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this post commits the cardinal internet sin of having nuance sorry :( (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

So Biden literally has no agency to change one stance that is overwhelmingly unpopular with young voters, many of whom are threatening not to vote for him over this issue?

When an equal or greater number of voters believe he's doing the right thing, or needs to do more for Israel, and young voters are notoriously unreliable? In terms of political calculus, this is not a clear-cut strategic decision.

I’ve seen so many excuses for why voters should feel they personally failed democracy if they don’t vote for Biden over his support for genocide, but not a single one of you have offered a reason why Biden should hold course on his Israeli policy, rather than correcting now, while he still has time. Again, there is zero benefit to the US for him to hold his current position.

He's in a lose-lose situation. Either way he loses votes, unless the anti-Israel sentiment accelerates even more. My opinion is that in a lose-lose situation, you should take the moral loss and not the immoral one - so I'm entirely in favor of cutting Israel off.

But if Biden doesn't change his position on Israel, despite voicing some responsiveness to current protests, he's still better, and yes, including for the Palestinian people, than Donald Trump. And realistically speaking, it's one of those two old fucks that's going to be president.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

When an equal or greater number of voters believe he’s doing the right thing, or needs to do more for Israel, and young voters are notoriously unreliable? In terms of political calculus, this is not a clear-cut strategic decision.

If young voters don't turn out for him in similar numbers as they did the last election, he's likely lost anyway. He's running a campaign on a knife edge, and alienating a demographic that was essential for his last win, which is a dumb move. Support for Israel tracks heavily with age, which coincidentally, tracks pretty decently with the likelihood to vote Republican, so there's a good portion of this block that were never going to vote for him to begin with.

But if Biden doesn’t change his position on Israel, despite voicing some responsiveness to current protests, he’s still better, and yes, including for the Palestinian people, than Donald Trump. And realistically speaking, it’s one of those two old fucks that’s going to be president.

No, it's just competing on degrees of awfulness. This is like saying you're going to fall victim to one of two murders; the first one will flay you alive and let you die of infections once they set in, while the second will shoot you 3 times in the face and make sure you're dead within ten minutes. You're arguing the first one is better because they prolong the agony, but the outcome is the same either way.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

He’s running a campaign on a knife edge, and alienating a demographic that was essential for his last win

The pro-Israel moderate vote was also essential for his last win.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

No, it’s just competing on degrees of awfulness. This is like saying you’re going to fall victim to one of two murders; the first one will flay you alive and let you die of infections once they set in, while the second will shoot you 3 times in the face and make sure you’re dead within ten minutes. You’re arguing the first one is better because they prolong the agony, but the outcome is the same either way.

Ah, so your opinion is that swift genocide is superior to delaying genocide. It's all the same in the end, right? Like how we all die in the end, so what's the difference between harsh circumstances and torture? All lives end in the same place, and circumstances don't determine possible courses of actions. And of course, it's not like circumstances can change, no, giving the Palestinian people more time to live will obviously have no possibilities that the swift extermination of the Palestinian people would extinguish.

Ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Not what I said at all. Rather, you're acting as though one is actually a great option, and not just possibly slightly less terrible, if not ultimately the same. As though that thin chance was supposed to be something to actually get excited about someone backing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm really excited about the prospect of NOT being thrown into a concentration camp, personally.

As shitty as life often is in the US, I don't want it to get worse. I'm very enthusiastic about that cause, not least because I live here.

I've said it many times - though he did much more than I was expecting him to when he won the primary in 2020 (Bernie voter here), Biden is still, at his core, a moderate, milquetoast, centrist, party-consensus politician with only a handful of solid positions that he's kept throughout his career, none of which are particularly radical anyway.

But fuck, you offer me a stale slice of bread with spread so thin you can only tell which side is buttered by the glint of the light, and a literal shit sandwich, I will very quickly and without hesitation take the stale slice of bread every goddamn time if those are the only available choices, no matter how much I might want real food. And if I see 49 people voting for EVERYONE to be forcibly fed the shit sandwich, I am going to be very vocal in trying to remind everyone else that it takes 51 votes for stale bread in order for all of us to not eat shit, and that eating shit is NOT a fucking acceptable alternative.

The menu isn't going to change today. We will have to fight for that. But while invaders are pushing a battering ram to our gates is NOT the time to have that fight.

Damn. That metaphor got a bit mixed. tl;dr; I am excited about not living under fascism, not excited for Biden specifically.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

One candidate will cause a lot more deaths than the other.