this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Sure. So it's not really my place to have this whole conversation, but I already did get involved, and I'm happy to give my input.
The point is that whatever's going on with Biden, Trump is objectively worse on every single metric, including but not limited to the safety of Arabs, Palestinians, and potential victims of the American military in general, at home and abroad.
Someone who cares about dead Palestinians could absolutely try to pressure Biden to stop sending weapons to the IDF, remove Netanyahu to the ICC, or whatever they want to do. Or they could point out that Biden is a monster for continuing the US's war criminal support for Israel, and not immediately denouncing Israel the instant they started blocking food aid or bombing hospitals. Sure. All that makes sense. If any of that is what you're doing, and it sounds like I'm trying to disagree with it, I am not. I actually originally came in this thread complaining about the OP cartoon, because I think most of the Palestine protestors are absolutely consistent and justified and the cartoon is grossly unfair as applied to them.
The very specific and very politically motivated construction from there to "that's why I can't support Biden, against Trump" or "that's why I'm not voting" or anything like that, is endangering Palestinians in Palestine, Palestinians in America, Hispanics in their home countries and in the US, Americans in the US, and many many other people, to an absolutely horrifying level.
This person is, if I am understanding them correctly, objecting very specifically to the second one. They're asking that people stop using the suffering of them and their family and friends to try to promote a particular political agenda which actually endangers them, increasing the chance of a genocide much much worse than what's happening right now in Gaza, while pretending that it's a Palestinian-friendly course of action and they're doing it because they care about Palestinians. They're pointing out that it's a ghoulish and dangerous thing to point to their own dead relatives and then try to use them to excuse a politics which threatens to make a lot more corpses, while pretending that it's on their behalf.
Is that a good explanation for how?
That's fair, but I think there's room for disagreement on how to pressure biden and if biden is actually even better for Palestinians at all. After all, biden has been the top supporter of israel for his entire career and is the top recipient of money from pro-israel donors by a huge margin:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S
So far biden has given israel everything they've wanted or needed. There is the case where he withheld weapons (but not "defensive" weapons) because of Rafah, but by that point israel already has more than enough to level the entire area and biden is already back to moving things forward for future weapon shipments. Clearly biden doesn't feel pressured enough to truly change his ways and I don't know how guaranteeing your vote will add pressure. I'm not saying to vote for trump, I myself will be voting for biden, but I feel like we shouldn't telegraph guaranteed votes to biden and the democrats no matter what they do. That's just a recipe for them taking you for granted and letting them get away with whatever they want.
You have GOT to be joking.
This part, I actually agree with. Ralph Nader did a great interview where he was expressing this huge level of frustration with Democratic voters and said more or less, I get the reality, but there is a way to wield your vote in order to get things that you want. You get together a coalition, and you credibly communicate to the person in the election that they can only get all of your votes if they do X, Y, and Z. That puts pressure on them and it can absolutely change policy.
To him, he was saying that he thinks it's criminally silly to just say "well Biden's better than Trump so he can count on my vote." Like I say, objecting to that makes sense to me. By the same token I think it's silly to say "well Biden's not good enough so he can count on not getting my vote even if Trump is 10 times worse". Both of those courses of action are passing up an opportunity to actually influence policy. But stuff like the uncommitted votes in Michigan I thought were a great idea.
I mean that coalition building takes work, and it maybe won't succeed, it's this huge operation where throwing around comments on Lemmy is pretty easy. But it will actually help, if you do it.