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shuppy @delan7/18/2024, 5:49 PM

Tom (tired of the computer)@masklayer

Shel @shel7/18/2024, 1:46 PM

Edit: See this post first please

I have people in my notifications saying (and obviously they block me immediately so I can't respond directly but the notification remains) saying "anyone who votes for the Democrats doesn't care about Palestine.*

First off, I've been supporting Palestine since 2012. I got booted from two synagogues for my support of Palestine. I am banned from Israel supposedly due to pro-Palestine activism i was involved in ten years ago. I gave money to Palestinian orgs to my own financial detriment. Fuck off.

More importantly, the Republicans are worse on Palestine

Joe Biden fervently supports Zionism but his party is not totally behind him on it and he needs to appease his party in order to do shit. In response to political pressure from pro-Palestine activists, Joe Biden has massively shifted his policy on Israel. He's still decidedly team Israel but he has worked to try and negotiate ceasefires, delivered aid, built ports to facilitate in the delivery of aid without going through land borders controlled by Israel, he's been doing shit that while absolutely not Enough.... is at least in response to political pressure from his base

A good candidate for Palestine would sanction and divest from Israel entirely until apartheid rule is ended. But that's not a candidate on the ballot.

Donald Trump appointed his Failson-in-Law Jared Kusher to handle Israel and he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem which was a really bad move politically and was a very strong demonstration of belief in Israel's claim to lands ceded to Palestine by treaty.

The base of the Republican Party believes that supporting Israel's most extreme zealous genocidal far-right politicians is their religious duty in order bring about the fucking rapture.

If US support for Israel triggers wars and genocide, the evangelicals see that as a good thing.

In what fucking would is a second Trump term better for Palestine?

Third of all, anyone who lives in a swing state who doesn't vote for the Democrats doesn't care about immigrants, LGBT people who can't afford to move, I could list so many groups. This isn't really a good argument.

Demonstrating if you "care" or not does make a material difference in the world. Social media is full of poseur leftists who treat declaration of their beliefs and allegiances as a type of prayer. Strong enough belief and care in your untainted heart will somehow cosmically pull the revolution to us. It will somehow manifest the clandestine organized people's revolt out of what, social media? It is hard enough to organize a single workplace to support a union that they already have by being willing to go on strike. It takes a lot of feet on the ground backbreaking sweating labor. You think yelling on social media is going to manifest a people's movement strong enough to take down the strongest empire on the planet, from the inside even? Get a clue! Prayer doesn't fucking work to do anything except to act as a salve for the believer.

And I say this as someone who literally modified my religious liturgy ten years ago to include frequent prayers for Palestine. Like I get it. Prayer feels like you're doing something. But you're not. Not a single amidah begging and pleading with HaShem to bring justice to Palestinians has done anything material, that is not the function of prayer.

Is leftism your organized political movement or is it your religion? For republicans, they are pretty open about supporting the republicans being a part of their religion.

If you do believe in revolution, then look to actual revolutionary history for evidence that supporting the moderate government in the short term is better for longer term victory.

It was the February Revolution which ousted the Romanovs from power. Nicholas II abdicated and a moderate government came to power. It was the October revolution that led to a communist victory, a revolution against the moderates!

Now, what came next, obviously, did not end up being the desirable left wing government we all support, in the long term, but what matters her is that the far left defeated moderates later but allied with the moderates initially in order to win the far more difficult battle of ousting Nicholas II.

It is far and away easier to fight the Democrats on Palestine than the republicans. Democrats at worst ignore protestors and at best try to appease them. Republicans openly call for murdering protestors.

That doesn't mean we can't have victories under republicans. The Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 was vetoed by Reagan but the legislature overrode his veto with a supermajority. The house was controlled by Democrats but the senate by Republicans. It's possible to force the hands of politicians even under Reagan.

But holy shit it is easier to do that with Democrats.

I want to reiterate that under Trump, an activist I worked with was kidnapped and tortured for six months and then deported. Someone who grew up in the United States since childhood and attended college legally in the United States. Whereas one of the leading Democrats in my state at the time sent me a hand-written postcard expressing his support and then immediately resigned from office due to a scandal involving his husband. Who would you rather be fighting? The latter hardly sounds like a competent ally who will fight with us, but it sure is less actively dangerous to our movement. And a vote takes very little time.

I'm not sure if everyone remembers the DREAM act and DACA. For a very long time there was a bipartisan effort to create a pathway for undocumented immigrants who were brought over by their parents as minors to receive legal residency. After over ten years of failing to get the bill passed, Obama instituted DACA via executive order which did very much the same idea. "DREAMers" as they were called, people who grew up in the United States since childhood but who are not documented immigrants, could legally attend school and avoid deportation and had a pathway to getting legal residency. DACA allowed my comrade I've mentioned to attend college with me. We were in student government together. He was living a normal fucking life like any American because of the action of a Democratic president.

Trunp rescinded DACA, rounded up DREAMers, especially targeting those who spoke out publicly against the Trump administration, and put them in fucking concentration camps, and then he deported them, often to countries they had no familiarity with. They were, as far as I'm concerned, Americans, who grew up here. They didn't have social support networks in their countries of origin. They didn't know how to get jobs there. They didn't have legal identification or documents in those countries besides maybe a birth certificate! They didn't have an education in those countries and sometimes weren't even very fluent in the language spoken in those countries.

Biden is not my favorite guy. I hope he fucking dies of COVID. His "COVID is over" policy has ruined my fucking life as a disabled person. I do not like Biden.

But he did reinstate DACA. If you were born in another country and were brought to the US as a minor without proper documentation, the government no longer actively rounds you up and deports you. You have a way to apply for legal residency. I don't think anybody should be getting deported ever for any reason. But at the very fucking least the DREAMers are not having their lives upended.

I would rather have DACA, and allow for people to fight to keep their parents in the country, than have "MASS DEPORTATION NOW" elected into office. The holocaust started as mass deportation.

I do fucking care about Palestine, but I also care about undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom are also colonized peoples. I also care about refugees. I also care about trans children and disabled people and Black people and indigenous people and Muslims and all the other groups who don't exactly have it peachy and good now but who have a lot to lose under a second Trump term. I care about Puerto Ricans and people living in the southeast being able to survive the next hurricane. I remember under Trump how disastrous Hurricane Maria was. I worked in the most densely Puerto Rican community in the continental US at the time and we did a lot of fundraising around that because the government fucking failed. I care about climate change sinking the Maldives and Polynesian islands. I care about a lot of things but it doesn't do any fucking good to care and to only care.

What Trump destroys in one day can take years to rebuild. We can't build the better future we need for everyone when the shitty present we already have is being dismantled and destroyed.

Even if you don't believe Project 2025 is real, Agenda 47 is real, the official RNC platform, and it's fucking bad as hell too.

There isn't an Earth 2. We are dealing with extreme and deadly heat waves where I live. The Democrats don't go fast enough but the republicans drive in reverse. Every day of republican rulership is lost time.

Very very few people have done as much as I have trying to make a better world and now I'm recovering from a fucking brain injury and I can't do jack shit but stay alive. I didn't vote for the democratic candidate for mayor in my city because I couldn't stand her policy on homeless people, police, and drugs. I'm not a vote blue no matter who kinda person. This general election is a big fucking deal though and you better fucking vote in it.

This is a pro-Palestine post. Biden is not exactly pro-Palestine but Trump will support the worst of Likud's agenda.

Continue to protest and rally and criticize Biden in Israel. I'm not saying to stop. But you have to fucking vote for him. You don't have to tell anyone you're voting for him. But if you live in a swing state you do have to fucking vote for the democrats. You do.

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in reply to @shel's post:

Matthew "Queso" Niederberger @Queso24697/18/2024, 1:58 PM

Letting even worse things happen because you don't want to feel personally complicit in terrible things is guarding one's own ego with real and devastating cost to the world. Sometimes the rationally best choice that saves lives and makes the world just a little bit better is to do something that makes you personally feel disgusting. And that sucks. It sucks a whole lot. But you still need to do it because you're stuck in this system, and until we actually succeed at removing evil from power and dismantling the systems of oppression, not participating in things that can have real impact now is just a different form of complicity in those systems.

secret to everybody @here-and-anon7/27/2024, 4:16 AM

"Sometimes the rationally best choice that saves lives and makes the world just a little bit better is to do something that makes you personally feel disgusting."

Ugh, I feel this and am dealing with this on a totally different matter and you hit the nail on the head. Sometimes you just gotta eat the shitveg.

Matthew "Queso" Niederberger @Queso24697/27/2024, 3:00 PM

Hope you get through it with as much peace of mind as possible.

Stryx-9 @hootOS7/18/2024, 2:23 PM

thank you for speaking out about the immensely defeatist doomerism because good GOD is it ever close-minded and short-sighted.

@eggpla7/18/2024, 2:33 PM

Could not have said it better!! Even if the two candidates were exactly the same on the issue of Palestine it would then become our moral imperative to vote on other issues that they aren't the same on

@sadmac3567/25/2024, 2:14 AM

Yeah, and the way these folks act I'm just like "tell me y'all don't actually care about the folks at home without telling me you don't care about the folks at home"

@onlyknownothing7/18/2024, 2:52 PM

There is no life score-card. You don't win special points for purity of ethos to be redeemed for prizes, and if you think it'll get you praise? Guess what, most of the people who are claiming that purity are lying. Because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism and no ethical existence in the imperial core. The device you're reading this text on is made from the blood of Africans forced into extracting rare-earth minerals by the West. But hey, you're still reading this - aren't you? You're still living here, aren't you?

It's real fucking convenient for the people who want to kill and crush and destroy to enrich and empower themselves when you restrict your strategies for resistance to self-destructive acts to demonstrate your moral and ethical purity. When your solution is "let's allow the worst to happen" or "let's all just die" the people doing the worst are happy for it. THEY aren't going to wallow in self-defeating misery with you, they're busy taking advantage.

What did Aaron Bushnell accomplish by setting himself on fire? What did Rachel Corrie actually do? Did they save Palestinian lives? Did they stop the genocide? Or are they active targets of mockery by those currently still perpetuating it?

There's no amount of self-immolation that will stop those who never cared about you or your opinions. So stop trying to find the right way to suffer and start operating strategically. That means making plays like voting even if it doesn't get you what you immediately want, because it opens up avenues. The Democrats are weak. That's kind of their thing. Controlled, hobbled opposition. Do you want to organize against the weak group who worries about the optics of their actions or the guy who openly wants to unleash the military against his opponents? Who actively wanted soldiers to use live ammo against the George Floyd protests in 2020?

Is a noble death worth more than your fucking GOAL? Or is death the only thing you can imagine anymore, and you just want to die as "pure" as you can?

Stop sitting there waiting for enough people to die for the leftist rapture to spontaneously occur, start acting. Sometimes that means getting your hands dirty. They're already bloody, since you're here reading this. Recognize this reality, accept it, and figure out that there's no undoing the now. There's only the future, and that means putting in work. Voting for "Genocide Joe" over "FOUR! MORE! GENOCIDES!" Trump is a simple thing in comparison to everything that comes after, and it makes that work so much more possible.

You need to organize - organizing is easier when there are people at the helm concerned about turning over power to the Republicans via overreach. You need to chip away at the foundations - that's easier when people aren't afraid to plan and act lest they get black-bagged the way Trump's organization did things. You need to prove to people NOT bathed in leftist theory that your way of doing things is preferable, and that's SO MUCH EASIER when you aren't screaming from the rooftops that people like them need to suffer more and harder.

Do you want to achieve your goals, or do you want to "win" at life? Because you don't get shit for the second. You're going to have to work with people you find unpleasant if you ever want to get anywhere. That includes making allies-of-convenience when needed. You can't revolution on your own, or you'd be doing it right now instead of talking theory on Cohost. And most people aren't going to join you if your rallying cry is "NO HALF-MEASURES, PURITY OR NOTHING." They'll choose nothing, and you'll GET nothing. After all, saying "Americans need to SUFFER more if they aren't sufficiently pure" is... exactly what the fascists are saying. And they'll agree with you wholeheartedly, and get right to making people suffer.

Half-measures are fine. Whatever moves towards the goal is fine, and something realistically leading to MORE and ACCELERATED genocide - of indigenous Americans, of Hispanic economic migrants, of marginalized orientations and beliefs - is NOT moving towards the goal. More suffering is not going to bring people to your banner. It's going to make people hunker down, recloset themselves as best they can, avoid attention, and attempt to survive the fascists. That's not how you get glorious revolution, it's how you get the Fourth Reich.

You don't have to sit at the table with the Biden administration. But you shouldn't be arguing "don't vote, if they won't give us what we demand and Trump wins then we deserve it" when the fascists are nodding and smiling at that. They WANT you to break the system along with them, when you have no popularly-supported alternative ready to replace it, because THEY have a plan already set up and ready-made to slot in with the gleeful support of 30% of the population.

If the fascists are going "yeah, do that" - maybe rethink?

Video Cathunk @Exameter7/18/2024, 5:45 PM

I swear the "we deserve trump because we're an evil nation who deserves to suffer, even if it means other people have to suffer with us as a result." is the most Actually Puritan mentality I see in american leftists. Profoundly selfish mentality masquerading as justice because it's steeped in the mentality of "if I don't like it, it must be the right thing."

Or it's just a cope, something for people to throw out so they don't have to reconsider their decisions in the face of evidence that it's a horrible decision.

@sadmac3567/25/2024, 2:19 AM

Yeah that's. Cue me being 5 seconds away from "say that to my face motherfucker" to the folks who, I'm sorry, did PROGRESS get in the way of your PERFECT?

Echo Cian @EchoCian7/18/2024, 3:23 PM

I looked at the replies to my comment on the other chost and wow the "trump for palestine" crowd really did memory hole things Trump literally did and said on the subject, huh. (spoilers they weren't on the side of Palestine)

Fucking terrifying.

Palestinians deserve better than a coin flip where heads is You Lose and tails is You Lose But We Hope Against All Evidence You Lose Less (And Also We're Torpedoing Our Ability To Help More In The Future)

vin @vin7/19/2024, 4:50 PM

shel yr my friend & always will be so im prefacing this with that & want that to be very clear! but this response is rly strange to me & like. youre entitled to your opinions ofc, but the major request asked of us by every palestinian ik both personally and not is to not vote for them. its the only way we can typically interact with our illegitimate fake "democracy".

i understand and sympathize with being scared. i am as well. i also think the way you are portraying the situation is not accurate and is exceptionalizing the situation, smth that ive been seeing escalate a lot in our general online social circles. when we do that we cut people off from understanding the course of how we got somewhere. we orient our politics around fear, which leads to looping into reaction and conspiracist approaches. we can lose sight of how what we are saying and doing is impacting ppl we know & in our communities. i can say some of our irl friends find this endorsement and invoking organizing experience/allyship in the ways u have to be kind of racist. i am inclined to agree.

i dont say any of this as an accusation or lecture, but i admit i am surprised and saddened by your choices here. it seems we will simply have to agree to disagree

Shel @shel7/19/2024, 6:15 PM

Even if it is what is being asked of us I struggle to see how it will lead to a positive outcome. I reference my background in organizing because most people reading aren't going to know the context of all the legitimate shit I've tried to do over the years and how deep in it I'd been. Without the context they are likely to cast me as someone coming at this conclusion from a place of ignorance, or loving the democrats, or from not knowing the severity of what I am saying.

It is not that I am more entitled to speak than people who have done less organizing or that I have a right to speak for people I've worked alongside. But that after dealing with all of it. After being present through all of it. After trying and failing to get a comrade back from ICE kidnapping. After trying and failing on so many things. I am struggling to reach any other conclusions than what I am presenting. I have been beaten down by 12 years of failed activism and organizing and maybe I was just personally fucking shit at it and was working with incompetent organizations or something idk. But I struggle to look at the past 12 years and see substantial victories that weren't just the Democrats implementing a half-measure of what we were trying to accomplish.

I would love to be convinced that there is hope. I would love to be convinced that there is way to successfully prevent the worst of what could come without voting. I am open to it. I have been reading what others have written. But I am just really genuinely struggling to reach another conclusion without relying entirely on faith, even though I recognize that what I am currently expressing is predominantly doom and fear.

All signs point to being stuck in a position of "vote or else" without an exit in sight. Maybe it will be effective if people in blue states vote 55% for democrats instead of 95% for democrats.... but I can't see a positive outcome from swing states having low voter turnout, and republicans for another four years. By the time the democrats come back into power, or someone else, having been convinced they must be pro Palestine to win elections, will there still be a Gaza left?

I talk about DACA not because I'm trying to weaponize a history of allyship to cow people into voting for Democrats or because I earnestly support them. But because I am trying to illustrate the things I have witnessed that I am afraid of coming back and worse than before. Because I am trying to illustrate that I can care about Gaza but also other things too. I hate the moral calculus of "who matters saving more" and I don't want to make it. I don't want to see my fear of mass deportations returning as being representative of not caring about Gaza enough. It's not modest or principled but it is genuine.

It's out of line, but it's genuine. I am struggling to see the other option.

vin @vin7/19/2024, 7:35 PM

i think the thing is im not asking anyone to have hope or do anything specific to prevent certain things. i support ppl doing what they need to do if they are convinced they cannot stay alive in certain situations, including leaving the US. i dont want anyone to suffer, or to be a martyr. what i think is a reasonable consideration to ask of people is how we as white americans discuss this publicly where our friends & others will see and potentially be hurt by types of disregard they have had to tolerate so much of already.

i do not think there is another option persay. i am not someone who thinks whats coming is preventable. to some extent i think some of it is necessary for things to change in a meaningful way. i dont have any delusions about what that likely means for me. its not fun and its pretty frightening. i have chosen to focus on trying to understand why its happening, what it may look like, and offer what i can to friends and strangers in the meantime emotionally, politically, and materially. sometimes thats nothing. its not my fault. i cant save it either. just like we cannot change or save a broken abusive family, we cannot change or save an illegitimate form of governance, a settler-colonialist project. i think we shouldnt, though im not one interested in going after people who are scared, and i appreciate your honesty in your reply

i cant recall if u saw my tweets the other day abt how "you cant control disease with fear" re; cruel harassment from covid activists. i would say you cant control politics with fear either, but certainly mixing the two, just like mixing politics with morality, has often been the origin of reactionary stances that have meaningfully harmful impacts on others in our communities

Shel @shel7/19/2024, 7:46 PM

On the first paragraph I will concede that I could have done without saying all the "shut the fuck up" and "get a clue" type phrases

I think I can see a timeline split where we retain some basic public services and have some agency over that. Given my experiences trying to rebuild one of the simplest pieces of infrastructure in the wake of collapse, I would really prefer to preserve that infrastructure rather than allow it to be destroyed. I am starting to find my values shifting away from grander ideals and more towards ensuring the absolute basics continue to function.

I struggle to imagine what a politics without morals or fear could look like. I think for most people outside of the noble courts, it has mostly always been about seeking what will bring stability. Most people don't seem particularly concerned with any of it until their own lives are upended and thrown into turmoil.... otherwise they are driven by morals and fear. My moral is I would like people to have access to basic public works and my fear is that we will end up living in the shadow of ruined aqueducts we do not know how to build.

vin @vin7/19/2024, 7:58 PM

i think at the end of the day the only thing thats helped me is focusing on trying to separate my mental health issues and needs from my political framework / analyses. and to be developing both of them as robustly as i can to try to process this without imploding or falling apart. it sucks and its hard. i fuck up, i lash out sometimes. i may be wrong. but this is the choice ive made to try to handle this stress and fear.

ik u were providing context to strangers, but unfortunately it rly does come across like "youre saying i dont care about palestinans? well ive been marching since 2012—" which was a big woah! moment to me to read. i think what youre advocating for involves a) taking the democrats at their word with their narratives abt themselves, b) seeing america/our govt as legitimate or functional even to a minor amount, & c) a belief this must continue to exist in some capacity for safety reasons. when you say this i think of my friends whose safety is actively made worse every day by what and who youre advocating for, while having to tolerate everyone around them saying stuff like what you said ykwim?

addition to second comment: im not trying to change yr mind on voting it seems thats where yr at rn. im not changing my mind. i think im mostly saying i dont think these posts were an okay way or venue to express those feelings and fears in and like. idk im not gunna Do anything abt it but it was Enough & was hurtful to ppl in our irl community in a way that i felt it worthwhile to say "i dont think this is smth i need/want to fight you about but this aspect of it isnt okay imo", thats all

Shel @shel7/19/2024, 10:41 PM

I mean, I was saying that, but like, also, yeah. I think it's really extreme for someone to say that everyone who votes doesn't care about palestinians. I didn't like those comments. Sure it's indignant of me to be like "how dare you say that given what I've sacrificed" but idk. It sucks for people to say that shit imho. I don't like it. I don't want to be approached as "Oh, so you're just saying this because you don't care" when it's actually "Oh, you care, but you are struggling with a decision being in conflict with that because different kinds of caring pull you in different directions."

I am not taking the democrats at their word, so much as observing their actions historically and presently. They're not honest at all, but they're just not the GOP. They just aren't. They are observable different. They aren't what they claim to be or who I want them to be. But I can observe strong differences. I'm not really sure what determines if a government is legitimate or not. The government is the organization that fulfills the role of the government. It does government things. I don't think that means it has a right to be the government. But it's the organization that is governing.

And like, the government does a lot of things, many of them are very very bad, but it also does basic government things like collect trash, and my view of the world has come to change in such a manner that i see those very basic things as something that should not be taken for granted, and having a government keeping those basic things going, with continuity, as being very valuable. I know this sounds very "Mussolini makes the trains run on time" (which was never even true) but it's more just... I'm thinking about things like the water department. Is the water department legitimate? I don't know. Is anybody else doing drinking water management? The water department is the people doing the water department things. I don't see any challengers to it. The weather service is the weather service. Nobody else is doing it. It's not that I believe in the presidency or in congress. I believe in the civil service. Civilian public employees. Right now congress is funding that work. If some other organization wants to challenge congress in directing the civil service, maybe I'd support that. Maybe the civil service should be taking orders from the Delaware nation and that would be legitimate. But that isn't what is happening. I don't really get that level of choice here. I get to choose between voting for trump, not voting at all which under the electoral college system is pretty risky, or voting for the democratic candidate.

If you're not gonna vote and you weren't convinced by what I said, then I don't have any other arguments that would convince you, that's kinda all I have to offer. If it's insufficient it's insufficient. I see things as being very precarious right now. I don't feel able to take risks and I'm not feeling up to going down a path of things getting worse before they get better.

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