this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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she continues to be vague about her policy on stopping the genocide in Gaza, and that's all I needed to hear, personally.
EDIT: well I got y'all talkin, and that was my main mission.
And that's as clear as she got the whole time. As least she was answering the question asked in that case.
(As to single-issue Gaza voters, I get it in the "had a close friend who was Palestinian in my 20s" sense, but Trump doesn't give a shit about the Palestinians. Somehow suggesting she's the worse choice in this race on that issue alone isn't even true, regardless of the larger picture. That's not politics or conjecture.)
Politicians are notoriously evasive, and this particular interview sounded more straight forward than most. Okay, most the honest ones, anyway. I mean: it's easy to say "Read my lips. No new taxes" or "Free IVF" if you've no legitimate plan to fund the government, but if you're not going to make stuff up for the sound bite, you almost have to be evasive. Robust and well considered plans are made by experts and a politician trying to promote a good plan has to boil it down to a couple nebulous basics. Doing anything else means you either bore the audience OR skip a contingency or other minutia such that your critics call you a liar.
Remember when Obama said you'd get to keep your doctor? He was trying to summarize explaining that Affordable Care would not mandate what doctor you could use, but what he didn't say was that Insurance Companies would continue to be able choose what doctors they covered, so Obama's critics said he LIED about keeping your doctor. It was NOT a lie. It was just Insurance companies doing what they always did.
Harris said she would support Israel but the war had to end. If Israeli/Palestinian strife has gone unsolved for 50 years through all sorts of Presidents, I don't expect any U.S. election to change what goes on over there. The U.S. could theoretically stop aiding Israel as it commits genocide, but the realistic outcome of that would be neighboring countries committing genocide on Israelis, and since that's the basic reason the country was invented... maybe that's not the best outcome either. It has been a mess for decades, and I'm not blaming Regan, Carter, Trump, Putin, or Tony Blair for any of the mess with Gaza.
Harris said she would not ban fracking but her values have not changed. I suspect this is because she's come to see no one banned horses when car came along, and no one need ban fracking if there's a better alternative. What she did not specify was the carrots and sticks she might employ to get us to which alternatives. That's fine with me because the tech is changing and the outcome is more important than the method.
Harris said she would enforce laws regarding immigration AND she wanted the tabled border bill on her desk so she can sign it. There's a bunch she could have said there, too, but my point is that again, she wasn't particularly evasive.
Israel is so armed to the teeth at this point, i'm not sure how you think they would just be sitting ducks without the US's support. And honestly at this point I kind of feel like they deserve whatever happens to them in the absence of US aid. 17,000 dead children is a lot of blood to wash off.
Given that Israel has nuclear weapons, they wouldn't be 'sitting ducks', but I don't want to see a nuclear war starting in the Middle East. I doubt it would stay contained to the area. I fear that Russia would back Iran and counter -- or at least threaten to -- with Russian nuclear weapons, which would get the U.S. or our allies back into the mess but escalated to the whole world at risk instead of just a small contested sliver.
I would love to see a workable path to a two-state solution. Experts have spent their lives working towards that goal and it still hasn't happened. I totally blame the government of Israel for not figuring out a peace with Palestinian residents back in the 1970s, but here we are. Bibbi makes everything worse and his public falls for his 'strong man' shtick just like Americans fall for Trump's version. Sitting in the U.S., the best election choice I can make for the sake of Palestinians is to vote Harris. Beyond the election, there is room for letters, protests, and boycotts, but the problem is mostly with Israel's government rather than with anyone in the United States.
I actually think you're slightly wrong about this. She isn't the worse choice on this issue, because they are functionally identical on this issue. If we have 17,000 dead Palestinian children due to Biden-Harris foreign policy, does it really matter that Trump foreign policy might have led to 20,000+ dead Palestinian children? It's an unconscionable tragedy either way.
If you don't care about any dead child above 17,000, you've made a fine argument. But now you're saying more deaths is fine (and better than current policy) because you've reached some tipping point where more suffering and death is actually preferable to ... what? A Democrat in the White House? Your logic doesn't work within your own argument.
This is very common among single-issue voters. As another example: abortion. Plenty of people who think Trump is heinous vote for him based on that issue alone (something the GOP has been using to great effect for the past 30 years), and accept whatever else his cronies get him to enact because they perceive him as "wanting to get rid of abortion."
If your think the suffering of Palestinians is the greatest domestic issue facing the U.S., dwarfing all others combined, by all means let it guide your choice. But don't complain about the internment camps that start getting built if Trump wins when you found everything else in this election irrelevant.
Six hundred Nader votes in Florida going to Gore instead 24 years ago would have put this country on a very different trajectory, so it is not hyperbole that staying home or voting for the other guy can result in an even worse outcome.
I did not say this. I said that 20,000 deaths is "functionally equivalent" to 17,000, not "preferable". Big difference in meaning. My point is that the two candidates are identical on this specific issue.
Well it's a foreign issue, not a domestic one. But that aside, I am aware of and care about the other issues. It just strikes me as selfish to focus on what will happen to us if Trump wins when people elsewhere in the world are being slaughtered, and the "morally good" alternative supports that slaughter.
Look, I been around the block. I voted third party in 2016 and saw what came of that. I'm utilitarian about this at the end of the day, and I want to choose the candidate that will cause the least total suffering in the world as whole. I want the Overton Window in the US to shift left, and I think that happens through repeated Dem wins. But don't get it twisted: the Dems are still the party that will throw you a few social justice crumbs so you don't complain about being ground up by the gears of capitalism. They bypassed the primary process and stole your voice from you so they could choose the moderate candidate that they wanted.
And ultimately, I hate that the Dems have so successfully-whipped y'all into a panic about Trump that y'all won't even DISCUSS this genocide anymore for fear that it will lead to a second Trump presidency. Watch them do it again with a new bogeyman in 4 years.
To your last point, you're dead wrong. I'm not whipped into anything, but thanks for the personal attack (not just on me, but on the gestures broadly "y'all") with zero basis. That's not Beehaw etiquette.
I'm far to the left of the current U.S. Overton window, so being cast as aligned with neoliberalism is laughable. As far as I can tell, your argument is that everyone for whom Gaza isn't their only deciding factor in a U.S. election supports genocide. That's certainly an opinion.
I didn't think I was making a personal attack, but I'm sorry if it came off that way. In spaces like this, I'm usually trying to stick to only expressing my POV without saying anything specific about anyone that isn't a public figure. I know I can get a bit heated, tho. Sorry if I overstepped in my language, I have no bad blood for any Beeple.
Thanks for the explanation and apology. No harm done ... using the second person when talking about contentious issues can be pretty fraught, so I just wanted to let you know how I received it.
right, but she is still the better choice in this matter by a wide, wide margin.
Not voting or voting for Trump because of this one issue , important though it is, and allowing a christo-facist authoritarian to assume power as a result seems like a horrible irresponsible take. (Not to mention Trump would only embolden Netanyahu and his cabinet.)
How would abstaining or voting for Trump help the situation in Gaza at all?
That's the neat part, it wouldn't.
it wouldn't. it just sucks that the US is funding genocide and no one seems to care.
I think people do care a lot, but this is the worst election to protest or shut down because of it. I know people always say that but in this case its true.
Either way the people of Gaza have a much better chance if Trump is decisively defeated. Again, Trump is closely aligned with Netanyahu, and has said the IDF needs to "finish the job". I would think people would be motivated to vote against him.
In this thread, I simply pointed out that she dodged the question about Gaza, and I was bombarded with replies about how I am endorsing Trump. This says to me that Beehaw is more scared of Trump than they care about the Palestinian genocide, bc y'all refuse to even have a conversation about this.
I don't disagree that Trump will be worse for the Palestinians. But I do disagree that things will be significantly better under Harris. 17000 dead children under Biden-Harris foreign policy, and Harris has given no indication that she will deviate from Biden's policy on Israel.
Yes, no kidding people are more afraid of Trump. He wants to dismantle democracy and install himself and Christian facists. He wants to arrest and deport "dissidents", citizens and non-citizens, millions of people.
Are you implying Americans are complicit in genocide if they vote against their country becoming a violent facist state? (especially when when Trump, would also 100% make things worse in Gaza. He is a known islamaphobe, and has called for Netanyahu to "finish the job" etc). This is why people are getting pissy.
There is absolutely a better chance of a new approach with Harris than with Trump, and to say otherwise is not based in reality.
Why do you think these are the only options?
In terms of who to vote for in the U.S. presidential election, 3rd parties are spoilers. The U.S. voter is wasting their vote if they stay home or vote 3rd party.
Why do you think voting is your only option?
Feel free to enumerate other options.
Organization (protests, unions, joining a local political movement), education (yourself or others), pressuring candidates (call your reps, protests), mutual aid & voter enfranchisement (food banks, clothing donations, volunteering at polling stations, any effort to protect the homeless). All of these are options, and this is just what I can think of off the top of my head. If you'd like, here's a page with a gallery of 346 nonviolent protest tactics.
Much of America has become trained to think only in terms of a vote – a vote in a system that was deliberately unequal from its founding through to today – to the exclusion of all other action. To say this is suffocating to any effort to enact change is an understatement; it is self-defeating in the extreme, serves only to perpetuate the status quo or worse, and yet time and time again I see so many people who have spent next to no time thinking outside these terms.
So you’ll be voting for trump then?
Criticism of Harris ≠ Support for Trump
As we all know, politics is a dichotomy!
It’s okay to admit it, was just curious. Realistically the US political system IS a dichotomy. The only options that have a realistic chance of being elected are either Republicans or Democrats.
It goes to show how I can say something so patently and obviously untrue and sarcastic and yet it still doesn't register as such. America has developed such a hyper-focus on voting to the exclusion of all other possibilities that it's basically learned helplessness at this point.
I found that there were a couple questions I would have preferred very straight answers to, but she knows she doesn’t have the time in that interview to go in-depth on any one topic and anything in the Middle East is always an extremely complex topic to debate.
I’ll still vote for her and she’ll likely win. Assuming you’re an American citizen, if you want to vote for Trump, that’s your right, but you will be voting for a convicted felon, whose policies are limited to “dictators love me” and “my crowd size is bigger” and “I’m not weird, they’re weird.”
I’d rather have an adult in the White House, personally.
Is a capable, genocidal adult better than a petulant child?
First, I don’t condone sending arms to Israel or any country or group that is intent on eradication of others. Israel is run by a shit leader.
Second, Hamas is also at fault.
Third, you damn well know if Trump had been in office, shit would be even worse in the Middle East.
So stop trying to make this a single issue election — it’s not. Some of us are capable of critical thinking and can easily see that America and the world are far worse off with your petulant child.
Glad we agree on that at least.
Hamas is the only entity doing something material to stop the slaughter of Palestinian children. This is not to belittle the efforts of protesters, or of nation-states that are advocating at the UN level. But to watch the mass slaughter and forcible relocation of a people, and then wag your finger at them for fighting back, seems...idk, patronizing to their efforts? Like only the white people can save them, they aren't allowed to wield power themselves. I don't think that's exactly what you meant, but it's how it strikes me any time anyone says "well Hamas is bad too".
Yes, you're probably right. But that doesn't change the fact that Harris is endorsing continued genocide. I get that it isn't a single-issue election, but not all issues carry equal weight. I care about income inequality and Medicare-for-all and protecting the right to choose. But all of those issues seem miniscule when stood up side-by-side with literal genocide.
She will probably still get my vote because I care about all of those issues and I want to see the Overton Window shift left, but that doesn't mean i'm going to shut up about the genocide.
You say that "only the white people can save them" line without any awareness of the irony that it gives your stance in not supporting a particular candidate.
i'm always aware of the irony. fully-clad in irony armor over here.
Well it's spraying all over everyone else still