I’m with you on what the meme is trying to say, but the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track and running over everyone.
Because that’s where the third track leads.
Like so?
Also, let’s have 'im on the track too.
“Oh, no, I’m not in any of those groups on the track, so I can safely not vote and have a clear conscience as it crushes everyone!”
Then they came for me…
What a sad misunderstanding of a quote literally describing state enforced genocide. I mean, this is how it starts. Both sides would kill Palestinians. Can’t do anything about it I guess. Oh well, best not put my foot down and take a principled stand here.
Who’s next?
You think that Republicans wouldn’t support genocide against anyone they consider to be their enemy?
I think that accepting that some groups, like Palestinians, will just be oppressed no matter what is what leads to things like the Holocaust. Saying you can’t afford to take a stand on your principles today and draw a line in the sand, but maybe you will tomorrow leads to the situation Martin Niemoller found himself in. It may be too late already, and making a stand won’t make a difference, but it’s never too early.
And what happens when a significant chunk of the electorate does that? I bet all those poor Palestinians will really feel good about Israel being given the green light to bomb them harder because a bunch of people protested and got a dementia riddled fascist elected.
These posts are just virtue signalling, because there’s never any forethought of what happens after the election to the people being discussed. You can speak from a place of privilege and moralize about the choice you’re making, but you’re pushing the same tactics that the republicans and alt-right push: don’t vote democrat.
I don’t like that I have to vote for Biden, but I actually want to minimize the harm being done to people, not just talk about it on the internet. Crazy concept.
These don’t-vote-for-Biden weirdos don’t understand that it’s wrong to use the idea of a minority to push your political interests in a way that hurts that minority.
If a significant portion of the electorate did that, Biden would be on the phone this minute applying all possible pressure to stop what is happening. Instead they are playing chicken with your vote. Children died today and every day for the past 8 months because a political party is betting that you’ll vote for them anyways.
Again, the original issue I raised is that it’s cruel to quote a man lamenting the fact that he and others like him didn’t do enough soon enough to stop the Holocaust. That same behavior is happening right now. But it’s fine. We just have to accept it. A few losses for the greater good. I’d bet you don’t have any Palestinian friends, but if you do, please let them know I’m the one who’s privileged and see what they say.
“All men were created equal”
IS SLAVE STATE
always jave been coming for us.
Doesn’t matter where the track leads if the trolley can’t get to it. It could lead to rainbows and sunshine, but that isn’t where the trolley is headed because there is no possibility that someone other than Trump or Biden is elected president. A few cry babies voting third party won’t get some third person elected. A vote for the third track is a vote for a track that will not be ridden.
It could be a little model trolley track going in a loop with no trolley on it.
As someone who for the first time did not vote in 2016. I started voting in the Bush era. I fully agree, no action leads to fascism apparently. Don’t do what I did because I was pissed that Bernie was cheated out of the nomination. Vote or Trump will be back in office.
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Oh, maybe. I assumed it was two different people, but yeah, that makes sense.
the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track
Okay, but the guy at the controls needs to be the swing vote on the SCOTUS.
It makes sense because you can see that the track exists and is better, but there’s no way to actually get the train onto it
I’m guessing the joke is that third party voters ignore the trolley about to go down one of two paths, instead deciding to stand next to a short piece of track connected to nothing with no trolley on it, so they can pretend the imminent disaster happening on the other track isn’t real
And there’s also a contingent of people on the trolley who are trying to get it to slow down, working their asses off to improve long term actual outcomes in the real world, whether related or not to the little lever, and the guy standing next to the empty disconnected track is claiming to be one of them and saying you must be against them and how dare you, you person-running-over-enabling monster, if you say anything against his strategy.
The problem is that we have two choices, and we will never not have two choices unless we do something about it. I can both say that Joe Biden sucks and we should do better and also vote for him because the other option is worse. This discourse that makes it seem like any criticism of Biden is pro trump is how we will end up in a slightly less terrible place. Cool. Really looking forward to that.
Also like what the fuck…I guess we have to kill Palestinians no matter what.
There is a third fucking option and it’s not doing a genocide.
There is a third fucking option and it’s not doing a genocide.
That’s only an option if you have a viable strategy for accomplishing it.
Which, of course, they don’t. It’s a vanity vote. They want to pretend they have actually done something without actually having to do anything of consequence.
It’s an expression of privilege.
If we’re interpreting their “third option” as a voting strategy and not convincing Biden to step in and stop the genocide, we can at least implement Approval Voting so that they can vote for all the “no genocide” candidates without having to worry that doing so could somehow backfire. Then, if they want or need to, they can cast a strategic vote to differentiate between different magnitudes of genocide.
we can at least implement Approval Voting
No, you can’t. You do not have the power to implement Approval Voting, and nobody who does have the power wants to do it. So it’s not gonna happen, at least not in the short term. Right now, anybody who wins has to win in an environment of First Past the Post. Nobody capable of doing that currently supports Approval Voting, so right now it is effectively not on the ballot.
This is what I mean about “hav[ing] a viable strategy.” Magically wishing Approval Voting into existence ain’t it.
Well the strategy is to work your way up from the local level because:
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It’s easier for people to make change at the local level, Fargo and St. Louis have already done it.
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Politicians tend to work their way up the ladder, and will be more open to using the system at higher levels if they already proved they can win under that system.
You have to remember that any real social change takes years, even decades of organized to realize. We didn’t go from Jim Crowe to the civil rights act in a fortnight, it took big organizations applying decades of pressure in multiple different ways.
If you want to be a part of the solution, join an organization dedicated to improving things. It doesn’t have to be the one I linked, but Election Science is the one working on approval voting. Local elections are such that one highly motivated person can build and run the organization to flip their local election laws, it could be you, but it won’t happen overnight.
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Yes, we need to change the way we vote before voting for POTUS can really move away from a binary choice.
Great. That is a state issue, so pay attention to your state government, vote for state representatives that support better voting methods, and contact your state representatives to push for reform.
That doesn’t change this trolley problem.
As someone else pointed out, those in power are unlikely to change the voting system to reduce their own power. However, you really start at the local level with referendums, and work your way up. First, it’s easier to force change at the local level and second, politicians working their way up will be less hostile to changing to approval if they’ve already shown they can win under that system.
Step one: Stop rewarding genocide with votes. 🤷
I agree, now how do we go about making everyone else see it too?
Apparently we can’t in 2024. They didn’t hear us in 2016. They won’t hear us now in 2024. Maybe two Democrat juggernauts losing the presidential election to Trump of all people will convince them.
They’ll just blame the leftists they cant stop attacking then use it as an excuse to move further right yet again.
The problem is that we have two choices
The problem is that we don’t. If you’re not in a “swing” state, all the votes in the world for Joe Biden are meaningless. Win California by another million votes. Win it by another 10M. Have every single eligible voter in California turn up and vote for Joe Biden. He still loses the EC when the SCOTUS tells Arizona to stop counting ballots the minute Trump is in the lead.
Also like what the fuck…I guess we have to kill Palestinians no matter what.
We have to keep sending money to Israel because its the means by which we control the Suez Canal.
Except… the Houthis have control over the back end of the canal so long as they’re able to scare off shipping in the Gulf of Adan. So now we’re endorsing a genocide just for shits and giggles.
It’s almost like two organizations have totally monopolized US politics. It’s a billion dollar industry, and they’d both rather alternate losing to each other and keep their seat at the table than let anyone else play the game.
Its an enormously lucrative game, so who can blame them?
you blame us for going along with it and blame those who shame anyone who points out that we don’t have to go along with it.
Funny thing is, that’s what’s called a controlled derailment. It’s the engineering answer to the situatuon, if the situation were real and not a contrived philosophical dilemma.
The Biden approach
This guy gets it
Roe v Wade sends their regards.
the decision that Blue did absolutely nothing to protect even though they knew full well Red would kill it any chance they got?
I could say the same thing of the self proclaimed progressives saying the dems should have done something in the total 4 years since then they’ve had trifecta control, not even including the filibuster.
You knew the redcaps would kill it first chance they got, why did you let them get the chance by not voting against them?
What was so much more important to you than women’s health that not even the open and active threat to it was enough to motivate you to the herculean task of standing in a line and pushing some buttons?
You asswipes are always on about how you’re the only ones who take fascism seriously in this country, and then whenever you’re given the chance to show it by doing the basic minimum to keep them out of power you balk and make demands like it’s suddenly a distant nightmare instead of the life threatening reality of the people you karen at to get the party’s manager for you.
Big Bridal Shower at the Gay Bar Energy.
This
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance, instead of making us speculate on it.
So deep.
I enjoy the self insert character of Zach in panel 4.
WEINNERSMITHHHHHHH
Simplistic philosophy for simplistic minds.
It’s not a trolley problem, and even if it were the consequences of greenlighting democratic support for genocide are not fully represented appropriately in this image.
It is a trolley problem for leftwing voters.
We all know what happens if the Republicans get in - they do what they want, and what they want is fervent, unquestioning support of Israel, and to continue trampling on the rights of millions of minorities.
That’s where the Trolley goes if the leftwing can’t agree on what it wants to do.
While I agree that you’re right in stating that the long-term consequences of allowing democrats to get away with this aren’t properly laid out, what’s the alternative exactly?
You could argue to vote an independent, but if everybody disagrees on which independent to vote for, then you fragment the leftwing and the Republicans get a free lunch.
You could argue to refuse to vote to teach the democrat party a lesson, which sounds nice, but every lost vote against the Republicans only helps bring them closer to victory.
If you’ve got another idea, then by all means go ahead, but those are the two I hear over and over again.
Except communicating to Democratic leadership that this is acceptable moves us to the right, not to the left. I think it’s time we all admit at least that we’re past pretending Democrats are going to reform themselves without any meaningful pressure, no?
How far to the right do we let the DNC use fear to push us before being “left” only in relation to the extreme right doesn’t cut it? If genocide is not where you draw the line what the fuck will be?
Voting or not voting by itself will not move democrats to the left. That can only be achieved by organizing. In the meantime, keeping republicans out of power is worthwhile.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
Both realistic outcomes of the election involve the US government continuing to support this genocide in one way or another - that’s why OP’s meme is drawn out like it is, because people arguing your exact viewpoint seem to think there’s some magical third track everybody else has missed that sidetracks this issue entirely.
Everybody loses this election no matter what happens, but I guarantee you the loss will be worse with the Republicans in the driving seat.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
There will never be a perfect time to draw the line, because the DNC will always play chicken with its own base as long as that continues to get them elected, they will always be putting us in that position of choosing between their fascist lite pick and the gop’s fascist. The only weapon we have that they care about is our ability to deny them power. They don’t care about protests, they don’t care about articles and letters, debate or polls or anything, as we see none of that changes their behaviour. They care about money and access to power.
So, the solution is to starve them until they realize the party simply can’t sustain itself on non-existent maga swing voters. It can’t leech enough “moderate” conservatives to survive. They need to be brought to the understanding that their route to power is not to be Alt Republican, it’s to be progressive and anti-fascist.
People can say the DNC won’t care and it will never work that way, but we’ve seen a real example from history that starving parties works. When Republican support was waning in the 1950s and 60s, the Republicans went out hunting for a new demographic to sustain them. That’s what the Southern Strategy was. Granted they were going in the opposite direction, but the Democrats can be put in the same position and since the GOP already occupies all the white racist territory, Dems have very few other places to hide from Millenials and GenZ.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that’s the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
One, that is a very long way of saying the idea you’re bringing to the table is don’t vote - and I’ve already said what I think about that.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that’s the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
Two, that’s a bit of an understatement considering just one highlight of Trump’s last presidency was rigging the SCOTUS towards being openly corrupt and against the people for literally decades to come.
You clearly didn’t read it then, we’re done here.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
Yeah, I did see that section, but given that a “corporate” candidate is already the democrat nominee, that also amounts to not voting in this election - or voting for independents, which I have also made my opinion known on - so there was no point in talking about that.
It’s funny you say the philosophy is simple when strategic voting requires multiple layers of analysis and voting for bubblegum ice cream just amounts to what feels good. You can’t bring yourself to accept the reality of the situation, so you pretend like the problem is easy to solve if you just ignore it. That’s truly simple minded. Pathetic projection on your part.
It’s not strategic if the outcome of either option in the binary you present is fascism. You’re not “saving” anyone on either of the tracks in the narrow political world you paint.
You’re reducing things to a single issue and have the gall to say my political world is narrow. You’re unreal.
Literally. How do people like this exist
It’s interesting how much the vote DOES resemble a trolley problem. Generally, the only real point in favor of not pulling the lever is “You’re killing someone, it’s immoral to get involved. Life shouldn’t be in your hands.”
Which is still setting aside all the conscious choice by other human beings that IS happening come election season. Probably the biggest way it diverges is that a trolley is moving under its own “natural” momentum. In reality, it’s as though some Nazis are pulling the trolley along the track to the 5 people.
this one is actually really funny, i like this one.
Good shit.
I appreciate OPs honesty that Palestinians are dead either way.
Less palestinians will die under Biden. People who says “how could it be any worse?” have a severe lack of imagination and/or historical knowledge.
Less palestinians will die under Biden.
This claim is absolutely meaningless without evidence and some indication about how the situation resolves.
There’s a very good chance the moment Biden knows he’s won the election he’ll call you Bibi and go “thanks for your patience. Go nuts.”
I mean the right has already made it clear that they’re 100% pro genocide, straight up recommending that every Palestinian is killed. The worst Biden could possibly do is be as bad as Trump.
Ok? I’m still not voting for a strike blocking genocide supporting candidate.
And that places you in the bottom left corner of the cartoon.
Ohhhh noooooooooooo
You have no one to vote for. Every single candidate supports genocide. Biden, West, Stein, Sanders. Palestinian genocide or Ukrainian genocide. Pick your 'cider
Ukrainian genocide
Yes, the “Ukrainian genocide”… You know that genocide used to be a word with a meaning, right? That we shouldn’t go around calling any conflict a genocide?
No matter what your opinion on the conflict, comparing it to the situation in Palestine is the same as denying it, there is no comparison. Russia is definitely not deliberately bombing civilian targets, we have only had the collateral damage that is expected from any war. And this collateral damage is infinitely smaller than any of the wars the United States has engaged in in the last 50 years. Do you call the wars in Iraq, Indochina, Libya and Korea genocides?
Will do. But it won’t be Trump or Biden which is all that matters to you.
Trump stoked tensions needlessly by moving US embassy to Jerusalem
I guess people shouldn’t have voted for a terrible candidate in the 2016 DNC primaries.
I think people shouldn’t have voted for a terrible president in 2016 but what do I know
Sounds like the DNC primaries didn’t produce a candidate that was sufficiently popular with all the major factions of the Democrat voter base. I wonder what the solution to that could be. Guess we’ll never know since people like you refuse to have that conversation.
There’s a very good chance…
This is how you know you have brain worms. Biden has to keep the Jewish liberal vote so he’s supporting Israel. He also needs congress to fund ukraine which they won’t do without also funding Israel.
If anything, Biden turns his back on bibi as soon as the election is over and throws him to the wolves. Netanyahu is doing everything he can to get trump elected.
Biden has to keep the Jewish liberal vote so he’s supporting Israel.
When you say this while telling me I have brain worms it’s easy for me to come to the conclusion you think the desires of Jewish liberals are more important than mine.
And while that’s certainly your prerogative I have zero motivation to cater to it.
Okay, I’ll bite.
Why can’t Biden stop supporting Israel?
He needs liberal jews and lapsed Republicans that support israel in November.
The big funding packages that he signed were part and parcel with deals to fund ukraine.
Holy shit this has me crying
He needs liberal jews and lapsed Republicans that support israel in November.
Yet here you are attacking us. We can only conclude you believe their opinions are more important than ours.
I’m not attacking you. I’m saying as bad as Biden is for Palestinians, Trump is will be 1000x worse. I can’t believe that’s so hard for people to understand.
I won’t be voting for Biden or Trump. I anxiously await your non-judgemental response.
Future aged like milk comment? 🤔
This is why the US should help move all Palestinians out of Israel. Relocate them to a place in the US. Give them a reservation land like the native Americans. They’re never going to beat Israel and the best solution would be to move and start over.
Why not move Israelis?
They already have a home.
So do (did) Palestine
wouldnt be a joke otherwise.
give that man a rocket launcher
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So, why do some blue states want to continueusing FPTP voting? Why continue using a voting system favored by Republicans? In states controlled by Democrats, there’s no Republican opposition hindering electoral reform efforts.
FPTP favors whichever party is currently in power in a two party system. Solid blue states don’t want to switch because it makes their hold on power less secure. Same reason as Republicans in red states.
You’re factually correct, and I support your long term goal, but it’s not something we can achieve by November.
I swear I hear this regardless of how close we are to the next presidential election. Can we maybe focus on some of the other races on the ballot? I would love if we could get a Congress that was actually able to make good things happen, instead of trying very hard to do nothing so bad things don’t happen.
Congress might also have been able to get more done if there was a filibuster-proof majority for more than several months in the last several decades.
I do vote for the most progressive person available in the primaries tho.
The fact that we even need a filibuster proof majority to get anything done is yet another glaring example of how fucked we are.
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Yeah, the focus on winning the presidency ignores the down ballot, small market and “off-cycle” races, and, to get to fillibuster-proof majorities, those races are the ones that need to be won. Berating progressives in urban areas to vote for moderate liberal candidates for president is not exactly harm reduction.
Sorry, media is now handled at the national level so covering local and state races outside of ones that get clicks isn’t profitable
Oh, good! Is it also owned by large corporations who have interests that cause them to favor certain stories because it impacts their bottom line and the editorial desk does not have strong independence from the business side of things because of a monoculture of publishers? Surely, this will bring us a wide variety of political candidates and not an endless parade of arch-capitalists and fascists who give kickbacks to corporations!
Electoral systems is a pretty nerdy topic (despite how important it is for who gets power), so it is not an issue the typical voter cares for. Therefore there is not enough political capital for such large reforms to be taken on by politicians.
Based on the about of Lemmy comments advocating for it, it seems like the typical voter is pretty passionate about ranked choice voting.
Based on a super niche subset of chronically online youth - this applies to everyone. 🤪
I hope this post gets a lot of tankie comments. They’ll be flockin’ to a blockin’
Heh. See, cause. It rhymes. So.
The one yesterday had that commenter who was all “what’s this? Oh it took me a second cause I blocked all the tankies” and that’s when I realized I forgot to block lemmy.ml. Now that that’s done, it’s just onsie-twosies. It’s a bright, bright sunshiney day.
They’ll be flockin’ to a blockin’
yoink!
At least on the default website, blocking instances doesn’t mass block the users, fwiw. Mileage may vary on alternate apps.
So far so good on voyager
Good to know!
Guys, I don’t know what’s going on in the world and their wars. I just want a president who isn’t abhorently evil. Do we have to revolutionize to find that 3rd option orrr?
Do we have to revolutionize to find that 3rd option
Pretty much. It’s against the interest of both parties to have more options because both are near-guaranteed to lose power if there were more options.
I assume your “abhorently evil” comment is based off support of the genocide in Palestine (which is a completely reasonable thing to describe as abhorently evil, I’m just being clear about my premise).
In which case, sorry, bad news, you can’t have that. Your options this time round are genocide supporter or genocide supporter. Somewhere down the line, years from now, the US electoral system may have been sufficiently reformed to make third parties viable. But this year that’s not going to happen.
So that decision is completely out of your hands. But here’s what you do get to decide; you can have an outright fascist, leading a party of outright fascists who have openly publicised their plans to turn your country into a fascist theocracy. Or you can have the guys who strengthened workers rights and went after major companies for union busting, hit Microsoft for $20 billion in back taxes, had the FBI raid a major landlord for illegal price hikes, brought antitrust lawsuits against Amazon and several other large tech firms, and secured billions in aid for Ukraine in their fight for their freedom. And that is literally just a tiny sampling of the good things that Biden’s government has done.
I don’t even see how that’s a choice. One of these two options is clearly and manifestly better than the other, no matter how disgusting it feels. A vote for Biden is not an endorsement of his position on Gaza. It is a tactical choice, nothing more. And if nothing else, its a tactical choice that will prevent the fascists from filling even more seats on the supreme court.
It sucks, but those are the only options. Sometimes life just be like that.
This guy gets it. I don’t see how this is so difficult to understand. Not voting is essentially skewing the vote towards the diaper-wearing Nazi-Clown you once already had for a president. Vote for the least evil party, it’s all you can do.
Then you all should have voted for someone better in the 2020 primaries.
But what if I am a bad faith actor that only pushes the “no moral choice” position because I want to ensure that the fascists take power? Better yet, what if my Russian paycheck demands it. Then what do I do?
Are you forgetting about all the registered Democrats who voted uncommitted in the 2024 primaries? Not everybody who hates Biden is a Russian troll bud.
Your argument is made every four years. The someday you talk about never seems to arrive. Which means the reasoning is missing something important.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
I think the choice is really: Does America deserve the lesser evil?
We can have it for the low price of demanding it. Tell the Democrats you won’t vote for Biden if he doesn’t stop supporting the Israeli genocide.
I’m certain ballots with good options are unavailable absent a revolution, but if we tried under present conditions we’d likely only get worse governance and maybe destabilize the global balance of power catastrophically.
Thank you! We may eventually have to but revolutions do not have certain outcomes and we face a second problem that in general will require a mechanism for global cooperation which is hard to do when the state with the military, cultural, and economic influence the US currently has plunges into chaos
stop the trolley, dumb fucks 😂
… The point of the trolley problem is you can’t stop it. …
Derailing is an option.
Entire trolley problem was created to show flaws of trolley problem.
What?
The trolley problem is a basic philosophical thought experiment on the nature of morality. Are we responsible for circumstances beyond our control, and do we take ownership of the consequences if we intercede? Is inaction a decision itself? Does the moral relativism of reducing harm absolve us of the results borne of our choices?
Derailing is a theoretical option, but raises additional concerns. You put the passengers at risk to hopefully save people on the tracks, and you destroy the trolley which is ostensibly going somewhere for a reason. What if there is a pregnant woman in labor on the trolley, and she’s on her way to the hospital? What if the detailed trolley still crushes the people on the track? Was your decision to intervene a moral one?
The trolley problem is a basic philosophical thought experiment on the nature of morality. Are we responsible for circumstances beyond our control, and do we take ownership of the consequences if we intercede?
Well, yes, that too. But also there is part of paper, where different additional information is provided. So paper that introduced it also in a way ridicules trolley problem. You never has complete information, and no solution is perfect in any morality.
you destroy the trolley which is ostensibly going somewhere for a reason.
I’ve never heard about trolley’s body destruction during derailment. And Uraltransmash trolley derail a lot.
What if the detailed trolley still crushes the people on the track? Was your decision to intervene a moral one?
Back to incomplete information. Or what if trolley doesn’t have enough velocity to kill anyone?
“The whole point of my meme is that you have to support genocide”
If you were sitting at the controls that would be an option, but allas we are all just part of those doing a tug of (less or more) war for the switch
Blow up the trolley 👍
You advocate for blowing up the trolley. Okay, what have YOU done to further this idea?
I think the demonic elephant already tied them to the middle track.
There are other options with switch. Like derailing.
