Trump said to lift all military restrictions on Israel on 1st day in office according to reports

I loved having people arguing with me and saying "At least my conscience is clear."

How's your conscience now??? Still feeling good about your decision?

They think they get to wipe their hands of it because they "didn't participate", refusing to concede that said choice still counts as their participation. Through ignorance, cruelty, and/or privilege, they'll blame everyone else for the state of the world while refusing to do their part.
- Howard Zinn - you can't be neutral on a moving train. The Enlightened Centrists (TM) always look like suuuuuch dipshits when they talk about "both sides".
  
  Howard Zinn would not support the genocide of Palestinians nor voting for genociders, nor is withholding a vote neutrality. Zinn was forcefully against the War on Vietnam before it was acceptable in liberal academic circkes and drew a hard line on it.
  Have you read his books?
  
  I have indeed read his books. I doubt he would have welcomed the idea of putting donvict in office because something something "Genocide Joe".
- "bUt i VoTeD iNdEpEnDaNt"
I loved having people arguing with me and saying “At least my conscience is clear.”
How’s your conscience now??? Still feeling good about your decision?
There is a certain set of dumbasses that will say this kind of thing no matter what.
Feeling very good about my decision, yes.
Dirtier than Trump supporters
How’s your conscience now??? Still feeling good about your decision?
Yes.
Trump is an irredeemably evil genocidal psychopath who deserves eternal torture in the deepest circle of hell. That fact does not make me wish that I had voted for a different irredeemably evil genocidal psychopath who deserves eternal torture in the deepest circle of hell. The fact that Trump is horrible was never in dispute.
- So Harris = Trump? Equal equal?
  
  I'll be there devil's advocate here and say that this whole shit show started under Biden and Harris
  
  Oh, I didn't say that. Not all irredeemably evil genocidal psychopaths who deserve eternal torture in the deepest circle of hell are exactly as bad.
  
  But it means your vote could have helped bring the victory to someone less genocidal.
  I know Harris is not a pro-Palestine person, but she's someone we could have talked to and could have felt the pressure of her voters. At the very least she doesn't support the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, unlike Trump, who couldn't give less of a shit about Palestinians and is happy if Israel leveled them down
  P.S. I don't want to make you feel guilty. The political system the US people live in is a shit. I'm just disappointed that maybe she could have had a chance of winning if people didn't abstain.
  
  she’s someone we could have talked to and could have felt the pressure of her voters.
  No, she absolutely isn't.
  Politicians are never more receptive to voters' concerns than just before an election. Once they have people's votes, they tend to shift further in the direction of interests groups and the establishment. Like, for example, on the campaign trail, Obama promised to end mass surveillance and protect whistleblowers, but once he was in office, he did the opposite. Harris on the campaign trail, after the widespread campus protests, was the most pro-Palestine she would ever be, which is to say not even the slightest bit and completely unconditionally supportive of material aid to Israel.
  It used to be that politicians would promise to do good things on the campaign trail, and then usually not follow through. But now they don't even have to promise anything, because people will just project whatever views and values they hold onto whichever candidate they like regardless of anything they say or do.
  Harris and Biden are unconditionally supportive of everything Israel does. Short of direct involvement of the US military, it's not really possible for Trump to be meaningfully worse than that.
  
  Okay I understand your point. Unfortunately Palestinians are not the only targeted ones. We have
  LGBTQ people
  Atheists and non-Christians
  Leftists and pro-democracy people. Non-fascists in general
  Scientists
  Ukrainians
  Refugees and immigrants
  Harris said and has showed to support them. Trump vowed to destroy all of them.
  
  Right, I don't deny that Harris was less evil on other issues, but I do not subscribe to the ideology of lesser-evilism. Just because one side is more evil doesn't mean that the other side is worth supporting when they're both irredeemably evil genocidal psychopaths who deserve eternal torture in the deepest circle of hell. Lesser-evilism doesn't make sense from either a moral or strategic standpoint.
  There's a social experiment that's been studied where the researchers give two people $100 to split, but the first person makes one offer on how to split it, and if the second person doesn't agree, then neither of them get anything. If lesser-evilism was correct, then what would happen is that the first person would offer a $99-$1 split and the second person would accept, because $1 is a lesser evil than $0. But that's not what actually happens. The reality is that most people have a certain minimum threshold, somewhere around $70-$30, and below that they'll tell the other person to get fucked.
  This is not really an irrational behavior, though it may appear so in the context of the experiment. For example, if the experiment were repeated multiple times with the same participants, than accepting the $1 means that you will only ever be offered $1 in future negotiations because you've shown you'll accept it.
  In reality, I'm pretty sure that lesser-evilists understand this concept on some level. It's just that either their minimum threshold does not preclude the genocide of foreigners in far away countries, or they convince themselves that the democrats aren't actually as bad about that as they are. But for me, I do recognize that Harris is a complete monster, and I also place value on Palestinian lives, so I said no to the $99-$1 offer and now I have $0 which I fully anticipated and have no regrets over. Maybe next time they'll come back with a reasonable offer that doesn't include genocide.
  
  Right, I don’t deny that Harris was less evil on other issues, but I do not subscribe to the ideology of lesser-evilism.
  Yeah, fuck the lives of American minorities, you have to make yourself feel good when you're in the voting booth! 😊
  
  What pisses me off is you don't even understand the place of privilege from which you speak. It's such disgusting selfish egotistical mentality to think that if a candidate doesn't represent your exact desires, that you think you can wash your hands of the whole thing and absolve yourself your part in the system.
  The world is not designed to cater to your personal sensibilities.
  Meanwhile, as you abstain and wait literally forever for a candidate that you don't have to pinch your nose to vote for, you are proudly throwing away your ability to impact change for the better.
  Basically you're saying if you can't have ice cream for dinner then we should go ahead and burn down the grocery store.
  You're a child.
  
  I fully understand why you see it that way. To you, Palestinians do not register as human beings, and so from your perspective I'm throwing a fit because my parents won't rescue a puppy, or perhaps buy me a new doll. Only through the complete othering and dehumanization of foreigners is it possible for you to describe opposition to genocide as a "personal sensibility" or my "exact desires" or compare it to throwing a fit because I don't get ice cream. You people are constantly telling on yourself that you do not recognize people born on the other side of an imaginary line with the wrong skin color as human beings. You don't see it as being about them, rather you think this is all about my feelings, about "oh no I saw something on TV that made me feel sad, somebody do something about my feelings," because you are unable to recognize them as human, and that is how you are able to absurdly call it "selfish" and "egotistical" for me to care about them.
  If it's truely the case that my only option within the system is to vote in favor of genocide, then yes, obviously, "burning down the grocery store" would be an extremely reasonable and proportionate response to that situation, you know, like, if the grocery store was actively butchering up human beings and serving their meat in the deli aisle. But since these people have the same moral worth to you as animals, that's why to you it seems like burning down a grocery store just because they serve beef.
  What's incredible about this though is that you have the audacity and lack of self awareness to describe my position as the privileged one. As if you don't get to live your whole life safely behind the walls of the garden, beyond which people are getting massacred in your name, but which you have the ability to simply ignore and shut out, out of sight and out of mind. You and I have the privilege of being born in a first world country, but I have my perspective precisely because I have had the misfortune of getting a glimpse of what things are like beyond that wall, and recognizing from that that the status quo cannot continue.
  Whether for good or ill and whether sooner or later, the wall is coming down. Someday you'll get a taste of the horrors beyond, of your own medicine that you've been dishing out, and the karma of your actions will find it's way back home to you.
  
  Harris and Biden are unconditionally supportive of everything Israel does. Short of direct involvement of the US military, it’s not really possible for Trump to be meaningfully worse than that.
  Remind me of this genocide-downplaying take in three months or so, please.

I voted Uncommitted in the primary so that Biden and the Democrats would get a count of how many people took the issue seriously. Primaries are a great place for message votes.

I also donated, volunteered, and voted for the Biden and then Harris campaigns, and didn't hold back any support in public. I had no illusions about how bad it would (now will) be with Trump in the Whitehouse.

Wasn't the uncommitted movement some 100,000 people strong?

Didn't Harris lose by millions?

How would have the uncommitteds saved the election if their numbers represented a fraction of what Democrats needed?

Could a more likely explanation of this deplorable outcome be that Democrats did this to themselves by not rallying up their base enough to bring more people out to vote?

Stop blaming the American people.

Almost 100,000 in Michigan alone likely flipped the swing state.
https://theconversation.com/voters-in-arab-american-strongholds-likely-tipped-michigan-in-trumps-favor-242854
- Looks like Harris did lose by about 79,000 votes in Michigan.
  Comparatively, about 44,500 went to Stein.
  We don't ultimately know how the uncommitted movement voted. If they were a monolith throughout, we'd expect 100k for Stein. If some abstained and some voted for Harris or Trump, that would've split the movement.
  If all of Stein's voters went to Harris, however, that wouldn't have changed the outcome. Harris would have still been short ~34,400. So if you wanted to make the argument that the uncommitted movement was a voting block, then the entire ~44k block voting for Harris wouldn't have changed the outcome.
  Overall I don't see Michigan outcomes changing my argument. If Dems were more persuasive, even if they lied about Gaza, they could have sweeped the nation. And even if the uncommitteds chose the lesser of two evils, Kamala still lost all other swing states. You can't chock the outcomes of those states up to the uncommitteds, because the largest organizational presence was in Michigan.
They would have been enough to secure the swing states and win Harris the electorial college. Her campaign would have need to promote more progressive policies that addresses the material needs of Americans, instead of running to the right on issues, in order to also pick up the popular vote.
Stop blaming the American people
100% It's entirely on the campaign to secure votes. That's the entire job of the campaign. Blaming voters is an easy scapegoat that accomplishes nothing. And when it's blaming marginalized groups, it seems like it's only promoting hate against the people most vulnerable to the violence of fascism

Yes, thank you for teaching the lesson that you should not support genocide.

Now we get to see who has learned from this snd who is going to double down despite losing.

It was the Harris campaign that made the decision to not break from Biden on Israel, at the cost of at least a +6 points gain. Those votes were entirely up for grabs. That's the fault of the campaign's calculations to ignore those voters, take them for granted, and instead run to the right with having the most lethal Military and unwaivering support for Israel a year into this genocide. That single policy change would have secured her the swing states needed to win the election. Biden is a Christian Zionist, the genocide and de juro annexation of Palestine is exactly what he wants.

I voted for Harris and told others to do the same. It's still on the campaign to earn votes to win. If they took this election seriously, they would have been going after those votes. Blaming voters is just sowing division when we need unity and solidarity to fight against Fascism.

Split Ticket (July 2024)

New Poll Suggests Gaza Ceasefire and Arms Embargo Would Help Dems with Swing State Voters (Full YouGov Report) (May 2024)

Data For Progress Poll (May 2024)

American Attitudes: Shifting Realities After the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza (Nov 2024)

https://instituteforglobalaffairs.org/2024/09/vox-populi-battlegrounds/#full-report (Nov 2024)

The United States Administration is the one enabling Israel unconditionally. Support for this genocide is bipartisan.

Can you also make a graph on how many luxury hotels Trump is going to build in Gaza after the rubble is cleared, thanks 👍
- Do you think I've ever supported Trump or something when I've repeatedly called out his Hitlarian and Fascist rhetoric and policies?
  
  Yes, because you helped him win.
  
  By voting for Harris? By telling others to also vote for Harris even if anti-genocide is their single issue? By voicing my concern that the campaigns strategy of ignoring all the uncommitted voters in swing states and failing to break from Biden on one of his most unpopular positions was risking losing the election? How exactly did I help Trump win?
  
  By promoting the lies that either Biden or Harris can single handedly stop the genocide, and that they've made no attempt to do so.
  If we just ended our alliance with Israel, do you know what they would do next? They would likely ally themselves with Russia instead.
  That would give Russia control over a port that facilitates a huge portion of commerce in the middle east. It would also give them control of a lot of tech companies, including Intel's massive R&D campus, and they would have access to the iron dome, which would be a pretty big intelligence leak. Israel also has an extremely important spy network that western countries rely on, and suddenly they would start serving Russia instead.
  It would also allow the rest of the middle east to "escape containment", so to speak. Particularly Iran. As soon as that happens, where do you think their missiles will go next?
  Oh, and the genocide of Palestinians would still continue.
  Geopolitics is complicated, and Biden was walking a tightrope. He was at least placing limits on how US weapons could be used, and trying to negotiate a ceasefire. Trump will scrap all of that and encourage Israel to kill everyone in the region.
  But you didn't care about any of that. Your moral outrage prevented you from trying to figure out why things are the way they are, and you joined the choir of people who were trying to prevent anyone from voting for Harris. A choir that mostly consisted of Trump supporters who were just trying to promote anything that might hurt Harris's chances of winning.
  
  By promoting the lies that either Biden or Harris can single handedly stop the genocide, and that they've made no attempt to do so.
  They haven't. You can't have a permanent ceasefire when the US is continually supplying military weapons unconditionally to the side committing the genocide.
  He was at least placing limits on how US weapons could be used, and trying to negotiate a ceasefire
  Only in rhetoric, not in policy. No limits were placed even after the 30 day deadline of Israel continuing to deny aid to a starving population. The same population Israel continually targets civilians, mostly women and children, and civilian infrastructure like hospitals and refugee camps.
  
  Timeline: The Biden administration on Gaza, in its own words
  One Year of Empty Rhetoric From the White House on Israel’s Wars
  If we just ended our alliance with Israel, do you know what they would do next? They would likely ally themselves with Russia instead.
  Reigning in Israel into a permanent ceasefire is not 'ending our alliance' it would only force Israel to abide by International Humanitarian Law for once and end the genocide and Apartheid. Nor would that mean they would Ally with Russia, which they aren't even on great terms with. Peace is also in China's best interest in order to increase trade with Middle East countries.
  Geopolitically, Russia still benefits far more from peace than the current situation.
  
  You can rationalize the US's decision to fund and allow Israel to eradicate the entire people of Palestine all you want. It is unacceptable. It's causing a rise in genuine antisemitism and islamophobia. I will do everything in my power to support Palestinian sovereignty and emancipation.
  https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/about/
  
  Western liberals live in a fog of thought-terminating clichés that allow them to support The Party regardless of what it does or stands for. One of those ckichés is thst if you disagree with them or don't support their politicians, you are actually a sleeper agent of the "enemy" faction.
  Calling you a Trump supporter isn't the only variation on this. They do the same re: "Putler" if you criticize US policy tiwards Ukraine and various racist accusations if you are anything less than a sinophobe.
  In fact there are already BlueAnon conspiracy comments in this comment section trying to call pro-Palestinian protesters a Russian op. Normally you'd see this kind of logic on your weird Uncke's facebook page but through liberalism alk things are possible.
Thank you for voicing this opinion in this thread, and bringing the receipts.
A Gaza ceasefire would be impossible without Netanyahu agreeing to it. So that 6% swing's based on a hypothetical that'd never happen, especially when Netanyahu was doing everything he could to help Trump. And, if Trump were the candidate of peace, why would that butcher do that?
- Guess what then
  Lie to the American people.
  Lie like Obama did! And lie well. Tell the biggest lie. Because clearly that worked for Trump!
  Democrats stared down the barrel of fascism this election, and didn't even think to come off their high horse to score a victory.
  
  I mean, they still lied plenty, they aren't on a high horse for pretending to push a ceasefire while providing unconditional support for Israel.
  They made a choice to stick by their pro-Israel donors and NatSec ghouls that want clear pro-Israel messaging.
Your take is absolutely idiotic.
- How? What does blaming voters accomplish exactly?
  If the Democratic Party is genuinely democratic, then they would respond to public pressure. If the Democratic party is not and instead only beholden to Donor interests, then we all have a much bigger problem where the interests of the American public is not represented.
  
  Harris became the candidate without winning a single primary, the only explicit democrstic mechanism in the party itself. She lost to Andrew Yang. She was selected behind closed doors by party insiders and donor input.
  Dems have never been democratic, they are a capitalist party by and for the largest business owners and finance. They cannot be reformed. The most realistic electoral option is for them to die like the Whigs and be replaced, though even that will be highly limited by the outsized power capitalists have over the state.

the donors of the Democrats/Republicans are doing a good job keeping the citizens divided and pointing fingers at each other

Yeah, no.
After months of alleged "Genocide Joe" bullshit, they don't get to shirk themselves of this.
They were told this was going to happen. They didn't want to listen.
- But hey, they've gone from not complicit, to extremely complicit.
  
  Your statement that we were not complicit before is just plain old lies.
  
  I think you have the wrong we in that case
  
  Democrats always have a scapegoat to explain the bad performance away too
- alleged "Genocide Joe" bullshit
  For a guy who's only alleged, he sure does support a lot of genocide.
- Yeah, no. After months of alleged “Genocide Joe” bullshit, they don’t get to shirk themselves of this.
  I see, so you are going to let them have it by whining and nagging on anonymous forums? Is that how you will keep them from "shirking"?
- Nothing alleged about Genocide Joe.
  Any vote for Harris or trump was still a vote for the war crimes to continue. The American people never had a say on this issue.
  
  And yet, this very article we're commenting on is about war crimes getting worse.
  Almost like when your options are "bad" or "worse" you shouldn't vote for "worse."
  
  And yet, this very article we're commenting on is about war crimes getting worse.
  Except it isn't because the US has been continually supolying the arms Israel needs to carry out this genocide and these supposed "restrictions" are a fig leaf.
  Again, the Biden-Harris regime provides unconditional support to Israel and its genocide. Recycled clichés about lesser evils don't apply.
  
  That sounds like some extortion. Not exactly something I would want to champion or believe to be a viable political platform
  
  Blinks
  That... is nothing the fuck like extortion.
  "Vote for me or I'll release these pictures of you fucking your dog" is extortion.
  "Vote for me because my opponent will make this issue you claim to care about worse" is not.
  
  "Vote for me or my friend here will kill your dog" is the alleged scenario.
  Though really the person making that threat is also saying they will kill your dog.
  
  That sounds like some extortion.
  Life gives us hard choices. Whining that they don't perfectly suit your pristine moral absolutism doesn't change that.
  
  That reads like exactly how republicans describe democrats. Can you not see how far to the right you have strayed?
  
  Oh, I'm sorry genocide isn't a big enough issue for you, I hope you get a new set of morals soon, yours seems damaged.
  
  Normalizing genocide is not a hard choice, it just confronted boilerplate Dem propaganda and any pretense of being a good person.
  If you are intetested in doing real political work it will not be something as minor as a single vote for 99% Hitler vs. 98% Hitler.
  
  There are differences in degree between Trump and the Democrats, and anyone who claims otherwise is malicious or ignorant. But stick to your binary thinking and reflect on what you've done to the rest of us by putting Trump back into power.
  
  That's true, there is a difference! While the genocide would receive material support either way, Democrats receive your support and silence while Republicans do not.
No. That's not a thing.
- It is, of course. Matginslization is created and maintained to suit ruling class interests, to ensure you blame the marginslized rather than the capitalist.
  Why do you think immigrants are being scapegoated? Did they close the factories or fire the workers?

Don't leave out the Harris campaign with the Cheneys and the DNC