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Dilemma
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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the Democrats have been incrementally progressing the Palestinian genocide, which is what they are objecting to.
Amen. Hell, I wouldn't even say it's incremental. Biden provided at least 18 billion more than trump 1.
If only it was as incremental as their progress on the policies they actually ran on.
You'd rather cross your arms, watch it all burn down and then smugly* say "well it's the best we could do."
All I want is for the democrats to even say they're going to make incremental progress, to pretend they're interested in progress at all, and they won't do that. Maybe if they're scared enough of continuing to lose, they will. I'm not counting on it.
So what incremental progress are you talking about?
Maybe incremental progress from the 16k people in ICE detention when biden took over from Trump 1 would not look like 40k in ICE detention when he left...idk? Maybe Biden could have made incremental progress by not providing Israel with at least $18 billion more in military aid to support the genocide than trump 1 did?
The smallest increment of progress is ceasing military aid to israel to support its genocide of Palestinians. That would be incremental. From there maybe we could see aid to palestine, idk. Fuck you for voting for genocide and then saying I'm the bad guy. There's no "oh they killed 20,000 children last year, and this year they only killed 18,000, that's incremental progress we should be proud of!"
Lol, you're the one saying "fuck those people who are so smug, not voting for the democrats, even if they support genocide; those people just want to watch the world burn" ... Why are you "sir this is a Wendys"ing me??
I'm serious though, what is the incremental positive change you're talking about here? I want incremental progress. I want a solution to be a part of. I just think it's delusional to think that the democrats as they are are a solution.
I'm from CT; CT was never going to send delegates to vote for trump. All my vote would do is affirm that one more person is comfortable enough with the democrats ongoing support for the genocide of palestinians to vote for them. I'm never going to regret not voting for funding genocide.
You can engage in strategic voting as you see fit, I'm being strategic too. I'm withholding my vote, and I'm not the only one. The Democrats have gotten a pretty clear signal on this: Dearborn Michigan was a sore loss for them and it was lost because arab and muslim democrats simply didn't show up to vote for harris due to her continued support for the genocide of palestinians (will they do anything about it, I don't know. it seems they're trying to suppress their own post-mortem on this https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/democrats-2024-election-autopsy - my guess is they'll stick to their usual "how can we be as far right as possible while still picking up just enough votes to beat the republicans?").
And hey, that you're canadian provides an opportunity to show what I mean. Carney won in a landslide...you're sure you couldn't have done more good by staying home or voting NDP or green or whatever and making the liberals bite their nails a little harder? make them think that they actually should be more progressive? Like...the right-winger lost his seat (great, hilarious), and the NDP lost so hard they lost their full status or something, right? Fair enough if you live in a place that it was a close race with the conservatives, but if not, I'm not sure your vote for carney was really all that strategic. Or maybe there's something there I don't understand, please feel free to let me know if that's a terrible example for some reason.
I voted Carney. I'm not the person you're replying to, but I think standing clearly against the principles of the Conservatives was what was most important. I think that's the clearest message and an important one to send at the time.
Fair; I don't have a finger on the pulse in Canada, if there's a risk that the principles of the conservatives are eclipsing human decency in prevalence, then send your message! I expect you'd send the same message by voting for whoever you want to vote for (assuming you'd prefer to vote NDP or Green or whatever), but again, I'm not trying to shame anybody for voting for democrats. If you're not a fascist, vote your heart out for whatever reason you like. That's great. Of course I hope the democrats change, but if they don't change, the best result of that would be they win by the skin of their teeth and are terrified enough that they may change next time. In the US, Donald trump got fewer votes in 2024 than he did in 2020; he's way less popular even in absolute terms despite a larger voting population. The democrats are WAY WAY WAY less popular than they were in 2020. And I hope they take something constructive from that. I want them to win.
I just object to being told I'm a bad person for having any standards whatsoever that would stop me from voting for someone (not supporting genocide is a pretty low bar to clear and democrats are lying on the floor to smash their face into it).
But you are bad if you don't vote for the better candidate because it is helping the worse candidate win and implement their bad policies. that you would prefer a candidate to win given the options, not voting for them is kinda stupid too. I understand that in many states, you feel that it's a forgone conclusion and your protest vote doesn't make a difference or something. But if your vote doesn't matter, then your protest vote doesn't matter either. You just weaken the vote and the popular vote totals which is dangerous in these times with trump doing everything he can to invalidate voting blocks that will vote against him. And more importantly, pushing the narrative that the better candidate is evil will discourage other voters who do matter a lot. The time for pushing the progressive angle is the primaries. If you can't move the dial much there then making a fuss during the election will only weaken the chance at 'better'. If the Dems then get control, then push again.
I disagree that a non-vote in a solid blue state doesn't matter. The democrats lost the popular vote. That's NEVER happened. Nobody turned up. If the Democrats don't see that that's a problem they're morons and they're too conniving to be morons.
Okay, I slept on it, and I think this may help explain why I think it's ludicrous to blame individual voters for not choosing the "lesser of two evils" when each of the "evils" is itself a moral agent. I'm sure you'll find this analogy doesn't fit your mental model, but it fits mine very well so if you're trying to understand where folks like me are coming from (and I think you are), see if you can try it on for size.
Sophie has two children, Eva (8) and Jan (11), with the same life-expectancy. Eva is a sweet child, very kind. Jan's a brat...a bit of a jerk, with a cruel streak. Anyway, two Nazis with guns are arguing "I am Ralph and I wish to kill your younger daughter. This is Dirk and he wishes to kill your older boy. You may choose!" Sophie chooses for Ralph to kill Eva, or Sophie refuses to choose and Ralph loses patience before Dirk and, kills Eva. Later, the hand-wringing liberals berate Sophie for not choosing to have the older daughter killed "Jan is a worse person and has five fewer years left to live, Sophie! It's OBVIOUSLY the worse choice. Why would you choose R? How COULD you? I hope you live with that for the rest of your days! If you had chosen D instead, things would have been better."
Does that illustrate my point? It's obviously the nazis that are to blame. If either of them was decent they'd die trying to kill as many on their own side as possible, or at the very least fuck off and leave everyone alone. Blaming Sophie is absurd whether she chose or didn't choose. The hand-wringing liberals are probably right, Jan is probably a shithead (hearing his mom acquiesce to the murder of his sister probably won't have helped), and voting D probably would have been a bit better. But like...shut the fuck up, hand-wringing liberals? Maybe no children needed to be murdered, actually, and maybe Sophie's choice is not something to focus on here?
So mom should refuse to answer and they kill both? That's your solution?
My answer is stop backseat driving Sophie’s choice. STFU and resist genocide.
When you’re Sophie, you pick whoever you want, I don’t care, I’m not gonna criticize you for it.
So you'd rather kill both and pretend it wasn't because of you. Hmmm.
You gotta be trolling me man. You're gonna blame Sophie?
If she refuses to make a choice and as a result both die, then the consequences of not making a choice are because of her. The whole bc situation isn't her fault. But not choosing is on her. In the case of Dems vs repubs, it's not even a hard choice as one side supports child rapists, seriously harmful random international policies, and there are many other issues that make it clear Dems are better.
Ok, I’m gonna keep my focus and ire on the fascists. I’ll leave you to spend time and energy backseat driving Sophie’s choice.
But that's the point. If you don't vote in an effective way against the fascists when you can, your focus is irrelevant.
That’s your point, my point is the democrats and republicans are both fascists and it doesn’t matter that much which you choose. Voting for the “less bad” fascist to kill the older kid isn’t working “effectively” against the fascists.
They are not the same. I totally understand that the Dems are evil. But it's so silly to say they're as bad as the repubs under trump, or any of the current maga crowd. So voting for the lesser evil gets you lesser evil. Otherwise you get more evil. And that's worse. I don't see how it can be any simpler. Not voting won't change the dems - they just move further right to try to get that vote since the left base evaporated. Work in the primaries to get more progressive candidates on the ballot. Start grass roots actions. Whatever. But not voting for the lesser evil while you do that is crazy. Heck, we may not even get another free election in the U.S. and this could have all been avoided if there were just a few more left leaning voters who got up off their asses and voted logically.
No, they’re not as bad, by about the same amount as Ralph is not as bad as Dirk. It doesn’t matter which you choose, they’re gonna kill a kid. It doesn’t matter whether you vote for democrats or not, tens of thousands of Palestinians will be slaughtered using our tax dollars.
I don’t know how else to put it. All the bad things that are worse under republicans are dwarfed by Palestine. Ice has killed…what, a handful of protestors and a few dozen kidnappees? It’s awful of course, but a rounding error on Palestine.
Maybe that extra rounding error of evil could have been avoided if leftists had been willing to acquiesce to the rest of it…maybe. But it definitely would have been avoided if the democrats had changed, and so would so much else.
You seem to be able to accept unquestioningly that the democrats won’t stop arming a genocide (I don’t, they need to change or else the US is fucked, even if they win. Best we can hope for then is a rapid collapse). I think you should also accept that lots of people will not vote to arm a genocide.
I think the Dems would have pushed back against Israel. Not anywhere near as much as we may want, but way more than trump/republicans. We can't know now what they would have done, but it wouldn't have been as bad as Trump's openly encouraging genocide. And trump will do his best to stop fair elections in the U.S. - he will likely kill democracy. That means no improvement can come even if we manage to get enough progressives in a position to get seats. The downfall of the U.S. will take decades even under trump and his ilk before the pitchforks remove them. In that time, he will allow the complete destruction of Gaza and other places in the ME. That's millions of people dead and impoverished because people like you couldn't see the difference. Wake up!
Why do you think the Democrats would have pushed back? I don’t believe there’s any factual basis for that. I don’t believe they’ve even whispered a word about slowing military aid. Biden did way more to openly encourage genocide than trump has so…I don’t really understand what you mean.
Amen man, I think the democrats should do everything they can to fight like hell and beat the fascists. Including not arming a genocide (which of course, they should do for more reasons than just winning the US elections).
I absolutely cannot comprehend how them not doing that is acceptable to you, but me not voting for them is not acceptable to you lol…like they’re clearly the moral agent here. All I can do is whine about it, lodge my non-vote and get back to my life. This is their fuckin job. They have unimaginable resources to figure this out, but sure I guess fuck me for not taking my one in two hundred million part in the decision of which party of genocidal maniacs is in charge; sweet or bitter.
Look at something like this it's talking about how Biden didn't do enough. His call to Netanyahu which cause Isreal to open the borders to humanitarian aide wasn't done early enough. Now compare that to this. Of course one can cherry pick quotes. You can find Biden saying Israel has a right to defend itself, which is true but doesn't give them the right to kill Palestine civilians wantonly. You can find trump saying all sorts of random shit; but he goes way further against the people of Gaza and people in shithole countries (his words). Yes Biden financed Isreal, and this was framed as defense. The tides were turning by the end of '24. It was only once Biden was lame duck that Isreal went full postal. And that's arguably because Biden was holding them in check.
Again, I don’t care as much about what’s said as I do about who funds it. Maybe you’re right, and there actually is a significant difference in how may people get killed. But obviously I don’t think so, at least enough to not vote for Kamala and to have a days long conversation defending that choice.
You don’t hold someone in check by giving them $18 billion worth of guns.
It matters to me because I care about those millions of people who will die because people like you don't seem to understand. You seem like a person with the ability to rationalize facts. But you helped create a worse outcome for what you say you care about. And there are more elections coming up. If they're even slightly free and fair, we need to vote out the republicans with a massive wave to overcome their cheating. It could be the last chance for generations. It won't just be the people of Gaza, or Iran - but Trump and his maga people will allow China to attack Taiwan, Russia to defeat Ukraine and beyond. These will be millions of lives lost because of insane trump policy. And life in the U.S. for most people will become much worse with the terrible and evil management by trump and his followers. These are not round off error issues, they really matter. I understand you are very frustrated with the tragedy in Gaza - but burying your head in the sand and just not voting effectively only makes the situation worse. It's as bad as people not caring politically about what's going on in the Gaza because it doesn't effect them personally. We have to be smart and not let our emotions override logic.
Boy, the democrats really should get serious then.
Yes they should. But it's not as simple as that. If they swing against Israel in their platform, how many votes will they lose from Israeli supporters? how many will they lose because Israeli money will campaign hard against them? And there's some psycho Israeli supporters in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party - if the party kicks them out, how much damage will it do? It's naive to say they should just do what's right, because if that means they lose votes and lose the election, then they can't do any good pushing back on Israel. Above all, most of the politicians just want power and they have access to a lot of polling data - the reason most of them support Isreal is not for some higher Jewish calling, but because the data tells them they will get more votes that way. Hopefully that changes this cycle and they come up with some sort of better balance - but they probably can't go completely against Israel - look for balanced statements, including statements about restraint and holding Israel accountable. These are like dog whistles for the left - indicating they plan to push back against Israel without burning their bridges. Of course this whole Iran fiasco complicates things more as the U.S. is now even more directly complicit in unnecessary carnage in the ME. So the Dems have to figure out a way to walk that back without seeming weak (Americans don't vote for weak).
I mean it sounds like you think they're in an impossible place...if they arm a genocide, they'll lose because us crazy leftists won't vote for them. But if they don't arm a genocide they'll lose because those crazy zionists won't vote for them. I think you're wrong about that, that they would win if they kicked the zionists out, but that's speculation on my part. They could make the election a referendum on genocide and I really think that would be a winning position. They might actually have to pick between decent people and zionists. I like to think there are more of us than them, but hey, maybe I'm just an optimist.
But say you're right, and they really are stuck between impossible choices...if each choice is impossible, how in the hell can it be so bad for me to make one of those choices?
I also absolutely don't trust "dog whistles for the left," Obama wasn't sending a dog whistle when he said "I'll close guantanamo bay" or "I'll create a public option for healthcare." Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. I was so STOKED for Obama; he talked progressive but practical. I didn't like everything he said but if he had followed through on the big progressive promises, the world would be a different place (and the democrats would be a different party). If they don't burn the bridges, they're not serious.
I hope you're right man. I hope they win, I hope they change, I hope things get better. But I aint holding my breath. I expect when they win they'll be pleased to keep most of the fascist powers trump has given precedent for. I expect they'll roll a few things back and put a more polite face on it and get back to rounding up immigrants and funding the genocide of Palestinians. And frankly, that's not good enough; I'd rather not even give my worthless token support to that.
Like I said, I'm not looking for perfection, I'm looking for the absolute minimum. 1% towards decency. If they did the only thing they could do in respect of Palestine that is not absolutely monstrous (i.e. stop military aid to israel), I'd be out working my ass off to get them elected, despite all my many other deep problems with them. And if they announced it and alienated their zionist donors I'd know they were serious about it. None of this "well we have some concerns" while continuing to ship them more guns than they can reasonably find people to shoot.
I agree on most of what you say. The critical part though is that you 'hope they win' but you won't help that happen. With too may people like you, we get Republican hard core fascist dictatorship with much more death and destruction in the ME. And that pisses me off. We're on the same side, but you're voting against us, and so we will likely lose and so many people will suffer because of it.
You seem to think your vote for the Dems would mean you agree with everything the Dems would do. It's not like that. Either the Dems or the repubs will win. You choose which to make more likely.
I don't think voting for the democrats means I agree with them, I think it means the bad parts are a trade-off I'm willing to make for the good parts. And right now it's not.
My non-vote can also make it a shade less likely the democrats will win without changing. If that makes it a shade more likely they'll change, great, because my vote for them wouldn't make it a shade more likely they'd win (again, living in a state where my vote doesn't count). What my vote does is rob them of an infinitesimal piece of legitimacy, and voting for them would grant them that infinitesimal piece of legitimacy. If you want to make a difference, it's not me you should be talking to, it's only folks in swing states you should be worried about. If my vote counted I might find your points more compelling. And before you say "well that's very nuanced and you shouldn't be telling people not to vote for democrats" I'm not saying that; it's you people calling us out! Saying we're bad people for not acquiescing to this trade off of "if you say yes to arming a genocide, maybe we can have a little less fascism at home."
As it is, I hope the democrats win, but importantly if they win without changing, I hope they win with the lowest turnout in history. I hope it's a near thing. I hope they're scared they'll lose again next time if they keep up this bullshit of chasing the republicans into more and more extreme right wing politics (hell, while we're hoping, I hope they start nationalizing the necessities of life and guillotining billionaires starting with the pedophiles).
Or else I hope grassroots organizing outside the party is integral to their success, and the democrats become beholden to organizations that represent the people. That'd be neat. Anyway, voting for the democrats works against those goals. The democrats winning in a landslide with a clear mandate to get back to "business as usual," where business as usual is rounding up immigrants and murdering Palestinians is still very bad.
> you are bad if you don’t vote for the better candidate because it is helping the worse candidate win and implement their bad policies.
nonvotes don't help any candidate win. the thing that helps them win is people voting for them. blame the people who are responsible.
This is where simple logic and math collide with some weird emotional notion. Non-votes don't stop the worse candidate - that helps them win. Sort of like the trolly problem. You are arguing that the act of not pulling the lever vs pulling the lever is relevant. Whether it's an action or a non-action that implements your decision is irrelevant.
the trolley problem only reveals your own ethics. it doesn't have a singular answer or lesson. deontologists don't touch the lever, and they don't vote for bad candidates, even if their are worse candidates.
Except in this case the trolly will kill a bunch of people if you pull the lever, or if you don't, it will kill those people plus a whole lot more. The logic of which people are killed is removed and so if you don't pull the lever you are responsible entirely for the deaths of the extra people.
I'm only responsible for what I do. I didn't create the situation in which the people were tied to the tracks of the trolley was set in motion. if I pull the lever I will kill people. I will choose not to kill people.
And that stupidity is why America has trump, and lots more people will die in the Middle East. Just because you are too ignorant to understand, doesn't mean you aren't responsible for it.
calling me ignorant and stupid doesn't change the morality of voting for evil people.
I think a case can be made that the long slope of lesser evilism is what made trump possible.
No, your attitude specifically brought trump to power. That's on you if you didn't do what you could to stop it.
a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
It's simple math ffs.
saying something doesn't make it true
I'm not making it true. It is true.
yet another unsupported claim.
I really don't know how to get this through your heads. Trump could march me personally into a gas chamber and I still wouldn't regret my third party vote. If the reason I die is because I was too unwilling to support genocide, then I will die proudly. I did not adopt my position on this idly, on some lark, with no thought of what it could mean.
If we collectively accepted that genocide was not an acceptable option, there would be no problem, because there'd be now way to avoid the pressure of such a movement. But instead, we have people like you trying to assert that genocide is somehow acceptable and demanding absolute, unconditional support for the democrats, and predictably failing.
What kind of world would we be living in if everyone in history allowed themselves to be limited by what the system (what the people in power) said was possible? We'd be living under a monarchy with chattel slavery.
I live in a deep red state and voted third party. I don't regret it one bit and will do so again next time.
You stand for absolutely nothing, you deserve Trump and worse