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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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For decades, Israel and the US (and European countries) have pursued a policy to destabilize middle eastern regimes.
People don't realize this, but there was a wave of Arab nationalism that was killed by sponsoring Islamic extremists. Had that not happened, the middle east would be much more secular today than it is.
Israel attacking and destabilizing Lebanon and Syria and the US maintaining a dictator in Egypt are part of this strategy.
In turn, this leads to hate towards the West and Israel by the Muslims affected.
It won't stop as long as American voters care much more about gas prices than about human rights. American politicians are willing to sponsor genocide to have some control on oil prices in order to win elections.
You are not giving Arabs any credit for the current situation? Thats almost racist 😁
America cares less today about oil as it is self reliant.
Americans still care about the price of oil, which is set in a global market and where Saudi-Arabia and Russia have more influence than the USA.
Obviously, the extremist Arabs that overthrew their own leaders are also to blame. Where did I deny that?
Extremist arabs didn't overthrew their leaders, the population overthrew their dictators and was hiding the fact of torturing and killing political oponents or even normal people critisizing the regimes
To be fair, how many secular leaders can you assassinate before they stop?
Who should we vote for to stop what's going on? Please, enlighten me.
I don't think you really have a lot of choices to be honest.
You'd first need to get new candidates to win a primary and then a general and the required majorities are lacking almost everywhere.
A more fruitful approach is to actually change public opinion.
It's a long uphill battle, but it's happening.
Therein lies the problem. We don't have a lot of choices. Voting for new, progressive candidates feels great and it's nice to pat ourselves on the back and think we're making a difference, but the fact of the matter is that voting for a candidate who has no realistic path to winning is only even a realistic option when the candidate with the 'D' next to their name is all but guaranteed to win. And yeah, I'd really love to be able to make a statement by splitting the leftist vote between the democratic candidate and a progressive one; I'd really love to tell the democrats to get fucked and vote for a progressive third-party for every seat, but right now is far from the time for that, especially in states where those races are actually close. The last thing we need is to pack the House and Senate with republicans who win something like 40/30/30 because we couldn't unify behind someone who actually had a chance of winning.
Not to mention, we only get to vote in 1 state's elections, and often times there aren't even any progressive down-ballot candidates on the ballot to vote for.
I know a lot of people don't like the American First Past the Post system, but to be honest, even in a proportional system like here in the Netherlands, you end up with very similar dynamics.
Truth is, progressives are always a small minority, in every country. Because they are always ahead of the curve on change.
In the US, this means that you only get a handful of progressives in the most progressive districts and never a really progressive national government.
In the Netherlands, this means progressives are always represented, but need to compromise to form a government. And often, they even get skipped and the centrist and conservative parties form a coalition.
Truth be told, Biden is as progressive as you could hope to get in the USA.
And, while I do think it is important to criticize him - and even threaten to not vote for him - to enable him to move more towards the left, it is also important to vote for him.
Progressives always win, not through getting majorities, but because they have the right ideas and eventually the other parties catch up to them.
For recent examples, gay marriage in the USA or marihuana legalization are now law in the USA.
I am 100% confident that American policy on Israel will also shift thanks to progressive voices. And it will not require a progressive majority.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't believe this will happen while Biden is president. Not to say I'm not going to vote for him - I'm not that stupid, but he's made it pretty clear that he will stand with Israel more or less no matter what they do.
I do worry that he's upsetting a lot of people to the point that they won't vote for him, though, and that's scary to me. He comes across as very weak when he capitulates to Israel this hard. He's repeatedly said, "This is the line, don't cross it!", then when they do, he moves the line. If he loses to Trump in November, I'll have a hard time not blaming Israel and his policies in dealing with them for that loss.
Sanders
But more seriously, vote everywhere for the most progressive people possible and vote strategically to get the most progressive person realistically electable when needed.
Down-voted with deep regrets. A vote for Sanders, no matter how good he would be, is a vote to let Netanyahu "finish the job" in 2024.
The path to your goal is to vote progressives down ballot and really support them until they rise to congressional level where they can actually create change. Until then, vote for the candidate who has the best chance of winning and gets you closest to you goals. Beware, the trolls want to create division so their guy can walk right in.
Did you skip the "but more seriously" part and everything that came after right after I said "Sanders"? 🤔 Because I'm saying exactly what you're saying.
Also, you can vote for Sanders so he keeps his position in the Senate so it's actually not false that people need to vote for him.
I refuse to vote for Sanders...
Because I don't live in his state so I'm not allowed to.
He's done great work convincing progressives that the best way to change the Democratic party is from the inside, and I hope it continues.
It's a general "you", I'm not talking about you as a person specifically.
Israel bombs Lebanon because Hezbollah keeps committing terrorist attacks and launching missles from there, the same goes for Syria. Also, in what universe is helping keeping countries stable like Egypt destabilizing? You people are mind numbingly ignorant. The middle east was never secular or stable, it was always religiously extremist, violent, and oppressive. There was a slight blip in secularism during the British and French mandates and slightly afterwards, but as time moved on, the region just went back to the way it used to. What we view as islamic extremism is just normal islam. Secular muslims aren't a thing. They're considered extremely liberal and westernized in islamic countries.