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I can understand being unwilling to vote for Biden because he’s supporting genocide. That, taken by itself, is perfectly reasonable.
Why aren’t those otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people looking at the bigger picture, though?
Don’t they understand that under Trump, things will be much worse? What’s their moral rationale for allowing fascism to take over America, and empowering untold numbers of reprehensible people? I’m trying to understand, but I just don’t get it.
They don't seem to understand that the Israel/Palestine situation is not on the ballot this November; does anyone actually think Trump would oppose Israel? Even if he personally wanted to, his supporters are all nominal Christians who would turn on him in an instant if he suddenly stopped supporting God's Chosen People.
Except for the anti-Semites, who make up a decent chunk of his active base. Or are they also pro-Israel?
Can anyone explain to me how the Nazis and pro-Israel crowds seem to be so friendly at the moment? It’s almost like this has nothing to do with Israel.
Except for the anti-Semites, who make up a decent chunk of his active base. Or are they also pro-Israel?
Yes.
Antisemite support of Israel is very common, because antisemites:
- Have a lot of overlap with fundies, who believe that Israel MUST exist for the apocalypse to occur
- Enjoy the thought of an ethnostate where they can deport all the Jews to
- Hate Muslims more than Jews
The Cristo-fascists are actively hoping for an Armageddon situation to bring about all their end of world predictions. The IDF may belong to a different abrahamic cult but they’re useful for fomenting that chaos in the region and lighting the lamp for jeebus or whatever the fuck they believe
Israelis are generally a little less brown, that's how.
They understand perfectly and that's why they're making it on the ballot. So what's it going to be: continue supporting genocide and lose votes or stop supporting genocide and gain votes? Seems like an obvious choice, but maybe you're too smart and understand too much over the masses you look down upon.
Unfortunately most of Biden's voting base hasn't paid attention to politics since 243BC so they still think Israel is the good guy
It is on the ballot if the voters put it there. If the voters say "I'll vote for you no matter what you do or don't do about the genocide", then it isn't on the ballot.
Bur you wouldn't be voting against genocide. Both options support it. Not voting will also reault in one of the supporters winning.
Maybe I will vote for someone who is against genocide. I know they won't win, but I will not vote for genocide. If someone told me I had to shoot one baby, or else they would shoot two babies, I still wouldn't shoot the one baby. I can't do anything to stop the genocide, but that doesn't mean I have to support it.
What if someone gives you the choice between them shooting one baby, or them shooting two? That's more analogous to our situation. Would you simply refuse to participate, increasing the chance of both babies dying, or would you make the choice for only one and accept some responsibility? It's basically the trolley problem.
Unironically yes, obviously I would refuse to participate in this baby murderer's game. I'm not going to say, "Please only kill one baby," I'm going to spit on his face and tell him to go to hell. And then he's going to murder as many babies as he wants, as he was going to do anyway.
The choice (even if the comparison really doesn't fit) is between one person going to kill one baby and the other person killing five. You're complicit if the second person wins because you're more concerned with suckling on your own genitals about how smart and principled you are instead of dealing with reality.
It's really as simple as that, and no amount of your self-aggrandizing mental gymnastics are going to change that.
You’re complicit if the second person wins
If doing nothing for someone counts as support, then you can rest assured that Biden will have my support.
The logic of the intellectual right-wing scholars 🥰
right-wing
You seem to be confused - I'm not voting for Biden
You're mostly correct, but there's something I need to point out:
Being "complicit" isn't a feature of consequentialism, and it's not a feature of the universe either. If you're doing utility calculus (which here you are) factoring in whether you'll be "complicit" essentially boils down to putting your self-image on the scales determining the lives of others.
I don't understand your last part, what do you mean with "projecting one's self-image"?
Placing one's self image. It's part of the scales metaphor.
If you take into consideration if you are "complicit" you are using how you will think about yourself as a factor in the utility calculus. I suppose you're also thinking about what how other people are perceiving you as well. Does that answer your question?
I guess I just don't understand why someone would do this. I mean if I had a gun I'd also just shoot the murderer, but assassination is "illegal" and "a federal crime" so unfortunately that's not an option.
In this hypothetical, because I refuse to give him the satisfaction of cooperating in any way. If he knows that he can get me to do things by threatening to kill babies, then I'm just encouraging him to threaten to kill babies.
I'm not trying to "talk tough," there are situations where I would cooperate with a hostage taker, but murdering babies is a red line, for me personally.
It's still an option, just one that has consequences.
Refusing to participate in a system designed to cause the murder of babies doesn’t mean they’re sitting on their thumbs pouting. So many people are so livid over even the concept of being given this non-choice, that they’re getting into direct action for the first time in their lives. Direct action, not voting, is responsible for the civil rights we have in this country. If the imperialist machine desperately doesn’t want to give us a voice on atrocities, it would start doing things like creating cop cities everywhere, increasing cop funding, creating laws against protesters that label them domestic terrorists, brutalizing activists but never white supremacists, and convincing the populace that voting is by far the most important and only effective tool you have.
We could surely further improve the analogy, but let's not. No, I wouldn't choose. For one, that is a sick game. Secondly, why would I even trust this person to not just keep shooting babies anyway?
No, I wouldn’t choose.
This is a choice.
Who else is hearing Rush right now?
The even bigger picture is the trend of things getting progressivelly worse even when Democrats are at the helm.
For example, it was Clinton that reppealed the Glass-Steagal Act which in turn led to hyperfinancialization and the 2008 Crash and it was Obama who chose to then save Asset owners in general (i.e. the Wealthy), unconditionally and on the backs of everybody else, leading to the slowest recovery from a Crash ever and all the imballances of the US Economy at the moment which as manifesting themselves as a complete total collapse in Social Mobility and rise of Inequality and Poverty.
Clearly electing Democrats doesn't improve things either.
The problem is of course that the US is not a Democracy (hence how there are only 2 carefully selected real options, which in this election are so bad that they're both hard Genocide supporters) so merelly voting for a President won't solve anything, and the only solution probably involves levels of political activism Americans aren't used to (one might even say they've been conditioned against it) such as General Strikes.
I can’t argue with anything you said. I can only argue that under Democrats, authoritarianism and the erosion of civil rights happen slower. We’ll have more time to acclimate ourselves to the concept of a General Strike. There’s no reason to give facism a helping hand by skipping the election.
It's my impression that Historically the slow bloil tends to breed acceptance, not rebellion, and when it doesn't there is generally a long period (decades, even centuries) of misery after the slow decay before people finally force a change for the better.
I can see your point, I just don't agree with your expectation that the slow crumble will be a less painfull way overall to get people to do what it takes to recover than the crash-n-burn - yeah, it's less painful immediatelly, but the pain lasts longer and the depths reached are probably much worse since human perception of how bad a crisis is, is based on where they were before not on absolute terms, so a crash-n-burn (i.e. a crisis, unlike the slow crumble) needs not collapse things quite as badly as the slow crumble to induce a general feeling that "this is unnacceptable".
All that said, I'm fortunate I'm not an American or living in America and that the actions of both Trump and Biden (more the former) have made the US be seen as "not all that great" and "a bad example to follow" over here so the contagion factor for whatever happens over there is a lot less than it would have been a decade or two ago.
I can safelly wonder about all that at an intellectual level safe in a country that's not really going to hurt from the changes taking place in America.
I can see your point, I just don’t agree with your expectation that the slow crumble will be a less painfull way overall to get people to do what it takes to recover than the crash-n-burn - yeah, it’s less painful immediatelly, but the pain lasts longer and the depths reached are probably much worse since human perception of how bad a crisis is, is based on where they were before not on absolute terms, so a crash-n-burn (i.e. a crisis, unlike the slow crumble) needs not collapse things quite as badly as the slow crumble to induce a general feeling that “this is unnacceptable”.
Two points, I think.
The first is that, honestly, if this is the like, assessment we're making, we're totally fucked. Not in the sense that we're totally fucked, but in that we're totally fucked if we're making that assessment, ja feel? It shouldn't really matter too much one way or the other what the outcome is, there, obviously the strategies for real change are the same in either case. We're also more broadly fucked if we're having this conversation of like, oh well which one is the damage control, there, because it takes a conversation away from what those strategies for change might be, and puts the perspective more towards like, okay, the supermassive meteor is hitting, do we have an orgy or do we get in the bunker? No conception of how to stop it, just sort of like, a doomer sense of resignation, a doomer smokescreen. Maybe this is like the fabled "accelerationist perspective", right, but I don't think so. That's a political movement, it still does things, and the people who are in it still end up doing things even if they think like, collapse of either the political system or just generalized ecological collapse and the holocene extinction are inevitable. In no case, really, can we come to a conclusion about it that kind of, forgoes the idea that we still end up doing general strikes, protests, and [redacted]. This isn't really a criticism of you, but of this conversation more broadly, because I've seen it happen like a million times every time election season rolls around.
I dunno, I guess I'm just saying that I don't think this meta-level, abstract conversation is very useful. It's sort of like when people talk about freedom or efficiency. I've been obsessing a little bit, it's surfaced once again in my mind, how those values are such core values to people's worldviews, right. They're core to people's decision making. And yet, they're totally meaningless, they're proxy values that indicate nothing on their own. One man's freedom to own guns infringes on another's freedom to live in a gun free society. One definition of efficiency says it's better to diversify and decentralize the methods of production, to better insulate against external forces which might collapse a system and make it less brittle, collapses which lead to increasingly larger losses as time goes on. The other definition of efficiency says that it's better to engage in mass production and centralized production, because the margins are better, and you can specialize more. This whole conversation is sort of, it strikes me as similar to when people argue about freedom or efficiency. We're arguing over an abstraction, here, we're implicitly accepting a framing in which we've already kind of lost.
The second point is that I don't know if we really have enough data to go with either perspective. The "slower and less painful" decision isn't always obvious electorally, even though we might make it out to be so in hindsight. It just seems more like either position is a gut feeling, to me. Against the cries of the history nerds, we can't much use historical precedent for these sorts of decisions. Anyone that's not a hack imposing a grand narrative on history knows that basically everything in history is just a hurricane that forms because a butterfly beats its wings, it's all an insane set of chances and probabilities.
So I don't know if we can come to a conclusion in which is better, and I don't really know if we even need to in order to still know where we should go and what we should do.
Well, I happen to think that the US is finished with its Greatest Power stage, just like every other nation in History that was once the Greatest Power for a while eventually fell of that pedestal, hence you could say you're totally fucked in aggregate. However given the massive disparity in wealth distribution over there and how the gains and the costs of Imperial America are distributed - a few people get most of the gains whilst most people get to pay for the costs such as the Military - it's quite possible that as the US becomes Just Another Big Nation and thus less rich in aggregate, the majority of people are still better off than before because they never really got the benefits of Imperial America whilst having to pay the costs.
Ultimatelly it depends on how much the elites destroy on their way down, which in turn depends on how much people in general fight against or cooperate with their desperate clinging to their elite position in an elite nation.
(By the way, your efficiency point is interesting: you see, one of those ideas of efficiency is long term - specifically the diversification for robustness one - and the other one is short-term. Short term efficiency yield more results moment by moment but does so at the risk of collapse from even relativelly mild external shocks, by which point that system stops operating and has to be rebuilt and if you count those downtimes and the cost of rebuilding, it actually adds up to less in the long run. Long term efficiency as you described it add robustness to shocks hence makes something unlikely to collapse when faced with one, but does so at the cost of less efficiency when things are going fine and there are no shocks. Ultimatelly what is the best efficiency depends of your time-frame: for example a Nation State, which aims to exist ideally forever, should be aiming for long-term efficiency, whilst a speculative investor in the Stock Market naturally only cares about short-term efficiency as they're in-today-out-tomorrow - the former has an outlook measured in decades or centuries and can't exactly "leave the market" in times of crisis, whilst the latter has an outlook of days or months and can just cash out and wait during shock periods or, if they can short, bet in the "things will get worse" direction)
As for your second point, I agree that we don't have enough data and probably never will: the world changes and no two situations are the same so we'll never be sure.
So anything you chose to do is a risk.
However doing nothing is just as much a risk.
Usually change happens when people's judgement of those risks (which is generally flawed) is heavilly tilted to seeing "do nothing" as the greatest risk.
I dunno. The collapse of the US is sort of, interesting, right. I think there are a lot more people reaping the gains of imperial america than you might think. I mean, that's basically all of what american industry is at this point, and maybe all it ever has been. If you think about like, first industrial revolutions, those came about not contrary to, but in combination with slavery. You can't much have a loom without cotton being picked somewhere, and you can't much have a grainery or industrialized mill without someone out working in the wheat fields, you know? And then you have the sort of colonial period in which that slavery was outsourced, and then you have a post WW2 period of rapid military expansionism and then now you have an interconnected global system in which larger colonial states rely on what are basically smaller states where everyone inside of them is a slave. Not only larger colonial states in the west, but states abroad which benefit from both US and domestic military imperialism. Nobody's talking about what's happening in the congo right now, but all those lithium batteries, that are used basically everywhere, they all have a set of common origin points.
I find it distressing that, you know, it can be within everyone's mutual interest, internal to a democracy, even a real democracy, it can be in their internal mutual interest to be extremely xenophobic and exploitative of another culture or nation, especially if they can do so at arm's length.
So I dunno, I think with the collapse of that global hegemony, I would like to think that it's only a more minor kind of thing, right, but at the same time, I think maybe it's not, and maybe the common narrative about BRICS being the big grand replacement on the world stage, and hopefully, being the better replacement, I dunno if that's gonna come to pass, and I dunno if they're really gonna be better so much as they might just be different. I might be wrong, you know, but china flirts with a danger, when they open up to a larger market and populate the higher parts of their government with billionaires, when they decide to fuse a presumably socialist project with a neoliberal economic system that inherently concentrates power.
I mean and that's all considering the idea that the elites don't just wanna fucking burn everything down at the point at which they figure out that it's not really tenable any longer, or like, just want to burn it all down for another fifteen minutes of power, which might very well be the case.
The efficiency point is something I find kind of interesting because. Say you have a short-term efficiency, right, you get much larger gains in the short term, much more rapidly. In a competitive field, you will be able to crush your competitors more easily, if you can grow faster in the short term of this time frame. This applies to the free market, but also applies to nations at the broadest level. You can't really reliably create a strategy that has long term efficiency and stability, because the short term strategies still win in the short term, and a "win" is quantified as the extinction of competition. So, I dunno, I don't have a solution to that problem. Might be like, we're just fucked longer than long term, just, fucked in the sense that human psychology is fucked, I dunno. I also don't really like the idea that the only "winning" is basically that, after some short term power becomes the dominant force, exterminates all competition, then they can start leaning into long term efficiency strategies. It's not as though it's like, a static process, right, where you only have to win once to keep going, you have to keep winning against all possible and future competition. There are also obviously problems with a structure that wins it's battles along the short-term and then becomes a sort of monopolized power, right, because it's by nature brittle and resistant to that change into a long-term strategy. And then I also just don't know if the cost of "winning" in that context, maybe that does enough damage by itself that you're just fucked. Holocene extinction style.
Maybe there's something I'm missing there, or like, I'm thinking in too absolutist and grandiose of terms in a place where the context really actually matters much more, I dunno. Probably that's the case, if I had to guess.
It's always going to be this way. Every election will be an emergency. Every election in my lifetime has been. We're in an abusive relationship and we need to get out of it. We need to break the duopoly. We need sane polling methods. But, no. Just like they keep us divided they're keeping us distracted.
The problem is that roughly half of voters want that crazy shit, so until they're overwhelmingly the minority and have no chance of winning, they will have a platform.
They're both fucking crazy. They're not the same, but they're both insane to half the fucking population. That's their power.
It's shitty. We're abused spouses. At some point we have to defeat the fear and either go to a shelter or the street. Until we're willing to do that, well, enjoy.
If you want to understand, I can explain fairly simply.
Consider this thought experiment. We are getting $100 to split, but only if they can agree on how to split it: I get to make an offer, then you choose whether to accept. If you announce that you'll accept whatever deal so long as accepting is better than the alternative - that is, that you'll act "rationally" - then the rational thing for me to do is to offer you only $1, while I get $99. Researchers have actually tested this game in real life, however, and it generally doesn't play out that way. Why? Because the numbers don't tell the whole story of what you're giving up by accepting a bad deal. Once you've demonstrated that you'll accept a deal like that, then you're communicating something about your behavior for all future deals. It may be rational in the context of a closed experiment, but for the general case, our minds know better than what may appear "rational" at first glance. If you tell me, "I will refuse anything less than $30," then you are openly declaring that you intend to behave "irrationally" and trying to convince me that you will - and it would most likely produce better results than behaving "rationally."
The moment that you say, "My only condition for voting for the democrats is that they be better than the republicans, who are unimaginably horrible," you have sacrificed every ounce of bargaining power that you could've wielded. So the real calculation is not "Who's better between Trump and Biden," but rather, is the difference between Trump and Biden worth sacrificing all my bargaining power?" And for me, the fact that Biden is supporting genocide makes that decision very easy and straightforward. I'd rather at least try to leverage what power I have against genocide altogether, rather than supporting the "lesser genocide." If I cannot set even something like genocide as a red line, then I am very clearly communicating to politicians that they can count on my vote no matter what they do, and they have no reason to ever consider my political priorities.
Thank you for taking the time to explain. That is by far the best answer I’ve seen.
And yet your actions will lead to "more genocide" while you go and jerk off in the mirror with your newly gained bargaining power! Good job!
Good job!
Thank you!
This is a false equivalence though: In the thought experiment, you denying to split ensures that none of you get anything. In this real-world scenario, you refusing to make a choice between more or less genocide increases the chances of "more genocide" winning. By not making a choice, you aren't punishing the person proposing the deal, you're just allowing someone else to make the choice for you.
There are elections in which it makes sense to vote against a candidate like Biden: In every election where there is a better choice on the table. That includes primaries, it includes backing candidates opposed to him in local elections, and elections for the house and senate. That is when you make your stand.
By not voting, in any specific election, you are simply giving up your right to have an impact on the outcome. That means that if the outcome is an increase in people killed, you are responsible, because you had the option to save lives, and chose not to take it.
By voting for the lesser of two evils, you are not signalling that you accept the lesser evil, but simply that you believe it is the best possible choice of those given. You can signal that you dislike the lesser evil by voting against it when an even lesser evil is on the table (or, preferably, something actually good).
Also, it's not like "the democrats" tactically choose a candidate that they think the voters will reluctantly accept. The candidate is specifically the person that got the most votes in the primaries. The candidates in the primaries are typically people who got enough votes to be either governor or senator or something previously. By consistently voting for the better candidate in all those elections, you can actually have an impact on the presidential nominee, and signal your beliefs to the political party, without running the risk of having a wannabe dictator become president.
It's not a false equivalence because I never claimed it was equivalent. The purpose of the hypothetical is to explain a concept, not to draw a direct comparison.
Not voting for Biden is punishing Biden because it's denying him something that he wants. I'm not allowing other people to make the decision for me, it's not as if my vote passes to the next person in line or something.
Primaries are not legitimate elections. There is no oversight and no legal requirement that they be conducted fairly, or even that they be conducted at all. The democratic establishment has the ability to influence the outcome or cancel them altogether, which it exercises regularly. What should I do if the democrats said, "We're not doing primaries at all any more, we're going back to the old days where party elites select candidates in smoke-filled rooms?" Should I just give them my full compliance?
I reject lesser evilism for reasons I already explained.
I am not responsible if withholding my vote leads to an increase in people being killed. That's not how responsibility works. The responsibility is on the people doing the killing, the people ordering them to, and the people supplying them with the means to do so. It's like if a serial killer tried to plead "not guilty" on the basis that one of his hostages refused to cooperate and that caused him to fly into a rage and kill more people so it's really the hostage who should be tried for murder. It's an absurdity, and frankly it betrays a refusal, in your psyche, to hold politicians accountable for their failures and misdeeds, instead trying to shift the blame onto ordinary people.
In a lot of countries you can be held legally accountable for not helping someone, and your negligence leads to death or injury. I think that's quite similar to refusing to vote, when voting can save lives.
Your vote does effectively pass to the next person in line, because you not voting means their vote becomes a larger proportion of the total. By not voting you are blindly accepting the will of others, without using your possibility of affecting the outcome.
Saying that there are no legal requirements for a primary is not a good argument for abstaining from voting in them. By your own arguments, the candidates want votes, and the party wants to nominate a candidate that has wide support. Voting in primaries is, if nothing else, a clear way of signalling what candidates you want.
In a lot of countries you can be held legally accountable for not helping someone, and your negligence leads to death or injury
In every country, giving assistance to one criminal to stop a different criminal is still a crime.
Your vote does effectively pass to the next person in line, because you not voting means their vote becomes a larger proportion of the total.
No it doesn't.
An individual vote is extremely unlikely to affect the outcome, but what it does affect are the margins, which can be factored into future calculations. A non-voter or a third party voter is someone who could potentially be won over. My vote still exists regardless of whether I exercise it or not, and nobody else gets to use it if I don't. I completely disagree with your framing, always have, and always will.
Saying that there are no legal requirements for a primary is not a good argument for abstaining from voting in them.
I didn't mean that you shouldn't vote in primaries. What I meant is that I don't believe in relying on something that the DNC provides, controls, and could take away at any time, as a reliable method of opposition.
So true. Where's all the reply guys who love to say "this is russian propaganda! Vote biden!"
Based on my experience, they're probably about to show up and complain that two paragraphs is too long to read, or chime in with some cheap rhetorical snipes, or pick apart the hypothetical for not being directly analogous while ignoring the concept that it's there to demonstrate - basically whatever brings the conversation closer to a cable news tier of debate.
So, say you were in a swing state, right? Then it might make sense to vote for biden. Or, a state where your votes are tallied earlier in the process, since a larger victory earlier in the process has an effect on those votes later on. Or, a state where your votes are disproportionately of more weight, maybe so long as you also live in a swing state. Those are the contexts in which it might actually make sense to vote for biden, because those are the contexts more broadly in which voting actually matters.
But, say you don't conform to those criteria, say you live in a highly populous state, like, say, california, new york, maybe texas. These are states where they've already pre-committed themselves to one candidate over the other, and regardless of like, screeching about like, "oh well all votes count everything has an impact", nothing's realistically gonna change in those states unless some major cultural shifts and maybe even demographic shifts took place. You'd pretty much be an idiot to believe otherwise, right, to believe, oh, well, this time, this time california's gonna vote red. Especially with a candidate like trump. Maybe if somebody like bernie suddenly became a republican or something, that might cause a decent amount of upset, but without a larger shift taking place there basically beyond your control, not much is gonna happen. The race has already been called for you, and been called for those states ahead of time. Maybe egg will be on my face if california votes red this election, but somehow I just don't think that's gonna happen.
In those cases, in those particular contexts, where your vote matters doesn't really matter, it actually makes more sense, in my mind, to vote for the candidate you actually believe in. Even if that ends up being no candidate at all, which, admittedly, I do find pretty unlikely. Like, you have nothing to lose or gain really either way, so the best thing you can do in my mind is just clearly signal what your actual priorities are, and then hopefully someone looks at the poles and changes tactics because of it. To either appeal to your bloc more, or say, the DSA gets more funding because of increased voter turnout, or whatever.
I have never heard anyone really provide a legitimate counterargument to this set of tactics, because I don't think you really can. It's just an elaboration on strategic voting with more specifics than "vote blue no matter who" as sort of a blanket, contextually devoid statement that doesn't make sense for a bunch of different scenarios. And strategic voting is what people are already doing when they're trying to do a compromise vote for one of the two main parties in a FPTP two party system. That's already a form of strategic voting, I'm just elaborating on it, instead of making a generalized party line heuristic that doesn't make sense inm frankly, most cases, for most people that you're gonna be talking to.
If Democrats lose to Donald Trump, then it will be entirely their own fault. Progressives have said for years and years exactly what they want, but Democrats think it's much more important to appease the Trump voters than it is to appease us. Let's see how that pans out.
From my perspective it seems like Democrats are trying to lose.
The people who fund the pro-Oligarchic Neoliberals who control the Democratic Party are the same people who fund a similar faction plus the Fascist faction in Republican Party, so either way they win.
For them the little mice under the table squealing "Vote Biden to stop Trump!!!" are just entertainment.
Yeah, let the country collapse under Trump, that’ll show them! I keep seeing this foolish argument over and over on Lemmy. Not sure if Reddit was this infested with naive and/or Russian trolls.
If Trump wins, everyone who didn’t vote for Biden shares the blame. When the situation in the Middle East gets worse, you’ll be to blame. When LGBTQ people get even more targeted in the US, you will be to blame.
Weasel out of it all you want, but come November, there’s really k lot two choices vote for Biden, or (in)directly help Trump.
I still find it incredibly rich that Democrats never have to take any blame for their bad positions. It's not even a considerable option that they actually capitulate to the voters.
You are literally victim blaming. How on earth can you act like they need progressives and then not throw them a bone at the same time?
Because the November election is not the place for that. I’d absolutely love the Democrats to move further left. First step is to make sure the current Republican Party can never win again, then, it will either collapse, or move more center to gain back some voters. As the Republicans move left, it would allow a further move left for the Democrats.
The best place to move left is with local elections, not the general election when both party candidates are already selected.
Every time progressives try to do anything, Democrats say that this is not the time and place for it seems like that goalpost keeps getting moved.
So are you suggesting the November General Election is the time? This is what I don’t understand about these threads. They don’t seem based in reality at all. What do you think will happen if people either don’t vote, or protest vote a 3rd party candidate? Please play that scenario out for me with a Trump win and how that solves anything.
Is it the ideal time? Absolutely not. But whether it's the November general elections, midterms or local city council, there's always plenty of people like you popping up to say "This is not the time, this is the most important election ever!" when there's any chance of opposition to Democratic hegemony, but when they're on path for a comfortable win, "Oh, those policies are too extremist, they'll be unelectable." No matter the circumstances, Democrats always have some pretext to try and dismiss progressives and socialist, while demanding unchecked fealty in the elections from them.
If no time is ever a good time for you to listen to people, tough shit, you're going to hear their voices when you don't want to.
I'm just saying you should consistently vote for the candidate you prefer. That includes voting for the "far-left" (no such thing in US politics) democratic candidates when they pop up. I would also argue that it is never the time to "protest" by not voting, as that just signals that you don't care who wins.
It's really quite simple: It's always the ideal time to vote for the best (least bad) candidate. It is never the ideal time to abstain from voting because you dislike both candidates, unless you legitimately don't care who wins.
It's really hard to discern between people who are fundamentally frustrated with the system and conservative bots (in flesh or code).
In the end they'll both lead to the same thing though, so does it really matter?
For starters, I don't live in a swing state, so my vote is completely irrelevant. Secondly, the ball was in the Democrats' courts to win this earlier. They threw it, they have been throwing it, and they are still throwing this election.
I fear they've already lost by not giving the people what they want. Again, they're not even pretending to try to give the people what they want. What kind of selling point is "we're not going to accomplish anything next term."
No: Every single election where a more left-leaning choice is pitted against a less left-leaning choice is the place to do that. If enough people consistently vote for the more left-leaning choice of the two, politics is pushed to the left.
By not voting, you are saying that you don't care which candidate wins. In this case, the choice is between a literal fascist and a more or less far-right (globally speaking) candidate. Of the two, one is clearly more left-leaning (less far-right) than the other. So you vote for that one. That's how you make a difference.
Always funny to watch people so eager to politically neuter themselves. But it's natural selection I guess- people that can't be politically pragmatic make themselves politically irrelevant. Thanks for the taxes though.
What are you talking about? Voting for a person explicitly because the other sucks is politically neutering yourself. It shows that you're incapable of demanding for more. Now your voice doesn't matter at all to the party. Notice how they are actually more eager to woo conservatives than they are you.
I totally support your effort to 'demand more' by not voting. Keep up the great work! And thanks again for the taxes!
I completely attribute your filth to why we're in this mess to begin with. Ez block
Sorry you're so sensitive, didn't mean to trigger you. But thanks again for paying taxes and not voting!
America is fascist already. Study history and you'll understand.
Do you have any principles that you won't compromise on?
Do you know how a first past the post electoral system works? Or are you young and naive, thinking that politics isn't about compromise?
Seems like compromise is "the political party does whatever they want and you guarantee your undying loyalty to them with your vote". You speak of youth and naivety, but only an idiot would accept such a "deal". If our votes have power then we should wield it.
The fact that you think voting is an undying loyalty and not a simple strategic decision baffles me, and embodies the exact argument I keep seeing on here. You know how you wield the power of your vote? USE IT. Voting 3rd party is really dumb right now but in theory okay. Not voting simply means you don't care.
I don't think voting in general is undying loyalty, I think guaranteeing your vote to a party no matter what they do is undying loyalty. That's what they demand and expect because the other guy is worse, but if that's the strategy then they have no need to ever actually improve things because the other guy will always be worse.
You have a choice between two candidates who can win the election. There is no third party who can win. You speak as if there is one in a first past the post electoral system. There isn't. If you have a way forward that doesn't further slide us into fascism and also isn't supportive of genocide, please enlighten me.
Sadly our only option is to not for for Trump, and the only other viable candidate is Biden. I don't like it anymore then you do, but until we replace our electoral system with one that is more fair, it's what we have to work with.
If the threat of withholding your vote does not scare the party that is supposedly saving democracy, then they probably don't actually care about democracy, especially when they prioritize genocide over getting those votes.
I'd much prefer a ranked choice voting system where we had viable third parties. At the end of the day, one of two people will win the election. If you make one issue your entire focus, you lose sight of the big picture. I'll just say this - genocide is not a joke, it's fucked up, and I believe Israel is committing it in Gaza.
Putting that aside for now, do you care about anything else politically? Do you believe a woman should not be allowed to have an abortion, or do you support further tax cuts for the billionaires?
You're arguing with basically bots.
You never can tell at this point. Some people are just low information, single issue voters. I dont doubt there are a lot of astroturfing trolls here though, especially since it's an election year.
I'm not completely, but mostly sure that all of this is astroturfed. It's crazy to me.
I think there are a lot of disenfranchised young people who are naive about how our voting system works, just like I was in 2016. I've said it elsewhere but I'm getting flashbacks because of all the "don't vote" and "vote 3rd party" BS I'm seeing, which heavily tilted the scales in the favor of the Republicans.
Sadly our only option is to not for for Trump, and the only other viable candidate is Biden.
And you don't need to vote for him either.
Just go sharpen your guillotines.
Politics is absolutely about compromise, but Democrats never really compromise with progressives. The most we get is putting weed in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, Yippee.
Sigh. They compromise with Republicans because they don't have all three of the house of representatives, the Senate, and the presidency. You want them to not compromise with Republicans? Give them all 3 consistently and overwhelmingly.
So, your only solution to fixing the country is to win a super majority every single election for all time, lest the next time the Republican wins, we will be a fascist dictatorship. Well, that doesn't seem very tenable, does it?
Guess we're just boned, right?
your only solution to fixing the country is to win a super majority every single election for all time
Wow, the strategy of consistently voting for the party that most aligns with your values? What idiots!
/s
Are you really implying that there is a conceivable reality in which Democrats win every election for the rest of time?
I'm saying if you want progress, then give Dems overwhelming and consistent victories.
You need to twist that to 'lest we be fascist dictatorship'. We'll see what happens after Trump, if the Republicans continue on that path. But whether they do or don't, we're back to progress and if you want progress.
I posits that Democrats are not the party of progress as long as they ignore progressives.
Im politically homeless.
They can't be progressive when they keep losing any of the 1) House of representatives, 2) Senate, or 3) Presidency. You want progress? Give them all 3 consistently and overwhelmingly.
So literally what I said, we have to win overwhelming super majorities and every single branch where there's no hope for the country. Got it, untenable.
Well you want to keep turning this to "no hope", down from "fascist". Turn this around, do you want progress? That's what it is progress.
Untenable? Dude, votes decide this. Voting is simple. This is simple.
Seems very much like you want to decide it's "untenable" so that you can give up, excuse yourself from not voting, and (here's the kicker) then bitch online.
So that's a no then? About principles?
So you're saying that... I should abide by principles... by allowing my country to further descend into fascism... by not voting for a politician that could prevent that...
...right. You're a smart mother fucker.
Don't be mad at me because I forced you to confront your own lack of principles. I've got a principle, personally, that won't allow me to vote for a genocidaire. I don't think that's a very high fucking bar. If we have found ourselves at an election where our choices are between two fascists, then we are already in fascism. If there is no way to vote for "no genocide" then there is no serious reason to vote.
I’ve got a principle, personally, that won’t allow me to vote for a genocidaire. I don’t think that’s a very high fucking bar.
Pretty clearly it's not a very high bar, since you're supporting an intensification of that genocide and the commencement of several others. That's a bar too low to limbo under.
Yeah man, I'm sorry but if you're doing a genocide, fuck you. I've got nothing but hate for you. I don't care who you are, or who might also do the same thing. I'll hate them too. That's what a principle is. If more people had such a principle maybe we could make real political changes instead of giving "political capital" to war criminals.
Yeah man, I’m sorry but if you’re doing a genocide, fuck you. I’ve got nothing but hate for you.
It's a shame you hate yourself so much. Wait, if you're pursuing multiple genocides, as you are by furiously seeking a Trump victory, is your hate multiplied?
Okay, you’ve hit on exactly what I don’t get.
Most Federal elections aren’t about good vs. bad. They’re about choosing the lesser of two evils. That’s important to remember.
As I see it, a vote for Biden OR Trump is a vote supporting genocide. On that one issue, sadly, there’s no real choice.
However, voting for Trump also brings with it sexism, racism and an inevitable threat to democracy - in addition to genocide. Crucially, changing the system for the better would become MUCH harder under Trump. Choosing not to vote at all (or voting for a 3rd party candidate with no real chance of winning) helps Trump. It would be giving up on yourself, and society as a whole. It would be saying that things are too broken to be fixed, ever, so it’s okay to let future generations suffer.
I don’t see the moral benefit in failing to choose the lesser of two evils.
When full support for genocide is "the lesser of two evils" then you've already lost. It's straight up evil.
It can ALWAYS get worse
A system that only allows you to choose between two enthusiastic war criminals should be given up on. There is no saving or reforming such a system. An election boycott and riots in the street are a preferable choice as far as I'm concerned.
What are you doing about electoral reform, I'm curious
I'm not doing shit about electoral reform. I would like to understand exactly the kind of optimism it takes to believe that meaningful electoral reform is a real possibility. Give me your realistic roadmap to a materially better system, accomplished through reforming the current one. I don't expect a detailed plan, but what are the broad strokes?
So you refuse to engage in the system and refuse to try to replace it? What the fuck are you doing here complaining? You have no right to complain, you're literally doing nothing and watching the ship sink around you and shouting "hey! This sucks! I sure wish it was different!" How about you help fix it? Literally what are you doing like why would you do this you're wasting everyone's time
Well? We're waiting.
They’re about choosing the lesser of two evils. That’s important to remember.
Which is why evil always wins.
So you base your voting decision on an abstracted philosophical argument? Maybe take a good look at the US voting system and ask yourself what happens when Trump wins because people like you upheld their "principles".
I don't understand why it is so hard to grasp that opposition to an ongoing genocide is not "an abstracted philosophical argument". Wake the fuck up. It's real, and it's happening right now. The guy you insist I vote for is angry at the idea that anyone (not even himself) be held criminally responsible!
The only other option is indefinitely worse, so the responsible thing to do is voting for Biden. You can still oppose the war on Gaza. Protest it. Be loud. Fight to change the shitty undemocratic voting system of the US. Not voting Biden will not save a single life in Gaza. You are the one who needs to wake up.
It'a abstract because you aren't considering the consequences of your vote. Here are your choices:
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Genocide, unions, anti-monopoly actions, infrastructure, healthcare, loan forgiveness, an excellent cabinet, and some other things that I would consider generally good
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Genocide, insurrection, corruption, hypocrisy, and literally so many negative things to list that I'm not capable of enumerating even a fraction of the total list
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Either of the above is fine, pick whichever
Those are your ONLY three options. It does not matter why you choose one. It does not matter what you believe, what principles you hold, or what you personally would do as president. The future that we find ourselves in comes down to this choice and this choice only. I cannot understand how a good person who understands this would make the wrong choice, so my goal is to make it as easy to understand this as possible.
Your argument is the abstract one. You are laying out what I think are mostly bullshit choices, based on hypotheticals and assumptions (abstract). I am talking about what is happening right now (not abstract).
I am definitely not going to get drawn into the finer points of what Biden has or hasn't done or even more lamely, what he might or mightn't do, but I will say this: I do not give one fuck about anything in your list compared to genocide. Like are you for real? Genocide but at least some loan forgiveness? Gross.
You basically just said you don't care about the future and are only concerned with the present if it relates to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. You don't care about how your inaction will affect any other topic. You're like a fucking horse with blinders on.
The options are genocide and loan forgiveness, or genocide and no loan forgiveness. Also nice job picking the least important item in that list.
Nice job including it in the list. I think it is sick to try to bribe me (with any of those things) into supporting genocide. Also, be honest with yourself, out of all those things you listed do you genuinely think Biden would somehow deliver on any of them (except the genocide)?
Nice job including it in the list.
I mean, I think it's cool and good, but it was still lame to downplay the importance of the choice of your vote by choosing it.
bribe
How
supporting genocide
Again, I've laid out in great detail why I think it's the least genocide-supportive action possible for us to make at this time* and therefore why it is explicitly the opposite of supporting genocide.
* voting + direct action would be better, but since that includes voting, it doesn't matter for my point here
Also, be honest with yourself, out of all those things you listed do you genuinely think Biden would somehow deliver on any of them (except the genocide)?
I really don't want to have to keep a list, because I think this stuff is obvious, but I feel like at this point I should.
Unions: Biden is the most pro-union president in history. Example:
"Nearly all the major labor unions have endorsed Mr. Biden. The board of the AFL-CIO, which represents 60 unions and has over 12 million members, was one of the first to endorse him in June last year, 17 months before the general election.
Over 30 organized national labor groups have endorsed Mr. Biden, including LiUNA, a construction workers union with many Latino and Black members, and the United Auto Workers (UAW). Many endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020, and exit polling shows he won 56% of union households nationwide, compared to 40% for Trump, nearly double 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's support."
Anti-monopoly actions: Within about one week, the following anti-corporate actions occurred:
These aren't all anti-monopoly per se but I had this list on hand and it's similar enough imo
Infrastructure: See the infrastructure bill and its effects
Loan forgiveness: This happens like twice a month, most recently today!
An excellent cabinet: idk literally just google them. I'm not explaining how what we have now is better than Betsy DeVos & Co. Biden picked a cabinet and he chose well.
And many other good things that aren't exciting but are extremely important (here's the most recent Biden article I've seen): https://lemmy.world/post/15676395
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Yeah, I do, like harm reduction. Which is what a vote for Biden is. I'm not willing to accelerate the situation in the middle East, climate change, pollution and erosion of rights to make an ineffective point.
Ah but I hear you say Biden isn't perfect, no the fuck he isn't but we're that much further from the left thanks to last time we tried this in 2016.
Hillary Clinton was campaigning on (and truly did believe given her track record) in universal healthcare. How exactly have we moved to the left?
I'm not saying she would have moved us to the left I'm saying Donald Trump moved us to the right.
So that's Biden's excuse for being to the right of Hillary?
When you run against an incumbent (Trump) you get a center candidate and platform.
None but that's a different argument not the one at hand.
I know what "not perfect" looks like. Full-throated support of a genocide is more than a difference of opinion. Will anyone be left alive in Gaza by the time of our election? I can't take the idea of campaigning for genocide as a form of "harm reduction".
So what is your alternative? Do nothing and let even more genocide happen? Vote 3rd party and pretend you did more than nothing by voting for someone that is statistically impossible to win?
Its an honest question, because you're clearly against harm reduction at all. If your principles don't allow you to engage in harm reduction, what is your better solution? Doom posting on the internet till the election?
The ball's entirely in Biden's court. The alternative is him doing an about face and doing what's right. Notice how none of the moderates act like this is even an option. No, it is us, the voter who must compromise on our morals, not the person in charge who needs the vote.
When election day comes, there are only two realistic candidates. If Biden is still in support of Israel at that time, your effective choices are "Genocide", "Much More Genocide", or "I don't care if there is more genocide"
Welcome to the political process. You want to be an innocent? Find yourself an autocrat willing to take responsibility for your participation in society. The rest of us will deal with the ugly process of wielding political power as citizens.
I voted for the Democrats last time. They don't deserve my vote this time. I was under the illusion that they would be plugging up all the holes in the system so that we could move forward from this fascist nightmare. Instead, they seem to be ceding ground to the fascists.
I genuinely 100% think that Democrats would much prefer Donald Trump's victory than a progressive platform.
I genuinely 100% think that Democrats would much prefer Donald Trump’s victory than a progressive platform.
I don't suppose you've ever considered that the Democrats think that the US electorate isn't as far left as the average Lemmy user?
Wonderful. If they don't need the far left voters, then what exactly is the problem?
Let's see how that strategy plays out.
If they don’t need the far left voters, then what exactly is the problem?
The problem is that some 48% of the electorate is ready to elect a fascist, and we're sitting at 52% of a coalition that doesn't agree on a single goddamn thing. And apparently, the smallest, leftmost wing of this coalition is beginning to flirt with the idea of "Just let the fascist win", despite the fact that they are, nominally (but apparently not in actuality, as they seem ready to pop champagne bottles at the ushering in of a fascist age) the furthest from the fascist.
If the alternative to genocide is more genocide, then we are in a failed state for all relevant purposes. I cannot abide the concept of "harm reduction" being applied to voting for genocide (the supreme crime). If I am against harm reduction, then it follows that you are for genocide. Do you see how that works?
The election is nearly 6 months away, so we both have time to think and do a lot of stuff. The world changes around us everyday. Maybe Trump will have a heart attack and die. Maybe Biden will kill himself out of guilt. Who knows? Maybe I'll keep reading headlines about Biden reaffirming his commitment to genocide, and posts from pugjesus about how dumb (or Russian) I must be for not recognizing how cool Joe actually i.
I hope that answers your question, and I have one for you: Imagine you convince someone like me to vote for Joe, and together we all post pro-Joe content, and we all vote real hard for him in November, and he still doesn't quite pull it off. Even best case it's basically a coin toss. What are you planning to do then? I mean, it will be the end of democracy, the new era of fascism and terror. Do you have plans (and means) to leave the country with your loved ones? Do you plan to stay and fight to protect your friends and neighbors? Will you just kind of muddle on going to work and voting? I don't need your answer as much as I need you to think seriously about it, but I am curious. What preparations are you making for the worst case scenario?
Maybe I’ll keep reading headlines about Biden reaffirming his commitment to genocide, and posts from pugjesus about how dumb (or Russian) I must be for not recognizing how cool Joe actually i.
Sorry that being confronted with the consequences of your decisions is so distressing to you. It would be so nice if you could show Mean Ol' Joe how very, very cross you are with him without having to think about the millions who will suffer under a Trump regime, or the additional aid to Israeli genocide that would result in.
It's much nicer when you can plug your ears and not listen to the screams of the genocides you're enabling, isn't it?
"It's much nicer when you can plug your ears and not listen to the screams of the genocides you're enabling, isn't it?"
It'll be so fun when I'm going to the death camps and you're safe and sound in your suburban home, listening to the news reports on the radio. 😊
You think that's what will happen to you because that's what you're supporting in Gaza right now.
I think that's what will happen to me because the opposition is openly fascist, and people like you are doing their damndest to see a fascist regime elected here because you hate the grotesque foreign policy that has been established over the past 50 years.
Like, it's not something that is unreasonable to see as fucking grotesque; it's only unreasonable to demand that fascism be implemented here - not in the name of stopping the support of genocidaires in our foreign policy, but in the name of intensifying it. Just straight up saying "Yes, I want the greater evil, in all possible areas".
For some reason, this endorsement of the mass murder of Palestinians AND American minorities makes an alarming number of self-proclaimed leftists feel good about themselves.
Don’t they understand that under Trump, things will be much worse?
Under Trump, things were much better. Housing was much more affordable relative to wages. Food was much cheaper. Inflation was much lower. Illegal immigration was much lower. People are used to politicians lying to them, so they believe what they see and experience. That's why Trump is now projected to win.
There were also riots in the streets, huge companies going out of business and massive layoffs, family farms going under because of soybean tariffs, and a massive pandemic where the federal government was confiscating PPE and selling it to Trump's friends. All the while the president of the country was too fucking busy calling Rosie O'Donnell fat on Twitter to care.
Yeah shit was totally better back then.