Israel’s attack and slaughter and torture and ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians has brought out in clear view who people really are and what they really believe in and stand for. People are showing their true colors. [***Sorry, I don’t know how to create a jump break for these blog posts.***]
I will not apologize for refusing to vote for Biden this November. I absolutely cannot, in good conscience, give my vote to someone who is not just complicit in genocide, but is actively participating in it. Not passively. Actively. This genocide and everything Israel is doing literally would not be possible at all without the United States. I don’t care what Biden and his ghouls say publicly, they have made it very clear that they do not care one iota about Palestinian lives. But, you’ll ask, don’t I care about domestic issues affecting Americans’ lives? Yes, of course! Reproductive healthcare and abortion access are extremely important to me! Lack of such healthcare and access is already having grave consequences, disgusting consequences, outrageous and shocking and enraging and terrifying consequences. That will only get worse if these misogynistic and sadistic Rs get their way. And it makes me sick to my stomach to think of how many girls and women would be hurt, and all the different ways in which they would be hurt.
However.
If I truly care about the rights and the safety and wellbeing and autonomy of women and girls, then I care about it for all women and girls, period.
Just before Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in protest against the genocide in which we are participating and would literally not be possible without us, he said he was about to do something extreme, referring both to what other people would witness and to what he was going to have to suffer and endure in order to carry it out, but that it was nowhere near to what the Palestinians are having to suffer and go through every single day. Similarly, as awful as the consequences to women and girls here may be, and for several years following, as much as they will have to suffer, we have to be honest here: it is no comparison to what the Palestinians are going through now and have been going through for almost 80 years. As horrible as lack of access to abortion and reproductive healthcare may and will be for so many, nothing is as bad as genocide. Nothing is as bad as ethnic cleansing and genocide. I cannot ignore the fact that we in the United States are incredibly privileged in comparison to the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. So I will say it again, if I truly care about the rights and the safety and wellbeing and autonomy of women and girls, then I care about it for all women and girls, period. On the one hand it pains me deeply to have to make a choice like this; but on the other hand, the fact that I (and we) even have a choice like this available to make at all, and the larger circumstances in which we are to make it—you know, voting—is a fucking privilege and luxury compared to millions around the world. I cannot ignore that. I don’t and won’t judge those who feel and choose differently; I cannot hold it against them to give priority to the lives and wellbeing of those here in the U.S. Just as I would not hold it against anyone to give priority to the lives of their own family and friends over the lives of others.
I came to the decision to not vote for Biden sometime in late December, or shortly after the new year. (And only after debating with myself on it for a few weeks.) In the four months since then, I have not found a single reason to even consider the possibility of changing my mind; in fact, I have found too many reasons to feel more and more strongly that I am making the right decision.
Biden and his ghouls, and our whole federal government, are just plain racist against Palestinians. (And probably against arabs and west asians in general.) There is no other explanation for Biden’s behavior and decisions, and those of his ghouls; no other explanation for their willing complicity and participatory enablement in the gruesome horrors and the maliciously diabolical dehumanization of Palestinians. They’ve suckled the Zionist teat of Israeli propaganda, nourished their egos and pockets on the sick and twisted lies about Palestinians. But they could only have done so if they were capable of racism, if they had racist tendencies to begin with.
(Okay, yes, the other part of the explanation is money, our tyranny of capitalism. But I ask you, what was a huge part of the precondition of the West that got us to this kind of tyrannical global capitalism? The racism, and thus tribalism and classism, that allowed westerners to look upon anyone as “other” as a useful natural resource—in as convoluted a sense of that concept as was needed—to be exploited and commodified as far as possible for the acquisition of capital in one way or another.)
Every single day the administration sends out their spokespeople to feed us lies on top of lies. Every single day they are gaslighting us. How many times have they repeated claims that have already been debunked? Remember: Biden said, more than once, that he saw the photos of the forty beheaded babies that never existed. How many more times are they going to insist that Hamas tied up families and either burned or executed them, when there’s never been a single piece of evidence of that? And despite that every attempt to get one tiny shred of evidence of Hamas fighters using sexual violence on Oct 7 fails miserably and returns empty-handed, our politicians and officials to this day still “remind” us that Hamas used systematic rape on Oct 7. Their doublespeak and double standards are off the fucking charts. Any mere hint of accusation of anything against Hamas or Palestinians in general is taken without question as obviously being true, even in the face of evidence to the contrary; while accusations with lots of evidence or even official reports from independent investigations against the IOF are consistently taken as highly questionable and our State Dept is “looking into it”.
It is truly shocking that they think we are all so dumb and blind when we can all see with our own eyes what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank, because the atrocities of this genocide are basically being daily livestreamed—by both the victims and the perpetrators of those atrocities!—to the screens in our hands, and we can all literally hear what Netanyahu and Gallant and other Israeli officials say and read what they post online. The Biden admin and their spokespeople pretend to be completely unaware of specific incidents being reported by so many independent media or foreign media outlets, and being reposted on social media. It is preposterous that they haven’t seen things being so widely reported. And they damn well know that, which is why they repeat over and over again, word for word—i.e. scripted—the same declarations of their supposed ignorance.
But stop and think about that for a moment: if it were true that these spokespeople and the administration had’t heard about whatever such reports that everyone else has seen online for hours or a day or a few days, does that not display for us a clear demonstration of their incompetence in something they’re supposed to be expert? Or similarly, they are aware but they are “looking into it” and “waiting for facts”, and they seem to hang in a prolonged and perpetual state of looking or waiting for information, hoping that we all eventually forget about it and stop asking. Again, how is their lack of knowledge or information not an admission of their incompetence? Only because they are lying. It is literally their job to know about all sorts of things going on, to be informed; and the U.S. regularly brags about their intelligence gathering capabilities. But they somehow don’t know about reports and videos we’ve all seen already? Really? Or they’re just still waiting for the facts to come in, even from one of our “closest allies” whom we talk with every fucking day? If they genuinely think we’d believe that, well then, that’s a whole different kind and level of incompetence that should frankly scare us.
If they’re willing to lie through their teeth straight to our faces, knowing how obvious to everyone the reality is, and lie about something so serious and grave and so atrocious and such extreme violations of international humanitarian law, then what other horrors are they lying to us about? I can tell you from experience because I was married to someone who lied a lot to my face because he indeed had things to hide, because he had severely uncontrollable drug addiction: if there are things you already know that they’re lying to your face about, there’s guaranteed to be so much more of which you are completely unaware that they are lying about and hiding on a regular basis.
And don’t give me the excuse that, oh, all politicians lie, as if that’s some fact that we just all need to be okay with. This is why it matters: because they’ve broken your trust on extremely serious and significant and important things, with complete disregard for your wellbeing or the consequences that may affect you; and thus, you can no longer simply trust them on anything, no longer take their word for it and give them the benefit of the doubt, no longer take it for granted that they have your interests in mind at all. And most importantly, they are not just anyone! They have a whole lot of power over things that directly affect you and your life and the lives of many (if not all) of the people you care about because they are the fucking government! And ours is a government with, whether we like it or not, too much power in this world, the most powerful and sizable military at their disposal, and decades upon decades of acting with impunity and building alliances who are all in on the scheme.
Some of you will be of the “but what about Trump?!” camp, arguing that we cannot let Trump back in office, he is too dangerous for all of us. I agree, I have zero desire to see him in office again, he is absolutely dangerous, he will do a lot of damage and a lot of people will be harmed, and this country will again be skewed into the wrong direction. As much as I hate Trump with every fiber of my being, it does not make me blind and irrational. I’ve already addressed the abortion issue, and I submit that of course Trump will be terrible for abortion access and reproductive healthcare. If you want to argue that were Trump in office now he would be behaving the same way with regards to Israel, then fine, sure, I agree, if Trump were if office he’d be helping along with the genocide for sure. But like it or not, we don’t live in that possible world. Like it or not, Trump is not right now committing genocide; Biden is.
If what you fear about Trump taking office again is that he is a serious threat to democracy, then I agree, he is. But what we have seen in the past six months is that so is Biden, and so are those in his administration and the other Democrats in D.C. who are willing to follow him. (Remember when Pelosi yelled at protesters and claimed they were paid by Russia? Like I said, people are showing their true colors.) Let’s be brutally honest here and not sugarcoat things: Biden is behaving like a dictator. I never thought I would say anything remotely close to that; such a statement was reserved in my mind for rightwing crazy conspiracy fantasies. But here we are, I have to say it, because I’m not afraid of the truth no matter how ugly or just plain off the fucking wall it is. Biden is doing only what he wants to do; not what the American people want, not what is good for the country and the global community, and perhaps most importantly, not what is in accordance with U.S. laws and international laws!
So if I admit that Trump will be just as bad, and there’s not really much of a difference, but then he’d probably worse, why the hell will I still refuse to vote for Biden? Because—and this is going to be something a whole lot of people don’t want to hear (or read)—frankly, the Democrats have to be punished; they don’t deserve to be rewarded for their awful behavior. The consequences will be what they will be, there’s no way around that. We have to face the fact that the Palestine-Israel issue has revealed into plain view the darkest and most corrupt underbelly of our whole government, and revealed it in a way I don’t think any other issue or incident ever has. (But I am not well-versed on 20th c. American history, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I am wrong about that. And if there is another issue or incident equally revealing, then that’s all the worse, isn’t it, because it shows we desperately need to learn our lesson.)
In other words, we have to stop giving in and rewarding Democrats forcing us to make decisions between corrupt and corrupt + sinister. (Which is which in this case?) We’ve already seen that the power of votes can speak loud and clear and it’s shaken Democrats: the “uncommitted” and “no preference” and similar option votes in the Democratic primaries were much higher in some states than anyone thought possible, and it was quite the gut punch to Democrats.
Let me drive the point with an analogy. A battered mother stays with her abusive husband, the father of her child, she gives in, because at the end of the day, he is the breadwinner in the house. She admits that the physical and psychological harm to her is pretty bad. She admits that her child having to witness the abuse and the aftermath of the abuse is taking its toll and affecting the child. But how would she feed and clothe and house her child otherwise?
Now come on, would you really advise her that the best thing, the best option, is to stay with him and just put up with it, despite the negative effects on the child and obviously on her?
Let’s admit it, this is kind of like our relationship with our politicians. We allow ourselves to be abused and battered and broken down…
Let me be clear about one thing here: my own decision to refuse to vote for Biden was made solely on the basis of genocide. For me, that is enough of a reason, I don’t need any further rationalizations. But I realize that won’t be enough for a lot of people.
