‘They will vote against Harris’: Arab Americans in Michigan desert Democrats over Gaza

www.theguardian.com ‘They will vote against Harris’: Arab Americans in Michigan desert Democrats over Gaza

Hamtramck, population 28,000, has new Trump campaign office weeks from election in hopes of gains in swing state

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21396125

Stephen Starr in Hamtramck, Michigan
Mon 14 Oct 2024 11.00 EDT

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Angry with the Biden administration – and, by extension, Kamala Harris – for its support for Israel, Arab Americans may be willing to overlook Trump’s history of closeness with Israel’s hard-right leaders.
So, these individuals could be described as the common clay of the new West?
- yeah man, denigrate them more, that'll surely get them on your side! maybe a touch more smug condescension? anything except engaging with their concerns, of course.
  
  I call conservatives dumb too.
  These people aren’t special. Just a different kind of dumb.
  Similar in the way they vote against their own interests.
  
  personally, I think ignoring the concerns of voters in a historically very important swing state months before the election is a recipe for a disastrous rerun of 2016, and should be avoided if you're actually concerned with winning, protecting democracy, etc. but I guess we'll see if the strategy of "fuck you, vote for me" works out this time 🤷
  
  (your mask is slipping)
- these folks are doing logical loop de loops
- You see no difference between people put off by settler-colonial genocide and... settler colonists? What?
  
  I don't know what you're referring to.
  
  You sure they're feigning?
  
  I'm not feigning. I don't know what point you were making. Perhaps you could expound using more descriptive terms?
  It seems that you are currently so agitated that my honest statement of not knowing what you mean must actually be a sneaky bad faith strategem.
  
  Oh, so is it amnesia then? Because you seemed pretty clear on the topic of discussion until I cornered you. Then, magically - or just conveniently - you have forgotten what we’re talking about.
  Feel free to rephrase and expound on what you said. I do not see how it applied to what we were talking about, and therefore don't see its meaning.
  And pretending to be psychic and read my mind (or, perhaps, hallucinating) via the internet doesn’t make you right. How is that even rational?
  As I said, I recognize behaviors and clichés. And you have not yet contradicted a single prediction and have accidentally confirmed a few.
  Why should anyone believe what you say when it’s clearly either a bad-faith argument full of disinformation or evidence of your ignorance and inability to comment intelligently on this topic?
  I have made no bad faith arguments nor presented any disinformation. Please do your best to not make things up and to address what I have actually said.
  And, of course, you should be against genocide and act accordingly.
  
  Please do your best to engage in good faith with what I have said.
  
  It's a movie reference. You should watch Blazing Saddles, it's very funny.
  
  It's a great movie, I always tell people to watch it!
  In the movie, this is a reference to the racist townspeople in the "Western". It's poking fun at the Westerns that romanticized allegedly good and pure settlers (colonizers) and to sympathoze with them. You weren't supposed to think of them as, in Wilder's terms, "morons".
  Parent was just trying to call people morons. It's not a clever reference, I got it. But those people are, specifically, Muslims so put off by the genocide of Palestinians that they'd vote against the administration supporting that grmocide. I would say their political acumen is more developed than the genocidal sheepdogging that we see in this thread, people that can't even say the word genocide trying to imply they're the adults in the room. At least they can understand basic leverage and independent action.
  But I was making note that the "morons" reference in Blazing Saddles is about settler-colonists whereas the people parent wanted to call morons are literally people that are reacting against settler colonists and their supporters. I think that is an oversight that can only be made through chauvinism, personally. The person wants to feel better than those moved by genocide, they want it to be as narrow as "those people are stupid". They can't contend with the content.
  
  Yes I know the reference, parent is just calling them stupid really. Though I appreciate you taking the time to explain it and write it up! I wrote a comment to this effect but explaining what I am saying in regards to it here.
  Good movie BTW, everyone should watch it, especially if you have ever seen a garbage chauvinist pop Western like anything with John Wayne in it.
  
  Good movie BTW, everyone should watch it,
  Correct.
  Western like anything with John Wayne in it.
  There's a movie I would suggest watching called In Harm's Way. Admittedly it's a WWII movie and not a Western, but it's...without wishing to spoil let's just say it's the most nuanced John Wayne film I'm aware of.
  
  Thanks for the movie rec! I added it to my queue. There is a lot of overlap between WWII movies at the time and Westerns so if nothing else I will enjoy making comparisons. If you could sum up your takeaway in one sentiment, what would it be?
  
  In Harm's Way: Not all war heroes deserve medals.
  
  Thanks!

425 comments