Turns out, if you're further left than either realistic candidate (because FPTP), it makes it really easy to figure out who you should vote for. "I wonder if I should vote for the person who's not left enough for my liking, or the one is so far beyond that as to be the diametric opposite of left. Whatever shall I do?"
Well, the electoral college isn't actually FPTP, it's even worse than that.
You’re not wrong. I was keeping it simple.
eh. one thing is to choose a candidate who seem less bad somehow, another is to be an actual liberal.
Yeah, the "you're voting for genocide" argument is also ridiculous, as the choices essentially boil down to:
🔲 One genocide (with a potential of partial mitigation)
🔲 2+ genocides (and the one being even worse)
🔲 Don't care (in green)
🔲 Don't care (in yellow)etc.
Genocide is bad. That should not be a controversial statement. I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose, and I will use my other energy to advocate for less (and hopefully zero) genocide.
You don't have to like that fact. I certainly don't like it. But this is exactly what harm reduction looks like.
This is just a monstrous reframing of a bipartisan genocide. Voting dem or voting rep is a vote for genocide, full stop, because they support the same genocide to the same magnitude, materially. Pretending Dems are better because genocide makes some of their voterbase sad is wrong.
I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose
Then vote Greens or PSL.
Both candidates fall under the latter category. An AG that was a prosecutor with a history of perpetuating the war on drugs and arguing in court innocent men should stay imprisoned because prison labor is good for the economy, who was also vice president to one of the most right wing men ever elected?
That's literally the state half of the fascist alignment of corporate and state power.
I don't understand how the Democrats in USA can be considered left-wing. Sure, they are more left than the Republicans, but in my eyes they certainly not left-wing.
I don’t know what country you are from or how your voting system works. But I will guess that your country has many parties and after the election, a governing coalition is formed.
In the US voting system, similar parties get punished by stealing votes from each other. So, in effect, we have to form our coalitions before the election and choose the single candidate that will stand for all of us. So, you can think of the Democratic Party as the Democratic Coalition, made up of some truly left-wing factions, as well as some not very left-wing or even centrist factions, and so our candidate will be much more watered down than what you’d see in a different system.
I am from Sweden. You are correct that my country has many different parties that together form a governing coalition.
Thank you for making it a bit clearer to me! I appreciate it.
There are also Right-wing factions in the "Democratic coalition" you mention like The Cheney's.
Calling the democratic party a "coalition" is extremely generous. It's historically been a corrupt patronage network since Van Buren and any attempt to make it represent the will of its voters is thwarted internally. Its history is a graveyard of progressive movements.
You said it yourself, they are less far-right than Republicans, so Liberals get to pretend they are punks and rebels despite supporting the status quo.
Easy. We set the FBI on all the actual leftists decades ago. So the movement is having to slowly rebuild itself in the US. As a result Progressives are the farthest left things most Americans have experience with.
basically, the US is a one party system, but it has two parties
"The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them." - Julius Nyerere
In the American sensibilities, the Democrats are left wing.
I know we've shat on Americans too many times that Democrats are not leftists and Republicans are far-right, but there is a place and time for doing so and I learned to cut Americans some slack. Americans simply have different Overton window because of different history and culture (I have explained before as to why, but I cannot be bothered to write another wall of text about it). Other countries don't even follow a left and right political dichotomy. Many places, especially in developing countries, vote on personalities than policies. But few of us crap on people from developing countries for not following policy-based discourse, or not following the European-originated sensibilities of "left or right" politics.
Americans are heavily propagandized and are politically illiterate. Generally speaking, they do not even know there is a world beyond "liberal" (Democrat) and "conservative" (GOP). It is considered nerdy and wonkish to even know very much about the two party bourgeois electoral system. So their sensibilities only mean as much as propaganda has eliminated any possibility of political education, let alone capacity for action in solidarity with humanity (even when empathy is there, correct analysis is not) for the vast majority of them. That requires developing projects dedicated to political organization and education outside and away from the two bourgeois parties.
Americans should only be cut slack to the extent that they are ignorant. They should not be cut slack for their knowing embrace of war, domination, racism, and so on. And when you simply inform them of the existence of such things, they will rapidly educate you in their commitment to the project. Perhaps they will momentarily feel bad, but most of the time they will quickly find a psychological salve for cognitive dissonance, lest they act outside of the tracks laid down for them by reactionary and genocidal capital. Our work on the left is to peel off more and more from those tracks and turn them into fellow track-peelers, this is naturally an opportunity for exponential growth if we can consistentlu break past what keeps them on-track.
We don't currently have our own special political spectrum.
We can make a new one for you so you can feel better about this whole situation. Let's call it the "the imperial political spectrum". I'd be happy with that solution. Then you can say you're left on the imperial political spectrum and it's all good.
Because American politics is weird and partisan a f.
Anything even remotely left will get you labelled a Commie or tankie by the right, while anything remotely right will get you labelled a Nazi by the left.
The US has two parties: center-right and far right.
surely if you enable a genocide that makes you extreme right right? so it's extreme right and extreme right
Eh, not sure it's got anything to do with the political spectrum anymore. At this point I'm not sure what to call it but the US and allies' obsession for maintaining ties with Israel no matter what feels divorced from... Well, a lot of things, really. But among them the left/right spectrum.
I can't talk much. Canada is also selling Israel the supplies they use to do their mass murdering.
Liberal extreme right and authoritarian extrem right.
(This is a lie internet lefties tell each other)
No, this is literally where the U.S. falls on a global political spectrum. The Democrats would be considered center-right in most other nations. Even by their own historical standards, they're center right; if you took a Democrat from 1975 and transported them to 1995, they'd ask you why the party had adopted the Republicans' fiscal policies.
Well, from where you're standing, everyone's a leftie.
The Left begins with anti-capitalism. If you aren't against capitalism, you aren't left.
Libs are seething at this absolute correct take. If you're pro free market, you're a liberal and thats as 'left' as you'll ever be.
Libs are seething, period.
I suppose you could be a free-market type of market socialist? Heavily doubt its common though
That's actually a really good layman's explanation. I'm going to use that combined with, "you're not a capitalist just because you support them. Capitalists are the people who own the capital."
Won’t even draw a hard line at genocide
It sucks. Liberals will be blaming Arab Americans going to Jill Stein if Harris loses, rather than Harris and Biden, just you wait.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were ridiculously handsome dudes
Sankara too, holy moly
when they say they're left, but then they're authoritarian
Marx and Engels were called "authoritarian" so frequently by their contemporaries that Engels wrote On Authority. What's considered "authoritarian" is a moving target, an arbitrary line in the sand just for people who succeed in revolution, or at least in throwing off western Imperialist powers.
If your argument is that Marxism isn't Leftist then that's hilarious
I mean, she is prettier than Marx. Which one did you want to date?
I'm sorry but like, look at his beard. I'd date Marx
That is a pretty good reason.
sankara and luxembourg are both 10/10s
Who are the bottom two people on the left side?
Thomas Sankara, a Marxist-Leninist who liberated Burkina Faso, and Rosa Luxemburg, of Reform or Revolution fame.
Thomas Sankara and Rosa Luxemburg
I'd like to see memes that are embracing the left but with a clear cut against authoritarianism. This one is too ambiguous.
Radicalization vs. sensibility
Get your nasty political memes out of here
