociders. And clearly it struck a nerve.
You are an open advocate for the people genociding brown people. You’re proud of it. You think it’s smart and condescend towards others about it.
I already told you exactly what it is and “glowing endorsement” isn’t anywhere to be found. See how you have to invent criticisms that are easier to respond to than what was actually said? You aren’t coping with the reality.
And yet, again, your only conception of left electoral power is to vote for Democrats and then everything else kind of just happens with hand-wavy “force” and “demands” with no mechanism. Your logic is to throw away leverage and only then will things happen, somehow. You’re very light on the details of the other steps because you haven’t thought about them. I know this. You know this. This is because you are parroting the logic of the genocidaires’ party, cynical logic to disenfranchise their voters and keep the money train a-rollin’, and they don’t want you to really think about how the rest of the steps would work so they don’t spell it out for you.
“Force”. “Pressure”.
With what? You still can’t even think of what you’d actually do once you have promised to always vote for them.
Yes that is part of the early genocide apologia. An immediate pivot to lesser evil rhetoric even in the face of your politicians doing genocide. I recognize your rhetoric because I’ve seen it scores of times for 2-3 years. There is nothing to doubt about this.
I am actually pointing you towards less incompetent electoral strategy so you can eventually learn its many failure modes and why, and more proximally, stop saying ridiculous bullshit we’ve all heard a thousand times.
No investigation, no right to speak. Shut up and ask for opinions and advice because you don’t know anything, you just repeat cynical party propaganda.
PS poor sharecroppers informed themselves by candlelight after 14 hour days so cry me a fucking river for trying to excuse your proud genocide apologetic ignorant proclamations. You always have the option of shutting the fuck up.
Split comment again.
Can you demonstrate this with data or something? I know that DSA members have been getting elected all over the place since Democrats started losing to Trump with 90% of all DSA members being elected since 2019. I also know that taking money from AIPAC is increasingly seen as politically toxic and elected Democrats are condemning Israel’s genocide.
I’ll do you a favor and not do any of the things you are accusing others of. I will simply correctly identify your sniveling cowardly apologies for what it is: Genocide apologia.
Others were too generous to you so I am here to tell you in the most respectful way I can to go fuck yourself.
Unless you’ve got something constructive to say, I’d like to invite you to gargle my balls. I came in here trying to engage on the topic in good faith with a chance to learn something from others who may know more, but the vast majority of people just want to verbally abuse me for daring to have another opinion.
You didn’t act in good faith at all you just defensively talked down to everyone trying to educate you.