some of the "vote blue no matter who" finger-waggers on this website should learn to engage with politics in ways deeper than kneejerk terror at the thought of losing your own rights because you would not be using this authoritative tone if it were 11,000 of your children who had been killed by american bombs. real politics would be, if nothing else, understanding the power of threatening to withhold your vote. instead for as long as i've been on this goddamn website every four years i see you morons telling people to just vote for the lesser evil, vote for the lesser evil, while we warned you over and over that you are also voting on behalf of the rest of the world that has to suck up the consequences of your votes. and now joe biden has explicitly sanctioned the death of 11,000 children and the best you can come up with is "it sucks but you still gotta vote."
that's not doing politics. that's avoiding politics. if you can't recognize that a genocide creates a fissure in your communities as great as trans rights, abortion rights, gay marriage or white supremacy then you are not fully embracing politics. imagine joe biden had sanctioned the death of 11,000 american children in under 100 days. im not even going to scale this for the american population. 11,000 is an inconceivable number of children to be killed in under three months. 11,000 children who died violent, preventable deaths, crushed under rubble, eviscerated by debris. that is over 100 children per day.
in 1982 reagan stopped the israeli invasion of lebanon with one phone call. in 2023, israeli military officials admitted they could not continue for more than a few days without american military aid. in 2024, biden commemorated 100 days of a war where over 100 palestinian children had been killed every single day without mentioning these children once. now imagine him doing this if israeli bombs had been killing 100 american children per day and you were watching their parents and siblings gather up their remains from the rubble with their bare hands in plastic bags to bury them. every day for a hundred days, new bags full of bits of small children who were once loved, dressed carefully, their hair brushed, children who spent the past few weeks drinking dirty water and sleeping in cold tents.
his re-election would not even be a matter of conversation, regardless of whether or not trump is worse. it would be completely unacceptable. the party would've been forced to choose another candidate. but of course 11,000 palestinian children (who are just at the mercy of your votes as american children are) do not warrant even a moment of shame before berating people to vote blue while there is an ongoing genocide trial at the hague. if you really want to engage politics seriously, you would be directing your ire at your administration first and foremost, not trying to sweep it under the rug for elections. you would be threatening to withhold your vote until a ceasefire. you would be making this a key issue for his re-election. you would be too horrified to contemplate asking people to vote for a lesser evil when it is so much evil. we know trump is worse. but unfortunately this genocide didn't happen under trump. refusing to confront that is going to get you nowhere.
acknowledge the genocide and the escalating regional wars. acknowledge the administration that did it. acknowledge that your rights are now at risk not because of leftists, but because joe biden let 11,000 children die. acknowledge that your vote is the only thing with the power to change this reality. acknowledge that presidents should be terrified to sanction a genocide without losing their chance at re-election. no president should have the assurance that he can kill this many children and still believe he will be re-elected. israel believes they can get away with genocide because they know american diplomatic immunity will protect them. joe biden openly bypasses congress to deliver bombs that eviscerate toddlers because he believes the american public doesn't care if he kills 11,000 arab children. and every time you say "vote blue no matter who" before you say "ceasefire now" you agree with that statement. you assure the next american president, whoever it is, that he too can get away with a genocide streamed right into everyone's phones in the comfort of their beds. and you better pray it's not your children dying live on tiktok next time, but there's no guarantee.
the world will get more cruel in the coming years; it's already too late to change that. the laws and exceptions made to excuse the death of arab children have been made before. mccarthyism was here before. this is a regression of hard-won rights, a violation of fought-for red lines and you will have to win them all over again and fight for those red lines all over again. otherwise you will continue whittling away your rights as you whittle away our rights.
i won't pretend i think this is a bloodless vote. but im not addressing the people who already understand that. im addressing the 'lesser evil' liberals i've seen on here since 2010 who have never once changed their tune on the presidential elections.
your vote is important regardless of efforts to suppress that. i don't deny it. you are voting on behalf of the entire global south. they have no say in the wars they get dragged into. america (and israel) are executing one of the ugliest atrocities of the 21st century, but unlike the uae, bashar al-assad or even putin, they are claiming to be representative democracies. that means you are voting on behalf of everyone receiving your bombs and your vetos and your military aid. so act like it. if that sounds unreasonable because you know you didn't sanction this war, that budget or these war crimes, then you're beginning to understand exactly what everyone else in your country has been saying.
voting isn't just the day you go to the ballot box. it is not exercised once for trump or biden. it is a power you hold every single day you have the ability to vote in the future. it's your voice. you can use it to berate the ones trying to stop a genocide, or you can use it to threaten your leaders. use it accordingly.
you can't put it to words better than this
