This was a trolley problem in real life, and these voters all selected the most immoral and unethical choice.
Ah yes, the trolley problem, a philosophical thought experiment which famously has a moral and an immoral choice.
The trolley problem has always been really interesting to me, not because of the problem as it is usually considered, but because of the framing of the problem.
We could stop the trolley, derail the trolley, hop on board the trolley and take control of it. All of these, and more, are within our power.
But those are not valid choices. The trolley must not be stopped, even if the trolley will end all human life.
We can only choose whether the trolley goes left, or right.
We must never ask who put the people on the track, or why we can’t protect people from the excesses of the trolley.
Yea its so incredibly pro status quo, that’s why liberals love using the trolley problem as the rules allowed within the framing only leave the lesser evil option.
That’s also why I love this picture, let’s just blow the trolley up it keeps murdering people
It’s also a thought experiment taking place during a short, discrete moment of time on the track. What if you stretch out the track by years? The path that seemed good before may have way more people tied to it in the long run.
That’s how I saw it if the Dems felt they could get away with doing a genocide forever without a political consequence. I mean, it’s hard to get much worse than that, but if the Dems feel they can do anything as long as it’s one step less out loud evil than what the fascist Republicans are doing, and the Republicans keep sprinting right as fast as possible, there’s literally nothing that will stop them from later abandoning those other groups people liked to put on the trolley as being saved if Harris got into office.
This election, liberals wanted us to vote for the trolley to genocide Palestine in order to protect other minorities in the US.
Next election, the liberals will want us to vote for the trolley to genocide gender binary non-conforming and transgender people in order to protect other minorities in the US.
The election after that… hey, wait, this reminds me of a poem I read somewhere…
Utilitarian ethics are ill suited for important things. Those people should embrace virtue ethics, except they probably think fucking Bill Clinton or Obama are paragons of virtue.
It’s not like it’s a hard problem in philosophy, it’s more a metric for how an ethical system views problems.
The problem here is that reducing US politics to one action in one event and not looking at the long term ramifications is, well, silly. People kept going “trolley problem, trolley problem, trolley problem” on lemmy, twitter and elsewhere, but the problem was actually much more complicated than this extremely simple and contextless thought experiment.
Except Biden was trying to get a ceasefire done and supported a two state solution. Harris publicly called for a ceasefire. Trump called for Netanyahu to “finish the job”
These guys have unlimited faith in empty promises when it’s coming from their guy. How many months of genocide does it take for them to realize that the Democrats are also pushing just as hard for a 1 state solution for Israel.
Publicly calling for a ceasefire while actively sending the better armed/funded side however many billion dollars a year of weapons. Wow.
But he sanctioned four settlers for a few days! He’s big mad!
Also love how all the talk of the totally real arms embargo set to trigger after the election has pretty much disappeared from all public consciousness. Like, wouldn’t now be a good time to prove that you’re the “harm reduction” party? Guess we’ll find out in one day…
The most credulous rubes.
But why would you be so worried about the fox? Look at him, he’s smiling at us!
Nice Mr Fox isn’t gonna hurt us like that mean snarling wolf
They believe it, so it’s true!
Obama promised to shut down the cia blacksite at Guantanamo Bay, libs memory holed that too. Heck Raegan promised to Make america Great Again.
Bread and circuses
Bread and circuses
Where’s the bread at?
No one in the country wanted to take the prisoners and he was just an uwu small bean President of the United States who couldn’t do anything after that.
Circuses, but instead of visitors watching a fun show full of acrobats and clowns, we are the abused animals.
I will do everything to end the war! No I won’t elaborate on how I’d do that or if I would do anything about the genocide occurring
Yeah she really tried to distance herself from what’s been happening yet people just want the sound bites
And it’s like…so is he evil and lying to you (it’s this one), or is he “only” fucking useless and incompetent? Either is disqualifying.
THEY DIDN’T! THEY JUST DIDN’T VOTE! HOW IS THIS SO HARD TO GET? HARRIS LOST 11 MILLION VOTES! GET THIS THRU YOUR DENSE SKULL THEY JUST DIDN’T VOTE
:nerd: it would be better under Harris because even though the west bank would be de facto annexed, it would still de jure not be
If only Harris could have done something to win their vote. Too bad she had to campaign on doing genocide more than Joe does it.
Population that voted for your candidate by a 30 point margin:
YOUR population that voted for your candidate by a -8 point margin:
JOE BIDEN IS STILL THE PRESIDENT, YOU GHOULS. The PFLP said “boycott Holden Bloodfeast” and every dedicated internationalist took the word of the resistance movement over the concerns of people whose analysis of the situation amounts to “everything is permissible unless you’re on the wrong team”.
The Brunch Brigade coming out in full force fantasizing about genocide as “retaliation” despite the genocide being 100% stoppable had all of them left Brunch and actually done something about it
It really is vile.
I have a brain disease where I must look at /r/politics to see how scratched the liberals have become
the answer is very very scratched
Libs telling us how they really feel. And what they feel is morally superior and genocidal hate against the poors, Muslims, Latinos, etc. Many of the comments don’t even pretend about making a distinction between Trump voters and all these groups. They all apparently deserve what’s coming to them, for being part of some group that maybe voted for Trump more than previously, but less than the (white) middle class a number of these assholes admit to being part of.
Anything else I say at this point would be fedposting.
Update: Here’s an NY Times article on the annexation of the West Bank.
It’s from 1982.
That was under Reagan! Bill Clinton tried to solve the problem!
spoiler
FINKELSTEIN: Briefly, because we don’t have time, there were four key issues at Camp David and at Taba. Number one, settlements. Number two, borders. Number three, Jerusalem. Number four, refugees. Let’s start with settlements. Under international law, there is no dispute, no controversy. Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it’s illegal for any occupying country to transfer its population to Occupied Territories. All of the settlements, all of the settlements are illegal under international law. No dispute. The World Court in July 2004 ruled that all the settlements are illegal. The Palestinians were willing to concede 50% — 50% of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was a monumental concession, going well beyond anything that was demanded of them under international law. Borders. The principle is clear. I don’t want to get into it now, because I was very glad to see that Dr. Ben-Ami quoted it three times in his book. It is inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Under international law, Israel had to withdraw from all of the West Bank and all of Gaza. As the World Court put it in July 2004, those are, quote, “occupied Palestinian territories.” Now, however you want to argue over percentages, there is no question, and I know Dr. Ben-Ami won’t dispute it, the Palestinians were willing to make concessions on the borders. What percentage? There’s differences. But there is no question they were willing to make concessions. Jerusalem. Jerusalem is an interesting case, because if you read Dr. Ben-Ami or the standard mainstream accounts in the United States, everyone talks about the huge concessions that Barak was willing to make on Jerusalem. But under international law Israel has not one atom of sovereignty over any of Jerusalem. Read the World Court decision. The World Court decision said Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. Now, the Palestinians were willing, the exact lines I’m not going to get into now — they are complicated, but I’m sure Dr. Ben-Ami will not dispute they were willing to divide Jerusalem roughly in half, the Jewish side to Israel, the Arab side to the Palestinians. And number four, refugees. On the question of refugees, it’s not a dispute under international law. Remarkably, even fairly conservative human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, in 2000, during the Camp David talks, they issued statements on the question of the right of return. And they stated categorically, under international law every Palestinian, roughly five to six million, has the right to return, not to some little parcels, 1% of Israel, which Israel is about — which Israel would swap, return to their homes or the environs of their homes in Israel. That’s the law. Now, Dr. Ben-Ami will surely agree that the Palestinians were not demanding and never demanded the full return of six million refugees. He gives a figure of 4-800,000. In fact — I’m not going to get into the numbers, because it’s very hard to pin it down — other authors have given figures of the tens of thousands to 200,000 refugees returning. That’s well short of six million. On every single issue, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. The problem is, everyone, including Dr. Ben-Ami in his book — he begins with what Israel wants and how much of its wants it’s willing to give up. But that’s not the relevant framework. The only relevant framework is under international law what you are entitled to, and when you use that framework it’s a very, very different picture.
To click or not to click
To click or not to click
To click or not to-
Hmmm…nah, I really don’t need this…ever.
Libs are totally incapable of reasoned thought. Like they where already materially annexing the West bank. Killing people there. Building and reinforcing settlements. You even had government officials saying as much. But what now they’re saying it 10% more publicly/mainstream outlets are reporting on it… So it’s more bad now. Anyway how much more harm reduction do you think Biden will send to Israel before he leaves office?
B-b-but Biden’s been calling for a ceasefire!
The only bad things are what people say, not their actions. This is worse than under Biden because now it’s being reported more publicly. Trump is worse than Biden because he openly calls for the destruction of Gaza while Biden says the word ceasefire.
Hot take: Saying good things while doing bad things is actually worse than saying bad things while doing bad things. I am more afraid of the fox than the wolf. I’d rather deal with the guy that says “shoot them all” than the guy that says “ceasefire!” but shoots them all anyway.
Not even a hot take. Classic bad guy tactic even in lib media to create a moment of hesitation by saying something like “wait wait we don’t need to fight” before stabbing or shooting the hesitating good guy.
Lucky the resistance is far smarter than the average lib and doesn’t often fall for this shit.
I honestly don’t think any more than 10% of the voters Kamala “lost” were because of Gaza. Otherwise there would be millions more votes for the third parties that ran almost exclusively on ending the genocide. The vast majority of these voters abstained from the presidential election and voted down ballot either because they did not like Harris or Trump, or more likely they didn’t know anything about either of them and did not feel confident casting a ballot for them.
As much of a farce as 2020 was, the political divide was quite clear. Trump represented COVID and racist cops murdering people. Biden seemed to represent something else. The mass mobilisations and the initial response to the pandemic taught people that and many more of them voted accordingly. The Democrats didn’t even try to reach the masses this time around though and so the masses were left confused and aimless and did not vote.
Otherwise there would be millions more votes for the third parties that ran almost exclusively on ending the genocide.
this does not follow
Yeah, not voting is also an option
in some places you can vote by mail pretty easily, but with all the barriers around voting in general, it’s not a good assumption that people (in the millions) will necessarily give up valuable labor time to wait in line to vote for a third party candidate they know cannot win, purely for symbolism…
That’s what’s going to happen. Fewer and fewer people will find any kind of justification to vote in future elections as time progresses.
But to libs not voting is voting for trump, so it doesn’t matter anyway.
At most Kamala only “lost” 2.1 million voters to other candidates this election (realistically it’s probably around a million). If that’s the case then 5.9 million voters voted for Biden in 2020 and nobody in 2024 but still casted a ballot. Now maybe that’s because of Gaza but from my experiences with the American electorate I highly doubt that the majority of those people are refusing to vote for Harris because of Gaza, refusing to vote third party, and yet still voting. I think if Americans had coherent anti-genocide politics then the anti-genocide candidates would have seen more growth than 5% of Harris’ losses. I don’t believe Americans have coherent politics though so I doubt most of those voters were taking a principled anti-genocide stance when they didn’t vote for anybody.
This isn’t to say that abstentions or votes for other candidates because of the genocide could not have played a significant role in the fucked up math of the American electoral system, merely that it didn’t drive her huge loss in the popular vote from Biden’s victory in 2020.
Not surprising at all if you remember what happened when the Russia-Ukraine war started.
They had the permission to let the mask slip for a bit then, now they are allowed to fully take off the mask.
Just want to thank hexbear for being the one website that isn’t super racist right now
Feel like I can’t go anywhere on the internet right now. Thank God for this place.
Are these people even aware that Biden is still the fucking president right now??? Jesus christ more than racist they are just fucking stupid.
