• P_P@lemm.ee
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    9 hours ago

    Once you are under dictatorship, you can’t vote to hold anyone accountable. Vote for Trump and you won’t have a say in what happens to Gaza. Or anything else.

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      yea, but you get to brag to all the other inmates in the political prison yard that you stood up for your principles by not voting!

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        They’ll be in the same political prisons as their primary enemies, the classic liberal Dems.

      • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 hours ago

        I’m not as enthused as you to vote for a system where innocent civilians have to die for political convenience, sorry. My morals say that killing is wrong, and I don’t like it.

        • GiantChickDicks
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          4 hours ago

          It doesn’t take enthusiasm to make an active move toward harm reduction if and when you see the opportunity, especially when the consequences are this serious. I would love to see ranked choice voting and a diverse and motivated number of parties to challenge the dichotomy we have now, but I live in the reality of the viable options in front of me in this moment.

          This isn’t about an acceptance or endorsement of the system we have now. Unfortunately for all of us, however, this is the system we currently live in. If my choices are between bad and catastrophic, I’m going with bad. Doubly so in cases like these. The choice is either the people who are suffering may or will continue to do so, versus these same people suffering even worse while making multiple new groups of people suffer, too.

          If Trump wins and things get as bad, or worse, than the scenarios that have been proposed on record, more people will continue to lose their homes, autonomy, and lives in the United States. Many people who are suffering from atrocities actively going on in places other than the Middle East will likely also be worse off under these policies.

          I hope those people who feel as if they own the moral high ground will remember they had an opportunity to stop it and chose to do nothing if we suddenly all find ourselves living in that world.

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            4 hours ago

            I hope those people who feel as if they own the moral high ground will remember they had an opportunity to stop it

            How many people died in Gaza today? I wish I had an opportunity to stop that.

            but I live in the reality of the viable options

            Yes, and I am unhappy that the options all involve ‘innocent people are dying right now’. This bothers me.

            If it’s the moral high ground to say that killing is wrong, then it is also the moral high ground for you to say “The choice is either the people who are suffering may or will continue to do so, versus these same people suffering even worse”. You’re saying that hurting innocent people is bad, yes?

            Having to choose to hurt some or more innocent people is not a choice I am enthused about, no matter what the practical reality is. It would be churlish to criticise someone without food for complaining about their practical choice between going hungry and starving, I feel.

            Practical concerns do not replace morality. Someone might have no choice but to abandon their children because they cannot afford them: this does not stop them from being harmed by the moral weight of what, in all practicality, they had to do.

            • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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              31 minutes ago

              There are no palatable choices in this election. You can vote for the guy who has said Israel should hurry up and finish the job or the woman who has asked for a cease fire. There are other choices, but they tend to support the first guy. It would be awesome to have a choice that results in the genocide absolutely stopping, and I feel it’s entirely appropriate to be angry that isn’t an option, but it isn’t the choice we have. Perhaps you believe standing aside and doing nothing when the moral choice isn’t available is the correct thing to do. I vehemently do not, but that is also an option American voters have, whether through protest voting or abstaining from voting altogether. Unfortunately, my world hasn’t been that black and white for a long time.

            • GiantChickDicks
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              4 hours ago

              My underlying point was the nuance of this entire situation, and you provided another obtuse black-and-white response. If you can’t radically accept the world and your life, it’s going to make it awfully hard to see it well enough to make changes.

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 hours ago

            Thanks, as a person with a trans gender identity, this really helps me to understand that nothing will change, because fear and oppression will be utilised to force people to rationalise harmful actions as inevitable.

              • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                4 hours ago

                Hey, I’m autistic, queer, and an immigrant. You can hate me if you want, plenty of people do.

                My gender identity is trans. I’m also ethnically Ukrainian. Feel free to assume I’m Russian because I’m different to you. That’s what human society does, create ougroups and scapegoat them. I try to avoid doing it, which makes me an enemy of those who do, because I say impossible things like “can we not kill innocent people?” For practical purposes, that will not happen, and asking for it is naive.

                I know that. But, although impractical and naive, that does not stop it from being the morally correct outcome. My autism shows itself in a very strong sense of justice, and I find justice to be more important than practicality.

            • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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              5 hours ago

              as a person with a trans gender identity

              I’m gonna go ahead and stop you right there chief. Transgender people don’t write “transgender” as two words. Big “as a black man” energy here, cishet loser.

              • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                4 hours ago

                As a non-binary person who is under the trans gender umbrella, without being transgender in the sense of having transitioned across genders, I am careful with my language. I am not transgender in the way people typically understand.

                Feel free to participate in non-binary erasure, I’m used to it. Humans love creating outgroups so they can bully each other, that is why I find myself not labelling myself as human. I think gender is stupid, and I think humans are rude.

        • meep_launcher@lemm.ee
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          9 hours ago

          I’m voting so the state doesn’t kill my sister if she has complications in her pregnancy.

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 hours ago

            That is good. I would also like to be able to vote so the state doesn’t send weapons to enable one country to kill innocent people in another. Some of those people dying are sisters, and their siblings feel much like you might when they are without them.

            • HostilePasta
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              5 hours ago

              “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.”

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 hours ago

            If your point is “some people think that killing is wrong”, feel free to consider your point proven.

            • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              You’re choosing between “lots of people being killed” vs “LOOOOOOTTTTTSSSS of people being killed”

              Based on your own morality you have outlined, ethically you would choose to vote Kamala then, as under her far far fewer people will die.

                • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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                  5 hours ago

                  No demon at all has created it; other humans have. You aren’t the sole person responsible for responding to it, but your actions will contribute to what happens next, non-action included.

                  You can say that this kind of situation implies someone else has done something wrong, leaving you holding the bag, and you’d be right, if nobody had done something wrong, we wouldn’t have a genocide to talk about in the first place- but saying that leaving you holding the moral bag was a wrong thing to do doesn’t change the fact that you are now holding that bag, along with all the rest of us. And about half of us (referring to the people of the US as a whole), if you haven’t noticed, have every desire of causing even more harm. “Neither” is simply not an option when failing to choose the least bad thing will result in someone else choosing the worse one. It’s not fair, it’s repulsive even, but the universe does not work in such a way as to ensure only fair moral choices exist. Morality is a thing we invented, the world doesn’t care about conforming to it.

                  Getting the best outcome you have with the bad options presented you matters more than whether or not you feel your own personal hands are clean- because metaphorically clean hands will not save the people of Palestine, and likely would doom some, and others elsewhere, that could have been saved. A clean feeling conscience bought by leaving people you could have helped to die is little more than a delusion of innocence.

                  • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    5 hours ago

                    It’s not fair, it’s repulsive even, but the universe does not work in such a way

                    It’s not the universe, it’s the human world. This is a solely human problem, and I do not find myself emotionally attached to the idea of being human.

        • poke@sh.itjust.works
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          9 hours ago

          Not voting is a choice as well. A choice that will make it so that your voice will not have an impact on whether the candidate that kills more will win, or the candidate that kills less. Choosing to abstain is an announcement that you don’t care about those whose lives are being threatened, the opposite of what you seem to think it is.

          • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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            5 hours ago

            Honestly my ideology on it is the same as my parents and my grandparents, and even my great grandparents ideology.

            I don’t care who you vote for, what you vote for, or your reasoning’s for doing do.

            But if you refuse to vote, regardless of reason, you lose any say in complaining about what happens as a result, as you actively did nothing to help prevent it, meaning you have no right to removed about the outcome.

          • dhork@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            A great Canadian philosopher once said “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!”

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 hours ago

            Not voting is a choice as well.

            Yes, but I don’t have any other choice, myself.

            Choosing to abstain is an announcement that you don’t care

            No, it’s an announcement that I care so much about innocent people dying that I am morally conflicted about being asked to be part of a political system which condones it.

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 hours ago

            I’m acting like someone who is saying that they do not accept killing innocent people as a viable part of a political process that will make the human world better.

        • KillerTofu@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          So you’re voting for fascism or just going to sit it out in a political statement? Or being bold and voting third party?

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 hours ago

            So you’re voting for fascism or just going to sit it out in a political statement? Or being bold and voting third party?

            I cannot cast a vote in this election.