They stayed home because either choice felt like doom, and probably felt they didn’t want to participate in either.
This is the false equivalency trap they were led into.
Neither side was supporting their cause, but one side was supporting Israel while trying to push for getting aid into the country, and the other side literally said Israel wasn’t killing Palestinians fast enough. You have to be a special kind of dumb to think those two things are the same.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. By not voting, they contributed to the win of the candidate who thinks Palestine shouldn’t exist.
Yes, I absolutely hold those people accountable, for this and every other action he takes. Sitting on the sidelines is immoral. Not participating because they couldn’t get exactly the outcome they wanted isn’t ethically defensible. The system is the way it is until we who are working to change it succeed (which may be never), and until then you pick the lesser of two evils, because not voting isn’t going to prevent the election.
Maybe they argue that by not voting they “sent a message.” Ok, maybe they did. As a consequence, the cost of their message is likely to be the extinction of Palestine.
Many of us tried to “send a message” in 2000, and it changed nothing; those of us who voted for a third party in protest are directly culpable for the war in Iraq and the continued expansion of the Republican agenda in courts and state legislature through two terms.
The protest voters, and protest non-voters, in 2024 participated in what’s to come.
The most infuriating thing about this is that it seems nobody learned anything from WWII. This is like Ghandi preaching passive resistance to German Jews; I have no respect for these people who refused to take a side knowing full well that one candidate was a worse outcome for Palestine.
This is the false equivalency trap they were led into.
Neither side was supporting their cause, but one side was supporting Israel while trying to push for getting aid into the country, and the other side literally said Israel wasn’t killing Palestinians fast enough. You have to be a special kind of dumb to think those two things are the same.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. By not voting, they contributed to the win of the candidate who thinks Palestine shouldn’t exist.
Yes, I absolutely hold those people accountable, for this and every other action he takes. Sitting on the sidelines is immoral. Not participating because they couldn’t get exactly the outcome they wanted isn’t ethically defensible. The system is the way it is until we who are working to change it succeed (which may be never), and until then you pick the lesser of two evils, because not voting isn’t going to prevent the election.
Maybe they argue that by not voting they “sent a message.” Ok, maybe they did. As a consequence, the cost of their message is likely to be the extinction of Palestine.
Many of us tried to “send a message” in 2000, and it changed nothing; those of us who voted for a third party in protest are directly culpable for the war in Iraq and the continued expansion of the Republican agenda in courts and state legislature through two terms.
The protest voters, and protest non-voters, in 2024 participated in what’s to come.
The most infuriating thing about this is that it seems nobody learned anything from WWII. This is like Ghandi preaching passive resistance to German Jews; I have no respect for these people who refused to take a side knowing full well that one candidate was a worse outcome for Palestine.