Part of the fucking problem is that Dems seem to have kinda given up on ever getting anything nice. The only thing that matters is “BEAT TRUMP”. Healthcare, civil/labor rights, debt relief, the anti-war movement, environmental protections, business regulation, green infrastructure development… none of that is even being offered up.
The only thing you hear is “Whatever position you have, know that Trump will be worse than Harris, so you have to vote Harris”. How do you go up to someone’s door and ask for their vote on those grounds? What do you say to someone who looks at Trump and Harris, shrugs, and says “They look the same to me”?
It isn’t the MAGA voter that you have to worry about. It’s the voter that’s been getting burned election after election by disappointment and can’t be bothered this time around.
What do you say to someone who looks at Trump and Harris, shrugs, and says “They look the same to me”?
What do you say? You say “are you suffering a stroke, would you like me to call you an ambulance?”
Americans aren’t being given a real choice here, too bad, but that’s how it is. Anyone who is eligible to vote but doesn’t realise Trump is a genuine threat to democracy the world over maybe shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
If you were caught in someplace where you didn’t have access to water, and the only choices were a bottle of piss with blood in it (Trump, in this metaphor) and a warm, stale coke light (Harris, in this metaphor), which one would you choose? Neither of them are particularly enjoyable or healthy in the long run, but if you were in a place which had no access to fresh water (spelling out my metaphor here, but democracy), you would die without consuming liquids. Still, you probably wouldn’t choose the pissy blood, because that’d actually be dangerous to drink no matter how dehydrated you were. A warm, stale coke light would still be a functional drink, no matter how much you’d never choose it if you had an option.
See where I’m going?
Chomsky did have a good point once about how there’s a difference of the type of lack of democracy that you can see between America and Russia. (I’m Finnish, btw, fuck Putler.) He made the point that Americans tend to like to think they have a choice, whereas Russians are pretty openly certain they don’t. As a heavy exaggeration, that is. I don’t recall which book it was, but I think it was honestly one of his books from the 70’s about linguistics, which made it weird, since it started with a chapter about CIA shenanigans and propaganda.
I’d never vote republican under any circumstance. …But if I click “Harris” am I complicit with her clearly stated intentions to commit mass murder, when I also have a choice to not vote for either candidate? Whats the responsibility of individuals which comprise and propel groups which openly state they are about to commit that stuff? Does “Do the least harm” just not apply in some situations? I know that legally its not a defense. If you aided murder you are getting punished unless its self defense, which this is not.
If I travel to the edge of the middle east and someone wants to kill me for his murdered wife and children who died screaming, burning slowly in a israeli hellfire missile strike, do I have it coming? I honestly dont know. Part of me thinks yes, I have it coming if I voted for either Harris or Trump. Can someone more philosophically inclined than me help me with this?
Metaphor wise, it feels like l’m being told to shoot an innocent or maybe get shot myself.
Does “Do the least harm” just not apply in some situations?
I think its a fundamentally false choice. People get bound up in the moral weight of their vote, when they spend an hour or two making the decision every 2-4 years. Then they spend 2080 man hrs+ / year working for an employer and god knows how many hours engaging in consumerist behaviors which plays a drastically more meaningful impact on the political and social economy of their neighborhood than the weight of their votes.
A Harris guy working for Raytheon has more blood on their hands than a thousand Trump voters who work construction or do email jobs. A postal worker doing the yeoman’s work of processing all those mail-in ballots has more consequence to their community than a dozen canvassers trying to GOTV. A gym teacher making off-color jokes about LGBTQ students in the locker room is going to weigh heavier on civil rights than a hundred ACT BLUE donators.
If I travel to the edge of the middle east and someone wants to kill me
After all the bombings and killings we’ve done in the Middle East, you’re less likely to be murdered by an angry local dissident than to die of cholera or dysentery because the place you landed has no access to safe drinking water.
it feels like l’m being told to shoot an innocent or maybe get shot myself.
You’re being told to feel complicit in a system that’s totally outside your control, while being hoodwinked into participating in systems within your control without thinking about what you’re really doing.
Part of the fucking problem is that Dems seem to have kinda given up on ever getting anything nice. The only thing that matters is “BEAT TRUMP”. Healthcare, civil/labor rights, debt relief, the anti-war movement, environmental protections, business regulation, green infrastructure development… none of that is even being offered up.
The only thing you hear is “Whatever position you have, know that Trump will be worse than Harris, so you have to vote Harris”. How do you go up to someone’s door and ask for their vote on those grounds? What do you say to someone who looks at Trump and Harris, shrugs, and says “They look the same to me”?
It isn’t the MAGA voter that you have to worry about. It’s the voter that’s been getting burned election after election by disappointment and can’t be bothered this time around.
What do you say? You say “are you suffering a stroke, would you like me to call you an ambulance?”
Americans aren’t being given a real choice here, too bad, but that’s how it is. Anyone who is eligible to vote but doesn’t realise Trump is a genuine threat to democracy the world over maybe shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
If you were caught in someplace where you didn’t have access to water, and the only choices were a bottle of piss with blood in it (Trump, in this metaphor) and a warm, stale coke light (Harris, in this metaphor), which one would you choose? Neither of them are particularly enjoyable or healthy in the long run, but if you were in a place which had no access to fresh water (spelling out my metaphor here, but democracy), you would die without consuming liquids. Still, you probably wouldn’t choose the pissy blood, because that’d actually be dangerous to drink no matter how dehydrated you were. A warm, stale coke light would still be a functional drink, no matter how much you’d never choose it if you had an option.
See where I’m going?
Chomsky did have a good point once about how there’s a difference of the type of lack of democracy that you can see between America and Russia. (I’m Finnish, btw, fuck Putler.) He made the point that Americans tend to like to think they have a choice, whereas Russians are pretty openly certain they don’t. As a heavy exaggeration, that is. I don’t recall which book it was, but I think it was honestly one of his books from the 70’s about linguistics, which made it weird, since it started with a chapter about CIA shenanigans and propaganda.
I’d never vote republican under any circumstance. …But if I click “Harris” am I complicit with her clearly stated intentions to commit mass murder, when I also have a choice to not vote for either candidate? Whats the responsibility of individuals which comprise and propel groups which openly state they are about to commit that stuff? Does “Do the least harm” just not apply in some situations? I know that legally its not a defense. If you aided murder you are getting punished unless its self defense, which this is not.
If I travel to the edge of the middle east and someone wants to kill me for his murdered wife and children who died screaming, burning slowly in a israeli hellfire missile strike, do I have it coming? I honestly dont know. Part of me thinks yes, I have it coming if I voted for either Harris or Trump. Can someone more philosophically inclined than me help me with this?
Metaphor wise, it feels like l’m being told to shoot an innocent or maybe get shot myself.
I think its a fundamentally false choice. People get bound up in the moral weight of their vote, when they spend an hour or two making the decision every 2-4 years. Then they spend 2080 man hrs+ / year working for an employer and god knows how many hours engaging in consumerist behaviors which plays a drastically more meaningful impact on the political and social economy of their neighborhood than the weight of their votes.
A Harris guy working for Raytheon has more blood on their hands than a thousand Trump voters who work construction or do email jobs. A postal worker doing the yeoman’s work of processing all those mail-in ballots has more consequence to their community than a dozen canvassers trying to GOTV. A gym teacher making off-color jokes about LGBTQ students in the locker room is going to weigh heavier on civil rights than a hundred ACT BLUE donators.
After all the bombings and killings we’ve done in the Middle East, you’re less likely to be murdered by an angry local dissident than to die of cholera or dysentery because the place you landed has no access to safe drinking water.
You’re being told to feel complicit in a system that’s totally outside your control, while being hoodwinked into participating in systems within your control without thinking about what you’re really doing.