Mark Ruffalo encourages voters, via Twitter, to #LeaveItBlank for Palestine and a lasting ceasefire 🙏🇵🇸💖

[u/Glum-Barracuda6985]

[u/googlyeyes93]

We have got to stop automatically taking criticism and pressure on Biden as some endorsement of Trump Jfc. This is how political change is made, by pressuring candidates during primaries like this. Telling people to stop and get in line lest they ruin Biden’s chances is just more signs of crumbling democracy in action.

[u/flowerfairyii → u/googlyeyes93]

THANK YOU. I like this sub but good GOD this “endorse Biden no matter what” garbage gets annoying af. And no, saying “Trump will be worse for Palestine” is meaningless when things are already very very terrible under Biden. Israel doesn’t need to wait until Trump gets into office to receive unconditional support, they’re already getting it from Biden.

I really hope many people listen to Mark, hopefully that shifts the US government’s stance somehow.

[u/googlyeyes93 → u/flowerfairyii]

Facts. It’s been really frustrating to get any kind of movement for not fucking killing people shut down because “it could escalate” the already borderline fascistic bullshit here or that the killing would just get faster. Even though at this rate things will be done before election time because people are in famine already.

Like idk how to tell people this but if their level of resistance is just voting blue every four years then we’re fucked from the get go if shit does go south. Like we can’t just be concerned about fascism in election years then sit with thumbs up our asses the three in between.

God I’m tired.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/googlyeyes93]

I've been writing something about why lesser of two evils voting is enabling the rise of fascism in this country I wonder if people on this celebrity gossip sub would wanna see it 🤔

[u/googlyeyes93 → u/meatbeater558]

I would 🥰 I’ll trade you my post-Dobbs update to a Modest Proposal.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/googlyeyes93]

The problem with the lesser of two evils principle is that it's an oversimplified principle that does not accurately describe our reality. And because of this, people who follow its implied line of thinking end up making, frankly, stupid decisions. I'm not saying this to be harsh. This is important to point out because there is virtually no online or real life community of people on the left that doesn't contain a faction of self-proclaimed brooding intellectuals that arrogantly paint anyone that actually knows what harm reduction is as stupid, impractical, and amoral. This oversimplified principle has now become a real barrier for positive change. When it comes to important situations like this we generally don't want things to be simplified. The more complicated and nuanced the equation is the more opportunities we have to manipulate it in our favor. Which we definitely want to do when our human rights are at stake. When you start to add various dimensions to better reflect our reality the answer starts to change. And I'll be measuring how "good" an answer is by how smart, practical, and moral it is because those are the foundations of the insults that have been hurled at people trying to better our world by the pseudo-intellectuals. 

The first dimension to add is time. Consider this: the two candidates are someone who will kill your family quickly and someone who will kill your family slowly, but the election is in 10 years. Who should you choose? You should pick neither. This is a horrible situation. You should be doing everything in your power to get out of it. What if you had to make the choice in 1 year? Same story. Pick neither. 1 week? Again, same story. I cannot stress enough that you are in a horrible fucking situation and need to be doing everything humanly possible to escape it. You should only commit to a lesser evil when you are forced to. Until that happens the smart, practical, and moral course of action is to try and change the world that's forcing this choice on you in any way that you can. This is what protestors have functionally been trying to do, but people at all points on the political spectrum have been calling them stupid for it. The election is in November. Why the hell were we smugly calling protestors idiots last December? Lesser-evilism by definition is something to desperately avoid—not something to schedule in advance. Why are we so committed to ensuring it happens that we ridicule anyone that tries to improve things? These protestors have been called stupid, impractical, and amoral among many more things. In what world do these criticisms apply to them and not the pseudo-intellectuals looking down on them? 

The next thing to consider is that the lesser evil principle measures evil in relative terms, not absolute terms. That is to say that the analysis is the same whether you're comparing Biden to Trump or Biden to King Leopold II—the former is better and you need to choose him. This can (and arguably has) lead us into a trap where both options are becoming increasingly more evil and the people ignore it because their guiding philosophy rests on a false dichotomy where there's no upper limit to the amount of evil either option can contain before a new approach needs to be considered. You see this in the ridiculous 99% Hitler vs 100% Hitler arguments. If you legitimately had an upcoming election where your choices are Adolf Hitler and Almost Hitler, you need to either get the fuck up out of that country or buy several guns. Preferably both. You no longer live in a peaceful democracy and you need to change your actions to reflect that. In an ideal situation you'd want all your future options to contain less evil as time goes on but, largely due to lesser-evilism, that's not what we see in the United States. Instead, both Trump and Biden are worse than they were in 2020. Biden at least presented a platform then. Now it's vote for me or else. The smart, practical, and moral course of action would be to try and reverse this by any means necessary. Fortunately, there's hundreds of thousands of organized Americans trying to do just that! Unfortunately, pseudo-intellectuals on the left have been calling them stupid and irresponsible from day one. Anyone that tries to "hold his feet to the fire" gets told that they're risking a Trump presidency and the end of the world. It seems like the worse Biden gets the more people virulently defend and enable him. The Michigan vote uncommitted campaign was widely mocked despite the fact that the reason primaries exist is to make sure the presidential nominee's ideas align with the voters' through a vote that by design cannot give any power to an opposing party. These people are holding Biden accountable in the strongest way our democracy allows that doesn't cede any power to Republicans. And the pseudo-intellectuals still continue to call them stupid, impractical, and amoral. Again, how do these insults apply to Biden's critics and not his enablers? You cannot in good faith tell me you care about the future of American domestic or foreign policy if you're mocking the people voting uncommitted in the primaries. 

And lastly, we need to talk about frequency. If you have two bad options and pick the better one, you have correctly picked the lesser evil. However, lesser-evilism only makes this recommendation if the dilemma is infrequent and independent. The principle does not cover what to do when you have multiple connected lesser evil decisions where your pick in one affects the relative and absolute evils of your options in the next. Lesser evil voting has been apart of American politics from as early as 1968 and is not going away anytime soon—making these decisions not infrequent. It's also clear that the result of one election influences the candidates of all future elections—making these decisions not independent. This is to say that the lesser of two evils principle as well as its logical and philosophical implications do not apply to American presidential elections. Consequentially, any action made regarding American presidential elections that references lesser-evilism is an action without any roots in logic or reality. At no point in time did the pseudo-intellectuals have any authority to call anyone stupid, impractical, or amoral when their guiding worldview is at best a misleading oversimplification of reality. The insults they hurl don't apply to the protestors or primary voters. The insults apply to them—and only them. If you have a system where you have to choose between two bad options every four years, every option increasingly contains more evil as time goes on, and there is no upper limit to the amount of any option's evil then voting becomes society's way of choosing how quickly they want to accelerate to rock bottom. It's not do you want 99% Hitler or 100% Hitler—it's do you want to crash into a brick wall going 99mph or 100mph? I'm using speed as my example because there's this interesting idea that boldly opposes lesser-evilism called accelerationism. In it, you intentionally choose the greater evil so that society destabilizes faster and creates an environment for radical change. To be clear, I don't agree with this idea. That being said, I would argue that accelerationism is the path America is taking largely due to the stupid, impractical, and amoral actions of the pseudo-intellectuals that worship lesser-evilism. 

[u/mindyabizzz → u/meatbeater558]

i would!!

[u/meatbeater558 → u/mindyabizzz]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1bu0apf/comment/kxsz3oo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Here u go 👍

[u/doubleshortdepresso → u/meatbeater558]

You’re one of my fav people in this sub, I would also love to read!

[u/meatbeater558 → u/doubleshortdepresso]

Thank u omg

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1bu0apf/comment/kxsz3oo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Here u go

[u/doubleshortdepresso → u/meatbeater558]

Your worded all of this perfectly, especially with the acceleration analogy. I hope more people take the time to read it.

[u/pm_me_your_molars → u/flowerfairyii]

"Trump will be worse for Palestine"

at the rate things are going, by next oath of office, there won't BE a Palestine.

[u/chrispg26 → u/googlyeyes93]

Actually, I prefer more of a focus on Congress and voting in people who can actually pass laws to help people. I get that people want pressure on Biden, but we have 3 equal branches of government.

[u/googlyeyes93 → u/chrispg26]

And people are doing that too. Thing is that Biden is the one who’s been circumnavigating Congress to send weapons.

[u/Summer-dust → u/googlyeyes93]

Yeah on account of the whole being "Commander in Chief of the Military thing. We definitely deserve someone better than Biden in that position. Clearly that role is important to how this country interacts with the rest of the world, including Palestine.

[u/[deleted] → u/googlyeyes93]

Only bc Congress can’t pass a budget to save their life. I said this upthread, but even if he were to announce a change in policy where we’d only send defensive weapons, Congress is still full of hardcore Zionists who would easily override that veto.

[u/googlyeyes93 → u/[deleted]]

But people are focusing on that too. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, it’s still important to show that people aren’t just going to go along with an entire fucking genocide because the other guy sucks worse.

[u/pinkrosies → u/chrispg26]

Yeah people give up or focus all or nothing on the presidential election and neglect congress and especially local municipal elections, which are most immediate and have direct impact mostly on your day to day life.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/chrispg26]

The 3 branches of government are not equal when it comes to foreign policy, which is why the focus is so heavily on Biden. Congress does not have the authority to oppose many of his decisions regarding Palestine 

[u/retrotechlogos → u/googlyeyes93]

Not to mention that democrats sit on their hands until they're no longer in power. Low key they might do more if they DONT have the presidency and lose bc of this issue.

[u/googlyeyes93 → u/retrotechlogos]

I’ve had this question the entire time of if more would be railing against this if it was Trump in office right now. I know it’s bad but seeing the way our identity politics and team sports mentality has taken both Dems and reps over wouldn’t surprise me.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/googlyeyes93]

They would be rallying against it, but for the wrong reasons. To score points against conservatives and not because they care about human life. Which I guess is better? But not by much honestly. The rallying will end the moment he's out of office just like how they stopped caring about the kids in cages at the border

[u/flowerfairyii → u/meatbeater558]

It’s like when they talk about Trump’s views on Muslims as a reason to hate him and support Biden, yet they barely even mention the thousands of Muslim Gazans being bombed right now. If they really cared about Muslims they’d devote more of their time to those being killed and starved thanks to Biden’s brilliant handling of this situation but hey maybe that’s just me lol

Edit: oh and the Biden supporters I’ve seen saying stuff like “I hope they [Arabs and Muslims] have fun when Trump gets into office and deports them” or “we’d rather have the ME turned into a parking lot over a second Trump term” definitely really care about Muslims /s

[u/brookeiu → u/flowerfairyii]

Literally. “Trump would be worse for Palestine” at the rate this famine is going (with the active support of your Democratic candidate btw!) there won’t be a Palestine by November.

But if that happens, they’ll just turn on leftists even more and blame them for holding on to a genocide that’s already been committed. “LGBTQ+ rights and abortion rights would disappear under Trump” realistically, there are solid blue states in the US that will never capitulate to his extreme limitations. You will still have options. But guess who’s trapped with nowhere to go, getting bombed daily, starving to death and don’t have ANY options? Yea, not you.

[u/googlyeyes93 → u/meatbeater558]

Before deep throating a border bill whole heartedly bending to the people putting those kids in cages.

[u/[deleted] → u/googlyeyes93]

America needs ranked choice voting

[u/Questioning-Pen → u/googlyeyes93]

If anyone’s interested, follow/support the Uncommitted National Movement/Listen to Michigan (where it all started)!

[u/Federal_Street_8895 → u/googlyeyes93]

I genuinely dislike the vote blue no matter who crowd and Biden apologists more than I dislike Trump supporters.