I don’t think it is. From a Palestinian perspective, Biden was bad. It is obvious to any sane and reasonable person that Trump will be much much worse. So, instead of choosing the lesser of two evils they did nothing and sat back allowing the greater evil to win.
Of course. That was four years. Trump has been in office for only how many days now? He has however already spoken about turning Gaza into a resort and moving the people who live there somewhere else. Then, a few Republicans spoke out ‘clarifying’ what Trump meant. Then, Trump spoke again, insisting that he meant what he originally said.
He had a choice, but choosing neutrality or being pro-Palestinian would have gotten him hated more. It was the politically expedient but morally correct answer to refrain from sending Israel weapons.
There was no choice that wouldn’t result in him being hated, however.
I’m placing a lot of weight on what happens with the upcoming Senate vote re: the continuing resolution. My fear is that the Dems will clutch their pearls, say, “We have to be the adults in the room and keep the government running!”, and enough will defect to allow something horrible to pass.
What I feel we are seeing is a real life slippery slope. It has only been less than 2 months, and we are rapidly sliding to a state where we have a much more dysfunctional government, we slash government services, maximize the wealth disparity, and alienate our international friends and markets. And my fear is that enough people just feel there is nothing to be done, and we get used to a crappier and crappier US.
Trump, Musk et al would rather strip a smaller, weaker, more isolated US than sacrifice ANYTHING for any positive values. Anyone who was stupid enough to vote for Trump - or not vote for whatever BS reason - is too damned stupid to support any meaningful change.
I guess I’m not saying much other than that I just see us sliding down to a “lower” state, and folk getting used to it and saying, “What could we do?” I don’t think there is anything that will push the Repubs to stop the slide. And I think far too many Dems are comfortable enough that they aren’t going to be manning the barricades.
Shit - I said basically the same thing 2-3 weeks ago in this very thread…
Of course. Let me try again:
From the point of view of someone for whom Palestine was the key issue, it was like choosing between voting for Darth Maul or Darth Vader and people saying “You should have voted for Maul because Vader is much worse”. They didn’t want to endorse either person; hopefully next time there’ll be a genuine choice.
And although I think Biden was one of the best presidents there’s been, it was his most significant failing, both the action itself and then ignoring the pro-palestine community IMHO.
By conservatives, sure, who somehow still managed to label him as being anti-Israel.
Anyway, that’s my last word on this topic because I think we might all be hijacking at this point. Obviously if you guys want to say more, go ahead, but unless your posts contain a specific question or claim put to me, I won’t reply.
If I heard the refrain once in the campaign, I heard it a thousand times: “The lesser of two evils is still evil.” Oh, they’re just too morally pure for this world. Their moral purity is too lofty to consider consequences in making choices. They may have never heard the term deontology, but they’ll happily die in a doomed last stand on Deontology Hill.
Let me try again. I think I have a perfect analogy- The patient’s hand is infected with flesh-eating bacteria. The options are-
Amputate the hand. The patient obviously loses a hand. But they get to live.
Do nothing- There is an incredibly remote chance the patient will spontaneously get better. The odds are very high that the patient will get worse and die.
These voters chose the second option. Again, Trump said he would move everybody out of Gaza, seize control of the land, and make it a resort. Then, he clarified by saying ‘yes, that is what I meant’. This the same Trump who enacted a Muslim travel ban during his first term.
There may not be a next time. Trump has Musk and his group of people without qualifications or security clearances cancelling programs he doesn’t like. We may not end up a fascist dictatorship, but that is the way things are heading. I predicted this would happen when Trump was named the Republican nominee.
Again, their two choices were- Do something to stop Trump from being elected and making things much much worse, or sit back and do nothing.
Then, I actually do have something in common with them. I have never heard it either. I could Google it, but you have proven yourself learned on many subjects and can give me a better answer. What is deontology?
Deontology definition: The normative ethical theory that the morality of an action is based on whether the action follows certain obligations or rules, rather than on its inherent goodness, consequences, etc.
From Greek deon ‘(one’s) bound duty’.
The aspect of it I’m criticizing is the deliberate ignoring of consequences in making choices, as expressed by Gazan sympathizers in last year’s campaign: “The lesser of two evils is still evil.” I’m criticizing those (non-)voters who couldn’t see forward past the end of their nose.
Umm To be perfectly clear- I know very little Talmud. I was kicked out of Hebew school at an early age. I did attend something called “confirmation class” in high school. Besides everthing else, I got a free copy of Telushkin’s Jewish Literacy. I have found a few translations of the Talmud online. I don’t think it is technically a violation of Jewish law, but it feels really weird reading the holy texts of my people on the same machine I use to search for and download abandonware and ‘adult material’ Oh! I can erase everything but Windows and such on the laptop I just uprgraded from and download the Talmud on that.
Anyway my point is- I know enough to give the impression of knowing much more than I really do.
But it’s not impossible to withhold funding for Israel. George HW Bush threatened to do it. Of course he lost the election, but the Democrats also lost their election, too.
Sure, and that would have been the correct position ethically. But that would have accomplished nothing practically, and probably been a significant negative politically. The power disparity between Israel and the Palestinians is too large for any support from the US to actually make Israel any more overwhelming than it already is. And supporting the Israelis was the only way for Biden to get any political support from either side of the issue at all.
And he likely didn’t realize that the pro-Palestinian side was as suicidal as it is.
Putin’s using the internet to convince 40% of Americans to destroy America will be the single political masterstroke of our era, one which will be studied for the next 500 years.
Haven’t seen anything like this since Luther used the press to unwittingly doom Christendom, but even Luther didn’t start with overturning civilization as his goal.
How is this going to end? Anyone who hazards a guess is akin to someone at the Diet of Worms predicting the rise of the nation state. But the old world order is dead, dead, dead, and the sooner we realize that the sooner we can build back better. To use a phrase.
The collapse of modern civilization in nuclear war, ecological disaster and resource depletion. Historians won’t study Putin’s masterstroke because there won’t be any, just tribes of survivors who by then won’t even know what Russia was.
Yeah, that’s my fear as well. Luther’s Reformation led to over a centuries worth of wars of religion. And while those guys didn’t have the toys we did, they still killed up to 20,000,000 people.