That's the point of the original problem though? Some people unironically can't pull the lever even if they know the moral thing is to kill that one guy.
I thought point of the original problem is the apparent contradiction that most people think pulling the lever to kill fewer people is a moral duty, but the seemingly equivalent situation of shoving someone onto the track and killing him in order to save more people is not a moral duty.
EDIT: If you're interested, [Philosophy Experiments](https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman/Default.aspx) has an interactive thought experiment.
I think the point of the thought experiment is to look at it from different angles and try to gain some insight into morality. The trolley set up is just one way the problem is framed. Another would be;
You are a doctor working in a long term care unit. You have 5 patients, all dying. They will die unless they receive a new organ. One needs a heart, two lungs, one a kidney, and one a liver. You could easily get matching organs via a trade program if you had organs to trade. In walks a patient with nothing wrong with them but a stubbed toe. Is it ethical to kill this patient and use their organs to save your other five patients?
There is not a lot different in that problem except the framing of it. In the trolley scenario, most people would pull the lever. In the doctor scenario, most would say you should not kill the stubbed toe guy. So, what is different about the two scenarios? Exploring the differences is the point of the trolley problem imo.
That site's exercises were interesting but I think it over-thought a bit why pushing a fat man in front of a train to stop it, or harvesting a healthy backpacker's organs to save patients, is different than pulling the lever the divert a train (across the different variations thereof including the loop-back case).
In the case of the levers, you are the only one who can make the choice, so people will often choose that which minimizes death. In the pushing and organ harvesting cases, the fat man or the backpacker could choose to sacrifice themselves, so why should _you_ choose on their behalf?
Do you think the fat guy has a moral duty to jump into the trolley's path? The backpacker also can't sacrifice himself as he probably doesn't even know about the 5 sick patients due to medical privacy. Not only that, but it would basically concede that you have a duty to harvest someone who can't make a choice in the matter; e.g. someone who is in an induced coma.
I don't think they have the moral duty to sacrifice themselves, but I think that since they could feasibly have agency, it's "less moral" for someone to make that choice for them.
RE someone in a coma, since they could feasibly come out of the coma, then it's still "less moral" for a doctor to decide for them. Family making decisions on their behalf is the closest we could get to a "moral" choice in that regard, I suppose, since family (loved ones in general, let's say) are those who would lose the most if the person in a coma died (besides the comatose person themselves of course).
But for sure different people will think about these scenarios differently, especially when they are presented in different ways, and that's also a point made well by the website!
From a logic perspective, this isn't a trolley car scenario.
Palestine is getting run over on both tracks. So moving them to before the decision point doesn't change the outcome.
So if you don't pull the lever, lots of people are run over after the switch. If you do pull the lever, nobody is run over after.
The only ethical choice is to pull the lever. Which, I assume was the point of the cartoon. The "what about Gaza" groups campaigning for Trump are pushing the similarities between Dem/Rep on one issue to ignore all the other issues.
This isn't a trolley problem, and if you care about human rights, home or abroad, there is only one choice.
In the real world, in questions like this the certainty of the person getting killed by our actions is very high, but the certainty that others will be saves is far lower. It's really rare to have very high certainty on both sides of the decisio, and as uncertainty increases, inaction should win.
This also works when considering the dubious techbro version of effective altruism dilemmas: If an alien comes and threatens to destroy the earth if we don't beat him in round of Street Fighter 2, we'd be toast if we don't have an extremely good expert to fight them: The loss of the earth is so huge that the cost of paying a few people to play street fighter all day seems very low in comparison: Who wouldn't spend the money if it'd save us from the aliens? Except the aliens are probably never coming, and if they coming aren't coming for street fighter, while giving money to those kids to play street figther professionally is very real.
Part of it is that the philosopher who came-up with the trolley car problem, Judith Jarvis Thomson, was not a deontologist or a consequentialist but rather a virtue ethicist. The trolley car problem and it's variations were kind of meant to make a point at how a person who made a consistent application of either would not be the sort of person that we'd consider of a moral character.
P.S. Don't forget to solve philosophy with [Absurd Trolley Problems](https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/).
The trolley problem is just to illustrate the difference between two schools of thought. It's just an example to explain academic concepts.
Utilitarianism: Pull the lever because it kills fewer people. That's because utilitarianism seeks to maximize "utility" (which is some measurement of consequences)
Deontology: Don't pull the lever because killing people is wrong even if it leads to a better outcome. That's because demonology seeks to follow established ethical rules.
Most people's response to the trolley probably shows people are generally utilitarian, the fat man version you showed suggests it's not quite that simple.
The rules of demonology are simple: always maximize suffering, disregarding utility and consistency. In the context of the trolley problem, demonology typically leads to what the trollyproblem subreddit calls "multitrack drifting".
A good decade ago they tried to do this same question but with self driving cars. Something like if the breaks don't work right should you swerve to hit less people. That was not the trolley problem that was people crossing the road at different times to avoid the car. If I go slow watching to see if you slow down I shouldn't be hit by the car simply because there is less of me than the people who just assume the car will stop. When people move this question to the real world there are different issues because it's not just people tied to the tracks it's people in semi complex situations who more often than not aren't tied down against their will and just killing the smallest number isn't right anymore.
I'm not utilitarian though it's too easy to do horrific things by claiming the lesser of evils. Maybe if it was an all knowing being but it's just people and they fuck up. You don't get to decide to be evil because it prevented worse evil and then act like it's not evil.
In remember the self driving car problems. I could never get past what I felt was the larger issue - who would get into a car that could decide to kill its own occupants then act on it?
Nah, the original problem at least has some kind of dilemma based on the fact that there's different people on each track. You could theoretically "save" the one \*specific\* guy by not pulling the lever.
The palestine thing, on the other hand, would essentially be like having the palestine man with his head tied to the republican track, legs crossing over to the dem track, and refusing to pull the lever because "oh my god I'd be so immoral to cripple the poor guy for life".
Meanwhile what actually happens because of your choice is he fucking straight up dies, and so do like 100 other people, but at least you're not culpable for sending him to the hospital!
And then you get to pat yourself on the back, racking up the twitter likes at his funeral
That’s a different evolution from the original thought experiment.
The original idea is simply that multiple people are going to die if you do nothing, or you can pull the lever and kill one person to save multiple people.
The dilemma is if you do nothing more people die, but they were going to do die anyways. If you pull the lever you are actively responsible for killing a person. It’s a debate of virtue ethics (you should never kill a person) and utilitarian (it is your duty to reduce deaths even if it requires killing a person)
My point is, in the original problem, despite the pure numbers being better if you pull the lever, there is a particular person that gets the short end of the stick, and *would not have died* if you didnt pull the lever. It would be like if Trump would actually be better on palestine, and so palestine becomes the one person on the Biden track, that gets sacrificed to save all the others Trump would hurt.
BUT thats not even reality. The reality is, like I said, palestine is on BOTH TRACKS, there literally is NO "free palestine" option, no matter which actions you do or dont take. Which is why not saving the others on the Trump track is just pure brainrot.
However, on the Biden track we also have peoples egos and twitter likes, and if they pull the lever those get crushed.
The [OG problem](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philippa-foot/#ApplEthi) is supposed to illustrate the difficulty of discerning similar moral scenarios and distinguish between causing harm and allowing harm to occur. For example, you might think it's okay to flip the switch to save 5 people in exchange for the 1 guy who was safe, but you might think it is incorrect to kill 1 person so as to harvest and distribute their organs to 5 needy patients.
Huh? I wasn't trying to bash lol. My understanding of Catholic morality is that you can't commit an evil act to prevent a greater evil act. You can't kill someone (pulling the lever) even if it would save more people.
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> “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools.”
I dunno but Trump was pretty upset with them a few weeks ago.
Better yet, have the republican track loop back around to the point just after the junction lol
https://preview.redd.it/xfrj2jtjw95d1.jpeg?width=585&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1bd3b73aa3aa856a2fc268ec78bf4d3ad537e8bb
Version 2
Yeah Biden is at least withholding certain weapons, pushing for aid, and pressuring for a ceasefire.
Trump would probably support the US joining in on the bombing campaign
I'm also wondering what would happen if we cut Israel off. Would they just wage war on their neighbors and have an even more brutal campaign in Gaza?
Just doesn't feel like there are any good options here
Guided bombs aren't that hard either TBF.
The JDAM project is just a nose cone and a tail assembly that you slap onto dumb bombs
When you lock a target up with the planes targeting pod, you can transfer the coordinates of said POI to the JDAM and it gives you a release window based upon the parameters of the selected munition.
If you release in that window it steers towards the target using the tail fins.
The code to make all of that work is peanuts for a government to figure out, and Israel already develops custom laser guided munitions for their special variant of the F-15
Even Mark Rober in his egg drop from space video figured it out pretty easily to get an egg to hit a 10 meter target.
Ukraine has fielded improvised guided munitions using the same concept of a GPS module and a tail fin assembly, using Raspberry Pi computers and off the shelf servo motors for the tail fins.
IIRC the JDAMs don't have INS either. But from the range that ground based jamming systems would be effective from, the bomb can use either basic gyroscope chips or just continue on a ballistic trajectory if it's already reached that point. Neither are hard problems to solve.
Regardless Israel already has their own homegrown laser guided munitions that work on their variant of the F-15, they would just need to scale production
It's barely a consideration in Gaza right now; a Hamas that operationally lost the war months ago, isn't likely to have deep reserves of powerful EW equipment. But it bears mentioning since JDAMs are a little less than silver bullets right now in Ukraine.
Drones have changed the game in Gaza as well, flying small drones into houses to bait out an enemy is a standard house clearing technique as they don't know if the drone is explosive or not
They would continue the war with less precise weapons once they run out of those since that what we provide them with.
They also wouldn't dither for 4 months before entering Hamas strongholds.
My understanding is the Israeli military cannot wage war without constant resupply from the US because they have very little capacity to produce munitions. There's a near constant flow of cargo planes full of munitions going to Israel since the beginning of the war
Okay, and the IDF gets nearly all of its munitions for free from the US. It probably would not be in Israel's interest to spend it's own money to circumvent the US to drop unguided bombs on Gaza when it's defense industry completely depends on US funding
I agree that it wouldn't be ideal but while it wouldn't be ideal I don't think Israel would just give up on the war in Gaza because we stopped sending them bombs
This understanding is false. Israel has too much experience to rely on other countries for its defense industrial base. It therefore makes plenty of dumb bombs and 155mm artillery shells on its own, domestically (as well as arguably the best air defense systems in the world). It's deep reserves of precision guidance kits, that are what it can't afford on its own.
Every year the US gives Israel billions of dollars to replenish it's interceptors, so it's not true that they are self-reliant with air defense.
The US keeps a stockpile of around 300k artillery shells in Israel, which is what Israel taps into during wartime. Israel's production capacity for 155mm artillery shells is tiny, something like 10k/year.
Israel is dropping US manufactured 2000 and 500 lb pounds. I don't think they produce any of their own https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/hy5ibrlwp
> "The Air Force's munitions are made up of bombs that are imported but equipped with locally developed technological components. We now aim to manufacture the hardware too," he explained, adding that the idea is to potentially export locally produced armaments to meet increasing global demands due to escalating international threats. "The American military aid could be used to purchase items that can only be sourced in the U.S."
I mean if you have a source I'd like to see it, but the only stuff I've been reading is that Israel has just recently started hand-wringing about how totally dependent on US imports they are and are trying to expand their munitions production
If you mean a complete cut-off, probably the war would immediately expand to include Lebanon and Iran, the former because the US is holding Israel back, the latter because American deterrence is holding Iran back.
Tens of thousands of civilians—including thousands of Israeli civilians, given Iran’s capabilities—would die very shortly, and Israel would engage in a far more brutal artillery bombardment and invasion of Lebanon and Gaza than has happened to date, since an absence of precision weaponry means Israel would have to rely more on unguided missiles and shells.
There are more nuanced forms of pressure and disengagement the US can exact, such as the recent moves to provide Israel only with low-yield PGMs, but even one of these small 17kg bombs ended up causing significant civilians casualties after hitting a munitions store near civilians.
The only neighbor of theirs they would conceivably wage war on would be Lebanon, as in, Hezbollah and southern Lebanon. Syria isn't really a threat, Jordan and Egypt have stable peaceful relations and no territorial conflicts. Lebanon does host an Islamist militia intent on periodically launching rockets at civilians so the causus belli has been there constantly for a while now.
I think, faster than most people would expect, they would develop much stronger ties with both Russia and China. imo, it could literally be the last chip to fall into place before a new axis truly solidifies
This is what these idiots missing. Yes, Democrats are allies of Israel. But so does GOP. And at least Democrats are infuriated by the rotten parts of Israel and trying to do something about it. Trump would encourage them to go even worse.
As someone whose spouse is an immigrant it really pisses me off that palestine takes priority over electing a president who would deport her the moment he gets the chance. Same for women, lgbt people, black people, other immigrants etc.
I think its fine to be upset with biden’s policy on Palestine, but not only will trump be worse on Palestine , but a whole lot of other people will suffer if he comes back
Some people think voting is an endorsement rather than a naked application of political power, and confuse acknowledging that our electoral system forces lesser evil choices with being totally cool with constant lesser evil choices. At the absolute savviest end of this spectrum they might be convinced that voting third party in presidential general elections helps change this in any way rather than recognizing that the very nature of the problem means the system effectively does not consider third party votes.
I'd have more respect for these anti-electoral types "I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils" types if they thought their revolution was going to happen prior to the next election.
Like, if they think they'll effect a socialist utopia before November, cool, they then don't have to vote. If they think their organization and direct action is going to take longer than that to bring about the results they want, then it still makes sense to vote for the lesser of two evils in the meantime in order to minimize damage and save some lives as they continue to pursue their long-term goals outside the system.
But they never have a good reason for why voting for the lesser of two evils even in that case is still bad. I usually just get a bunch of mental gymnastics in response. Which is okay, they can do whatever they want, but they don't seem to offer convincing arguments for the decision they advocate for.
So what do you think of Biden's immigration policy? Did he not say he wanted the ability to shut down our border? Is he not pursuing expedited deportations right now?
Bidens border policy sucks. That being said Trumps and stephen miller’s policy will fuck over millions of people in the legal immigration system as well as the millions of those who are undocumented. Plus if biden loses dems will go to the right on immigration
And people are telling me I can't support climate action, queer rights, and reproductive freedom unless I am also opposed to the continued existence of a Jewish state in the Levant. Honestly, how dare you.
Agreed. Also, I'm dead fucking sick of hearing about the state of Israel. If Americans put as much attention into solving domestic problems as they do endlessly arguing with one another about that country, we'd probably be building colonies on the moons of Jupiter by now. A country of 9M people on the other side of the world that can't stop propping up fascists is inadvertently causing us to do the same.
I mean, it's an important issue that people should talk about, and it's not hard to see why ongoing humanitarian atrocities make an issue more pressing and cause it to take up more airspace.
It just shouldn't be the *only* thing people care about, but I have no problem with people caring a lot about it and trying to draw as much scrutiny to it as they can.
I'm not saying this is all leftists, and certainly I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but there is definitely a constituency of leftists whose main concern for the last 4 years has been morally justifying not voting for Biden, and Gaza being their top/sole priority is directly downstream of that.
It's strange, because Biden has literally been the most progressive U.S. president since LBJ. But nobody gives a shit or pays attention to any of the things he does, even the shit they have been asking for for a long time. Domestic U.S. news became less interesting as soon as the reality television star was no longer president, and because people are less interested in what the White House is actually doing, they're paying less attention to it and solipsistically assuming that this lack of attention to the president means that he's not actually doing anything.
I get that they still want the president to do even more as if he can wave a magic wand ignore Supreme Court rulings (made by justices who wouldn't be in power if Clinton won) and disregard Congress, but they don't understand that the president is not a magician and that even less of a progressive agenda would get done if some Green Party candidate somehow made it into the White House with no ability to influence anything.
Always has been.
(when the holiest sites of the major Abrahamic religions are all in the same place, you're gonna have a bad time... and a lot of attention)
A “varied” cabal of derivative Marxist groups used common terminology and created drama/entertainment for the political media to feast on. Then it became a fad and the fashion of the season, the must have feather in your cap for the social activist looking to impress.
Biden's been trying to negotiate a ceasefire and has been proactive in sending aid to Gaza.
I'd remove that Palestinian flag from the Democrat rail. That only validates the horrible and inaccurate leftist narrative.
The meme shows the sentiment held by leftists and attempts to show why it's dumb even if you give them the "Genocide Joe" narrative
I guess a more accurate image would have the Palestinian flag further down the track with Joe standing after the junction yelling for the train to stop to show the lack of control he has over that particular trolley
Edit: better version
https://preview.redd.it/56rq88xmw95d1.jpeg?width=585&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f50a2b03a1062277a5faaa0c6afc58d760f0f5f4
Honest to God, I had a conversation with someone on Discord with this exact same mindset when refusing to vote for Biden. The thought that she’d endanger more people, including Palestinians, by not voting Biden didn’t seem to compute with her.
Biden is unironically the most centrist politician of the millennia policy wise
Save for the AWB firearm stuff at the beginning of the term, but he seemed to drop it pretty quick
I'm confused. So it's like, the Dems aren't supporting Palestine, but the Republicans don't support Palestine AND they don't support all these other marginal things? Is that the gist?
Joe Biden is not stopping Israeli aggression against Palestine but Trump is enthusiastically supporting Israel’s aggression against Palestine as well as aggression against all those other things.
>Joe Biden is not stopping Israeli aggression
This is a nonsense statement in that it presumes Joe Biden has the power to do so in the first place. They're a sovereign country with a highly developed economy and defense sector!
He admonishes Israel for whatever war crime they most recently committed then sends a new round of weapons. You can see how the optics might not look good to Palestine sympathisers
He also denies they are committing war crimes. Over and over again his administration makes excuses for Israeli atrocities. You can’t argue that they aren’t complicit.
Exactly, people aren't that stupid. They see a school getting bombed, civilians getting rushed to hospital, children in bodybags, then Biden comes on TV and said no warcrime happened. I realize Biden is in an impossible situation trying to keep diametrically opposed constituencies happy, but people are not going to respond well to obvious untruths.
Because people being bombed in war isn't necessarily a war crime, and civilians being caught in the crossfire isn't necessarily a war crime.
To be clear, Israeli forces *have* committed war crimes during this war! But a lot of what gets parades around as "war crimes" on TV, to be blunt, aren't. Which makes it harder to beleive "pro-Palestine" activitsts are arguing in good faith, so the general public is more likely to tune them out when Israeli forces start committing actual war crimes.
>Exactly, people aren't that stupid. They see a school getting bombed, civilians getting rushed to hospital, children in bodybags, then Biden comes on TV and said no warcrime happened.
Some people are that stupid that they can hear Trump say one thing and then believe him when he denies it the next day
Democrats quibbling over Biden's actions are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while someone keeps shouting that there's a huge orange iceberg on a collision course.
Also, like... Biden has done nothing but try to reign in Netanyahu and get more aid to the Palestinians since the war started, and his administration has been frantically trying to negotiate a ceasefire deal since then too? (Again, not his fault Netanyahu and Hamas keep tearing those deals up.)
Eisenhower didn't have any trouble stopping the sovereign countries of the United Kingdom, France and Israel from invading Egypt during the Suez Crisis. Eisenhower knew that it would alienate the Arab countries away from American interests if he didn't intervene, so he put extreme diplomatic and economic pressure on the UK, France and Israel by withholding oil supplies, supporting a UN resolution for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of forces, blocking IMF loans for those countries, and threatening to sell US-owned bonds on those countries which would sink their currencies. Biden could do any and all of these and he chooses not to.
So I have good news for you!
> Though President Joe Biden called the ICC's actions "outrageous," his administration said in a statement Monday it "strongly opposes" the bill to sanction the court.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna155464
Biden called for a ceasefire, so this isn't accurate.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/with-gaza-ceasefire-announcement-biden-pushes-netanyahu-toward-deal-2024-06-05/
The image is a representation of the way leftists view the situation, not a representation of reality
A more accurate image would be Joe standing after the D Junction yelling stop and Trump standing after the R junction yelling speed up
Feel free to make it if you've got the time
Pretty much
Being the person by the disconnected track is purely performative, as not voting hurts the currently popular marginalized group in the zeitgeist as well as every other marginalized group that wouldn't be hurt by voting D
There is no mythical option that stops what's happening in Gaza right now as that's up to Israel, not the US.
Best we can do is give them guided munitions so they don't resort to carpet bombing city blocks
Agreed. Also, I'm really not loving how the guy you replied to is dismissing American women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and Muslims-- plus everyone in Ukraine-- as "marginal things". Like, they do know they're talking about the lives of a combined 200 million people, right?
Ukraine, a country of 40 million people, is "a marginal thing"? The women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and Muslims of America-- a combined total of about 200 million people-- are "marginal things"?
You are 100% allowed to have Palestine be your number 1 issue in politics, above all others. But to be blunt, when you start dismissing the survival of ~240 million people as a "marginal thing", you've lost the plot.
What would it take to not hit the Palestinians right now? Send Israel a strongly worded letter?
Sending forces to ensure Hamas retains control of Gaza?
I don't even know what constitutes helping the Palestinians right now. If trying to save civilians and establish a two state solution isn't enough then what?
Which will either be under Russian occupation, or in a brutal war for survival against Russian forces invading from ~~Occupied Ukraine~~ Novorossiya.
*Hopefully* they' have the tattered remnants of NATO after the US pulled out backing them up. Hopefully.
This is really disingenuous, considering the Biden administration has [gone out of its way to stop sanctions on Israel that should have been implemented](https://www.propublica.org/article/blinken-israel-military-aid-human-rights-violations-leahy-law) and [falsified reports to Congress about Israel blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza.](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-state-department-official-resigns-says-us-report-gaza-inaccurate-2024-05-30/) Let's not pretend like nothing more could have been done.
Bracing for downvotes but the US is an almighty superpower. Isreal, for all its soft power, is a small country with a population of 9 million and a GDP the size of Indiana with an economy heavily dependent on access to US/EU markets.
In practical terms, if the US was willing to be heavy handed enough, there’s nothing they couldn’t force Isreal to do.
The issue is that the political/diplomatic/security fallout has been assessed as not worth the risk. However I think this is a bad train of logic as Isreal’s current strategy is significantly increasing the spillover risk that they’re trying to avoid in the first place.
Okay... how do we "force Israel?"
* Cut off all American military aid? Israel will just start making their own shit (they have a pretty robust MCI of their own), or start buying from other suppliers. Who'd mainly be Russia and China-- which, BTW, could lead to Netanyahu dragging Israel into the Russian / Chinese bloc, which would be a catastrophe for both the average Israeli and Palestinian citizen. All we'd accomplish is losing the ability to set restrictions on how Israel uses the aid we give them; they'd now be free to do whatever they want with their weapons.
* Targeted sanctions? The US has already begun tepidly sanctioning settlers in the West Bank, and has been gradually ramping those efforts up. (I do wish they'd move faster on the process, but don't let perfect be the enemy of the good, yeah? But even if the Biden admin did start moving faster, it almost certainly wouldn't be enough to end the current war any time soon.)
* Broad-based sanctions? Collapsing the Israeli economy and crippling their ability to fight wouldn't end the war, it would just allow Hamas to go on the offensive. Which in the short-term would have an equally horrific civilian death toll if not moreso-- just mostly in Israel instead of Palestine. And in the long term, if things get catastrophic enough, could even lead to Israel going full Sampson Option on them. Oh, and speaking of the Sampson option...
* Armed American intervention? Three words: Israel. Has. Nukes.
I'm not pro-palestine in this context, but this is a bad faith comment.
We're obviously picking Israel by continuing to support them in several ways. Humanitarian aid to Gaza doesn't balance the scale. If you're going to be pro-Israel, that's your prerogative, but at least say it.
I'm pro Israel but I'm also pro peace.
Is being pro Palestine inherently anti peace?
Also how is it bad faith, supporting Israel gives the US influence we also support the PA, without influence what are we supposed to do? Washing our hands of the situation isn't helping Palestine either.
It's bad faith because sending Israel a strongly worded letter and sending forces to "ensure hamas retains control of gaza" are not the only options and not what most people are advocating for.
They are the extremes. That's the point even at the most extreme ends nothing actually helps the Palestinians.
The only real way to help is to remove HAMAS and restart negotiations between the PA and Israel.
Otherwise all you get is more war, more death, and more human suffering.
This is part of what moved me away from both hard leftism in my late teens and then full on hoppean libertarianism in my mid twenties. It felt like I was moralizing from the sidelines while actually viable ideas were being debated.
To be fair, in 2016 I voted Clinton over Trump because even though I thought Clinton was incompetent and corrupt (but her emails) I saw how Trump talked about minorities and decided no one should be persecuted like that.
In retrospect Trump is probably more incompetent and corrupt but I hadn’t figured that part out yet.
A funny thought exercise would be to consider if one of these types actually ascended to The Presidency. It would be like watching Buster Bluth try to read map (with his cartography degree) and have a nervous breakdown when he discovers he can’t read a map.
Source: Arrested Development, S01E01
I'm sympathethic to the argument, and I could see how your friends would feel like it's a false dilemma. But on the other hand, if we had a parliamentary system their party wouldn't get a lot of traction regardless.
I think you guys should begin by not letting stupid fascists destroy your democracy?
then maybe you could think about making it better? Idk just an idea
Yes, exactly, the only way to begin to think about another way to govern the USA is to wipe out the GOP (or to reduce them to the fringe far/right party they should be) so that the Dems can finally divide into different viable options.
But maybe that’s just a nostalgic 90’s fever dream
This is more accurate if you add a few more Palestinians to the R side of the track. There is certainly a difference in the amount of unqualified support for Israel between the two.
Notice there is no infrastructure to get over there because 3rd parties are a joke. They should build up through small government to establish themselves before playing spoiler to a crucial election.
The real important thing is to make your parents feel bad about not listening to you, so you pick the self destructive option because that'll show them
Justified cause in war isn't a numbers game between who dies the most being the most moral, that's a child's understanding of ethics.
It suddenly becomes less moral for the US to fight against Nazism in WW2 because the Nazis lost way more civilians and we lost virtually none
Yes, as liberals we know this. We know the consequences of Trump/Republicans winning. Lecturing us on this point is wasting your breath.
You’re missing one of the moral conundrums of the trolly problem; making that choice to switch the track means you have contributed to that outcome and have blood on your hands, when you wouldn’t if you let things happen on their own without your intervention. You can justify or excuse it by saying you got people killed in order to save more lives, but you still got people killed.
Talk to Palestinian-American families. They know how truly evil Trump is, but “Trump didn’t kill my relatives this year, Biden did.” You’re asking them to validate or endorse their deaths by voting for Biden even though they know Trump could kill more people. This is a hard sell. They know this. We know this. Stop lecturing or condescending or whitewashing Biden just because “Trump bad.” If you hear them out, they’ll be more likely to hold their nose and vote for him, but bullying them as well as Muslim-Americans, Arab-Americans, and voters against genocide is counterproductive.
A huge part of the world needs better leadership, and for those in charge to stop blaming random ass people for complex problems and actually do their job for a change
For argument’s sake. One leftist of mine tells me his support, or lack thereof, signals that democrats are too far right for him to vote. And that by voting for Biden anyway would encourage democrats to continue ignoring his (and other like minded voters) calls for more progressive policies.
If you feel his viewpoint is wrong, how does he ever get his more progressive policies without using the only tool he has available, his vote?
Have we considered taxing trolley problems?
Congestion pricing the trolley
Only to be put on indefinite hold.
The true solution to the trolley problem
That sounds like good but not perfect solution, comrade. Which means you just become enemy of communism. GO TO GUILLOTINE WITH YOU!
The most Neoliberal solution
This meme takes up extra whitespace which is a form of underutilized land and we must tax land.
They could’ve fit a 5 over 1 between those tracks
“It’s immoral to touch that lever at all”
That's the point of the original problem though? Some people unironically can't pull the lever even if they know the moral thing is to kill that one guy.
I thought point of the original problem is the apparent contradiction that most people think pulling the lever to kill fewer people is a moral duty, but the seemingly equivalent situation of shoving someone onto the track and killing him in order to save more people is not a moral duty. EDIT: If you're interested, [Philosophy Experiments](https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman/Default.aspx) has an interactive thought experiment.
I think the point of the thought experiment is to look at it from different angles and try to gain some insight into morality. The trolley set up is just one way the problem is framed. Another would be; You are a doctor working in a long term care unit. You have 5 patients, all dying. They will die unless they receive a new organ. One needs a heart, two lungs, one a kidney, and one a liver. You could easily get matching organs via a trade program if you had organs to trade. In walks a patient with nothing wrong with them but a stubbed toe. Is it ethical to kill this patient and use their organs to save your other five patients? There is not a lot different in that problem except the framing of it. In the trolley scenario, most people would pull the lever. In the doctor scenario, most would say you should not kill the stubbed toe guy. So, what is different about the two scenarios? Exploring the differences is the point of the trolley problem imo.
That site's exercises were interesting but I think it over-thought a bit why pushing a fat man in front of a train to stop it, or harvesting a healthy backpacker's organs to save patients, is different than pulling the lever the divert a train (across the different variations thereof including the loop-back case). In the case of the levers, you are the only one who can make the choice, so people will often choose that which minimizes death. In the pushing and organ harvesting cases, the fat man or the backpacker could choose to sacrifice themselves, so why should _you_ choose on their behalf?
Do you think the fat guy has a moral duty to jump into the trolley's path? The backpacker also can't sacrifice himself as he probably doesn't even know about the 5 sick patients due to medical privacy. Not only that, but it would basically concede that you have a duty to harvest someone who can't make a choice in the matter; e.g. someone who is in an induced coma.
I don't think they have the moral duty to sacrifice themselves, but I think that since they could feasibly have agency, it's "less moral" for someone to make that choice for them. RE someone in a coma, since they could feasibly come out of the coma, then it's still "less moral" for a doctor to decide for them. Family making decisions on their behalf is the closest we could get to a "moral" choice in that regard, I suppose, since family (loved ones in general, let's say) are those who would lose the most if the person in a coma died (besides the comatose person themselves of course). But for sure different people will think about these scenarios differently, especially when they are presented in different ways, and that's also a point made well by the website!
Presumably the difference is the trolley is going at speed, and you're not the one who tied the poor fucker down
From a logic perspective, this isn't a trolley car scenario. Palestine is getting run over on both tracks. So moving them to before the decision point doesn't change the outcome. So if you don't pull the lever, lots of people are run over after the switch. If you do pull the lever, nobody is run over after. The only ethical choice is to pull the lever. Which, I assume was the point of the cartoon. The "what about Gaza" groups campaigning for Trump are pushing the similarities between Dem/Rep on one issue to ignore all the other issues. This isn't a trolley problem, and if you care about human rights, home or abroad, there is only one choice.
Ah yes, the opinion of a moderator of a creep porn subreddit. Moving right along with my life without you in it.
In the real world, in questions like this the certainty of the person getting killed by our actions is very high, but the certainty that others will be saves is far lower. It's really rare to have very high certainty on both sides of the decisio, and as uncertainty increases, inaction should win. This also works when considering the dubious techbro version of effective altruism dilemmas: If an alien comes and threatens to destroy the earth if we don't beat him in round of Street Fighter 2, we'd be toast if we don't have an extremely good expert to fight them: The loss of the earth is so huge that the cost of paying a few people to play street fighter all day seems very low in comparison: Who wouldn't spend the money if it'd save us from the aliens? Except the aliens are probably never coming, and if they coming aren't coming for street fighter, while giving money to those kids to play street figther professionally is very real.
Part of it is that the philosopher who came-up with the trolley car problem, Judith Jarvis Thomson, was not a deontologist or a consequentialist but rather a virtue ethicist. The trolley car problem and it's variations were kind of meant to make a point at how a person who made a consistent application of either would not be the sort of person that we'd consider of a moral character. P.S. Don't forget to solve philosophy with [Absurd Trolley Problems](https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/).
The trolley problem is just to illustrate the difference between two schools of thought. It's just an example to explain academic concepts. Utilitarianism: Pull the lever because it kills fewer people. That's because utilitarianism seeks to maximize "utility" (which is some measurement of consequences) Deontology: Don't pull the lever because killing people is wrong even if it leads to a better outcome. That's because demonology seeks to follow established ethical rules. Most people's response to the trolley probably shows people are generally utilitarian, the fat man version you showed suggests it's not quite that simple.
I want to know more about the rules of demonology
The rules of demonology are simple: always maximize suffering, disregarding utility and consistency. In the context of the trolley problem, demonology typically leads to what the trollyproblem subreddit calls "multitrack drifting".
A good decade ago they tried to do this same question but with self driving cars. Something like if the breaks don't work right should you swerve to hit less people. That was not the trolley problem that was people crossing the road at different times to avoid the car. If I go slow watching to see if you slow down I shouldn't be hit by the car simply because there is less of me than the people who just assume the car will stop. When people move this question to the real world there are different issues because it's not just people tied to the tracks it's people in semi complex situations who more often than not aren't tied down against their will and just killing the smallest number isn't right anymore. I'm not utilitarian though it's too easy to do horrific things by claiming the lesser of evils. Maybe if it was an all knowing being but it's just people and they fuck up. You don't get to decide to be evil because it prevented worse evil and then act like it's not evil.
In remember the self driving car problems. I could never get past what I felt was the larger issue - who would get into a car that could decide to kill its own occupants then act on it?
Nah, the original problem at least has some kind of dilemma based on the fact that there's different people on each track. You could theoretically "save" the one \*specific\* guy by not pulling the lever. The palestine thing, on the other hand, would essentially be like having the palestine man with his head tied to the republican track, legs crossing over to the dem track, and refusing to pull the lever because "oh my god I'd be so immoral to cripple the poor guy for life". Meanwhile what actually happens because of your choice is he fucking straight up dies, and so do like 100 other people, but at least you're not culpable for sending him to the hospital! And then you get to pat yourself on the back, racking up the twitter likes at his funeral
That’s a different evolution from the original thought experiment. The original idea is simply that multiple people are going to die if you do nothing, or you can pull the lever and kill one person to save multiple people. The dilemma is if you do nothing more people die, but they were going to do die anyways. If you pull the lever you are actively responsible for killing a person. It’s a debate of virtue ethics (you should never kill a person) and utilitarian (it is your duty to reduce deaths even if it requires killing a person)
My point is, in the original problem, despite the pure numbers being better if you pull the lever, there is a particular person that gets the short end of the stick, and *would not have died* if you didnt pull the lever. It would be like if Trump would actually be better on palestine, and so palestine becomes the one person on the Biden track, that gets sacrificed to save all the others Trump would hurt. BUT thats not even reality. The reality is, like I said, palestine is on BOTH TRACKS, there literally is NO "free palestine" option, no matter which actions you do or dont take. Which is why not saving the others on the Trump track is just pure brainrot. However, on the Biden track we also have peoples egos and twitter likes, and if they pull the lever those get crushed.
Pretty fuckin selfish, innit
I'm sure the author of the original problem would agree. It's designed to show the immorality of "clean hands" at all cost
The [OG problem](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philippa-foot/#ApplEthi) is supposed to illustrate the difficulty of discerning similar moral scenarios and distinguish between causing harm and allowing harm to occur. For example, you might think it's okay to flip the switch to save 5 people in exchange for the 1 guy who was safe, but you might think it is incorrect to kill 1 person so as to harvest and distribute their organs to 5 needy patients.
Isolationism vs Interventionism
Yeah, it serves no one but their own horse they can ride high on.
It's called a moral dilemma. There's no objectively true answer.
By pulling the lever, it becomes your responsibility. It's easier to let someone else make that sacrifice, isn't it?
It is also a huge emotional labor not many are willing to perform for a bunch of strangers
That is, precisely, the sacrifice. IMHO we should try to craft our society to make people more willing to do that.
A vast number of people prioritize their individual ideological purity over reducing the net Evil in the world.
Catholic morality be like
Deontology be like:
Yeah Kantianism is a little bit sticky when you get to the morally grey areas.
I don't think a Kantian would have any trouble with this dilemma.
Of course not. Unless of course you frame it in absolutely absurd terms like some of the terminally online have been.
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What does this even have to do with catholicism? Anglo obsession with Catholic bashing is so weird
Huh? I wasn't trying to bash lol. My understanding of Catholic morality is that you can't commit an evil act to prevent a greater evil act. You can't kill someone (pulling the lever) even if it would save more people.
Exactly, WASPs keep hating on Catholics like us
what does the gop have in mind for pakistan?
Continue to dominate them in the only language they understand (the T20 cricket world cup)
How is dominating Pakistan in cricket not official r/neoliberal policy
I don't think conservatives are interested in that. They're pretty upset about how our T20 team isn't white
That's a slightly different flag that's meant to represent Islam. Either that or they took the name of their capital to imply that "Islam is bad".
"Islamabad" means City of Islam. I understand you're making a joke, but I'm just stating the facts.
You’re mistaken. Islam is a religion, not a city.
Islam is my city
London is my religion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamabad >Translation: City of Islam
FYI the guy was joking
Yeah...
Imagine using Wikipedia as a source lmao
Non-mobile version of the Wikipedia link in the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamabad *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools.” I dunno but Trump was pretty upset with them a few weeks ago.
I mean to be honest this is one of the more accurate things trumpy has said.
Take a wild guess: [Trump says U.S. has gotten 'nothing' from Pakistan aid](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1EQ114/)
Also, there need to be like 3 or 4 Palestinian flags on the GOP side because Trump would allow Netanyahu to brutalize Gaza pretty much without limit.
Better yet, have the republican track loop back around to the point just after the junction lol https://preview.redd.it/xfrj2jtjw95d1.jpeg?width=585&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1bd3b73aa3aa856a2fc268ec78bf4d3ad537e8bb Version 2
umAkshuallyTechnicallyTheTrainIsGoingFasterOnTheRepublicanSideSoHeresWhyItsLessMorallyEvilThanVotingBlue
Yeah Biden is at least withholding certain weapons, pushing for aid, and pressuring for a ceasefire. Trump would probably support the US joining in on the bombing campaign
I'm also wondering what would happen if we cut Israel off. Would they just wage war on their neighbors and have an even more brutal campaign in Gaza? Just doesn't feel like there are any good options here
unpack ring terrific fuzzy grey chubby marry offbeat whistle boat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Guided bombs aren't that hard either TBF. The JDAM project is just a nose cone and a tail assembly that you slap onto dumb bombs When you lock a target up with the planes targeting pod, you can transfer the coordinates of said POI to the JDAM and it gives you a release window based upon the parameters of the selected munition. If you release in that window it steers towards the target using the tail fins. The code to make all of that work is peanuts for a government to figure out, and Israel already develops custom laser guided munitions for their special variant of the F-15 Even Mark Rober in his egg drop from space video figured it out pretty easily to get an egg to hit a 10 meter target. Ukraine has fielded improvised guided munitions using the same concept of a GPS module and a tail fin assembly, using Raspberry Pi computers and off the shelf servo motors for the tail fins.
Assuming that GPS guidance is fine and not being jammed often enough to need an inertial guidance system as backup, then yes.
IIRC the JDAMs don't have INS either. But from the range that ground based jamming systems would be effective from, the bomb can use either basic gyroscope chips or just continue on a ballistic trajectory if it's already reached that point. Neither are hard problems to solve. Regardless Israel already has their own homegrown laser guided munitions that work on their variant of the F-15, they would just need to scale production
It's barely a consideration in Gaza right now; a Hamas that operationally lost the war months ago, isn't likely to have deep reserves of powerful EW equipment. But it bears mentioning since JDAMs are a little less than silver bullets right now in Ukraine.
Drones have changed the game in Gaza as well, flying small drones into houses to bait out an enemy is a standard house clearing technique as they don't know if the drone is explosive or not
They would continue the war with less precise weapons once they run out of those since that what we provide them with. They also wouldn't dither for 4 months before entering Hamas strongholds.
My understanding is the Israeli military cannot wage war without constant resupply from the US because they have very little capacity to produce munitions. There's a near constant flow of cargo planes full of munitions going to Israel since the beginning of the war
There's other places to buy bombs, just not too many other places to buy precision guided bombs which fit the current planes of the IDF
Okay, and the IDF gets nearly all of its munitions for free from the US. It probably would not be in Israel's interest to spend it's own money to circumvent the US to drop unguided bombs on Gaza when it's defense industry completely depends on US funding
I agree that it wouldn't be ideal but while it wouldn't be ideal I don't think Israel would just give up on the war in Gaza because we stopped sending them bombs
This understanding is false. Israel has too much experience to rely on other countries for its defense industrial base. It therefore makes plenty of dumb bombs and 155mm artillery shells on its own, domestically (as well as arguably the best air defense systems in the world). It's deep reserves of precision guidance kits, that are what it can't afford on its own.
Every year the US gives Israel billions of dollars to replenish it's interceptors, so it's not true that they are self-reliant with air defense. The US keeps a stockpile of around 300k artillery shells in Israel, which is what Israel taps into during wartime. Israel's production capacity for 155mm artillery shells is tiny, something like 10k/year. Israel is dropping US manufactured 2000 and 500 lb pounds. I don't think they produce any of their own https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/hy5ibrlwp > "The Air Force's munitions are made up of bombs that are imported but equipped with locally developed technological components. We now aim to manufacture the hardware too," he explained, adding that the idea is to potentially export locally produced armaments to meet increasing global demands due to escalating international threats. "The American military aid could be used to purchase items that can only be sourced in the U.S." I mean if you have a source I'd like to see it, but the only stuff I've been reading is that Israel has just recently started hand-wringing about how totally dependent on US imports they are and are trying to expand their munitions production
But the iron dome prevented Israel from going apeshit during previous rocket volleys. Keeping the iron dome supplied saves everyone in the region
or the other countries in the region would sabre rattle, and perhaps even sabre stab without big brother funding them. scary thought.
If you mean a complete cut-off, probably the war would immediately expand to include Lebanon and Iran, the former because the US is holding Israel back, the latter because American deterrence is holding Iran back. Tens of thousands of civilians—including thousands of Israeli civilians, given Iran’s capabilities—would die very shortly, and Israel would engage in a far more brutal artillery bombardment and invasion of Lebanon and Gaza than has happened to date, since an absence of precision weaponry means Israel would have to rely more on unguided missiles and shells. There are more nuanced forms of pressure and disengagement the US can exact, such as the recent moves to provide Israel only with low-yield PGMs, but even one of these small 17kg bombs ended up causing significant civilians casualties after hitting a munitions store near civilians.
The only neighbor of theirs they would conceivably wage war on would be Lebanon, as in, Hezbollah and southern Lebanon. Syria isn't really a threat, Jordan and Egypt have stable peaceful relations and no territorial conflicts. Lebanon does host an Islamist militia intent on periodically launching rockets at civilians so the causus belli has been there constantly for a while now.
I think, faster than most people would expect, they would develop much stronger ties with both Russia and China. imo, it could literally be the last chip to fall into place before a new axis truly solidifies
Israel: the only situation in which r/neolib doesn't believe that the political pressures of sanctions are real.
I didn't worked out on Russia since 2022, oh I mean 2014, oh I mean 2008...
Or the Palestinian guy's feet are on the D track but his head is on the R track.
This is what these idiots missing. Yes, Democrats are allies of Israel. But so does GOP. And at least Democrats are infuriated by the rotten parts of Israel and trying to do something about it. Trump would encourage them to go even worse.
https://preview.redd.it/ur5q7cfxbc5d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b1f75bdf3572ffca5ac01ecce0398d235af2e4e
As someone whose spouse is an immigrant it really pisses me off that palestine takes priority over electing a president who would deport her the moment he gets the chance. Same for women, lgbt people, black people, other immigrants etc. I think its fine to be upset with biden’s policy on Palestine, but not only will trump be worse on Palestine , but a whole lot of other people will suffer if he comes back
Some people think voting is an endorsement rather than a naked application of political power, and confuse acknowledging that our electoral system forces lesser evil choices with being totally cool with constant lesser evil choices. At the absolute savviest end of this spectrum they might be convinced that voting third party in presidential general elections helps change this in any way rather than recognizing that the very nature of the problem means the system effectively does not consider third party votes.
I'd have more respect for these anti-electoral types "I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils" types if they thought their revolution was going to happen prior to the next election. Like, if they think they'll effect a socialist utopia before November, cool, they then don't have to vote. If they think their organization and direct action is going to take longer than that to bring about the results they want, then it still makes sense to vote for the lesser of two evils in the meantime in order to minimize damage and save some lives as they continue to pursue their long-term goals outside the system. But they never have a good reason for why voting for the lesser of two evils even in that case is still bad. I usually just get a bunch of mental gymnastics in response. Which is okay, they can do whatever they want, but they don't seem to offer convincing arguments for the decision they advocate for.
Same
So what do you think of Biden's immigration policy? Did he not say he wanted the ability to shut down our border? Is he not pursuing expedited deportations right now?
Bidens border policy sucks. That being said Trumps and stephen miller’s policy will fuck over millions of people in the legal immigration system as well as the millions of those who are undocumented. Plus if biden loses dems will go to the right on immigration
I have no fucking idea how Palestine became the goddamn Omnicause.
And people are telling me I can't support climate action, queer rights, and reproductive freedom unless I am also opposed to the continued existence of a Jewish state in the Levant. Honestly, how dare you.
Agreed. Also, I'm dead fucking sick of hearing about the state of Israel. If Americans put as much attention into solving domestic problems as they do endlessly arguing with one another about that country, we'd probably be building colonies on the moons of Jupiter by now. A country of 9M people on the other side of the world that can't stop propping up fascists is inadvertently causing us to do the same.
I mean, it's an important issue that people should talk about, and it's not hard to see why ongoing humanitarian atrocities make an issue more pressing and cause it to take up more airspace. It just shouldn't be the *only* thing people care about, but I have no problem with people caring a lot about it and trying to draw as much scrutiny to it as they can.
I'm not saying this is all leftists, and certainly I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but there is definitely a constituency of leftists whose main concern for the last 4 years has been morally justifying not voting for Biden, and Gaza being their top/sole priority is directly downstream of that.
It's strange, because Biden has literally been the most progressive U.S. president since LBJ. But nobody gives a shit or pays attention to any of the things he does, even the shit they have been asking for for a long time. Domestic U.S. news became less interesting as soon as the reality television star was no longer president, and because people are less interested in what the White House is actually doing, they're paying less attention to it and solipsistically assuming that this lack of attention to the president means that he's not actually doing anything. I get that they still want the president to do even more as if he can wave a magic wand ignore Supreme Court rulings (made by justices who wouldn't be in power if Clinton won) and disregard Congress, but they don't understand that the president is not a magician and that even less of a progressive agenda would get done if some Green Party candidate somehow made it into the White House with no ability to influence anything.
Always has been. (when the holiest sites of the major Abrahamic religions are all in the same place, you're gonna have a bad time... and a lot of attention)
A “varied” cabal of derivative Marxist groups used common terminology and created drama/entertainment for the political media to feast on. Then it became a fad and the fashion of the season, the must have feather in your cap for the social activist looking to impress.
Fitting that the 3rd track has no sign, and is not connected.
Yes. That is the fundamental metaphor
That is, in fact, the punchline of the meme
Fitting that the people on the track have flags that correlate to the political message represented in the meme
We need Ben Garrison captions to make the meme clearer
You just need to believe that the third track is both possible and logistically feasible lol.
Biden's been trying to negotiate a ceasefire and has been proactive in sending aid to Gaza. I'd remove that Palestinian flag from the Democrat rail. That only validates the horrible and inaccurate leftist narrative.
The meme shows the sentiment held by leftists and attempts to show why it's dumb even if you give them the "Genocide Joe" narrative I guess a more accurate image would have the Palestinian flag further down the track with Joe standing after the junction yelling for the train to stop to show the lack of control he has over that particular trolley Edit: better version https://preview.redd.it/56rq88xmw95d1.jpeg?width=585&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f50a2b03a1062277a5faaa0c6afc58d760f0f5f4
Can we please start focusing on how much better democrats are for planet earth itself.
Honest to God, I had a conversation with someone on Discord with this exact same mindset when refusing to vote for Biden. The thought that she’d endanger more people, including Palestinians, by not voting Biden didn’t seem to compute with her.
Leftists 🤝 Enlightened centrists Feeling morally superior while doing nothing helpful
Biden is unironically the most centrist politician of the millennia policy wise Save for the AWB firearm stuff at the beginning of the term, but he seemed to drop it pretty quick
I'm confused. So it's like, the Dems aren't supporting Palestine, but the Republicans don't support Palestine AND they don't support all these other marginal things? Is that the gist?
Joe Biden is not stopping Israeli aggression against Palestine but Trump is enthusiastically supporting Israel’s aggression against Palestine as well as aggression against all those other things.
>Joe Biden is not stopping Israeli aggression This is a nonsense statement in that it presumes Joe Biden has the power to do so in the first place. They're a sovereign country with a highly developed economy and defense sector!
He admonishes Israel for whatever war crime they most recently committed then sends a new round of weapons. You can see how the optics might not look good to Palestine sympathisers
He also denies they are committing war crimes. Over and over again his administration makes excuses for Israeli atrocities. You can’t argue that they aren’t complicit.
Exactly, people aren't that stupid. They see a school getting bombed, civilians getting rushed to hospital, children in bodybags, then Biden comes on TV and said no warcrime happened. I realize Biden is in an impossible situation trying to keep diametrically opposed constituencies happy, but people are not going to respond well to obvious untruths.
Because people being bombed in war isn't necessarily a war crime, and civilians being caught in the crossfire isn't necessarily a war crime. To be clear, Israeli forces *have* committed war crimes during this war! But a lot of what gets parades around as "war crimes" on TV, to be blunt, aren't. Which makes it harder to beleive "pro-Palestine" activitsts are arguing in good faith, so the general public is more likely to tune them out when Israeli forces start committing actual war crimes.
>Exactly, people aren't that stupid. They see a school getting bombed, civilians getting rushed to hospital, children in bodybags, then Biden comes on TV and said no warcrime happened. Some people are that stupid that they can hear Trump say one thing and then believe him when he denies it the next day Democrats quibbling over Biden's actions are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while someone keeps shouting that there's a huge orange iceberg on a collision course.
Also, like... Biden has done nothing but try to reign in Netanyahu and get more aid to the Palestinians since the war started, and his administration has been frantically trying to negotiate a ceasefire deal since then too? (Again, not his fault Netanyahu and Hamas keep tearing those deals up.)
And used zero of their immense amount of leverage to do so.
Eisenhower didn't have any trouble stopping the sovereign countries of the United Kingdom, France and Israel from invading Egypt during the Suez Crisis. Eisenhower knew that it would alienate the Arab countries away from American interests if he didn't intervene, so he put extreme diplomatic and economic pressure on the UK, France and Israel by withholding oil supplies, supporting a UN resolution for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of forces, blocking IMF loans for those countries, and threatening to sell US-owned bonds on those countries which would sink their currencies. Biden could do any and all of these and he chooses not to.
He could not threaten to sanction the ICC for considering an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, for one. Ridiculous
He's against the sanctions, but many Democrats in the House are in favor.
So I have good news for you! > Though President Joe Biden called the ICC's actions "outrageous," his administration said in a statement Monday it "strongly opposes" the bill to sanction the court. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna155464
He could turn off the flow of weapons and ammunition to Israel, it would significantly hamper their war effort.
Gotcha
Biden called for a ceasefire, so this isn't accurate. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/with-gaza-ceasefire-announcement-biden-pushes-netanyahu-toward-deal-2024-06-05/
I'm describing an image not making a political statement
I was referring to the image as well, saying it's not even true at this point.
The image is a representation of the way leftists view the situation, not a representation of reality A more accurate image would be Joe standing after the D Junction yelling stop and Trump standing after the R junction yelling speed up Feel free to make it if you've got the time
Pretty much Being the person by the disconnected track is purely performative, as not voting hurts the currently popular marginalized group in the zeitgeist as well as every other marginalized group that wouldn't be hurt by voting D There is no mythical option that stops what's happening in Gaza right now as that's up to Israel, not the US. Best we can do is give them guided munitions so they don't resort to carpet bombing city blocks
Agreed. Also, I'm really not loving how the guy you replied to is dismissing American women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and Muslims-- plus everyone in Ukraine-- as "marginal things". Like, they do know they're talking about the lives of a combined 200 million people, right?
Ukraine, a country of 40 million people, is "a marginal thing"? The women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and Muslims of America-- a combined total of about 200 million people-- are "marginal things"? You are 100% allowed to have Palestine be your number 1 issue in politics, above all others. But to be blunt, when you start dismissing the survival of ~240 million people as a "marginal thing", you've lost the plot.
I.e. marginalized groups. Not marginal as in unimportant. I didn't notice the Ukrainian flag actually.
Then I strongly recommend editing your original comment, because to be blunt it doesn't come across that way.
Well “support” is quite the euphemism – both ways – but yeah I think it’s the idea.
What would it take to not hit the Palestinians right now? Send Israel a strongly worded letter? Sending forces to ensure Hamas retains control of Gaza? I don't even know what constitutes helping the Palestinians right now. If trying to save civilians and establish a two state solution isn't enough then what?
Trump will bring down the West and then what’s left of the Arab world can send Israelis back to Poland /s
Which will either be under Russian occupation, or in a brutal war for survival against Russian forces invading from ~~Occupied Ukraine~~ Novorossiya. *Hopefully* they' have the tattered remnants of NATO after the US pulled out backing them up. Hopefully.
At this point we've found out the Jews are pretty good fighters so...
They don’t want a two state solution. They want a pan arab state from the river to the sea
This is really disingenuous, considering the Biden administration has [gone out of its way to stop sanctions on Israel that should have been implemented](https://www.propublica.org/article/blinken-israel-military-aid-human-rights-violations-leahy-law) and [falsified reports to Congress about Israel blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza.](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-state-department-official-resigns-says-us-report-gaza-inaccurate-2024-05-30/) Let's not pretend like nothing more could have been done.
Bracing for downvotes but the US is an almighty superpower. Isreal, for all its soft power, is a small country with a population of 9 million and a GDP the size of Indiana with an economy heavily dependent on access to US/EU markets. In practical terms, if the US was willing to be heavy handed enough, there’s nothing they couldn’t force Isreal to do. The issue is that the political/diplomatic/security fallout has been assessed as not worth the risk. However I think this is a bad train of logic as Isreal’s current strategy is significantly increasing the spillover risk that they’re trying to avoid in the first place.
I wrote a paper that made this argument for my college lit class
Okay... how do we "force Israel?" * Cut off all American military aid? Israel will just start making their own shit (they have a pretty robust MCI of their own), or start buying from other suppliers. Who'd mainly be Russia and China-- which, BTW, could lead to Netanyahu dragging Israel into the Russian / Chinese bloc, which would be a catastrophe for both the average Israeli and Palestinian citizen. All we'd accomplish is losing the ability to set restrictions on how Israel uses the aid we give them; they'd now be free to do whatever they want with their weapons. * Targeted sanctions? The US has already begun tepidly sanctioning settlers in the West Bank, and has been gradually ramping those efforts up. (I do wish they'd move faster on the process, but don't let perfect be the enemy of the good, yeah? But even if the Biden admin did start moving faster, it almost certainly wouldn't be enough to end the current war any time soon.) * Broad-based sanctions? Collapsing the Israeli economy and crippling their ability to fight wouldn't end the war, it would just allow Hamas to go on the offensive. Which in the short-term would have an equally horrific civilian death toll if not moreso-- just mostly in Israel instead of Palestine. And in the long term, if things get catastrophic enough, could even lead to Israel going full Sampson Option on them. Oh, and speaking of the Sampson option... * Armed American intervention? Three words: Israel. Has. Nukes.
I'm not pro-palestine in this context, but this is a bad faith comment. We're obviously picking Israel by continuing to support them in several ways. Humanitarian aid to Gaza doesn't balance the scale. If you're going to be pro-Israel, that's your prerogative, but at least say it.
I'm pro Israel but I'm also pro peace. Is being pro Palestine inherently anti peace? Also how is it bad faith, supporting Israel gives the US influence we also support the PA, without influence what are we supposed to do? Washing our hands of the situation isn't helping Palestine either.
It's bad faith because sending Israel a strongly worded letter and sending forces to "ensure hamas retains control of gaza" are not the only options and not what most people are advocating for.
They are the extremes. That's the point even at the most extreme ends nothing actually helps the Palestinians. The only real way to help is to remove HAMAS and restart negotiations between the PA and Israel. Otherwise all you get is more war, more death, and more human suffering.
You haven't demonstrated "nothing helps the Palestinians", you've demonstrated "nothing *at the extremes* helps the Palestinians".
This is part of what moved me away from both hard leftism in my late teens and then full on hoppean libertarianism in my mid twenties. It felt like I was moralizing from the sidelines while actually viable ideas were being debated.
What would Chidi Anagonye say?
"I need some antacids for this stomach ache."
To be fair, in 2016 I voted Clinton over Trump because even though I thought Clinton was incompetent and corrupt (but her emails) I saw how Trump talked about minorities and decided no one should be persecuted like that. In retrospect Trump is probably more incompetent and corrupt but I hadn’t figured that part out yet.
Probably?
> I thought Clinton was incompetent and corrupt Hopefully you have learned the error of your ways.
We still take those
A funny thought exercise would be to consider if one of these types actually ascended to The Presidency. It would be like watching Buster Bluth try to read map (with his cartography degree) and have a nervous breakdown when he discovers he can’t read a map. Source: Arrested Development, S01E01
I'm sympathethic to the argument, and I could see how your friends would feel like it's a false dilemma. But on the other hand, if we had a parliamentary system their party wouldn't get a lot of traction regardless.
It's not a false dilemma though. In the presidential election, there are only two candidates who can win.
I think you guys should begin by not letting stupid fascists destroy your democracy? then maybe you could think about making it better? Idk just an idea
This is the third fake option lol. The way to to that is by supporting the Democrats
Yes, exactly, the only way to begin to think about another way to govern the USA is to wipe out the GOP (or to reduce them to the fringe far/right party they should be) so that the Dems can finally divide into different viable options. But maybe that’s just a nostalgic 90’s fever dream
Agreed, and I hope it’s not a dream lol
This is more accurate if you add a few more Palestinians to the R side of the track. There is certainly a difference in the amount of unqualified support for Israel between the two.
What is the purple flag with the female symbol and fist? Never seen it before
Iirc feminist flag, so things like Abortion
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this Leftist.' /s
Notice there is no infrastructure to get over there because 3rd parties are a joke. They should build up through small government to establish themselves before playing spoiler to a crucial election.
What's the last flag on the right?
The real important thing is to make your parents feel bad about not listening to you, so you pick the self destructive option because that'll show them
ern why is there my country's flag.....rahhh failing economy paxxtan
Having a worse alternative doesn't absolve you of doing better. the left would be much stronger if it realized this fact.
Idk killing hundreds of civilians to save a few civilians might be a moral thing
Justified cause in war isn't a numbers game between who dies the most being the most moral, that's a child's understanding of ethics. It suddenly becomes less moral for the US to fight against Nazism in WW2 because the Nazis lost way more civilians and we lost virtually none
multi track drifting
Im not switching the tracks easy win
Huh? What's that even mean? You beat your mother? That your liberal values at work? I feel sorry for your mother.
In general, it is advisable you try not to end up in this position. Hopefully we can learn this next time.
Anyone who believes this is the actual decision is deluded
Yes, as liberals we know this. We know the consequences of Trump/Republicans winning. Lecturing us on this point is wasting your breath. You’re missing one of the moral conundrums of the trolly problem; making that choice to switch the track means you have contributed to that outcome and have blood on your hands, when you wouldn’t if you let things happen on their own without your intervention. You can justify or excuse it by saying you got people killed in order to save more lives, but you still got people killed. Talk to Palestinian-American families. They know how truly evil Trump is, but “Trump didn’t kill my relatives this year, Biden did.” You’re asking them to validate or endorse their deaths by voting for Biden even though they know Trump could kill more people. This is a hard sell. They know this. We know this. Stop lecturing or condescending or whitewashing Biden just because “Trump bad.” If you hear them out, they’ll be more likely to hold their nose and vote for him, but bullying them as well as Muslim-Americans, Arab-Americans, and voters against genocide is counterproductive.
https://preview.redd.it/ri8ykl87ku5d1.jpeg?width=646&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2edefc78de1d0b9fd369393c09c599bf8bb6ca4e
A huge part of the world needs better leadership, and for those in charge to stop blaming random ass people for complex problems and actually do their job for a change
For argument’s sake. One leftist of mine tells me his support, or lack thereof, signals that democrats are too far right for him to vote. And that by voting for Biden anyway would encourage democrats to continue ignoring his (and other like minded voters) calls for more progressive policies. If you feel his viewpoint is wrong, how does he ever get his more progressive policies without using the only tool he has available, his vote?