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Why are so many Pro-Palestine (I am pro-Palestine and anti-genocide) Americans refusing to vote for Harris due to her stance on Israel? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.

I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.

Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.

Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.

Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

provide them with a pathway to build power

If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don't see this happening very much. On one side I see people saying "vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies" without actually any clear idea how to do that. On the other side I see "don't vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win" without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.

It is bad to normalise genocide. Did you not know this?

Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.

All it takes is for one "side" to be racist and panicky...

Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill, but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.

You have to unseat and challenge with a truth that disagrees with the prevailing wisdom

I definitely agree, I think all widespread "truths" should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better. But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side's viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another. To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being "supportive of genocide" (which is obviously ridiculous), while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being "stupid/ignorant" or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.

Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions. And dismissing people is not a good way of "calling them out", it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas. If you cannot see the reasons for someone's beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.