Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this?
And I'm being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don't understand it. Can someone please "steelman" that argument for me?
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The moral argument that one should not vote for someone who has been and continues to provide massive material support to a genocide is as clear as day.
But considering the alternative to Harris, it doesn't seem as clear as day to me.
The moral argument against voting for Harris doesn't imply that one has to vote for Trump instead.
That's the fallacy of Denying the Correlative. In the FPTP system, there were two choices and only two.
To an individual voter in a large electorate the idea that a Harris loss would ensure a Trump victory isn't relevant except as an excuse to vote immorally for Harris, the genocide candidate. The only moral choices were to abstain or vote for an explicitly anti-genocide candidate.
Oh. That's alright then. The people who have already lost loved ones and the impending victims of fascism, like the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples who are now destined to be wiped from the globe, will understand that you refused to do anything meaningful to prevent it because you value your own sense of moral purity more than other human beings. /s
No. Choosing to enable the greatest possible harm was not a moral choice.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
That's you. Great work.
"I voted for the genocide lady in the hopes of rewarding her and her party with four more years in the White House and blocking anyone who hasn't had a material role in the Palestinian genocide ." That's what you sound like. You cannot morally justify voting for Harris unless you can justify her ongoing role in the genocide. No one else running for president came close to playing such a role and, of course, there's nothing immoral about abstaining.
Anyway, I'm just answering the OP. One does not have to vote on the basis of morality. People make immoral decisions all the time. It's just easily understandable why many people wouldn't cross that line.
You cannot morally justify voting for Harris unless you can justify her ongoing role in the genocide. No one else running for president came close to playing such a role and, of course, there's nothing immoral about abstaining.
Your reasoning is utterly bunk and, again, Denying the Correlative. The choices were D or R. Status quo and attempts to softly change 70 years of foreign policy was the Dems. Full-blown genocide of the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples, ending democracy, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, minority rights, labor rights, and any action to combat climate change was the Reps. There were no other choices possible in the FPTP system. None.
We've seen that non-voters allowed rightward shifts in the Overton Window for half a century, rejecting every bit of statistical data that showed this to be the case. That's done now. Selfish desire to feel morally pure has permanently altered humanity's course for the worse, accelerating atrocities and climate collapse.
The choice was "try to reform the status quo" OR "drastically increase global human suffering and oppression of marginalized groups". The "genocide or not" was nothing but propaganda to help the far-right win so that they can play out their doomsday cult's fantasies.
I'm not saying that in the US system, at the presidential level, the loss of one of the two main parties doesn't ensure the victory of the other. I'm saying that that doesn't matter to a regular individual who is eligible to vote. That person only gets one ballot and their choices are what is printed on the ballot as well as leaving some or all of it blank.
This one or the other correlative is actually the purview of the campaigns. They have the power to sway enough votes to matter by adjusting their messaging, strategy, and, for the incumbents, actual policy. Instead of looking at what they were up against and eschewing the status quo, the Democrats decided to make the following threat to voters: give us permission to keep exterminating Palestinians or the other guy might take away your various rights here at home. The continued massacre of Palestinians wasn't their only demand, but I'm just trying to stay on-topic. It's darkly humorous that the voters who made the choice to acquiesce to that threat ended up morally compromising on genocide for a candidate that apparently was going to lose anyway.
For a final time, this is still repeating the fallacy of Denying the Correlative. The only options available were Dems or GQP facists. There were no other options. Choosing to not vote or vote third party was a choice to not oppose facism. Full stop.
"Genocide" or "no genocide" were not options of any statistical possibility. The only possible outcomes were Dems, who at least made half-hearted statements of opposing, OR GQP fascists who want genocide to occur at a much larger and faster scale in more places and prevent anyone from removing them from power while openly stating their intent to oppress all LGBTQ+ people domestically and abroad (foreign aid will be contingent on oppression), women, non-christians, and political opponents.
Outcomes are factual, measurable things. Moral purity dick-measuring contests have no impact on reality or human suffering. Your moral purity means absolutely fuck all to those of us who have already lost people or have friends and family on suicide watch because of people too high on their own egos to care about how their choices impact others. I'm sure that it was extremely moral to hand over the entire government of a nuclear power to fascists on a silver platter, without even pretending to offer resistance. Hey, at least you can sure off your gargantuan morality-peen, right?
Why don't you or anyone using the "morality" excuse for not opposing fascism call up The Trevor Project and explain to them how it's really for the greater good that you chose to allow the election of those with intentions to murder and oppress those that they are trying to save? I'm sure they'll be overjoyed and applaud the size of your morality-peen.
Please relax. I don't claim to have special moral purity or whatever. Opposing genocide just seems like an obvious baseline. Besides, from the perspective of the individual voter (or eligible non-voter) there were no options of statistical possibility. The election was going to go the way it did regardless of what you or I decided to do with our single ballots. The voters who compromised on genocide got nothing except self-imposed damage to their minds and souls. The only way it would have gone differently is if the Democrats ran a better campaign with a different platform and probably with a different candidate.
The thing about moral principles is that they are inflexible. Think about it like the draft during Vietnam. Some people refused to go fight because of moral principle. A common argument against them was "if you don't go, someone else will go in your place". Soldiers still go, and the immoral war continues whether you participate or not. I would not go to fight in an immoral war, and I will not politically support a genocide. I know it will happen anyway, but you cannot make me participate. I refuse.