I respect that you acknowledge my way of thinking rather than caricaturizing it. Thank you. I am still of the opinion that had the grenade not been thrown now, it would lead to situation becoming even worse next time around. This is why I say Harris would only have delayed the inevitable. It is my opinion that the death toll would have been higher and more dramatic if the issue was allowed to fester for another election cycle. I agree that sometimes you have to take a loss to keep fighting long term - it’s just that to me, the current situation is that loss, and it enables us to keep fighting in the form of people like Mamdani being elected. I strongly believe that if Kamala had won, Mamdani would not have. Mamdani may actually move the window, we’ll see. That’s what we need.
Blood is partially on my hands indeed, but it is also on the hands of all the neoliberal voters of the last few decades by the same reasoning. If the grenade had been thrown 30 years ago, it also would have blown up, albeit less spectacularly, and that lesser blood would be on the hands of those who refused to vote out of principle that year. If the grenade had been thrown 25 years ago, it would have blown up, slightly more. 20 years ago, even more. Etc etc. This is why I believe that if we sucked it up with Kamala this time around, then we would just find ourselves with the same gambit in the future but with even higher stakes. Every election, people have said “sometimes you have to take a loss to keep fighting long term” and “THIS is the ONE election that you really can’t afford to throw the grenade! That last one maybe, sure. But that’s in the past now anyways. THIS is the one you have to suck it up and vote for!” And indeed it never gets better. Blood is on the voters hands either way, the only difference is if we see the toll paid immediately (making it easy to blame them) or see it delayed by decades (making it hard to connect the dots). From my perspective, the majority of blood spilled today is precisely due to the lack of strategic foresight of compromise-voters of decades past, exhibiting exactly the same mentality that called for voting for Kamala this time around. In a nutshell, I believe my mentality spills blood today, but the compromise-voting spills more blood tomorrow. I consider my ability to properly take into account a greater future cost over a present cost exactly an example of strategic thinking. So it’s funny that we have an identical qualm with each other - it comes from simply a different prediction of the future.
I’m sure that this still leaves us in disagreement, but it is at least a smaller disagreement, not about strategy, intention, or even mentality - we merely have different judgements of the most likely future, which I think is a much more negligible disagreement - since predicting the future accurately is known to be difficult.
I respect that you acknowledge my way of thinking rather than caricaturizing it. Thank you. I am still of the opinion that had the grenade not been thrown now, it would lead to situation becoming even worse next time around. This is why I say Harris would only have delayed the inevitable. It is my opinion that the death toll would have been higher and more dramatic if the issue was allowed to fester for another election cycle. I agree that sometimes you have to take a loss to keep fighting long term - it’s just that to me, the current situation is that loss, and it enables us to keep fighting in the form of people like Mamdani being elected. I strongly believe that if Kamala had won, Mamdani would not have. Mamdani may actually move the window, we’ll see. That’s what we need.
Blood is partially on my hands indeed, but it is also on the hands of all the neoliberal voters of the last few decades by the same reasoning. If the grenade had been thrown 30 years ago, it also would have blown up, albeit less spectacularly, and that lesser blood would be on the hands of those who refused to vote out of principle that year. If the grenade had been thrown 25 years ago, it would have blown up, slightly more. 20 years ago, even more. Etc etc. This is why I believe that if we sucked it up with Kamala this time around, then we would just find ourselves with the same gambit in the future but with even higher stakes. Every election, people have said “sometimes you have to take a loss to keep fighting long term” and “THIS is the ONE election that you really can’t afford to throw the grenade! That last one maybe, sure. But that’s in the past now anyways. THIS is the one you have to suck it up and vote for!” And indeed it never gets better. Blood is on the voters hands either way, the only difference is if we see the toll paid immediately (making it easy to blame them) or see it delayed by decades (making it hard to connect the dots). From my perspective, the majority of blood spilled today is precisely due to the lack of strategic foresight of compromise-voters of decades past, exhibiting exactly the same mentality that called for voting for Kamala this time around. In a nutshell, I believe my mentality spills blood today, but the compromise-voting spills more blood tomorrow. I consider my ability to properly take into account a greater future cost over a present cost exactly an example of strategic thinking. So it’s funny that we have an identical qualm with each other - it comes from simply a different prediction of the future.
I’m sure that this still leaves us in disagreement, but it is at least a smaller disagreement, not about strategy, intention, or even mentality - we merely have different judgements of the most likely future, which I think is a much more negligible disagreement - since predicting the future accurately is known to be difficult.