My disenchantment is based on how differently the current administration reacts to 2 conflicts: Ukraine-Russia and Gaza-Israel, in the latter supporting Israel’s indiscriminate war against Palestinian civilians with the excuse to exterminate Hamas. This post summarizes my disappointment after finally accepting that the US is not the benevolent hegemon I thought it was and how even the supposed American liberals, the democrats, while publicly calling the Israeli government to restrain itself, keep sending them every weapon they ask for and protect them at the UN with our veto. I’m now politically orphan.
I always thought America stood against bullies, America was the great nation, a country where we help others protect their human rights, fight authoritarianism of any kind, be it left, right, religious… the way we did with Ukraine against Russia. Ukraine fits here because authoritarian Putin decided he couldn’t accept an independent Ukraine anymore: I’m all for sending Ukraine the means they need to defend themselves to deny authoritarian Russia a successful occupation. The Ukrainian war is not a morally gray one like the ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, this one is black and white. Putin has to be stopped. America is here on the right side of history supporting Ukraine.
However, in Gaza, America doesn’t act like the benign hegemon I thought we were, but like a external power supporting a client state: Our government supports the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians in the name of fighting terrorism and calls everybody that questions the narrative that Israel is fighting against terrorists an antisemite, yet ignoring that Gaza has been an open air prison for 20 years and that these conditions make it ideal for fanatics and hate to thrive.
No, I’m not an Islamist (I don’t care about any religion) and no, I don’t want Israel to be wiped off the planet and no, I don’t have anything against Jews or Israelis, and no, I don’t deny the holocaust and the 6 millions of Jews who were murdered. It’s ridiculous to have to say this before even criticizing Israel.
America loves to support Israel’s right to defend itself, yet this same right in practice means carte blanche to kill Palestinian civilians as well, destroying their hospitals and their capability to function as a normal society. The Israeli army and government are not behaving any better than the Hamas fanatics that invaded Israel and killed 1300 Israeli civilians, the Israeli army has killed far more Palestinian civilians than Hamas did when they invaded Israel, yet simply saying what I did, simply comparing both sides like I did or calling for a cease fire gets you labeled an antisemite, hoping that simply uttering those words will make everybody rally against you and justify killing Palestinians.
A life is a life everywhere. All lives matter.
No, not every Palestinian is a terrorist, yet the media and the Israeli and American right insist in no making distinctions, make no effort to create a separate Palestinian state and keep not questioning the conditions of deprivation that will make another violent reaction against Israel in 20 years possible, when the current Palestinian children, now bombed and homeless, grow up and reach maturity, accusing Hamas of hiding behind civilians, ignoring that the policies of the Israeli right created them.
And our government does nothing to stop that. Worse, keeps arming and protecting the other side, the more powerful side.
Where do I go now?
I’ve actively spoken against the democratic party since I was in middle school. I voted for Obama, Hillary, and Biden. I am disgusted with all of thwm, but the only way to get the best person is to always support the least awful one. When the GOP is no longer viable, the power Vaccum will be filled.
Iceland or New Zealand.
The USA has firmly entrenched mechanisms (e.g. legal gerrymandering and the electoral college) that ensure third parties can’t survive. If you truly can’t stand either party, your only practical recourse is to leave. I outlined the best two alternatives up above.
Oof I’ve been there. It’s rough having your worldview turned upside down. The lucky thing for you is that you’re not the first one to go through this.
I’d say before you go anywhere, try to understand why you believed in the Democratic Party in the first place. Books like Manufacturing Consent, podcasts like Citations Needed, or outlets like Fair.org can help. I think developing a critical lens for political media is a key step towards building a new understanding of the world.
Beyond that it’s important to understand that politics can’t be limited to how you vote. Change in the US has largely been a direct consequence of mass movements composed of well coordinated organizations. So, if you’re willing to put in real effort to participate and learn, join a member run political organization like DSA. That is if you’re open to democratic socialist political perspectives :P
You’re naive.
Ukraine wasn’t attacking Russia before they invaded. It’s a completely different situation.
Gaza has been attacking Israel for it’s entire existence, and far worse since Hamas took over 15 years ago. The Gaza strip was literally created by an invasion from Egypt (and four other countries) when they invaded Israel the day after Israel declared independence.
You call Gaza an open air prison, but it has a wall to another country (Egypt) who doesn’t want to help these people either because they realize that this isn’t actually a Palestinian vs Israeli war.
As with most things, you just need to follow the money. This war isn’t being funded by Palestinians on that side, they’re far too poor for that. So who’s bankrolling them, and what do they want? It’s Iran.
Iran sure as hell doesn’t give a shit about Palestinians independence. I’ll tell you that for free.
The reason why western governments support Israel is for that exact reason, they’re fighting a proxy war against Iran.
You don’t fix this situation by backing off support for Israel though, all that would result in is the mass killing of Israelis, and you’d be complaining the government isn’t doing enough to keep Israeli’s safe.
I’d like a citation on the funding from Iran. Iran is mostly Shi’ite, and doesn’t generally get involved in Arab or Sunni affairs. And this article from 2021 (prior to the current conflict) points out that the bulk of Hamas funding comes from Qatar and Turkey, respectively.
This Wikipedia article that’s been around for more than a decade covers a lot of info and has references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict?wprov=sfla1
Gaza has been attacking Israel for it’s entire existence, and far worse since Hamas took over 15 years ago.
Israel has been attacking Gaza for about the same period of time too. Occupations are an act of war.
Congratulations, you’ve now figured out it’s a war.
In your opinion, should Israel or Palestine surrender? Because if one side doesn’t surrender, the other option to end a war is literally just killing everyone on the other side.
Uh… Neither? Usually peace is preferable in cases like this. So from that perspective it’s Israel and its far-right government that has sworn against a Palestinian state multiple times that should back down, but nobody needs to surrender to anyone.
Peace treaties are just a nicer name for one side surrendering. Go look up the Paris Peace Treaties (Germany surrendering), or the Treaty of San Francisco (Japan surrendering), hell even the Paris Peace Accords were just the US surrendering in Vietnam. Go read the terms of these agreements, it’s pretty obvious they’re surrenders.
Are you really that naive?
Peace treaties are just a nicer name for one side surrendering.
You’re either being willfully obtuse or have zero knowledge of history. Either way you’re using a very convenient definition of surrendering. If you interpret the aggressor pulling out as surrendering then yeah a lot of wars will end in one surrender or another, but that’s not how that works.
What about the winter war?
The problem is we have a First Past the Post system. This essentially means that you get to vote for one or the other, and refusal to vote means the one you like even less gets more voting power.
To complicate matters, this particular upcoming vote is actual Nazi-style fascists (down to quoting Hitler) who would fund the Israel/Hamas war vs Dems (and Republicans) who are funding the Israel/Hamas war. Basically, it’s a really bad time to push for a third party when FPTP is still the main hurdle.
So I would encourage you to look at your local races and your state races to change things from the bottom up. These local candidates are often not beholden to the whims of the DNC. I’m not a fan of Dems, either, but I am also under no illusions that if I don’t help them win in 2024, we’ll wind up with a fascist dictator and lose our ability to meaningfully vote at all.
I believe we can dump both the Dems/DNC and the Fascists/RNC, but we have to vote strategically to get there in several cycles; it’s not going to happen overnight, and the sad reality is a lot of people are going to die in Gaza no matter which option we choose.
ETA: As someone smarter said, “Your vote is a chess move, not a love letter.”
Get involved with the DSA
Spanish PM openly supports Palestine and said all the right things out loud. Just move there.
Fix the political system by supporting IRV. Until then vote for the best offered that can win. Be involved in the party prices too so the best is better then it is…
Keep in mind that both the Palestinians and Iran and Russia enabled Hamas and are enabling similar entities in Lebanon and Syria. Hamas is the government of the Gaza Strip. They are heavily armed and well entrenched with something like 40000 solders on their side. Until the Palestinian death numbers reach 40000 the Hamas sourced numbers really could be all combatants as they are not broken out nor are they third party numbers so who knows. They also do not care about the rules of war… they will murder anyone. The war would not have stared without Hamaa, Palastinians, and their supporters making it so. So hold all of these parties to the same standards you hold Israel.
That said yes. Seems like Israel is over the top. Then again look at what the US did after 9/11 and about 3000 killed. How do we justify that. Consider if 30000 were killed in 9/11. This is roughly proportionally what Israel experienced. What would you have them do instead.
Only responding to the IRV portion of your comment, and repeating myself from elsewhere in this thread:
Instant runoff voting is terrible and more complicated than people think, and I will never support it. It’s a false improvement whose adoption will discourage meaningful change.
If it’s a single winner election and you want a simple improvement, use approval voting. If you want to take on a little complexity for some further improvement, use delegable yes/no voting. I have one idea for further improvement, if anyone is really interested in voting methods.
I think you can choose almost any system and be better then what we have.
We have IRV for some offices. I love it. Biggest problem ranking 6 or 7 candidates takes some time and looks complicated.
Frankly open to other systems. Proportion representation seems interesting for example in some cases.
I want to just agree with what many have said and reiterate - if there is a party that is actively trying to remove people’s ability to vote, surely not voting would play directly into that?
That aside, I hear you. We’re in a tough place right now
Don’t let a single issue cloud your judgement. Vote green, independent, or don’t vote, or suck it up and don’t let single issues decide your vote. I think if we all honestly looked back on our lives, there are at least a handful of things that could make us hate ourselves. Or others to hate us for. I don’t think anyone should be judged by their worst (to a point at least).
The continuing lack of exposure to the Ukraine/Russia war I find far more disturbing. The lack of urgency about the status of the climate I find far more disturbing. There are for more issues even at home that I find more disturbing.
By not voting for the lesser evil, you’re helping the greater evil. Badee badee badeep, that’s democracy!
I’m truly in the same boat as you.
“You need to push this button that kills innocent people, to counteract the people pushing the button that kills more innocent people.” really seems to be the only argument anyone can muster for why I should vote at all in this system.
Participating in a system that only aspires to offer different numbers of murdered Innocents isn’t a very morally compelling stance, and because there is no vote on individual stances of a candidate, any vote is a blanket endorsement of ALL of the candidate’s stances.
Fuck this country.
You’re not pressing the button yourself, you’re voting for which one gets pressed. By not voting, you’re basically saying “I don’t care which button gets pressed, even if one of them is objectively worse”.
It’s a shitty situation to be in but unfortunately there are lots of people in your country who are rabid about pushing that worse button.
Yeah. You can protest against the candidate you voted for and it is fine to vote for someone in a general election you voted against in the primary.
And it is important to participate because the loss of a vote may affect other elections down the ticket who are better representing you.
You are literally pushing a button on a voting machine that says, “put this person in charge of the weapons, who says they’re going to use the weapons to kill people”.
Just because both buttons you can choose result in dead people doesn’t make the dead caused by one more okay than the dead caused by the other.
Both buttons result in dead people, but one button results less dead people.
The choices suck, but the less shitty choice should be pretty obvious.
Of course the less shitty choice between the 2 main candidates is obvious. There are also other choices, and some of those are even less shitty. Arguing for only ever voting for the less shitty of the top-2 just means nothing will ever change. You go vote for murderers if you want, just don’t tell yourself it makes you a good person because you pick the less prolific murderer.
“I voted for Goebbels instead of Hitler, so I’m a hero!”
Go vote for non-murderer if you want, just don’t tell yourself it makes you a good person because you pick the one who can’t possibly win and let the bigger murder win.
“I ignored the shitty reality of the situation, so I’m a hero!”
The only practical course of action would be to vote for and support progressive candidates who are morally and ethically consistent in an effort to change the make-up of the democratic party.
You can use resources like opensecrets.org to investigate where candidates get their money for campaigns, which will tell you the truth about whether they believe the things they say or just say them because they know it’s what people want to hear.
There’s no way of improving a democracy without participating in it, even when the conditions are less than ideal.
There are two things you do when voting in a two-party system:
- Vote to keep out the candidates that would do real damage
- Vote to communicate your preferences for candidates with platforms that match your priorities
I know it seems like a third party is the only solution to your current situation, but it’s not. The solution is to keep the idiots out by voting Democrat in general elections, and then to vote in primaries or with your campaign contribution dollars for Democrats who match your views on Israel/Palestine.
You might also support candidates who are in favor of voting reform, including things like ranked choice voting, which also happen to be people who currently run as Democrats.
Yes, exactly. The short term solution requires that people recognize the greater evil in the room and defend what little progress we’ve made. We can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Our first part the post voting system is horrible, but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system, priority 1 is exactly what you said.
Choosing not to vote for Democrats because they’re not perfect is choosing to step back and give republicans a free ticket to burn all of our progress to the ground. It’s naïve to think otherwise.
And honestly, that naïveté is holding us back from actually addressing issues like israel vs palestine. Enoguh splintering among progressives will by default give control back to republican leaders who would happily sit back and watch palestinians die while lying about it and blaming it on anything anyone else.
but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system
We also need to try and expose as many people to the alternatives as possible. Anyone who can should be trying to utilize RCV. Trying to figure out what game(s) to play at game night? Use RCV. There are plenty of free apps out there to facilitate.
The more people who use it, see it’s benefits and that it’s not as complicated as people make it out to be, the faster it will happen.
Instant runoff voting is terrible and more complicated than people think, and I will never support it. It’s a false improvement whose adoption will discourage meaningful change.
If it’s a single winner election and you want a simple improvement, use approval voting. If you want to take on a little complexity for some further improvement, use delegable yes/no voting. I have one idea for further improvement, if anyone is really interested in voting methods.
STAR voting offers the same benefit of “vote for as many as you want” without Approval Voting’s drawback of being unable to rank your preferences. I have yet to find a better method. It is, of course, miles better than IRV, both in complexity to the voter (rate candidates 0-5 stars) and simplicity of tallying the result (two steps).
Any thoughts on the alternative I mentioned, DYN, described here?
At first blush, that sounds really complicated for the voter to understand what happens to their ballot. Potentially delegating part of their vote to one of the candidates? That’s going to be a hard sell. Sure, the direct mechanics for voting seems simple, but the system that ballot would go into feels unlikely to lead to better satisfaction than STAR, and might even lead to less informed voters. Even reading your link several times, I’m still not sure I correctly understand how the delegated votes are supposed to work, because I keep going back to “Why would anyone want that?”
My takeaway is either what we value in a democratic voting system is significantly different in some key area, or I don’t understand how the delegation in DYN is supposed to work, but I suspect it’s the former. I’m not a political scientist or a voting system enthusiast though, I just happen to like STAR.
It’s not ‘terrible’, but it does have issues just like every other voting system. It’s significantly better than what we have now.
Approval voting simplifies things but also has limitations because it removes any weight/preference people may have. If 55% vote for A, and B, but prefer A over B, and 45% vote B and C, but prefer C over B… B wins but 55% of the voters preferred A. Same exact issue you’re raising with RCV but occurs more often with approval than RCV.
Keep fighting the good fight, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
☝️☝️☝️ this ☝️☝️☝️
Nobody gets their way 100% in democracy. Vote in the primaries or try and run… Then vote from who’s on the field.
75 million voters think a 91-count indicted, authoritarian, future-convicted felon with Nazi-istic rhetoric is better than anyone else running. And make no mistake, he would have done the same bullshit, or worse, with respect to Israel, or Ukraine, or whatever.
I don’t care how disenchanted anyone is with the Democratic Party. If that moron is still allowed on the ballot, then the US is facing an existential crisis in the 2024 election. It’s time to put this Trump nonsense to bed. And the only way to do that is to elect people who are against Trump and are for free and fair elections.
It’s absolutely mind boggling that the bar for election is “supports a free and fair election”, and we’ve reached that stage in such a short time.
The death spiral is a steep one.
