I’d never vote republican under any circumstance. …But if I click “Harris” am I complicit with her clearly stated intentions to commit mass murder, when I also have a choice to not vote for either candidate? Whats the responsibility of individuals which comprise and propel groups which openly state they are about to commit that stuff? Does “Do the least harm” just not apply in some situations? I know that legally its not a defense. If you aided murder you are getting punished unless its self defense, which this is not.
If I travel to the edge of the middle east and someone wants to kill me for his murdered wife and children who died screaming, burning slowly in a israeli hellfire missile strike, do I have it coming? I honestly dont know. Part of me thinks yes, I have it coming if I voted for either Harris or Trump. Can someone more philosophically inclined than me help me with this?
Metaphor wise, it feels like l’m being told to shoot an innocent or maybe get shot myself.
Abstaining from voting makes you somewhat complicit in whoever wins. You have the ability to affect the outcome with whatever choice you make (Harris, Trump, neither). If you choose neither, it is partially your fault the winner won as you could have voted against them.
It can be boiled down to a classic trolley problem. A greater harm the trolley is hurling towards, a lesser harm you could divert the trolley to. You can choose inaction and let the greater harm happen or you can choose action and cause the lesser harm. Most people think the lesser harm, even if they enact it, is better. But it’s a classic morality problem for a reason. Some people view the action to cause the lesser harm as less moral even if it prevents the greater harm.
In the classic trolley problem, if you do nothing then the murderer is the person who tied the people to the tracks. You are not using that analogy correctly.
Even if they did hit a switch, they bear no responsibility for who is murdered. Again thats to the person who created the situation.
I have never heard that interpretation. Everyone I’ve ever seen talking about it agrees that if you flip the switch, you are complicit. Why else would there even be a discussion of if you should or not?
Does “Do the least harm” just not apply in some situations?
I think its a fundamentally false choice. People get bound up in the moral weight of their vote, when they spend an hour or two making the decision every 2-4 years. Then they spend 2080 man hrs+ / year working for an employer and god knows how many hours engaging in consumerist behaviors which plays a drastically more meaningful impact on the political and social economy of their neighborhood than the weight of their votes.
A Harris guy working for Raytheon has more blood on their hands than a thousand Trump voters who work construction or do email jobs. A postal worker doing the yeoman’s work of processing all those mail-in ballots has more consequence to their community than a dozen canvassers trying to GOTV. A gym teacher making off-color jokes about LGBTQ students in the locker room is going to weigh heavier on civil rights than a hundred ACT BLUE donators.
If I travel to the edge of the middle east and someone wants to kill me
After all the bombings and killings we’ve done in the Middle East, you’re less likely to be murdered by an angry local dissident than to die of cholera or dysentery because the place you landed has no access to safe drinking water.
it feels like l’m being told to shoot an innocent or maybe get shot myself.
You’re being told to feel complicit in a system that’s totally outside your control, while being hoodwinked into participating in systems within your control without thinking about what you’re really doing.
Moral weight isnt absolute. Just because you don’t put much weight on what america and by extension its citizens is participating in, does not mean everyone else should. Its interesting you assume someone who’s concerned about minimizing harm would even consider working for Raytheon to begin with.
You also described the palestinian genocide as a system outside our control, which you’d really need to elaborate on. Why are google employees quitting over their assistance of israel in genocide?
The argument that if a vote doesnt end up going to one of the two most likely candidates, that its the same as going to one of them anyways makes no sense. Why anyone would count votes they didnt get is beyond me.
Just because you don’t put much weight on what america and by extension its citizens is participating in
I do put weight on it. I simply ascribe that weight to their lifelong careers rather than their fleeting political selections.
The argument that if a vote doesnt end up going to one of the two most likely candidates, that its the same as going to one of them anyways makes no sense.
I agree. But then I’d argue individual votes, even whole elections, don’t matter much in a heavily privatized economy.
