In America’s general election you get two choices for president, the bad choice and the worse choice. That’s the undisputable reality. As South Park once elegantly put it, choose between the giant douche and the turd sandwich. Now, often times which candidate is which is a matter of perspective, but sometimes it’s pretty clear to see who the worse choice is.
For instance, so many people got on a high horse against Kamala for supporting Israel, and they weren’t wholly wrong, but her opponent was very well known for being an admirer of Netanyahu and never took a stance against the genocide either. So considering both parties seemed likely to let Israel keep on keeping on it was a very strange thing to get hung up on electorally; there was little to no chance that we’d have an election outcome would have ended well for Palestine regardless, and having lived through Trump’s first term and his attempted coup there was plenty of evidence to suggest that he would be the worse choice.
Now, many people used the argument that politics and ethics are completely inseparable, saw that both candidates would be bad for Palestine, then refused to vote on moral grounds, thereby doing their part in condemning America to its current circumstances of grappling with human rights crises at home. Thousands brutalized by ICE and CBP, shipped to torture centers for crimes the didn’t commit (e.g. El Salvador) children separated from parents (again) and effectively orphaned (again)… Much of this very much predictable given his first term. I’m not seeing this supposed moral high ground.
The act of voting is indeed a political act, and not a moral one. One’s politics and ethics may intertwine, but at the end of the day you only get two choices and chances are that in order to avoid the greater evil you need to ensure the lesser evil prevails. It shouldn’t work this way but sadly it does.
The gas prices out here are bonkers. I changed my commute to VTA light rail + Caltrain and a lot of walking just to avoid filling up so much. Definitively makes the commute worse compared to driving, public transit is messy and inefficient here, but gas prices are close to double what they were pre-war (at cheap stations like Rotten Robbie at least).