Of course it’s feasible. Biden literally cannot win, it’s in fact the only option if you don’t want to see GOP in power again.

Prohibition? We still have drug prohibition. Woman’s suffrage? It’s something, but women’s votes still are as useless as everyone else’s, especially if you refuse to vote for anything to actually change (and they still have a wage gap). 75-day school year - what? Jim Crow? Improvements but black communities institutionalized, ghettoized, gunned down by cops, and still a wage gap. See prohibition.

Plus, now our government is totalitarian, eating a third of GDP, massive surveillance state, largest military on earth, quarter of the prisoner’s on Earth, constantly trying to censor the internet, economy is insanely unequal and getting worse, inflation over the long term getting worse and wages not keeping up with them, housing prices skyrocketing, and currently openly engaged in a genocide despite nation-wide protests. Need me to keep going?

Wow, sorry, didn’t realize this was still going.

What is my feasible solution? General strike and/or total shift to third party to implement direct democracy. 100 million people can go out and waste their vote on a petty tyrant like Biden or Trump, or 100 million people can actually start making real changes. You’re all in a prison of your own making.

Good luck with your attempts at incremental change, that’ve been going on for a century while our society has completely devolved into fascism, a bipartisan police state and a genocidal global empire. You are clearly the brilliant visionary we need to guide us into the uncharted future.

Including Montana.

“Our democracy” has been dead for a century. You guys are like rats running around a maze with your moronic “lesser of two evils” between two parties all controlled by the same interests.

Both parties openly backing and arming the genocide in Palestine, the most well-documented genocide in world history, despite overwhelming public opposition, is not a binary system, it’s a one-party system. We are living in dystopia already, the Democrats shave 3% off of whatever the fascist Republican platform is and say “we’re the best option.” Stop being a fool and see the system for what it is.

“Normal” and not a military empire would be a start.

Well past time for one of those historical shifts to a third party.

Not many people still alive, but the exact same imperial systems we're working the gears on today.

The same standards should be applied to all countries. Otherwise you're forced into a vicious cycle of an arms race for brutal global domination. This is the purpose of international law and if anything we should be decentralizing and strengthening it.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/20/us-israel-dead-last-in-following-un-charter/

It doesn't matter if you're willing to change, the world changes you anyway, that's what I'm saying. If you're talking about persuading people, that's a question of technique. I'm not gonna pretend I'm great at that, I have a pretty short temper, but there are ways.

I don't think that's true. Our mentalities change throughout our entire lives because of events and information we never anticipated.

Got your reply and had to scroll back up to remember if this post was about Biden or Trump…

Honestly I can't remember an election cycle in the last 20 years where somebody didn't say something stupid and people tried to turn it into a question about their mental fitness. It's part of the excruciating minutia of examining every mole and freckle on the body of political candidates to see if they're qualified for a job that shouldn't even exist in the first place. The blind fixations of American politics on the personality of candidates who are basically universally betraying them years before they even get into office.

I think you're going to be dealing with them on that level of engagement as long as you don't correct it. And as long as they are, they're gonna be subject to the same kinds of manipulation that they are now.

"Flubs" I think are the absolutely least interesting thing* in politics, that people just love to focus on.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

I mean that, within the corridors of power - the U.S., Israeli, the U.K., etc. - there's systematic policy of unequal regard for Palestinian lives, below that of Israeli lives. That creates an environment where extremely disproportionate attacks on Palestinians, like we're witnessing now, are characterized as acceptable. This, of course, creates the conditions of systemic apartheid, the conditions for the hostilities in the first place.

And in regard to the point you bring up (to be sure, not what I was talking about) - whether or not either side of the conflict has equal or unequal regard for human life - I don't think it's simple to make that kind of calculation. The facts we have to contend with are the current situation are the result of a movement since the late 19th century seeking to move a population into Palestine, militarily seize control of the entire territory, and militarily occupy, oppress, blockade, and expel the local population for land acquisition. In the context of that, we have to contend with the reality of the civilian casualties:

which have never been equal. It does not prove equal disregard for human lives, but it's a very strong indicator towards it, that Israel disproportionately and recklessly slaughters Palestinians, on the order of 10 to 20 times as many, in retaliation to any Palestinian attack, or vice versa.

In regard to Hamas itself - we have the evidence of the rocket attacks themselves (unguided rockets, just going wherever in a general direction), which took a total of about 40 non-Palestinian lives between 2004 and 2014. And we also have the exact evidential record of October 7th - through which we have to filter out atrocity propaganda, deaths that were attributed to Hamas but should properly be attributed to the IDF, etc. (look into this yourself, it's a doozy), and that military vs. civilian casualties seem to have been underreported by Israel. Those attacks are in the context of trying to achieve a prisoner swap, bring attention to the situation of the Gaza strip, or most cynically, to empower Hamas itself for the profit of its leaders - while on the Israeli side, the explanations ranging from trying to disempower from Hamas, to trying to continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, either to nullify them, to gain control of territory, etc. - armed with all the military tools, all the knowledge, all the human rights theory, of Western nations, but choosing to use them to purposefully target civilian facilities, destroying the entire city, destroying the civilian infrastructure, starving the entire civilian population of food, water, electricity, fuel, medicine, the essential needs for the entire civilian population - coupled with open statements of genocidal intent - not coming from anger of perpetual oppression, like that of Palestinians, but coming from anger resulting from resistance to that oppression. I think that strongly suggests Israel's disregard for human life of the Palestinian population reaches extremes that are not reciprocated by the Palestinian population as a whole, or probably even by Hamas itself.

That's just me thinking through it in response to your comment. We see greater numbers of casualties. We see what seems to be a far greater percent of civilian casualties from Israel. We see explicit attempts to justify the targeting of hospitals - which they cannot even substantiate. We see open statements of dehumanization and incitement to genocide. I don't think the disregard for human lives is equal, I think Israel as a state has proven that it's only concerned with its own interests, completely disregarding all human lives that stand in the way of those interests, while as a result of that, the Palestinian population has perpetually been in a posture of defense. And my understanding of international law, that it places the defensive right with the Palestinian population on the basis of their 56 year long experience of occupation, not with the occupying power - I think mirrors precisely that.

Yes, and that touches on the core problem, unequal regard for human lives.

Honestly, I saw his most recent interview, he was supporting the continuation of hostilities (urging restraint and all that) until Hamas was removed. Then I watched the hour long Norman Finkelstein response to it, going over his premises in excruciating detail - https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/11/06/18860126.php I don't think your portrayal of his statements is accurate.

That's an odd response to what I wrote…what I said is that the two choices are becoming more and more evil, not that they are evil in the first place. Which is not how that phrase has typically been used (to justify selecting the lesser of the two evils).

Which, side note, may make sense in the context of, there are actually only two choices. But what we do is collectively lock ourselves into those two choices and then choose between them, when there are not only other parties and independent candidates we could support, but entirely separate political systems we could move to.