You need to look at game theory.

The only two candidates that matter if Harris and Trump, and you’ll realize that the only candidate that makes sense to vote for is Harris

I’m as much a willing participant in the genocide as anyone else who intends to vote, unfortunately in the USA right now we are the way we are.

I can vote for the party that has people willing to address the elephant in the room, literally anything else is being a more willing participant.

Anyways, get fucked.

How would you leverage your vote in this instance?

I’m going to ensure people know they are other options

I haven’t heard of any viable option, so you’ve failed. The only way to accomplish what you want to accomplish, what we all want to accomplish, is to elect enough local politicians that support massive electoral overhaul to disrupt the two party system. FPtP and winner-take-all must go, but we’re never gonna get there by throwing our votes away to unviable third parties. In the meantime, we do the best with what we have and we let logic rule our decisions, not emotion. Try it!

Do not normalize or support genociders.

Re: reducing harm, genocide is as harmful as it gets and the candidate you are telkjng people to support is an active part of the ongoing genocide. The idea that you would be reducing harm by advocating for that is absurd.

You should, of course, engage in meaningful resistance, but those who rationalize voting for genociders are not the people who do that. This is a barrier to action, it is complacency.

You do it by overwhelmingly knocking out the GOP so that there’s room within the blue wave for more progressive candidates.

That’s not how it works. Dems treat their “left” flank as a group to be disciplined, not accommodated. And giving them the greenlight on genocide confirms a move right, not making space for the left.

Dems got their “wave” under Biden. They have moved right and their “progressives” have been cowed.

But genocide should be something you consider a red line regardless of the illogic sold to you by the party.

If, somehow, the Democrats swept with some insane margins, the GOP in its current form would need to evolve or die.

The same applies to Democrats who are committing a genocide, don’t you think?

When a race is this close, the Democrats will always move to the center.

The Democrats move to the center because they are gambling that their “concerned” voters will fall in line and because they absolutely do not want to do the things those “concerned” voters want.

They look at you as someone to be handled by PR, not met with any concessions. And you enable that, including genocide, by voting blue no matter who.

Yes, let’s let a fascist who wants to kill the Palestinians even faster into power.

Israel already has unconditional material support from the Biden-Harris administration on which the genocide is entirely dependent.

However, you can help prevent the normalization of genocide by saying it is your red line that you will not cross.

It will be super effective to protest against him when he is using military force to suppress us.

The Biden-Harris regime recently issued an EO, prompting a corresponding memo from the Pentagon, to authorize domestic military use, including lethal force against citizens in the US. Harris’ running mate mobilized the national guard against George Floyd protesters. Harris is a prosecutor known for harsh and unfair treatment of the accused.

They are not oppositional forces in this matter.

It’s not like he hasn’t already used BOTAC to kill leftists during the George Floyd uprisings.

The people that killed leftists were cops and right wing stochastic terrorists. The cops are funded and defended and overseen and protected by Dems at all levels of government. And it is a rabbit hole, but the fates of Ferguson organizers are something to follow as well.

Surely all the guardrails will allow us to stop the genocide with him in power!

There are no guardrails. The question is whether you will take the first step in opposition of genocide by refusing to support it. There is much more work to be done.

"After Trump, Our Turn” comrades! Don’t vote!

Please center Palestine in your thoughts.

Refusing to normalize genocide is an important first step for working against it. The reason Dems can do genocide and not fear a loss is that so many people fall in line over threats that “the other guy” will win.

I understand your stated idealist position, “I won’t vote for someone engaged in genocide”.

I don’t think it’s particularly idealist, though it is formulated to appeal to those with empathy. If they won’t listen to “genocide is a red line”, what do you think they will listen to? A long-winded explanation of political organizing, realignments, game theory, economics? Just saying “don’t support genocide” elicits a flurry of bad-faith insults and absurd lies.

… but the reality is that Trump win, which is likely without every possible Dem vote, will cause the worst possible genocide.

There is no bigger gun to threaten people with. There is already genocide with maximalist support from the United States and a deftly subjugated Europe. It even gets support from alleged “good guys” that vote for Democrats. No resistance except from those with personal connections, a stronger connection to empathy, or the politically educated.

So by withholding your vote you’re not complicit in Harris-supported genocide, but you’re complicit in Trump supported genocide, which everyone understands to be worse.

That’s funny, I don’t think I told anyone to vote for Trump, either. Instead, I do work against genocide, organizing actions, politically educating those who don’t just sit on their computers and justify supporting genocide to one another.

As I often say in these threads, withholding your vote is precisely what the republicans want you to do.

Of course it is, because the GOP and Democrats are competing for votes for an election. Do you believe this to be revelatory?

Seriously, will your ideals be much comfort when Trump supported Netanyahu is grinding Gaza to dost?

That is already happening under the Biden-Harris administration that forwarded this genocide for over the last year. Have you not seen the destruction, mass murder, burning of children alive? Do you not know where those weapons come from, how they are donated, what logistical support they receive, how the US attacks all opposition to the genocide?

Genocide is the worst thing and should be a red line. Please do your best to not help erase that red line.

Anyone that is not a genocider. Even not voting is better. If you would like to communicate that genocide is unacceptable, then the camdidates with anti-genkxise messages are de la Cruz and Stein.

It is possible, but it doesn’t happen particularly often. The kind of thinking on display in this thread is defense of a barrier to doing these kinds of actions, from recognizing one’s own lack of political education, from developing a concrete notion of leverage or collective action.

When people do hold themselves to those standards but still hold out hope for Dems, they learn some uncomfortable lessons. The first one is that Democrats make you their opponent and gladly lie about you and will even throw their money and influence behind Republicans instead. Something else that people learn (at least when they are honest with themselves) is that they often don’t really have a concrete idea of how to make demands or build leverage, and so they will engage in actions and spin their wheels. The ones that are not honest with themselves will still claim a victory. The ones that are honest with themselves will engage in productive criticism and development of their political program.

But this is so many steps past what the people here are doing, relying on tired canards shared as memes. I would rather they at least get to the “try and fail” step of becoming politically educated and a force for humanity, but we are stuck at the “defend everything Dems tell us to do” phase.

Great intro to philosophy lesson.

I did not describe anything particularly philosophical.

In the real world, we have the choice between Harris and Trump

Oh, so you just mean you are trying to be condescending and pretend I am not being reakistic. Unfortunately for this excuse for why you will vote for someone doing a genocide, I am pragmatic. I criticize your ideas of “strategy”, which are just bog standard lesser evil vote shaming trotted out to discipline Democrats’ empathetic voters every 4 years and suggest you take the first steps towards empowerment by doing the same. My hope would be that them asking you to support genocide would be enough to take that srep., that you could accept that there is not a greater evil than genocide, and that as a good person, you would be an opponent of genocide rather than complicit.

If you want to talk more specifically on being pragmatic when it cones to political power,I would be happy to do so. It is mostly about building leverage, which is basically the exact opposite of your rhetoric.

You can forget anyone else exists because our election system is broken.

The system is working as intended.

But in your terminology, would you say it is more broken or less broken than when the Whigs dissolved and an abolitionist party took its place over the issue of slavery? In this scenario, you would be someone saying that you must always vote for the pro-slavers.

If I don’t vote, one of them will still win.

Yes, that is true. But are you going to orient yourself in opposition to genociders or are you going to decide on which one to support? I think it should be a red line.

Never again means never again for anyone. What do you think that phrase means?

Now, without philosophizing, what do we do to stop the violence?

“The violence” is far too vague for me to give you any real answer. If you mean US support for genocide, then you will need to join groups opposed to the genocide, participate in political education, and build those organizations so that they can make demands and enact material change, such as blockading weapons manufacturers. Or, if you can only understand politics through elections, you can spend your time organizing a principled anti-genocide voting bloc, ideally tied to some material interest. You have no leverage as a voter unless you can credibly threaten to withhold your vote. And your leverage is dramatically decreased when you act as an individual rather than an organized bloc.

Is that practical enough for you?