I voted for Biden in 2020. This was despite the fact that he is one of the main architects of modern American slavery through his crime bill which made the US the nation with the highest proportion of its own citizens imprisoned by far, who are quite literally slaves according to our constitution. This was despite him participating in the lies which caused us to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis in our pursuit of blowing up Halliburton’s stock value and taking control of large parts of the oil trade. This was despite his support of the neoliberal consensus which has lead to the deterioration of the economic, social, and physical health of the average American while the wealthiest’s share of the economy continues to grow meaninglessly. In fact, it was relatively easy for me to vote for Biden because the person he was running against was Trump who demonstrated worse tendencies on all of the above (while actually softening some prison laws, still fostered the increased social acceptability of acting according to blatant racism so I can’t even give him credit here) and more. According to my utilitarian principles, the evil choice I made was morally superior to the evil choice I did not make. Recent events have me re-considering this motivation.
To be clear, my opinion of Trump has not changed. Under Trump, I am sure I will be more likely to lose my loved ones or even my own life, although I am personally less at risk than his main targets. I am also sure that his influence would at least maintain if not increase the atrocities committed by the Likud-lead Isreali government with whom he has a strong relationship. Christian Nationalism is extraordinarily dangerous and if some of their desires are pushed through there’s really no telling the extent of future horrors we may have to deal with. If Project 2025 has a certain degree of success we may consider any pretense of democracy to be nullified. If I were only considering the immediate consequences of my decision, I would still support Genocide Joe.
I phrased that last sentence like that intentionally and it is the inspiration for this essay. The lesser of two evils in this case is now facilitating a genocide and I think that’s significant. In 2020 I didn’t think I had a red line which would cause me to allow a greater evil, and within the last few months I’m coming to find that I do have a red line I have to consider in and of itself and that line is genocide.
This is what I find particularly frustrating when I try to engage this topic in good faith, even among Biden supporters who are lucid about recognizing what is clearly happening before their eyes with their implicit support. Yes, they tell me, there is a lot they don’t like about Biden but he is the better choice. There is some equivalence implied here. Biden is guilty of a lot of things like union busting, failure to support a public option despite promises, the continuation of many unfair border policies, and oh yeah genocide too. I really want to emphasize that we are talking about the categorization and systematic elimination of a group of people from their homes which could not be happening as it is now happening without the economic and political support of the Biden administration. This is now among the issues we are telling Democrats we are ok with or not ok with via the use of the only political currency left to us being our votes.
“Vote Blue No Matter Who” is a phrase that made me sick the first time I heard it and I have only grown to detest it more, especially since I acted according to it it through my actions in 2020. Recently I realized that this is less of a call to action and more of a threat. More explicitly, this phrase can be understood as “Vote for our candidate or the Republicans will fuck you up.” We better pay up or they can’t be responsible for what happens to us. Like other organizations who make threats like this, by paying up we are supporting them in what they do even if it’s under duress. As long as their heavy, the Republican party, is out there fucking people up the Democrats have license do anything as long as it’s not as bad. The DNC made a hard right-wing shift with Clinton and have been moving right since then, just not as far as the Republicans have. This is where damage control has gotten us. Democrats have pushed through so many boundaries and now we’re at genocide. Now the promise is, “You better support our genocide, or the Republicans will make it worse and fuck you up too.”
What is going to happen if we tell the Democrats that even though they are facilitating a genocide, we’re still going to pay up? What is the message the DNC will read from that? What precedent is going to be set? Are we going to be safer now that genocide will be seen as something we can compromise on? Do we really believe that Trump is the worst threat they can make, or that the lesser of two evils couldn’t eventually be worse than Trump? Do we really think by making this compromise here, on top of all the compromises we’ve made over the last few decades, that after this time everything will suddenly change and we can start talking about making average peoples’ lives better for once?
I can’t responsibly ask these questions without recognizing that the threat is very real. I am not an accelerationist and I do not desire the further deterioration of our society in hopes of a positive outcome through violent revolution. I do not want to have to risk imprisonment and death to resist government persecution. I recognize that a breakdown of democracy and subsequent shift to political violence would only advantage those most equipped for and skilled in the use of violence, whose society of nails would be governed by hammers.
It seems to me that failing to support the Democrats this cycle puts us at greater immediate risk of the above, and that is shocking enough to bring most reasonable people under control. The thing is though, I think that by leaving genocide on the table for anyone across the Overton window of elected officials to consider as a socially acceptable tool is a far greater risk in the long term.
I think that by making genocide just another issue of managing how much we can tolerate among the two sides, making it something that is tolerable under some circumstances, or especially encouraging the thinking that the charge of genocide is conditional on the political expediency of it victims, we are ultimately normalizing the general idea that genocide is an acceptable tool for elected officials across our “political spectrum” of right wing and big tent(right wing, centrist, some left wing) to support or even employ in the worst case as long as they call it something else regardless of international law. If this is ok, what is the next boundary the Democrats will push? I want to stop digging the hole we’re in now, suffer the consequences, and deal with Democrats who at least understand they will not get elected if they facilitate genocide. Honestly I’d like one day to not have to make the least evil choice and have the opportunity to support something after the DNC primary, and it doesn’t seem like damage control is leading us in that direction at all but away from it.
In practical immediate terms, Trump is hated outside of his base and has demonstrated that his endorsement is poison to politicians who are not himself more often than not. He is dangerous, but inspires so much more opposition to himself and his ideas than any other candidate I can think of. I even think that Trump’s genocide is going to be received very differently than Biden’s genocide since Trump will be far less tactful and far more honest about his motivations. The worst case scenario is possible under Trump and I don’t think it’s ok to dismiss that, but it is by no means a guarantee that Trump is the one to lead average Americans into fascism. It is a fucking frightening risk allowing a greater evil through inaction, but I think it’s the actual least bad option this time.
I’m open to being challenged on or discuss anything I’ve said here in good faith. I’m also open to rage-induced teardowns of the ideas I’ve proposed here as long as those teardowns are against my ideas and not against me as a person or others who are sympathetic to these ideas. I understand that this is an extremely charged topic and would like to encourage honest conversation as long as it doesn’t bleed into abuse which won’t help anyone.
Edit: Whew, that was some important discussion. I hope it was clear that my intention was to clarify my thinking and explore different perspectives on my argument rather than me judging others for coming to different conclusions or trying to convince everyone I am sure I am absolutely correct. Importantly, I realized this entire argument is secondary. What is important now is direct action. Depending on the degree of success we have with disrupting this sick order, this whole conversation could become moot and that is my strongest desire. See y’all on the street.
I half agree with you. Yes, even if I do not vote for Biden I am certainly complicit in part for his actions, at least so long as I am not in open rebellion against the government. I am, by simple merit of enjoying the privileges afforded me as an American, complicit in it. It’s a passive complicity.
But when you move into taking actions that actively support the evil, you are no longer passively complicit, you are actively so, and I think there is a real material difference, rhetorically, morally, and practically (though even passive complicity is wrong).
If we know, as we do, that Biden will continue to support Israel’s genocide, and still vote for him, how can we un-hypocritically fault anyone else who supports a genocidal leader so long as they can claim some other worse person waiting in the wings?
If we place our own innocent lives above the lives of equally-innocent people in other countries (since none here would be advocating voting for Biden if it was some sub-group of Americans he supported the genocide of, as Trump does), how can we think ourselves better than Republicans? “The only moral genocide is my genocide”, as it were. The genocide of Americans is non-negotiable, rightfully, but apparently the genocide of Palestinians must be ‘contextualized’ properly (and in this case, lose out to our own internal political interests).
On a practical level, we are absolutely hemorrhaging any remaining shreds of international credibility, for a leader who was supposed to be the “return of US world leadership”. We are finding ourselves more and more isolated by the day, which is exactly what Trump and the rest of the isolationist GOPers want as well. Whatever quiet political leverage we on the Left gained from Trump being a worldwide laughing stock (and if you know any Trumpers, you know that no matter how much they pretend otherwise, they do feel anger about that ridicule), has now been matched by Biden being a worldwide figure of shame and frustration. Our closest allies are rebuking us over our inability to even just step aside and allow the rest of the world to pressure Israel into a ceasefire. Biden may have actually succeeded in undermining US hegemony in a way that Trump could only have dreamed of.
I am not claiming to have an answer that fixes this. I don’t think there is any way to extricate ourselves cleanly from the very circumstances of our country’s origins and its continuing imperialism and settler-colonialism. We’re stuck with this collective guilt, until the day this government ceases to exist. If you choose to treat that guilt as the simple “cost of doing business” of living as an American, and vote for Biden, that’s fine. But for me, I cannot accept active complicity in Biden’s reelection without eschewing my own personal moral redlines. Everyone has to draw their own lines. Maybe some would torture one man to save the lives of many, and that’s certainly Utilitarian, but don’t condemn the persons who wouldn’t, lest we lose sight of the heinousness of the act itself.
To my mind, this rhetoric pushing Biden over abstention as the only moral action
risksis taking us down a pathway of moral relativism in which even genocide can be excused under the right circumstances, and that’s not a path I will walk.i think this is already addressed in my comment: even if you don’t vote for Biden, you are complicit by virtue of paying taxes. the Palestinian children we’re murdering probably don’t care very much if you do or don’t vote, given that your vote is largely meaningless in what we do–your taxes are another matter, and directly finance our shipments of aid and weapons to Israel. accordingly i consider taxes to be a far more active contribution than any vote can be in this space, and i think if everybody was truly principled on this matter they would also abstain from paying them. since they don’t, i think they’ve already made such a moral compromise that it would be very silly to impugn voting for Biden.
Yes, I acknowledged the guilt we all collectively share for living in America and not actively and violently dismantling it, but that also doesn’t mean we should actively go along with it when we have the very simple ability not to. If I attempt to destroy the government , I will be killed. If I don’t pay taxes, I will go to prison. If I don’t vote for a president who will perpetuate a genocide, I won’t.
It is, in many ways literally, the least I can do.
They are unaware of me as an individual, sure, but I guarantee you they wish we’d all stop voting for presidents who kill them and their families.
i guess i’m sort of obliged to ask: why are these undesirable outcomes if your moral system is just? i find this a weird objection to make unless you fall into one of the following three camps:
If I believed that either my failure to pay taxes, or my individual revolutionary actions, could have any chance of ending the genocide in Palestine, I would absolutely agree with you.
If the probability of success of those actions was not 0%, there may be an argument that the impact outweighs the unlikelihood of success. But you and I both know otherwise.
My belief that opposing the genocide in Palestine is necessary, does not assert that I must simply take whatever random actions someone throws out there, especially when the only real and logical outcome is self-harm, without helping Palestinians.
i mean i just don’t find this argument particularly convincing. i think biting this bullet would impugn the vast majority of protests and forms of protest—because most of them are unsuccessful and will never be successful. does that mean we shouldn’t do them? likewise, i think “chance of influencing an outcome for the better” is just one variable you should consider in a moral act, because trying to weigh whether you should do something or not on that basis just invites a whole host of other problems.
If your express and only goal in a marching in a protest is to directly bring about some immediate policy change based on empathy or sympathy from politicians, then yes, stop protesting right now, you’re wasting your time. But generally the goal of most protests is to make an implicit threat that if ignored, other actions will follow (whether it be voting a certain way, boycotting, or other direct actions). The more people who participate in making that threat, the more effective it is.
People who organize protests attempt to plan for actions and times and places that maximize their impact, because 5,000 people standing in a field at midnight is not as effective as 5,000 people standing on a bridge in rush hour. They would tell you that the field at midnight is likely to have 0% chance of achieving any impact, which is why you don’t see that happen, as where you do see bridge obstructions during rush hour.
Of course it is not the only metric, but it can and must be heavily considered. All risk calculation looks at impact and likelihood as the 2 key factors. If Impact is High, but Likelihood is None, there is no chance of that outcome, and the outcome can be safely ignored.