this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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The responsible thing to do is to mitigate the damage.
Genocide is inevitable regardless of which candidate wins. I’m not happy about that, but that’s the situation we’re in. The less awful thing to do is pick the candidate who will protect women and immigrants. I am not willing to sacrifice their well being in order to make a political statement.
Genocide is never inevitable. It says a lot about the US's supposed "democracy" that you think it is.
Cherry-picking statements to make a point is a bad habit to get into. Try to avoid it in the future.
Genocide is not inevitable if we respect one another, and politicians become more empathetic. Unfortunately, genocide is inevitable in the current US election, because both major candidates support Netanyahu.
This is liberal idealist nonsense. Genocide isn’t happening because we’re insufficiently respectful of one another or because our politicians are insufficiently empathetic.
That does tend to be a “flaw” of mine. I expect better of people. I think that “matter” bit is garbage, but that’s not the point.
Are you saying that disrespect and a lack of empathy don’t play a significant role in genocide? That doesn’t seem right, either, though.
Most liberals are idealists*, so they usually do.
Base and superstructure
You can look at it that way, but it’s not very helpful. It’s a bit like blaming a ball for rolling on account of it being round. It’s rolling because the surface isn’t level. You’re not going to un-round a ball, but strap it in place, level the surface, place a wedge, etc. And plenty of people in the world are no less disrespectful and unempathetic who aren’t genociding. And the people genociding are disrespectful & unempathetic to specific people under specific conditions for specific reasons. Those are symptoms, not causes.
*You do find the occasional materialist liberal. Realists sometimes are, for instance.
The tiny minority of sociopaths that sit at the top of the pyramid of US corporations and its state are the self-selected few who got to where they are because they lack empathy. They're the ones who can't be convinced out of it.
Take any large group of ppl and there will be a few assholes among them. What's unique about the capitalist mode of production, is that it makes sure those people run the entire society, and control the nuke codes.