this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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Maybe I will vote for someone who is against genocide. I know they won't win, but I will not vote for genocide. If someone told me I had to shoot one baby, or else they would shoot two babies, I still wouldn't shoot the one baby. I can't do anything to stop the genocide, but that doesn't mean I have to support it.
What if someone gives you the choice between them shooting one baby, or them shooting two? That's more analogous to our situation. Would you simply refuse to participate, increasing the chance of both babies dying, or would you make the choice for only one and accept some responsibility? It's basically the trolley problem.
Unironically yes, obviously I would refuse to participate in this baby murderer's game. I'm not going to say, "Please only kill one baby," I'm going to spit on his face and tell him to go to hell. And then he's going to murder as many babies as he wants, as he was going to do anyway.
The choice (even if the comparison really doesn't fit) is between one person going to kill one baby and the other person killing five. You're complicit if the second person wins because you're more concerned with suckling on your own genitals about how smart and principled you are instead of dealing with reality.
It's really as simple as that, and no amount of your self-aggrandizing mental gymnastics are going to change that.
If doing nothing for someone counts as support, then you can rest assured that Biden will have my support.
The logic of the intellectual right-wing scholars 🥰
You seem to be confused - I'm not voting for Biden
You're mostly correct, but there's something I need to point out:
Being "complicit" isn't a feature of consequentialism, and it's not a feature of the universe either. If you're doing utility calculus (which here you are) factoring in whether you'll be "complicit" essentially boils down to putting your self-image on the scales determining the lives of others.
I don't understand your last part, what do you mean with "projecting one's self-image"?
Placing one's self image. It's part of the scales metaphor.
If you take into consideration if you are "complicit" you are using how you will think about yourself as a factor in the utility calculus. I suppose you're also thinking about what how other people are perceiving you as well. Does that answer your question?
I guess I just don't understand why someone would do this. I mean if I had a gun I'd also just shoot the murderer, but assassination is "illegal" and "a federal crime" so unfortunately that's not an option.
It's still an option, just one that has consequences.
In this hypothetical, because I refuse to give him the satisfaction of cooperating in any way. If he knows that he can get me to do things by threatening to kill babies, then I'm just encouraging him to threaten to kill babies.
I'm not trying to "talk tough," there are situations where I would cooperate with a hostage taker, but murdering babies is a red line, for me personally.
Refusing to participate in a system designed to cause the murder of babies doesn’t mean they’re sitting on their thumbs pouting. So many people are so livid over even the concept of being given this non-choice, that they’re getting into direct action for the first time in their lives. Direct action, not voting, is responsible for the civil rights we have in this country. If the imperialist machine desperately doesn’t want to give us a voice on atrocities, it would start doing things like creating cop cities everywhere, increasing cop funding, creating laws against protesters that label them domestic terrorists, brutalizing activists but never white supremacists, and convincing the populace that voting is by far the most important and only effective tool you have.
We could surely further improve the analogy, but let's not. No, I wouldn't choose. For one, that is a sick game. Secondly, why would I even trust this person to not just keep shooting babies anyway?
This is a choice.
Who else is hearing Rush right now?