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[-] frisbird@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

So how did people that go against what the elites want get into power?

You mean a handful of representatives and handful of senators? It's called tokenization and appeasement.

I’m saying that’s how a democracy works you fucking idiot, if the majority of voters feel strongly about something politicians will promise it to secure their votes. Please for the love of god read a book.

That's what I've been asking you to do. Because you're empirically wrong. Princeton did a huge report on this. It is not the case that when the majority of voters feel strongly about something politicians will DO anything about it. Sure they'll promise it, but the promises empirically have no follow through.

Instead, consistently what we have seen is when a minority of people are willing to disrupt life, THAT'S when politicians will actually do something. Again, Richard Nixon did absolutely nothing because the voters wanted it. He was forced by the violence on the ground by a minority of activists to give them concessions. And then to DOUBLY PROVE that voting isn't the path, he then disenfranchised entire generations of people by launching the war on drugs, criminalizing cannabis and heroin specifically to target the people who were gaining traction, and every single president and congress after him supported the program.

Women's suffrage was never earned by a majority of people voting. They couldn't even vote. The fact that they got suffrage flies directly in the face of your point that people who didn't vote Harris because of genocide demonstrated that because they won't vote then the party can ignore them. I mean, it's so obvious how contradictory your position is. Your cognitive dissonance is really fucking with your ability to reason.

Yet a fucking gain, you are pushing your dumb fucking false dichotomy that because activism works that means voting is pointless

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that voting is pointless and you try to gave examples of how voting wasn't pointless and I showed how every single one of them was due to activism, and then showed the women's suffrage was the proof that voting wasn't even needed. Activism is both necessary and sufficient. Voting, empirically, is neither necessary nor sufficient.

If a democrat being elected stops even a single bomb, then it’s worth doing.

Again, I don't actually think there's cause and effect here. The military is driven by the bi-partisan consensus of global dominance. It's absolutely true that under Biden fewer bombs were dropped. But it's not reasonable to conclude from a single data point that this means Democrats reduce bomb droppings. None of the historical data supports it. Hell, the Democrats ran Operation Paperclip! There is no evidence that Democrats drop less bombs and insisting that just because for one term it was true then that means it will always be true doesn't make any sense.

And again, using this logic, Trump is deporting fewer people than Obama did so he represents harm reduction. I know you don't want to agree to that, I don't want to agree to it either. My point is not to say that Trump is or isn't harm reduction but that the strategy of lesser evil voting is both morally and logically bankrupt.

The whole pointless fucking war with Iran, the invasion of Lebanon are fucking proof of that

Again, you can't use Biden's exceptional presidency as proof when all historical proof refutes you. What Trump has done in Iran is far less damaging than what Obama and Hillary did in Libya, but Clinton did in Yugoslavia, what Truman did in Korea, what Johnson did in Vietnam. You have got to stop pretending that history started in 2020.

As I’ve mentioned Trump stripped healthcare from 1.6m Americans, that is harm that wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t get elected

So I was mistaken about this. I thought you were referring to the end of federal subsidies for the ACA. What you're actually talking about is the defunding of Medicaid. The defunding of Medicaid was indeed a classic Republican pattern of reducing entitlements (with some exceptions) and reducing entitlements generally always causes harm. Yes. This is a valid point, that voting for Ds, generally speaking will expand entitlements and social safety nets. They tend to cock it up a lot, like they did by promising single payer and then abandoning the will of the voters and creating the ACA, but this form of harm reduction is true.

It's not enough for me to say that we should vote for genocidaires so long as they expand our entitlements at home. It used to be when I was younger and didn't understand the role the US plays in the world. It's not anymore. If they want my vote, they're going to have to reduce the military, reduce the prisons, and end support for Israel.

[-] gmtom@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

You mean a handful of representatives and handful of senators? It's called tokenization and appeasement.

Ah classic "yes you proved my entire point wrong with your examples, but they don't count because I said so"

Literally just maga but with different talking points, lmao.

[-] frisbird@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Way to not engage with any of the other content in the comment including the empirical evidence and focusing on your shallow understanding of the world to assert that it's me acting in bad faith.

[-] gmtom@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Because you just keep pretending I'm arguing something I'm not and pushing the idea that activism working means voting doesn't.

Also you've already said you agree with me, so there's no point addressing any of your other nonsense. Sorry I'm not going to "debate" you any more.

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
278 points (100.0% liked)

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