Why are so many Pro-Palestine (I am pro-Palestine and anti-genocide) Americans refusing to vote for Harris due to her stance on Israel?

I've recently seen a nice description of that - "peasant mindset".

People who are not ready and willing to peacefully discuss reality with literally anyone, and most of all marginal and weird viewpoints, like sovcits and antivaxxers, because those are more interesting, - have that "peasant mindset".

(I've found something like that in my head too this morning, so sharing the thought.)

Aggression is a sign of fear, and fear is something we feel when we are not ready to change our mind if we get some good arguments, or when we get bad, insufficient arguments, but are pressed to change our mind anyway.

Why can we not be ready for that, feel powerless before that possibility of deciding to think differently 5 minutes from now?

Because there's something that we follow like a peasant follows their master. It's the assumed identity, the family, the group, the party, the state, the nation. Such a decision, and a decision to discuss reality preceding that, is an act of defiance toward those. It's a conflict, and we as humans sometimes try to avoid conflicts. It's like discussing orders. Only there's not a single soul above us who is entitled to order us how we vote or how we think.

Every decision worth making is destructive, everything new comes in the place of something old and something that could be, there's nothing to fear.

Changing one's mind by a conscious decision after careful consideration is a sign of having personal dignity. Not changing one's mind in the same situation is too a sign of having personal dignity.

Keeping your head down and trying to eat anyone not in line is not.

(too long again)

Well, in that case, the Democrats should adopt policies that attract more left leaning voters. Saying stuff like, "I will prosecute migrants" doesn't make any sense because if that is an important topic to a voter, why wouldn't they just vote Trump who has promised that and more?

If the problem is, "not enough left leaning votes", the solution seems like, "attract more left leaning votes". People in this country love progressive leftist policies like universal healthcare or not funding genocides, no matter their party affiliation. People have not responded well to neo-liberal/conservative policies like means testing school lunches or increasingly stringent border laws.

And yet, the Democratic party continually adopts neo-liberal/conservative policies. It feels like voting Democrat is just, "voting Republican but slower". The Democratic party has accepted the Republican framing about an imaginary migrant crisis, and that was with a much more firm stance against racism only 4 years ago. Yeah, they would possibly be better on Israel's genocide than Republicans, but all the actions protesting the genocide have been met with vitriol from the current administration. It seems far more likely that the Democrats would just do the same thing as Republicans, just less loudly.

The Democratic party cannot expect to win simply because, "orange man bad". They have not shown they will not continue to adopt Republican ideas and policies. If they want people to vote for them, they should do things to attract those voters. They should stop doing things that pushes away voters.

The electoral college ensures the vote in California has nothing to do with the one in Wyoming.

You still haven't provided any proof that the net result of third party or not voting favors republicans though. It could just as easily still be neutral, or favor democrats.

The anti-genocide people have drawn a line in the sand and decided to stick to that principle. I think it is pretty reasonable to have lines you do not cross with genocide being a pretty understandable one. These people have decided, "if you use our tax dollars for genocide, we will not vote for you".

You are asking them to, "ignore the genocide stuff and focus on the good stuff", but unlike Biden, these people have red lines they will not cross.

If you don't want fascists to come into power, then the Democrats should stop doing fascism-lite. I think it is reasonable for people not to support fascism-lite. They should indeed move further left away from the fascism they are barreling towards.

You simply cannot count votes you never had.

There are far more people that don't vote than there are conservative democrats. In fact, non-voters are the biggest chunk of population in this country. Instead of courting the center conservative voters, wouldn't it make more sense to target non-voters with policies that have been proven to be widely popular?

People like progressive left-leaning policies. Streamlining the citizenship process for immigrants is popular. Fighting price gouging is popular. Not supporting genocide is popular. It seems like getting the couch potatoes excited to vote would have more beneficial results than trying to attract conservative democrats with unpopular neo-liberal conservative policies.

Waiting several election cycles to end a genocide is insane and there is no world in which that is the moral, ethical, or logical path forward. Hope this helps!

That'd be cool

It's too rigged

Maybe, but third party presidential, when there is no legislators is never going to happen, never going to be elected, and never get any bills passed. Aiming for the white house as the first stop is just silly.

We get drug spam and stock spam, no reason to expect that political spam is any less likely.

Lemmy has a huge amount of hardcore lefty's. If you can get them to not vote, and especially if you can get them to tell their friends not to vote, that is a big win.

Astroturfing/sockpuppeting is dirty cheap to do, so no reason not to try.

You do see some users here that will post continously on about a certain topic repeatedly, with no other opinions. They might be legit, but I have my suspicions.

I disagree - it feels like Lemmy is seeing the same kind of shills that 4chan saw in the last several elections. These bad actors are trying to sway dems to vote third party or not vote at all "in protest" across many small and large online spaces.

It is not currently such a place. I’ve yet to hear a Lemmy admin say otherwise.

Edit to add: Russiagate conspiracy theorists want it to be true so they can simply dismiss voices that contradict their beliefs.

takes no effort with modern technology

Is there any evidence of these CIA/Israeli bots / paid posters?

If somebody makes a pro-Israel post, maybe they just genuinely support Israel (I wouldn't say that's my view currently - I think both Israel and Hamas are wrong because both have killed civilians).

Edit: your downvotes aren't evidence.

Lemmy being small makes astroturfers seem like an actual minority even when they aren't. It's actually way worse here than on Reddit.

Funny, good one

And who, of those who aren't mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn't about to help Isreal with their genocide? Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn't Biden, it seems hard to imagine she'd be much worse than current administration on that issue. One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.

Suppose you have two buttons. If you press one, it kills someone. If you press the second, it kills two people. If you don't press the first button, someone else is eagerly waiting who will press the second. Whoever has placed the buttons here, has enough power that neither the buttons nor the other person are within your personal ability to harm at the moment, and you have neither the time nor the popularity to amass enough people to change this before the other guy pushes the "kill two people" button. Your only options are to press one or press neither and allow the second be pressed. If your answer to this scenario is "I press neither button, because pressing the first kills someone, don't you care about people's lives!?", then you are not choosing morality, you are choosing selfishness, because you care more about the notion that your hands will be clean than about the net life saved if you press the button that kills fewer people. In fact, the blood is as much on your hands by inaction if you decide to reject your choice, as it would be had you killed the additional victim yourself.

If both of them support genocide, but one also supports banning abortion, the ethical choice is to vote for the one that won’t ban abortion.

If you’d rather wait until a candidate arrives that agrees with you on every issue, that’s fine, but you’ll probably never vote, and in the meantime, by not voting, supporting whichever candidate you like less.

While there’s no honor in the presidency, there is honor in doing what you can to reduce harm, and if you can’t reduce harm to the Palestinians, at least you can reduce harm to American women and girls.

The critique of the trolly problem isn't that you don't still make the choice, it's that the outcome was predetermined before you even got there.

Leftists who are making a point of abstaining are doing so to point out that voters have no control over the trolly to begin with - that the choice is artificial because the outcomes were pre-selected by someone/something else to ensure a particular outcome, and that participating in that choice only ends up legitimizing that process.

The no genocide option is to protest against the current regime instead of vote shaming people who probably don't even live in a single swing state (where your candidate brought Liz Fucking Cheney btw).

The time to suddenly pull a principled stance about Trolleys out of your ass is not ten seconds before your inaction kills people.

So why do establishment liberals ignore the demands of progressives until it's time to suddenly demand their votes?

Always time later right? Later never comes though does it.

And all of this concern was here before the election, its only getting attention now because during election season is the only time it has an effect.

People just blow off protestors during the non election season. Why? Because they don't have to bargain with them, they have no power then.

After election protests were shot at, broken up and arrested. Election is the only way to change how stuff is today.

I've actually seen some Muslim American leader (not sure who, maybe the mayor of Dearborn?) saying something like this. At least with Republicans in charge democrats would need to oppose them instead of gleefully supporting the genocide. Not sure how much this logic checks out, but it's a thing I guess.

That's the thing. I see a more likely scenario where the genocide is hindered under Trump. Not because Trump opposes it, but because it would suddenly become fashionable for liberals to oppose it.

If the election were between Trump and somehow someone even worse who was calling to nuke the entire area and turn it into glass, then I would absolutely be pushing for Trump. Shockingly, if we are trapped in a horrifying, dystopian version of the trolley problem (which we are), I'm going to make the choice that causes the least damage.

Using another analogy, if you have a badly broken arm, you can either set it and try to keep it immobilized, or you can let it stay how it is and all but guarantee that it gets fucked up even worse as it heals wrong. Voting third party is like saying "I don't like either of those options since they both involve my broken arm, so I choose to pray to the Moon Goddess". There is no option that immediately stops your arm from being broken. You can delude yourself and say the Moon Goddess will magically fix it, but in reality, you are choosing the option that does nothing and makes it worse. Choosing to set your broken arm doesn't make you "pro-broken arm", it's just the only practical choice given a terrible situation.

Hes gonna genocide better than harris, he guarantees it

Correct! That's a great reason not to vote for either of them.

I mean it does doesn't it? Trump supports can also threaten not to vote for him if he continues bad policies.

But we are talking about Harris supporters here. If Americans don't even have a real vote with real value then what would stop Harris or Trump policies that will eventually render everyone in Gaza dead? If you can't even speak to politicians with your own vote and if they don't even value your vote, then how are we going to achieve anything?

Harris is the one losing votes for her shitty policy. It's not the fault of the voter. It's the fault of the candidate.

He would if he could but Harris is giving it a 100% already so Trump can't up that.

Trump has been deliberately framing himself as a protector of Israel who supports them doing whatever they want to.

I genuinely do believe we're going to look back this time as inexcusable. Right now, Netanyahu's extreme right flank is now advocating for settlement of the parts of Gaza that have been ethnically cleansed. Specifically, they're saying that as long as the army stays there for a permanent long-term occupation, that can be the first step to proceeding with settlements.

It's so much worse than even the Iraq war. I've seen by some estimates that the Iraq war displaced 2 million people, and the deaths, before they stopped counting, were between 100,000 and a quarter million.

I think the deaths and displacements in Gaza probably are going to exceed those, and it's concentrated in a much smaller area, and it's horrifyingly closer to affecting the whole population.

Simply put there's no excuse for this moral atrocity.

And here's the but: I don't see how a strategic attitude of indifference to who runs the State department brings it closer to an end. And I don't see that that attitude is one of even pretending to try for an alternative. I do think supporting politicians especially in their Democratic primaries is a positive step. And I do think, as with the Iraq war, galvanizing a sea change and discrediting everyone who is associated with what happened in Gaza is necessary. I believe it is urgent to do something, and the actual channels of aid that can meaningfully do something right now exist entirely outside of party infrastructure of either party. But I also think, for how true that is, using that to lose sight a very real and very serious differences between the parties that also affect human welfare in numerous ways, would be to needlessly visit tragedy upon tragedy. I wouldn't want to lose American democracy into the bargain, and I don't think it's nuanced to be in indifferent to that.

So when Trump wins and my rights to exist are stripped even further, I’ll be sure to thank you for it

I'd rather vote for the party that's 85% nazi than 100%. And in a world where it's entirely unrealistic that anyone else can win between past-the-post voting and voter disenfranchisement, that's the best we're getting.

the most cynical fucking thing I've ever heard.

Yes, it's cynical. It's based on the jaded belief that democracy is 90% dead, and Americans only get to make one of two meaningful choices.

The opposite belief, which is that America is a democracy and you can vote for whoever you want, is hopeful and patriotic. It puts a lot of trust in the American system. It shows faith that politicians have our best interests at heart, and that it'll all work out if you just say what you want.

Is that how you want to describe yourself? As a patriot who believes in America? It doesn't seem to align with your worldview, but it's what your actions are saying.

I honestly appreciate the downvotes as a counter of angry people shamed into silence

Good. You should be fucking ashamed.

Humpback whales have been seen interfering with killer whales that are attacking seals or dolphins. Maybe they don't see it as "genocide" as they don't have a concept of the idea, but there is at least some evidence of another species upset at, and willing to stop, the killing of another. I think by that logic, if they could understand the concept of genocide, they would consider it a bad thing.

Yeah, for instance: funding a genocide, xenophobic immigration policy, building the wall, dropping the ball on covid right before delta/omicron, a lack of healthcare reform, the inability to protect abortion rights, being a cop, denigrating anti-genocide protestors, racially profiling Muslims at your events

https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq#kamala-harris

There is a real possibility that the person who would be best for Palestine would be Trump simply because he doesn't follow through on what he says and is too incompetent when he does.

It's a very sad state of affairs that the US Presidential Candidate that might be the least Nazi-supporting one is Trump, not because of his ideology not being Fascist but because he's incompetent, inconsistent and has a tendency for non-interventionism.

Whilst the first paragraph does make some sense, it presumes that in such a situation the Republicans would not conclude it's the style of the candidate rather than his ideas that caused the rout. That might be a little optimist considering that the traditional Republicans' were just as far right economically before and almost as right in Moral issues, but they had a different style of candidate (remember Reagan?).

It might also be a little optimist to expect an absolute walloping of anybody, Republican or Democrat.

That said, it's a valid scenario, though it relies on very low probability events.

The second paragraph is inconsistent with every single thing the Democrats have done in their pre-electoral propaganda, from the whole "vote us or get Trump" (something which wouldn't scare the Right) to the raft of pre-election promises on Left-wing subjects like student debt forgiveness or tightening regulations on giants such as Telecoms a little bit. If they really thought they could win with only votes stolen from the Right, they would be making promises which appeal to the Right, not the Left.

Besides, the whole idea that Rightwing voters would go for the less-Rightwing party rather than the more-Rightwing party is hilarious: why go for the copy if you can get the real deal?

From what I've seen in other countries were Center-Left Parties totally dropped their appeal to the Left and overtly went to appeal to the Right, they got pummeled because the Maths don't add up and, as I said above, Rightwing votes will choose the "genuine article" over the "wannabes".

It's not by chance that in Europe even whilst becoming full-on Neoliberal parties, Center-Left parties maintained a leftwing discourse and would throw a bone to the Left once in a while (say, minimum wage raises) when in government.

Yeah, I care about stopping Trump from building the wall-

Hold on a second, I'm getting some new information

There is no third option.

There is a third option.

I never understood the intense laser focus some people put on one policy. There's so many to care about if you're American. People are dying from homelessness, starvation, guns, and mental health every single day but the only thing you care about is overseas? That's not even mentioning things like a woman's right to dictate what happens to their own body.

Exactly. People do learn. That's who we're trying to reach.

Only reason to be anti genocide is you being an Iranian agent.

What a thing to say. Really, just step back and look at the words you wrote.

After what we've allowed and contributed to in Gaza, maybe we don't deserve another election.

I know this is the argument people think is the most compelling. But in reality, this is not hitting with the electorate. Calling him weird was much more effective. Even post Jan 6th!

Trump bad, Trump fascist, for some reason that's preaching to the choir; the urgency is already felt with the people who are gonna feel it. The campaign could realize this, and could pivot and focus entirely on abortion and economy, because they won't touch the war. But Kamala is currently stumping with Republicans on a "Trump Bad" ticket. Fuck the Cheneys.

Basically Trump = fascist, even if true, is ineffective, and is losing the election as Trump picks up immigration votes from minorities and protest votes from Muslims.

They still have elections in Russia /s

Yes, Harris is the only realistic option. Anyone voting for Trump is a Nazi in the most literal sense of the word.

For a vote, yes. I can't even imagine what Trump would do with the situation given another chance. Some may say the same thing as the US has always done, which is one of the problems that will need to be addressed regardless of who wins, but Trump also likes dictators, so support would probably be bumped up even more for Netanyahu.

Hardly okay with it. Some Americans don't even know how things work to begin with, so ignorance is worse than knowing things are broken but what we have at the moment. Just because I acknowledge that's the current election system doesn't mean I don't think we could do a lot better. That is its own topic with a lot of hills to climb, but some states have started.

And it's a representative democracy with various flaws, one being not the proper number of constituents per representative, and far too much influence from other places that override the public's opinions. Another separate debate.