Heās had yet another horrible week. The old tricks arenāt working. Kamala Harris does not fear him. And itās showing in the numbers.
Heās had yet another horrible week. The old tricks arenāt working. Kamala Harris does not fear him. And itās showing in the numbers.
I am fine with hurting Democratic chances as a side effect as part of a campaign which will produce better behavior from the Democrats. Sorry, I should have made that clear. I think thereās been a slight (pitifully slight) shift in the Democratic line on Gaza this year, and I think a lot of that is because of how much pro-Palestinian activism was creating real credible threats to them electorally. To me that is fine, thatās a good thing.
It would be great if our system supported a third option, but it doesnāt š¢. Not in this election. I think advocating for reform of the system in the future, and pushing for more humanity from the Democrats, is the best we can do for now.
Anything which actually goes as far as leading to Trump getting elected for real will be an unmitigated catastrophe for the Palestinians (even relative to their existing level of catastrophe which is already hell on earth). I think they might literally all be dead or pushed into Egypt by the end of a Trump term. (They might be at the end of a Harris term, too, but itās at least less likely).
No. I donāt know how many times I need to keep explaining that this is not what I am saying, or why you keep not listening to me when I do. Do it one more time and I will report you for strawmanning and see if the mods feel that that represents approaching the conversation in bad faith, and either way just end my side of the conversation.
It is highly relevant whether the thing being protested is actually happening.
So e.g. when the uncommitted voters punish the Democrats for their support of Israel, Iām in favor of that. When ozma makes something up about the Democrats that isnāt accurate, which only hurts their chances but doesnāt do anything productive for anyone except Trump, Iām against that.
Why do I keep having to explain this? This is such a weird conversation.
100% agree
I feel like just typing again the same thing I have been typing will not be productive here
Let me try just pure pattern recognition
Is that what I am saying?
Pick one
No, I do not. I can take another stab at explaining it, but first let me ask something: Would you agree that Trump would be an even worse catastrophe for Palestinians (as well as many many other vulnerable people) than a second term of the existing Democratic status quo?
This is it, I think. If it were just about misinformation, weād be having a different conversation. I donāt think anyone here would defend sharing outright false information. But that isnāt the only complaint youāve had about Ozma; youāve complained that they only post bad things about democrats, not just that some of them are incorrect (not even incorrect in entirety, sometimes simply incorrect it its framing, or maybe even factually accurate but simply uncharitable in its framing). I disagree with suggesting that behavior is āover the lineā, outside of any alleged misinformation. Similarly, if there are pro-Palestinian protestors at the DNC today, I wouldnāt classify those people as āāuseful idiotsāā (I cannot put enough scare-quotes around this). The democrats have not moved hardly at all on their Israel policy, why wouldnāt they be legitimate protestors? I am indignant that I have to keep defending loosely-targeted attacks against protestors coming from you, when you are still being vague about what makes a protest or online protest behavior something that you consider to be āactually leading to Trump getting electedā. How the fuck do you measure that? What proof to you have that Ozma or Linkerbann or anyone else is āactually leading to Trump getting electedā, or that their building popular discontent around democrats on this issue isnāt āhelping lead to better behavior from democratsā? Fuck you for accusing me of misrepresenting your argument, when your argument seems completely dependent on some imagined future that only you could possibly see. Honestly, āactually leading to xā is effectively meaningless. Who the fuck knows if something āactually leadsā to something? And it also still incorrectly places the responsibility of the protestor, who is protesting against a policy they would like to see changed, instead of the person in power, who is consistently refusing to take meaningful action toward better policy.
I reject your question.
FFS, how about you apply your logic on your own example, then? If there are massive palestinian protests in the DNC this week that constantly interrupt the proceedings, is that an example of a good or bad protest? Is there additional information that you need to make that determination?
Or maybe online: if thereās a user who exclusively posts (factually accurate) information about the Democratās culpability in the ongoing Palestinian genocide, is that a good or bad protest behavior? What makes it so? How do you know if that behavior āactually leads to x or y outcomeā without traveling to the future to see what impact it had?
Iāll answer your question with another question: would you agree that supporting any amount of genocide is beyond indefensible? Hint: the answer should be fairly obvious and the question should feel incredibly condescending.
If I wanted to be petty Iād apply your own logic on your own behavior in defending democrats on their inaction. Does mozzās behavior lead to better or worse policy from democrats? Does making excuses for their lack or response improve their policy on Gaza? No? Well fuck, looks like heās just another useful idiot, then. š¤·āāļø Absent any concrete qualifiers i guess anyone or everyone could be a bad-actor
This is totally weird to me. Why would you possibly advocate for any particular course of action, except in terms of what itās likely to accomplish?
What else would lead you to what youāre deciding to do? Vibes? Allegiance to the group? Iām just lost. I mean of course itās impossible to know for sure what the outcome will be, but you can at least make an educated guess.
Why else would you do a protest, unless you were aiming to impact the future? That is a serious question.
Hm. So, I just looked over a bunch of Ozmaās recent history and it honestly looks fine. Maybe itās a little dishonest to characterize one of the main architects of the IRA and the Paris Agreement as āformer alum of Blackrockā as if thatās the most relevant thing about him. But I mean basically itās fine and thatās the only story I have much of any complaint about.
I think most of my complaint about ozma is historical at this point. Back in the day he would do stuff like say Biden betrayed his voters on marijuana policy because he said he would do X Y and Z and then he didnāt. When I pointed out he had done X and Y and tried to do Z but failed, ozma would ignore it and post more memes about how Biden betrayed his voters on marijuana. That to me seems like it implies you donāt give a shit about X Y or Z, or pushing Biden to better marijuana policy, but you do want to try to get Trump elected. Thatās weird and counterproductive. To me.
No idea. Iām not even plugged in enough to that culture to know. Probably itāll be a good thing; anything thatās directly putting pressure on the Democrats and bringing public awareness to the issue will probably be a good thing, because those are two excellent things.
Like I said, I donāt know if there are any people who are doing protests at the DNC who think the answer is to unconditionally blow up support for the Democrats, imply that they caused inflation and they love what Netanyahuās doing and are cheering him on, and so vote instead for Cornel West. I know they exist on Lemmy, and if theyāre in Chicago too, then I would classify those people as useful idiots.
Does that help answer the question?
Dude, I am not asking that as any kind of āgotchaā question or anything. I want to know where you are coming from.
If itās a choice between blowing up the earth and destroying India or something, and those are the only two possible options, then I would choose destroying India. Thatās sort of the type of choice you have to make in modern American politics. If there was a way to lean on the lever to make the blow-up-India explosion smaller, I would definitely support doing that.
If someone was saying, blowing up India is SO BAD that it is indefensible, and so I want to aim a whole bunch of criticism at the blowing up India option (and in a way that seems only in the vaguest of senses to connect with leaning on the lever to make the explosion smaller and in practice seems more likely just to make more likely the blowing-up-earth option), that would alarm the fuck out of me and I would disagree with that person.
I mean doesnāt that make sense? If the alternative is no genocide, then supporting genocide is indefensible. If the alternative is a bigger genocide, then supporting genocide can be an āacceptableā (if you want to call it that) lesser evil. Putting pressure on to reduce the magnitude of the lesser genocide, while also advocating for it to be the lesser and not the greater genocide, sounds perfectly defensible. It sounds right to me.
I doubt anyone from the DNC is on Lemmy. I think the impact of anything I am saying, if any, will be on the voters.
Thatās what makes it not make sense to me why shitting on Democrats on Lemmy is supposed to help any Palestinians. It seems more likely to get Trump elected, which will hurt them.
Lmao no itās not, youāve been articulating the other reason repeatedly, havenāt you? According to you, a great many people protest simply to get Trump elected, right?
Thereās good news here: there actually is a condition to running interference to democratic support, and itās very well communicated.
The funny thing is that people want to treat the opposition as a monolith, but itās a coalition of various interests just like any other group. If thereās a group within the group that is hard-lining a Palestinian liberation movement, the good news is that group likely isnāt big enough that youād need their support. But thereās likely some compromise policy that gets the support you need from that larger group without conceding the least practical conditions.
But when you treat them as a monolith, itās easy to complain that nothing you do can appease that group of crazies so they must not be acting in good-faith!
Lol this would be more funny if it werenāt so depressing. You donāt even see the self-contradiction. It reminds me a little of that conservative minority trope: āour opposition is both laughably weak and existentially dangerousā
Let me try a different tactic: Iāll just ask it as a question. Am I supportive of people protesting at the DNC, trying to get the Democrats to improve their policy on Israel by vocally demanding change, and withholding support unless they do?
Iāve given you the answer as to what my feeling on this is, several times.
Based on your varied responses: sometimes.
It seems to depend a great deal on what you think the likely outcome of that protest is, and if your imagined calculus puts the protest on the wrong side of some imaginary line, suddenly those protestors are āuseful idiotsā at best or ābad-actorsā at worst.
Yes. You have grasped it.
If someoneās protesting with the most likely result being better outcomes for the Palestinian people (because of useful pressure on the Democratic party, or even better some longer-term reform to our broken system that leaves these as the only two options), then Iām in favor of it.
If someoneās protesting in such a way that the most likely result is Trump winning the election and making things 10 times worse for the Palestinians, then Iām against it.
I have no idea why that would be weird or surprising, but yes. Thereās a little bit of overlap between those two goals, and itās impossible to know the future or the impact of any particular action definitively, but a lot of real-world situations are messy. Themās the breaks.
I describe as āuseful idiotsā people who are falling for deliberate propaganda which is being deployed to turn them unconditionally against the Democrats, alongside a lot of objectively false criticism, producing only a vague level of improvement to the Democratsā behavior but a strong result of making it more likely that Trump will win, yes. If youāre not doing that them Iām fine with you. And I have no idea, as I said, how many (if any) of the DNC protestors will fall into that category in practice. I just know how I categorize people based on the outcomes theyāre promoting, and I know I see people in that āuseful idiotā category on Lemmy. I donāt think youāre one of them, for the record; thatās why I laid out some of the specific accounts Iād describe as more specifically promoting propaganda as opposed to good activism and tried to be specific about it.
Hope this all is helpful; glad we could clear it up.
Jesus christ. Do you consider US culpability in the Palestinian Genocide a part of this ādeliberate propagandaā? At what point does someone protesting against democratic involvement and complacency in Israeli war crimes become someone who is protesting against democrats generally? Is there any grey area that youāre willing to acknowledge between these two categorical binaries youāve proposed? Can there be a legitimate protest against the democrats, that hurts their odds at winning, but doesnāt directly result in a change of policy? If the democrats and the protestors both refuse to bend to the other, is it categorically the protestorsā fault if and when trump wins? Even if it isnāt apparent that theyāve lost explicitly because of those protestors? Is it also the fault of the protestors if the democrats adopt a pro-palestinian policy in response to the protestors, AND THEN lose? What iām gathering from you is that it is ALWAYS the protestors fault for the loss, no matter what the democrats do in response.
Fuck off with your electoral reductionism. The democrats are not helpless here, and they could absolutely be fighting to save palestinian lives and it is 100% their own fault if voters decide they canāt support them over it. They are welcome to weigh the electoral calculus to predict how voters might react to their policies but it is completely their own fault if theyāve chosen the wrong ones.
No
When they stop either conditioning their lack of support on Democratic behavior, or advocating for voting reform or some other strategy which can lead to effective replacement of the Democrats with something better. Either one of those sounds fine and sensible to me, but when they reach the point of saying, functionally, āwell if the Democrats arenāt doing what I want then I will let the Republicans win even if they are 10 times worse at the things I hold as priorities in the world,ā that to me stops making sense.
I think if youāre a Palestinian who is still alive right now, and a protestor āon your behalfā enables Trump to come to power, and then Trump supports someone who kills you, the idea that the protestor was mad that the Democrats werenāt doing enough for you before Trump and Netanyahu cooperated to kill you would be cold comfort. I think this whole āharm reduction isnāt worth doingā idea is a childish and entitled reaction from someone who is safely far away from that harm that is very real to very real people in the real world, who have the luxury of poo pooing the entire idea of predicting outcomes in the real world and strategizing how to get them.
Yes, quite a substantial one.
Yes. If itās only hurting their odds of winning, and not even trying to change their policy, then itās suspect to me, but as you said thereās quite a substantial grey area and itās not easy to tell ahead of time what protest might result in what outcome. You have to just kind of do what you can and hope that youāve worked it out what is going to help the Palestinians and what is going to hurt them, and do the first and not the second as best as you can figure it out.
Not categorically, no. The Democrats have a lot of responsibility, the Republicans and Netanyahu obviously have quite a bit more. The protestors might have some responsibility, but depending on how they were protesting, potentially not much at all.
Honestly, Iām less concerned with assigning āblameā after the fact than I am with strategizing what I could do, or what someone else could do, to get better outcomes. Like I say, I consider this whole thing of it being real important āwhose fault it isā when something horrifying happens to be an entitled mentality from someone whoās not directly in danger. Mostly when peopleās familiesā lives are threatened theyāre more focused on āhow can I keep them safeā than they are on āwhose fault will it be if someone comes to power who kills them, and how can I make sure it wonāt be this personās fault but instead this other personās fault.ā
So this brings up a really good point. To me, it makes a lot more sense to help the Palestinians by educating the American people about whatās going on in Palestine, so the Democrats wonāt have to decide (to any degree) between enabling war crimes and losing the election.
A lot of protests right now are serving a double purpose ā one, theyāre bringing awareness to the issue with the American people (and itās working), and two, theyāre threatening the Democrats electorally and forcing them to change their calculus of what types of Israel policy they should do if they donāt want to lose the election from the other direction (and thatās working, too). Both of those are good things. I keep saying that, and you keep insisting for some reason that I must have a problem with them. I guess because it makes the point that youāre trying to say easier if I am just against all protestors. As I keep saying, I am not.
I donāt care whose āfaultā it is. I am talking about what actions are good (in terms of creating better outcomes in the future), and what actions are bad (in terms of getting people killed). Like I said, this emphasis on āfaultā having any significant importance is the mindset of someone who isnāt watching their family getting killed.