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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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Yeah, because context matters. The political environment when you're in the middle of the general election and infighting accomplishes fuck-all except to help the enemy is entirety different from the one when it's time to find new primary candidates and there's an opportunity for dissent to actually serve a useful purpose.
Weird how attempting to control peoples opinions online didn’t win Harris the presidency then.
Maybe the focus should’ve been on earnestly listening to concerns from the leftists under the umbrella instead of silencing them.
Well said!
IT WAS TOO FUCKING LATE FOR THAT! Harris was the candidate. End of. There was zero possibility of replacing her with somebody more leftist. The choices were only "vote for Harris" or "help Trump." That's it.
Game theory is MATH, not an opinion!
Did you think I wanted that class traitor prosecutor bitch either?! Fuck, no! But, being someone who isn't a goddamn drooling moron, I realized that Trump was even worse and held my nose. That's how the system works, and it does not care how much you or I both hate it.
Nobody was trying to "control people's opinions;" we were trying to stop you from making an objective mathematical error that would destroy us all.
It wasn’t too fucking late for Harris to change messaging though.
You failed then.
Now you are seeing how it was back then. Imagine the guy you're responding to, and 100 more just like him ganging up on ya. And just as angry, stubborn, and mad as he is.
That's how it was back then. lolol
It’s like I never left Reddit lol
Harris is a neoliberal piece of shit. She wasn't going to change, no matter how much any of us whined or threatened to withhold our votes over it!
You could either understand that and work to reduce harm, or fuck up and ruin everyone's lives because you were too stubborn or stupid to accept factual reality.
This is what these people constantly ignore. They reply by calling us stupid shit like "blueMAGA" or a liberal, and it usually terminates the conversation. They know exactly what they are doing.
When in reality, I can only speak for myself, I fucking hate the current Democratic party. Like 99% of them are absolute trash.
That doesn't mean I'm not going to call you out when you're online working overtime to convince left leaning voters in October 2024 not to vote.
But no, we're just dirty liberals who love the DNC and are incapable of criticizing them (just be sure not to check comment history).
Or vote third party. Which I proudly did. And will do again unless the Democrats stop fucking shit up.
So why didn't you speak up? Was it because you knew Lemmy would censor you? Do you think it's right to censor someone for what you just said?
The system is like that because you refuse to support third-party support. By you refusing to validate third parties, they don't have the pull they should have. But if EVERYONE voted third party, guess what? Shit would start to change. You are actually part of the problem, not the solution.
And how did that work out for you? What ended up happening?
That's a lie. "Vote third party" is a subset of "help Trump."
grue, I dont vote for genociders, full stop. Harris was going to continue Bidens support of zionism, thats just a fact. If we must literally feed the bodies of innocents and children into the gears of our "democracy" or it explodes, I say let it explode ASAP, because you'll just be voting for more genocide next election too, wont you.
Have the zionists relinquished their hold on the democratic party? No. Have the dem leaders kicked them out? No.
Maybe if you took the time to take a stand on that too our leaders would see they cant win by taking that position. Your "harm minimization" is short term thinking and just delays the inevitable. Sooner or later this has to happen, so lets do it now instead of after we have even more blood on our hands. You're just spending other people lives to stall for time.
The blood is on your hands anyway, because you had the chance to reduce harm and refused. In fact, it has accelerated and spread because of the actions of people like you.
I knew this would happen. I warned people like you that this would happen. And the last year has proven me correct.
You can deny it all you want, but that doesn't change reality.
Don't use the words game theory and harm reduction. You clearly don't know anything about either.
You are literally ignoring all of game theory based around games with repeated plays. Why? Because it shows the opposite strategy then what you are promoting works better.
When people point out that your vaunted game theory proves you wrong, that is when the phrase harm reduction comes out so you don't have to argue against people correctly pointing out that your strategy fails in the long term.
It's not clever, nor is it subtle.
How was their game theory proven wrong? Voting third party is part of the original calculation. Because of the first past the post system in the US, voting third party in a general election is throwing away your vote. In 2024, it was a spoiler for the Democrats. So it helped Trump. That's game theory.
The aspect of game theory people who espouse it as their rational for voting blue no matter who only applies to games that occur only once.
What strategy wins in the long term over multiple plays is exactly opposite what they espouse and is closer, though not entirely, the strategy espoused by the people they argue against.
We have elections on a repeated basis.
Well said, brother.
~~Thanks for proving my point. I bet ya miss the lemmy times right before the 2024 election, huh? I bet you hate seeing how many people are pro-third party these days! lolol~~ EDIT: A little too much snark, but poster is definitely showing how angry some people can be when it comes to third-party talk.
No, I don't. Why? Because NOW is the time that we SHOULD be trying to replace the neoliberals!
Could you quit your trolling for just a goddamn second and actually COMPREHEND what I've been writing?!
Then maybe you should stop being pissed off and yelling at people who support other parties.
So disagreeing with you is "trolling"?! I don't think that word means what you think it means.
No, this is trolling:
It's telling that you never quote yourself when recounting how 'unfairly' you were treated.
Meh, fair point. I did go a little far with that line. I'll edit.
But I would love your thoughts on seeing so many people being much more open to third parties on Lemmy now. Because the tide is def turning on that subject.
It's great! Because now is the appropriate time for it. Now is the time it can actually work instead of screwing all of us over.
Cool. That means we have to vote for them in elections though. All elections. Even 2028.
Also, the bigger point is that even if everyone who voted third party in 2024 would have voted Harris, she still would have lost. That's how big the margin of her loss was. Trump didn't win because people voted third party.
No, it doesn't mean that at all. You have to vote strategically within the system that exists. You have to vote for progressives in primaries and then still hold your nose and vote for the best candidate that can actually win in general elections (which is not the third party candidate, except in some down-ballot races), until there are enough progressives to actually get the voting reform passed. Then, and only then, will it be viable to vote third party as a matter of straight preference.
(And even then, the need to vote tactically will never be eliminated entirely, BTW.)
The anti-Harris propaganda also discouraged people from voting at all.
What primaries? No one voted for Harris in any 2024 primaries.
Hell, then DNC told States that allowed other candidates in the primary ballots that they wouldn't be counted.
There was no fucking primary. Funny how the ignorant that like to write about game theory like to point to the non-existent primaries as the only appropriate time to try to push the party to the left.
Nope. Not me. Imma vote for whoever I want, whenever I want.
Guess Dems should have picked a better candidate who would have overcome that. You all lost against Trump. Trump!! Of all people! lol
No, we lost against Trump. Me and you. Because you've comprehensively fucked your own future, too, even if you haven't figured it out yet.
Pretending you are separate from the consequences is an incredible expression of privilege.
I think deep down, they know it but their ego isn't allowing them to accept it because then that means they need to take responsibility
No, just you. My future hasn't been fucked at all. I've been a prepper since before there was even a word for it.
See, I didn't trust either side, so I made the necessary changes to my life that made it so I'm untouchable. Started doing several elections ago. Way up here north in the remote interior. I own my own land, my house, and my rigs outright, all paid off. I have zero debt. I've got enough saved up that I don't need to work ever again. I haven't had to work a job for the last 6 years.
I live in an unorganized borough with basically no property taxes. I'm zero debt and fully off-grid. Well water right on my property, plus rainwater and snowmelt catchment for backup, we get plenty of precip up here. I run a solid garden (made my own greenhouses to extend seasons), keep chickens, goats, and a few other animals. Me and my gf hunt and fish to fill the freezer. Around here we eat moose, deer, salmon, whatever the fuck is in season. Solar panels and battery bank power everything, with propane for backup and lotsa wood for heat when needed.
My neighbors are all cut from the same cloth. All of us are independent, trustworthy folks living the exact same way. We can't depend on anyone else to bail us out anyway. lol
Guy, nothing you or Trump or the Democrats or any politician say or do down there has any effect on me or my life whatsoever.
You can't even drive to where I am. Only fly in, take the railroad flagstop, boat, or snowmachine depending on the season. That's why the guy trying to doxx me had such a tough time of it.
Picture an Amish-style self-sufficient life but Alaska-rugged, non-religious, and I still run tech like solar, batteries, and satellite internet where it actually helps. Politics doesn't touch any of this. Never has, never will.
I'm as free as one can be in the current world. And most aren't tough enough to even worry about trying to change that. It's fucking awesome!! :)
None of that is going to stop ICE gestapo from dragging you off to a concentration camp for being a leftist.
lololol ICE doesn't do that. If they did, there would be no one left on Lemmy! I was born a raised in the US, and my family was too, for generations. Ain't no one coming for me, brother. lol
Besides, ICE wouldn't even be able to find this village. I'd love to see them try to get here! lololol
The party I voted for would have dismantled them. Democrats wouldn't have.
Interesting fact about how Democratic Party has dealt with ICE in the past:
Under President Obama (2009–2017, Democratic administration): Record-high formal removals (“deportations”): The Obama administration carried out more than 3.1 million ICE removals over eight years, with a peak of over 407,000 in fiscal year 2012 alone. An increase of over 70% in criminal removals compared to the final year of the prior (Bush) administration.
Expanded programs: Obama expanded the Bush-era Secure Communities program, which led to more local-federal cooperation for identifying and removing people with criminal records (or sometimes minor offenses). Critics on the left called him “deporter-in-chief” because of the scale.
Under President Biden (2021–January 2025, Democratic administration):
Continued large-scale removals and returns: Through early 2024, the Biden administration had carried out about 1.1 million formal deportations (removals/returns), on pace to match or approach Trump’s first-term totals in similar categories. In addition, there were roughly 3 million Title 42 expulsions at the border (pandemic-era public-health returns, overwhelmingly under Biden).
These are straight from government data and nonpartisan trackers like the Migration Policy Institute and Pew.
So like I said, both parties suck. The party I voted for wouldn't have done that shit. That's why I voted for them, and why I didn't vote republican or democrat. :)
Yet. They're already openly talking about purging 100 million people, and a lot of them would certainly be natural-born citizens.
Irrelevant. It's unfortunate but acceptable for larger numbers of people to be removed, if they have due process and thus actually "deserved" (in the view of the law) to be removed.
What matters is that Trump is using ICE to do things like terrorize brown people's neighborhoods, imprison people in concentration camps en masse without due process, illegally rendition people to foreign prisons, and murder protestors in the street.
Hasn't happened. Won't happen.
Very relevant. You are wondering why so many people are against the Democratic party now. That's one of the reasons. All of this could have been avoided if the Democrats really cared about people and picked good candidates. They lost to Trump TWICE!
Twice! Think about that. You can keep simping for them all you want, but I'll vote for who I want to win. No nose holding for me. :)
They were specifically talking about voting for third party in the 2024 general election. They weren't yelling at people who support other parties.
So do you agree with the censorship we had back then? Do you think it's ok to call people nazis, russians, and racists, just because they didn't support either of the two major parties?
I'm assuming you don't, but that was happening. And not just to me.
Dude, I had a guy DM'ing me telling me he was going to find out where I lived and post it on Lemmy so I could "find out what happens." Even tho that is against pretty much every single instance rule of any instance. All because I didn't think Harris was a great choice and I didn't think she could beat Trump.
Guess what? That guy is still on lemmy, and has a huge fucking list of bad shit in his mod history. But he's still here. Lemmy didn't care at all that he did that, and felt it was fair play, because I said both parties suck. Or as they like to make fun of back then: "bOtH PaRtIeS!"
I don't care what political environment was going on, trying to censor and get rid of people who weren't 100 percent on the Democrat Train back then was wrong.
Not only that, I feel vindicated. I see lots of people openly saying the same stuff now that I was saying then. And now it's not so taboo. But does that mean we're gonna have the same censorship in 2028? And if so, will be ok?
I'm not being snarky, I'd really like your opinion.
First of all, being called out isn't "censorship." You haven't given any examples of being censored (i.e. having your comments deleted by the mods or admins); you've only complained about how other users treated you.
Second, There were exactly two reasons to advocate against voting for Harris, once she was the candidate:
In other words, those labels were accurate because such people were materially helping the nazis, Russians, and racists.
I agree that doxxing you is not okay and that he should've been banned for it.
But you're either confused or not telling the whole story, because there is no such thing as "Lemmy" as a monolithic entity that can have a single opinion like that. You're actually talking about the decision of one admin of one instance, but attempting to crucify everyone on the entire network for it. (Or at least, everyone who doesn't conform to your particular viewpoint, which is a bit ironic for somebody complaining about being censored.)
Because NOW it's appropriate! BACK THEN it was objectively a mistake, and the passage of time does not retroactively change that!
In 2028 -- if we even have free and fair elections at all, because that's how catastrophic your preferred outcome has been! -- I will be there begging, pleading and screaming for you to quit trying to help the fascists by telling people not to vote for the candidate opposing them. And it will continue to NOT BE CENSORSHIP because that's not what censorship is.
Like I am gonna go down that path. I had comments removed, I was banned from multiple communities, some literally said, I was banned for "bOtH sIdEs." Dude, I had people trying to dox me. You'd love me to post proof wouldn't ya? Because then all the doxxing would start to happen again. Nah...thanks, but not thanks.
See above. Also, I realize that Lemmy isn't one person, but I think it's pretty much common knowledge that most of lemmy has the same opinion about lots of things. Just like when people say "The United States thinks..." doesn't actually mean every single person in the US, but what you feel is a vast majority. Same thing, guy.
It was never appropriate to censor differing opinions. Especially on a platform as small as Lemmy. Every single person in Lemmy could have voted for Harris, and it wouldn't have done fuck all to change the election. There just aren't that many people on Lemmy.
You are legit just saying, "Oh, well it was a different time back then..." Think about that. Hmmm, how many people on the wrong side of history have said that about their actions. Think about that.
What makes you think I wanted Trump to win? I didn't vote for him. We have the right to vote for whoever we want to win, regardless of odds or "math." If I wanted Trump to win, I could have voted for him. But I didn't. Because he wasn't my choice. Just because your candidate lost, don't get mad at me.
Even if every single person who voted third party, put their vote towards Harris, she still would have lost. That's how bad the margin was. If you wanna be mad, be mad at the people who didn't vote.
Better yet, be mad at the party you voted for, who chose a lackluster candidate who lost. :)
Sure you can yell if you want. I support your right to do that. I support your right to vote for whoever you want. But shouldn't you support my right to as well? And I don't think yelling at me is censorship. I think removing my posts, trying to brigade downvote me, follow me around on Lemmy downvoting out of spite, and trying supporting efforts to block me is censorship (not as in legal definition).
Thanks for commenting. You providing a great example of how mad people were about going against the tide in those days.
I'm still trying to have a good-faith discussion here, so I'm just going to ignore the top half of your comment.
NO I AM NOT!
I am explaining why the different circumstances at that time were -- or at least, should've been -- relevant to your decision-making.
You refused to vote for the only person who could beat him.
Harris was not "my candidate," and I'm mad at you because your delusional fuck-up helped destroy my children's future! This was not 'just another election' where the other team won. American democracy itself is systematically being dismantled. It is an existential threat that America will not ever recover from if it's not stopped soon (and even then, it's a long shot). I am seriously considering fleeing the country because of people like you! Thousands are dead in Palestine, Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, and the US itself because people like you were asked to do harm reduction and refused!
(Of course you're gonna say something like "it's not my fault, it's MAGA's fault." And sure, I'm even madder at the fascists themselves, obviously. But I'm bothering to argue with you about it instead of them because, unlike them, I think people like you are still capable of seeing the error of your ways.)
Because 'the tide' is literally what wins elections, and so going against it is how you lose!
How so? I already told you that if every single third party voter had voted for Harris, she would still have lost. That's how large the margin of loss was for her. The party that you suppport picked her. And you still support them. That's on you, guy. Not me. As long as you continue to support them and the "No matter who, vote blue" mindset, what reason do they have to change? You are enabling them.
Good luck. I think you'll find out that lots of countries are even more strict than we are when it comes to immigration policies. To find a country that would accept you and that's better or even as good as the US is gonna be tough. It's slim pickings out there.
Discouraging people from voting for Harris didn't just result in them voting third-party, it also resulted in them not voting at all.
They change by having people with better ideology win the primaries. That requires participating in the system, not picking up your ball and going home like a petulant child!
I am painfully aware. Of course, my standards will lower and thus the selection will expand as the US continues to be destroyed. So, thanks, I guess.
No one on Lemmy was discouraged or persuaded to vote for anyone. You don't think Lemmy had their minds made up? lolololol come on now, be real. We all know how Lemmy swings.
Yeah? and now did that work out for you. You all lost against Trump, TWICE! How is that even possible? How did you all fumble the ball so badly?! Twice. Twice!!! lololololol
Yeah? Any good choices you are looking at? I'm in Alaska, so it's practically a different country up here anyway. Ain't nowhere I'd rather be in the world. Except maybe for Norway, but they don't let people stay very easily.
I've been studying French for a while now. The original plan was to buy a sailboat and sail around the world -- hence the French, because France still owns a bunch of tropical islands, like Tahiti and Réunion -- but the pandemic fucked up my finances so now I'm less confident about being able to afford one big enough for my family to live aboard long-term. So, not sure, really. At this point, I might be thinking in terms of "any reasonably-developed country that'd take me" and continue to live a 'normal' urban lifestyle.
See, that's a path I just can't get on. As crazy as I may seem tho, my gf is more more hardcore. She'd be fine without indoor plumbing, but fuck that, I want my fucking hot showers! I'm pretty tough, but she's tougher. She doesn't even go online and wouldn't even check out Lemmy when I was trying to explain it to her. lol
You don't seem crazy for your lifestyle; you seem crazy for your political naivete.
I actually 'get' the whole prepper/homesteading thing, BTW. For me, that lifestyle would be a very close third after "urban/walkable" and "itinerant boat-person," and come way ahead of "typical car-dependent suburbanite."
You opinion. For me, these are my beliefs.
This just isn't true, there absolutely were people here saying no options were good because of the genocide