OBJECTION!

Hahaha, are you saying that because it was you on the other end of that discussion?

Not to my knowledge, but there’s no way for anyone to know what incident it’s referencing so it could be any conversation they had with anyone, or made up whole cloth. I say this exact thing every time I see someone claim something happened on the fediverse without providing a link 1 2 3, and I haven’t been wrong yet. And that’s not really surprising, why wouldn’t someone provide a link to something that made the other side look bad, unless it didn’t actually play out the way they claim?

For example, when you say that I “praise the genocide of Uyghur people,” that is a lie, and it should be obvious that it’s a lie from the fact that you didn’t provide a link to it.

I’d be happy to have a good faith discussion regarding China’s economic policies and how they relate to socialism. Just not with someone who I already know is going to lie, misrepresent whatever I say, and act in bad faith, as I know you will.

Is it actually that it happens in one country in particular, or is it that nobody makes a note of it when it happens in other countries because someone not being in the public eye for a bit is normal and routine, and it’s only because China is treated with suspicion that it’s considered noteworthy?

Of course, I can’t even imagine the shitstorm that would happen if another country tried to demand that public figures in the US provide, not only testimony saying they were fine, but a detailed account of any time they were out of the public eye, to confirm that they weren’t being interrogated by the NSA and then forced to lie about it. It’s absurd, as you admit, it’s a conspiracy theory. There are so many actual real problems that have actual real evidence that I don’t understand why anyone would care about something that’s grounded on pure conjecture and circumstantial evidence.

We’re really entering into conspiracy theory territory here. Imagine if I monitored every public figure in the US and whenever one of them didn’t appear in public for a while, I automatically assumed that they had been abducted by the NSA, and when they later showed up and were fine, I concluded that the only reason they weren’t talking about it was because the NSA was holding their family hostage or something. Do you need any actual evidence to make conclusions like that, and is there any form of evidence that could possibly falsify such conclusions?

It’s impossible to account for ever minute of every person’s life so it’s always theoretically possible that any time someone doesn’t have an alibi, it means that they’re being held in detention where they are also sworn to secrecy about being held in detention - but just because it’s theoretically possible doesn’t make it a reasonable assumption.

something on the lines of

Any time someone describes something that happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they are misrepresenting what happened 100% of the time.

That’s perfectly fine, I just think it’s important to treat claims critically, and to understand what it actually means to say that someone has “disappeared” in this context - it doesn’t mean that their friends or family have reported them missing, it doesn’t mean that a reporter has checked their house and found it abandoned, it just means that they haven’t been on TV, and it requires a lot of assumptions on the part of the audience to conclude from that that they’ve been kidnapped or extrajudicially detained.

ANTIZIONISTS IN CONTROL

HARRIS IS JUST PRETENDING TO SUPPORT ISRAEL TO TRICK THE DEEP STATE

TRUST THE PLAN

Why do you think Israel needs a fucking iron dome? Bunch of virgin clowns in here.

This you?

Western media talking about “disappearances” is always the funniest thing to me. If somebody just goes like a week without appearing on TV, they can say they “disappeared,” and the audience will immediately assume that they’re in some black site with a bag over their head. If they show up the next week and tell everyone they’re fine, then they have plausible deniability since they never actually said anything bad happened to them. Of course, then you’ve got your audience primed to believe that something’s up and can write another headline like, “Questions remain regarding the disappearance of so-and-so.” Once you get a name trending, it doesn’t matter what the facts are.

I remember coming under fire from an irl friend over the “disappearance” of tennis player Peng Shuai… until she reappeared, and the International Olympic Committee confirmed that she was perfectly fine. The only evidence that anything bad had happened to her was the lack of a public appearance, but then, after making public appearances, the story didn’t die, instead each new appearance simply gave the media more to talk about, keeping it in the public consciousness and always insisting that “questions remain.”

Of course, that’s not even mentioning all the times the media doesn’t just claim a “disappearance” but just outright lies about these things. If Business Insider can’t even muster up a “detained,” it’s pretty safe to assume it doesn’t mean anything. And of course, if someone says anything critical of the government, then they are immediately absolved of any and all suspicion of having committed actual crimes - absolutely zero investigation into the charges of corruption is needed for everyone to conclude with 100% certainty that they’re trumped up.

I can’t wait to see how many downvotes I can get lmao.

again, shitpost because i didn’t understand what you were saying

Yeah I’m done here.

‘Morally Indefensible’ - but Adolf Hitler will not come out against drinking cow’s milk.

This is even more incoherent than ever, but whatever, I guess I’ll try.

ok well in this case it just makes complaining moot, because for some reason, you’re admitting that you’re going to hold a worthless protest vote that means nothing. So that’s cool.

Isn’t it your job to show that voting for Harris would be meaningful? If my vote is meaningless, then you should have no problem with me voting however I personally prefer.

in terms of how elections work, i suppose so, in terms of how power works, not really. Down ballots are much more ambiguous and nebulous than primary candidacy, by the virtue of there being like 500 congress members. as opposed to one president.

How does there being more congress members change anything about the dynamics we’re discussing?

also, i didn’t realize that both trump and kamala were running for downballot positions.

I genuinely cannot even begin to follow your logic. Walk me through how you got from point A to point B here.

The fact that Harris isn’t running downballot is even more reason why your argument is completely nonsensical. Why should I withhold my vote from a different candidate, who might even be pro-Palestine, instead of withholding it from the person I’m actually criticizing? This is, again, a point in my favor.

do you unironically think that in a vacuum, if you were to elect kamala harris, and one republican congressman for example. That it would functionally equivalent to you not voting at all?

No, I think that would be worse than not voting at all, because my vote in down ballot races is more important than the presidential race.

And then trump having the potential to win, and you still having no options down ballot. This is an objectively worse position to put yourself in. You simply have less leverage there.

I don’t know what this is even saying.

i don’t believe the 22nd prevents VPs from running for presidency for a term. That would be weird. Unless you’re implying as a russian bot would do, that kamala is literally only a one term pony. Which would be odd.

Again, I am extremely confused by your logic here and cannot even begin to fathom how you got from point A to point B.

The only thing I can think of is if you’re using “midterms” to refer to the next presidential election in 2028, as opposed to the, you know midterm elections that happen every two years, the next being in 2026. Kamala will not be up for reelection in the 2026 midterms, because, and this is true, presidents serve four year terms. Do you think presidents having four year terms is Russian misinformation?

??? I mean if you specifically only care about israel palestine maybe but trump literally tried to overthrow democracy. How is that not markedly worse than literally any other republican, who has not yet tried to do that.

I’m not invested in protecting the capitalist, imperialist state. It doesn’t represent me at all and frequently makes my life worse, I have zero loyalty towards it.

George W. Bush started two major wars that got nearly a million people killed, he instituted unprecedented and illegal mass surveillance programs that removed any semblance of civil liberties that once existed in this country, he used indefinite detention without trial - and he did everything with the full support of the Democrats, who have happily continued his policies without any challenge at all (despite the fact that they were allegedly meant as “emergency powers”). Trump is bad but his presidency was nowhere near as bad as that of Bush.

curious how you only list 20 years of foreign military policy, and not republican policies. Or domestic policy at all.

Seems to me like you only care about foreign military policy. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a problem, but the war on terror is over, we’ve pulled out of afghan. This shit’s literally done right now.

Yes, I was discussing Democratic foreign military policy because that is the topic that we’re discussing. I don’t mind discussing domestic policy, but those issues are not unrelated. The only way we’d have the funds to do the kinds of things that need to happen domestically is by cutting the unbelievably massive military budget, which is higher than the next 9 countries combined.

But even if we could, I am opposed to imperialism even if the spoils of that imperialism were distributed to the people. So bad foreign policy but good domestic policy would not be satisfactory. But even that isn’t on the table, the profits of all this killing go straight to the top.

And no, it’s not over. The war in Afghanistan is (now replaced with sanctions to impose starvation), but we’re still involved in other places like Gaza and Yemen. We may not have boots on the ground, but my priority is not on whether American soldiers are being placed in danger, it’s with stopping the violence towards the people living there.

The war on drugs might be another thing, paired with more democracy war, however unpopular that may be, it’s the only realistic way to solve the immigration crisis, the one that republicans constantly make shit up about.

What on earth are you even talking about? Going to war with Mexico or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

Not a single one of these applies to me but your lazy condescension is noted.

Totally fine so long as it’s our rich people who control politicians, just so long as it’s not foreign rich people.

Nationalism is a hell of a drug.

That analysis makes no sense on multiple levels. First of all, since I don’t live in a swing state, my downballot/midterm votes are far more important than my vote for president. Second, if my vote for president was so important, that would be all the more reason for me to use it as leverage. Third, the fundamental dynamics are the same for downballot races as the race for president, there is nothing unique about the presidential race that would mean I should treat it differently. If withholding a vote is an effective strategy downballot, then it is an effective strategy in the presidential race. And if the risk of Trump getting elected is too great to employ that strategy in the presidential race, then the risk of another Republican getting elected downballot should be a deterrent too. Lastly, there is virtually no chance that Kamala could be pressured to change her position during the midterms when she herself is not up for reelection.

The only way I can make any sense of your logic is if Trump is uniquely horrible compared to other Republicans, and I don’t really consider that to be the case.

If your ideals don’t match at all you’ve either got a failure of ideals, or a failure of government, which one probably depends on which one is at a larger scale.

Well, let’s see. For the past 20 years, my entire adult life, my ideals have been saying that we should stop slaughtering people in the middle east. In that time, the democrats ran Kerry, a hawk, Obama, a hawk, Clinton, a hawk, Biden, a hawk, and now Harris, a hawk. The result of that was nearly a million people dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, some more in other countries like Yemen, and now more and at a faster rate than ever in Palestine. And what exactly do they have to show for any of it in terms of making people’s lives better? I think it’s pretty clear which side the failure is on.

mid terms are a pretty common swing point for an unpopular candidate. Between the late term push for legislation to increase the chances of re-election, and the initial push after getting into office to appease the voter base, the midterms are the biggest impact in a governmental term. Plus further down ballot votes can harm the institution as well.

Oh, ok. So when mid terms come around, and Kamala’s done nothing I want, then you’ll be fine with me withholding my vote, right? Or are you going to be telling me the exact same thing you’re telling me now? If you’re genuinely alright with me withholding my vote during the midterms, what’s the difference between then and now?

in the hopes that you can push them later down the lines

How? What method do you expect me to use to push her? And why should I have any confidence in that method working when it’s not working during an election year, when she most needs people’s votes and support?

protests over what? I haven’t heard about any, but i guess i also haven’t been paying much attention.

There was a major wave of campus protests this year over the genocide in Gaza, all over the country.

Again, you just want me to give them everything they want while asking nothing in return and you’re trying to pretend otherwise without offering any sort of coherent strategy. If that’s not what’s happening, walk me through what you expect me to do and when.

That’s nonsense. Why on earth would she listen to me once she’s already secured my vote and the presidency? She knows that she can do nothing and that I’ll just “pretend” that she will next time too. Of course, I find the idea of acting based on an obviously false “pretense” that’s based on nothing but imagination to be completely ridiculous.

This is just, “You have to give them everything they want while asking nothing in return” with extra, nonsensical steps. You’re telling me I’m supposed to wait until I have less bargaining power to try to bargain. Of course, there’s already been widespread protests during an election year and the democrats not only did not give an inch, but forcibly suppressed them. So how exactly do you envision people gaining enough leverage for them to actually change?

liberals think you can do the exact same action and it’s meaningfully different if you feel kinda bad while doing it.

They will not listen to things like how you don’t support the genocide, don’t support war, know things like genocides are horrible, any explanation about how it will get worse, or anything similar.

Literally the exact thing I just described. If your actions are indistinguishable from someone who supports genocide, then nobody gives a shit what’s going on inside your head regarding it, least of all politicians.

So you want to reestablish the Third Reich then, got it.

My ideal outcome is that Harris caves and stops the Israeli version of Auschwitz which is already happening. Failing that, my ideal outcome would be that the protesters establish a credible threat going forward that supporting genocide will result in tangible political consequences. Establishing such a threat is far more important is far more important than any one election, especially when both people are pro-genocide.

The moment you commit yourself to the ideology of lesser-evilism, you have sacrificed every ounce of bargaining power you might have wielded. The concerns of reliable voters don’t factor into any politician’s calculus. I can’t figure out whether liberals just have terrible instincts regarding wielding power, or if it’s just that they don’t care to wield it because they’re satisfied with the status quo.

Completely feckless. Effectively an endorsement of Harris despite getting absolutely nothing in return. The people who want the genocide to continue (like Harris) were just proven to be strategically correct in writing off this movement because they knew they could and they’d just come crawling back to the lesser evil. What’s worse is that this spinelessness discredits any future movements or protests on the issue.

Somehow telling people to vote for Harris is “not an endorsement,” because liberals think you can do the exact same action and it’s meaningfully different if you feel kinda bad while doing it.