A good reason (sufficient, IHMO) not to carry Biden’s water for the genocide was the foreseeable corruption that would follow. You’ll eventually talk yourself into the take that even if it was genocide, *ours was better* or at least less bad.
Replies
Every good wish.
aug 31, 2025, 8:16 pm • 0 0 • view
Srebrenica is objectively less bad than Rwanda. Both are atrocities. You still have an obligation as a human being to prevent suffering and death wherever possible
aug 31, 2025, 8:19 pm • 0 0 • view
Rwanda is less bad than Nazi Germany. A frequent talking point was that since it wasn’t as bad as Germany, it was excusable, or understandable—that those who had done it were in some way excused or justified by some causally independent event that happened to be worse.
aug 31, 2025, 8:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Cool. That's not my point. Fuck the Israeli nationalist right and fuck any Ds running cover for it. Still doesn't change the facts
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 0 0 • view
And yes, the Holocaust was worse than Rwanda which was worse than Gaza which was worse than Srebrenica. All are atrocities and should result in the perpetrators held responsible
aug 31, 2025, 8:26 pm • 0 0 • view
I thought your story (one of many, AFAICT) was that if there was some worse instance of a kind of wrongdoing, then the less bad ones were at least possibly permissible (if only to stop the worst one happening, say).
aug 31, 2025, 8:28 pm • 1 0 • view
The Rwandan-denier reasoning tends to be a little more direct: they’ll just say that that since it wasn’t as bad as Germany, it isn’t really a genocide, or it’s partly excusable &c
aug 31, 2025, 8:29 pm • 0 0 • view
Permissible in that you should vote for the perpetrators if they are the option to stop it from getting worse? I guess
aug 31, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes. I think this is a consequence of your view. If Théoneste Bagosora laid out a plan to kill a million Tutsi in 100 days, and then added a causal rider—something like “if you let me kill a million innocents, you will have prevented the death by other causes of a million and one innocents”—your
aug 31, 2025, 8:38 pm • 1 0 • view
view is that it’s not just fine to let him do it: it’s *obviously* fine.
aug 31, 2025, 8:39 pm • 0 0 • view
(I think your view is even stronger: that you have a weak obligation to help him.)
aug 31, 2025, 8:40 pm • 2 0 • view
I don’t think you have to do much more than write it out to see why it can’t hope to persuade many (perhaps any).
aug 31, 2025, 8:42 pm • 0 0 • view
If you want to imagine that is my argument, I can't cure stupidity
aug 31, 2025, 9:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Nobody extra suffers but your ego in that case
aug 31, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
"We have already arrived at 'genocide' tier, therefore it is already the maximal badness level" only makes sense if you do not value human lives If a single person dies who might have otherwise lived, it fucking got worse!
aug 31, 2025, 8:20 pm • 0 0 • view
I think the thing to notice is that some act doesn’t have to be the worst ever to be of a kind which you shouldn’t do or be complicit in. Maybe killing and eating one of your children will save 5 children elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, you can think up a case where a very large number of children may
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 1 0 • view
be saved by killing and eating one of your children. I’d still recommend against intra-family cannibalism.
aug 31, 2025, 8:26 pm • 0 0 • view
I feel like usually this kind of far-fetched hypothetical gets used from the other direction, but we are talking about someone here whose choice is to vote for a Democrat (who had inexcusably enabled Israel) or not try to defeat Trump (who was going to kill many more Palestinians, and other stuff)
aug 31, 2025, 8:48 pm • 2 0 • view
this is not on the same planet as comparing someone who literally murders two people and then saves three to someone who does neither
aug 31, 2025, 8:48 pm • 2 0 • view
I think we were told that we had to actively help the perpetrators in committing the acts if that cut net deaths. But presumably if you can faultlessly help someone do something, you can usually do it yourself (if I can help someone cross the road, fill their tax forms, or donate money to a charity)
aug 31, 2025, 8:55 pm • 0 0 • view
"we were told" by whom? maybe someone in the original thread, though not in the post that's quoted at the top. but if you're talking about voting, your attitude seems to be that voting for someone who does some bad things is as bad as doing the bad things yourself. OP is right to condemn that
aug 31, 2025, 9:03 pm • 2 0 • view
aug 31, 2025, 9:08 pm • 0 0 • view
aug 31, 2025, 9:08 pm • 0 0 • view
because that means you can effectively never vote for anyone. for any office. let the world be destroyed so long as my hands are clean in it
aug 31, 2025, 9:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Did you support and vote for Harris? I'm trying to figure out if this stubborn pigheadednees is out of being defensive "Help the perpetrators" = "vote for them since they were the only other option to the guy who makes everything worse everywhere, including Gaza, and defeating him was vital"
aug 31, 2025, 9:04 pm • 1 0 • view
> If a single person dies who might have otherwise lived, it > fucking got worse! You haven't presented any argument for how this might have happened - in another response you even stressed that you hadn't been making a causal argument.
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 0 0 • view
If Harris won there would be fewer deaths in Gaza
aug 31, 2025, 8:33 pm • 1 0 • view