[mandmandam]

Zero flippancy, none.

> we had only two viable candidates

That's a major part of the problem, and not one to be ignored or accepted.

> the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice.

Nope. It's simple facts. Both 'viable' candidates promised to continue arming a nation which is currently conducting genocide, as confirmed by basically every major human rights group and even some Israeli genocide scholars. That's thoroughly illegal by long-held, hard-won domestic and international law.

You can argue as to why that is, or accuse people who say so of "cycnicism" and "moral superiority", but it's a fact and needs to be said.

There is NO good reason for Harris to have ignored the wishes of the vast majority (77%) of her voter base in order to keep arming mass slaughter. Turning around on that one choice would have won her the election in a landslide, and anyone who looked at the polls knew it.

> you care more about your own sense of self worth

Again, it's simple facts. America is so thoroughly depraved that 98% of voters chose to go for someone arming an active genocide.

Not about me, not about my self worth (bro, I'm an anonymous account with basically no reputation to win or lose here). It's about America, and how a large part of it got conned into thinking that voting for a genocidaire was the right and practical thing to do somehow.

If genocide was properly considered as beyond the pale; far, far over any basic red line for human decency, then Americans would have gone for a third party candidate, or forced a change in nominations from the two 'viable' parties. It's up for debate why they didn't do that, but the simple fact is that 98% of US voters voted for continuing a live-streamed series of atrocities.

> holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’,

The gulf between 'perfect' and 'complicit in genocide' is so, so vast. I refuse to believe that you can't understand that.

[0xEF]

You're fighting a losing battle, I'm afraid. Instead of trying to justify your position, explain to me and my fellow voters what the alternative third option was when we were presented with Kamala or Trump?

We don't like this any more than you do, yet you point the finger and offer no solutions, plan, or course of action. Your obstinacy and that of people like you served only to hand the election to those you so vehemently stand against, but rather than admit your own part in this mess we are now in, you chose to attack the people who made a rational choice to vote for Kamala given the circumstance.

I'm sorry, but you're part of the problem, here. Accept that and heal.

[vaidhy]

Wasn't there Jill Stein and Cornell West?

[0xEF]

Yes, if you want to call them candidates. That word seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting, here.

Were they better options? Probably. I personally was a fan of Stein. Were they available to us on any realistic level in our broken "democratic" system? No. Had I voted for her, my vote would have counted for nothing.

They had zero backing when thrown up against the two candidates that the very real and present two-party system pushed in front of us, and that was that.

Every time someone wants to whine about Harris supporting genocide, I feel like I'm talking to a bunch of bots who have never seen a US ballot, have no idea how our party system works and are incapable of comprehending the vast network of chicanery that results in two major parties drowning every other option we might actually want to vote for.

The illusion of a choice is not actually a choice, is it? So, at the time, the best plan was "NOT TRUMP AGAIN" leaving Harris as our strongest option _even though most of us did not agree with 100% of her policies_. We had a knife to our throat, and a knife at our back. We tried to get everyone on board with the knife at our back since, sure it would hurt, but at least it wouldn't kill us and we could work to move closer to a better solution.

Instead, we're now getting slit ear-to-ear because of impetuous fools who can't see past their own blind outrage.

[dcow]

We really have to shatter the bind. Every time someone buys into the two party system and votes against rather than for, we all lose. I'm not criticizing you, I am lamenting how toxic and horrible first past the post voting makes our elections.

[0xEF]

I agree with you. Been shaking my fist about it since I cast my first vote. But I genuinely feel like an ant attacking a lawnmower. The machine just keeps going and barely notices our efforts. I was a Bernie supporter, too. Same deal although at least he's got street cred the media meat-grinder can't spin into something else. Still, I cast my vote and it mattered as much as a fart in the wind.

When you feel like that for a couple decades and you start to look for the best possible outcomes that everyone will actually agree to, things start to look really, really bleak. Again, it's a War of Attrition and historically speaking, the people with the most resources win those.

Rally. Protest. Please. I have no idea what else to do. I'd lead the damned charge in the revolution if I thought anyone would follow, but my experience has been the opposite. The liberals of the world all seem to hate each other just as much as the conservatives do, so I'll be dipped if they ever really come together on anything, these days.

I don't like my conduct in the earlier comments, but after being that guy who tried to tell everyone the two-party system has no power without us for so damned long, I am not going to sit idly and listen to someone accuse me of supporting genocide when I made the most rational choice I could have with what was presented while they did nothing, as though Gaza's horrifying reality is the only thing the American people have to worry about right now. We live in a zero-sum game, and I hate it, but that's it.

Anyway, sorry to anyone I offended.

[mandmandam]

Forced candidate: "I promise to keep arming this genocidal apartheid state."

Voter: I will vote for you, because the only alternative that our party have allowed [0] a chance to win is even worse somehow.

Other voter: Hey, you know that candidate promised to continue to arm genocide, right?

Voter: Supporting her was the most rational choice. You whine. It feels like you're a bot. You don't understand the complex zero-sum game we are in. You, who I know nothing about, did nothing; while I voted. Also you're cynical and think you're morally superior.

Other voter: O-kay.

Like I said: 98% of America voted for a candidate who promised to arm genocide. We should be sanctioned by the world, and the only reason we aren't is because we threaten to either fuck their economy, ie [1], or literally invade them [2].

0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-s...

1 - https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/12/16/occupied-terr...

2 - https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...

[mandmandam]

There certainly was.

Stein actually aligns far better with the real opinions of the majority of the American people; on affordable housing, on healthcare, on the military industrial complex, on the environment, on taxing the rich, on fracking, on education, and indeed on arming genocide.

However, the entire political and media class united to smear her as a "Russian stooge". Despite a complete lack of evidence, American voters ate that slop up and asked for seconds. It still disturbs me, how easy they made that look.

A Senate investigation ran from 2016 to 2019, investigating Stein. They found absolutely nothing, and completely cleared her in 2019... But try and find a corporate media article which acknowledges this. Many Americans still believe it; like WMDs in Iraq, or the Earth being 6,000 years old.

Try and find a Democrat who stood up for her this entire time. Nope - accusing Harvard-educated Jewish doctor ladies of being Russian assets without a shred of proof didn't seem to bother anyone.

Democrats went to extreme and even illegal lengths to take Greens off the ballot everywhere they could, and then accused the Greens of never winning elections (not true btw [0, 1]).

The media refused to cover any of those Green wins, then smeared the Greens as only appearing for Presidential elections as a "grift". A grift! In a race where that same media presented *Donald 'TrumpCoin' Trump as a serious candidate!

Let's see who was grifting:

Harris raised more than a billion dollars, and received 48.3% of the vote.

Stein raised $2.7m, 370 times less, and received 1% of the vote; in other words, her campaign dollars were more than 7 times more effective than Harris' despite rabid media bias.

But you can't explain any of this to a Harris voter. The real problem, I believe, is that once you've been conned into actively supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, you can't really acknowledge that and still think of yourself as a good person. So people just lash out instead with personal attacks. The ones above are about the mildest I've seen, to be fair; usually bringing up Harris' complicity in genocide gets you called an asshole. Go figure.

0 - https://www.gpelections.org/election-history/victories/

1 - https://www.gpelections.org/greens-in-office/2024-july-01/