How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America
How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America
'According to our research, today, 1 in 2 adults is estranged from a close relative,' write Joshua Coleman and Will Johnson.
He’s a father of a 28-year-old son and he’s hurting. A retired police officer, he proudly voted for Donald Trump every time he ran and never hid his political beliefs from his family. “My son and his wife say that since I’m a fan of Trump they’re no fan of mine and cut me off,” he said. “Now I can’t see my only grandchild who I was so close to. It’s crazy and it’s tragic.”
It’s also increasingly common. The 2024 election spatchcocked the nation, widening a rift that was exposed in 2016 and put in an even sharper gulf four years later. Now, the hyper-partisan politics in the shadow of the 2024 election is breaking the bonds of families to a greater extent than ever before.
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In the US there are only two party choices that matter. We are forced to vote for evil and must choose the lesser. I agree with you in principal but Trump is an especially egregious choice.
When both evils support genocide, there is no lesser. The only reason these two maintain their power is because people like you convince everyone that’s all that’s possible.
The only reason these two maintain their power is because people like you convince everyone that’s all that’s possible.
Is because those are the two with the support of the vast majority of voters and we don't have a parliamentary system that would allow for more than 2 viable parties. By not voting for a serious candidate, all you are doing is setting yourself up to be a lifetime loser in politics.
Not to be reductionist of the genocide in Gaza, it is undoubtedly evil and both parties deserve to be labeled as such for supporting it, but to speak as though that's the only issue in this world and the only yardstick we can use to measure both parties is itself reductionist. And the reason they maintain their power is that the system is so structured as to ensure it. And that's not to say there is nothing we can do about that (for one, elimination of FPTP voting), but as of the 2024 election the reality was that only one of those two parties would win. And to claim that recognizing that in itself is the sole cause of it is silly.
It’s not the only thing happening. But it is the worst thing happening. It’s the worst thing that can happen.
I thought we all agreed genocide is the worst crime possible.
And nobody in this thread at least is arguing against that. You seem to have taken the position that because both parties support Israel in their genocide of Palestinians there can be no other measures worth judging them by. That they are equal. And the "both sides" argument is objectively a false equivalence. It's not as though a woman's bodily autonomy no longer matters because Israel is leading a genocidal campaign in Gaza, for instance.
It is precisely because there are other issues in the world and in the country that there is a lesser evil. Even if we disagree on degrees of "lesser" or even who is "lesser", everything is not so one dimensional as to be able to label both political parties as equally evil when there are other evils that need to be piled on and added to the scale. Ignoring those evils is ignoring the victims of those evils.
When people are charged with a crime, while there may be many lesser charges for other crimes committed at the same time, the prosecution will mainly focus on the most severe charge.
Both parties are criminally complicit in genocide. Debating the weight of the lesser charges each is guilty of is not really relevant. They’re both genocidal. They’re both irredeemable. They both need to go.
Well as far as I understand, this discussion is about voting and not prosecution. A prosecutor's job is to seek the greatest penalty they think they can feasibly get, so of course they're going to focus on charges that carry the greatest penalty. A voter's job, in the context of presidential elections, is to choose between a series of power-hungry hyenas to lead the Executive branch of the government. Not voting is counter-productive and under the current system voting third-party is also counter-productive, so a voter has an incentive to consider all of the "crimes", and even the good sprinkled amongst them, and not tunnel-vision on the worst.
So debating the "lesser charges" could not be more relevant, because who you vote for matters and the government does a heck of a lot more than support Israel. If I follow your line of false equivalence, I can only envision 2 conclusions:
- Who you vote for does not matter at all, just flip a coin.
- There's no point in voting at all, leave the decision to everyone else.
Yes, the current system is corrupt and is awful, and it needs to change, but in the meantime elections are still held and decisions are still made about things like education funding, women's bodily autonomy, trans rights, student debt, and so on and so on. Saying nothing else matters because the political parties that have a duopoly on power support Israel's genocide campaign is short-sighted at best. As far as I can tell what you're advocating for is voter apathy, and I fail to see how that's productive.
I thought we all agreed genocide is the worst crime possible.
We agree that Hamas is most responsible for Gaza and Israel's terrible prime minister is the 2nd most responsible party. Americans are much farther down the list, and the GOP is way ahead of Dems. Biden literally gave the Israeli PM an ultimatum at one point. There is 0% chance Donald Trainwreck would have done that. And you are helping people like Trainwreck come to power. YOU are "enabling genocide" more than us.