This is where most leftists who refuse to vote for Biden are coming from. Do they pull the lever and participate in the system even if their vote would lead to continued genocide? Or do they remain a bystander and let the chips fall where they may, knowing they did not vote for genocide in any form?
When we participate in a rigged system, doesn’t it just give the system legitimacy? When we don’t participate in a rigged system, are we complicit in what happens? The trolly problem says no: you didn’t put those people on the tracks; you don’t have the power to stop the train and save everyone. You only have a choice: participate and save more lives than you (personally) chose to take or don’t participate and remind yourself that the system put these people on the track to begin with.
My position is if you are aware of the situation you are already a part of the system. Whether you choose to pull the lever or not is still a choice, which you have made, and are responsible for the outcomes thereof.
How do you feel about the third option? If I vote for a third party, knowing they won’t win in a rigged system, am I just as responsible as I am if I don’t pull the lever at all?
All I said still applies. What is the outcome of your choice? Is it achieving your goals? Is it leading to a better or worse outcome?
Sadly, the FPTP system doesn’t lend itself to reflecting the will of the people if more than 2 options are presented, and I haven’t heard of a credible independent candidate. And by credible, I mean having any real chance of winning.
If you had two very similar choices, I could see the argument of voting for a third party, but one of your candidates is literally promising a dictatorship. I’ve seen a lot of valid arguments of starting local and building up to statewide change if you want to effectively change the political landscape. It won’t be as fast, and it certainly won’t be easy, but it does appear to have a real chance to move things in the desired direction.
Have you ever read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams? How long do we have to vote for the “right” lizard so the wrong lizard doesn’t get in? When do we get to vote for a human? And why is it that people like you continually tell me that I have to vote for genocide - that there’s no other choice, either genocide or fascist genocide? When do I get to choose? When is the literal future of democracy no longer on the line?
You ignored every question I asked and haven’t given any reason for how voting third party will achieve your goals. You can vote for whoever you like. There are more effective ways to have someone other than lizards to vote for, but thatbrequires work. Neither you not Adam’s have provided any real suggestions on how to fix that with anything more significant than a salve to your conscience.
Yes I understand this, and I also understand leftists who look at this from other angles. I’d greatly distrust anyone who considers it an easy choice to vote for someone who’s actively making a genocide possible and who’s imprisoning and deporting record numbers of immigrants and refugees. It’s not something to be taken lightly, even if one does arrive at this conclusion.
And I really distrust people’s motives who start barking orders to people about how to respond. If anything, I feel like such tactics only discourage people from voting, and it’s unfortunately common, at least in online spaces.
But I’m not arguing against what you’ve said.
In the realm of voting the trolley problem is accurate, but I agree that there is more than can be done outside of that. One can pull the lever and rush to try to get the person off the tracks.
Yeah maybe it can buy us time to do that
I hate to feel hopeless, but people always ask me what’s my plan and to be honest … I don’t know
oh! I recently asked you what your plan is and I thought you answered well and it gave me enough hope to get by
Thank you for saying so, but do you think we have enough time?
While there’s life there’s hope, friend! We’re around two generations into imagining hope post-apocalypse and we rehearsed one already.
I’ll try to cultivate your optimism. I just said to someone else if we try and things perish anyway, at least we’ll die knowing we weren’t complicit
I hope we die old and at peace in some kind utopia, or if not we die building towards that for others
I have the same hope. I feel pretty old, so I’m hoping to at least feel like things are gonna be OK for everyone else when I’m on my way out
Does the answer to that change anything? We should still do the best we can with what we can do. While saving 1 person and failing to save the rest is absolutely terrible, it’s also better than saving 0 and so still worth doing
True, I suppose it’s either try or throw our hands up and cease trying
If we try and the planet dies anyway, at least we’ll go out knowing we weren’t complicit
Tldr a better trolley meme for it is voting vs not voting?
That could be one way to look at it, yeah.
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Democrats are actively making the Palestinian genocide worse. In fact, it wouldn’t be possible without their support
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The D politicians don’t give a shit about anyone on the R track, they’d never actually risk their political power for any of those groups.
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Saying “D politicians don’t actually care” is missing the point
It’s true though that Democrats don’t care about us. Regardless of how you feel about voting, it is important to understand that the party that’s ok with killing children and torturing refugees does not care about us.
Solidarity means what is done to one marginalized group is done to me.
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It also doesn’t justify supporting the literal person making the genocide possible
Stop shielding a genocidal fascist from correct criticism
The trolly problem doesn’t apply to Gaza and the commenter in the image isn’t really criticizing the image right.
In the trolly problem, throwing the lever is effectively choosing who gets to die. That’s the philosophical choice: you become the person choosing which lives are valuable. It’s not just about being a murderer or a bystander. Even by noticing the lever, your inaction is a choice. IMHO, pretending you can remain a bystander by not throwing the lever is just moralizing your lack of action. The real philosophical question in the trolly problem is about human life and how to even measure it. Is the problem the same if the single person is a mother of three, and the five people on the other track are proven murderers/rapists? Should you throw the lever if you don’t know the people on the track?
The trolly image in the meme doesn’t even make sense. You’d have to draw the Palestinian man across both tracks to make it match the real life situation. It has been demonstrated that neither party is interested in saving those lives. (That doesn’t mean it’s not worth pressuring Biden)
Edit: clarity
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I somewhat misread the four-paragraph response, basically I’m making the same point, probably very badly.
I am sorry to disturb you.
No, you’re fine.
I’ve had a lot of liberal rage in here lately, so I’ve got to step back and see who’s here in good faith and who’s not. Sorry I came across strong.
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