I think we have an ethical obligation to do what we can to stop him, because there are some levers of power we have access to that can harm his power. Voting is one of them, and I encourage people to do it. Tax resistance, protesting, organizing work, and direct action are even more effective, so arguably between people who solely vote and solely do those things, the voters are not pulling their weight.
But having an ethical responsibility to act and being directly, personally responsible are two different things. You fundamentally can’t blame people for the actions of someone else. That’s not right. No matter what the non-fascists in the US do, the fascists are going to continue trying to do all the horrible things they do. And due to their various illegal and unethical schemes, they’ve rigged the electoral system to give them minority rule.
The only reason people believe stuff like this is because of nationalism. People are indoctrinated to believe that nations are some homogeneous cohesive entity. Nations aren’t real. They’re just artificial collections of individuals only united by the systemic oppression of the state. It’s not much different than gender or racial essentialism. And it’s the same reason Israelis blame all Palestinians for Oct 7th instead of merely the soldiers and leaders who carried it out. This is the logic of collective punishment, and it should be attacked everywhere it appears.
I think we have an ethical obligation to do what we can to stop him, because there are some levers of power we have access to that can harm his power. Voting is one of them, and I encourage people to do it. Tax resistance, protesting, organizing work, and direct action are even more effective, so arguably between people who solely vote and solely do those things, the voters are not pulling their weight.
But having an ethical responsibility to act and being directly, personally responsible are two different things. You fundamentally can’t blame people for the actions of someone else. That’s not right. No matter what the non-fascists in the US do, the fascists are going to continue trying to do all the horrible things they do. And due to their various illegal and unethical schemes, they’ve rigged the electoral system to give them minority rule.
The only reason people believe stuff like this is because of nationalism. People are indoctrinated to believe that nations are some homogeneous cohesive entity. Nations aren’t real. They’re just artificial collections of individuals only united by the systemic oppression of the state. It’s not much different than gender or racial essentialism. And it’s the same reason Israelis blame all Palestinians for Oct 7th instead of merely the soldiers and leaders who carried it out. This is the logic of collective punishment, and it should be attacked everywhere it appears.