Heās had yet another horrible week. The old tricks arenāt working. Kamala Harris does not fear him. And itās showing in the numbers.
Heās had yet another horrible week. The old tricks arenāt working. Kamala Harris does not fear him. And itās showing in the numbers.
This is totally weird to me. Why would you possibly advocate for any particular course of action, except in terms of what itās likely to accomplish?
What else would lead you to what youāre deciding to do? Vibes? Allegiance to the group? Iām just lost. I mean of course itās impossible to know for sure what the outcome will be, but you can at least make an educated guess.
Why else would you do a protest, unless you were aiming to impact the future? That is a serious question.
Hm. So, I just looked over a bunch of Ozmaās recent history and it honestly looks fine. Maybe itās a little dishonest to characterize one of the main architects of the IRA and the Paris Agreement as āformer alum of Blackrockā as if thatās the most relevant thing about him. But I mean basically itās fine and thatās the only story I have much of any complaint about.
I think most of my complaint about ozma is historical at this point. Back in the day he would do stuff like say Biden betrayed his voters on marijuana policy because he said he would do X Y and Z and then he didnāt. When I pointed out he had done X and Y and tried to do Z but failed, ozma would ignore it and post more memes about how Biden betrayed his voters on marijuana. That to me seems like it implies you donāt give a shit about X Y or Z, or pushing Biden to better marijuana policy, but you do want to try to get Trump elected. Thatās weird and counterproductive. To me.
No idea. Iām not even plugged in enough to that culture to know. Probably itāll be a good thing; anything thatās directly putting pressure on the Democrats and bringing public awareness to the issue will probably be a good thing, because those are two excellent things.
Like I said, I donāt know if there are any people who are doing protests at the DNC who think the answer is to unconditionally blow up support for the Democrats, imply that they caused inflation and they love what Netanyahuās doing and are cheering him on, and so vote instead for Cornel West. I know they exist on Lemmy, and if theyāre in Chicago too, then I would classify those people as useful idiots.
Does that help answer the question?
Dude, I am not asking that as any kind of āgotchaā question or anything. I want to know where you are coming from.
If itās a choice between blowing up the earth and destroying India or something, and those are the only two possible options, then I would choose destroying India. Thatās sort of the type of choice you have to make in modern American politics. If there was a way to lean on the lever to make the blow-up-India explosion smaller, I would definitely support doing that.
If someone was saying, blowing up India is SO BAD that it is indefensible, and so I want to aim a whole bunch of criticism at the blowing up India option (and in a way that seems only in the vaguest of senses to connect with leaning on the lever to make the explosion smaller and in practice seems more likely just to make more likely the blowing-up-earth option), that would alarm the fuck out of me and I would disagree with that person.
I mean doesnāt that make sense? If the alternative is no genocide, then supporting genocide is indefensible. If the alternative is a bigger genocide, then supporting genocide can be an āacceptableā (if you want to call it that) lesser evil. Putting pressure on to reduce the magnitude of the lesser genocide, while also advocating for it to be the lesser and not the greater genocide, sounds perfectly defensible. It sounds right to me.
I doubt anyone from the DNC is on Lemmy. I think the impact of anything I am saying, if any, will be on the voters.
Thatās what makes it not make sense to me why shitting on Democrats on Lemmy is supposed to help any Palestinians. It seems more likely to get Trump elected, which will hurt them.
Lmao no itās not, youāve been articulating the other reason repeatedly, havenāt you? According to you, a great many people protest simply to get Trump elected, right?
Thereās good news here: there actually is a condition to running interference to democratic support, and itās very well communicated.
The funny thing is that people want to treat the opposition as a monolith, but itās a coalition of various interests just like any other group. If thereās a group within the group that is hard-lining a Palestinian liberation movement, the good news is that group likely isnāt big enough that youād need their support. But thereās likely some compromise policy that gets the support you need from that larger group without conceding the least practical conditions.
But when you treat them as a monolith, itās easy to complain that nothing you do can appease that group of crazies so they must not be acting in good-faith!
Lol this would be more funny if it werenāt so depressing. You donāt even see the self-contradiction. It reminds me a little of that conservative minority trope: āour opposition is both laughably weak and existentially dangerousā
Let me try a different tactic: Iāll just ask it as a question. Am I supportive of people protesting at the DNC, trying to get the Democrats to improve their policy on Israel by vocally demanding change, and withholding support unless they do?
Iāve given you the answer as to what my feeling on this is, several times.
Based on your varied responses: sometimes.
It seems to depend a great deal on what you think the likely outcome of that protest is, and if your imagined calculus puts the protest on the wrong side of some imaginary line, suddenly those protestors are āuseful idiotsā at best or ābad-actorsā at worst.
Yes. You have grasped it.
If someoneās protesting with the most likely result being better outcomes for the Palestinian people (because of useful pressure on the Democratic party, or even better some longer-term reform to our broken system that leaves these as the only two options), then Iām in favor of it.
If someoneās protesting in such a way that the most likely result is Trump winning the election and making things 10 times worse for the Palestinians, then Iām against it.
I have no idea why that would be weird or surprising, but yes. Thereās a little bit of overlap between those two goals, and itās impossible to know the future or the impact of any particular action definitively, but a lot of real-world situations are messy. Themās the breaks.
I describe as āuseful idiotsā people who are falling for deliberate propaganda which is being deployed to turn them unconditionally against the Democrats, alongside a lot of objectively false criticism, producing only a vague level of improvement to the Democratsā behavior but a strong result of making it more likely that Trump will win, yes. If youāre not doing that them Iām fine with you. And I have no idea, as I said, how many (if any) of the DNC protestors will fall into that category in practice. I just know how I categorize people based on the outcomes theyāre promoting, and I know I see people in that āuseful idiotā category on Lemmy. I donāt think youāre one of them, for the record; thatās why I laid out some of the specific accounts Iād describe as more specifically promoting propaganda as opposed to good activism and tried to be specific about it.
Hope this all is helpful; glad we could clear it up.
Jesus christ. Do you consider US culpability in the Palestinian Genocide a part of this ādeliberate propagandaā? At what point does someone protesting against democratic involvement and complacency in Israeli war crimes become someone who is protesting against democrats generally? Is there any grey area that youāre willing to acknowledge between these two categorical binaries youāve proposed? Can there be a legitimate protest against the democrats, that hurts their odds at winning, but doesnāt directly result in a change of policy? If the democrats and the protestors both refuse to bend to the other, is it categorically the protestorsā fault if and when trump wins? Even if it isnāt apparent that theyāve lost explicitly because of those protestors? Is it also the fault of the protestors if the democrats adopt a pro-palestinian policy in response to the protestors, AND THEN lose? What iām gathering from you is that it is ALWAYS the protestors fault for the loss, no matter what the democrats do in response.
Fuck off with your electoral reductionism. The democrats are not helpless here, and they could absolutely be fighting to save palestinian lives and it is 100% their own fault if voters decide they canāt support them over it. They are welcome to weigh the electoral calculus to predict how voters might react to their policies but it is completely their own fault if theyāve chosen the wrong ones.
No
When they stop either conditioning their lack of support on Democratic behavior, or advocating for voting reform or some other strategy which can lead to effective replacement of the Democrats with something better. Either one of those sounds fine and sensible to me, but when they reach the point of saying, functionally, āwell if the Democrats arenāt doing what I want then I will let the Republicans win even if they are 10 times worse at the things I hold as priorities in the world,ā that to me stops making sense.
I think if youāre a Palestinian who is still alive right now, and a protestor āon your behalfā enables Trump to come to power, and then Trump supports someone who kills you, the idea that the protestor was mad that the Democrats werenāt doing enough for you before Trump and Netanyahu cooperated to kill you would be cold comfort. I think this whole āharm reduction isnāt worth doingā idea is a childish and entitled reaction from someone who is safely far away from that harm that is very real to very real people in the real world, who have the luxury of poo pooing the entire idea of predicting outcomes in the real world and strategizing how to get them.
Yes, quite a substantial one.
Yes. If itās only hurting their odds of winning, and not even trying to change their policy, then itās suspect to me, but as you said thereās quite a substantial grey area and itās not easy to tell ahead of time what protest might result in what outcome. You have to just kind of do what you can and hope that youāve worked it out what is going to help the Palestinians and what is going to hurt them, and do the first and not the second as best as you can figure it out.
Not categorically, no. The Democrats have a lot of responsibility, the Republicans and Netanyahu obviously have quite a bit more. The protestors might have some responsibility, but depending on how they were protesting, potentially not much at all.
Honestly, Iām less concerned with assigning āblameā after the fact than I am with strategizing what I could do, or what someone else could do, to get better outcomes. Like I say, I consider this whole thing of it being real important āwhose fault it isā when something horrifying happens to be an entitled mentality from someone whoās not directly in danger. Mostly when peopleās familiesā lives are threatened theyāre more focused on āhow can I keep them safeā than they are on āwhose fault will it be if someone comes to power who kills them, and how can I make sure it wonāt be this personās fault but instead this other personās fault.ā
So this brings up a really good point. To me, it makes a lot more sense to help the Palestinians by educating the American people about whatās going on in Palestine, so the Democrats wonāt have to decide (to any degree) between enabling war crimes and losing the election.
A lot of protests right now are serving a double purpose ā one, theyāre bringing awareness to the issue with the American people (and itās working), and two, theyāre threatening the Democrats electorally and forcing them to change their calculus of what types of Israel policy they should do if they donāt want to lose the election from the other direction (and thatās working, too). Both of those are good things. I keep saying that, and you keep insisting for some reason that I must have a problem with them. I guess because it makes the point that youāre trying to say easier if I am just against all protestors. As I keep saying, I am not.
I donāt care whose āfaultā it is. I am talking about what actions are good (in terms of creating better outcomes in the future), and what actions are bad (in terms of getting people killed). Like I said, this emphasis on āfaultā having any significant importance is the mindset of someone who isnāt watching their family getting killed.
Yea, thatās the point. But you continuously allude to some āotherā type of pro-palestinian protestor, who is putting the pressure squarely on those most directly responsive to their protest, as āuseful idiotā, or ābad actorā, or alluding to them having abuser logic for placing agency on the people currently providing Israel military aid and not, weirdly, on themselves. You even use a double-standard when discussing online behavior: in one instance, the correct way to Do Activismtm is to convince the american public to sway public opinion, and then in the next you hand-wave away activity that is directed at swaying public opinion because āyou doubt the DNC reads your comments on Lemmyā.
That, OR, youāre trying to distinguish between types of pro-palestinian protestors using some weird, āthatās not gonna helpā classification system thatās opaque and/or ambiguously defined, so that at any given moment someone saying ādemocrats havenāt done enoughā can be cast aside as āotherā or ābad actorā. It is almost as if you are defending a naieve enthusiasm from water being thrown on it, simply because you value that enthusiasm even while there is a veritable gulf between what is needed from democrats on Israel and what they are doing. No, you may not return to your brunch, look at the shit that still needs cleaning up. Protestors are there to remind libs (who, as you pointed out, are safe from harm themselves no matter what the democratic policy is on Israel) that the work is not yet done. This includes people on Lemmy who are serving you reminders that things continue to be shit, despite what little democrats have actually done.
And itās not even like the Democrats canāt, also, campaign for that change being worked toward. Youāre pretending as if the desired policy must grow from grass-roots before democrats can take action, but the democrats already know what the right thing to do is, it is just politically inconvenient to have to do it right now. A huge part of the problem is that the Democrats actively use the bully pulpit to deflect blame and run cover for Israel - when they should be using it to make the case to the american public why things need to change.
Literally anything to disembody the problem away from your personal electoral goals, while also claiming to support the issue being raised. It is the quintessential āwhite moderateā take that MLK discusses in Letter from Birmingham, but youāre so blinded by self-confidence that you couldnāt possibly see it.
Okay so I just deleted a whole bunch of stuff. Honestly, letās just get to the root of it.
No - I meant you. Youāre safe from harm. You can advocate for something that might get Trump elected, and I think itās safe to say no fighter jets will commence carpet bombing anywhere where your family is, if it happens.
Iām safe from harm too. Iāve flown close enough to see little flashes in the distance, I briefly dated someone who grew up in a refugee camp, Iāve spent a little bit of time staying with someone who was captured and tortured at one point in his life. That kind of secondhand stuff is as close as Iāve come. I donāt want to come any closer. I have my safe, privileged life. But Iāve experienced this stuff second hand; Iāve been friends with people who were crippled by these policies and decisions, had the arc of their lives changed without their consent.
You keep bringing it back to shit that doesnāt matter. I donāt care whose fault it is. I donāt care what you think is opaque or ambiguously defined, or what frameworks you feel like are too complicated to want to spend the mental effort on, so you use simple ones instead. I care about dying people, and how we change it; whatās going to work, and what isnāt.
I can dig up 10 different times when Iāve been doing exactly that, on Lemmy. Do you want me to? If itās useful for you to hear it, Iām happy to show it to you.
I thought about it for a while, and I think the reason weāre not seeing eye to eye is this: The Democrats are not my friends. No one in Washington is my friend. When Iām saying, I want the Democrats to win this upcoming election, itās purely because that will keep some people alive who will die under Trump. Thereās a very few people in Washington, of any party, that I actually think have any kind of human standing on anything, that I would āsupportā in the sense of hey I like this person, I want them in charge. Kamala Harris isnāt one of them.
I feel like ā tell me if Iām wrong ā youāre interpreting all this that I am saying like I āsupportā Kamala Harris, and youāre trying to get me not to. Like I think what sheās doing is sufficient and you need to debunk that. You can stop. I donāt. Put it this way: If one of my neighbors regularly made phone calls and ordered people to be killed, I wouldnāt hang out with them. Thatās pretty much everyone in power in Washington: Biden, Harris, McCain, Trump, Adam Schiff, you get the idea. I look at them all (again, with a very small number of exceptions) as almost like these dangerous robots who somehow have this unimaginable power.
Iām not saying that I think, yes letās change the system and get these fuckin maniacs out of power and also letās Kamala Harris win this particular election, because of any of the stuff you are debunking in your message. Most of your message, I agree with. I am saying blah blah also letās Kamala Harris win this particular election because according to the only other available alternative, a whole fuck a lot (more ā much more) people will die. Thatās not imaginary ā it is real as you or I. Figuring out how to make a non performative change and what will work and what wonāt is important.
If you show me a strategy āhey hereās how we can get better than the Democrats in powerā I will start supporting it instantly. It feels like ā again, tell me if Iām wrong ā you think that what youāre advocating is that, and Iām refusing to support it and so I must love Democrats or something. Thatās not the case. I just donāt think what you are advocating will work (definitely not in the short run which is when most of the Palestinians will die). If you want to talk about, why not, how can we get something that will work, letās rap. But ā I donāt know how many times I have to say it ā stop telling me how important it is to arrive at something better than the Democrats. You can silence that, and move on from it, or just keep wasting your time typing it over and over again, I guess, if you want to, but thatās what youāre doing when you type it.
Doesnāt that make sense? Or no? You tell me.