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Donald Trump has no idea what has hit him, and it’s a joy to watch
(newrepublic.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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At the risk of repeating myself: there's no objective measure for this. Creating pressure for action always involves risking some damage, that's what activism is. Your standard doesn't mean anything for determining what level of pressure is acceptable because all of it risks damaging electiral odds to some degree. If anything, your standard would seem to suggest that the only form of protest is that which doesn't risk anything, at which point it becomes purely aesthetic.
You mean like sharing reporting on the matter? How does this exclude people like r2o and linkerbann?
So back when I was saying "I'm not real concerned about their actions 'hurting' the Democrats...". What do you think I meant with that whole explanation / that whole paragraph?
I think you're personally confused, because that statement is in direct contradiction to this other statement of yours:
You say that you're fine with hurting the reputation of democrats, but your material concern over some forms of protest/activism is that it's going to "damage the reputation of people in the best position to do something positive".
The war in Gaza must end. Israeli occupation must end. Israel must face consequences for their war crimes. Until those conditions are met, I think all forms of protest are fair game. Comparing the defense of those protests as "abuser logic" is a crazy weird way of assigning blame to people holding the US and Israel to account for the war crimes they are currently and continually complicit in, especially when you notionally agree with the subject of those protests.
edit: just to illustrate the absurdity of that comparison -
The US and the pro-zionist democrats are materially supporting the actual abuse and genocide of Palestinians, and you're suggesting the people pushing for an end to the abuse are the ones abusing the abuser.
Incorrect. My prime material concern is that these forms of protest/activism are much more likely to hurt Palestinians than to help them. I can’t believe that I need to explain this this many times.
If you persist in telling me that my own argument is something different than what it is, I am going to report you for strawmanning. Either start dealing with my argument as it actually is, or stop talking to me.
Hurt them through what mechanism, exactly?
Edit: this is why i constantly have to spell out the implications of your arguments to you, because you bury them in verbose explanations that you hide behind and cry foul when I bring them out into objective language. You're saying that by hurting democrats' electoral chances, it risks bringing more harm to Palestinians because republicans would be worse. But hurting democratic chances is the thing we're actually discussing: any protest against continual Israeli defense aid will hurt democratic chances if and until they commit to stopping the aid. Those protests can only hurt democrats if they continue to avoid addressing the subject of that protest in a satisfactory way.
Kamala has done nothing more than signal support for a ceasefire, but has largely avoided any language that would indicate what she would do if she ran up against the (predictable) resistance of Israel to commit to one. I (and the other protestors) are not satisfied by that ambiguity, so we continue to pressure her campaign to make a firm commitment. A part of that pressure is going to drag down enthusiasm by raising the issue repeatedly, but that is am unavoidable part of protest. That you are satisfied by her soft language around the issue and we are not doesn't suddenly make that form of protest invalid, and claiming something as an objective standard doesn't make that subjectivity disappear.
By getting Trump elected
I already explained it all… I mean it’s fine if you disagree with my calculus and think that what ozma is doing is the best way for good outcomes for Palestinians. I can disagree with that, and it is fine; it’s just talking. But it seems like because what I’m saying isn’t what you want to hear, you keep pretending that I am saying something different (saying that any criticism of Democrats is not allowed or etc), or like it’s too vague to make any sense, or etc etc.
People can have different points of view and still be both aiming for good things. It is possible. They can even talk to each other and understand the points of view without ever really coming to 100% agreement on details. It is actually more common than not; usually the only places where everyone sees it exactly the same way and anyone who disagrees is some wild enemy who’s trying to defeat all the progress, is in weird MAGA-like political monocultures.
... by hurting their reputation through protest.
See my edit above. I haven't misstated your argument at all, I am presenting you with its underlying inconsistency. Referring to your opinion as 'calculus' doesn't suddenly make it objective in any meaningful way. I don't hold my opinion as objective standard, but I also don't accuse those who disagree with me of abuse.
I see the subtle accusation in this statement, and I would probably point out that the 'weird MAGA-like political monoculture' is likely one where protestors are blamed as having 'abuser logic'.
Yes! You have grasped it.
I don’t give a shit inherently about the Democrats’ reputation. I’m fine with actions that may hurt them in the election, as long as they’re aligned with better prospects for the Palestinians. Actions that have a lot of risks on the “getting Trump elected” side and not a lot of benefits on the “getting better behavior from the Democrats” side, I’m not in favor of.
How can that possibly be confusing? I feel like I’ve restated it enough now. If you’re really determined not to pick it up, I will not keep repeating and trying to force you to, though.
It’s not all that subtle. It sounds to me like you’re part of a political monoculture as I described. Most people even in political discussions are not this obstinate about pretending that something they don’t personally agree with must therefore be some crazy thing that doesn’t make any sense, and spending most of your time talking with people who see it exactly like you do is one explanation for maybe how you got to be that way.
Lmao, fuckin.... no, you're not! What could you possibly mean by this? You're fine with hurting democratic chances as long as, what, the alternative candidate is better than or equal-to the democrats when it comes to saving Palestinian lives? Doesn't this mean that you aren't fine with it in our current reality where our only options are Kamala and Trump? Or are you suggesting you'd be ok with it if there was a third-party candidate with a better policy?
Any form of protest risks damaging democratic electoral odds, it is only a matter of degree. I've been saying this the entire time. I'm not at all confused about what it is you're arguing, you just don't like saying it outright because it sounds (and is) arbitrary, petty, and completely subjective. When a protest gets big enough to present a genuine threat to the Democratic electoral machine, suddenly it's the protestors fault for, what, successfully raising the issue and pressuring the democrats? Lol fuuuuuucccckkkk offfffff. If a substantial portion of the electorate is turned off by their stance on an issue being protested, it's not fault of the protestors, it is the thing being protested that's doing the damage. The Palestinian genocide and the US's complicity in it is happening in real-life objective terms. Protestors are simply pointing out the US's continued roll in it and asking the democrats to put an end to it (quite peacefully i might add). Fuck, even simply making a definitive statement or commitment to it would be great, but they continue walking on egg-shells because they still value Israel as an ally more than they care about Israel committing war crimes.
Your "calculus" is simply 'democrats have moved as much as they are willing, and any more protest will hurt their electoral odds, so let's top now'. There is a HUGE, MASSIVE GULF of subjectivity in that thinking. Instead of acknowledging that as subjective, you keep doubling down on what is essentially your personal gut feeling (which, i might point out, has already been proven quite wrong in one notable example this electoral season).
You are entitled to your opinion. I realize you are less optimistic than I am when it comes to realistic political responses, and more pessimistic about the risk of the protests impacting democratic odds. That's perfectly fine. But don't confuse your opinion with objectivity, and certainly don't compare those who disagree with you as 'abusers' (i keep giving you opportunity to amend your language here, but you don't seem like you want to)
I am fine with hurting Democratic chances as a side effect as part of a campaign which will produce better behavior from the Democrats. Sorry, I should have made that clear. I think there’s been a slight (pitifully slight) shift in the Democratic line on Gaza this year, and I think a lot of that is because of how much pro-Palestinian activism was creating real credible threats to them electorally. To me that is fine, that’s a good thing.
It would be great if our system supported a third option, but it doesn’t 😢. Not in this election. I think advocating for reform of the system in the future, and pushing for more humanity from the Democrats, is the best we can do for now.
Anything which actually goes as far as leading to Trump getting elected for real will be an unmitigated catastrophe for the Palestinians (even relative to their existing level of catastrophe which is already hell on earth). I think they might literally all be dead or pushed into Egypt by the end of a Trump term. (They might be at the end of a Harris term, too, but it’s at least less likely).
No. I don’t know how many times I need to keep explaining that this is not what I am saying, or why you keep not listening to me when I do. Do it one more time and I will report you for strawmanning and see if the mods feel that that represents approaching the conversation in bad faith, and either way just end my side of the conversation.
It is highly relevant whether the thing being protested is actually happening.
So e.g. when the uncommitted voters punish the Democrats for their support of Israel, I’m in favor of that. When ozma makes something up about the Democrats that isn’t accurate, which only hurts their chances but doesn’t do anything productive for anyone except Trump, I’m against that.
Why do I keep having to explain this? This is such a weird conversation.
100% agree
I feel like just typing again the same thing I have been typing will not be productive here
Let me try just pure pattern recognition
Is that what I am saying?
Pick one
No, I do not. I can take another stab at explaining it, but first let me ask something: Would you agree that Trump would be an even worse catastrophe for Palestinians (as well as many many other vulnerable people) than a second term of the existing Democratic status quo?
This is it, I think. If it were just about misinformation, we'd be having a different conversation. I don't think anyone here would defend sharing outright false information. But that isn't the only complaint you've had about Ozma; you've complained that they only post bad things about democrats, not just that some of them are incorrect (not even incorrect in entirety, sometimes simply incorrect it its framing, or maybe even factually accurate but simply uncharitable in its framing). I disagree with suggesting that behavior is 'over the line', outside of any alleged misinformation. Similarly, if there are pro-Palestinian protestors at the DNC today, I wouldn't classify those people as ""useful idiots"" (I cannot put enough scare-quotes around this). The democrats have not moved hardly at all on their Israel policy, why wouldn't they be legitimate protestors? I am indignant that I have to keep defending loosely-targeted attacks against protestors coming from you, when you are still being vague about what makes a protest or online protest behavior something that you consider to be "actually leading to Trump getting elected". How the fuck do you measure that? What proof to you have that Ozma or Linkerbann or anyone else is "actually leading to Trump getting elected", or that their building popular discontent around democrats on this issue isn't "helping lead to better behavior from democrats"? Fuck you for accusing me of misrepresenting your argument, when your argument seems completely dependent on some imagined future that only you could possibly see. Honestly, 'actually leading to x' is effectively meaningless. Who the fuck knows if something "actually leads" to something? And it also still incorrectly places the responsibility of the protestor, who is protesting against a policy they would like to see changed, instead of the person in power, who is consistently refusing to take meaningful action toward better policy.
I reject your question.
FFS, how about you apply your logic on your own example, then? If there are massive palestinian protests in the DNC this week that constantly interrupt the proceedings, is that an example of a good or bad protest? Is there additional information that you need to make that determination?
Or maybe online: if there's a user who exclusively posts (factually accurate) information about the Democrat's culpability in the ongoing Palestinian genocide, is that a good or bad protest behavior? What makes it so? How do you know if that behavior "actually leads to x or y outcome" without traveling to the future to see what impact it had?
I'll answer your question with another question: would you agree that supporting any amount of genocide is beyond indefensible? Hint: the answer should be fairly obvious and the question should feel incredibly condescending.
If I wanted to be petty I'd apply your own logic on your own behavior in defending democrats on their inaction. Does mozz's behavior lead to better or worse policy from democrats? Does making excuses for their lack or response improve their policy on Gaza? No? Well fuck, looks like he's just another useful idiot, then. 🤷♂️ Absent any concrete qualifiers i guess anyone or everyone could be a bad-actor
This is totally weird to me. Why would you possibly advocate for any particular course of action, except in terms of what it’s likely to accomplish?
What else would lead you to what you’re deciding to do? Vibes? Allegiance to the group? I’m just lost. I mean of course it’s impossible to know for sure what the outcome will be, but you can at least make an educated guess.
Why else would you do a protest, unless you were aiming to impact the future? That is a serious question.
Hm. So, I just looked over a bunch of Ozma’s recent history and it honestly looks fine. Maybe it’s a little dishonest to characterize one of the main architects of the IRA and the Paris Agreement as “former alum of Blackrock” as if that’s the most relevant thing about him. But I mean basically it’s fine and that’s the only story I have much of any complaint about.
I think most of my complaint about ozma is historical at this point. Back in the day he would do stuff like say Biden betrayed his voters on marijuana policy because he said he would do X Y and Z and then he didn’t. When I pointed out he had done X and Y and tried to do Z but failed, ozma would ignore it and post more memes about how Biden betrayed his voters on marijuana. That to me seems like it implies you don’t give a shit about X Y or Z, or pushing Biden to better marijuana policy, but you do want to try to get Trump elected. That’s weird and counterproductive. To me.
No idea. I’m not even plugged in enough to that culture to know. Probably it’ll be a good thing; anything that’s directly putting pressure on the Democrats and bringing public awareness to the issue will probably be a good thing, because those are two excellent things.
Like I said, I don’t know if there are any people who are doing protests at the DNC who think the answer is to unconditionally blow up support for the Democrats, imply that they caused inflation and they love what Netanyahu’s doing and are cheering him on, and so vote instead for Cornel West. I know they exist on Lemmy, and if they’re in Chicago too, then I would classify those people as useful idiots.
Does that help answer the question?
Dude, I am not asking that as any kind of “gotcha” question or anything. I want to know where you are coming from.
If it’s a choice between blowing up the earth and destroying India or something, and those are the only two possible options, then I would choose destroying India. That’s sort of the type of choice you have to make in modern American politics. If there was a way to lean on the lever to make the blow-up-India explosion smaller, I would definitely support doing that.
If someone was saying, blowing up India is SO BAD that it is indefensible, and so I want to aim a whole bunch of criticism at the blowing up India option (and in a way that seems only in the vaguest of senses to connect with leaning on the lever to make the explosion smaller and in practice seems more likely just to make more likely the blowing-up-earth option), that would alarm the fuck out of me and I would disagree with that person.
I mean doesn’t that make sense? If the alternative is no genocide, then supporting genocide is indefensible. If the alternative is a bigger genocide, then supporting genocide can be an “acceptable” (if you want to call it that) lesser evil. Putting pressure on to reduce the magnitude of the lesser genocide, while also advocating for it to be the lesser and not the greater genocide, sounds perfectly defensible. It sounds right to me.
I doubt anyone from the DNC is on Lemmy. I think the impact of anything I am saying, if any, will be on the voters.
That’s what makes it not make sense to me why shitting on Democrats on Lemmy is supposed to help any Palestinians. It seems more likely to get Trump elected, which will hurt them.
Lmao no it's not, you've been articulating the other reason repeatedly, haven't you? According to you, a great many people protest simply to get Trump elected, right?
There's good news here: there actually is a condition to running interference to democratic support, and it's very well communicated.
The funny thing is that people want to treat the opposition as a monolith, but it's a coalition of various interests just like any other group. If there's a group within the group that is hard-lining a Palestinian liberation movement, the good news is that group likely isn't big enough that you'd need their support. But there's likely some compromise policy that gets the support you need from that larger group without conceding the least practical conditions.
But when you treat them as a monolith, it's easy to complain that nothing you do can appease that group of crazies so they must not be acting in good-faith!
Lol this would be more funny if it weren't so depressing. You don't even see the self-contradiction. It reminds me a little of that conservative minority trope: "our opposition is both laughably weak and existentially dangerous"
Let me try a different tactic: I'll just ask it as a question. Am I supportive of people protesting at the DNC, trying to get the Democrats to improve their policy on Israel by vocally demanding change, and withholding support unless they do?
I've given you the answer as to what my feeling on this is, several times.
Based on your varied responses: sometimes.
It seems to depend a great deal on what you think the likely outcome of that protest is, and if your imagined calculus puts the protest on the wrong side of some imaginary line, suddenly those protestors are 'useful idiots' at best or 'bad-actors' at worst.
Yes. You have grasped it.
If someone's protesting with the most likely result being better outcomes for the Palestinian people (because of useful pressure on the Democratic party, or even better some longer-term reform to our broken system that leaves these as the only two options), then I'm in favor of it.
If someone's protesting in such a way that the most likely result is Trump winning the election and making things 10 times worse for the Palestinians, then I'm against it.
I have no idea why that would be weird or surprising, but yes. There's a little bit of overlap between those two goals, and it's impossible to know the future or the impact of any particular action definitively, but a lot of real-world situations are messy. Them's the breaks.
I describe as "useful idiots" people who are falling for deliberate propaganda which is being deployed to turn them unconditionally against the Democrats, alongside a lot of objectively false criticism, producing only a vague level of improvement to the Democrats' behavior but a strong result of making it more likely that Trump will win, yes. If you're not doing that them I'm fine with you. And I have no idea, as I said, how many (if any) of the DNC protestors will fall into that category in practice. I just know how I categorize people based on the outcomes they're promoting, and I know I see people in that "useful idiot" category on Lemmy. I don't think you're one of them, for the record; that's why I laid out some of the specific accounts I'd describe as more specifically promoting propaganda as opposed to good activism and tried to be specific about it.
Hope this all is helpful; glad we could clear it up.
Jesus christ. Do you consider US culpability in the Palestinian Genocide a part of this 'deliberate propaganda'? At what point does someone protesting against democratic involvement and complacency in Israeli war crimes become someone who is protesting against democrats generally? Is there any grey area that you're willing to acknowledge between these two categorical binaries you've proposed? Can there be a legitimate protest against the democrats, that hurts their odds at winning, but doesn't directly result in a change of policy? If the democrats and the protestors both refuse to bend to the other, is it categorically the protestors' fault if and when trump wins? Even if it isn't apparent that they've lost explicitly because of those protestors? Is it also the fault of the protestors if the democrats adopt a pro-palestinian policy in response to the protestors, AND THEN lose? What i'm gathering from you is that it is ALWAYS the protestors fault for the loss, no matter what the democrats do in response.
Fuck off with your electoral reductionism. The democrats are not helpless here, and they could absolutely be fighting to save palestinian lives and it is 100% their own fault if voters decide they can't support them over it. They are welcome to weigh the electoral calculus to predict how voters might react to their policies but it is completely their own fault if they've chosen the wrong ones.
No
When they stop either conditioning their lack of support on Democratic behavior, or advocating for voting reform or some other strategy which can lead to effective replacement of the Democrats with something better. Either one of those sounds fine and sensible to me, but when they reach the point of saying, functionally, "well if the Democrats aren't doing what I want then I will let the Republicans win even if they are 10 times worse at the things I hold as priorities in the world," that to me stops making sense.
I think if you're a Palestinian who is still alive right now, and a protestor "on your behalf" enables Trump to come to power, and then Trump supports someone who kills you, the idea that the protestor was mad that the Democrats weren't doing enough for you before Trump and Netanyahu cooperated to kill you would be cold comfort. I think this whole "harm reduction isn't worth doing" idea is a childish and entitled reaction from someone who is safely far away from that harm that is very real to very real people in the real world, who have the luxury of poo pooing the entire idea of predicting outcomes in the real world and strategizing how to get them.
Yes, quite a substantial one.
Yes. If it's only hurting their odds of winning, and not even trying to change their policy, then it's suspect to me, but as you said there's quite a substantial grey area and it's not easy to tell ahead of time what protest might result in what outcome. You have to just kind of do what you can and hope that you've worked it out what is going to help the Palestinians and what is going to hurt them, and do the first and not the second as best as you can figure it out.
Not categorically, no. The Democrats have a lot of responsibility, the Republicans and Netanyahu obviously have quite a bit more. The protestors might have some responsibility, but depending on how they were protesting, potentially not much at all.
Honestly, I'm less concerned with assigning "blame" after the fact than I am with strategizing what I could do, or what someone else could do, to get better outcomes. Like I say, I consider this whole thing of it being real important "whose fault it is" when something horrifying happens to be an entitled mentality from someone who's not directly in danger. Mostly when people's families' lives are threatened they're more focused on "how can I keep them safe" than they are on "whose fault will it be if someone comes to power who kills them, and how can I make sure it won't be this person's fault but instead this other person's fault."
So this brings up a really good point. To me, it makes a lot more sense to help the Palestinians by educating the American people about what's going on in Palestine, so the Democrats won't have to decide (to any degree) between enabling war crimes and losing the election.
A lot of protests right now are serving a double purpose -- one, they're bringing awareness to the issue with the American people (and it's working), and two, they're threatening the Democrats electorally and forcing them to change their calculus of what types of Israel policy they should do if they don't want to lose the election from the other direction (and that's working, too). Both of those are good things. I keep saying that, and you keep insisting for some reason that I must have a problem with them. I guess because it makes the point that you're trying to say easier if I am just against all protestors. As I keep saying, I am not.
I don't care whose "fault" it is. I am talking about what actions are good (in terms of creating better outcomes in the future), and what actions are bad (in terms of getting people killed). Like I said, this emphasis on "fault" having any significant importance is the mindset of someone who isn't watching their family getting killed.
Yea, that's the point. But you continuously allude to some "other" type of pro-palestinian protestor, who is putting the pressure squarely on those most directly responsive to their protest, as "useful idiot", or "bad actor", or alluding to them having abuser logic for placing agency on the people currently providing Israel military aid and not, weirdly, on themselves. You even use a double-standard when discussing online behavior: in one instance, the correct way to Do Activism^tm^ is to convince the american public to sway public opinion, and then in the next you hand-wave away activity that is directed at swaying public opinion because 'you doubt the DNC reads your comments on Lemmy'.
That, OR, you're trying to distinguish between types of pro-palestinian protestors using some weird, "that's not gonna help" classification system that's opaque and/or ambiguously defined, so that at any given moment someone saying "democrats haven't done enough" can be cast aside as "other" or "bad actor". It is almost as if you are defending a naieve enthusiasm from water being thrown on it, simply because you value that enthusiasm even while there is a veritable gulf between what is needed from democrats on Israel and what they are doing. No, you may not return to your brunch, look at the shit that still needs cleaning up. Protestors are there to remind libs (who, as you pointed out, are safe from harm themselves no matter what the democratic policy is on Israel) that the work is not yet done. This includes people on Lemmy who are serving you reminders that things continue to be shit, despite what little democrats have actually done.
And it's not even like the Democrats can't, also, campaign for that change being worked toward. You're pretending as if the desired policy must grow from grass-roots before democrats can take action, but the democrats already know what the right thing to do is, it is just politically inconvenient to have to do it right now. A huge part of the problem is that the Democrats actively use the bully pulpit to deflect blame and run cover for Israel - when they should be using it to make the case to the american public why things need to change.
Literally anything to disembody the problem away from your personal electoral goals, while also claiming to support the issue being raised. It is the quintessential 'white moderate' take that MLK discusses in Letter from Birmingham, but you're so blinded by self-confidence that you couldn't possibly see it.
Okay so I just deleted a whole bunch of stuff. Honestly, let's just get to the root of it.
No - I meant you. You're safe from harm. You can advocate for something that might get Trump elected, and I think it's safe to say no fighter jets will commence carpet bombing anywhere where your family is, if it happens.
I'm safe from harm too. I've flown close enough to see little flashes in the distance, I briefly dated someone who grew up in a refugee camp, I've spent a little bit of time staying with someone who was captured and tortured at one point in his life. That kind of secondhand stuff is as close as I've come. I don't want to come any closer. I have my safe, privileged life. But I've experienced this stuff second hand; I've been friends with people who were crippled by these policies and decisions, had the arc of their lives changed without their consent.
You keep bringing it back to shit that doesn't matter. I don't care whose fault it is. I don't care what you think is opaque or ambiguously defined, or what frameworks you feel like are too complicated to want to spend the mental effort on, so you use simple ones instead. I care about dying people, and how we change it; what's going to work, and what isn't.
I can dig up 10 different times when I've been doing exactly that, on Lemmy. Do you want me to? If it's useful for you to hear it, I'm happy to show it to you.
I thought about it for a while, and I think the reason we're not seeing eye to eye is this: The Democrats are not my friends. No one in Washington is my friend. When I'm saying, I want the Democrats to win this upcoming election, it's purely because that will keep some people alive who will die under Trump. There's a very few people in Washington, of any party, that I actually think have any kind of human standing on anything, that I would "support" in the sense of hey I like this person, I want them in charge. Kamala Harris isn't one of them.
I feel like -- tell me if I'm wrong -- you're interpreting all this that I am saying like I "support" Kamala Harris, and you're trying to get me not to. Like I think what she's doing is sufficient and you need to debunk that. You can stop. I don't. Put it this way: If one of my neighbors regularly made phone calls and ordered people to be killed, I wouldn't hang out with them. That's pretty much everyone in power in Washington: Biden, Harris, McCain, Trump, Adam Schiff, you get the idea. I look at them all (again, with a very small number of exceptions) as almost like these dangerous robots who somehow have this unimaginable power.
I'm not saying that I think, yes let's change the system and get these fuckin maniacs out of power and also let's Kamala Harris win this particular election, because of any of the stuff you are debunking in your message. Most of your message, I agree with. I am saying blah blah also let's Kamala Harris win this particular election because according to the only other available alternative, a whole fuck a lot (more -- much more) people will die. That's not imaginary -- it is real as you or I. Figuring out how to make a non performative change and what will work and what won't is important.
If you show me a strategy "hey here's how we can get better than the Democrats in power" I will start supporting it instantly. It feels like -- again, tell me if I'm wrong -- you think that what you're advocating is that, and I'm refusing to support it and so I must love Democrats or something. That's not the case. I just don't think what you are advocating will work (definitely not in the short run which is when most of the Palestinians will die). If you want to talk about, why not, how can we get something that will work, let's rap. But -- I don't know how many times I have to say it -- stop telling me how important it is to arrive at something better than the Democrats. You can silence that, and move on from it, or just keep wasting your time typing it over and over again, I guess, if you want to, but that's what you're doing when you type it.
Doesn't that make sense? Or no? You tell me.
No, and I find this reduction to be a huge part of the problem with most of the political discourse on Lemmy. There's this intense urge to reduce or interpret discourse into 'support' or 'don't support', usually electorally and usually as a strict binary. To most Americans, the most interaction they have with politics is voting, sometimes even just for the general. IDGAF if anyone 'supports' Kamala/Joe/Dems, whatever that means. I view who people end up voting for as almost incidental to the broader direct action that I think is the true driver of political change.
That's not to suggest you're making a reference to that binary - you're clearly speaking more broadly. But even the way you're interpreting direct action through its "actual" electoral result is frustrating. Because the people protesting (even the people on lemmy who seem (to you) dead-set against democrats) contain multitudes, and most of them will end up voting for an option that's not perfectly aligned to their principles in the end (because there are none who are). That's not the point of direct action. You (or maybe not you specifically, but liberals generally) complain that people repeatedly casting criticism without proposing an electoral solution are just fanning the flames of division, but what they're doing is creating a kind of "positive tension" within the electorate that the democrats will eventually need to address if it's allowed to grow. Democrats can't do x or y policy change because "it just isn't popular", but it isn't popular because people aren't being confronted with the results of the policy that needs changing. Protesting is a part of that, but so is posting on social media about it. Those are doing the same thing.
But what I specifically take issue with is your objection to protests that have real and legitimate standing, simply on some theoretical calculation where policy doesn't change but the damage to voter enthusiasm remains, and the "fault" **implicit ** in that judgement. I realize you've made explicit statements of affirmation toward Palestinian protests generally, but you've still defended this abstracted way of assessing advisable/in-advisable protests independent from the 'righteousness' of the cause itself. From your perspective, it seems that even a protest that is completely justified in its cause can be viewed negatively (and liable to accusation, labels and insults) if your personal judgment has determined it will only cause damage and not result in policy change. It's a form of dismissal that comes from an intense sense of paternalism that rhetorically allows you to identify yourself with the cause but avoids the uncomfortable work of reflecting on your own complicity. Even if you object to that complicity on grounds that you do direct action yourself, blah blah blah - you're also vocally defending a system that enables that type of subjugation you're fighting against. (I can already hear you objecting to this framing on the grounds that you want the system to change, and I'll just say it now that i'm not talking in abstraction. I'm saying you're defending the electoral system by insisting we must conduct ourselves in a way so we can preserve your desired electoral outcome)
Funny. I don't care about whose fault 'it' is, either! I don't care if you've judged a form of protest as ineffectual or not, even. I care about dying people, and the real ways in which our system of power enables and supports the killing of those people. I think the point of direct action is to tie the policy outcomes of the system to the people acting on that system's behalf in order to pressure them, and tempering that direct action around preserving a desired electoral result is antithetical to that rhetorical goal. You cannot pressure political agents into change if you're undercutting the protest by implicitly assigning electoral responsibility to that protest. I know 'you don't care' about fault, but you're still drawing a causality between the protest and the electoral outcome, when the explicit goal of that protest is to draw causality between the electoral outcome and the policy.
No, that is not what i'm advocating. It sure would be great if we had a better system, but placing our political goals behind that fantastic revolutionary goal first is just a way of deferring our problems to a different time, a better season. We have the system we have, and trying to change that system (even simply influence the outcome of that system) without damaging it is like trying to box with both hands tied behind your back. Democrats won't do their job better until they're made to swim in their own shit, without trying to white-wash it or rhetorically dance around their own complicity in them. Protest helps to reflect the impact of those policies back on the office, and a side effect of that is damaging their electoral chances.
I think judging a form of protest based on its hypothetical electoral impact isn't just pointless, it neuters and subverts it. It isn't 'abuser logic' to assign responsibility for electoral losses on the policies being protested - if anything it's holding the 'abuser' responsible for the harm they themselves are committing. By flipping the responsibility of that loss on protestors it rhetorically excuses democrats for their shit policy.
I hope that makes sense.