I pit over-the-top Anti-Trump hysteria

The BBQ Pit
1662

…the word you are missing here is genocide.

Say it with me. The Democrats were funding and giving material support to a genocide. President Biden was funding and supporting a genocide. It’s not a matter of “not being sympathetic enough” but the fact they were actively taking part in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

You don’t get to whitewash how truly evil the Biden administration was here. Whether it was the smirking ghoul or posing for photos with indicted war criminals, this wasn’t just about “not enough sympathy”. On average, 100 men, women and children were being slaughtered every single day during the Biden presidency. Rafah was flattened on his watch.

And you don’t get to blame people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the Democrats. Because for starters, nearly every single strong advocate for Palestinians that I follow advocated for voting for Harris over Trump and actually voted for Harris. But that on its own wouldn’t have been enough.

Because the campaign went out of their way to alienate pro-Palestinian supporters. They didn’t let them speak at the convention. They sent Bill Clinton to Michigan where his message to the Muslim community was this:

“You would say, ‘Well, you have to forgive me. I’m not keeping score that way. It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians,’” he said. “They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”
…
Well, I got news for them. They were there first before there was—their faith existed,” he said. “They were there in the time of King David in the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria.”

The Democrats not only didn’t court the Muslim vote: they actively spat in their faces.

So when people say “give us something to vote FOR” you need to understand exactly what that mean. Over in the UK Starmer led a purge of the “left” from the party. He said told members of his party who were unhappy with the direction he was taking the party to leave. Now the two front-runners in the polls aren’t the incumbant party and the traditional opposition, but Reform and the Greens.

And when the Democrats tell many of their traditional voters, “We don’t want you and we don’t need you,” and run a campaign largely based on “Don’t vote for the orange guy,” then don’t be surprised if you end up losing. The Democrats ultimately made poor decisions and ran a bad campaign. That’s not on the voters.

So don’t you dare blame the voters for what happened to Gaza or what happened to “American democracy”. This isn’t on them. The people who “condemned” America to fascism weren’t a statistical handful of voters but the people with actual power.

1663

Sure I do. Both because they effectively supported killing or enslaving us all, and because nothing I or they do matters any more. What are they going to do, vote in a fascist to punish me? A little late for that. They can pat themselves on the back over their moral righteousness as they are herded into the death camps with the rest of us.

“Bothsides” has never done anything but help the fascists, and now it’s handed them the nation permanently.

1664

…no they didn’t.

That’s on you. If you don’t want to fight then so be it.

All the Democrats had to do was stop funding and supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people. Was that too much to ask?

I’m being serious here. You think that was a bridge too far?

1665

If they didn’t vote Democrat then they helped the Republicans and Trump get in, which was supporting a fascist regime and everything that comes with it. They are just as responsible as any MAGA fanatic.

1666

…I think everyone should have voted for Harris even though she was going to continue fund and support the genocide of the Palestinian people.

But if people chose not to vote for that? That’s entirely fair. Americans who had their entire families wiped out in Gaza: how in good conscience would you expect them to vote for the people who helped kill them?

If I had the choice between voting for Pol Pot or Hitler, I would have chosen neither. And if people wanted to sit the last election out, then that is their right.

There is more hate for the people that didn’t vote than there is for the billionaires and the oligarchs who have spent decades engineering this. The last election shouldn’t have hinged on a handful of votes. The time for a plan for winning in 2024 should have been enacted way back in 2016, the first time Trump won. That was the warning shot. That was when the Dem establishment should have mobilised.

Instead, they tried to run a clearly not-well Biden but got found out at the last minute, threw a Hail Mary at the same time as funding and supporting a genocide and they lost. They had a vice-presidential candidate that was clearly landing a few punches and told him to stand down. It was a disaster of a campaign because they are a disaster of a party and they were probably always going to lose again to Trump because they don’t give people anything to vote for.

1667

If they didn’t vote for the Democrat, then they supported that anyway, along with being targeted themselves. They simply made sure that the support for the genocide would be much stronger.

1668

…their families were literally wiped out with loving support from the Biden administration. If they didn’t vote Democrat, that means they didn’t vote for the people that murdered their families.

I don’t know what it is you aren’t getting. I wouldn’t vote for the people that helped kill my family either.

1669

If the alternative is supporting the death of other families as well, and your own death?

Because that was the choice. That was the only choice there was ever going to be in the US.

1670

…At the moment they aren’t dead now, are they?

And while the genocide is ongoing in Gaza, it’s gone from an average of 100 traumatic deaths per day down to about 20 traumatic deaths per week. We aren’t seeing decapitated babies every other day like we were while Biden was in power.

That may well have happened under Harris as well. It probably would have. But again: who could blame them for deciding to sit the last election out?

No, that was never the choice.

1671

Which rather strongly indicates that Biden was never actually the issue, given Trump’s attitude on the issue.

1672

…what absolute bullshit.

You know nothing about this topic whatsoever. Your ignorance is showing.

1673

I think the real issue here is that Americans fundamentally don’t accept that we can do things as bad as the g-word. We just wouldn’t, so QED you are making it up / exaggerating / whatever else gives credence to our denial. If it were that bad, we’d have heard about it. Well, heard about it more.

So there’s no way to communicate that some of us take these wrongs seriously, because fundamentally we’d be crazy to value the lives of poor foreigners over the US economy.

1674

No; you are just trying to defend supporting Trump by taking away Israel’s agency.

1675

…again: absolute bullshit.

I think that Hamas are 100% responsible for the atrocities they committed on October the 7th. I think Israel is 100% responsible for the genocide they are committing in response. They absolutely have agency here.

I think the Biden administration, the Trump administration and Congress ignored their obligations under the genocide conventions by continuing to fund and materially support Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

And while voting for Harris represents the “less bad” option here, and I think that yes, people should have voted for her at the last election, I refuse to put any blame on people who chose not to. Because in funding and supporting Israel’s action in Gaza, the Biden administration acted in defiance of international humanitarian law. There is a moral imperative not to support that, and it is completely understandable why people chose not to do so.

Which brings us to the next election and whether the Dems have learnt any lessons. I suspect not. And what that means is we might see (just like we saw a few years ago) a huge backlash against MAGA, which might mean the Dems hopefully winning back the House, the Senate and hopefully the presidency again.

But if they don’t heed the lessons then, just like last time, success will be fleeting. Because “don’t vote for the other guy” only works when you have had to recently exist under the other guy. If it goes back to “business as usual”, then that opens the door again.

Which brings us back to “give them something to vote for”. I don’t actually think this is controversial. “Vote for us because we will do this [lists specifics]” is what political parties and politicians should be doing along with actively fighting voter suppression, standing up for the poor and the marginalised, and fighting tooth-and-nail every single battle, being completely aware that your opponent is doing the same and will never, ever stop coming for you.

1676

This is just a brilliant post. I often marvel at how articulate and patient you are in your responses. I just kind of roll my eyes and mutter under my breath at the conventional wisdom that too often passes for political thought here, but you always roll up your sleeves and get to work to challenge it.

1677

I bet, in practical terms, the Gazan vote in an American election was much too small to change any result. The total Palestinian vote would have still been too small. What threw the vote was all the other non-Palestinian voters, whose homes and families had not been destroyed.

The question is whether to look ahead to the future when voting, or to react only to the present moment. If Gazan voters could not look into any future at all when consumed by their present crisis, that’s one thing. One could make a case for overwhelming emotion affecting one’s ability to consider the future. But what we’re really talking about is non-Palestinian voters, who are not personally suffering, exhibiting an obstinate refusal to consider the future. I don’t think there’s a case for defending that.

1678

No matter who you voted for in 2020, you were voting for someone who was going to allow America to continue its support of the genocide of the Palestinian people. If you are the kind of person who is opposed to the genocide of the Palestinian people (I concede that is a big IF in American politics) then I think you could make the case that it makes sense to vote for the candidate who is most likely to destroy America’s status and wreck its economy so that America is no longer in a position to support the genocide of the Palestinian people. Since the choice is between two genocidal regimes, it makes sense to choose the least competent one.

1679

Nihilistic accelerationist insanity. :roll_eyes: I greet that with the derision it deserves. :zany_face:

1680

Did you think that the collapse of the USSR was a bad thing? Personally, I think that it was ultimately for the best and a lot of the former Warsaw PAC agrees. It’s clear that the only way America will stop supporting the Palestinian genocide is if it can no longer support it.

1681

We had confidence in 1990 that Gorbachev would not nuke someone to save the Soviet Union. Can you say with any conviction that this is true for Trump now?

If you can, you’re an even bigger fucking idiot than a Muslim Trumper.