this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
317 points (81.6% liked)

Asklemmy

43700 readers
2244 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.

I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.

Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.

Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.

Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 161 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Remember that in online spaces (and IRL in reality), there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts that will make claims to sway public opinions.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Good point. Although, I would question whether Lemmy is such a place as we really don’t have the numbers to warrant the effort, imo.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We get drug spam and stock spam, no reason to expect that political spam is any less likely.

Lemmy has a huge amount of hardcore lefty's. If you can get them to not vote, and especially if you can get them to tell their friends not to vote, that is a big win.

Astroturfing/sockpuppeting is dirty cheap to do, so no reason not to try.

You do see some users here that will post continously on about a certain topic repeatedly, with no other opinions. They might be legit, but I have my suspicions.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

"Hardcore lefties" have a very different understanding of the value of their vote, which is to say, it means very little.

Have you deigned to ask them questions?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It is not currently such a place. I’ve yet to hear a Lemmy admin say otherwise.

Edit to add: Russiagate conspiracy theorists want it to be true so they can simply dismiss voices that contradict their beliefs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've seen cryptospam, drugspam, generic adspam on here. Why would a political astroturfspam be a conspiracy theory?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

It does exist. It just doesn’t currently exist here, and Russian/Chinese/Iranian bots 1) hardly exist at all and 2) so far have had virtually no effect.

The reason people are seeing $evil_country bots everywhere is because our own government and our own corporate media tell us they are everywhere, not because they are everywhere. The propaganda is coming from inside the house. They’ve spent the last seven years and who knows how much money trying to convince us of. They’re trying to manufacture our consent to censorship.

They tell us what opinions are $evil_dictator talking points so we know what opinions to dismiss out of hand, and to see the people & organizations that express those opinions as malevolent foreign agents, so we never listen to them again. They’re training us to do some of the censoring for them.

The first step is to understand the media and propaganda.

I linked upthread about this specific propaganda campaign, but since people don’t click links, I’ll copypasta myself.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (14 children)

I disagree - it feels like Lemmy is seeing the same kind of shills that 4chan saw in the last several elections. These bad actors are trying to sway dems to vote third party or not vote at all "in protest" across many small and large online spaces.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

takes no effort with modern technology

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

yeah, mostly CIA and Israeli bots/paid posters. all of reddit is astroturfed. All social media is controlled by the feds as well. Look into the twitter leaks to see how they do it. Mintpressnews also has great articles about feds in censorship positions in all these social media companies ranging from Facebook to TikTok (100% CIA controlled btw).

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (15 children)

Yeah like all of these people out here telling me to vote for genociders. There's no way that real humans would think so little of Palestinian lives, right?

Right?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (17 children)

And who, of those who aren't mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn't about to help Isreal with their genocide? Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn't Biden, it seems hard to imagine she'd be much worse than current administration on that issue. One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.

Suppose you have two buttons. If you press one, it kills someone. If you press the second, it kills two people. If you don't press the first button, someone else is eagerly waiting who will press the second. Whoever has placed the buttons here, has enough power that neither the buttons nor the other person are within your personal ability to harm at the moment, and you have neither the time nor the popularity to amass enough people to change this before the other guy pushes the "kill two people" button. Your only options are to press one or press neither and allow the second be pressed. If your answer to this scenario is "I press neither button, because pressing the first kills someone, don't you care about people's lives!?", then you are not choosing morality, you are choosing selfishness, because you care more about the notion that your hands will be clean than about the net life saved if you press the button that kills fewer people. In fact, the blood is as much on your hands by inaction if you decide to reject your choice, as it would be had you killed the additional victim yourself.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (19 children)

You know how you can trick a stupid fucking child into doing what you want by presenting them a false choice of two alternatives you're happy with? "Do you want to go to bed now or after one more show?"

load more comments (19 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn't Biden, it seems hard to imagine she'd be much worse than current administration on that issue.

What liberal brain rot is this?

Biden is fully engaging with his policy of genociding Palestinians. Harris has said that she will carry on with the policy with absolutely no change.

The fucking dissonance you people walk around with is astounding!

And before you come out with the usual other shit floating around your vacuous head, no, I'm not advocating voting for the shitty pants trust fund rapist.

You people cannot seem to grasp that what is being done in the Levant will be done to you. The DOD had just updated it's rules so they can use lethal force against you.

It's coming and you'll are too fucking partisan to realise that you're turkeys all voting for Christmas!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.

Current dead baby count would disagree

load more comments (14 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (7 children)

There are, but not on Lemmy, because Lemmy is still much too small to bother with.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)