I'm going to try to be as clear as possible here in where I'm coming from.
I'm not going to make this about Israel's war with Gaza and Lebanon except to say that I stand with the large number of Israelis and Palestinians and the Lebanese people who want a ceasefire and the hostages and prisoners brought home. Nor am I going to talk about the Biden/Harris administration's continued policy of arming Israel. I've been pretty clear that I oppose the blank check on weapons the United States has given Israel and that conditions need not only to be met but enforced when it comes to massacring civilians. I want the mass killing of children to end. Dismiss me if you want because of that.
This is really about voting for Kamala Harris for president despite her response to a grave and horrific situation in the Middle East. I understand the impulse to withhold your vote because of this. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. As I've said before, I went through it with Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996 (I was pissed at him for his inaction on the Rwandan genocide and welfare reform), although I ultimately voted for Clinton because I didn't want Bob Dole picking Supreme Court justices or other federal judges.
But I haven't had the same impulse with Harris. It's not that I'm deluding myself into thinking that Harris is going to completely change US policy towards Israel once she gets into office. See, I have a few things I believe about this whole situation when it comes to the politics of this fucked situation. I think that Biden’s treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu has been ludicrously naive and ineffective and based in a fear about an electoral backlash to any hint of opposition to Israel, a fear based in the politics of 30 years ago. I think that the refusal to condemn the actions of Israel and to hold them to international law lessens the credibility of the US in holding bad actors to account.
However, Harris is still a part of the Biden administration. She cannot state a policy completely at odds with the policy of the president, and I think that Biden has unintentionally screwed over Harris by letting Netanyahu roll him so completely. Harris is showing some tiny signs of shifting away from Biden's position, as when she was asked about supporting Netanyahu on 60 Minutes and she responded, "I think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people. And the answer to that question is yes." If this means something, it's hard to say, but the right people are freaked out by what she said. It feels like she's testing the waters.
Again, I don't believe that Harris will all of a sudden take a stand on limiting or stopping weapons flowing to Israel. She might, but I won't hold my breath. But it's pretty clear that Trump will be worse, aiding and abetting whatever extensive war crimes Netanyahu wants to commit, with the added bonus of threatening to deport anti-Israel protesters from the United States and reinstating his ban on people from Muslim countries. I also believe that Netanyahu is, at least partially, prosecuting this war in a way specifically meant to interfere in the US presidential election in Trump's favor.
It's a fucked situation, one of many fucked situations going on right now. My vote can't unfuck everything that's fucked. Even if the most perfect candidate in the world were nominated, it still wouldn't unfuck it all. I will disagree with something; I will still see something as fucked. But I have a responsibility to unfuck what I can unfuck in whatever way I can unfuck it. Frankly, we all do.
If I vote for Harris, I accept that I am probably not doing anything to unfuck the current situation in the Middle East. But I also accept that I am doing something to unfuck so many other things and preventing many more from becoming fucked (or further fucked). I know that if Harris isn't elected, the parade of what's fucked will be grotesque and long, from the suffering of women over abortion restrictions to the suffering of families over mass deportation and threatened denaturalization to the suffering of everyone over the reversal of policies trying to mitigate climate change to the suffering of children in this country over the mad proliferation of guns. I know that rights will be taken away from queer and trans kids and adults. I know that Ukraine will be handed over to Russia and that an emboldened Putin is gonna fuck things up a great deal more. I know that people all over the world will be harmed by the United States moving into an isolationist and racist posture, with the potential for more wars. I know that free speech rights will be trampled by right-wing courts, workers' rights will be crushed by the elimination of regulations, and civil rights will be beaten and shot by the police. And the Supreme Court will be lost for the next generation, at least. That's just scratching the surface of fuckery that Trump and his more effective MAGA apparatchiks are planning to do, along with a huge helping of Christian nationalism.
I'm not trying to minimize the suffering caused by Israel's decimation of Gaza and its threat of decimating Lebanon. I get the raging anger over it. I'm not even going to pretend I understand your feelings if you're from one of the countries involved or have family there. But not voting for Harris isn't going to solve it at all. That never fucking works.
Whatever you thought about Hillary Clinton in 2016, you didn't make things better by not voting for her. Whatever you thought about Al Gore in 2000, you didn't make things better by voting for Ralph Nader or not voting at all. The losses in those elections didn't bring about some lesson for Democrats or some great ideological shift that wouldn't have happened otherwise. But we know what they did bring about, and it was fucked. We know that factually and demonstrably. You didn't make anything better. You didn't save a single person. You made yourself feel better, and maybe that's enough for you. (And, by the way, I'm including myself here. I voted for Nader, albeit in a state that was going for Bush anyways.)
So I'm gonna vote for Harris not because I agree with her on everything. I disagree with her on quite a bit. But I know she's the only candidate in a position to unfuck things I want unfucked or at least stop them from being fucked more. And that's a trade off that I'm at peace with.
