You’re talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide, and their easiest out has always been to say, “but Trump is worse”. They have never done the introspection required to look at their own personal role as a political being beyond what they’re told to do by the Democratic Party and their donors: slacktivist vote shaming, always presuming the high ground for themselves (even while tolerating genocide!), and doing as little as possible on the ground outside of minor exercises in false catharsis like a cop-escorted, permitted march or an ignored letter writing campaign.
When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect, these are the folks that responded in bad faith, even when the context is genocide, because they have made politics into an extension of their egos rather than a project to which to subordinate yourself and devote real work to.
Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.
In short, many on .ml vocally opposed supporting genociding Democrats. None that I’m aware of expected Trump to be better. At best, a roll of the dice.
Edit:
Sorry, folks. I failed to consider that this is the home instance of the people being target by this comment.
Just to be clear, I’m not a big .ml fan, I’m just an anarchist who’s never seen this particular gripe of mine worded so nicely.
Sorry, folks. I failed to consider that this is the home instance of the people being target by this comment.
“It’s upsetting to me that, here, people are allowed to defend themselves or raise counterarguments. It’s much more orderly in places where they can be banned for doing that, so we can talk shit about them unimpeded by anyone defending themselves against it.”
Not at all what I meant to say with that. I barely participate in .ml spaces, and I think the censorship there is whack. I legitimately made a mistake posting this here, is all. It’s like posting something offensive to queer people on blahaj, or posting a tankie-dunk on .ml. It’s just not appropriate
Hm… I mean, I’m not sure I would say that. I think it’s good to be able to talk about it. You raised a common perception, and I and some other people wanted to disagree with the perception because it’s offensive to us yes, and we got to talk about it. In my book, that’s a good thing. It’s part of how people get to understand each other.
It might sound like I’m super-irritated at points during the conversation, but I’m really not heated about it. I’m just being vocal, in part because I’m being accused of being racist and supporting genocide and then lying about it. I do think this type of conversation is a good thing. The metaphor where disagreement is “violence” and certain spaces have to be “protected” against it, or against people being harsh when they disagree, because that’s hostile and awful, doesn’t make sense to me. I think disagreeing and being able to clash a little bit is a good thing. Like I said, it’s part of how people get to understand each other. For my side I’m very glad we had this whole conversation about it.
It sounds like my edit in the post body may have come across with a sarcastic or pompous tone, but I really did mean it genuinely
I agree with you, I just didn’t intend to come here to argue lol. Tbh I normally just block people with your opinion, but it is nice to have discussions like this every now and then, and have my positions challenged
If you didn’t want an argument, accusing anyone opposed to Trump of being “people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide,” and saying they’re only cloaking it in a deceptive framework of being anti-Trump, was not a strategic move 🙂.
Like I said, the fact that there are places on Lemmy where you can say shit like that and it doesn’t cause an argument, says a lot more about the culture and nature of the conversations in those places than it does anything about the wider Lemmy community where you chose to post this. I do get what you mean, though. We good. It’s good to talk.
anyone opposed to Trump
Just to be extra clear, myself and OOP oppose Trump. I don’t think you meant it that way, but I wanted to be clear
If you didn’t want an argument, [this] was not a strategic move
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, I made a mistake lol
Also, I don’t think OOP was saying it’s deceptive, though I might argue there’s some self-deception going on under the hood. I know ‘cognitive dissonance’ gets thrown around a lot as a buzz word but, as a therapist, it really does look like that
“You’re talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide”
this is not happening, and like every single other person who cries about Democrats, I’m sure you don’t have a shred of evidence either.
“their easiest out has always been to say, “but Trump is worse”.”
Trump is worse.
Trump supports the Palestinian genocide explicitly.
and “always”?
how old are you, eight?
That’s how long Trump has been politically relevant.
“slacktivist vote shaming”
If you didn’t vote, you should be ashamed.
If you didn’t vote against Trump, you are the reason Ukraine is not receiving aid, you are the reason diversity is being ruled back, you are the reason women don’t have bodily autonomy.
If you didn’t vote against Trump, you should be ashamed of your selfish cowardice.
.ml supports the disrespectful and illegal authorian practices that have perpetuated the Palestinian genocide.
your post is trashy trash trash and you don’t have a sprig of evidence or logic behind it.
This is not happening
The justification here is that voting for a genocider is an endorsement of the genocide
Trump is worse
Yeah duh. This goes without saying
Voting stuff
I’m queer and disabled- like second on the chopping block for Trump- and I put my own safety aside in defense of Palestinians by refusing to vote for anyone who intended to have them murdered (Both Harris and Trump)
.ml stuff
I’m not a .ml stan- I didn’t post this here for that part
other rude nonsense
Your comment is rudey rude rude and you’re pretty rude
The justification here is that voting for a genocider is an endorsement of the genocide
“I would never hurt a patient. This guy who’s choking to death needs a tracheotomy, but what am I to do? Stab him in the throat? That’ll be bad for him.”
Walks away, humming proudly to himself about the purity of his ethics.
Edit: Typo
This is a terrible analogy. I get that it conveys your feelings about it, but that’s it.
For a better analogy:
A badguy tells you to kill someone else, or they’ll kill you and your family, and also probably someone else too. Your choice, I assume, would be the utilitarian one- to kill someone else. This is the so-called “logical” answer to the trolley problem folks love to bring up with this topic, because less deaths = good, and the ‘someone else’ was probably gonna die either way.
The field of philosophy that discusses these questions, however, is vast, and there is no one correct answer. You and I happen to have different opinions on ethics.
I would argue that refusing to kill someone doesn’t make you responsible for the badguy’s actions. I also wouldn’t argue that people who kill the stranger are bad people- they just made what they thought was the best decision. I just disagree that that’s the best decision, and can’t justify doing the same myself.
You folks, however, seem to beat around the bush about it to avoid admitting what you did. You decided that the continued genocide of Palestinians was worth it to keep Trump out of office. That’s valid- that was the only choice you felt you had. You don’t need to rationalize it away.
It’s disrespectful to both me and yourself to not be upfront with yourself about that.
You folks, however, seem to beat around the bush about it to avoid admitting what you did. You decided that the continued genocide of Palestinians was worth it to keep Trump out of office. That’s valid- that was the only choice you felt you had. You don’t need to rationalize it away.
Absolutely false. Try again. We started this conversation by me addressing this exact point. If I explain clearly what I mean, and you decide that I am “avoiding admitting” some different thing, then there’s not a lot of point to us talking to each other.
A badguy tells you to kill someone else, or they’ll kill you and your family, and also probably someone else too. Your choice, I assume, would be the utilitarian one- to kill someone else. This is the so-called “logical” answer to the trolley problem folks love to bring up with this topic, because less deaths = good, and the ‘someone else’ was probably gonna die either way.
If a badguy is running around town killing children and families, and the only two possible sheriffs that might win the election include a guy who’s friends with the badguy and has been selling him guns and covering for his crimes, that’s sure as fuck not great. However, if the other sheriff is someone who is also a serial killer himself, personally, plans to use the office of sheriff to accelerate his own killing as well as the killing of the badguy, and has a tendency to egg the badguy on and imprison anyone who tries to say it’s a problem that he’s killing, I think it’s fair for me to say that the first sheriff is the better outcome. While also, obviously, pushing for some kind of change to this fucked-up situation that we’ve been placed in by the absurd farce that is American “democracy.”
If someone says that the whole situation is fucked and wants to accelerate the process that will get rid of it entirely, that’s absolutely great in my book. Pretty much the only aspect I have a problem with is when people who are terrified of the serial killer, both for themselves and also on behalf of their victims and the victims of the badguy, and so are trying to make sure at least the first guy is in charge while we’re dealing with the rest of the problem, get painted as “rationalizing” or “beating around the bush” about some kind of secret love for serial-killing that must be at heart of their reaction to the whole situation.
The whole thing where Trump was a “roll of the dice”, but Kamala Harris who wasn’t making any of the war-criminal decisions that Biden was, was somehow preordained to definitely be a continuing disaster for the Palestinians, is just icing on the cake.
Absolutely false. Try again. We started this conversation by me addressing this exact point. If I explain clearly what I mean, and you decide that I am “avoiding admitting” some different thing, then there’s not a lot of point to us talking to each other.
trying to make sure at least the first guy is in charge while we’re dealing with the rest of the problem, get painted as “rationalizing” or “beating around the bush” about some kind of secret love for serial-killing that must be at heart of their reaction to the whole situation.
I never implied some secret love. It is blatant support though. You can’t choose either of those options and pretend you didn’t make a calculated decision for evil. The “lesser of two evils” thing necessarily implies that you are supporting evil. You’re trying so hard to talk around it, but it is what it is.
The “lesser of two evils” thing necessarily implies that you are supporting evil.
Absolutely, yes. Paying taxes in the US is supporting evil. Buying an iPhone is supporting evil. Eating meat is supporting evil. Voting for Biden would have been supporting evil. Voting for Harris, I’m a little less sure about, but I feel like even saying that is going to get me accused of some kind of rationalizing.
But yes, someone can say that they want to buy an Android instead of an iPhone, because of whatever reasons, without someone else having an absolute meltdown and accusing them of supporting abusive mining in the Congo, making excuses for functional or actual slavery in China, and so on. But for some reason when it is geopolitical, saying that you’re going to vote for X candidate for reasons of creating less suffering in the world somehow gets transmuted into this “blatant support” for that candidate and everything they do, or denial of their numerous crimes, or implying that you’re okay with suffering in the world, that to me has nothing to do with why I would make that decision.
I might be one of the rare folks who are consistent about this actually lol, because I have the same reaction about all of the examples you gave. I just don’t say anything unless I feel attacked for my position/behavior (evading taxes, buying exclusively second hand electronics, being vegan, voting 3rd party, etc).
I think people should just be honest with themselves and others about what they’re doing. Paying taxes, buying a brand new iPhone, eating animal products, etc, is tacit support for evil. With taxes, it’s much more clear cut, because you can say “I’d rather indirectly, and under coercion, fund a little bit of atrocities than make my life harder and risk imprisonment.” and that’s okay- everybody does that. Trying to rationalize a way out of it just makes it sound worse
“The justification here is that voting for a genocider is an endorsement of the genocide”
nobody who voted against trump voted for a “genocider”.
trump is worse.
“Yeah duh. This goes without saying”
you are looking down your nose at voting against Trump and have a wait and see mentality about the devastating effect his greed has already had, is having and will continue to have in the real world, so it needs to be said loudly and repeatedly that Trump is worse empty Harris was a better candidate, that Trump is killing people and ripping apart the US because of your inaction.
that Is a significant fact, since you and others who didn’t vote against him clearly don’t understand the consequences of your apathy.
“I put my own safety aside in defense of Palestinians by refusing to vote for anyone who intended to have them murdered”
Palestinians are now in a worse position because of your myopic, selfish posturing, and so are you and other vulnerable populations.
Oh, I see
oh no, someone I don’t like isn’t talking to me anymore…
I said get blocked. Please block yourself from me so I don’t have to see you anymore
I know you’re woefully inept at taking responsibility for your actions, and apparently at language, but “get blocked” means that I’m getting externally blocked.
it’s the imperative form.
If you want something to happen, you have to do it.
talk about a microcosm of your poor reasoning skills leading to Trump ‘getting’(see what I did there?) elected, you clueless cletus.
I declare blocked!
Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.
Uh yeah, I can’t argue against what y’all say on .ml because anything beyond the prevailing opinion will just get scrubbed away
When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect
lol, this is some grade A fart sniffing. Guess I’m not reading the right books
Uh yeah, I can’t argue against what y’all say on .ml because anything beyond the prevailing opinion will just get scrubbed away
I think it’s easy not to realize how profound an impact this has. I tried looking at the same comment threads, on Hexbear and then on some other instances, and it’s really remarkable how distorted a picture you’ll see of reality and consensus when it’s being artificially manipulated to look some particular way. I was surprised by how compelling an alternate reality was created by banning everyone who disagrees.
I’m not surprised to hear someone say “you cannot actually argue against” it, because if you spend all your time in .ml spaces, you may never have heard the counterarguments or had a chance to see a sustained conversation about it. Or maybe a handful of times, with each one being met with ten angry counterpoints which meld into an overall picture of the first thing having no merit at all. I think a lot of times, they form their picture of the counterarguments based on what other .ml people say the counterarguments are. Which is usually pretty different.
When people talk about needing to “protect” their spaces against invasion from some kind of outside force which is going to comment them to death, which is tedious and “debatebro” and they don’t need it, that’s the outcome they are bending things towards. I have no idea if it’s on purpose or just an accidental product of trying to make a friendly space for people with some particular belief. But that’s the outcome. It’s why they have so much trouble talking with people from “outside” and so little frame of reference as to what the people “outside” actually think and say and believe.
lol, this is some grade A fart sniffing
It’s got some
tankieauthvanguard-elitism flair to it, but I felt it was really well written regardlessEdit: adjusted my language
Roll of the dice?
Trump is worse. UNRWA is illegal, there’s no aid of any kind going in, and they’re invading the West Bank now. By the end of Trump’s term, Palestine may be no more.
This whole thing is a massive exercise in exactly what it claims to be criticizing.
OP was saying most people on .ml didn’t expect Trump to be better and, if anything, maybe some folks felt he’s unpredictable enough that an improvement was possible but unlikely. The point is that most people on .ml were criticizing dems, not saying trump would be better.
Obviously Trump is worse. It might be worth rereading.
I think this misunderstanding comes from the “trump is worse” part being unspoken between leftists, but liberals don’t recognize that and assume rejection of their candidate means approval of their enemy
maybe some folks felt he’s unpredictable enough that an improvement was possible but unlikely.
Yes. Those people were being stupid. And their persistent pretense that saying “Trump is so CATASTROPHICALLY worse that it makes no difference if the Democrats are bad, which they are” meant “the Democrats are good and all we need to do is vote for them” is exactly the same type of bad faith, and failure to even bother to try to understand the slightest bit of nuance, that OOP is now accusing others of. Which makes it fair game, now that Trump is trying to burn everything in the world that isn’t white and wealthy and making quite a bit of progress on it, to point out to the people who said he might be a “roll of the dice” how idiotic and divorced from reality that statement was (which was pointed out to them in advance which they met with condescension and refusal to listen) with some concrete present-day examples.
That was the point that I was making.
I actually have had people tell me that Trump is better, because of the “cease fire,” but I don’t even really care about that. There will always be random people saying dumb shit. I was dealing explicitly with the statements OOP was calling out and defending, in the terms in which OOP was defending them.
Edit: Typo and phrasing changes
The ‘roll of the dice’ thing a silly/uninformed thing to say/believe, but that was a minor throwaway part of the what OOP was saying, and they only said it to stress that it was a rare thing.
Also, I’m not convinced Trump is “catastrophically worse” for Palestinians than Biden/Harris. Seems like the same outcome, just faster under Trump. (Of course, Trump is catastrophically worse in countless other areas, but that’s not the topic of discussion here.)
I actually have had people tell me that Trump was better, because of the “cease fire,”
I did see a couple people saying that, and I’m still not convinced they weren’t trolling.
The ‘roll of the dice’ thing a silly/uninformed thing to say/believe
Agreed.
that was a minor throwaway part of the what OOP was saying, and they only said it to stress that it was a rare thing
Okay, sure. I definitely still encountered it a lot. I’m still encountering it.
And none of that really excuses their persistent habit of reframing “Trump is so CATASTROPHICALLY worse that it makes no difference if the Democrats are bad, which they are” into the persistently wrong but easier-to-argue-against “I ❤️ Democrats” terms that I very often encountered, which OOP repeats above.
I do understand disagreeing with someone who is saying Trump is so much worse that it doesn’t matter. I talked not that long ago about how I can understand how Rashida Tlaib for example could just throw the whole premise in the bin because it’s just not what’s important to her. What I don’t understand is pretending that the person using that logic is actually saying something else (“tacitly”, as OOP claims), so you can argue against the much easier thing that isn’t what they’re saying.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Just like it’s annoying and uncool when people say “you basically voted for Trump by voting for De La Cruz,” it’s equally annoying and uncool when I say “people who support establishment Dems support genocide.” Is that mostly your point?
Yes, precisely. With a handful of rare exceptions I strongly dislike the Democrats. I voted third party for over ten years, and only stopped once the Republicans became so dangerous to make it an urgent matter to try to keep them out of power. I definitely support voting reforms which will make it more realistic to get third parties into power. Really, I think the answer is to get rid of political parties as the unit of political organization, and replace them with politically active unions as used to be the case back when this country wasn’t so fucked. I frequently post stories which accuse the Biden administration of war crimes in their support for Israel.
Often when I have this conversation, someone tells me some variety of “No you don’t. You’re clearly a liberal. I already know everything about you, and you ❤️ Democrats, and you’re lying about it to try to trick me. So I can safely ignore everything you say. Who knows, Trump actually might be better.”
I really am not, and he isn’t, and I think OOP’s type of viewpoint on people like me and what we had to say before and after the election is childish and insulting.
Thanks for sharing; I get your perspective now. I don’t think this comment was about people like you, though. People enjoy boiling things down into a single statement, and it can be hard not to take offense when you’re swept up in an over generalization. I assume you don’t identify with what varyk is saying elsewhere in the comments here? Because that’s the kind of person I think OOP is talking about.
