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.
So, I actually agreed with most of what you just said, as of 2020. Biden seemed to me like another crooked rich white guy who's been in Washington all his life, and I didn't have real high hopes for him. You touched on a couple of specifics of his history that fed into that, yes. Honestly, I don't have real high hopes for the majority of the Democrats; I like Bernie Sanders and there are individual Democrats who do pretty good things from time to time but I think by and large Washington doesn't know and doesn't care what ordinary people need, and that's why the country is as fucked up as it is. The whole reason Trump was even able to have a showing in the election was because the Democrats, like the Republicans, have mostly turned their backs on working people ever since Jimmy Carter. I still voted for him obviously, because the available alternative was "let's invade Mexico let's kill the vice president if he won't play ball with seizing power," but it wasn't because I was real happy about the idea of Biden.
I was genuinely very surprised. He forgave a ton of student loan debt, he issued marijuana pardons, his economic policy actually seemed invested in benefits for working people. There's a common talking point about the rail strike -- did you know that his labor department kept working the issue after the strike, and got the workers their sick days? There's a whole list of stuff that he's done that radically outside the norm for a standard Bill Clinton center-right Democrat goon.
I also think it's weird to hammer on him for Gaza when he didn't invade Gaza and he didn't create the murderous pro-Israel foreign policy that's been a US mainstay for 50+ years -- basically, Biden is not the one committing genocide. I think the link "Biden = Genocide" is a talking point that anti-Biden people like to hammer on because there is some fairness to it. It's to his credit that he did put sanctions on a handful of Israeli settlers which is way outside the norm for US presidents. He is now using the words "cease-fire" which Western leaders as a rule tend to try to avoid saying because Israel doesn't want to stop killing people. Is any of that enough? Fuck no. Is he enabling Israel now? Yes. Do I hope that the political price he's paying for supporting Israel will convince him and future presidents to maybe not give them a free pass for their state-sponsored murder? Fuck yes. But he's not calling the shots on the ground for the IDF while they're killing people, either.
I mean, I'm obviously going to vote for him if he's the nominee. Not because I love the Democratic establishment or feel "allegiance" to them or anything, but because Trump is the end of the fucking world. I vote to try to produce better outcomes, and to me Trump is so clearly a Hitler-reincarnate that I would vote for a rotting whale carcass if it was running against him.
I genuinely do not get this "Biden is bad, so it's okay if someone 10 times worse wins the election" logic. I would actually really like to have some option for someone not Biden to support in the general election, but if it winds up that the DNC refuses to listen to reason and runs him again, I definitely plan to vote for him because... I mean, if you don't like Biden enabling genocide by not reversing US foreign policy (which, again, I don't either), then you're really going to hate it when Trump announces suddenly he's going to nuke Iran because it's full of vermin and dirty diseased people and he's sure that some of them are nice people but anyway we did it because all the military is full of his loyalists now.
Biden did exceed my expectations by doing a lot of what you mentioned, and I was fully ready to support him as better than nothing rather than bad but not the worst. I would have been thrilled with another few years of non-chaos and a handful of good deeds which are even more progressive than almost anything we’ve had in decades. After he did a 180 on unions after getting called out for busting them we have had some real meaningful progress in the area of labor rights. I was ready to accept Biden not on terms of my own desires and values but in the context of the pressures of an American president, especially one since the Citizen’s United decision. Like pretty much everyone who typically votes Democrat, I have my preferred candidate but would support the nominee considering the danger of the alternative.
I never thought I would be a single-issue voter and I’ve even thought that engaging like that is naive and even immature. My thing is that once both of my choices are pro-genocide I have really started to re-consider the political direction we’re heading and what has lead us to this point. I don’t think we’re now experiencing how bad it can get, and I’m now considering how things might have been different if voters had made a stronger stand by letting pre-Trump Republicans win to show the DNC that their behavior will have electoral consequences. The thing is we really had no idea how things would go when this kind of thing would have far less dire consequences.
I am fully aware that Biden is far from unique in his support of Israel regardless of what they do. Although especially severe, the current ethnic cleansing going on is far from the first push and is happening in the context of the greater genocide which has been occurring for the better part of a century. The US has almost always supported and covered for them, as you mentioned. You are also correct to say that Biden isn’t himself driving this genocide and is even attempting to reduce the carnage through diplomacy. I will even go so far as to say that a Democrat supporting Operation Cast Lead in 2004 wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker for me if they were running against GWB, and I consider that event to be heinous. I am holding Biden to a different standard than I would have in the past, and this is due to context.
In 2004 Operation Cast Lead was a fringe issue with managed exposure and general bipartisan support. Only those who had gone out of their way to learn about the situation outside of American media, government, and education in 2004 had any idea what was really going on. Anyone making a big deal about it would have been easily swept under the rug. Everyone else can credibly claim that they had no idea what was really going on. The whole Overton window was from “I support Israel” to “It’s a very complicated situation, and I support Israel,” and this was due to the extent of the information Americans were commonly exposed to at that time.
2024 is quite a bit different than 2004. Information is now out of control for good and for bad. All the information which has always been managed to be pro-Israel still exists but is now no longer the whole picture the average person sees. Despite the best efforts of the US and Israeli governments to manage exposure carefully of this event, no such ability for such overwhelming control exists at the moment without cracking down on free speech. As a consequence, far more people than these governments are comfortable with have seen what they don’t want to be seen. The New York Times and the Washington Post are the same as they’ve ever been, but it is more commonly understood now than ever that these sources are far from objective as they claim to be, and foreign english-language media is more accessible than ever. The information is everywhere and now everyone at least has the opportunity to learn as much about it as they can. At this point anyone sticking to the government line is responsible for the behavior of choosing to believe lies for whatever reason, and anyone interested in what is true and is not true understands that our government is facilitating a genocide. It is now a well-known and well-understood issue compared to decades past.
Although Biden didn’t himself order this ethnic cleansing, he has chosen to support it economically and politically. What has been happening would not be happening to this degree if not for this support. I consider the behavior of the Biden administration to be instrumental in the level of destruction which has been undertaken, and I blame Biden for not even conditioning our political and economic support on the polite requests he’s been making which are barely even acknowledged. This behavior disturbs me because it’s as if they aren’t even considering holding Israel to any reasonable standards regardless of the new rapidly spreading awareness that what Israel is doing is plainly horrendous. They expect no consequences for fueling the genocidal fire.
With that context, unlike in 2004 the general voting public is aware that a genocide is happening and their voting behavior knowing this is going to be taken into account in future political strategy. They know that we know there’s a genocide happening, so whatever message we send with our voting behavior is going to be considered in future political action. I hope the message they receive is “We know there’s a genocide, and the reason you lost is because we can’t support a genocide” rather than “We know there’s a genocide, but your threat worked so we voted for you anyway. It’ll take a lot worse than that to lose my vote!” I know that from the administration’s perspective, 2024 is no different than 2004 in terms of the potential consequences of funding a genocidal action. I think it would be a good thing if they were wrong about that.
To clarify my argument, I don’t think that since Biden is bad that alone would lead me to allow a far worse evil to take power. My argument is that supporting a Democratic candidate when they know that we know about the genocide they’re facilitating, they will have a basis to push our boundaries even further in the interests of their campaign funders as they have been doing since since Citizen’s United. I think it’s pretty late to take the extreme action I’m advocating for in my post to allow Trump to run rampant in the hopes that the Democrats understand there are limits to what voters will tolerate. If the lesson they learn is that there are no limits to what voters will tolerate as long as there is a worse option, then I’m afraid our two evil options will continue to get worse.
If this is progress we are all truly screwed.
We are screwed. That's a key feature of the nature of the current US economy.
That doesn't mean that I think it's a good idea to take someone who did work to fix some aspect of it, from absolutely pitiful to slightly-less-awful-and-pitiful, and scream "GENOCIDE JOE GENOCIDE JOE" in their face and enable instead someone ten times worse, who will actively take us backwards to the best of his ability for the entire time he's in office. That seems, in fact, to be counterproductive.