2024 ELECTION THREAD
The next presidential race will be here soon! Please see current Bovada odds. Thoughts?
Let’s say there are two candidates. One promises to kill 1 million random people. The other promises to kill 10 million people. I say it would be a moral imperative to vote for the one that will kill 1 million.
Everything else is just talking about what the threshold is. Saying you would never vote for the lesser evil though? Just seems like a weird voting strategy. I would actually respect “voting statistically doesn’t matter” people over “
The point is you don't need hypotheticals to figure out the impact of not voting. We know from demographic analysis that voters are a subset of the population that leans slightly to the right and primary voters lean even more to the right. If you are on the left and advocate not voting, you're advocating for the exact strategy that lead to Reagan, Bush, Clinton and the current status quo.
In primaries, progressives in droves did not turn out for Bernie Sanders. Yet they didn't change radically and discover that they should not expect to win if they run a lesser evil candidate. The impact of progressive vote withholding seems pretty well understood and historically has resulted in right leaning candidates winning primaries and elections and no leftward shift, either of the party as a whole or the progressive wing.
they were interred for being potentially dissidents, even worse.
"how can we be sure that they won't help japan soldiers"
It was a good faith (even if obviously extremely misguided) fear for national security. It wasn't using national security as a pretext to lock up people who disagree with the party in power politically.
The Soviet Union and its ilk regularly locked up journalists, authors, artists and others who posed no danger and could not possibly pose any danger other speaking out against the party in power. It's a qualitatively different scenario.
I like how you just skipped over the whole imprisoned part but its ok, I still got you. bc you know I can and do read stuff.
Cool, I can do screenshots too, although sadly I do not have the same faith in your reading abilities as you have in mine.
In any case, your evidence for your assertion that the US government executes dissidents is a ****ing MLK assassination conspiracy theory. Great work as usual, crack on.
Oh the US govt disagrees with the unanimous court decision that they helped kill MLK? I guess that settles the case then.
Ignoring your dumb conspiracy talk, you are quite clearly also arguing in bad faith. All the examples you gave are of extrajudicial activities. The countries you idolise persecuted political opponents as a matter of public policy, and their incarceration and/or execution was within the framework of the judicial system for vague crimes such as being "an enemy of the state", or of course their favourite fallback charge, espionage.
Extrajudicial? Oh so it's better that USA was working outside of the law?
Back on topic please
Ignoring your dumb conspiracy talk, you are quite clearly also arguing in bad faith. All the examples you gave are of extrajudicial activities. The countries you idolise persecuted political opponents as a matter of public policy, and their incarceration and/or execution was within the framework of the judicial system for vague crimes such as being "an enemy of the state", or of course their favourite fallback charge, espionage.
these days they come up with pseudolegal excuses, and the executions are very rarely official unless there is a clear non political crime involved.
Russia in particular is good at keeping a facade up, including fake voting.
they do this exactly to give the victors of the world plausible deniability.
regimes were less sophisticated in the past, and you see some examples of that in very weak regimes currently like the Burmese junta.
if Tienanmen Square happened today the reaction would be as lethal or more, but far less photogenic.
just check recently how dissenters in Hong Kong disappeared without publicity, or the epidemic of suicides by jumping from a window among high level Russian dissenters.
Putin in particular has been very careful with the killing of journalists and opposition candidates. he didn't take the "merit" almost ever
sorry mod I was writing while you intervened, will go back to topic as well
ty, luc
But he will leave the post up with a blatant personal attack and falsehood to which I am not allowed to respond.
I was actually asking you who you would support and what policies you would support that you think would accomplish an end to the conflict.
oh, yeah, well ... voting in a us federal election wouldn't help there, kamala made that clear with her big speech. voting 3rd party or not voting might send a message, but it won't end the conflict. idk, organize, advocate, protest, bds, disrupt, make phone calls, write letters, [redacted], etc. not much anyone can do to end the conflict unless you're joe brandon or a us senator/congressperson, so i guess you can only do what you can do to show you're not happy about the situation. laying down and voting for the "lesser evil" who are doing this certainly won't do anything.
contact your local anti-war/genocide group to learn more, they'll probably have some better ideas than i.
you can vote in primaries for candidates that agree with you, within the two main parties.
or you can do your best to help Israel win definitively, which would end the war as well.
I still don't believe for a second the obsession over this particular conflict over all other life loss and human right violations occurring worldwide is genuine, I am absolutely certain it's predicated on antisemitism almost always, but in the very rare case you personally aren't antisemite yet you decide the Gaza situation is worthy of 100x the attention of all other violations worldwide combined (this is what you guys are doing) because you can't do math, I guess you have to gote for Jill Stein and help republicans win seats in Congress and perhaps the presidency.
i mean it's completely obvious that women rights in Afghanistan are being violated because Biden left them there to be violated, and that's more human suffering than the Gaza situation, but for some reason you guys are ok with leaving women in Afghanistan as actual slaves of their men and don't give a **** about actual human suffering if it isn't Palestinian suffering
you don't care about womens' rights lol
yeah ppl can vote down ballot for candidates they like, especially if they're anti-war. it probably won't end the genocide, but it might be a net positive.
oh, yeah, well ... voting in a us federal election wouldn't help there, kamala made that clear with her big speech. voting 3rd party or not voting might send a message, but it won't end the conflict. idk, organize, advocate, protest, bds, disrupt, make phone calls, write letters, [redacted], etc. not much anyone can do to end the conflict unless you're joe brandon or a us senator/congressperson, so i guess you can only do what you can do to
Well, if you think you should vote 3rd party, write letters and protest, then do that. It's what democracy is about. If it changes anything or not isn't that relevant, a voter can rarely be an agent of change on his own.
i mean it's completely obvious that women rights in Afghanistan are being violated because Biden left them there to be violated, and that's more human suffering than the Gaza situation, but for some reason you guys are ok with leaving women in Afghanistan as actual slaves of their men and don't give a **** about actual human suffering if it isn't Palestinian suffering
This is weird to me in a lot of ways:
1.) I never voted for Biden and a lot of people around here dislike him.
2.) I don't know why my dollars should be fighting for women to live better lives on the other side of the world. And why in Afghanistan when women's rights are pretty terrible everywhere on the other side of the world?
3.) Giving a **** about Palestinian suffering is a fringe issue and mostly cared about my people who are against U.S. military intervention. Whether it's against Israel or the Taliban.
I get what you're saying, but you're kind of talking to no one here when you say "you guys". Now, if you wanna point out hypocrisy int he Ukraine thread where the hypocrisy exists, OK; I don't read that thread, so I won't speak to what's in there. But your lines are really weird here.
i mean it's completely obvious that women rights in Afghanistan are being violated because Biden left them there to be violated, and that's more human suffering than the Gaza situation, but for some reason you guys are ok with leaving women in Afghanistan as actual slaves of their men and don't give a **** about actual human suffering if it isn't Palestinian suffering
The afghan withdrawal should have been a learning experience for the doves but they will never learn their lesson. They think that indifference in the face of injustice in another country is some kind of moral imperative.
But no, these people never get to learn from their mistakes and get to keep pretending that every action of the US military and every foreign outpost of the US is inherently evil and every time the US stops helping an ally is awesome and based.
yes every US foreign outpost and foreign massacre is evil and wrong. a simple reading of history would show this.
yes every US foreign outpost and foreign massacre is evil and wrong. a simple reading of history would show this.
No countries should help other countries !
Strange stance from a lefty where the concept of helping each other should be a normal thing .
Btw Vic , is there a specific country you would say is a good country to live in with a great politics that fit your view , basically isn’t evil ?
