You’re talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide, and their easiest out has always been to say, “but Trump is worse”. They have never done the introspection required to look at their own personal role as a political being beyond what they’re told to do by the Democratic Party and their donors: slacktivist vote shaming, always presuming the high ground for themselves (even while tolerating genocide!), and doing as little as possible on the ground outside of minor exercises in false catharsis like a cop-escorted, permitted march or an ignored letter writing campaign.
When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect, these are the folks that responded in bad faith, even when the context is genocide, because they have made politics into an extension of their egos rather than a project to which to subordinate yourself and devote real work to.
Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.
In short, many on .ml vocally opposed supporting genociding Democrats. None that I’m aware of expected Trump to be better. At best, a roll of the dice.
Edit:
Sorry, folks. I failed to consider that this is the home instance of the people being target by this comment.
Just to be clear, I’m not a big .ml fan, I’m just an anarchist who’s never seen this particular gripe of mine worded so nicely.
Roll of the dice?
Trump is worse. UNRWA is illegal, there’s no aid of any kind going in, and they’re invading the West Bank now. By the end of Trump’s term, Palestine may be no more.
This whole thing is a massive exercise in exactly what it claims to be criticizing.
OP was saying most people on .ml didn’t expect Trump to be better and, if anything, maybe some folks felt he’s unpredictable enough that an improvement was possible but unlikely. The point is that most people on .ml were criticizing dems, not saying trump would be better.
Obviously Trump is worse. It might be worth rereading.
I think this misunderstanding comes from the “trump is worse” part being unspoken between leftists, but liberals don’t recognize that and assume rejection of their candidate means approval of their enemy
Yes. Those people were being stupid. And their persistent pretense that saying “Trump is so CATASTROPHICALLY worse that it makes no difference if the Democrats are bad, which they are” meant “the Democrats are good and all we need to do is vote for them” is exactly the same type of bad faith, and failure to even bother to try to understand the slightest bit of nuance, that OOP is now accusing others of. Which makes it fair game, now that Trump is trying to burn everything in the world that isn’t white and wealthy and making quite a bit of progress on it, to point out to the people who said he might be a “roll of the dice” how idiotic and divorced from reality that statement was (which was pointed out to them in advance which they met with condescension and refusal to listen) with some concrete present-day examples.
That was the point that I was making.
I actually have had people tell me that Trump is better, because of the “cease fire,” but I don’t even really care about that. There will always be random people saying dumb shit. I was dealing explicitly with the statements OOP was calling out and defending, in the terms in which OOP was defending them.
Edit: Typo and phrasing changes
The ‘roll of the dice’ thing a silly/uninformed thing to say/believe, but that was a minor throwaway part of the what OOP was saying, and they only said it to stress that it was a rare thing.
Also, I’m not convinced Trump is “catastrophically worse” for Palestinians than Biden/Harris. Seems like the same outcome, just faster under Trump. (Of course, Trump is catastrophically worse in countless other areas, but that’s not the topic of discussion here.)
I did see a couple people saying that, and I’m still not convinced they weren’t trolling.
Agreed.
Okay, sure. I definitely still encountered it a lot. I’m still encountering it.
And none of that really excuses their persistent habit of reframing “Trump is so CATASTROPHICALLY worse that it makes no difference if the Democrats are bad, which they are” into the persistently wrong but easier-to-argue-against “I ❤️ Democrats” terms that I very often encountered, which OOP repeats above.
I do understand disagreeing with someone who is saying Trump is so much worse that it doesn’t matter. I talked not that long ago about how I can understand how Rashida Tlaib for example could just throw the whole premise in the bin because it’s just not what’s important to her. What I don’t understand is pretending that the person using that logic is actually saying something else (“tacitly”, as OOP claims), so you can argue against the much easier thing that isn’t what they’re saying.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Just like it’s annoying and uncool when people say “you basically voted for Trump by voting for De La Cruz,” it’s equally annoying and uncool when I say “people who support establishment Dems support genocide.” Is that mostly your point?
Yes, precisely. With a handful of rare exceptions I strongly dislike the Democrats. I voted third party for over ten years, and only stopped once the Republicans became so dangerous to make it an urgent matter to try to keep them out of power. I definitely support voting reforms which will make it more realistic to get third parties into power. Really, I think the answer is to get rid of political parties as the unit of political organization, and replace them with politically active unions as used to be the case back when this country wasn’t so fucked. I frequently post stories which accuse the Biden administration of war crimes in their support for Israel.
Often when I have this conversation, someone tells me some variety of “No you don’t. You’re clearly a liberal. I already know everything about you, and you ❤️ Democrats, and you’re lying about it to try to trick me. So I can safely ignore everything you say. Who knows, Trump actually might be better.”
I really am not, and he isn’t, and I think OOP’s type of viewpoint on people like me and what we had to say before and after the election is childish and insulting.
Thanks for sharing; I get your perspective now. I don’t think this comment was about people like you, though. People enjoy boiling things down into a single statement, and it can be hard not to take offense when you’re swept up in an over generalization. I assume you don’t identify with what varyk is saying elsewhere in the comments here? Because that’s the kind of person I think OOP is talking about.
I looked up OOP. It turns out I’ve talked with them a few times before.
I’m just going to present this, without comment. I think it speaks for itself and the frustration I’ve experienced specifically with OOP, talking to them about this kind of thing:
https://ponder.cat/post/484521/715793
Edit: To answer the specific question, I agree with varyk up until “how old are you, eight?” I don’t think anyone who didn’t vote for Harris necessarily needs to feel bad, and I don’t think it’s productive to start slinging insults around. However people look at it, and whatever they choose to do, I think we can talk about it and it’s already going to be difficult to come to understanding without getting angry and making it more difficult. I do get the frustration though. And the part before that, I’m completely in agreement with.