“Talent just defines what you do,” Rincewind said. “It doesn’t define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.”

He thought a bit more and added, “That’s what makes sourcerers so powerful. The important thing is to know what you really are.”

There was a pause full of philosophy.

“Rincewind?” said Conina, kindly.

“Hmm?” said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his head.

“You really are an idiot. Do you know that?”

-Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

you only think otherwise because liberals were engaging in mass genocide denial and apologia when it was their team doing it.

Well, no. Actually I think it is accelerated because the Dems engaged in performative humanitarian efforts, which while largely ineffective still presented a minor barrier to the complete genocide. Trump on the other hand has called for Israel to “finish the problem”, and said that the Gaza strip just needs to be “cleaned out”. Beyond that Trump has said things to the effect of “US will own the Gaza Strip”, and is pushing for the displacement all remaining Palestinians, which is by definition escalating the situation to a declared ethnic cleansing, which Trump has attempted to mitigate by saying is only “a small number of people relative to things that have taken place over the decades and centuries.”. His administration has even been directly consulted regarding airstrikes and said that “All hell will break loose” on the enemies of Israel and the United States

And given all of that, it is fairly clear that he is throwing the full weight of the US government behind the genocide, without even the faintest facade of decency or “humanitarian efforts”. So while it’s obvious that the Dems were still allowing the genocide to move forward, it was being ever so slightly hampered by their desire to “appear humane”. Trump has removed those final barriers and now it is accelerating.

And you don’t have to take my opinion for it, you can take it from the warmongers mouth. Israel’s far-right former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who quit Netanyahu’s war cabinet earlier this year to protest the Gaza ceasefire deal, confirmed the synergy between Trump’s thinking and extreme conservatives in Israel, saying on Xitter “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship” in response to Trump’s proposed plans for Gaza.

Beyond that, in the United States, Trump has attempted to silence dissent against the genocide. From attempting to strong arm colleges into forcibly stopping protests on campus, to deporting any foreign nationals who speak out, to instructing the Justice department to “aggressively prosecute pro-Palestinian activists”.

Which kinda torpedoes the claim that “Trump has been better for Palestine”, especially on the ground of “now liberals are actually acknowledging what’s happening.” I don’t really see how a group of people who have no political power, and are actively being silenced from using their freedom of speech and assembly, could be an improvement at all. Doubly so when the Trump administration isn’t even asking Israel to pretend to not be committing a genocide, but rather encouraging it.

Which kind of puts us at an impasse. Because the logic of your claim that “Trump is actually better for Gaza” sounds… insane to me. And even if your logic was correct, I don’t see the value in promoting Trump now, given that he is still perpetrating and encouraging genocide and needs to be stopped just as urgently.

But given your world views, I think you kind of need your rational to be true just to protect your sense of self. Because if it isn’t, then you would have to reconcile the fact that your efforts may have played a part in making things worse for the LGBTQ+ community, women, minorities, the world economy, the education system in the US, privacy laws, and the few Palestinians in Gaza that otherwise could have been saved (if only so the Dems could save face), to name just a few.

Here is the kicker however, despite your rather colorful accusations towards my character, I don’t think you are out to intentionally cause harm. We are both limited in our abilities to affect change, and (I hope) are doing the best we can with the knowledge we have to make the world a better place.

So maybe instead of assuming that “lesser evil voters” are “untrustworthy” and seeing them as your enemies, recognize that many of them share the same goal as you. Recognize that we need to work collectively towards these goals. And if you think there is a better way, speak up! I’d be glad to listen, especially if you have a good plan moving forward instead of trying to rehash decisions long since cast. But don’t think listening is somehow admitting defeat either. As far as I’m concerned, we are not enemies and we are not competing to prove who is “more responsible for the world’s problems”. We are all going to need to work together if we are serious about making this world a better place for everyone.

I get why you are pissed off, and have every right to be. How both parties of the American government have treated the Palestinian genocide is beyond reprehensible, immoral, inhumane, and frankly disgusting. And that is only a small slice of the harm caused by the US across the globe. All of which I condemn wholeheartedly.

But Trump is actively making it harder for anyone to help slow, stop, or otherwise prevent additional unnecessary death and suffering. So while yes, the genocide would have continued under the Dems, there may yet have been innocent lives that could have been saved that will now be lost. When faced with saving 1 out of a 100, or 0, I believe that 1 life is worth saving. I even have the audacity to hope we could have saved more than just 1 out of 100.

I don’t intend to give up on anyone, but I also have to accept that my power is limited. So doing what I can to prevent the genocide from accelerating, in the hopes that it gives even one more child a chance to escape, is worth it to me. Maybe it isn’t the best strategy, but it is the best I could do with my time and ability to affect change to the best of my knowledge. I certainly would have preferred if the US electorate had united to solve these problems long ago, and we could have used our collective force for unambiguous good, but when even my parents won’t listen to me on the changes I think the country needs to make, steering the entire country in the right direction is beyond me at this point. Despite that fact, I still can’t just bury my head in the sand and say “sorry Palestinian child, I could have done everything in my power, kicking and screaming, to give you a snowballs chance in hell. But instead I felt it was more important to give up to the feelings of despair”.

I get that a lot of folks, yourself included I assume(?), believe that abstaining from voting or voting 3rd party would send a strong message that we will not be complicit in the countries support of a genocidal regime. And I can see why that would be your strategy, maybe in 100+ years that kind of strategy would actually amount to more saved lives, I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that in the short term, our collective inability to keep Trump out of office has made many things worse for many people, minority groups most of all, and has made sure that the Palestinian genocide has only accelerated with the enthusiastic support of the US government under the Trump administration.

But with all that said, I hope that you haven’t given up either, and are with me in doing the best you can to help anyone you can to the best of your abilities.

You’re not wrong. But if I had cancer, and a doctor gave me a way to delay the inevitable, I would take it. Maybe it can’t be fixed, maybe it’s totally fubar. But I don’t have it in me to just give up and willingly let people suffer without a fight.

I mean… I’m not in love with the idea of “blocking movement to the left”, but I sure as fuck would take that over the freespin to the right we are on for now. Like, I get that Dem’s need to step their game way the fuck up because you don’t win elections by being the “second worst choice”… but still. If we didn’t want accelerated fascism…

deleted by creator

We all wanted rocky road ice cream, and they gave us vanilla

I feel like you missed an important point here. We didn’t all want rocky road, we argued quite a bit on what ‘‘new and progressive’’ flavor we wanted. Some people even wanted vanilla.

The MAGAts won because they were united in not caring what flavor they got, so long as certain folks weren’t allowed in the ice cream shop.

I absolutely see your point, even employed more or less the same logic when “deciding” who to cast my vote for.

Though I don’t know if I can fully agree with the logic that having no viable alternative somehow removes the reality that it was still a sacrifice. If you need to sacrifice a pawn to win a game off chess, you still had to sacrifice that pawn. Only in this case the pawn was a group of people that we as a nation theoretically collectively could have helped but didn’t.

This isn’t the only case mind you, voting for Obama meant voting “for” drone strikes that killed children. Being a voter in the United States means constantly trying to collectively push for harm reduction as we all collectively agree that “we had no real say in the horrors wrought in our names”.

I guess it just makes me wonder why we all are so sure all that this harm is “required”. When in all reality, we could stand united against it at any time and push for a better world.

But instead trying to do so gets you told you support Fascism and are just causing “leftist in-fighting”, because the largest semi-left-ish voting bloc says there is no other way. So you just shut up and fall in line lest something worse happens.

It is this cold logic that made me only talk about how bad Trump would be on Gaza, and vote for Kamala, knowing full well that I was still abandoning Palestinians to their fate.

Anyways, sorry for the rant. I agree whole heartedly that voting for Kamala was the only option to stop Trump, and that doing so was the least horrific option most American’s could agree on. The reality of those facts just make me sick to my stomach sometimes.

ETA: To clarify, knowing you have no chance of winning and still pushing for voters to abstain or go 3rd party is also sacrificing minorities regardless of if it was done for moral or strategic reasons, just as you said. I guess I just get mad at the whole world when our options are so shit.

I mean, I voted for Kamala, I pushed for the harm reduction ‘‘best hand available’’ strategy… but like… it was predicated on strategically sacrificing Palestine for the ‘‘greater good’’.

Sure, the alternative was sacrificing Palestine plus a bunch of additional minorities and at risk groups…

But it was still sacrificing a minority group. Less of a braindead take, more of a ‘‘you caught us, we did indeed try to strategically sacrifice as few minorities as possible while abandoning those we thought we had no chance to save even if logically a large scale united front would have potentially meant sacrificing no one’’ take.

I still believe it was our best play, but only because a terrifying percentage of folks left of MAGA felt it was a necessary sacrifice.

I own a pair of these. Depending on the game, they add a lot of value to my Steamdeck. But for everyday computing, they are actually very impractical.

Just like Lemmy more.

I do miss the ability to find conversations about any niche topic I want.

But the conversations on Lemmy are more genuine/authentic and the platform is run on principal/morals. An enshittified platform based on greed and inundated with bots could never compete.

Put another way, Reddit feels like I’m talking to the ‘‘internet’’, Lemmy feels like I’m talking to people.

Source?

Again, you know you can’t back up these claims.

And I believe that most people who “enter illegally” are those who can not obtain the resources to do so through official channels. Full stop.

And given that the Justice Department reports that illegal immigrants commit less crimes than citizens on average , the data supports the belief that illegal immigrants are more likely to only commit the crime of crossing illegally. Which begs the question if we should allow an easier and more supported path for these otherwise innocent and impoverished people to come into the country legally.

But we have veered very far into your feelings at this point (which sadly the facts don’t care about), and you keep making unsupported claims to emotion, so it’s probably time for you to go to bed. Eh champ? There will still be human rights for you to violate in the morning.

edit: It’s cute you dropped the victims of gang violence point when you realized your points would lead to more gang violence. It’s tough being you huh?

Source?

Just kidding, you couldn’t prove that claim even if you wanted too…

Of course I care about the victims of gang violence. Only a monster wouldn’t. But many of the asylum seekers who’s rights are being deprived are trying to escape gang violence, and are instead being sent right back to it. Many of those being deported are not gang members, but innocent people who lived in the US their whole lives and are being sent to countries or prisons where they will be subjected to gang violence.

Only when it’s convenient for your point do you bother to suddenly discover your compassion. What a great way to play with an appeal to emotion to justify dismissing the right to due process.

Here is the difference between you and me, I believe even gang members deserve their day in court. That we should all try our best to ensure the innocent are protected.

We can’t do that by just deporting people without due process. We will drop balls we could have caught, mistakenly send innocent people to jails they don’t belong in, to countries where they will be subjected to violence.

If they are guilty of gang violence, then let them suffer the consequences of their actions. But don’t let the government just throw out a “trust me bro, they were illegal gang members frfr”.

Civil rights have to be for everyone, or they can be taken away from anyone.

Because the number is immaterial to the question at hand. It could be 1, or 100, or 1 million. It doesn’t change the fact that trying to argue semantics over human rights is inherently inhumane. Nor does it change the fact that these are not just numbers on a spreadsheet.

But frankly, I know you know that. There was never any real value to you asking people for it.

The fact that you ignored my point about Trump’s removal of legitimate ways to seek asylum, which undermines the validity of any dataset that could answer your question, is proof enough that you were never asking in good faith. Or do you reckon it was a coincidence that you didn’t want a source for that bit?

https://www.uscis.gov/records/genealogy/genealogy-notebook/researching-deportation-records

Though you will have to submit a request to get the records. Shouldn’t take too long.

You didn’t answer my question btw…

187,420 and counting. Did the inhumanity of your view change now that you have a number?

I’m assuming you are conveniently ignoring Trump’s executive orders that severely limited options for seeking asylum and instead are asking people to search innumerable records to distract from the inhumanity of your position?

Can’t deport asylum seekers if seeking asylum is illegal after all.

May those who find themselves with the power to judge your fate have the mercy and compassion you so clearly lack.

I dunno, if you can laugh at yourself, I think Johnny Bravo is far from the worst comparison someone could make about you.

We as in me? Didn’t think I was. Even specified that I didn’t care about the specific “who”.

We as in the royal we? I reckon because the post was making a point about not romanticizing past presidents in the face of our current super awful kiddy diddler and you took offense to the specificity?

Well, it was literally mentioned in the post. Unlike… Kamala and Israel.

And you responded to my comment regarding it with random facts trying to soften how terrible it is, historically speaking.

So if we are talking obsessive behavior… Not sure it’s mine that qualifies.