• Nobody@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m still not seeing why Israel is being treated as a priority over or at least equal to Ukraine. Ukraine is up against a legitimately strong adversary using human wave tactics. Israel is dropping bombs seemingly indiscriminately on mostly civilians. Ukraine is fighting for its existence. Israel is getting revenge on its much, much weaker neighbor.

    If Iran and its proxies enter the war, that might change the calculations, but that hasn’t happened yet.

      • imgprojts@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Example: we don’t vote for the president or the people who actually elect him. Yet, we are bombarded with ads about which to pick! Why?

        • _bug0ut@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean, that’s not entirely accurate - a vote for a presidential candidate is a vote for the slate of electors tied to said candidate - effectively a vote for your candidate, albeit indirectly. Electors can, however, be required to vote according to popular vote as required by the state they’re electors in. Or they could have pledged to vote according to specific party. I don’t know for sure, but I assume state elector requirements override party pledges.

          My understanding is that when it was devised, it was a compromise between direct democracy (which would honestly be potentially dangerous - how many people do you know where you can’t help but go, “Fuck… This guy can vote.”) and election via congressional vote. It certainly ain’t perfect and I have no bias towards it, but it’s a system like anything else that people tend to point at and blame when things don’t go their way or just ignore or even defend when things do go their way.

          • imgprojts@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Biden is president. Things went my way. But let’s imagine that this was how you got lunch.

            Hmm, Josh! I want a hamburger!.. okay buddy I promise I’ll bring you a hamburger. I’m just going to be your food delegate in the food acquisition team.

            Josh! I want a salad! … and I want a spoon full of extra virgin olive oil!. Josh I want an apple! Hey Josh can I get some Doritos crushed in a bowl and mixed with jalapeno and chicken nuggets!

            Then Josh goes to the big food acquisition meeting… My team wants a spoon full of extra virgin olive oil!

            Then you wait half an hour and you get a turkey sandwich but you’re vegan so you eat the three onion rings.

            70 percent of the office was vegan too, but only 5 of the food delegates were vegan. The other 20 were old timers that have been ordering the food for the past seven years. They like turkey sandwiches. So you get turkey sandwich.

            I hope you enjoy your turkey sandwich 🥪. 😂 LOL. At least it wasn’t a lump of lard with a tupee.

            • _bug0ut@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The long, drawn out metaphorical explanation was unnecessary and frankly kind of condescending.

              I’m not over here trying to be some champion of the electoral college and I’d be more interested in seeing a real push for ranked choice or one of its cousins.

              The point I was making was that if you sat at home and didn’t vote at all, your chosen candidate would never see the inside of the oval office and I went into my understanding of why it is the way it is. Ultimately, voting under the current system is not entirely worthless as you seemed to claim in the original post I responded to.

              We’ve had something like 59 elections in total and 5 of them involved the winning candidate losing the popular vote but winning the election by way of the electoral college. Only one of those elections - the very first - involved anything even remotely close to your example (but still not42.3% vs 31.6%). The other 4 had a difference of like 2% or less between the two leading candidates.

              The electoral college was devised as a compromise between direct democracy and congressional voting and I’m sure it was done in good faith to try to make sure everyone was represented, but this system seems to truly show its cracks when we’re facing an insanely stark national split like we see today and there’s no argument that we should probably shake things up and get rid of it.

    • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Biden said something like: “If there was no Israel, we’d have to invent it.”

      The US loves having a highly militarized, violent, totally amoral and 100% US-dependent proxy next to all those oil fields. The last thing the US wants is peace in the middle east. This is just divide-and-conquer 101.

  • krzschlss@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t like this trend! War movies in 10-20 years will be boring. No Rambos, no Schwarzeneggers, no Spielberg and Tom Hanks emotional patriotism! No funny casual racism, no casual homophobia, no casual misoginy… Did Mark Hamil play a terrorist in Star Trek after all? The End of an Era. We’re gonna have to watch films about how a bribed White House politicant struggles to keep up with weapon manufacture demands while managing to convince his wife not to divorce him because she feels neglected since he’s never at home… directed by Clint Eastwood.

    That’s boring. I’m out!

    • krzschlss@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Genocide is illegal (I think, it’s kinda blurry for decades now). Don’t see those people concerned about it. I don’t think these people care about law. They bend it to their will, like they do with their tax-paying citizenry who vote and pay for them.

    • krzschlss@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Genocide is illegal (I think, it’s kinda blurry for decades now). Don’t see those people concerned about it. I don’t think these people care about law. They bend it to their will, like they do with their tax-paying citizenry who vote and pay for them.

    • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nah fam. Miss me with that nonsense. Why would a tiny nation control the US? They have influence with American interests in many ways, but control it? It makes no sense. The only position that this would make sense from is the same antisemetic cabal bullshit. A small group controls the world alright. The wealthy, most of whom are white Christians. They control things, not Jews.

  • demesisx@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    I can’t believe how many shitlibs there are in here, using this opportunity to guilt people with an actual conscience into voting for this piece of shit as if he has some sort of moral high ground.

    What is the lesser evil when both the DNC and the GOP work directly for the exact same military industrial complex?

    The real villain here is the system that makes any party outside of the two party system completely irrelevant: first-past-the-post.

    We have two Republican parties. One of them just so happens to pretend better at being inclusive…but they secretly also wish that the poor could be burned to fuel their mega-yachts.

      • demesisx@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Maybe I should switch to hexbear. I feel like I’m on 2016 Twitter, arguing with Neera Tanden’s astroturfing PPI team and they’re trying to brainwash other leftists to think that Single Payer is somehow bad.

    • thilo@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This is nonsense. MAGA is a fascist movement. Don’t let both being neo-liberal blind you.

      • cosecantphi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        And yet the United States continues to slide into fascism despite having elected Biden. What horrific Trump era policies did the Democrats even bother to repeal after they won in 2020 and held both the senate and the house?

        They are still funding the construction of border wall segments. They never repealed the Republican tax cuts. They have done nothing about the concentration camps on the southern border for fuck’s sake. They never codified Roe v. Wade, we literally lost the right to abortions while Biden was in office. They could have stacked the supreme court but they didn’t.

        The Democrats and the Republicans form an obfuscated one party system in the US. Republican leadership aggressively ramps up the oppression of marginalized people, then Democratic leadership does nothing to restore our rights nor proactively prevent the same thing from happening again. Instead they just use their time in office to suck all of the energy out of people’s movements that could actually effect change.

        And much more importantly than all of that, Republicans and Democrats are virtually identically evil when it comes to foreign policy. When the US is dropping bombs on you and destroying your country, you’ll tend not to care whether it was a Red MAGA or Blue MAGA administration pulling the trigger.

        In some specific cases it might be worthwhile to vote for Democrats in local elections where there exists much more leeway for politicians to stray from the party line, but voting for them in national elections is just lending your voice to legitimizing their bullshit good cop/bad cop routine they play with the Republicans.

        • demesisx@infosec.pub
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          1 year ago

          Hear hear!!! My sentiments exactly! Thanks for putting it into words better than I could have.

    • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The one that isn’t taking away trans rights, making abortion illegal, and saying the last election was stolen, seems like the lesser evil actually. I can agree that I think our parties would be slightly better if first past the post was changed to allow for multiple parties, but i think it’s ridiculous to say both parties are currently the same. Edit: As I responded to thecrotch, I disagree with the assertion that the Dem party is evil. Flawed? sure, our 2 party system will only allow for flawed parties, but to say their evil is downright showing ignorance of US politics or disinformation given the examples that I gave.

        • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          You’re right, what I should have also added to my post was that, I disagree with the assertion that the Dem party is evil. Flawed? sure, our 2 party system will only allow for flawed parties, but to say their evil is downright showing ignorance or disinformation for the examples that I gave.

          • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Democrats voted for Afghanistan, Iraq, the Patriot act, and countless other evil legislation. They’re absolutely evil. So they’re less evil than the Republicans, so what? Should I give them a cookie?

            • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              You’re like 20 years behind, catch up. Give them a cookie? Give them your vote. The alternative is republicans who RIGHT NOW, IN THIS YEAR are attempting to restrict abortions, deny the elections, restrict lgbt+ rights. Democrats are fighting against that. But yeah you’re right maybe split you’re vote because both sides “are the same”.

              • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I didn’t say they’re the same. They don’t have to be the same to both suck. Fuck you for telling me how to vote. You got a lot of nerve.

            • frunch@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              No, but you should still vote for them. What else can you do? Vote independent? Change the world?

  • moonlit2107@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’m not voting for this man a second time. No more harm reduction. I’m not degrading myself by voting for a genocide enabler.

    • fiercekitten@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You getting downvoted for refusing to vote for Biden for a very valid reason is proof of how broken our two-party system is. This is why every state needs to pass ranked-choice voting. Maine did it and proved it could be done, and now they get to vote for who they actually /want/ without having their vote “spoiled”.

      Everyone in the US should be working to get ranked-choice voting in their state.

    • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is the dumbest take, unfortunately very common amongst otherwise compassionate people.

      • moonlit2107@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I will stay dumb and ignorant if it means sticking to my morals of being anti-genocide. Thanks.

        • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You’re not any more anti-genocide than I am, you’re just being childish. You’re not getting your way so you’re going home. Meanwhile the right wingers are taking advantage of your childishness to enact more sadistic laws at home.

          You’re literally choosing to be indifferent to the suffering of one set of groups because a politician didn’t protect your preferred set of oppressed peoples.

          • moonlit2107@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Not saying I am, but voting for someone who enables a genocide goes against my values. If by childish you mean choosing what I want to do with my vote, then sure.

            • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Your logic equates to:

              Biden is enabling genocide so I’m going to effectively throw my vote to his opponent, who not only will also enable genocide, but massively expand it.

              Don’t vote FOR Biden, vote AGAINST Trump/Republicans because while both Democrats and Republicans are awful, Republicans are actively sadistic.

              • moonlit2107@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Great, I’m telling you that it goes against my morals. You can effectively vote for whoever you want and I can effectively not vote for either. Are you going to tell me voting third party is a vote for Trump too?