Help me understand.
I am very afraid, so I need your help to understand something.
Some Americans talk about refusing to vote in the 2024 presidential election on moral grounds, such as the fact that the Biden administration sends money and weapons to Israel.
Israel has crossed the line. That is a grotesque understatement.
But this is my personal understanding of what is concretely and actually possible in 2024:
I. A third party does not have a chance to win the U.S. presidential election. However, they can absolutely be disruptive.
II. If Biden wins:
- Palestinians continue to be senselessly murdered.
III. If Trump wins:
- Palestinians continue to be senselessly murdered.
- Additional conservative justices are installed to the Supreme Court.
- The life-or-death endangerment of my family members in Texas and Tennessee in the event of a pregnancy complication continues indefinitely or may become worse due to the influence of additional conservative justices.
- The life-or-death endangerment of ME becomes possible, as I am transgender and rely on a hormone medication.
IV. Disruption via a third party or non-voting has a nonzero risk of increasing Trump’s chance of winning.
That is what I understand.
I have been told to ‘think beyond the confines of the two-party system,’ and I want to do this.
However, I do not see a narrative that works out.
I understand Trump to be so remarkably dangerous that he must be guaranteed to lose the upcoming election at any cost.
But I really do want to understand others’ views here — beyond being told to ‘think bigger’ or ‘open my mind,’ with no additional context or elaboration.
I will be terrified until you break down a CONCRETE narrative of hope for me, and how that would work, day-to-day, month-to-month, and into the years following the next election, if I do not vote for Joe Biden. What would people like us do? What would I do? What creative acts would I take part in make the country healthy again? Who would be in power, and when?
Please help me understand how your path forward will save Palestinian lives.
Because some of us have more to lose than sleep, and if the short-term gain of voting blue is my own life, the noble rules of the long term no longer appeal, let alone apply.
