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this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Yeah even to expand on that - they don't understand that everything they don't like about Biden, they'll like about Trump less. I mean I have real serious gripes about Biden but it is insultingly stupid to pretend that Trump would be any kind of a solution to those problems.
It seems that many of them know that Trump is worse, but think that sticking to ideals and voting for a non-viable candidate (or not voting at all) is somehow the best course of action. Republicans count on people like that to win. Fascists don't give a fuck how they get into power, as long as they do.
They don't just count on it. They actively invade spaces and spread that idea. I'm almost certain the first people saying that about Biden/Israel were right wing trolls, and people on the left actually took the bait and started spreading it themselves.
I get the sentiment, because I hate our two choices, too, but until first past the post system is changed, the lesser of two evils will always be the most practical choice.
What exactly is your plan for changing first past the post?
You could make the case that if the democrats actually supported that, it's worth holding your nose and voting for them in order to open up other options in the future. But they don't support it, because they benefit from it. So basically you're asking the left to keep voting for the democrats unconditionally forever while they don't address any of our concerns and refuse to make any sort of reforms that might allow us to have a voice in the future. How is that a viable path to accomplishing anything?
The plan is to keep voting in every primary for the most progressive candidates and then voting for the least bad people in elections while pushing for reform. However hard it is to enact change while Democrats are in power, it will be impossible while Republicans are.
I'll pose the same question to you: how is not voting for the least bad viable candidates, thus guaranteeing the worst candidates get into power, a viable path to accomplishing anything?
Did you not notice what the DNC did to Sanders in the last Democrat primary???!
It's not just a case of "a few bad apples".
I noticed that voters didn't turn out to vote for him. The DNC doesn't get all the blame.
It's just as impossible to enact reform through the Democratic party. Especially when you adopt the approach of "vote blue no matter who." The Democratic parties interests in terms of voting reform are directly contrary to the interests of voters, and will never allow it happen unless they have no other choice. If they know they can count on your support no matter, then you have forfeited whatever negotiating power you've managed to accrue.
To the extent that electoralism is worth engaging with, strategic voting as part of a bloc is the only way to make it worthwhile. The goal should be to build an organization or movement that can say, if you refuse to give into our demands, we will not vote for you and you will lose. In the short term, it might mean losing an election, but if you can demonstrate that power, then in the future you'll be able to make a credible threat of withholding votes to get what you want, and if they cooperate you won't have to follow through. If that organization is able to coordinate other actions like strikes, then all the better.
It's like this: two countries are facing a powerful invader, and the only way to fend them off is through an alliance. But country A says, "I know you need us to survive, so we demand 99% of your territory in exchange for an alliance." If country B follows the ideology of "lesser evilism," they'll agree to that, because 1% is better than 0%. But how did that happen, when country A needs the alliance just as much? Because lesser evilism is stupid and irrational. At some point you have to set a red line and say, this is the absolute minimum that I'll accept, and I'll reject anything less even if it means the deal falling through and me facing a worse outcome. And "no genocide" is decidedly inside of that line.
There are a few ways of going about it. One is third parties. If you vote for the Green Party for example, you get voting reform, anti genocide policies and a much better enviromental policy. At the same time Biden is still much better then Trump and being realistic about what you can get should also be part of voting strategy. Also it is incredibly important to say, that citizenship does not end at the ballot box. You got to and can do more to influence politics. So I would probably vote Biden in a swing state and Green Party in an state, which is not a swing state. This matters in two ways. Firstly the more people vote third party, the more likely they can get into some actual power, but also the Democrats see that they can gain potential votes, by improving policies.
Also no lesser evil has to be distinguised from compromise and deals. If you get an actual improvement out of doing something, it can be worth doing even at a price. So if two countries face a powerfull invader, it can be worth making a deal that country A gets 40% of the invaders land and country B also 60%, if country B is already stronger for example. In that case both get something out of it. However without the alliance both would probably fail. In this case the question is, if Biden would actually net improve the US compared to today.
The point of the hypothetical is to demonstrate why the principle of lesser evilism is incorrect. Not every deal has to be exactly equal, the question is what to do when offered a terrible deal when the other party needs you just as much as you need them, and the answer is to bargain even if it means a risk of the deal falling through.
But what I'm being told over and over is if Biden cuts off support for Israel he'll lose the election. Which means moderates and liberals won't vote for a progressive candidate who makes it through the primaries leading to whatever nutjob is running on the other side.
So our reward for being pragmatic and holding our nose will be the same as voting 3rd party today.
Lemmy is absolutely infested with right wing trolls pretending to be leftists. And the worst part is that .ml protects them because they are completely blinded to this subversion by their pathological instinct to relitigate the cold war.
It's incredibly obvious to everyone who understands why assuming the moniker of a Haitian slave turned actual freedom fighter is actually incredibly offensive to those dealing with real oppression, both modern and historical.
Everybody who disagrees with you is a right wing troll?
It is pathetic how you are falling into the same line of thinking like the Trumpists. Building the Dems into a cult is not going to solve any of the problems. Threatening their power basis by voting based on principles does. Because then they have to actually listen to their potential voters. The majority of Americans is against continuing to support the Genocide committed by Israel. Biden would gain politically by turning the tides. But he would rather help Trump into power, than to stop a fucking Genocide.
Stop blaming the people who are voting and start holding the people in power accountable for their actions. That is the entire point of threatening not to vote fore the Dems.
Yeah but the problem is we live in at least a pro-fascist state if not a fascist state already. So convincing people who realize this to vote for the guy who has been voting for fascist policies for decades (as well as some progressive ones, for those who will say I'm ignoring the "good" he's done) and is actively supporting genocide not just in policy but in his statements and apparently beliefs is going to be pretty tough. It's not just about voting "not Trump" anymore, people also want to vote "not Biden".
If you're going to call Biden a fascist, the word really does mean "anything I don't like".
Where did I call Biden a fascist?
Show a little fucking courage when you call someone a name, own it coward.
Okay, he's a fascist. As if that needed to be pointed out.
Apparently it did because you tried to say you didn't call him that 40 minutes ago. Glad we could clear it up, it wasn't that hard.
If someone is being accused of voting for fascist policies, it's reasonable to assume they are being accused of being a fascist.
While I would call Biden a fascist (and I do), your logic doesn't follow. Would I call every Biden voter a fascist? No. Fascist apologist or enabler, maybe.
And with that, the world has reached a new record for equivocation
Republicans have lost more than one Senate seat because they ran zealous nutbag losers in safe elections and pissed off moderates.
I'm not sure why Democrats get to run pro-war Zionists and Blue Lives fascists, free from the fear that they'll suffer the same fate.
Because even though they would prefer the fascists don't get into power, the wealthy Democrat politicians know they won't be too adversely affected by it.
Well that just begs the same question about the moderates and liberals who keep them in power. Do they think this is a winning strategy?
Because unfortunately the pro-Israel, pro- cop Democratic candidates are much closer to the average voter than the nutbag religious extremists are.
If that's true, why do more Republicans hold office at the national, state, and local levels?
Gerrymandering, structural advantages, etc. the same as it's always been.
This sounds like the strategy Republicans are banking on to win.
You will understand this when you understand why most people who have more than 20s of geopolitical memory associate people who unironically rant about evil Zionists with neo-nazis.
You realize this critique cuts both ways right? Fox news and CNN are completely aligned in their criticisms of the protestors.
They know Donald will destabilize the country and accelerate a collapse. They think that will make room for China to expand.
I'm going to give you a serious answer even though it's obvious you know nothing about us and don't care to learn.
Accellerationism is stupid and reactionary, and from my perspective Biden seems to be doing a fine job of doing that as it is. Trump is a symptom produced from the policies Biden has spent his entire career enacting. There will be plenty more candidates like Trump, because the material conditions that produced him still exist, and Biden is perpetuating and worsening those conditions.
The US is in decline and that's not going to change regardless of who wins this election. What I'd most prefer is to refocus our efforts domestically in order to address some of the many different crises that the country is experiencing. If we did this, it's likely that China would eventually eclipse the US due to it's manufacturing capacity, but the lives of everyday people would be improved and the country would become more stable and healthy. Whether the decline could be reversed, I don't know, but it would at least be a gradual, peaceful decline.
But that's never going to happen, even a little bit. Instead, our leaders are intent on getting involved in conflicts all over the world while ignoring all the problems at home and allowing things to get worse and worse. The geopolitical interests of the US government are completely disconnected from the interests of the American people.
The US doesn't need to collapse for China to grow. China's strategy for many years has been a policy of peaceful coexistence with capitalist states while it focuses on economic development. And that strategy is proving successful. The only concern is what the US is going to do once it becomes eclipsed as global hegemon, and the concerning thing is that while China manufactures more than the next 10 countries combined, the US spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined. The possibility that the US could start WWIII in an attempt to maintain hegemony by pressing the area where it has an advantage is deeply concerning.
Even if you believe, as you probably do, that Xi Jinping is paying me to run around some niche corner of the internet pretending to be Phoenix Wright - why would China actually want to destabilize the US? They're already winning the peace.
Hm, read a dissertation from a Uighur genocide fan who communicates in childish video game cartoons, or focus on people who aren't delusional? Tough choice for me but I'll have to go with the latter.
Well, no one can say I didn't try. If that's the kind of engagement you want,
ahem
evidenceis the only thing that matters! Your baseless accusations are... completely meaningless!What a goofy little clown. You have no substantial thoughts and have to do this instead.
Thanks for the laughs and nostalgia. Loved that game.
There is a
contradictionin this testimony! You literally just called my previous comment a "dissertation" and refused to read it! So it's impossible for you to know if my thoughts are substantive or not!The defense would like to submit a piece of
evidence: this tweet!This doesn't actually prove anything, I just think it's funny!
Sustained
If their goal is to destroy the US then helping Trump makes sense, at least.
The hypocrisy comes when millions of vulnerable people they pretend to care about actually suffer as a direct result of their nihilism. Acceptable costs, right?
It really is shocking that more people on the "Lemmy left" don't see this. The US is one of the most tolerant places in the world for a bunch of otherwise marginalized groups. Pretending that it is irredeemable and must be destroyed because of your cold war grudge is destroying one of their biggest safe spaces and condemning them to suffer.
Taking the “moral high” ground even though it would have a bad result. Sounds like what the DEMs do all the time.
“I learned it from you” -young people probably.
And the Dems get criticized for taking the moral high ground at the expense of being practical, too.
Or they understand that all this apolgetics for the Dems being the lesser of two evils just results in them being the same evil, just four years later. The Dems are still running internment camps at the border. They are still building Trumps wall.
By never threatening them with actual consequences to their power, you give them a blanket check to fuck everyone over for their rich donors. And that is exactly what they did and continue to do.
No they are not the same evil, and it insults the intelligence to pretend otherwise. And threatening the Dems with consequences by giving power to people who are even worse on those issues than them? That does the opposite of what you're hoping - it encourages that kind of behaviour.
We got to where we are because the right has pulled the window further and further, step by step, for years - and we have to do the same. The system doesn't just change overnight.
You have to understand that a win for Trump this year is a total win for the far right and a total loss for the left. Anyone pretending otherwise is hopelessly misguided or intentionally stumping for the fascists.
Because the Dems were happy to shift the window with them instead of pulling on the other side. Telling them "Either you pull it back now, or there is no reason to vote for you." Is the only way they will be motivated to not help the Reps pushing further to the right.
Sure just like in 2016 after we withheld our votes from HIllary and let the far right get all their wishes. The Dems realized how wrong they were and came pandering to leftists.
But surely it'll work this time, at least we don't have that many liberal justices left to lose on SCOTUS.