As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.

I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.

Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.

Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.

  • @EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
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    61 hour ago

    Some people are single-issue voters who don’t care if one side is slightly better, even if still terrible, than the other on that issue. They will gleefully sacrifice everything for taking a moral stand against the slightly less worse party on this one single issue and then claim some sort of high moral ground and how they need to destroy the system via a revolution.

    Of course, revolutions involve hard choices, in fact even harder than choosing who to vote in this election, and they also take more effort than getting off your ass and vote, so this revolution will probably never happen but that’s a tiny detail.

    The real winners of course are Trump, his MAGA republicans (who, alongside ruzzian bot farms, promote the narrative that both sides equally bad on Israel so don’t vote Kamala) and Netanyahu as a proxy. I mean after all a president who moved the embassy to Jerusalem and actively encourages settlers is better for Israel than one who has surprisingly been less supportive even if still sending weapons and not really doing anything concrete to punish Israel, I mean Netanyahu has multiple times clearly stated he wants Trump specifically because it would make it easier to genocide Palestinians. Not to mention obviously all the other issues pike LGBTQI+ rights, women rights, not losing your right to vote, minority rights, Ukraine, climate change, etc etc those are all very important issues but a good size of these people never really gave a shit about them, in fact a sizeable portion probably doesn’t even give a shit about Palestine, they’d have happily sided with Israel if the US sided with Palestine, and just want an excuse to look morally superior or to promote a supposed revolution to gain power.

  • What has the current administration actually stopped Israel from doing? Every line in the sand has been crossed and there have been no consequences, trump won’t be worse for Palestine than Kamala

  • doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

    And what if they seem equally likely to escalate the situation?

    Trump says he’ll let Israel finish the job. Kamala says she disapproves of what’s happening in Gaza, but will always support Israel and will always provide them with weapons.

    Same fuckin’ thing.

  • yeehaw
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    4 hours ago

    Lol, living in a world where “anti-genocide” is actually a thing people say is messed up.

    • @daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      255 minutes ago

      I think is actually kind of nice.

      I mean of all species living on earth, human is the only species that would consider genocide a bad thing. Some random plant on prehistoric ages would just produce oxygen an cause a mass extinction without sweating it.

      And for most human history Humans would actually try to genocide others.

      At least now there is people who is anti-genocide. And it’s probably a growing stance.

  • Max
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    5 hours ago

    I think something that contributes to people talking past each other here is a difference in belief in how necessary/desirable revolution/overthrow of the U.S government is. Like many of the people who I’ve talked to online, who advocate not voting and are also highly engaged, believe in revolution as the necessary alternative. Which does make sense. It’s hard to believe that the system is fundamentally genocidal and not worth working within (by voting for the lesser evil) without also believing that the solution is to overthrow that system.

    And in that case, we’re discussing the wrong thing. Like the question isn’t whether you should vote or not . it’s whether the system is worth preserving (and of course what do you do to change it. How much violence in a revolution is necessary/acceptable). Like if you believe it is worth preserving, then clearly you should vote. And if you believe it isn’t, there’s stronger case for not voting and instead working on a revolution.

    Does anyone here believe that revolution isn’t necessary and also that voting for the lesser isn’t necessary?

    The opposite is more plausible to me: believing in the necessity of revolution while also voting

    Personally I believe that revolution or its attempt is unlikely to effective and voting+activism is more effective, and also requires agreement from fewer people in order to progress on its goals. Tragically, this likely means that thousands more people will be murdered, but I don’t know what can actually be effective at stopping that.

    • @EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
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      01 hour ago

      They can’t be arsed to choose pragmatically between two bad candidates when voting and we’re to believe they can do a revolution that involves several harder choices? Do these people think revolutions are easy walks in the park where you never have to make hard choices like, for example, killing your neighbors for being in the way of the revolution or how to handle POWs, etc.

      Some people assume that voting and political activism are mutually exclusive, these people are stupid and won’t win a revolution. These two things are not mutually exclusive, voting doesn’t stop you from protesting and being politically engaged and vice versa.

  • @Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org
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    44 hours ago

    I think it’s because of stuff like this:

    I’m not a U.S.A-ian. From my view(might be too critical), I don’t think the foreign policy would be greatly affected by the President or party, unless there’s some massive movement and notion of losing resources like during the invasion of Vietnam.

  • @Moxible@monyet.cc
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    3 hours ago

    The US two-party system is a duopoly, so whichever party you vote for doesn’t matter. They are two sides of the same coin pretending to be opposites.

    • @abbenm@lemmy.ml
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      32 hours ago

      One of the most commonly repeated and least thought through statements in politics.

      Unions stand a better chance of advocating before an NLRB board that has Democratic appointees. The FTC is going to do more to fight monopolies under a Democratic administration. The EPA is going to fight pfas and lithium mining.

      And god almighty is it fucking frustrating to have to say this out loud in a serious conversation to adults, but Justice Elena Kagan makes meaningfully different decisions than Brett fuddrucking Kavanagh. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you can’t acknowledge things like this, I don’t know how to treat you like a serious person.

      For instance, let’s just throw out everything other than the Supreme Court. To maintain the false equivalence, you have to say with a straight face that things like the Janus decision didn’t matter, or that overturning Roe vs Wade didn’t matter, or gutting the voting rights act didn’t matter, or getting rid of Chevron doesn’t matter. If you can make any of those arguments with a straight face, I won’t agree, but I’ll at least believe that you’ve actually thought this through.

      • Xavienth
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        144 minutes ago

        The Roe v Wade decision and the Chevron decision literally happened under Biden, a democrat. Before you butter up the Democrats as the second coming of Christ, consider that the Democrats are literally in power and have been for the last four fucking years of hell. It’s not that those decisions don’t matter, it’s that the venn diagram of what your vote can possibly do, and the ways to reverse those decisions, it looks like this: O O

  • @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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    23 hours ago

    I voted party for socialism and liberation and you can too!

    They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to israel.

    Psl is eligible for enough electoral votes to win in a landslide!

    If genocide is your red line then they’ve crossed it. How will you respond?

  • Drusas
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    438 hours ago

    They believe that taking a moral stand against the Democrats, who are supporting Israeli genocide, is worth it even if that means that Trump, who even more fervently supports Israeli genocide, becomes president.

    • @AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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      -75 hours ago

      Even calling it “Israeli genocide” is transferring responsibility. “Supporting” is an understatement. The democrats ARE THE ONES DOING THE GENOCIDE. Biden can stop it with a single phone call. Israel is not an independent state; it is a subordinate of the US.

      Telling people to vote for your party, a nazi party, at the absolute peak of your depraved inhuman bloodthirst, because the other side might be worse, is the most cynical fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

      • @abbenm@lemmy.ml
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        2 hours ago

        I genuinely do believe we’re going to look back this time as inexcusable. Right now, Netanyahu’s extreme right flank is now advocating for settlement of the parts of Gaza that have been ethnically cleansed. Specifically, they’re saying that as long as the army stays there for a permanent long-term occupation, that can be the first step to proceeding with settlements.

        It’s so much worse than even the Iraq war. I’ve seen by some estimates that the Iraq war displaced 2 million people, and the deaths, before they stopped counting, were between 100,000 and a quarter million.

        I think the deaths and displacements in Gaza probably are going to exceed those, and it’s concentrated in a much smaller area, and it’s horrifyingly closer to affecting the whole population.

        Simply put there’s no excuse for this moral atrocity.

        And here’s the but: I don’t see how a strategic attitude of indifference to who runs the State department brings it closer to an end. And I don’t see that that attitude is one of even pretending to try for an alternative. I do think supporting politicians especially in their Democratic primaries is a positive step. And I do think, as with the Iraq war, galvanizing a sea change and discrediting everyone who is associated with what happened in Gaza is necessary. I believe it is urgent to do something, and the actual channels of aid that can meaningfully do something right now exist entirely outside of party infrastructure of either party. But I also think, for how true that is, using that to lose sight a very real and very serious differences between the parties that also affect human welfare in numerous ways, would be to needlessly visit tragedy upon tragedy. I wouldn’t want to lose American democracy into the bargain, and I don’t think it’s nuanced to be in indifferent to that.

      • Dragon "Rider"(drag)
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        02 hours ago

        the most cynical fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

        Yes, it’s cynical. It’s based on the jaded belief that democracy is 90% dead, and Americans only get to make one of two meaningful choices.

        The opposite belief, which is that America is a democracy and you can vote for whoever you want, is hopeful and patriotic. It puts a lot of trust in the American system. It shows faith that politicians have our best interests at heart, and that it’ll all work out if you just say what you want.

        Is that how you want to describe yourself? As a patriot who believes in America? It doesn’t seem to align with your worldview, but it’s what your actions are saying.

      • @AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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        5 hours ago

        I honestly appreciate the downvotes as a counter of angry people shamed into silence

        Good. You should be fucking ashamed.

  • magnetosphere
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    24 hours ago

    Sometimes, I see a quality discussion between principled people who care deeply about the issues. They both want to do what’s best, but simply disagree on what “best” is.

    Their opinions can be so far apart, though, that they’re unable to even comprehend the other position.

  • @Stizzah@lemmygrad.ml
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    35 hours ago

    Democrats: “Either you vote us or you are fucked. And no you won’t get what you really want (the end of the genocide, healthcare, whatever), but you can choose to eat out shit or the republican’s. Are you happy with that? No? Fuck you and vote Harris anyway ah ah ah. You don’t have a choice, we don’t give a shit about you and your problems but you have to vote us. You have to.”

    You see, people are realising that their vote is useless by design, and maybe the only way to change something is to punish the party that pretend to be the good one, the one that pretend to be at your side and pretend to work for you but it really doesn’t.

    They are making you believe that democracy is just about preventing the others to get elected because they are worst. No it’s not, and you should stop being a victim and do something, anything, to force them to change. Even if you get 4 years of Trump: whoever think that it makes a difference is delusional, he’s just blatant fascist while Harris is secretly fascist. They are just two different seasoning for the same plate of shit.

    • @abbenm@lemmy.ml
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      02 hours ago

      Democrats: “Either you vote us or you are fucked

      Dems tend to be in favor of ranked choice voting and often clear the way easy for independents to run when they have a better shot.

      For instance, I live in Maine, and Independent senator Angus King caucuses with the Democrats. The Dems don’t say vote for us or you’re fucked, they get out of the way and let him run unopposed. (Technically there is a Dem candidate but he’s getting no institutional support.) They did that a couple years ago in an Alaska Senate race also, and are currently doing it in Nebraska.

      I don’t think it helps anyone to reduce these things to cartoon caricatures and lose sight of real issues. I don’t think the internet is good for people’s brains and I think it’s good for your mental health to walk into your local state legislature and go to a committee meeting and hear the folks talk about, I don’t know, how to fund the water utilities, or emergency heating fuel deliveries in the winter, or needle exchange programs or something. Once you do, you don’t come out the other side talking like an internet poster with a fried brain.

    • @Mechaguana@programming.dev
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      5 hours ago

      I mean their choices are shit, but third parties dont exist, so I guess these democrats are right. Its gonna be democratic cold shower or acid bath republican, and perhaps the libs hope that they both dont get the acid bath through their inaction.

      Its not like the americans are gonna rebel, they clearly dont have any political will, guns or alcohol.

  • @CameronDev@programming.dev
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    8811 hours ago

    Remember that in online spaces (and IRL in reality), there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts that will make claims to sway public opinions.

      • @CameronDev@programming.dev
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        2810 hours ago

        We get drug spam and stock spam, no reason to expect that political spam is any less likely.

        Lemmy has a huge amount of hardcore lefty’s. If you can get them to not vote, and especially if you can get them to tell their friends not to vote, that is a big win.

        Astroturfing/sockpuppeting is dirty cheap to do, so no reason not to try.

        You do see some users here that will post continously on about a certain topic repeatedly, with no other opinions. They might be legit, but I have my suspicions.

        • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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          129 hours ago

          “Hardcore lefties” have a very different understanding of the value of their vote, which is to say, it means very little.

          Have you deigned to ask them questions?

      • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1210 hours ago

        I disagree - it feels like Lemmy is seeing the same kind of shills that 4chan saw in the last several elections. These bad actors are trying to sway dems to vote third party or not vote at all “in protest” across many small and large online spaces.

    • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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      99 hours ago

      Yeah like all of these people out here telling me to vote for genociders. There’s no way that real humans would think so little of Palestinian lives, right?

      Right?

      • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        99 hours ago

        And who, of those who aren’t mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn’t about to help Isreal with their genocide? Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue. One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.

        Suppose you have two buttons. If you press one, it kills someone. If you press the second, it kills two people. If you don’t press the first button, someone else is eagerly waiting who will press the second. Whoever has placed the buttons here, has enough power that neither the buttons nor the other person are within your personal ability to harm at the moment, and you have neither the time nor the popularity to amass enough people to change this before the other guy pushes the “kill two people” button. Your only options are to press one or press neither and allow the second be pressed. If your answer to this scenario is “I press neither button, because pressing the first kills someone, don’t you care about people’s lives!?”, then you are not choosing morality, you are choosing selfishness, because you care more about the notion that your hands will be clean than about the net life saved if you press the button that kills fewer people. In fact, the blood is as much on your hands by inaction if you decide to reject your choice, as it would be had you killed the additional victim yourself.

        • @tangentism@beehaw.org
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          23 hours ago

          Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue.

          What liberal brain rot is this?

          Biden is fully engaging with his policy of genociding Palestinians. Harris has said that she will carry on with the policy with absolutely no change.

          The fucking dissonance you people walk around with is astounding!

          And before you come out with the usual other shit floating around your vacuous head, no, I’m not advocating voting for the shitty pants trust fund rapist.

          You people cannot seem to grasp that what is being done in the Levant will be done to you. The DOD had just updated it’s rules so they can use lethal force against you.

          It’s coming and you’ll are too fucking partisan to realise that you’re turkeys all voting for Christmas!

        • @AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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          46 hours ago

          You know how you can trick a stupid fucking child into doing what you want by presenting them a false choice of two alternatives you’re happy with? “Do you want to go to bed now or after one more show?”

        • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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          -19 hours ago

          And who, of those who aren’t mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn’t about to help Isreal with their genocide?

          When you are offered two candidates and both support genocide, including one being an active part of the current one, you can say, “no, never again means never again” and work against both rather than pretending you now have to support genocide.

          Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue.

          You should believe your lying eyes and see that Biden has gotten your consent for genocide, with Harris helping. The genocide has only ramped up as the election draws close.

          There is not worse that can be done. It is full, unequivocal support for basically anything Israel wants for genocide including the weapons and supplies on which they depend to carry out this genocide. If anything, Dems are more effective at this kind of thing, as they secure European support and offer better stipulations to the Israelis around when to escalate and when to play it a little cooler.

          Though your electoral logic is seld-defeating anyways. Your consent for the lesser evil keeps you politically anemic and unable to have solidarity with those who need it. You make yourself subservient.

          One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.

          This is a fantasy.

          Suppose you have two buttons.

          I am not interested in childish metaphors.

          • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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            8 hours ago

            If you reject the lesser evil, and all options possible to you are evil, then you by inaction support the greater evil, which, by definition, makes you evil. “Working against both”, when evil is inherit in all means by which you might do that work, is a fantasy you tell yourself to justify sabotaging efforts to limit the damage by practicing and encouraging what effective amounts to surrendering one of the few levers of power that you have any limited ability to pull.

            • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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              -18 hours ago

              I already addressed your lesser evilism logic. If you want to continue this conversation you will need to respond to what I say and not dither and repeat yourself.

              • Pup Biru
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                86 hours ago

                You live in a fantasy and sabotage real effort to limit damage in the real world. You are responsible because you can’t swallow your pride. How incredibly selfish of you.

              • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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                8 hours ago

                I am repeating myself because the notion that the least evil option available is the best one, that the lesser evil if you will is preferable to the more evil one, is axiomatic, that is, it’s a basis one takes when constructing a moral framework, not a consequence of one that can be reasoned through. If you do not agree with someone’s moral axioms, then there is simply nothing to debate, you and they are simply operating under mutually incompatible definitions for what is and is not the right thing to do. Restating that in a slightly different way is a way of testing if the axioms we are operating under are truly different, in which case further argument is pointless, or if we merely misunderstood eachother the first time around.

        • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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          39 hours ago

          The comprador government of the West Bank is just that, compradors. You should care about the people who live under a comprador government, yes.

          The government of Gaza is led by those taking direct militant action against their genocidal settler colonial invaders. They fight and die alongside their people.

            • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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              98 hours ago

              I never said I didn’t care. In fact I care very much.

              From Merriam Webster: “one” example: “you never know what will happen”

              Hamas is a terrorist organization. Lets not pretend that they’re some force of good.

              Hamas is a Palestinian resistance organization against apartheid settlers that routinely use and used extensive terrorism. While the Zionist entity bombs residential blocks, schools, and refugee camps, the axis of resistance, which includes Hamas, focus on military targets and building if leverage for their own liberation.

              The term “terrorist” is used selectively and in a racist way. When the Western Imperialists like a resistance organization they call them freedom fighters. When they dislike them, they get called terrorists. The ANC, including Mandela, were similarly labelled terrorists in their own fight against apartheid. Similarly, the Americans supported apartheid in South Africa and its mainstream political adherents gladly adopted their white supremacist framing.

            • NoneOfUrBusiness
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              48 hours ago

              They’re both not elected anymore and a resistance organization. They were elected on a platform of not-exclusively-peaceful resistance (peaceful resistance inside Palestine and especially inside Gaza was render impossible by Israel by 2006-2007, so their resistance activities are now exclusively violent). Resistance activities are supported by the population of Gaza, even if many don’t support Hamas specifically. If your point is that October 7th implies they don’t care about Gazan lives, that’s patently false. If that’s not what you meant, then explain what you mean by “they don’t care about Gazan lives”.

    • davel [he/him]
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      810 hours ago

      There are, but not on Lemmy, because Lemmy is still much too small to bother with.

        • davel [he/him]
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          -46 hours ago

          Are you a Lemmy sock puppetry expert? Because I am.

          Which Lemmy admins are saying there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts? Because I haven’t heard any.

          There is the occasional spammer or corpo shill, who is quickly dealt with, and that’s about it.

          • Tar_Alcaran
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            Are you a Lemmy sock puppetry expert? Because I am.

            Oh wow, a real sock puppetry expert! That’s so amazing, can I have your autograph to show to my children?

  • @Sundial@lemm.ee
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    10 hours ago

    Majority of the people who are saying this are Arab-Americans. They know how bad Trump will be, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of Biden back in 2020. Unfortunately, after a year of witnessing their entire ethnicity being written off as an acceptable casualty in the name of international diplomacy and foreign lobbying, they’ve become numb and just stopped caring. There have been repeated instsnces of Democrats actually silencing them from speaking up as well. They’ve adopted a scorched earth mentality and are deciding to send a giant “fuck you” to Harris and the entire Democratic party.

    And the Democrats are also allowing Israel to do whatever they want. There’s not much of a difference between the two on this topic.

    • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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      319 hours ago

      There is a difference between them on this topic.

      If Trump were in office now, every liberal here would be screaming for the genocide to end and trying to understand how anyone could let this happen.

      With Biden in office and his VP as candidate, they are trying to sell you on their candidate rather than working against the genocide.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness
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        228 hours ago

        I’ve actually seen some Muslim American leader (not sure who, maybe the mayor of Dearborn?) saying something like this. At least with Republicans in charge democrats would need to oppose them instead of gleefully supporting the genocide. Not sure how much this logic checks out, but it’s a thing I guess.

        • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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          177 hours ago

          The logic definitely checks out. It was far easier to mobilize and educate mainstream liberals under Trump. They have gone to sleep under Biden and become fully accepting of what the administration does. They might say they don’t approve in a poll or something, but get them to leave the house? Only the college students can be mobilized at this time.

          • @Kacarott@aussie.zone
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            14 hours ago

            I think assuming that people are completely accepting of what the administration is doing, even when they try to voice their opinions in polls, is in bad faith. They simply don’t feel they have the option to not vote. In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election, but the two party system is so entrenched (at the minimum in the minds of voters), that to not vote is seen as the functional equivalent of voting for the other side.

            I’m not in the US so my opinion doesn’t really matter, but I do think that political discourse would be much more productive if people would stop talking past each other and dismissing the motivations/logic of the opposing side.

            • @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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              13 hours ago

              I think assuming that people are completely accepting of what the administration is doing, even when they try to voice their opinions in polls, is in bad faith.

              Polls happen because paid pollsters call people and do surveys, then compile the results and format it into something consumable for research, entertainment, or propaganda purposes. Polls are not a reflection of what people care about, they reflect what a few hundred or thousand people answered some questions on a Tuesday.

              Polls do not tell you what anyone really cares about, because anyone can say they care 4 out of 5 stars even though they won’t leave their house to do anything for anyone else over a 3 year period.

              To get people to care, you have to educate them and provide them with a pathway to build power. That is actually the opposite of what these self-appointed genocide salesmen are doing, where the lesson they teach is, “suck it up and vote for the genocider, you are stuck with what was chosen for us”.

              They use the same line every time, just with different issues of the day. It is a focus-group-tested way to convince people that otherwise have a conscience that it is okay to check that little box for that sociopath and hey, “why not tell others to do the same? And maybe even start saying they are wrong and bad for not pushing the sociopath as well. And sure, the whole party is full of such people and they only really listen to capital, but also this is your chance to have a voice.”

              They simply don’t feel they have the option to not vote.

              So you should tell them that they don’t have to vote for any genocide, just like me.

              In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election, but the two party system is so entrenched (at the minimum in the minds of voters), that to not vote is seen as the functional equivalent of voting for the other side.

              Uh-huh. Still shouldn’t vote for genocide, let alone tell other people to. It is bad to normalize genocide. Do I need to tell you this? Did you not already know?

              I’m not in the US so my opinion doesn’t really matter

              I disagree. You are free to develop and share any informed position about any country. And sharing informed opinions is helpful.

              but I do think that political discourse would be much more productive if people would stop talking past each other and dismissing the motivations/logic of the opposing side.

              That would be nice but it is not exactly a balanced equation on that front; all it takes is for one “side” to be racist and panicking for it to all go off the rails. Such as what is happening right now. Every other reply to my “don’t support genocide” schtick is someone simply making things up and guessing and avoiding what was said. This is because the people who reply are the ones who get the most defensive about their personal morality being questioned, i.e. someone did not accept their support for a genocidal candidate and how dare someone do that to them.

              Unfortunately this is literally the only way to agitate. You have to unseat and challenge with a truth that disagrees with the prevailing wisdom. The people that reply will act like absolute pieces of shit at first, but there will also be an audience where some of them go, “huh, that is a good point” and there will be others that start out defensive but then digest and read and move in a better direction.

              Finally, you cannot understand societal behaviors without looking at the realities of motivations and tendencies. We are not all independent agents with tabula rasa brains, we are a product of our societies, and yes sometimes those societies are racist and teach you to devalue the lives of, say, black people and brown people and people overseas. And if you cannot recognize that and call that out, you will have a false understanding of how to tackle injustice.