As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.

I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.

Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.

Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.

Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Remember that in online spaces (and IRL in reality), there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts that will make claims to sway public opinions.

    • coolusername@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      yeah, mostly CIA and Israeli bots/paid posters. all of reddit is astroturfed. All social media is controlled by the feds as well. Look into the twitter leaks to see how they do it. Mintpressnews also has great articles about feds in censorship positions in all these social media companies ranging from Facebook to TikTok (100% CIA controlled btw).

      • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Is there any evidence of these CIA/Israeli bots / paid posters?

        If somebody makes a pro-Israel post, maybe they just genuinely support Israel (I wouldn’t say that’s my view currently - I think both Israel and Hamas are wrong because both have killed civilians).

        Edit: your downvotes aren’t evidence.

        • Count042@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Who has killed more civilians?

          By multiple orders of magnitude?

          This is like “Man, I don’t like the sun and light bulbs, they’re both so bright.”

          • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ideally I don’t think any civilian deaths should happen, so they’re both wrong. I’m not going to say Hamas is somehow better because they killed fewer people. To me that seems like saying “oh you didn’t kill too many people, that’s fine then”. Which would be completely wrong in my view.

            • Count042@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              They also don’t have systemized rape and torture camps paid for with your taxes.

              By any quantitative value system, Hamas commits less evil than the state of Israel

              Comparing them is as useful as comparing the relative brightness between the sun and a lightbulb. The two sides are not comparable. One is committing genocide. Trying to gloss over that fact is propaganda trying to cover up the fact that we’re paying for the weapons doing the killing.

              • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Yeah I’m not into the whole “let’s excuse Hamas” thing. In my view killing civilians is bad, which is why I think both Hamas and the Israeli government are bad. Neither should kill civilians at all - not 1, not 100, not 1,000, etc.

                • Count042@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Good job responding to something I didn’t say to try and discredit what I did.

                  Don’t think that goes unnoticed.

                  I’m not excusing Hamas. The fact that you read what I did says that you are either responding in bad faith, didn’t read my response very carefully, or are stupid. I’ll go with the middle one to be generous.

                  I don’t excuse Hamas. I don’t control Hamas, and much more importantly, I don’t pay for the weapons that Hamas use.

                  I pay, or rather my country pays, for the weapons that Israel uses to bomb apartment building, schools, and hospitals.

                  Hamas has killed somewhere between 1000-2000 civilians in this conflict, and that is being generous because we know that a large number of causalities were from Israel enacting the Hannibal directive and intentionally killing their own to keep them from being made prisoners (If Israel gets to grab 11,400 West Bank civilians without trial or due process and call them prisoners, then Hamas gets to do the same). Furthermore, if we count anyone who was in the IDF or the IDF’s military reserves as active military, then the number of civilians goes WAAAAY down. Remember that the IDF considers the trashmen, police, and hospital administrators as active combatants with Hamas affiliation. So, once again, if that is the standard that Israel is setting then it applies to all parties, including Israelis.

                  Israel, by all best estimates, has killed somewhere between 100,000-200,000 civilians. That is between 5% - 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF GAZA. In all honesty, the number is probably higher.

                  That is completely ignoring the systemized rape and torture camps that Israel has set up, and the Israeli media discovered. Also, something that there is no evidence that Hamas has set up.

                  Acting like those two numbers are equivalent, or pointing out that Israel is quantitatively a minimum of 2 orders of magnitude worse, or that the two sides are the same is either stupidity, or evil. Take your pick.

                  None of this is justifying Hamas. It is pointing out how much more fantastically, cartoonishly fucking evil the Israeli government is.

                  You should ask yourself why you view the above as justifying Hamas. You might discover something.

  • rocci@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    In my situation, I’m in a solid blue state so I’m voting for a third party to push the country to the left.

        • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yes and your vote does absolutely nothing in “pushing” the country left. Who taught you that? Please do better research as the future of your country depends on it.

          • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Sometimes being principled in your vote is a good first step towards doing something politically meaningful. Many liberals are chained to the idea that their vote is their political being. And then they go vote for genociders!

            That first step of pulling at their chains can lead to further political education.

            • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I would say you have to be the stupidest person on earth to vote 3rd party but I know that Magidiots exist.

              You do nothing but enable genocide by voting 3rd party. A Democrat loss in November GUARANTEES the genocide continues. The Republican Party is the party of Israel and they would bend over backwards to give them whatever is necessary to bring back Jesus Christ

              • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                I would say you have to be the stupidest person on earth to vote 3rd party but I know that Magidiots exist.

                Yep just big dum-dums that won’t support your genocider candidate. If only they were smart like you and supported 98% Hitler!

                You do nothing but enable genocide by voting 3rd party. A Democrat loss in November GUARANTEES the genocide continues.

                You know Dems are doing the genocide, right? And at the point where they have the most to fear from supporting it, they aren’t even pandering.

                You’re the baddies, bud.

                The Republican Party is the party of Israel and they would bend over backwards to give them whatever is necessary to bring back Jesus Christ

                The Democratic Party is also the party of Israel.

                It’s impressive that you’re calling people names while writing polemic that obviously applies to “your team”.

                • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I am not a Democrat. At this point I’m closer to Independent because both parties have gone off the rails over that last decade. However I understand the importance of this election and I understand how our system works. Voting 3rd party does nothing but pull votes from Democrats. It happens EVERY election. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but voting third party doesn’t give you the moral high ground. It just makes you an idiot because not only will your candidate not be elected but more often than not you enable Republicans to win elections based on how our voting system works.

  • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    She’s campaigning on building the wall. she’s endorsed by dick cheney and 200+ reagan and Bush admin staffers. we have sent more aid to Israel in the past year than we ever have since Israel was invented. she has stated that her support of Israel is iron-clad. the current admin has broken records for the amount of oil and gas extracted extracted in the past 4 years. she has refused to voice support for the trans people who are supposedly going to be protected by her admin. she has kicked Palestinian people out of her campaign events, while instead parading around Richie Torres, a person who famously has stated multiple times that Palestinians deserve their eradication. her policy page has removed all mentions of medicare for all and paths to citizenship. she has promised to make america’s military the most lethal fighting force in the world.

    she has decided that the “moderate conservative” who will never vote for her is more important than all the progressives and leftists who probably would’ve. just like Hillary Clinton and Dale Earnhardt, she’s going to crash into a wall because she can’t turn left.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Democracy : Very bad choice versus very very bad choice

      Democracy : a vote for the system versus a vote for the system

      Democracy : a thin facade hiding a genicidal monstrous death machine that claims to speak for us all

      Hint : is it really democracy after Edward Bernays ?

      Time to overwrite the government and take out the trash

      made it into a song draft (et en québécois)

  • OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one
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    1 year ago

    I voted for Harris, but I feel like it’s pretty obvious why someone would vote third party instead.

    One need only reject the premise that voting should be a strategic act of harm reduction. Mind you, I’m not saying “is” here. I’m saying “should be”.

    We may not take their approach, but you have to admit that there’s value to it. They are embracing the world as it ought to be, whereas we are trying to work with the reality of the situation as we perceive it.

    And we could be perceiving incorrectly. For all we know, Trump could loose-cannon his way into making Netanyahu’s whole party lose their next election. It may not be likely, but nothing in this world is certain.

    For all we know, the Heritage Foundation could destroy so much of the government and economy so rapidly that it weakens all of the property rights and FBI operations aimed against self-sufficient mutual aid, and communes start springing up all over the place. It’s not likely without massive turmoil, starvation, and bloodshed. But however unlikely, we cannot predict the future!

    Cyncism is costly in terms of mental health and well-being. In order to choose pragmatism over principles, we must accept a reality where no good choices exist. But that’s not something we can do everywhere. We can’t repeatedly choose the “least miserable option” and still be able to hold ourselves together and function. It’s just not possible.

    Humans need hope to survive. They need a hill they can hang onto. They need to be able to say, “on this ground, I fight for what should be rather than what is.”

    Some people’s hill is their ballot.