Full title: “Shut the fk up!” Democrat storms out of event as voters voice criticism of anti-trans bill. “You can’t fking talk to me that way!” Rep. Eugene Vindman said before walking out without taking more questions.
This title is outright lying by the way it mixes another person’s quote with the main subject. Ground News only found right-leaning sources.
This guy serves a swing district. His constituents may equally favor and reject his position on those issues. He does have to listen to all constituents, but it’s also fair that loss of decorum is going to shut down a discussion, if nothing else then because at that point it’s likely to not be a useful discussion. And if roles were reversed–imagine, for example, Sarah McBride saying what Eugene said but to a conservative constituent telling her the same thing–I think that situation would make it easier to see this a different way, and many might be saying “good for her” for walking away from it.
I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I’m just saying this smells to me like a smear piece in a swing district, and it started with unethical journalism by structuring the title the way it did.
loss of decorum is going to shut down a discussion
Can someone explain why this isn’t “civility politics” and simply used as a tool to further marginalize persons that already don’t have enough representation?
When a person advocates for making it harder for other persons to participate in public life, it should be acceptable to have an emotional response, including but not limited to ad hominem attacks, while also building the reasonable/logical/rational/non-fallacious arguments against them.
Runs for politics, which serves the people.
People call him out.
Tells people to shut the fuck up.
Yeah – this guy needs to go.
“I’m going to vote to help the vast majority of people the majority of the time,” Vindman told the crowd, according to the Advocate. “Is it going to help everybody? No.”
Dang, this reminds me of what I was saying two years ago:
If a minority group like Palestinians can be sacrificed for the sake of winning an election, then the same can and will be done for any minority group that becomes seen as an electoral liability. The only way for any minority, but especially one as small as trans people, to really achieve security is through solidarity, an alliance of the vulnerable that treats an offense against one as an offense against all. Right now, there might be cis gays watching the democrats blame trans people and thinking that they’ll be safe, but that’s not guaranteed at all.
I’m just saying, if you’re willing to accept excuses like, “Palestine isn’t on the ballot this year” then you’ll readily accept excuses like “trans rights aren’t on the ballot” and so on, until there’s no one left to stand up for you.
Reject trolley problem thinking.
I’m autistic, and as far as I understand it, there seem to be two groups of people able to pass the trolley problem: psychopaths/sociopaths, and autistic people.
I’m going to tell you something. I don’t think this is trolley problem thinking, although superficially it looks that way. I think this is the opposite of trolley problem thinking.
Trolley problem thinking is having zero qualms about doing the thing which causes the most difficulty even when you personally would have to feel responsible for extremely negative consequences, in order to have the best possible outcome for the highest number of people.
The Trolley Problem isn’t an illustration about the difficulty between choosing the deaths of a small number of people versus choosing the deaths of a large number of people. It’s a demonstration that a person has the ability to live with themself knowing that their actions had the best possible consequences in a no-win scenario.
This person’s behavior isn’t an illustration of that. Ironically, the phrase “throw them under the bus” is appropriate here, because Eugene Vindman isn’t doing this for the purpose of winning, but instead because he lacks the ethics to feel that he is causing harm. He’s not doing it because he’s calculated that this will cause the best possible outcome, because if he had the ethics required for that kind of thinking, he would understand that the next step once transgender people are thrown under the bus is to be asked to throw another group under the bus. It’s weird how well this metaphor and the other metaphor illustrate how this is actually leads to more people being run over.
The trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment designed to examine differences in schools of moral philosophy and of people’s moral intuitions. It’s not necessarily about demonstrating that you have to live with the consequences of the choice.
The problem with it comes when people assume that the act utilitarian answer is objectively correct, and that it is broadly applicable to real world problems even when there are huge differences. At that point the trolley problem stops serving as a tool to explore moral philosophy and becomes a rhetorical tool to justify and feel better about throwing people under the bus.
Another thought experiment designed to critique this perspective is as follows: while travelling through the woods, you come across a group of armed men holding prisoner a group of people who were protesting their regime. The leader of the armed men says that if you take a gun and kill one of them yourself, he’ll let the rest go, but otherwise, he’ll kill all of them. From the perspective of act utilitarianism, or trolley problem thinking, taking the offer is morally obligatory.
The problem with that is that you can be manipulated into causing harm by a malevolent actor. All they have to do is threaten some greater harm, and you become their tool, which can increase their power and their ability to threaten larger harm. “You must go out and kill one person, or I will command another of my agents to go out and kill three.” This essentially precludes standing up to any powerful entity in any meaningful way.
Refusing to kill one of the hostages, or pull the lever to run over Palestinians, leaves open the possibility of forming a united front to defeat the people forcing us into such situations in the first place. Keeping one’s own hands clean is not simply a matter of “moral purity,” but rather, an intentional strategy of avoiding actions taken against a particular group.
We can imagine a trolley problem where on the switched track is a foreign diplomat who, if killed, will cause an alliance between two countries to fail, leaving them both vulnerable to a third, and making it essential to save them. This is the hidden cost of pulling the lever to sacrifice Palestinians. But it goes beyond their specific value as allies, it also tells other allies that they can be sacrificed in the same way. In this case, it is better to accept a future where an external force commits a greater immediate harm than to commit a smaller immediate harm ourselves but which jeopardizes alliances and solidarity.
The problem with that is that you can be manipulated into causing harm by a malevolent actor. All they have to do is threaten some greater harm, and you become their tool, which can increase their power and their ability to threaten larger harm. “You must go out and kill one person, or I will command another of my agents to go out and kill three.” This essentially precludes standing up to any powerful entity in any meaningful way.
Refusing to kill one of the hostages, or pull the lever to run over Palestinians, leaves open the possibility of forming a united front to defeat the people forcing us into such situations in the first place. Keeping one’s own hands clean is not simply a matter of “moral purity,” but rather, an intentional strategy of avoiding actions taken against a particular group.
No, those are separate problems, not the trolley problem.
Yes, they are separate problems that highlight problems with trying to apply the logic of pulling the lever more broadly to other circumstances.
Philosophically it is a test for how far and long people will participate in unjust systems.
It’s about the point people start questioning the system of charging someone with this choice, or the system that has people being lashed to trolley tracks as a point of principle.
What a weird take to try and justify the way morons didn’t vote to keep their own country functioning. Instead, they helped to directly destabilize the entire planetary governance system but somehow still think it was justified action.
Other countries are not the scope of the US vote. Especially now more than ever.
Conflating internal problems with external ones is just missing the point. Can’t have it both ways. Either the US dictates world policy and you accept that with that will come chaos to other nations, possibly without their consent. Or the US stays completely out of world policy, and you accept that with that will come chaos to other nations, possibly without their consent.
It isn’t a trolley problem. Both sets of tracks are piled with bodies.
You can’t have feelings and turn them into a non-vote that determines your own country’s downfall because of what happens in another country in either of those two scenarios, because destroying your own country helps nobody, and in fact has already led to the death of hundreds of thousands (mostly children) across the planet and many more will follow.
Now, your own country is in jeopardy, and with that comes jeopardy to all the people in your nation and many other nations. Not just trans rights. Everyone’s rights. Everyone’s lives.
RIP: critical thinking.
Other countries are not the scope of the US vote. Especially now more than ever.
Conflating internal problems with external ones is just missing the point. Can’t have it both ways. Either the US dictates world policy and you accept that with that will come chaos to other nations, possibly without their consent. Or the US stays completely out of world policy, and you accept that with that will come chaos to other nations, possibly without their consent.
This is the weird take. The decision to arm and support Israel is not “world policy,” it is US foreign policy. Calling on a change of US foreign policy to avoid causing harm and to stay out of other countries affairs is not “dictating world policy” it is the complete opposite of that. I would be perfectly fine with the US staying out of world policy, although you’ve also set up a false dichotomy here, it is possible to have a foreign policy that’s somewhere in between “complete isolation” and “arming and funding genocide.”
To say “other countries are not the scope of the US vote” is utterly bizarre. Obviously US voters can, should, and do consider US foreign policy when casting votes. It’s also relevant to domestic policy because so much of our tax money is being wasted on the military rather than being used to address actual problems.
Now, your own country is in jeopardy, and with that comes jeopardy to all the people in your nation and many other nations. Not just trans rights. Everyone’s rights. Everyone’s lives.
RIP: critical thinking.
Everyone’s rights would be in jeopardy either way. The only question is whether we allow the ruling class to divide us and turn against each other, like crabs in a bucket trying to screw each other over for our own advantage, or whether we attempt to forge a united front. If we betray each other, our defeat is completely inevitable, and all we’re doing is buying our in-group a little time. To stay united means a willingness to pass on some fleeting offer of short-term security for some of us, but in exchange we have an actual fighting chance in the long term.
You think I’m not thinking critically only because you aren’t aware of the factors that I’m basing my analysis on. The immediate, direct outcome is not the only thing that matters. What we are now seeing, only a few years later, is the beginning of a massive shift towards more progressive, more antizionist politics.
The conventional wisdom was always that if you run centrists who are essentially Republicans but like 10% less bad, then you’ll pick up the centrists and the left with fall in line behind the lesser evil, and so there is no reason to ever run progressives from the perspective of winning elections. If everyone followed your logic, then that’s where we would still be. But Harris’s loss is just one more point of data, together with the wave of progressives like Mamdani, that proves that theory false.
However, if you think I’m being unreasonable, I don’t mind. A “reasonable” person (by your standards) would fall in line behind whatever garbage candidate was placed in front of them. To win in an electorate with enough “unreasonable” people means that you have to start caving to their demands.
Fixing the idiocy is great. Trying to justify abstaining from voting, which has directly led to killing so many humans, even just USAID alone led to 700,000+ deaths, mostly children, all over one president (which alone is dumb as anything, a president isn’t a king, they are just a figurehead that does stuff and takes blame) doing a policy decision based on historic engagement spanning almost a century is basically one-dimensional moronic.
Justify your mistake all you want. The hard line is protecting as many people as possible and then targeting the rot when you’re able to. You don’t just let the rot live and hope you can somehow fix it afterwards with hopes and prayers.
Those that thought they had power by not voting killed so many people with their concept of having power, without thinking of the bigger picture. The ripple effect is huge. Power grids, data centers, transportation, air travel, medicine, elder care, medical, insurance, vaccinations, communications, emergency preparedness, welfare in disaster zones (in the US), water, massive job layoffs, food safety, access to food, health and safety, inter-government agreements. Pick a dart and throw it, you can’t even trust lettuce anymore. All because some idiots didn’t care about their own lives and thought that using their vote in their country for some other far away land might make a difference even though it never would because they were hoping their decision for a leader in one country somehow would have any active effect in a corrupt nation on the other side of the planet that was always dead-set on genocide regardless of who the US puppet is. Instead, they were just unknowing pawns.
It did make a difference. It destroyed everything. Kudos. RIP critical thinking times a thousand.
You don’t just let the rot live and hope you can somehow fix it afterwards with hopes and prayers.
My thoughts exactly. I suppose the difference is that I consider supporting genocide to be rot as well. I believe “hopes and prayers” was the strategy proposed for convincing the Democrats to change their position after demonstrating to them that they could win without doing so and therefore had every incentive to keep doing what they did to win.
Those that thought they had power by not voting killed so many people with their concept of having power, without thinking of the bigger picture.
I didn’t kill anyone. Trump, and Trump voters did. It’s truly bizarre how intent y’all are about not assigning responsibility to the people who are actually responsible for the harm.
a corrupt nation on the other side of the planet that was always dead-set on genocide regardless of who the US puppet is.
I understand it’s appealing to switch the relationship of who’s in charge between the US and Israel for the sake of preserving a fantasy of the US being “the good guys,” but it is nothing more than a fantasy. The US holds every card, it is a larger, wealthier, far more influential nation, it is the most powerful nation on earth, it has military spending higher than the next nine countries combined, and when there was a similar situation before, Ronald Reagan whipped Israel in line with a single phone call.
Israel is the US’s forward base in the Middle East, it’s unsinkable aircraft carrier, and its actions are in accordance to the US’s wishes, because they would not be remotely possible without US aid. The tail is not wagging the dog. Israel is a proxy of the US and not the other way around.
It destroyed everything.
What was there worth preserving? A police state conducting pointless war and genocide? Now we still have that, just as we did before, just as we would have no matter who won the election. If only it had destroyed everything!
RIP critical thinking times a thousand.
Again, I’ll repeat what I just said. You think I’m not engaging in critical thinking only because you’re not aware of the factors I’m looking at, but, if you’re not going to agree with me, then I would prefer you see my as “unreasonable,” because it puts me in a stronger negotiating position with your side.
Liberals view government in terms of disinterested parties coming together to try to work out the most rational policy together. This is completely delusional and always has been. Politics is inherently about self-interested parties fighting for themselves and their own material interests, and those of their allies.
Harris and her ilk spat on our faction and made it completely clear that she had zero interest in giving us anything we wanted. They wouldn’t even allow the purely symbolic move of allowing a Palestinian speaker at the convention. On virtually every issue, it was the same. “Fuck you, vote for me.” This is not how politics works, at all, and to allow such an approach to win would be to demonstrate to everyone that the left is completely powerless and that there is no reason to ever give us anything.
It’s not my fault that the DNC decided to force a candidate down our throats who acted completely unreasonably and absolutely refused to negotiate. After that, my hand was forced. Even if I wanted to compromise, they’re not even at the table.
It’s also worth remembering that the Democrats have literally funded far-right candidates because they know that people will fall in line behind “lesser-evil” candidates that way without having to offer anything we actually want. There is no chance of ever getting out of this mess so long as we allow them to manufacture problems like that and flinch into supporting them anyway. Fighting this war requires thicker skin.
I swear, y’all are like, “Because of that damn Churchill fighting back, now I have to deal with my city getting bombed. This is all his fault! Why don’t we just let the Nazis kill all the Jews and take over Poland so we can all go back to brunch? We can’t control what Germany does anyway.” Only worse, because in that example the UK wasn’t actively arming and supporting Germany like the US is doing with Israel.
We’re your fucking bosses. You signed up to be talked to however we fucking like. Whiney little bitch baby.
Welp, time to call his Office and talk to this lil bitchboi like that
Vindman is currently favored to beat Republican opponent Doug Ollivant in the November election, according to the Advocate. But one trans woman told the outlet that she’s frustrated that Vindman ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. She said the choice between the congressman and Ollivant feels like a choice between “callous dismissal and active hatred,” but that she felt she would “have to” vote for Vindman anyway.
That’s what you end up with when you let these fuckers slide in the primary.
This is why the rhetoric around “The dems are unsalvageable. Elections will never save us” is so destructive. It discourages people from participating in the democratic processes in the first place.
The very people who need to participate in it more in order for the system to work in our favor are the ones who are most likely to be dissuaded by this line of thinking. Of course democracy won’t work for us if we refuse to vote. That’s kind of how it works.
If a progressive had run in that district’s primary, they might have won the nomination and this seat’s general election could be a completely different story. Of course that would also require progressive voters to show up and vote in the primaries.
So the “don’t bother voting” crowd does twofold harm: they discourage progressives from running, and they discourage progressives from voting.
We made our bed and now we have to sleep in it
I think you’re overstating the prevalence and influence of “don’t bother voting”. This feels more like trying to misplace blame on your fellow socialist who don’t believe in “electorialism” instead of blaming plutocrats and propaganda and the ideology of greed and individualism. Or blaming the party that had Harris run.
There is a real danger in this heated rhetoric about voting. Like if you just vote harder it will work out this time. We must resist that lie. And don’t be surprised about some trolling if you try to sell that lie to a bunch of gnarly socialists. Imagine someone came to your house and told you something like “Yes, Trump is a bit bad, but he is with the angels and the power of religious faith surrounds him on all sides and just believing in Christ and praying will lead to an untold utopia!” I mean what would you say to such nonsense?
But I don’t think it actually discourages a single progressive from running if they want to. Which means having to play a corrupt game if you want to actually gain power and rise to the top.
If you want to actually do something I recommend some autonomous action.
Roughly a third of eligible voters abstained from voting in 2024. And you want me to pretend that for months leading up to it, the internet wasn’t flooded with self-proclaimed leftists screaming about how they won’t cast a vote and you shouldn’t either?
Plutocrats and propaganda are certainly to blame. And if you think they don’t infiltrate leftist spaces on the internet to astroturf their agenda by posing as leftists, then their propaganda is working.
Your entire second paragraph is disingenuous so I’m not going to bother. Comparing voting to door-to-door evangelism and prayer? Really?
But I don’t think it actually discourages a single progressive from running if they want to.
You don’t?
If you want to actually do something I recommend some autonomous action.
Okay fed.
Your entire second paragraph is disingenuous so I’m not going to bother. Comparing voting to door-to-door evangelism and prayer? Really?
Their second paragraph is literally how the political opposition supporting Trump approaches their politics.
Not bothering with a reality you do not wish to contend with is very on-brand here. Almost too much so.
And
you’rethey’re inserting that into this conversation as if it’s relevant to what we’re discussing, and then acting like I’m refusing to confront the reality of it when in fact all I’m doing is refusing to follow a red herring.Hence, it’s disingenuous
and therefore very on-brand for you.Edit: just realized you’re a different commenter
It’s all a public conversation, which is the point. Unless you delete or edit yourself, it gets to stand publicly for scrutiny.
That’s fine, I don’t see how that changes anything. It still wasn’t relevant to the conversation and doesn’t say anything about the stance I was actually taking. So I didn’t bother responding to it, because it was a red herring.
I could randomly say “Killing babies is evil”, but that doesn’t automatically mean that you support infanticide. And if you decide it’s not worth your time to say “Duh” then I’m not going to be like “Aha! Now it stands publicly for scrutiny. Are you sure you don’t want to delete or edit your comment?”
That’s honestly kinda batshit
Shout out to the Palestine protest voters
Shout out to Schumer who said we would get 3x the votes from the GOP never trumpers by rejecting the left flank of the party.
I’m sure the Palestinians in Gaza are so glad that Kamala Harris didn’t get elected… 🙄
At least it wasnt ‘I’ll do nothing and let active hatred kill me down the line’.
Both of the Vindmans are wolves-in-sheep’s clothing and working for Israel. Vote them out.
Bingo.
The constituents can talk to their reps however they fucking want, that’s kind of enshrined in the constitution. The whole idea of “america is so great”, false though it was, was almost entirely based on the Bill of Rights in which the freedom to openly criticize one’s government is at the very top.
If citizens can’t criticize their representatives, then they have no representation and we’re becoming a feudalist system with an untouchable aristocracy. That’s like centuries of regression.
On the other hand, government officials should be held to a higher standard and need to maintain decorum in their own actions and words, so cussing out your constituents and then storming out is conduct unbecoming of the station and makes one unqualified to hold office.
Quit your fucking job then
This guy should have been primaried. Now, without congressional recall elections, we have to live with him for another two years.
I CANT believe SO MANY Democrats want Change from THIS!
-Media Labeling Socialists as an UPRISING!
The problem with having a big tent party to unite everyone that isn’t actively a fascist is you get people who are still white-wing as fuck I suppose… disgusting anti-human representative, and somehow there’s still worse, what is wrong with our world
And note these fucks talk and talk all the time about wanting a “big tent”, then that narrative crumbles into fucking dust the moment leftist voters and DSA candidates enter the chat.
If the LGBTQA+ community and leftists and DSA aren’t invited in, it’s not a very big tent.
They’re invited in. They’re just expected to sit quietly in the corner while the old timers repeat the mistakes of the last old timers.
The “old-timers” are sucking up a lot of air on the media, but they lost control of the DNC in 2024.
It’s a big tent. It encompasses a diversity of opinions, and subjugates them all to the official party line.
Honestly, in a way, parties that reject outsider opinions are more honest. They might be vile and despicable human beings with god-awful opinions and perspectives. But at least they’re not pretending to welcome disagreement only to stifle dissent when it counts; their party is full of true believers who aren’t being coerced into toeing the party line.
Actually, on second thought, maybe they are being coerced, but in an entirely different way…
Sorta notable that Alex and Eugene Vindman are twin brothers, and both were mixed up in the disclosure of Trump’s threatening phone call to Ukraine President Zelenskyy, which led to Trump’s impeachment.
Oh man, I had no idea there were 2 or that they were both running for office. I just confused this one with Alex
Alex is also bought & paid for by Israel, was proud to vote for his opponent earlier this week.
ffs
How about we try to organize a nationwide protest where we just act like our fucking representatives for a day or two. Get asked a question? Go the fuck home and get paid apparently. Disappear for weeks? Fuck it I’m working from home now apparently.
I got written up and sent home once at work because my pants weren’t black enough and I was making 15¢ above minimum wage. Why does more money and power come with less responsibility?
Or, you could become an active participant in the process.
Look up Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority.
Falwell was a TV preacher who figured out how to take over the GOP at the grass roots.
If the local GOP had an average attendance of twenty people at the monthly meeting, Falwell’s folks would show up with fifty. It started out with them grabbing jobs like sheriff and county clerk, but it was a short step to Congressmembers and governors.
That would require 50+ people cooperate, which the left famously is extremely bad at.
Hierarchical leadership styles might have a tendency to lean towards authoritarianism, but we can’t deny that they’re effective at organizing large numbers or people efficiently.
The left tends to be allergic to even the idea of leadership, so it’s harder for someone to say “I need fifty people at this meeting, and a hundred people at that one” because most people would just be like “You can’t tell me what to do.”
I know there’s a tendency to think of leadership as a cushy do-nothing position of privilege, and bad leadership can certainly be like that, but examples of good leadership exist even though they’re more rare in our current system.
Coordinating and delegating large groups of people is a job in its own right, even if they’re not the ones swinging hammers and doing gruntwork. There needs to be a mind behind it all who sees the big picture and can follow a plan, receive reports and feedback and adjust as necessary. Leftists reallllly don’t like that idea. They’d be more likely to say “Oh yeah, why don’t you show up to all those meetings yourself?”, ignoring the fact that one person can’t be in multiple places at once, let alone participate as dozens of people at even one meeting.
If the left wants to take over the Democratic party the way maga took over the GOP, we need to learn how to do central coordination in order to organize organize ourselves for large-scale and efficient mobilization.
And we need to unify beyond everyone’s individual pet issues and stop competing for relevance as if anyone’s oppression is more important than anyone else’s. We’re all oppressed, it doesn’t matter who’s the most oppressed. We need to work together to fix this system, not fight each other over who gets the gold medal in the oppression olympics.
Judean People’s Front has entered the chat.
Th headline is misleading.
Another committee member told him he needed “to shut up and listen.” Vindman argued that he’d chosen to continue the conversation, but was being “attacked.” The same committee member reportedly told Vindman to “shut the f**k up.”
“You can’t f**king talk to me that way,” Vindman reportedly responded, before walking away without taking any further questions.
No one has to take that sort of treatment.
Oh wow yeah, the headline made it seem like both quotes were from him. That’s fucked up journalism.
People all over the world are treated much worse than that daily, but sure, clutch your pearls because someone said “shut the fuck up” 🙄
And they don’t have to. If I was talked to that way I’d get angry and most people would.
Are you… clutching your pearls because he responded by saying “you can’t fucking talk to me that way”?
Weird to accuse someone of pearl clutching when all they really said was that his response was justified…
I’d argue his job is to listen to his constituents, and since through his actions or inactions this person is coming to harm, that he is not listening. Perhaps he should “Shut the fuck up and listen.” The problem is that while she’s talking, he’s not listening. He’s just waiting for her to stop talking so he can tell her that she’s wrong. This has been a big problem with the establishment of Democrats for a very long time.
