this post commits the cardinal internet sin of having nuance sorry :(

If you want to argue that the answer to Biden being too soft on Israel's crimes is to let the guy who handed them East Jerusalem, The West Bank, and The Golan Heights on a silver platter get back into power, you're either a covert Zionist agent, or an unwitting Zionist agent. Either way, you have no business lecturing about the moral course of action in this crisis.
- Sir, this is a Wendy's.
  Jokes aside I unironically agree with everything you just said.
  
  Can I get a double with no pickle, medium fry and a frosty to dip my fries in?
- I’ve seen this sentiment expressed but I thought you expressed it super well, fwiw
- If you want to argue that the answer to Biden being too soft on Israel’s crimes is to let the guy who handed them East Jerusalem, The West Bank, and The Golan Heights on a silver platter get back into power, you’re either a covert Zionist agent, or an unwitting Zionist agent.
  The answer to Biden's complicity in Netanyahu's genocide is greater political pressure for him to stop.
  Of course, people who don't want him to stop will always try to pretend that any opposition is support for Trump.
  
  Of course, people who don't want him to stop will always try to pretend that any opposition is support for Trump.
  You honestly think the people posting this sentiment don’t want Netanyahu to stop? That’s a silly opinion if so. Maybe you disagree with the logic being used, but you can’t say these people actively want Netanyahu to continue what he’s doing.
  I want this to end as much as you, but it is undeniable that Biden is a better candidate than Trump in this respect. And in our country there are only 2 options so vote for. So if I’m not voting for Biden, I am just helping Trump get in office and do more harm.
  
  Of course, people who want an excuse to support trump will pretend anyone not vocally raging about Biden every day is a lover of genocide.
- Israel committed a far bigger land grab under Biden than under Trump
  Israel’s largest land seizure since Oslo Accords deals fresh blow to Palestinian statehood
  Biden rejects the Palestinian UN application
  US vetoes widely supported resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine
  Genocide Joe lies that israel isn't committing war crimes so he can send them more bombs to commit Genocide with
  Leaked U.S. Memos Say Israel May Be Violating International Law In Blocking Gaza Aid
  Trump cannot be worse for Palestine than Biden. Biden fully supports full Genocide of all Palestinians. Accusing opponents of Biden of being Zionist agents is top tier irony.
  
  Comments like this are why no one should trust your motives
- People aren't upset because Biden isnt trying hard enough to stop Israel. We're upset because he's an active participant in what theyre doing. Using executive orders to bypass congress to get them more weapons.
  
  I'll be nice and assume you're just stupid instead of actively trying to support the Zionist cause by letting their biggest supporter back into office.

Voting does make you complicit in the things the candidate has said they will do. For example, if the candidate says “I will get rid of abortion” then voting for them means you are partially responsible if they actually do get rid of abortion. Or if they say “I will kill all the gays” or “I will lock up all non-Christians” then don’t act all surprised pikachu face when it happens.
It’s not a blood pact, but it’s not a football game either where you’re just rooting for your team. You have to weigh the consequences of casting a vote for someone and decide if you can live with the possible outcomes and/or pick the lesser of two evils.
- If you don't pick the lesser of two evils, you're saying you're okay with the greater.
  Man, the famed revolutionary Robespierre once said, "To rule innocently is insanity." He was wrong about numerous other things, but he fucking nailed that on the head. There are no good decisions in positions of power. If you fail oh-so-nobly, the nobility of your fall and refusal to compromise with your ideals isn't going to save a single goddamn person, and there's a good goddamn chance it'll kill many, many more. Every decision has costs in the lives of innocent people, and there is no abstention from that that is anything more than giving license to the currently-occurring trends happening.
  In a democracy, we share power. The more democratic the society, the more power is shared - and the power that is shared also comes with responsibility for what that power does. The modern US is less democratic than it should be, but it's much more democratic than pre-Enlightenment societies - or prior incarnations of the US, for that matter. We all have blood on our hands, because we all have a share of the decision-making power.
  We must choose the option that improves things to most - or damages things the least - to the best of our ability, whether in voting, organizing, protesting; all of it. And abrogation of that decision-making responsibility in any area is not abrogation of guilt; it is acceptance of the worse of the results.
  
  I think the best analogy I've heard had compared voting to transportation. If you're at the office and want to go home, there probably isn't a train that goes directly to your front door. So you get on the train heading in the right direction, and maybe at the end of that line you still need to take a bus and walk a couple blocks, but that's how you ultimately get where you want to go. Otherwise you're going to be in the same spot waiting for a perfect train that's not coming.

this person describes it better than me:
- Goddamn, that last paragraph speaks to me. I grew up in a little purple oasis surrounded by a desert of deep, deep red, and the idea that there are all these people just WAITING for a REAL LEFTIST to come along, whose ideas they'd all agree with and overwhelmingly vote for, because they only vote GOP because they don't believe Dems are GENUINE about SUPPORTING THE WORKERS is just...
  ... neither my experience nor supported by polling, nor supported by electoral results.
  A lot of people have dogshit beliefs. A lot of work has to be done before they'd even consider voting for someone other than the fucking fascist party.
  
  It's the end result of leftists circling the drain in ever-tighter bubbles after a decade of ostracizing anyone not pure enough in their beliefs. At their core, a lot of leftists are convinced that moderates don't exist, much less that they're the vast majority of people.
- That resonates so well. Wish I had it when I was arguing with some idiot who was claiming that voting can't accomplish anything ever.
  I blocked them after a while so I can't get their username, but if you check my latest comments you'll see them.
- I'm this scenario, voting is just wasted time and energy. At worst, it's pretending you have any kind of control over your conditions.
  
  Objectively false.
  Never forget the recent case of Kris Mayes, who refuses to uphold the Arizona supreme court’s sweeping ban of abortion. Kris Mayes only won her 2022 election by 280 votes. Voting changes things.

Voting does sort of make you complicit, honestly.
But guess what? Not voting also makes you complicit. So does voting in a way that has no chance of having an effect based on the current rules.
Basically, existing as an eligible voter, at least in a country where voting isn't rigged (so like, Russians are off the hook here, for example) makes you complicit in your government's actions.
That's kind of a big point of being in a democratic society - we are all, every one of us, responsible for the actions of our government.
And if you don't like that responsibility, I get it, I totally sympathize, because I agree. I hate that responsibility, especially cause I know damn well I'm not qualified to make those decisions. But I still am responsible, and pretending I'm not doesn't change that.
- eh, im with you but i dont really like the overapplication of the word complicit.
  i much prefer the model that we are a bunch of individuals doing our best to organize against systematic murder. but yes thank you for your corroborating comment :)
- This is straight horseshit. The only reason I could be possibly be considered complicit is that I haven't shot those fuckers, and well, that's frowned upon.
- I'm not responsible. I'm the the horse they ride in on. If fuck me too, what am I gonna do about it?
  Paying taxes seems to put us all in the wrong.
- Not voting also makes you complicit
  What if I vote for someone you don't like, though? Say, by endorsing a third party or spoiling the ballot with a write in?
  That’s kind of a big point of being in a democratic society - we are all, every one of us, responsible for the actions of our government.
  Police officer bludgeoning student protestor with a truncheon
  "WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR MY ACTIONS, CITIZEN!"
- at least in a country where voting isn’t rigged (so like, Russians are off the hook here, for example)
  So we're all off the hook, then?
  That’s kind of a big point of being in a democratic society
  You don't live in a democratic society.
  
  Everywhere on the internet is America

Whenever people express the sentiment that we need Biden to put his foot down on genocide I'm always for it.
But then when you ask them what they want to do it always becomes some nebulous Republican rhetoric about how Trump's not that bad.
Yes we need the genocide to stop, Trump will not accomplish that, he will make it worse.
We can pressure Congress and continue to protest because it needs to stop.
The past eight years have been such a strong argument for ranked choice voting.
- yep. either the nebulous version or its evil unveiled sibling “well maybe leftists will mobilize more if we let another maga win happen/voting is about holding them accountable so let’s fire brandon 🤓”
  mfs out here acting like the overton window doesn’t exist
- What the actual fuck? They are pretty clear what they want. ONE we stop giving weapons to isreal. TWO we stop getting in the way of a cease fire. THREE we start giving humanitarian aid to trapped Palestinians. FOUR we cooperate with The Hague on what evidence we have on isreal war crimes.
  These are things we could do without much effort that would have immediate impact on both stopping the genocide and boosting his numbers.
  I get we want “our strategic ally in the Middle East” but maybe if we stop doing all the war crimes and genocide we wouldn’t need to write a blank check to Israel every-time they run out of genocide juice. If our status as an ally to isreal is contingent on what we are doing, we are not an ally we are being used.
  It seems this thread pops up every time Fox News talks about Biden’s slipping numbers. The disillusionment of the left is real. And calling them out and saying “but trump!” Is not going to convince them, it’s not like they forgot.
  If they complain about Biden being complicit in genocide. Now the time to do it. And it’s up to them if they follow through with their threat, and it’s up to Biden if he’s willing to risk it
  
  I'm not asking what Biden could do, I'm very clear on what he could do.
  What I'm saying is what we as individuals could do to pressure them realistically.
  You're failing to recognize the inherent biases of the voting system, we all know that our system favors a two party outcome. Which is to say it's a statistical improbability for anyone except for the two most popular parties to win.
  This isn't just my opinion this is well known statistical fact with many years to back it up.
  This puts us in the awkward place of choosing the least bad candidate, Obviously pressuring Biden isn't working and I'm not happy about it.
  But when we consider our vote we have to consider more than just the situation in the middle East, something that the Republicans don't even want to fix.
  That's why I think it would be better to pressure Congress and to push for ranked choice voting and to continue to protest.
  Because at least rank choice voting would allow us to vote for a better option rather than the least bad option.
  You fell into the same trap, no actionable advice to the individual.
  
  I get we want “our strategic ally in the Middle East”
  Oh absolutely. Can't risk Egypt setting market rates on Suez Traffic. We'll support endless genocide to prevent that.
  
  Democrats claim to be the good guys but can't stop themselves from engaging in this massive faschie disinformation campaign about anyone left of genocide Joe. I've not seen a single user in leftist forums saying we should vote Trump for "acceleration" but I can't fucking escape it being thrown around as a consistent fact by dems.
  Same with how they can't call a third party vote a "third party vote," its always a "spoiler" or "protest vote," (when they aren't outright lying and claiming anyone not voting Biden is actually not voting and advocating for others to not vote.)
  Turns out, if you need leftists to win you should probably stop telling them to eat shit and lying about them at every fucking turn. I'm no political expert but 🤷‍♂️
- But then when you ask them what they want to do it always becomes some nebulous Republican rhetoric about how Trump’s not that bad.
  I tend to see "we need to pull Biden to the left" pitched as a solution, right up until it means doing anything to impede Biden's political agenda.
  Don't vote for him? You're MAGA.
  Don't donate to him? You're MAGA.
  Don't block walk for him? You're MAGA.
  Say anything critical of him on the Internet? Russian Bot Chinese Wumao Republican Traitor Why Do You Hate America?!
  I saw the same thing from Republicans in 2004. "We're at war so any kind of dissent means you're with the terrorists!"
  And it worked for Bush. He got another four years out of the hysteria. Maybe it'll work for Biden, too.
  
  I don't think anyone here is equating not voting for Biden to being a Trumpet but due to the reality of our voting system absence of a vote is in and of itself a vote so you have to decide your best option whatever that may be.
  Problem is the opposition has the same or worse policies on Palestine and worse policies on a lot of others.
  I'm not a fan of this "least bad option" we've got ourselves into either but to equate the two parties or to deny the reality before us is how we allow it to get worse.

I've finally trained my brain to jump to the bottom two panels of that format!
- i don’t really like this format either lol sorry about that 🥲

This reminds me of the trolley problem. One candidate wants to kill five people, the other "only" wants to kill one person. No matter what you do, it is guaranteed that one of them will get elected and kill at least one person - but if you try to use your vote to make the lesser evil slightly more probable - you are suddenly complicit.
Even worse - if the kill-one-person wins and kills that person, the kill-five-people candidate' supporters will be the ones to hold the kill-one-person voters accountable for it. Their candidate would have killed more people, but because he lost the elections he was not able to kill anyone, which somehow makes voting for him more ethical?
- You fail to mention the economic status or skin color of the potential victims.
  Realistically the kill-five-people Candidate would have explicitly stated that they'd select the "correct" victims for their supporters to rally behind.
  Whereas the kill-one-person Candidate would deny wanting to kill anyone in particular, so when it happens everyone is mad, even if their victim is a member of the "other" their opponent explicitly said they'd kill.
  Wow that is a mess, but I can't think of a better way of putting it.
  
  You fail to mention
  I did not fail to mention - I chose not to do it. The point of the trolley problem is not to find reason why killing the one person is not really that bad and why killing the five people is so much more terrible than what a simple multiplication implies. The point is to ask if its worth to end up with the greater evil just so that you can tell yourself that you are not complicit.
  
  That's an excruciatingly tortured metaphor. Are you implying that killing only one person instead of five could be worse depending on everyone's skin color or economic status? Or that it's worse to kill one person if the candidate tries to deny killing them?
  Rereading your post. You're either saying that or adding nothing to the conversation.

The amount of controversy is this thread is a dead giveaway that some fuckery is going down.
Luckily the amount of actual engagement shows its all just manufactured and there is no real consensus. Anyone forming an opinion based on discourse in this thread needs to step back and interface with real, actual, protesters.
- The amount of controversy is this thread is a dead giveaway that some fuckery is going down.
  Yep, pushing the bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe WhY bOtHeR vOtiNg narrative is cheap and easy "divide and conquer" propaganda.
  In recent history, one side has been shown to benefit over and over again from lack of overall voter engagement - the fascists... I mean republicans, sorry, Freudian slip there.
  Voting to keep out an anti-science, anti-education, anti-democracy political cancer = Moral inferiority.
  Doing NOTHING and therefore giving the anti-science, anti-education, anti-democracy political cancer the keys to the kingdom to turn it into a gigantic toilet with all of us in it = Moral superiority!!!
  
  You can go into any other left leaning thread on lemmy and it's crickets. Not even a stray trumpet to say mum.
  You go into a Isreal/Palestine thread and it's a regular dumpster fire.
  I'm not saying left leaning people are always on the same side of every issue but in general they are mild mannered and mindful of others. These threads are knock down drag out fights where 100 times some one is accused of supporting genocide when the actual number of people participating in the thread who support genocide is 0. 1-2 maybe if you consider the bad faith actors.

Who you vote for says a lot about what your priorities are and what your moral compass is willing to tolerate for what you see as the "greater good." When you vote for someone, you may not agree with everything they stand for but you absolutely do believe that overall what they stand for is more closely aligned with your political goals than the alternatives.
- It doesn't really reflect that much on you. Like, if my choices were Putin or Pol Pot, I don't think voting for Putin would say much about my moral compass. Obviously not voting would feel nicer, but feeling nice doesn't help much when the national average life experience drops to the mid teens.
  
  Equating trump and biden is dishonest. Both in terms of what the average american experiences and at a distant policy level.
  Saying "I dont care about things that dont immediately impact me" also says a lot about someones' moral compass and where their priorities are. There is no belief that doesnt say SOMETHING about a person.

That's why I always vote for Satan.

I have a feeling that the people who upvote this meme hate "trump voters" because of their complicity.
- The difference is that Trump's supporters actively supported his administration, and have been working to push him even further right. Biden doesn't have the kind of cult of personality and worship Trump has, people willing to storm the capitol to keep him in power, against the democratic will of the people.
  
  I thought of a few ways to respond to this, but I think I'll just let your comment stand as-is. It's a good encapsulation of the mindset, thanks.
- Voters are not complicit in individual policies, but they are complicit in the broad differences in outcomes that are easily predicted. Trump is, by any sane metric, the greater evil by far, so Trump voters are complicit in bringing more evil to the world.
  The choice to vote for a viable candidate rather than a non-viable one doesn't make anyone complicit in an outcome they couldn't realistically vote to prevent. Anyone who thinks a candidate other than Biden or Trump can win in November is delusional.
- No, actually. I view most of the American populace, and indeed the planet's, as an exploited, disadvantaged proletariat. The folks watching Faux News for 50 years never stood a chance. I so not hate them for it. Theyre still Americans, and I still need to go to work with them, and live in the same society as them. Ive gotten many meager and not so meager gains with righties over the past 5 years. If one of them recants on any one piece of bullshit they formerly believed in, than that is one more piece of bullshit they are not further propagating to their peers, or, more importantly, their children.
  I believe that the ideal society is one free from hierarchy. How can I hate anyone for being brainwashed if I truly believe we are meant to be classless?
  Always punch up, never down.
  
  Solid take, but have you seen the other replies? A bunch of liberals explaining that trump voters are complicit is "totally OK because it's so different!" I took this meme to be another castigation of leftists saying they would not vote for Biden because he's responsible for killing more than 30k civilians in Gaza - our daily vote blue no matter who reminder. Thus any vote for Biden makes you NOT complicit in genocide because it's not a blood pact, so please vote blue. Yet they will immediately turn around and claim that any vote for Trump IS in fact a blood pact and makes you complicit. It just gets exhausting.

Fucking brilliant.

Nuance is about subtlety. Nothing here is subtle.
There are clear differences between destroying the planet by eating meat and driving a car and supporting the guy with Mein Kampf on his nightstand who publically Idealizes Dictators.

I'm shocked! Are you telling me there are people in real life with whom you can have nuanced conversation?!

Fundementally it's perfectly valid to take a position that a system is so irredeemable that you cannot participate, but instead believe it must be torn down instead of adding legitimatecy to it. Sometimes that protest achieves something and sometimes it doesn't. It is a kantian ethics stance that you'd have to work a lot harder to invalidate than the cursory anger that folks spew out on Lemmy.
If a vote acknowledges the legitimacy in someone's view of a genocidal government, I think it's fine for them to protest against it. I'm not personally of that stance, but I don't doubt many have sincerely held beliefs.
- fundamentally, someone is going to end up in that seat anyway and you are flaunting your privelage by ditching the only right you have to make change to save the livelihoods of your neighbors.
  some of us don’t have the luxury of “sitting back and watching it all burn.” but carry on. your protest is certainly worth more in the short and long run than the individuals who the opposition has promised to wreak death on today.
- Ah yes, my concerted effort to win trump votes through the vast reach of.. lemmy.

literally Labour and Liberal in Australia, people have such little critical thinking skills that almost everyone i know either votes for one of the two, either its for welfare or for "freedom!", nothing else ever. no wonder we have policies most genuinely disagree with...

- wow i was like, ‘damn did orwell really write this dumbass quote’? then i did the bare minimum of research. snopes, reuters
  welcome to my blocklist. this post is really weeding out the worst of you trolls. im terrified and angry.
  
  I'm not that guy, but maybe check a different source. Snopes got snoped like a decade ago.
- So, funny story...
  The revelation that towards the end of his life, George Orwell had collaborated with the secret British government propaganda agency, the Information Research Department (IRD), provided conclusive proof as far as his political critics were concerned that he and his politics had always been flawed; that he had never been a reliable adherent of the socialist cause and that he had certainly abandoned that cause in his last years.
  Also, Orwell was literally a cop serving the British occupation of Myanmar.
  If he was familiar with corrupt politicians, theiving, and traitors, it was through very first hand experience.
- This would be true-ish if there wasn't a huge power imbalance and the massively powerful government didn't manipulate the voters each with a tiny spec of power.

- The only opinion I can come to about the conflict is "God this is all so fucked that it shuts me down mentally"
- It's weird that all the "genocide Joe" posters I've seen lately have all been coming from lemmnsfw.com.
  Anyway. Let's reframe this like a trolley problem.
  Imagine you are Biden, you have zionists in your party in both houses, zionists in the DNC, zionists among your donors as well as an array of people with vested interests in the military industry.
  Now you can either try and hard line aid to Israel, get completely dicked on by the entire party, lose donors to the Trump campaign and make an already uncomfortablely tight race even worse for yourself and potentially hand Trump the presidency who in turn gives Israel the go ahead to wipe Palestine off the map. Knowing that even if you don't give Trump the win Israel won't stop their genocide.
  Or you can just work in soft pressure, keep your keys to power happy and make what difference you can by doing stuff like sending aid that doesn't piss off the zionists and maybe save the Palestinians from a Trump backed Israel?
  
  Fuck the keys to power.
  
  I'm still waiting for the trolley to show up
- The hell it doesn't. You're being spoiled children, so we talk to you like you're being spoiled children.

When the American Empire implodes (hopefully soon) and a thousand years pass and an enlightened civilization is looking back on us with all your "nuance" weathered down, I don't want my name to be thrown on a list of people who voted for genocide. No democracy worth saving would've ever had its most important vote of our lifetimes ever for the fate of the world come down to Vanilla or Orange Sherbet flavored fascism. We are at the logical end of the American Experiment.
- Well, if I were a betting woman, I'd say your name isn't going to be remembered at all, so you can probably safely stop using that as an excuse for apathy.
  
  I'd say your name isn't going to be remembered at all,
  Great! Yours will be remembered for generations as the lady who voted for the genocide of brown kids across the world :)
- Cool, your name will be thrown on a list of people who enabled even more genocide than those who voted for less genocide. Thanks for having more blood on your hands, I guess.
  
  Inaction isn't action. Stop trying to force your guilty conscience on me. Every Palestinian killed by by Israel was murdered with the full support and backing of the president we both (presumably) voted for in 2020, where we seem to differ is that I'm not going to have that blood on my hands when that genocider wants to ask for a fucking second turn at office.