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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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It’s Biden vs trump, and there’s zero chance I’m voting for a waste-of-carbon republican traitor. Now or at any time in the future. I don’t like our stance on Israel/Palestine, but that is immaterial to the choice I must make.
If it's a choice between one geriatric who endorses genocide and another geriatric who endorses genocide, why should I be voting for either?
I still haven't decided but atm I'm leaning towards 3rd party
This "lesser evil" thing is smoke and mirrors.
Well one endorses genocide, the other wants to enable and cause genocide in our own country. I'd prefer my existence to not be criminalized.
what, are you gay or trans or something? newsflash
you have it 1000x better than the tens of thousands of palestinians getting mutilated and killed. i don't see tens of thousands of gays being mutilated.
you even have it 100x better than the millions of illegals and asylum seekers in this country, of which both candidates flashes their wrinkly middle fingers to
you lose credibility when you exaggerate like this. yes, gays and trans should be treated better. yes, the republicans are more hostile than the dems. but it's not genocide, not even close. if you care so much about genocide you in theory should not be voting for someone who is actually endorsing genocide
first they came for the jews, and i did speak cause i was not a jew... etc
Unfortunately when you have to pick between two lesser evils, even deciding not to choose is a lesser evil. Inaction can sometimes lead to the greatest evil.
Refusing to make a decision doesn't absolve you of culpability for the consequences.
Incorrect. The culpability lies with the moronic corrupt DNC and Democratic party for allowing Biden to run again. He is not electable, not coherent, and barely a hold your nose better choice than Trump.
The same assholes who cheated and broken their rules to put Hillary on the ballot are now forcing Biden to appear for some unknowable reason.
The lesser evil choice was forced by these people.
Frame it however you want, you're not even wrong. It still remains true that, if elected, Trump is going to try to end democracy and replace it with a fascist dictatorship. Biden is Not going to do that.
That's literally it, that's the only relevant factor to consider when deciding if you're going to vote for Biden. I hate him as much as everyone else, but I don't hate Biden more than I hate the idea of getting put in a camp for being trans at some point down the line, and if you do you're shortsighted and you value your ability to feel Morally Pure over actually doing anything.
the modern GOP is a death cult. the modern democrats are a corporate theocracy
choose between psuedo-religious fascism or fascism that lets you wear a little rainbow pin on your shirt
we're headed towards fascism either way. look at europe, already censoring protests. look at our American websites like reddit and twitter, banning and silencing pro-palestinian accounts. they're using the techniques they learned during COVID to "fight misinformation". You cannot stray far from The Narrative
the scope of the information you will receive will continue to get smaller and smaller and more and more people are getting filtered into echo chambers
we need to wake up before it's too late, the noose is tightening. a modern fascist state with the surveillance technology that we have (we can even read minds now) is not going to be pretty. add in an economic crisis, another world war.. it's the 1930s all over again baby.
i wish orwell was around to see it
careful, or jordanlund wil ban you for telling the truth and knowing what fascism is.
i didn't say i'm not going to vote. i'm leaning towards 3rd party.
if enough people voted 3rd party, we could break free from this quasi one-party state we have
in the early 1900s we actually had a socialist/communist presidential candidate get over a million votes
it's possible if people stopped towing the democratic party line. they are not our friends. they will do the bare minimum necessary and oftentimes they won't even do that, just promise to do it. i've been waiting for immigration reform my entire life. NADA is the total value of what has come out from Democrats beside's Obama's DACA which was a stopgap measure. we've had democratic majorities multiple times since then. how many times could they have put abortion into law? how many times could they have gotten in universal healthcare?
it's a joke. they don't actually want to do anything. we have 1 party and 2 factions. business faction A and business faction B.
and now Biden goes out and gives Netanyahu a big hug after Israel announced to the world they were about to slaughter tens of thousands of civilians?
What world do you live in where this is OK? What kind of men does our country breed? It's ridiculous
This right here tells me you haven't been paying attention to the details. There are 0 times in modern history where this was possible. The closest was the first few months of Obama's term, which is when they hammered out Obamacare. And it would've had a public option if not for needing Lieberman for the 60th Senate vote. It was removed in return for his vote.
There were not 60 Democrat senators at the time willing to overturn the filibuster. Some of those senators were further right than Manchin. This is also why abortion couldn't be signed into law -- you didn't have 60 senators in favor of abortion.
That was the only time in modern history where Democrats had 60 Senate votes, and they used it to pass the furthest left healthcare policy possible at the time. And Democrats were eviscerated in the following midterms because it was seen as too far left.
Aside from all that, there is no serious third party in the US. None of them are actually trying to win. It's a grift, they just want your money. If they actually wanted to win, they wouldn't spend so much on the presidency. They'd be building up a powerful ground game to win local across the country, and then take state legislatures and governorships, and then take Congressional seats, and finally the presidency. A president without any allies in Congress is powerless, and all the third parties try to do is win a presidency without any allies in Congress. And then you have their ridiculous beliefs, like WiFi causing cancer and vaccine skepticism.
Third parties align much more closely with Republicans culturally. They trick voters so they can get money and power, they adopt feel-good phrases and policies they'll never enact, and they give anti science conspiracy theorists a platform.
This reply sort of makes the point for the OP though -- the American system appears to be broken at levels so fundamental that it's not worth engaging with, much less saving. It's amazing the evil that people are comfortable shrugging at.
You're not wrong. Our government is inherently conservative in how difficult it is to change things. It's a flaw by design, unfortunately. Still, as broken as it is, there's people I still care about a lot. There's a lot of good people worth fighting for. So even if it's fundamentally broken, I'm going to keep maintaining hope that we can fix the fundamentals. If I'm lucky, maybe my grandkids will get the government that I wish we had.
Not to mention, liberals in the past struggled against worse odds to get just basic dignity. Things must've seemed more hopeless for women's suffragists and civil rights marchers. But through tenacity, they succeeded. Abolitionists succeeded, gay people succeeded -- and then for some fucking reason Republicans decided to bring it back up again when it was seemingly settled. But LGBT rights will succeed once more.
I guess being almost 30, talking about how things were when I was kid isn't quite as impactful as it used to be, but still over my lifetime, a lot has changed with gay rights. In middle school, gay jokes were all insults and slurs. It was all "I love you dude, no homo". Now though? Gay jokes are homoerotic insinuations that you and the guys are all banging. We say "I love you dude, full homo" to laugh at how ridiculous the "no homo" era was.
Where I'm going with this, we've lived to see real progress. And it's progress that was previously unimaginable and just a dream. Civil rights, voting rights, they all seemed like much more hopeless causes in the past. What we face now is no less serious, but certainly less difficult. And we owe it to our forbearers to keep carrying their torch.
I'm about fifteen years older than you, and I think what I'd say is, for the United States -- and a lot of developed countries -- the the majority of progress has been made on issues that matter the least in the grand scheme of things.
Like, I agree, a moderate decline in the number of homophobic jokes from culture is a good thing -- but compared to the lack of action on an existential crisis like the climate, or the active encouragement of wealth hoarding, and the deterioration of your once-vaunted democratic norms...? I mean, that's like saying, "At least my executioners were polite!"
Most of that applies to developed countries generally. For the United States specifically, you folks don't have universal healthcare, you have a tremendous problem with guns, you have tremendous problems with education, you've made precious little progress on race issues, you're backsliding on women's rights, and -- to circle back -- it's not like the actual legal situation of LGBTQ folks is great and getting better.
Basically, from the outside, it looks like your nation's vast resources are being applied to everything except improving the lives of your citizens.
And I know someone will say -- "the United States isn't homogeneous -- it's huge and there are a bunch of different states, so things aren't bad EVERYWHERE! Don't trust the news you see!" But, really, that just makes the United States looks like an orange that is slowly rotting. Some parts of it are still orange and healthy-looking, but vast swaths appear to be deep in decay.
Edit: And I really want to say, this isn't sourced from smugness or intended as an insult. It's despair for your situation. And despair for a lot of the rest of us. Because, unfortunately, the end of the United States as a functional democracy is going to pull the keystone out of the modern world, and drag all the rest of us down with you. I desperately want your country to get its shit together, while simultaneously doubting you're capable of doing so at this late date.
That was well said, and I agree with almost everything. My only disagreements would be extent to which we've made progress on certain issues -- I think race has improved considerably, and the Inflation Reduction Act was the largest government investment into green energy in the West at the time -- but when it comes down to it, I agree it still isn't enough.
The cultural change for being more pro LGBT and in favor of diversity is also more important I think than you're giving credit for. Change is going to come from the people at the end of the day, and a cultural change is necessary for that. I've seen a petrochemical company in a big oil and gas corporation get absolutely terrified: consumers demanded better sustainability, which made companies like Coke pledge to stop using single use plastics by a target date, which made the petrochemical companies start looking for innovations and sustainable improvements, because single use plastics were the lions share of their profit.
I went on a bit of a tangent there, but this is the sort of thing I like to keep in mind. You're spot on with your description of our situation, and even if it isn't happening in every single part of the US, it's still happening overall to a very large degree. Like you said, we need to get our shit together, and it won't be easy. But if I give into despair, then the conclusion is inevitable, and as you pointed out, that sinks more than just the US. To keep hope, I look at silver linings and try to think of historical contexts. And in that regard, I think we can turn things around. I think we're on the cusp of the Republican Party's destruction, and when that happens, we can start putting in serious work to fix our country. That's my hope, at least.
They were eviscerated because it was a lukewarm attempt at healthcare reform.
Obama didn't even dare say the words "universal healthcare" once - something that majority of Americans supported at the time. The words "public option" was only said during his election campaign. As soon as he won the election, he downplayed it and pretended like it wasn't important. He could have easily put pressure on these senators by giving public speeches, running a campaign to try. But he didn't. And nobody will. Because that's not actually something any Democrats as a whole want to pass. It's not just the Manchins. Why aren't the Dems as loud as the Republicans? Why don't they say crazy things? The Republicans get things done. Look at the Supreme Court.
The fact is, the Democrats are a conservative party. They don't want change, they don't want reform.
The 3rd party as we know it today is a joke, I agree. But again, I repeat, there was a real movement in the early 20th century to have a socialist/communist presidential candidate. All it takes today is a real grass-roots movement that spreads online and we could elect someone who actually wants to change things for the better. Look at Trump essentially pulled off a coup against the GOP. Real change for the better is possible, but it will never happen going through the DNC.
And what happened as a result? Did Congress start working on more comprehensive reform? Did we get universal healthcare and a public option?
No. The exact opposite, things moved further right. Now Republicans had to agree for any bill to get passed. Nothing got done, unless Republicans agreed with the bill. Which meant legislation had to become a compromise that the right would accept.
The same people who were unhappy with the lukewarm attempt then continued to not vote for Democrats, because things weren't getting done and bills were further right than they wanted. Was that their goal, in the end? To drag the country to the right? Did they not foresee that if Republicans won, things would become more conservative?
Democrats were eviscerated in 2010 because a bunch of idiots cut off their nose to spite their face. And then they got angry when the consequences of their actions came around.
in deontological ethics, the ethics are in the action itself. ontological ethics imply that the ends may justify the means, and that is not something most people will sign.
This is why I've suggested to others to set up a business to buy guns and other stuff on behalf of the Israeli state only to have the money put on hold until you find a supplier, because you know, America has sooo many guns manufacturers
You wanna shoot yourself in the dick? Hey, your choice. You’re fucking a lot of people, though.
Im with you. Honestly im not sure there is a possible stance I would be happy with. Its like being happy with the strategy used in viet nam.
When voting between two parties that support genocide the only moral option is not to vote.
Fuck the stupid lesser evil thing. You are choosing and supporting genocide the moment you vote for it
You’re supporting genocide simply by paying your taxes. Grow the fuck up.
One is a choice, the other is not. Read a damn book. Lol /s
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-4-9faefa-1.jpg
Well then you're just casting a vote for Trump by default. You still have made a choice.
If you're in the US, with a two party system, not voting for the less evil is actively enabling the greater evil.
You think Trump or any GOP candidate wouldn't do the same? Or worse? They're certainly not going to do anything better than Biden.
Voting on principles is for the Primaries. Try and get the best candidate possible that you actively believe in into the race. Election Day however is when it's time to put your adult pants on, accept the world is messy, and vote for the least worse option possible, because otherwise you're just abetting the worst option.
You guys are just trolley probleming but you can add a third rails that says "if enough people pull this lever nobody dies".
You have roughly equal amounts of people pulling the lever in the "kill one person" direction and the "kill many people" direction.
The only people interested in pulling a lever that adds a third rail are the "kill one person" crowd. The moment enough of them let go, the lever goes in the "kill many people" direction because that crowd has no interest in a third rail, they quite like the "kill many people" option. You'll never get enough people to join the third option from both crowds simultaneously. No third party has seen any real form of success in nearly 200 years within the current system. Changing the system is necessary but taking out hands off the lever is a disaster.
You genuinely think Biden pulled back the israel support? There would be no difference between him and Trump.
You're never gonna change anything if you're not willing to take your hands off a kill lever.
Also you are actively pulling the kill lever instead of the peace lever by voting for the "lesser evil" it's because of this that a third party isn't taking off.
Of course Biden didn't, but I genuinely think Trump will be way worse. Anyone who thinks Trump, in control of our military as President, wouldn't be making even worse choices, clearly wasn't paying attention last round.
And it's not just Israel/Palestine. It's Ukraine/Russia and China/Taiwan. Biden isn't changing the status quo, but he's not actively making the situation worse. Trump adores the military and sees himself as a strongman (admittedly not when licking Putin's boot), and is going to immediately want to flex the military. He'll pull Ukraine support entirely. He'll antagonize Iran or maybe actively bomb Hamas targets in Palestine. He'll antagonize China or maybe recognize Taiwan's independence. That would be a disaster.
I want change. I want a better system. I desperately want us to take our hands off the lever. But that change needs to be better and lasting change. It needs to be done such that when enough Democrats take their hands off the lever, the lever does get pulled hard in Republican's favor. I will actively pull the lever in the "kill people" direction because if we let go at all it will be yanked in the "kill everyone" direction, and when it comes to ideals versus practicality, I go with what actually results in less harm.
I get the ideal, but the practicality of American politics and the electoral college is just shitty. I'm genuinely curious what you think would happen in 2024 if people don't vote Biden? I'm assuming you're advocating for the Green Party, whoever their candidate ends up being. Trump doesn't need huge margins to win. Biden had over 6 million more votes but the margins in many key swing states were less than 25,000 votes. Anyone farther left of Biden isn't pulling votes from Trump, they're pulling votes from Biden, and when the margin is that small, it makes all the difference. A Green candidate taking even 3% of a given state is enough to give it to Trump.
I believe enough change from the inside is possible that it can invalidate the lever. There are progressives within the Dems, that could get us to a point where there's no electoral college, or a voting system that isn't first-past-the-post. States are independently joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Once such systems are in place, then it doesn't matter how hard the Republicans pull the lever, we have a bunch of working levers. But we'll never get to that point in the first place if the Republicans get to pull the lever all the way. The party that actively wants to destroy our democracy is not gonna give us a second chance at any lever if we let them pull this one further.
Your democracy? You're supporting genocide because you can't vote for the other guy. What the fuck are you on about. Might as well call Russia a democracy now. Wake the fuck up. Your morals are flushed so far the drain I've seen North Koreans less brainwashed.
Who's the "other guy"?
Literally who are you advocating for? Who do you think will apparently fix the state of American democracy in 2024?
no, it's not. only the people voting for the greater evil are actively enabling it.
you could vote for literally anyone else.
Yes, and I could also shoot myself in the dick.
vote for a genocidal politician. what do i care: 1/3 of america has already decided they're going to.
As opposed to what? Voting for an authoritarian cunt who’s going to set up interment camps on day 1 and will gladly slaughter people the world over? Fuck outta here.
personally I'm leaning towards Cornell West. I'm also looking at Jill Stein.