this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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You're very sweet, man. I really hope you keep at it and make the world a better place. If you want to call the ghouls running the democratic party voters (I'm sure they vote too), be my guest, but they're not "the voters," they don't represent the voters, and they don't listen to the voters. The voters don't control the platform...they don't even have a meaningful voice on the platform. No matter how many people show up to the meetings saying "we should not arm genocide," the platform will not change. You will be asked to leave, and if you don't leave you'll be arrested. And if, by the grace of god, you take over a caucus, the DNC can and will simply ignore you.
I'm all for compromise and letting people have wins and doing politics. But not around genocide. We don't compromise on that. It's not "because I think it" it's because of the tens of thousands of dead palestinians rotting in shallow graves with american bullets and shrapnel riddling their bodies.
People have approximately no impact on policy. You may be familiar with the Gillens & Page (2014) paper. It's obviously a little long in the tooth at this point, but I don't see any reason to imagine it's less true now. Customers probably have more impact on the design of a car, because focus groups are actually trying to get info to make you buy the car rather than not buy the car. However politicians don't care whether you vote or not, it's just that if you vote they need you to prefer them just a little.
And the particular analogy here is between the Ford Pinto blowing up and the parties arming the genocide of palestinians. So no, we don't have a mechanism to say whether we want that to be the policy, just like consumers don't get to decide if the Pinto being dangerous is a design choice or not. I'm not sure how the coverup is relevant to the analogy. The point is that the customers/voters don't have power to change the car/policy...so stop blaming them.
Anyway, the Ford case doesn't help you see what I mean? Sure it's an analogy, there are always all kinds of ways analogies don't work, but the point is that I'm using it to point at a way it does work.
Well I disagree, obviously, but it doesn’t mean there weren’t things like this: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/convention-floor-erupts-as-dems-restore-references-to-god-jerusalem-in-platform (apologies fir the source, it was the first one in my enshittified search results)
Which was obvious bullshit. But then look at 12 years later and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/aug/14/democrats-have-officially-abandoned-god/ (apologies again for the source - ugh) and hey lookit that: forward motion.
Does it take too long? Yes. Is it ruled by 300 people who have jockeyed for years to be one of the leaders, yes. Like all human endeavor it is flawed. But it doesn’t exist without the people who make up the party.
We need to get money out of politics, kill the Slaver’s College, re-democratize voting, kill FPTP and a ton of other things. But those things won’t happen through a third party, or the republicans. They can happen through the Democrats if only we’d all agree for one goddamn day. Which is the point of the meme.
I don't mind the sources, it's got a sprinkling of schadenfreude!
Is that forward motion? Looks more like walking in a circle to me, and like the focus is absolutely not on the suffering of other human beings. Like..bandying about how much we reference god or not while we fund the extermination of palestinians.
If they win without changing, why would they change? The Democrats have shown us over and over that if they win, they take it for granted. When they win they think "well I guess I could scooch a little further right." Look I'm not saying they gotta guillotine the leadership (though that would be welcome and might in reality be required for my much more reasonable line in the sand), i'm just not going to vote for them until they stop arming a genocide.
So you’re a single-issue voter?
That’s a thing. And yes, if you don’t recall, the whole god bless the united states is a reaganism that infected all discourse and mutated into brylcreem and flag pins so specifically dropping it from the platform after spectacularly failing to do it as we wanted in 2012 is progress.
I'd love to be more than a single issue voter, but yeah I think that issue is completely overriding. I guess i'm a single-issue vote-withholder. And again, I'm not judging anyone who thinks otherwise, or are single-issue voters for the environment or whatever. I just object to being told I'm the problem when I'm not the one arming a genocide.
e: on reflection I'm not really sure that's right, though, in that if the republicans cut aid to nothing and the democrats cut aid to a thousand dollars, I wouldn't go vote for the republicans. It's not that it can't be overridden inherently or something...its about the scale. The scale is what makes it so overriding.
Well the opposite happened so - I mean republicans cut more than funding, they closed up the entire agency, leaving millions of people around the world without food and medicine, and the Democrats would have continued sending food and medicine. That’s scale.
And just to reiterate the genocide didn’t stop, and trump has sold the Palestinians down the river for thirty pieces if silver and a statue of himself plus the naming rights. So how did that even help? There’s no way Harris would have even come close to that. Much less start a War for our buddy Bibi and let Pooty-poot continue his own genocide.
It just makes zero sense to not try and make it better. Letting trump win - even for the ethical reasons stated - is worse.
Sorry, to be clear, in my edit I meant if both sides cut US military aid to Israel, not aid in general. And yeah cutting off USAID is horrifying. I don't think the scale is the same as the genocide in palestine (it's a lot less money, and I think that money spent buying bombs is probably more effective at killing than money buying aid is at saving lives, but I may be wrong about that), but no doubt that's one major difference. There are lots of differences, and I don't deny they matter. I just deny they matter as much as the agreement between the parties to help israel exterminate Palestinians.
I'm also not convinced Harris wouldn't have us invading Iran all the same; she was extremely hawkish on Iran. Just go look at what she was saying in 2024.
I also don't see any reason to think Palestinians would have been better off under Harris. Biden gave way more to Israel than Trump has (again, granted, he had more time to do so...i just don't see any reason to think it would ever go down). Maybe bibi and putin "feel empowered," and we're just gonna vibes that into assuming it's actually worse? IDK vibes don't make guns go bang, bullets do, and it's the bullets that I think are the same.
And as for how it helped; it hasn't yet. If the democrats announce that they're changing course on Palestine, then win, then follow through I'll feel like it's made all the difference in the world. I'm not holding my breath, but that's how it'll help. As I said, i don' think voting for the democrats wouldn't have helped either, so I'd rather try for the option that has a chance.
You should probably read this: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts
It says somewhere between 5-10x the amount of lives lost. Obviously there are differences. But sheer number of deaths, the USAID cuts are way worse.
No. Obama worked hard to get a treaty that trump destroyed immediately. She would try to get back on that track. And, point of order, she’s not a goddamned idiot like our demented rapist, or surrounded by sycophantic nazis.
I disagree entirely, but it’s a big discussion. The quick points are Biden’s private disagreements with Bibi and attempts to prevent arms sales that the republicans intentionally overrode; and the demented rapist’s carte blanche for Bibi and Pooty-poot. Coagulating into his owning “beautiful beachfront resort property”. It’s just worlds away from competent, adult foreign policy. And I’m sorry that’s not staggeringly clear.
I mean, I agree with the option that has a chance part. I just disagree entirely on which had the chance.
Well you've found the way to my cold heart. Given those US aid stats, I'm with you, that dwarfs even the genocide of palestinians. And how fucked is that? I'll need to sit with that for a while...the democrats are clear they want to restore it (or were last year anyway), so that's a very convincing argument to hold my nose and support the genocide of palestinians? Fuck. Well fuck. I don't even like USAID because they so frequently use it to smuggle guns into countries they're attempting to coup. This is a very speculative abstract metric, but if it's even close to a fair approximation it's pretty convincing.
I don't think Harris is an idiot, but I don't think you'd have to be...like...wars are very good for american arms manufacturers. I'm sure it wouldn't happen like this, but I she was certainly not less hawkish on Iran than Trump was. Was that to try to win over some of the two-dozen or so american voters who fall into the infinitesimally small crack between the republicans and the democrats? I guess maybe, but I think it's more likely she just actually was hawkish on Iran.
I'm just not convinced private disagreements and qualms have anything to do with it. We have agreements in place to provide military aid to Israel, and the democrats would follow through on those "obligations" to arm a genocide. Trump 1 did not make a significant increase over Obama, but Biden made a significant increase over Trump 1. Trump 2 isn't even close to catching up. I agree the private disagreements and qualms are nicer than trump's jeering nastiness, but that difference in nastiness is not worth a single death, so I'm not really interested in saying 'that's what makes it worse.'
I have heard that too and that needs to be stopped wherever it may have been the case. It’s not perfect.
I think Iran is a bugaboo that candidates have to posture on. They said the same about Hilary. I think saying, in a campaign speech, “I’m tough on Iran” is a world away from actually fucking up the way trump is doing this very minute.
And as for trump and Gaza have you seen this? That he shared and is proud of? Harris would not have had anything to do with that, i think it’s safe to say.
IDK, you've obviously got a lot more faith in them than I do. Obama didn't even say "I'm gonna drone strike anyone I want anywhere in the world, sovereignty be damned," but he did it. Biden and hillary both voted to invade Iraq. So when Democrats say "I'll do anything necessary to stop Iran" I don't put anything past them.
And yeah, that's the gross behavior I'm talking about. Like...that video is gross, but it's less bad than any of the many thousands of bombs we've provided. I don't think the nastiness and the policy are related to each other.
I’m not saying I’m not frequently disappointed in them - but demanding perfection immediately seems to work even less well.
And as for “stopping Iran” i know there’s a bunch of plans that don’t involve random school bombings, which just speaks to the derangement and incompetence of the people who supposedly won the election. We would have had better than that. By a lot. The world would have had better.
I'm really not demanding perfection. Like look I'd love to see all kinds of stuff I think are no-brainers, good policy, whatever. If the Democrats tomorrow said "no more arms to Israel" I'd still have a million and one complaints...no question they're not perfect. That's not perfection that's like...minimal human decency. They can keep funding ICE keep carrying out regime change wars keep fucking everyone over on healthcare and the environment and labor rights and all that. But arming israel? No; come on. That's not "demanding perfection"