You choose, even when you don't vote
You choose, even when you don't vote
https://midwest.social/post/18536008
Edit of yesterday's meme with accounted for non-voters
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"In this example, your options are:
A. Voting for Hitler. (Hitler wins)
B. Voting for Super Hitler. (Super Hitler wins)
C. Voting 3rd party (Super Hitler wins)
D. Not voting (Super Hitler wins)"
Me: Ok, those options suck, but 'A' I guess?
"OMG, wow, advocating voting for Hitler? Literal fascist."
I can't believe I have to say this, but "being literally Hitler" should be automatically disqualifying. You should not, under literally any circumstances, support Hitler.
This should not be controversial.
It isn't controversial, but voting isn't the same as supporting.
Nowhere in this scenario between Hitler and Super Hitler would I support Hitler, but I would still vote for Hitler out of the two because it would lead to best results out of the possible outcomes at that time.
Your pearl-clutching is saying you're equally fine with both Hitler and Super Hitler, which is objectively worse.
Why are you voting at all? Haven't you figured out yet that elections are a circus designed to make you think you have a choice? How have billions of people been convinced that playing by rules established by 'them' is going to work to benefit justice? Who counts the votes? The very same people you might be voting against command the ones counting the vote. If the electorate is not separate from and superior to the political power, then an election is a farce no matter who votes, and no matter who wins.
All the candidates are Adolf. All the candidates are always Adolf. Adolf Senior, Adolf Junior, Adolf Lite, Fuzzy Adolf, Slimy Adolf, Orange Adolf, Busty Adolf, Regal Adolf, Caesar Adolf, Genghis Adolf, Pope Adolf, King Adolf, Queen Adolf, etc., yada, yada, yada .....
These days it seems that Godwin's Law has been heavy-dosing steroids and meth. Adolf died 70 years ago and went to seed. Now we have 100 thousand Adolfos all in cahoots.
Voting from the pool of candidates chosen, groomed, and funded by the real rulers, is literally slaves voting for the less evil of pre-approved masters.
VOTE HARDER.
If for no other reason, then because the election gives an opportunity to advocate for a socialist platform and ideals. According to Lenin, socialists have a responsibility to participate in bourgeois elections until the people have given up on them and stopped paying attention to them.
Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
Our culture considers how you vote to be the defining aspect of your political character. Voting for a specific candidate makes people feel more inclined to defend that candidate's actions. Not voting promotes disengagement from politics altogether. Moreover, a party like PSL can use the attention it gets from the election to promote itself which it can then use to organize in other ways beyond elections.
voting isn’t the same as supporting.
Yes it is, and it's insanity or butchering of the English language to suggest otherwise.
Your pearl-clutching is saying you’re equally fine with both Hitler and Super Hitler
I am equally fine with Hitler and Super-Hitler, which is to say, not fine at all with either of them. They are both fundamentally unacceptable and I would never vote for or support either of them. I am as opposed to both of them as it is possible to be opposed to.
which is objectively worse.
You either have no understanding of what the word "objectively" means or no understanding of philosophy or politics.
"Objectively" in that in the same situation (i.e. being the deciding vote between Hitler and Super Hitler) you would decide to not vote, allowing Super Hitler to win and I would Vote to have Hitler win.
Super Hitler is objectively worse than Hitler because one is made up and the other is dead, so what are you really arguing with me for?
Lesser-evilism is not objectively correct. It is an ideology, a specific strategy and belief system, and one that is supported by neither reason nor evidence.
Your willingness to potentially support Hitler is what destroys the chance of a non-Hitler candidate winning. It also betrays the people Hitler will harm and who find supporting him completely unconscionable and destroys trust. Voting for Hitler is not a tool that you should have at all in your toolbox of tactics, and if I saw that someone had it there, as I'm seeing now, then I would be extremely concerned and suspicious of them.
I shudder to think what other tools and tactics you're prepared to use if you manage to convince yourself it's a "lesser evil" than the alternative. Unexamined consequentialism is an abhorrent belief system.
Lesser-evilism is not correct, however it's the system we currently have.
It's the natural result of a system with a single vote. You might be able to change enough people's minds to impact a single election, but the system will default back to a two-party system eventually. That is not an ideology you can break people out of, it is simply how the system works.
It sure would be nice to vote FOR someone instead of AGAINST someone else, but that's not a choice we have the luxury of making right now. We have to change the system first before that has a chance of succeeding. Otherwise it's just helping elect Super Hitler.
No, it is not. First-Past-the-Post is the system we have. Lesser-evilism is a specific ideology.
Suppose that a gunman has taken 5 people hostage, and gives you a choice. You can either kill one of them for him, and he says he'll let the rest go, or he will kill all of them himself. The ideology of lesser-evilism says that you should do it. But there are plenty of other belief systems that say you shouldn't. Your ideology of lesser-evilism, which you present as an inevitability, is actually a specific philosophical position, and one that is frankly complete nonsense. But regardless, it is impossible to critically examine any ideology if we cannot identify the fact that it is an ideology.
What if you execute a hostage, and then the gunman says, "Great, you work for me now, my first order is to gather up more hostages so I can do this again. If you don't, I'll kill twice as many people." Is that still ethical? That is what your ideology implies.
What if five people are dying and need transplants, and one innocent person happens to have the exact organs all five of them need to live? Is it ethical to kill them? That is what your ideology implies.
You are completely writing off contrary ideologies and belief systems without even recognizing that they exist, while presenting your own unexamined and indefensible ideology as objectively true and not even an ideology.
None of these examples are government elections, which is the only place where I'm using this ideology.
That's not how logic works. If you believe that lesser evilism is a valid ideology, then you don't get to just arbitrarily exclude the natural conclusions of that ideology whenever they're inconvenient to you. At that point, you should just say, "I'm voting for Kamala because I feel like it" without appealing to lesser evilism, because by presenting lesser evilism as a reason to vote for Kamala, you're arguing that because lesser evilism is true in general, it should be applied in this specific situation. You can't then go back and say, "lesser evilism isn't actually true in general" without undermining that whole argument.
It seems like you expect me to vehemently defend this ideology "in general" when I told you it's only for specific circumstances because of the way the system has been rigged since before we were born.
It's also a smart move to double down bets in specific situations in Vegas, but I'm not going to defend always doing that "in general". Context matters, and you seem to be ignoring the fascist in the room.