Is anyone else utterly mystified by the Vote Blue Rhetoric this election?
I really do feel like I'm taking crazy pills with libs this election. The last two they at least had a bloodless rationale to the "lesser of two evils" rhetoric.
But this is genocide, the canonical Worst Thing You Can DO! I know many just believe that it's not a genocide at all because Palestinian civilians are all Hamas and just subhuman or that the videos published by official IOF channels are all deepfaked by the hungry ghost of Nasrallah. But then just FUCKING SAY IT and then we can call you a genocide denier and we'll know where we stand!
What I can't get is that many do seem to agree it's a genocide and Kamala is complicit. But then they lesser evil by going "Well if we don't vote then Trump will do bad things to trans people here."
Like Fuck You! You scheming, gaslighting bloody handed monster!
Either this is just a disingenuous argument to get your team in power or to maintain liberal civility politics, in which case double Fuck You that you think people are abstract political tools.
Or, you actually believe this, and the freedom of an LGBT person here outweighs the lives of 2 million people, many LGBT, who happen to have had the extreme misfortune to be born 5 cm over the border and thus outside your ability to feel empathy.
In which case Triple Fuck You, because you are, somehow, more of a fascist than Trump. At least Trump is too incoherent to make a complete argument for fascist policy!
I'm going mad, I really am. How can people be streamed genocide live on CNN and just say "well, I guess we're ok with genocide now!" Is the US public even human?! Even the fucking Germans had the good sense to pretend to look guilty after they lost.
Liberals get so scratched when you tell them that you're a marginalized person who wants them to fuck off.
They love to exploit the hell out of the underprivileged (unless said underprivileged people are Arab Americans) to make their case as to why you have to
Racial justice, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ equality are all just tools they use to act as if they're any less bourgeois, chauvinistic, and ultimately fascist in nature than Republicans.
But then they lesser evil by going "Well if we don't vote then Trump will do bad things to trans people here."
I don't know if they understand how much it looks like they use our LGBTQ+ comrades as a human shield. "Either become complicit in our genocide of the browns, or we'll let our controlled opposition kill disadvantaged subjects-of-empire here". In a climate where the primary slander against you in the first place is that you are unintelligible from a Republican, when the secondary slander against you is that you're forming a uniparty with right-wingers, why would you phrase a threat like this that only makes it sound more like you peckerwood yankees are in bed together?
I fuckin hate Amerikans, I swear to god. Whatever happens to us, we deserve if Kamala gets in. Hell, even if she doesn't.
It breaks liberals brains to learn that there are people to their left when their entire political spectrum is hitler to bernie, so to maintain their sense of moral superiority which defines their relationship to their politics they have to bend and twist their brains to make actual leftists into worse people
Honestly I'm not sure I'm even really processing how Libs are behaving right now. Like I'm pretty sure I'm in some kind of denial after the Libs derailed the uprising in '20 and killed MeToo, Abolish the Police, minimum wage, and public healthcare, plus they ended all attempts to even slow Covid down, and now they're proudly, openly committing genocide in front of the whole world.
It's too much. It's Fascism with bottomless mimosas.
They believe the genocide is unstoppable and inevitable, so they write it off as an issue entirely. I've literally been told "genocide is not on the ballot" on multiple occasions. Because of the structural issues with US elections we can't stop the genocide by voting PSL, or Green, or staying home. In their minds they don't see the point of not voting for the lesser of two genicidiers.
They're making the choice to sacrifice Palestinians for their own comfort. By refusing to go along with that, we force them to confront the fact that it is a choice, that they're willingly making themselves complicit in genocide for their own gain. That's why they hate us.
It’s also very funny (not actually) because what is Harris going to do for LGBTQ people? Not that her or any Democrat’s symbolic rhetoric mean anything but have the words “transgender” even come out of her mouth this campaign?
My response to people who say “if we don’t vote for Kamala then X will happen to Y here at home…” has just been “Why can’t she do both?” If they continue after that then I just say “If the price for my rights is thousands of dead Palestinians, I refuse to bargain with the devil.”
The thing I don't see people saying enough is that there will be elections after Trump, and a vote for third parties that allows Trump to win is much less damaging in the long term than a vote that enables the rightward slide of the Democrats.
I don't get how I can see people well into their 50's talking about voting for the "lesser evil." I always think of this Hunter S. Thompson quote:
That's the real issue this time," he said. "Beating Nixon. It's hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years."
The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but "regrettably necessary" holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.
That's from Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail from 1972
50 years ago that was a tired argument. 50 years!
The blue MAGA people also screamed in rage at us for months and years about any sort of leftward movement on policies and demanded VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO before Biden or Harris even had any 2024 policies in place.
If you want to play electoralism games.. you need to say “if you want my vote - Do This”
Instead all of these Blue MAGA fuckers went “you have my coconut brat queen, but also please do these policies!”
Which gave Harris explicit permission to run as far right wing as possible to try and pick off Trump supporters who only support Trump because they legitimately think he has some good ideas but don’t like him but would have voted for him, which is such an extremely small group of weirdos consisting entirely of Dick Cheney and his daughter.
The mental gymnastics are relatively simple, it’s:
It’s not genocide
If it is, it’s by accident
If it’s not, they deserved it
Trump is literally hitler I’m shaking and pissing this is the most important election of our lives
Most people don’t even reach step 1 because they’re American and completely subconsciously dismiss the idea that foreign people exist or matter at all.
Idk, I'm not shocked by it at all. It's Western chauvinism, plain and simple. Plenty of women, POC, queer, and trans people are getting on board because they're still part of the imperial west. To recognize that American elections are political theater would require them to completely disregard everything they've been raised to believe. And Trump is very flagrant about undermining the traditional election pageantry, especially after January 6th. They are bought into the system and the system now requires blood sacrifice, so they'll stomach the bloodletting to appease angry gods in hopes for a blessing.
The idea that Trump would do something that would be worse than the Dems learning genocide is completely okay is weird to me.
Like if the Dems get in while committing a genocide, why would one think they'd ever get better? If the line isn't drawn at genocide then there is no line and the dems will know they don't even got to pretend anymore.
On top of that it's wild to me how many people don't wrap their head around the concept that voting legitimises the government. The US frequently uses "democracy" and amount of voters and so on to justify it's foreign (and domestic to a lesser extent) policy. US politicians talk about representing their constituents, they talk about their voters, they use these things to make themselves accepted as rulers. The less people that vote for them the better.
On top of all that it's weird to see libs at the same time comprehend long(er) term thinking - "vote for Kamala so we at least have four years to organize/hope for a better candidate" and at the same time be able to understand why someone might vote third party, despite that candidate not being able to win.
Or its not weird, its standard doublethink, but it's fucking frustrating.
Nobody is really dealing with the fact that rhetoric and demographics != policy and action.
Republicans are pretty unpalatable unless you're a hog hooting for immigrant and queer death, and people are just kind of assuming that, of course, the other team won't do anything bad, and will do the good things, because they have the correct demographic support, and the rhetoric at times gestures vaguely to something nicer and less fascist, or at least tries to let a voter infer whatever they need to in order to deliver support, right?
People are pretty rightly scared, they should be, and they literally have no tools for understanding a world where a vote isn't a solution. Because Americans have limited understanding of non-electoral organizing, limited time because of work and survival, and I think we're reaching this point where solutions are so ugly, and so outside of anything anybody in living memory understands, that it might as well be like showing a Westworld host a picture of the outside world - It's just not going to seem like anything. There's an ontological break where voting has to work.
This is what's happening on the ground.
On the organizing level, the ghouls are just playing to the emotions, anxieties, and fears of their constituent demographics. Republicans are integrating with their extremists, and democrats are suppressing theirs. This creates a balance that will inevitably empower the far right, and the democrats are fine with this because their bosses are the same people.
The rhetoric is insane because the moment is insane.
I'm going mad, I really am. How can people be streamed genocide live on CNN and just say "well, I guess we're ok with genocide now!"
I have seen plenty of Americans (the more right-leaning ones, admittedly) who will say it’s a genocide but that if Gazans didn’t want to be genocided then they shouldn’t have attacked Israel on Oct 7.
Is the US public even human?!
No, not really. This is what 20+ years of dehumanization of Arab and Muslim people will do to your brain. But also, Americans really struggle with being able to accept reality outside of the geographical United States. They are so ill-informed and incurious about what happens around the world I genuinely do not trust any polls regarding things like the genocide in Gaza. When 90% of Americans don’t even know basic, objective facts about the situation what do their opinions actually mean?
This extreme ignorance does not, of course, prevent Americans from expressing their opinions about foreign matters and believing their own opinions to be inviolably correct.
The gambit that liberals are trying to sell me on makes no sense. The presumption is that Trump would continue or exaggerate the genocide. Whereas a Harris administration would simply continue the genocide or maybe possibly have a possibility of maybe ending the genocide if we all ask really nicely.
Yeah except why am I going to trust an administration currently doing genocide to change their minds later? Voting for Harris is an endorsement of her current platform, which involves collaboration with Israel and no proposed alternatives. All of her talk about ceasefire is just talking, the Biden administration has done Jack and shit to actually accomplish this. The weapons shipments to Israel continue, the Biden admin celebrated Sinwar's death.
Libs are also saying we wouldn't be allowed to protest for Palestinian rights under a Trump presidency. Bruh where have they been for the past year? Have they missed all the cops dragging students out of colleges? Have they missed that associating with BDS is a crime in some states, like Texas where I live?
Absolute child brained people who only care about their own personal comfort
Personally I really like the whole: Republicans are the ‘Big Bad‘ that will destroy the country, end reproductive rights, start a war on LGBTQ+, end democracy, be the second coming of hitler etc…. And also we’re going to reach across the isle and have a republican in our government too. It’s like wtf? Are these guys bad? Or do you want to work with them? Which is it? I know that once we drop the keyfabe they’re all the same, perusing the same material and class interests, but their outward messaging is so incoherent. No wonder it doesn’t exactly resonate.
I watched this tik tok that hit the top page of reddit where it was a lib making fun of leftists not voting for genocide and they jerked themselves off over making the point that “uh yeah honey, there will be a genocide whether trump or Kamala wins but Kamala will be better for your real financial situation”
Yeah they’re built different lmfao their brains are room temp potato soup
The part where it breaks down for me is that that they talk about all the hypothetical stuff the DNC will do but it is all just fantasy. It is always stuff the DNC has never done or given any indication they will do. When you ask them about it they always just switch to talking about the bad stuff the gop will do that the DNC will not stop at all.
I'm an outsider and frankly I don't get the weird hostility to being critical of the dems.
Like if the election is so crucial isn't now the time to hold them over the barrel to try change them? you can vote or not as you please and it's all secret anyway so shouldn't you threaten them with a loss unless they change policy? Even if secretly you do intend to vote for them should the threats fail as some sort of lesser of two evils?
I don't get it at all. But then your politics always seemed a bit nuts to me anyway. Very high feelings over the person who will export war and misery over the whole world while crushing the working class, or the person who will export war and misery over the whole world while crushing the working class and also being more explicitly racist.
Americans literally cannot fathom shit that they cannot see directly in front of them. They know it's happening but ehhhhh it's somewhere else who cares. Nobody cares. Libs who say they care, but are still frothing to defeat orange guy say that they care, but they do not care. Americans didn't give a fuck about Iraq either.
I don't honestly see a "shift" or a "change" or anything different this election. Other than maybe democrats being actually a little more openly right wing with specific policies. Other than that this is just business as usual.
If I'm being real I don't even factor Palestine into either candidate, as they are both going to be genocidal freaks, and even if Palestine wasn't currently being eliminated, I wouldn't vote for these ghouls anyway. Domestically there's a couple differences. Foreign policy wise literally every politician in this trash country is
huh? do you think trump wouldn't also do the same genicidal policies or worse?
that's the only way your argument makes any sense.
if the 2 options have the same genocidal policy in palestine, voting for kamala because her other policies are better than trump still makes her the lesser of two evils.