I’ll jump in here, though I know that everybody is dug in, and this is akin to poking the hornets’ nest. Anyway, it’s a matter of differing ethical calculations. On one side is utilitarianism, which says that if your choice is between Nazis who will murder 5,000,000 Jews, and worse-Nazis who will kill 5,000,001 Jews, then it’s a moral imperative to support Hitler for the sake of that one person.
And that’s… not wrong. I can imagine that many people would make that call, if it were some sort of send-a-time-traveler-to-kill-Hitler-or-not scenario, when the outcomes are fixed. But imagine deciding to support Hitler and personally aiding the systematic murder of 5,000,000 humans when the alternative is speculative, still in the future, when it’s not assured. I think a lot fewer people would be willing to do it. How many more people would the hypothetical worse-Nazis have to kill to make that an appealing choice?
Everybody has got a moral line after which we can’t abide cold, utilitarian calculations. Maybe some people would help produce the Zyklon B on the prospect of saving one life. Maybe some would only do it if it was required to save humanity from extinction. Probably a lot of people would do it to save themselves. (Hello, 1930’s Germans!) That’s getting off-topic, the point is that everybody has a line, and some of us would just refuse to aid the Holocaust.
Furthermore, the reality is not nearly so black and white as it is usually framed here on Lemmy. We don’t actually know what a future dementia-addled President would do. He has the attention span of a toddler. He’s not a strong manager and has a lot of power-hungry underlings (like Vance); his administration might resemble a bucket of rats each scrambling for the top. We don’t know how the world would react to anything he’d do. Bottom line, it’s speculative at this point.
And on the other side, the usual framing casts Democrats as fixed in their positions and imperturbable as the faces on Mount Rushmore, or at least boxed-in politically. They’re not. President Biden has already felt the heat and slightly altered his position on Israel in a couple of instances. In fact, while we could change and abide their support of genocide, they too could change at any time to just simply not support genocide. They could even frame it (accurately, as I see it) as tough love, protecting Israel from itself and assuring its survival long-term.
That’s why we pressure the people actually in power now, who are the ones supporting genocide right now, because that’s democracy in action. Yes, to be fair, it might result in a worse outcome later, but that’s far from assured, and in the mean time, you’re telling people not to even try to stop evil.
