_portrait.jpg){kind=link}
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
1069 points (92.3% liked)
Leopards Ate My Face
9670 readers
1585 users here now
Rules:
- The mods are fallible; if you've been banned or had a post/comment removed, please appeal.
- Off-topic posts will be removed. If you don't know what "Leopards ate my Face" is, try reading this post.
- If the reason your post meets Rule 1 isn't in the source, you must add a source in the post body (not the comments) to explain this.
- Posts should use high-quality sources, and posts about an article should have the same headline as that article. You may edit your post if the source changes the headline. For a rough idea, check out this list.
- For accessibility reasons, an image of text must either have alt text or a transcription in the post body.
- Reposts within 1 year or the Top 100 of all time are subject to removal.
- This is not exclusively a US politics community. You're encouraged to post stories about anyone from any place in the world at any point in history as long as you meet the other rules.
- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service apply.
Also feel free to check out:
Icon credit C. Brück on Wikimedia Commons.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I remember arguing for days, in 2024, that the whole "Democrats are bad because Palestine" thing was clearly a psyop by Russian bots trying to mess with the election. I really need to improve my persuasion skills. Like by a lot.
Liberals: I can fix that voter, I just need to find the right logic combo in my persuasion.
Also Liberals: if voters were rational they would vote for the lesser evil.
Keep lecturing people, I am sure it will work this time around.
"People who oppose genocide can't possibly be human: they must be foreigners"
You guys I just as fascist as MAGA you know
By "Palestine" do you mean "supporting genocide in Palestine"?
Pretty sure Democrats doing nothing to stop the genocide in gaza was a factor to their detriment in the election, bots aside
USians have been OK with crimes against humanity for decades. If Palestine had anything to do with Trump winning, then that's due to propaganda, not them organically giving a fuck.
But why are we still pretending Trump even won when his senile rotting brain admitted they rigged the elections?
Even knowing that Trump was going to actively help Bibi? That's the thing I didn't understand: sure, the Democrats were not doing much to stop the slaughter, but from the previous Trump administration we knew Trump was going to actively help.
They were selling weapons to enable the genocide you're downplaying by refusing to call it a genocide.
Yes. Because what so many folks can't seem to get is that different people are different. And they have different ethics.
This is literally the entire point of the trolley problem. Yes, you can stick your fingers in your ears and say, "always pull the lever for the track with fewer people on it." But that's just not how ethics works. Utilitarian ethics is one way to live life, but utilitarians have this incredibly annoying habit of assuming that theirs is the only valid ethical system, and that you're a complete moron if you follow any other school of thought.
You're demonstrating a utilitarian sense of ethics. One who follows a respect-for-persons belief system would say that the ends don't justify the means. That it's not fine to pull the trolley lever, even if that would result in a net saving of lives. That it's fine to vote to hold people accountable, even if that will objectively result in net material harm. It's not always about the greatest good for the greatest number. Otherwise, for example, we would never put any research dollars into studying cures for rare diseases. Those dollars could always objectively do more good elsewhere.
Hell, even our criminal laws don't follow a utilitarian sense of ethics. You can't legally get out of consequences from killing someone by saying, "this on net saved lives." Even if you can objectively prove it, you're not legally allowed to kill people. It doesn't matter if your murder on net saves lives, you're still a murderer. If a gang kidnaps your two children and tells you, "you must go kill this other one person if you want them to live." If you do that, if you go and kill that stranger to save your own kids? You will be charged and convicted of murder. You're not allowed to kill one innocent person to save two innocent people.
Many people voted against or refused to vote for Kamala because they were trying to punish her and the Democratic Party. Voting is the only way we have of holding politicians and parties accountable. Millions of voters saw the horrific haughtiness and barbarity of how the Democrats acted around Gaza, and they wanted to punish them for it. It was about holding them accountable. It was about justice. Many voted against Kamala to punish her for supporting genocide. And if the likely thing came to pass, if Trump supported genocide as well? Well those voters would vote against him for the same reason. They vote to hold people accountable for past actions, not to speculate on future ones. Maybe not how you vote, but again, people are different and can use whatever ethical system they want in choosing their vote.
Again, you can argue greatest good for greatest number, but that isn't the only system of ethics out there, and it's not even the system that defines the foundation of our legal codes.
Ok, but you see how massively demoralizing this conversation is, right?
Making logical points weighing up two distinct yet similar stances on genocide is only going to suppress voter turnout.
It shouldn't. It's basic harm reduction.
One side probably won't stop it, but they're on our side so there's a sliver of a cintilla of a chance we could pressure them into it.
The other side absolutely would not, vocally stated he would help accelerate it, and would laugh in our faces and do even more to accelerate it for no other reason than it made us mad.
The choice should have been obvious, even if I and everyone else would have preferred better options.
I mean, the democrats ARE bad because Palestine. But the Republicans are worse, by A LOT.
People want to believe the Republicans are massively worse. They aren't. It's a 10-15% thing at most. Most mainstream Democrats still support Israel, and they support the war on Iran. Even JFK ordered terrorist attacks on Cuban civillians. Dems are just fascists wrapped in a rainbow flag. The base need to reckon with this and actually force the party to address it rather than just acting like it's not happening. Voting blue no matter who on the basis of harm reduction just enables it.
Harris saw a 6M vote undercount relative to Biden. You can argue all the reasons why, but you can't deny Democrats would have won if they'd been as popular in 2020 as they were in 2024.
It's bizarre to see people insist this collapse in support has nothing to do with the policies of the party people stopped liking.
In the same vein, there's a real hard November coming for the GOP this year. Their incompetence is going to cost them.
Exactly. And frankly, any person who blames the voters rather than the politician is a deplorable. You have to be the biggest dumbass on Earth to think that trying to shame voters is a good electoral strategy. Kamala lost because she was a terrible candidate. Her loss is her fault. Not the voters.
Is there any possible way to disagree with you that you won't read as a Russian bot trying to undermine democracy?
It's such a thought-terminating cliche that anyone can use to dismiss any criticism. I could just as easily say that you're a DNC bot. Like, fuck critical thinking, I guess.
Why, of course there is! I certainly went from an early stance of "Israel is just defending itself from a terrorist attack" to "Alright, what they are doing to the civilian population in Gaza is clearly genocidal." Then I went on to include what the "settlers" are doing in the West Bank with tacit sanction of the government under the same genocidal umbrella.
If the thesis is, "There was no attempt by Russian bots to sway public support of Palestinian civilians against the Democrats," you'd have a hard time convincing me.
If the thesis is, "GenZ was well-informed about the plight of Palestinians before TikTok told them to look into it and shaped their opinion," also unlikely to convince me.