Political Memes

I get that this is not the hill to die on in this meme, but the tracks should really be reversed.

This implies "doing nothing" will only sacrifice Palestine, while "pulling the lever" (i.e. voting) will sacrifice Palestine+all other at risk groups.

Otherwise, this really is a classic trolly dilemma. We can't stop the train and someone is going to get killed.

I was going to make this, but put Palestine before the fork. And then put the person away from the lever refusing to participate when pulling the lever would move it to a track with nobody on it. Or pulling a different lever that does nothing (labeled Jill Stein).

Palestine is and will continue to get run over regardless who wins the presidency, so they aren't exactly relevant to the choice. It's not a real trolley problem because it's not a trade for different people. It's just "let the trolley run over Ukrainians, lgbtq+ people, minorities, and immigrants" or... don't. And then refusing to touch the lever because it somehow makes you "love genocide" to have anything to do with the trolley, even if to mitigate the damage.

anybody on the left withholding their vote at this point fundamentally disbelieves in a system with exactly two discrete options, so this type of post doesn't persuade anybody

I see .ml found this post. There are almost as many dumb comments as there are downvotes.

We have some very bad people; we have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.

• Donald Trump

One thing I've learned this election cycle is how few people have any knowledge of utilitarianism. Genocide is better than genocide+1. Not acting is a moral choice, and frequently a cowardly one.

Honestly, I wonder how much of our disagreements do ultimately come down to moral philosophy. I see a lot of people making this comparison and I'd be happy to put aside the present political situation and step back to discuss a higher level of disagreement.

I am a consequentialist, and I would agree, in principle, that the correct decision in the trolley problem is to pull the lever. But that should always come with an extreme amount of disclaimers. There are no shortage of people throughout history who have made justifications for their actions on the basis of "the ends justify the means," but often, they turned out to be wrong. To use an example, torture under the Bush administration was claimed to be justified on the basis of getting useful intelligence in order to save lives. But no such intelligence was ever extracted. Really, it was more motivated by revenge, or a desire to be the sort of cool antihero who does the stuff nobody else will that needs to be done, but "the ends justify the means" served as a rationalization. Another example like that (though perhaps more controversial) is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The problem with applying the trolley problem to real life is that we are mere human beings of flesh and blood. We have a whole host of cognitive biases that mislead us even when we have the best of intentions. If we give our minds a way to justify things that we know are bad, it gives it an out that allows us to rationalize the irrational and justify the unjustifiable.

There are two practices that are necessary to apply in order to counteract these biases. First, it is necessary to adopt a set of strong moral guidelines based on past experience and historical evidence. Second, it is necessary to regularly practice some form of introspection or meditation in order to better understand where your thoughts and feelings arise from, and how they flow through your mind. Said guidelines do not have to be rigorously adhered to 100% of the time, but they should be respected, and only deviated from after clear, careful consideration, understanding why the guideline exists and why deviation from them is almost always bad.

"Base" consequentialism, where you recognize that pulling the lever in the trolley problem is the correct decision, but simply accept that as a guiding principle, is a terrible moral philosophy, worse than deontology and possibly worse than having completely unexamined moral views. Some of the worst atrocities in history are the result of that sort of "ends justify the means" approach, detached from a set of moral guidelines and detached from humility and self-reflection. I would even say, speaking as a communist, that many of the bad things communists have done in history are a result of that kind of mentality. Following moral rules blindly is preferable to breaking moral rules without first doing the necessary work to be trusted with breaking them.

There's plenty more I could say on the topic but people always complain about my long posts so I'd better cut myself off there.

The way I see it is, if one side wins, the Left will not only have to worry about the Palestinians, but suddenly they’ll have to choose between protesting about all those other things AND it’ll be with a hostile government that will curtail civil rights and probably start committing abuses against US citizens.

If the other side wins, all those other issues become less of a danger and the Left can focus on keeping up the pressure on Democratic leadership to stop supporting Israel. It’s still not guaranteed, but it’s a much better chance than in the alternative world where out and out fascism takes over. Focus on what’s important, don’t needlessly add more problems on to the pile.

These are all sort of parody to begin with but the purpose of the trolley dilemma isn't about the results of the lever switch, it's about approaching complicity and participation in a system that creates this kind of immoral choice.