• Ginny [they/she]
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    3 hours ago

    The essence of the trolley problem is to ask whether choosing not to exercise the agency that you have is a moral choice. The fact that you may not have complete control over the outcome doesn’t make the analogy bad in and of itself.

    Suppose everyone else except you had already voted and exit polls suggested Trump had won by one vote. Would you vote, then? I don’t care what your answer is would be; that is between you and your own conscience. But, is the situation really so different from the real world situation where for all you know your vote might actually count?

    You can disagree that the trolley problem comparison is apt, but I think calling it “deceitful and self-serving” is a stretch.

    FWIW I am from the UK and I don’t care whether you vote or not.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      In your specially crafted scenario it is indeed applicable.

      However that’s not at all how it’s being used here. Here it’s just another variant of the propaganda used in the last year or so by the members of the Democrat tribe which boils down to “if you don’t vote Democrat you’re voting Trump”, which is a blantant false dichotomy and falacy.

      Couple such sleazy salesman style of political propaganda with their active support of a Genocide were tens of thousands of children have already been murderer and, when seen in the broader context of World Politics, the Democrats are almost as low and disgusting as the Republicans.

      To add insult to injury, I suspect that it’s the continued expectation amongst the Democrat Party leadership that the use of these propaganda techniques will retain enough of the Leftwing vote for them to win no matter what they do, that has allowed Biden during the last year to overtly support a Genocide to the point of doing things like sending Israel the very 2000lb bombs (which the US Military refuses to use because of their massive collateral damage) that they used in bombing Lebanese neighbourhoods: by having been parroting for months shit like this false-choice meme, these people have enabled Israel to be sent the very weapons with massive collateral damage that they used in bombing civilians and have hence been indirectly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands.

      (Had they instead been putting pressure on the Democrat Party, as the Israeli Neue Nazi side did for themselves via AIPAC, things would likely be very different now).

      I too am not an American, I just have been involved in politics in two countries and seen it right up close in another two and after having been massivelly exposed to American Political Propaganda here in Lemmy in the last year or so, find it appallingly manipulative and deceitful, from both sides, though far more hypocrite from the Democrat side (Republicans are more users of straightforward lies rather than using more sophisticated methods of deceit such as presenting false choices like this one or cherry picking).

      Funnilly enough, my enormous disgust with this kind of sleazy propaganda grew up during the decade I lived in the UK, especially the Leave Referendum period: compared with The Netherlands and Portugal were I lived before that, English politics, which is dominated by Public School types, is insanelly heavy on this kind of sleazy slimmy posh-salesman discourse crafted to mislead without outright lying and especially after my decade living amongst the plain speaking Dutch, I’ve come to really detest that kind of hypocrisy, especially when, like here, it’s deployed to cover those commiting morally unacceptable acts such as activelly supporting the mass murder of human beings.

      It was bad enough when such style of politics was used in the UK to screw the lives of millions and its even worse when it’s used in America to enable the outright murder of hundreds of thousands of people, over 40% of whom are children.

      I can barelly begin to convey my utter disgust with such practices and those who use them to enable what can only be described as evil-doing.