By Brandon Smith (and many others)

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.’ They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.” – Naomi Shulman

A former UN ambassador recently gave a lecture at a University. He said that Gaza is a turning point in history that will likely redefine the world. He said both the UN and international law died in Gaza, along with the credibility of the West.

I’ll start by saying that this essay is my opinion and not that of Hartford town, where I’m a board member. As you read on, you may think I’m a leftist “extremist.” I will remind you that the far left has, as its ideal, getting everyone’s basic needs met. The far right, which for reasons described below essentially includes Biden and Harris, wants to exterminate entire social and/or ethnic groups either because they’re considered impure or because partnering with those who do can help your career. If you think the far left is just as bad as the far right, then you should rethink things, ‘cause you’re a big part of the problem. Sorry not sorry.

“Don’t be a single issue voter,” say the people whose only platform is “Orange man bad.” Even if Gaza were a “single issue,” it’s enough. If you’ll vote for a politician doing genocide, then you’ll vote for a politician doing anything else, and our democracy is already forfeit. Genocide is a pretty good litmus test for what egregious moral transgressions you’re willing to tolerate in the name of some shallow commitment to pragmatism. Basically by definition at this point, Trump voters may not be racist or misogynist themselves, but neither racism nor misogyny is a dealbreaker for them. Harris voters may not support genocide, but genocide is not a dealbreaker for them. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said, “It’s not complicated.” There are no both sides when confronting ethnic cleansing. Our principals made us all pledge allegiance “with liberty and justice for all” every morning from ages 5-18… and then folks get mad when we demand library and justice for all.

You’ll see here that I recommend—humbly but not subtly—not voting for either major party on Tuesday. As X (Twitter) user @_raquelvictoria said, “The point is not ‘punishing’ the Democrats for bombing Palestinians trapped in a concentration camp for over a year; [the point is] sparking a divestment process from a political system that asks you to find the lives of innocent people a worthy price to pay for your individual rights.”

I’ll just drop in here that Newsweek reported, on October 17, that “Jill Stein hurts Donald Trump more than Kamala Harris, poll suggests.”

But back to Gaza, and it’s outsized impact on this election. As Briahna Joy Gray, a former Bernie staffer and keen political observer, said, “[I]t’s not even true that being pro genocide is the pragmatic and popular position. (Harris) would get MORE votes in key states by supporting an arms embargo.” This is borne out by polling by IMEU Policy Project.

Make no mistake that major media, of which I used to be a part, has manufactured consent. It’s not Harris “appealing to moderate voters” if 70%+ of Democratic voters, and 60%+ of Republican voters, want an arms embargo for Israel—and that’s true in every swing state. Rather, funding and providing cover for Israel no matter what they do is the Democratic Party clearly deciding they’d rather lose the election to someone they characterize as the “most dangerous candidate ever” than oppose Israel. 

Let’s get this out of the way: there are consequences for living on freshly stolen land; for apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. If I watch video, like I did this month, of a 10-year-old weep as he watches the tent in which his ailing father is burnt alive inside… under no circumstances will I condemn him if in 7 or 8 years he picks up a rifle against the militaries that caused that tent to burn. How could you condemn him?

There is a double standard of who is allowed to be angry and how that anger is allowed to materialize. When brown people watch members of their communities be slaughtered, they’re expected to be stoic and unfeeling. But any thinking person understands this breeds deep, violent resentment, AKA “blowback.” The consequences are all but guaranteed. That’s why my working theory is that the blowback is the point. Guaranteed weapons sales in 10 or 20 years.

The late Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 attacks as a reaction against 75 years of oppression, was so popular in the Arab world that he could have won an election in any Arab country against its current leader, according to several online observers. That’s the dragon we have helped unleash. And which we will face—unless, perhaps, the American people censure the obscene unconditional support we’ve provided the genocide. To do that, we have to start thinking about our politics as being about policy and outcomes, and not a jersey-color sporting event.

CNN recently published a piece focusing on the trauma an Israeli soldier has endured in all this. One bulldozer driver testified that he drove over Palestinians, “dead and alive,” he said, “in the hundreds.”

Despite how viscerally hard it is to witness, I hope you have seen the now-infamous video of 19-year-old Shaban Al-Dalou, a freshman engineering student, burning alive in his hospital bed attached to an IV.

Saying you’re sad about all this but not backing the legal and moral right to resistance including armed struggle, is just you laundering your own feelings of guilt and shame. By backing, I mean both vocally with friends and family, and by withholding your vote from one of the two people providing the weapons. According to a recent Brown University study, the U.S. has funded 73% of the attacks on Gaza.

I had trouble processing the moving image of Shaban’s last moments, who, according to AP style, was older than 17 so should be referred to by his last name. But how many 19 year olds do you consider full-blown adults? For me he’s Shaban. I used to report on police brutality in Chicago, so I’ve seen my share of videos of death. But I had trouble with the video of Shaban until a contact shared this excerpt from Berger’s “Photographs of Agony.” See if you can spot the—small—glimmer of hope, hidden in the only logical response to these images:

“Confrontation with a photographed moment of agony can mask a far more extensive and urgent confrontation. Usually the wars which we are shown are being fought directly or indirectly in ‘our’ name. What we are shown horrifies us. The next step should be for us to confront our own lack of political freedom. In the political systems as they exist, we have no legal opportunity of effectively influencing the conduct of wars waged in our name. To realize this and to act accordingly is the only effective way of responding to what the photograph shows. Yet the double violence of the photographed moment actually works against this realization. That is why they can be published with impunity.”

A social media post reverberated this month, from Sasha Frere-Jones: “[O]ne of the many horrors beneath this daily horror is that this is what colonialism has always looked like and there simply was no footage.”

At this juncture I must remind you, dear reader, that the U.S. sending bombs to immolate patients isn’t remotely new. Do you remember when, in 2015, “we” bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan? Here’s what someone there said: “Our patients burned in their beds. Our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.” Hell: when Abraham Lincoln was starving indigenous people in the concentration camp part of the American genocide policy, 39 native men escaped to get food; they were found hunting nearby. Lincoln had them all hanged in a mass execution. We are rotten all the way back. The only way forward is to confront this and work to change it.

How can one work to change it when the political systems are constructed precisely so nothing changes? One good response seems to be what so-called “actionists” have done with the Palestinian genocide: physically disable the mechanisms of warmaking. Sabotage. Recently young people, who had never done anything like it before, made their way atop the roof of an airplane plant, cutting away the roof, and fouling up the clean room that makes possible production of fighter jets for Israel. These people are heroes of their generation.

Compare that to your standard “liberal”: Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt gloated that you can dismantle a democracy right in front of a liberal’s face and all they’ll do is convene breakout sessions and committee meetings ‘til the boots are in the halls. To quote Jon Stone, “One reason people insist that you use the proper channels to change things is because they have control of the proper channels and they’re confident it won’t work.”

People who consider themselves liberals seem to, generally, love Kamala Harris. In “60 Minutes Overtime,” asked what foreign country she considers to be the US’ “greatest adversary,” Harris said “I think there’s an obvious one in mind which is Iran. Iran has American blood on their hands.” Did you know that Israel has killed more American citizens in just the last year than Iran has killed in the entire history of the U.S.? The Democrats are basically running George W. Bush as a candidate and calling you crazy if you’re not excited about it.

The comparisons to George W. don’t stop there. Israel is currently dropping depleted uranium bombs on residential buildings in Beirut. I reported on military apparatus from Washington D.C. for some years, where I learned about depleted uranium (“D.U.”). Munitions tipped with D.U. are used where armor-piercing is deemed necessary, because of uranium’s hardness. The side effect is that the metal that remains in the area, often microscopically, is radioactive—and causes near-guaranteed birth defects in any family that lives nearby. For potentially hundreds of years. It’s a sadistic, scorched-earth munition. Crucially, there’s one alternative to D.U. in terms of hardness/armor-piercing efficacy, which is often cited as costing more, and that’s the end of the conversation. But follow it one step further and you’ll learn that the alternative only costs 10 cents more per shell than uranium. So, one can reasonably infer that whenever D.U. is used, the birth defects are the point. George W. Bush was criticized internationally for using D.U. in Baghdad. (Not so much by the U.S. press, who didn’t ask tough questions.) Now, a Democratic administration is providing these munitions for use, again, on civilian populations. And those of you who purportedly care about humanity are telling me to vote to continue this administration? How wholly unserious.

You know as well as I do that if this was all happening under Trump, so-called liberal people would be shaking, convulsing, throwing up, and/or recording a TikTok of them screaming into the phone. Meanwhile, you haven’t heard about it, from your friends or your news sources. Think about how this is a double standard. Liberals were correctly outraged when Trump hosted a genocide-denier at Mar-a-Lago. I need these people to understand that Biden (and Harris) denying a genocide they’re currently facilitating is worse, by definition.

I’ll get to this more later, but “lesser evil” voting has led us to where we are today. If a party doesn’t run on good, popular policies—i.e. a campaign of “what we’ll do that you’ll like” rather than “what we won’t do”—then after a few races, a few decades, this party may slip so far into unpopular policy that it’s unrecognizable. That’s what I believe has happened with the Democratic party. During Harris’ campaign, she has stopped opposing genocide; torture; the death penalty; fracking; the border wall; and mass deportations, all of which cede the moral high ground. She has stopped supporting student debt cancellation; free public college; universal health care; and a $15/hour minimum wage. When have you heard Harris supporters talk about her policies to win anyone over? It’s always shame and insults to force us to vote for her, like we’re children. Is this something you see in democracy, or in fascism? The ruling parties have got normal people doing their dirty work for them.

Let’s talk about fascism. Is it here? You tell me. Low level officials in New York are cracking down on Yemeni-owned delis and stores in Brooklyn, sanctioning them and shutting them down. It’s clear political retaliation for Yemen standing up for Palestine, and it’s exactly the behavior you saw in Nazi Germany. Over 100 students at Harvard Law School recently held a study-in for Palestine. All of them were identified by administration and await discipline. This was a day after 30 faculty members held their own study-in where administration threatened them with disciplinary action.

You know as well as I do that whichever candidate wins, they will claim votes cast for them were “a mandate” to either continue what they’ve been doing (in the case of Harris), or to start the full suite of what they’ve discussed (in the case of Trump). So, at best, a vote is tacit approval. That’s not my philosophy of it; that’s hard facts of what will happen. At worst, a vote becomes rhetorical ammunition that will be used to fund more literal ammunition in their extermination campaigns.

You’ll note that I focus more of my effort below on Harris rather than Trump. This is twofold. First, because my audience is primarily Harris voters, by a wide margin. Second, because thinkers like Briahna Joy Gray, who worked in the Democratic Party, understand that their former party is a key barrier to progress, despite it’s claims to the contrary.


If Harris loses, she will blame those who refused to vote for her because she’s doing a genocide. She will blame those who voted for Jill Stein. But Harris and the various pundit lackeys won’t blame the “strategy” to embrace Dick and Liz Cheney and accept the endorsements of Mickey Edwards and other trustees of the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025. These people are *wildly* unpopular among likely Democratic voters. (Like ~15% approval, compared to 70% approval for an arms embargo against Israel.) I understand that the idea is to pick up more voters than you lose. But consider this: what a politician has to offer to get votes from people who typically vote Democrat is far less than what they have to offer to get votes from people who love the Cheneys.

Harris has given zero concessions whatsoever to leftists, despite evidence that anti-genocide is a serious voting bloc, like 100,000 Michiganders voting “uncommitted.” Harris even barred Palestinians from speaking at the DNC, and kicked out a Muslim political leader (who, mind you, wasn’t protesting) from her rally without explanation. Just last week Harris sent to Michigan, to campaign for her, an outspoken Zionist who bragged about silencing Palestinians. This piss-poor strategy must be remembered and discussed, because if not, the blame for another Trump presidency will fall on Muslims and those who can’t bring themselves to support genocide.

Harris, it seems, will really accept endorsements from Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and then accuse people voting for Jill Stein of being Republicans or helping Republicans. I mean, does she think you’re stupid? Harris and the Democrats chose, as their strategy, to abandon and dehumanize Arabs and Muslims, and look instead to white women and war criminals. These figures endorsing Harris literally avoid Europe for fear of arrest.

“The ballot is your power,” Harris says in an ad. “Don’t give up your power.” In reality, the vast majority of our power exists in the ability to organize outside of voting. (Mostly toward the end of a credible threat of withholding our labor.) This is me begging you to consider that the ruling class has a vested interest in convincing folks that 1. Voting means you live in a democracy, where you chose (past tense!) what’s happening. Classic victim blaming. 2. All you can do is vote, and 3. It’s only meaningful if you vote for one of the two major parties. Just a little thought should conclude that all three of these points are patently false.

Let’s return to Gaza, the great awakening event of our age. The destruction of Gaza is why most of what’s in this essay has become obvious. Before Gaza, dots were much harder to connect. From the beginning, the U.S. provided “targeting intelligence” for the carpet bombing; It’s now been confirmed that the U.S. has troops on the ground in both north Gaza and southern Lebanon, and that we’re involved more than supplying the missiles for Israel’s strikes on Iran; we’re bombing the poorest country in the world, Yemen, because Yemen dares try to thwart Israels’ behavior. According to the Washington Post, Biden-Harris has sent Israel more weapons every 12 hours since last October. (A reminder that CNBC reported 63% of American workers can’t cover a $500 emergency expense.) No one even debates the term genocide anymore. All this to say: This is a joint U.S.-Israeli genocide. Perpetrated by the Biden-Harris administration. Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, said during his debate that “the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there.” The Biden administration says it supports Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. This is behavior exactly like we would see with Donald Trump. These two genuinely present no measurable difference in respect to war, Israel, Palestine, and other countries’ sovereignty. I need you to understand that.

Israel has moved on from, a year ago, inventing excuses to bomb hospitals. Now it openly brags about bombing hospitals, sniping EMTs, and shelling ambulances. And now they’ve started doing the same thing to southern Lebanon. Israel injured more Lebanese people, largely healthcare workers, in their “pager bombings” than people who died in 9/11. To be clear, everything I’ve described here is a war crime. How many times has Biden staff “leaked” to beltway outlets that Biden is upset with Israel? But the weapons keep flowing all the same, contrary to U.S. law.

I’ll list below some common retorts and my responses to them.

“Israel has a right to defend itself.” Israel surpassed the international standard of proportional response within about a week following October 7, 2023, according to South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Criminal Court. Everything after that has been superfluous to defense.


“Israel has a right to exist.” Actually they don’t. No nation has a right to exist. People have a right to exist. If one nation, in order to exist, requires the daily murder of babies, then that nation (as a governmental entity) should categorically not exist. The real question is, Why does the existence of one group require the eradication of another? And why are we okay with that?

Speaking of a “two state solution,” where Palestine would have its own sovereign land. Liberal U.S. politicians, including neoliberals like Biden or Harris and neoconservatives like George W. Bush, have said for decades that they prefer to work toward this “two state solution.” One of the most bombshell reports this year was that the Biden administration, while saying “two state solution” publicly, worked against this outcome in secret, where the business of statecraft actually happens. If we can’t trust Biden or Harris on this important point, I don’t think we can trust them on anything.

“Trump will be worse for Palestinians and the Middle East.” I argue elsewhere here that these two are much more similar than you might think. Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté has said “It’s like we’re watching Auschwitz on TikTok.” Given what Biden has accelerated with Iran, he’s been undeniably *more* dangerous to world peace than Trump was in his term. Right now we’re using B2 bombers on Yemen with zero Congressional authorization, which is a violation of the constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973. Where is Biden-Harris compared to other world leaders? Italy’s openly fascist prime minister recently imposed an arms embargo on Israel because of its brazen civilian massacres using ground troops. Where is Biden-Harris compared to historical U.S. leaders? Well, they’re to the right of Ronald Reagan on Israel/Palestine. For much less bloodshed, Reagan privately demanded, and received, an immediate ceasefire from Israel.

It’s unclear how things could be worse for Palestinians under Trump, with Gaza having been wiped out with the equivalent explosives of several atomic bombs, and us supporting attacks on Lebanon and Iran. There has never been a war, in history, in which 80% of the country has been destroyed, 100% of the population displaced, and 50% of the deaths children. (That’s why it’s not a war; it’s a genocide.) So no, it might not be able to be worse. But if it is, according to X (Twitter) user @AchmatX, “it’s because Democrats set the stage for [Trump], just like Obama built the cages and drones. Biden and Kamala will hand Trump a world with no international law, an Israel stockpiled with bombs, and colonial deals with Saudi (Arabia) and the UAE.”

“Biden-Harris say they’ll cut off arms to Israel after the election.” Firstly, when a war crime is unfolding—which this threat of arms embargo helpfully acknowledges—you don’t give the perpetrators a 30-day deadline. That said, the reason you don’t hear serious policy people talking about the threat is because the statement was vague, likely intentionally, and with no way to independently verify it. No discernable parameters. No outside inspectors. Our country is currently backing Israel’s open/flagrant starvation and ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, for the express (according to Israel!) goal of taking land. This flatly disproves Israel apologists’ initial claims that the genocide was about self defense. So if the administration is seeing this, and they are, because of course they are, then it stands to reason they already decided they won’t stop funding it. 

We also should be clear: whenever the U.S. has defined the “ceasefire” it has been “working toward,” this has always been a demand for Hamas to lay down all arms; Israel to have no such mandate; and to allow Israel to occupy Gaza with no restriction. That’s not a “ceasefire” by any common definition. So, beware the re-defining of words in your observation of politics. (“Antisemitism” is another key one to have a speaker define.)

But the nail in the coffin of the embargo threat comes from a former Biden State Department official, Hala Rharrit, in their interview with Democracy Now!, which I’ll excerpt here:

“I can tell you, as someone that worked within the State Department PR machine, that this, unfortunately, is a public relations ploy. … The reality is that the State Department and the administration at this point is trying to give voters, especially those that are so concerned about the conflict in Gaza, some level of hope. ‘As long as you vote for us, after this 30 days, we’ll enforce the law, and we will make a change.’ This is absolutely a deception for the voters and for the American people.”

Rharrit continues: “We have had ample evidence from within the United States government, not just the State Department, but a multitude of U.S. agencies, with proof that Israel is violating so many of our laws, is systematically withholding humanitarian assistance from going in. … This 30 days is only a PR ploy, and that is the only thing it really is.”

Did you know that the two U.S. agencies that monitor and dispense humanitarian aid around the world have, since at least early spring according to leaked documents, maintained that Israel is withholding humanitarian aid in Gaza? Given that, consider that in early summer, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress that Israel is not withholding aid. It would seem that was an outright lie to Congress. Presumably, Blinken lied because he knew sending weapons to a country that withholds humanitarian aid runs afoul of U.S. law.

“Harris will keep the U.S.’ reputation better on a world stage.” The current U.S.’ ambassador to the UN has been calling the Special Rapporteur on Gaza “unfit for her job,” to which the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention replied that it is “clearly intended to hide your criminal complicity in an ongoing genocide,” and that “the Biden White House, State Department, and your office … have materially aided Israel in committing genocide.” Indeed, U.S. weapons, which still flow to Israel, have killed hundreds of UN workers in the last year, including with internationally-banned chemical white phosphorus, which burns people to death, and which the U.S. supplied. This is de facto war on the UN by the U.S.. In case you didn’t realize.

“Harris will defend, as opposed to attack, LGBTQ people.” As Attorney General of California, Harris put a trans woman in a men’s prison and within 8 hours she was murdered in a hate crime by her cellmate. Biden-Harris continues to fund and provide political cover for the Israeli Defense Force, which has a documented history of blackmailing gay Palestinians into becoming informants. And just last week, Harris confirmed in a TV interview that she will not defend transgender rights if states ban lifesaving gender-affirming care. When asked again, she doubled down. It’s starting to look like voting for Harris is not about protecting anyone’s rights—which are by definition universal for all people—but rather about protecting privileges a Harris voter might be the beneficiary of.

“Harris won’t criminalize dissent.” To be clear, while Donald Trump has said he wants to use the military against U.S.-based dissenters, it was the Biden-Harris Department of Defense that recently re-issued the aforementioned “Directive 5240.01,” which allows for domestic use of the military. This didn’t come from a Trump administration; it came from Biden-Harris. Now, if they’re so afraid of a Trump presidency, why would they create that environment only to risk handing over the keys? Biden-Harris also continued Obama and Trump’s prosecution of journalists under the misused Espionage Act. To say nothing of the scores of journalists murdered in Palestine, the largest targeting of reporters in modern history.

“Harris will defend abortion rights.” She and Biden have blamed everyone but themselves for the current draconian state of affairs for the people of childbearing age, with uteruses, in this country. But the fact remains that there were a half dozen ways they could have prevented and/or fixed the situation, whether by eliminating the filibuster, even temporarily, to pass abortion legislation; expanding SCOTUS as many presidents before have done; or opening federally-run clinics on state lines near abortion-restricted states. They appear to prefer not to fix it while they’re in power now, so I say we should treat them like the politicians they are: not trusting them to fix it later if they have the power to do it now and refuse.

Politicians should be judged not on what they say, but what they do. Biden-Harris chose to use emergency powers hundreds of times to send weapons to Israel. They chose to *not* use emergency powers to codify Roe v Wade, nor clean up the mess the loss of it caused. They also didn’t use emergency powers to manufacture masks or install HEPA filters in public places to mitigate continued covid deaths (which continue at rates similar to “during the pandemic”); they didn’t use their power to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran; to provide any accountability for past price gouging of essential goods or future protection against the same; they didn’t mandate enough inspection to ensure safety in the food supply (in fact, while Trump made cuts to testing, Biden made further cuts, USDA records show); they didn’t tax wealth, including stock holdings, so folks who have $500 million have higher tax rates than paycheck-to-paycheck workers; and of course they haven’t used emergency powers to rectify, or mitigate, the housing crisis.

Imagine knowing exactly which policies will make people want to vote for you; having Congressional budget office studies on how little it would mess up if you did them; and choosing to not do virtually any of them. “The purpose of a system is what it does,” goes the old adage. If you spot a long series of “unforced errors,” you should consider whether the outcome was actually the intended one. The U.S. sent $1 billion of federal aid to victims of hurricanes Helene and Milton. The U.S. sent $18 billion in military aid to Israel in the last year. Our “leaders” sent $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine in the last two years. This stuff matters because it’s why you can’t have nice things. In all seriousness: it’s why you can’t afford healthcare and a house, and your kids can’t afford college. These aren’t niceties so much as necessities, and for all intents and purposes, they’ve been stolen from you and given to weapons manufacturers. For the immolation and dismemberment of poor folks on the other side of the world. Never forget: $53 billion would eradicate homelessness in the U.S. $25 billion would eradicate hunger. To quote the late, great David Graeber: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

Finally, to quote X (Twitter) user @TALK_L3SS, “the fact that the *only* reason most people are voting Dem is to ‘protect reproductive rights’ is exactly why they’ll never codify it into law.” This might sound conspiratorial, but the fact remains that if they solved this once and for all, they couldn’t use it as an excuse to get away with genocide, or any number of other things they might want to do. In this scenario, the right to abortion becomes, simply, a magic talisman to be wielded.

“Harris won’t imprison and/or deport so many immigrants.” Fact: Biden-Harris have deported more people than Trump did in his administration. On the campaign trail, Harris said that Trump should have built more border wall. That she will be more tough on immigration. She has abandoned her commitment to DACA recipients and “dreamers.” Remember the outrage (or feigned outrage) for “Trump’s border wall” when he was president? This is the prime example of treating politics like a sporting event. It doesn’t matter what these people do, so long as it’s your team doing it. You can practically hear the Overton window moving rightward.

“It will be easier to organize under Harris than Trump.” This feels like a toss-up. Here’s the score: Biden-Harris and Congress decided to get rid of TikTok specifically because young people were sharing world news and their takes on it, and organizing, according to one loose-lipped Congresscreature on camera. I will never forget that Biden-Harris broke the rail workers’ pending strike whose goal was to allow for two sick days per year instead of their current zero days. And remember the millions-strong marches under Trump? People were *mobilized*. No such things happened under Biden-Harris. Presumably because it was “our team” doing the caging (here), and burning alive (over there), of children.

“We can push Harris left.” I’ll quote Leila Charles Leigh. “If Trump wins [then] Dems will blame the left, and…keep moving right. If Harris wins, Dems will gloat to the left that we weren’t necessary, and then keep moving right. Dems hate Nader and Stein, but love George W. Bush and the Cheneys. We’re not pushing any of these fascists left.” If you say “we can move her; we can’t move Trump,” I ask you to remember: Harris has practically built a brand out of proudly not changing in response to new information or pleas from voters. I would bet my most valuable five possessions that she won’t move on her war policy nor her policing policy, giving ever more money to open “cop cities” to train police to kill citizens.

“We can trust Harris to make the economy better than Trump would.” Perhaps! But Biden-Harris haven’t helped build a good economy by any stretch of the imagination, so I don’t put much stock in Harris doing that if she wins the office. Median income is now ~14% the cost of the median home, while during the Great Depression median income was ~22% the cost of the median home, according to a Congressional candidate’s calculations in 2022. So, houses are significantly more out of reach now than they were in the alleged worst economy in U.S. history, suggesting we might *currently* be in one of the worst economies in history. Harris was asked, on the campaign trail, if making houses affordable or making them a better investment would take priority. She said investment would win the day: the opposite of a solution to the housing crisis.

By 2016, the wealth distribution in the U.S.—our inequality—had eclipsed that of pre-revolution (1760-1790) France by about 30%. That’s according to the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Since 2016, we have had one bout each with each of the two administrations currently vying for power. In that time, inequality has gotten a lot worse, not better.

Can we trust Harris to “save democracy?” I cannot be more clear about this: you are not saving democracy by voting for a Democrat party that kicks 3rd parties off ballots; rigs primaries with superdelegates, media collusion, and backroom deals; and refuses to pass popular policies because they’re owned by Wall Street and tech and oil giants.

Also: Harris is in the White House right now. Don’t forget it. What’s happening right now is almost certainly her policy preference. A vote for Harris is a vote to preserve the oligarchy.

What I mean by oligarchy is, to cite but one example this month, Raytheon agreeing to pay a $252M fine to resolve bribery charges while that same bribery netted them $37B in contracts. Do the math: the fine was .68% of the revenue. A minor cost of doing business. No executives nor politicians were charged with any crimes, and no restrictions were placed on future work for the government from Raytheon. Meanwhile, New York police executed a child for stealing a $2.90 subway ride.

The fascism isn’t “on our doorstep”; we’re living in it. The Dartmouth history department recently invited Palestinian scholar Dr. Basil Farraj, of Birzeit University, to speak. Dr. Farraj was detained and questioned at Boston Logan airport on September 19, as he was coming to the U.S. for the engagement. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency seized his phone, revoked his visa, and disallowed him from entering the country. Did you know major media regularly edits out pro-Palestinian signage, even just watermelons on T-shirts, as the show “Big Brother” recently did. This month Microsoft fired an employee organizing for Palestinians’ right to existence, but continues to retain an employee who served as a sniper for the IDF in Gaza. Universal Content Productions this month killed a TV series apparently because the author of the book it was based on, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, made a single social post condemning genocide in Gaza.

The only thing more ridiculous than still believing the U.S. is a democracy is thinking that the Democrats are trying to save it.

Democracy also dies with bribes, perhaps more than with anything else. I implore you to remember that “[t]he Democratic Party is accepting millions in bribes from Israel to guarantee their genocide continues irrespective of what voters actually want,” said X (Twitter) user @ecomarxi. Talk about election interference!

An aside: Jill Stein wins the election if everyone who says they’re against the genocide votes for the candidate who’s actually against the genocide.

What about “harm reduction” voting, AKA “voting for the lesser evil?” I will quote Tamara Nassar: “There is absolutely nothing that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can do—no death toll high enough, no amount of footage of scattered limbs and dead children—that will change the liberal mind into believing that they are not the ‘lesser evil.’ For liberals, the lesser evil is simply the one more capable of leading the empire with a facade of decorum on the world stage. It is not the crime that liberals oppose, but how it’s packaged.”

Liberals have convinced themselves that they can beat fascism by voting for their preferred version of it. If burning children alive in a hospital is the lesser evil, then every part of the system that results in this must be dismantled. Full stop. Are you realizing that polite company currently allows tacit endorsement of burning children alive in hospitals? Tacit endorsement via a vote, as a twisted version of pragmatism. Did you know that during chattel slavery, polite society “lesser evil’ed” slavery? Saying you’re doing a “lesser evil” is not the comeback you think it is.

Harm reduction? People have been voting with intent of harm reduction for decades, and the amount of harm the U.S. does is the same as (or worse than) it was a couple generations ago. Let us please all agree, finally, that this voting strategy is a charade, and move on. Don’t ask your friends and family to vote for a system that killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Laquan McDonald. A system that sterilized indigenous women in ICE detention centers. A system that set alight a 19-year-old coding student and his IV. And these are just the ones we happen to have on camera.

All the thinking about politics on purely aesthetic grounds needs to stop. You are better than that. Do you primarily hate Trump because he forces you to pay attention to what the person holding this office is doing? Do you think you can let down your guard if a Democrat is in office? Think you can rest easy; avoid close inspection; avoid striving for accountability; avoid dreaming for a better world? If yes, please consider this idea: that this line of thinking might be a significant part of the problem.

As W.E.B. Du Bois said, we have but one party in the U.S., which happens to go by two names. Neither of these represent workers. To quote X (Twitter) user @Alexand3rTheMeh, “The Democratic Party only wants to win under a very slim set of circumstances that leave them beholden to no one but donors, because they’re ideologically opposed to the base they electorally depend on to win.”

Is this election important? Only insofar as Jill Stein can achieve 5% of the vote to ensure federal funding for her party. To quote Caitlin Johnstone, “There is so very, very little to say about this horror that is remotely positive. But it is opening eyes. And enough open eyes is all that’s required to change the world.”

Let this moment lead you not into despair—but rather, radicalize you into action.

Let me ask you this: Would you vote for Harris if she had funded the killing of 200,000 Jews? No? Case closed.

“We all have to live with the things we did, allowed to happen, and the things we promoted. When told my ‘protest’ vote for Jill Stein does nothing I counter with this: It allowed me the peace of mind to know I didn’t sign my name to burning children alive. And that’s enough.” – X (Twitter) user @benigma2017

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” – Omar El Akkad

Brandon Smith is a selectboard member in Hartford.