You could have stopped with “white.”

Yes good point, clearly my story was steeped in “white” privilege, rather than understanding and dissecting conflict and trauma.

You know squid, here the thing. Whenever issues of Israel and the the palestinian genocide pop up, I see lots of hysterical posts like yours. Theres a clear pattern of attempting bury the lead in their own self interest, and push antisemitism to the fore to the exclusion of everything else. Exactly like you’re doing now. So are you commenting in good faith right now? I cant say for sure. But your last comment shows you minimize every other concern in order to yell and potentially bully. I’d care more about your words if you talked about doing the right thing and human rights – you know, the context of whats going on-- rather than this woe is me thing, nobody knows my sorrows shtick that comes across. I have no doubt you’ve experienced attacks based on your ethnicity, but many of us have-- many of us much more severe than yours. As an frequent OP and mod somewhere you could focus on leading forward toward everyones shared interests despite your experience. You’re not doing that. if you have any interest in being a better person, do better.

Democrats have already been trying to get ranked choice voting.

I’ve been “trying to get” a bunch of things I’ll never get, so I understand your disappointment. Hey, maybe next election, eh?

As long as the protest is symbolic bullshit that’s makes you feel better, nothing will fundamentally change.

I could not have gotten a better response if I had been writing your response myself. Bravo. Rich irony, thank you. Oh and heres colbert roasting Biden for saying that. Always a good time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_q2LBA38NI

oh! but thats everyone else but Bidens fault now eh! A centrist classic line. Redirection via projection exactly the same as the republicans do. The apple doesnt fall very far, it seems.

Your assigning blame is the same as a child saying it. Its meaningless petulance and assigning everyone else centrisms failures. So please, assign away. Masturbate on the street corner for all I care. Past time to block your lame arse, so bu-bye.

I’m literally saying that the power we do have is elsewhere

Then you’re literally living in a dreamworld. Politicians dont care what we think except during an election. They dont even care about your patheticly small donations. This been proven without a doubt. FPTP benefits the DNC, so they would never change it unless they are leveraged to do so. What were you going to do, write letters to interns? hold a sign on the steps? It didnt work for Defund, and that was a much more potent cause. You as a dem voter have two short moments of power and leverage, and those were when you voted in the primaries and general.

You were conned into doing exactly what you were told and missed your chance to have any power. If 80% of the dems had voted uncomitted in the primary you bet your ass Biden/Harris would have acted, and Biden stil would have won the primary. But I bet you didnt vote uncomitted did you?

Plenty of time to do the right thing later, you think.

I admire your ideological purity and devotion to a single issue.

Well thank you for the compliment. I admire your moral flexibility and ability to do what you’re told. Servants who would sell their souls for an purely tactical outcome in a situations thats manufactured by the buyer, and they know it can be hard to come by. People are so uppity with their illuiosns of free will in their voting, right?

Seriously though: You keep pretending that Harris had no ability or accountability to effect any change in ths election, so the outcome was the sole responsibility of the voters and not the canddiates making policy choices–why is that? all she had to do is utter a single phrase on camera in the week or two before the elction and she would have won. “I beleive whats going on is genocide”. It would have cemented the party around a new direction and given people hope that she was going to buck Bidens deeply unpopular policies of all kinds.

But the outcome of her choice to adopt Bidens, “nothing will fundamentally change” mantra is somehow all my fault.

edit: and faced with the idea of Harris being accountable you silently downvote and run for the hills. shocker.

No matter how much you throw a fit, it was not going to help

That sounds suspiciously like just blind acceptance that we have no power, will never have any power, and sort of like a suggestion that I should just lay back and enjoy it. And if thats true we need to burn the system to the ground-- no matter the short term pain-- not lend our support to it so it continues year after year. If you’re right, it has to end.

How many times in your life did someone physically assault you because of what you look like?

You’re talking to the wrong guy. Many. I grew up in the inner city and was one of the only white kids in my grade school or neighborhood. I’d get chased around by groups of kids and beaten up. Very often --once they found out they could-- I’d have one of my knees dislocated. I spent a lot of time hiding in the bushes. I had bright red hair, am small and was skinny, and looked like howdy doodie-- or so I’m told, so even after we moved from that place, I’ve been singled out for my looks here and there. Until I grew big enough to go all in on fighting back, and shortened my hair to stubble.

A lot of fighting back is intellect. Understanding who was just teasing and could be joked with to defuse, who was just following, and who I had to fight, understanding when and where it was safe to enter a restroom.

I’m an old man now. A few times per year I still relive the fear of being chased and understanding that violence was about to happen when I hear or see other people being chased in movies. I cant look at that stuff. Being surrounded and overpowered is pretty visceral, and is having your leg yanked and twisted to dislocate it–especially when they cant remember which knee it was. I know exactly what reliving PTSD is. The severity comes and goes, but its more severe over time than makes any logical sense, and I sit there sort of stunned while I relive it. Which actually becomes …tedious in its lack of healing. Frankly, at a certain period in my life, I became a bully myself. The fight changes you I think.

Do my creds check out enough?

My point was, conflict requires intellect, and you I dont see that you are applying that intellect.

your multi-paragraph attempt at justifying calling all Jews Zionist is noted

Thats not what I said at all. You’re lashing out and putting words in my mouth. The TLDR is that your complaint is doomed by human nature. So you better get creative.

And hey, my “attempt” is “noted”?
Well your emotional outbursts and manipulative straw manning is “noted”. Seems you arent acting maturely enough to consider these problems in the abstract. Thats a ‘you’ problem bud. Way to miss the point and insert your own “woe is me!” cry as the only consideration here. You are displaying the same binary thinking as I was talking about in my post.

As to your other comment: You do know that Jews live in countries other than Israel and the U.S., right?

Sure. but over 82% of the worlds jewish population live in the US and in Israel. Did you know that?

I’m not jewish, or Palestinian, or religious in any way, but I am flatly against war crimes and genocide, period. And that puts me in the progressive camp where I am shat upon by the population just as much as you feel now, if not more. But you have lumped me in with the people who define all jews as zionists. Do you see how you are jumping to conclusions about me in exactly the manner you are angry about other people doing to you?

@flying squid, part of the problem: “85% of American Jewish adults believe it is important for the U.S. to support Israel”

https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-survey-shows-american-jews-are-deeply-and-increasingly-connected-to-israel

To their detriment, people generally do not think about any population with statistical terms. Humans are tribalist and much prefer binary thinking and always have. Linguists say that is not going to change and will get worse. I hear that our embrace of stats in the later 1900s was an aberation in the arc of historical rhetoric.

So the question becomes, when does a random fellow human feel its right to make generalizations?
when its 50% +1 (aka “more right than wrong”) 99%? 99.999% or only at 100%?
Given, its a sliding scale dependent on the harm being done by making the assumption. If this decision kills someone, people generally will not make an assumption unless they are in an incited mob. If it will irritate or unfairly characterize you, nobody cares, and they will feel free to assume.

surety at 100% is obviously the ideal answer, but humans will never approach that because its too much work. We dont care about the uniqueness of individuals who self identify into a group. Most people tend much more toward 50%+1 than 100% in their thinking. As an example, I’m sure there were some (maybe not many) actually good people in the german nazi party. Maybe they werent aware of the murders, or their kid was a soldier, or whatever. Ever heard anyone talk about being careful not to malign them? And no, I am not suggesting we sympathize with nazis. This is part of the problem judges had to wrestle with after ww2: “not evil nazis”

Theres also the problem of crypto nazis as well. People who are secretly in favor of genocide but wont admit it outright. Humans lie, we all know this, so embracing someone on their word is not a successful strategy. We have to watch their actions instead. And we get tired of looking earnestly for outliers. Sorry, its not fair, but as far as I can tell its how humanity works, broadly speaking. Additionally, people do recognize that a lot of manipulation and marketing shenanigans has been going on around the Palestinian genocide. Yes, we are stupid, but we are just smart enough to see how ham-fisted that effort was. Thats not even going into what happened in the last election.

And theres the problem of aggregation. Sure any one member of a group stands a 15% chance of being against the genocide, but when 3 people get together, whats the odds that they are all against genocide? It drops from 15% per person to 3 tenths of one percent for a group of 3 all being members of that minority. This assumes uniform distribution of that viewpoint across a defined population.

It’s like we all saw a horrible fire headed our way

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?

So voting for the people who started the fire is your solution?

In the hopes they had lied about their stated plan to keep that fire burning as long as the Israelis wanted?

When they knew they’d lose the election by stoking that fire and they continued to stoke it anyway? But its the voters who are to be blamed huh. Harris could have won by admitting Israel was engaged in a genocide, about two weeks before election day.

No I dont think your suggestion is logical at all. Its a tired argument and its hostage taking by the DNC. I dont negotiate with far right wing terrorists-- whether they are democrats or republican or other. Sometimes when given an impossible choice of two murderous outcomes, the correct response is to make no choice, and stand up to smash all the people and systems that made this vote “neccessary”.

Now that the election is over, will you lay on the ground bitching or will you get whats needed done? Its time for you to stop talking about the past and start being a decent human being pushing for a brighter future. Remember when doing the right thing was something we all did? When will that start being present in your mind again?

Dont stop there, take the next step: why are enough dem voters apathetic, such that they cant win an election?

it’s idiocy

Your point hinges on the bankrupt idea that diet fascism and diet war crimes arent as bad as what trump will do. But so far the murders have declined and food is flowing to the Palestinians, so your wished for reality does not match actual reality. Your version of reality remains pure speculation designed to deflect accountability.

You know how you marked your ballot. You explicietly endorsed war crimes when you get right down to it. And now you’re whining that other people didnt turn out to be as terrible ad personally immoral as you were in your vote. If the US dems had stood up and demanded of their candidate that the killings stop, they would have stopped. But your ilk didnt care enough to do the right thing-- because-- in my opinion, you’re human trash, and doing the right thing was just too hard for you. And deep down you know exactly what you did. So you’re mad. I get it.

I think Lemmy is sick of your tirades though, and its not really effective is it? can you please stop? Go find some other way to salve your conscience and convince yourself you’re actually a decent human being. Read some Emmanuel Kant and do better next time.

Well you’ll be happy with the next four years then.

You’ll be happy with it too. So will Harris and her campaign staff. We’re all in this together but you’d never know that listening to the DNC and people like yourself, @optional. This sort of “fuck you, vote for me, even if that includes war crimes and class traitor-ing, or everything is your fault” routine the Dems keep pulling doesnt work, is not going to work in the future, and the centrist dems should stop trying to make it work.

I’m tired of voters being blamed for DNC incompetence, corruption, and now war crimes.

Lots of us voted the entire ballot but left the presidential box blank or voted third party. Is that apathy?