Are you finally with her? The Hillary Clinton paradox- Ignore Hillary Clinton at your own peril

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No.
I am saying that even if democracy was fine and not under threat, "vote out the people you might influence and bring in the people who oppose you so that the people you might influence learn to cater to you better next time" isn't a tactic with a great track record.

Voting for a regime aiding genocide doesn't have a very good track record either, valcazar.

No.
Why do you think that?
We're talking about the long term issues of Israel and Palestine.

Trump isn't going to start genocide just like Biden didn't.
The right wing Israeli government will do what it intends to do based on what it thinks it has support for.
Trump isn't going to be issuing orders to attack Gaza.
Why would he?

Exactly.
Israel 'mows the grass' every 3-4 years. This time they took a blowtorch and set their own house on fire. They will be putting that out for years.
I don't think they will be attacking Palestinians like this again.

Because there is an authoritarian anti-democratic movement in the US that has made its intentions clear.
Betting on "Don't worry, they will probably just fail if we give them more power" is a bad idea.

Just as supporting a regime aiding genocide is a bad idea, except once side are doing it and you are worried about what the other side might do.
Do you really think rump can assemble a new team of despot enablers that will be effective given that everyone who worked for him is in jail, or are you expecting him to pardon them all and put them back in office with a vengeance like some netflix movie?

You have said, flat out, that you believe nothing bad will happen because Trump is too weak.
There is no logical argument to make against fantasy like that.
It is clearly a firmly held belief of yours. An act of pure faith.
Nothing I say will make the slightest difference here.

No, lots of bad shit will happen, just different bad shit. More corruption, tax breaks for billionaires, anti environmentalism and attempts to thwart democracy again. The US survived 4 years of that while he wasn't senile and had the best team he could find.

Yes.
This discussion, specifically, has been whether or not voting Biden out will help.
The student protest is about many other issues.
The students also, quite obviously, have many views on what they are doing.
Projecting absolute alignment with your preferred beliefs is folly.

No, the discussion is about whether you can actively support someone who aids genocide.
The student protest aims at the one tool they can use, divestment at universities.
But its all about the same thing, ending the genocide.

Yes.
I made that clear from the beginning.
The discussion I was engaging you on was that the specific electoral tactic of "Biden should lose because of this" isn't an effective one if you want better results in Palestine in either the short term or the long term.
In the short term, the Trump administration and the GOP have made it very clear they want things you don't want and will make US policy in the region worse for what you claim you want.
In the long term, "making things worse to make things better" doesn't have a great track record. (I should clarify that this is from the "heighten the contradictions" point of view.)

Again, voting for regimes that aid genocide doesn't have a good track record either.
In the short term the genocide will end before the election, if rump wins you have more battles to fight. You don't say you're too afraid to fight those battles so 'sorry Palestine, you all have to die'. You take one battle at a time, end the genocide, turf the people that enabled the genocide, fight against the next POTUS if he tries to thwart democracy. You take a moral stand and you try to maintain it and fight for what you believe.

No.
It leaves the situation with both of us wanting the US to do better but one insisting the way to do it is to make things worse.

It leaves both of us fighting for which way they think is best.

Yes. But you aren't really making the right comparisons.
You want to punish Biden for his position.
I get that.
The problem is that you don't have a means to do so that doesn't result in someone with a worse position coming into power.

So what? That leaves you arguing like skoob and mitch. 'All politicians are genocidal so we might as well have the genocidal one that lowers student debt' isn't much of a moral argument. You need to start by saying you have to call out corruption, lawbreaking and yes, even aiding genocide.

Are you really arguing that you have to back corrupt, criminal, violent or genocidal politicians because maybe the other one is worse?
Good luck seeing where that leads.

Because you actually can't vote and have no influence on this, you get to say and do whatever you want.
But the people who actually vote have a different issue.
What to do with the situation they are actually in.

Yes, I can protest here, write letters to politicians, guide my donations and pick who I vote for here.
You seem to think that the vote is the be all and end all of democratic participation.
But you can still do what you want, choose to reward aiding genocide or 'punish' it.
If that's your binary world are you really picking reward genocide?

Trump or Biden will be in power.
Given that, what is the situation you prefer for the various goals you hope to advance?

If I was american I'd be working my ass off to keep rump in the courts, his businesses shut and all his associates behind bars. I'd be working with the progressive side of the dems to plan to turf Biden or shut him down, I'd be backing having charges laid for genocide on him to shame him out of office.

If both those old men are still alive, not behind bars and rump wins, you deal with those problems next.

The problem is that "He's a rapist, but he will lower my taxes" is only a good analogy if the other guy isn't also a rapist.

Well, we know which one is a rapist and we also know which one is aiding genocide. Whether the other one would do either of those things is a future problem.

I'm not sure why you have so much trouble with that idea.
If Trump was saying he opposed what is happening in Israel and was credibly talking about changing US policy, you would have a much more interesting argument.
But that isn't what the situation is here, no matter how much you keep wanting to skate past that part.

Sure, but rump is also a cheapskate and totally ineffective as a leader. Would he have been able to get a $96 billion bill passed? Debatable.

It isn't a moral line you have to cross, or even consider.
You can't vote.

“Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

Stupid quote, I know. Really the correct movie comparison right now is Oppenheimer. Do you build nukes and help them use them on Japan when the war is pretty much done? Was committing genocide on Hiroshima the winning moral position? Did his goal of stopping all future wars happen?

And, as I've said repeatedly, not voting or voting third party isn't avoiding the moral line.

Sure, you're fixed on the binary choice, ignoring third party and soiling your ballot.

Your "It's a trolley problem" defense is pretty weak.
Are you trying to say "it's all theoretical" or are you saying "No, actually, killing the 5 people is better than killing the one, because at least I didn't throw the switch"?

When your trolley choice is guy who aided genocide vs corrupt guy who might aid more genocide should the opportunity happen but might also mess up the already messed up electoral system, its not that clear. You pick what's important to you and act accordingly.

Thank you for admitting this!
That's all this is about - he did bad, so he must be punished and should lose.
You insist that the consequences of that are irrelevant.
I think they are crucial.

So you think he must be rewarded for aiding genocide.
Such a great precedent for a president.

We just have very different ethics, especially when it comes to voting.
I don't believe in voting as an act that's supposed to reflect on my personal morality.
That's a pernicious myth that leads to bad things for people.

Where this leads is that it asks would you have voted against the communists in 1933 Germany because you were afraid of what they might do to democracy. Now, I'm not invoking Godwin for a comparison with Biden, I'm just using an extreme example of your same moral dilemma.

You have fears that rump will in the future destroy the US.
I see the present the destruction of Palestine. Why is something that far away so problematic? Because of Canadian support as they follow US support that makes us active participants. Its the maintenance of racial supremacy worse than the KKK and supporting its survival instead of calling it out in a country still recovering from our own colonization issues.

Its a Trolley problem, an Oppenheimer choice. Aid genocide now or risk future problems closer to home. Do you build the bomb and back the genocide and hope it doesn't lead to bigger wars with Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran? Do you say no to bombs and risk getting blown up by a rump.

I say take them all on.
Take on the genocide now.
rump later