Turns out, if you're further left than either realistic candidate (because FPTP), it makes it really easy to figure out who you should vote for. "I wonder if I should vote for the person who's not left enough for my liking, or the one is so far beyond that as to be the diametric opposite of left. Whatever shall I do?"
Well, the electoral college isn't actually FPTP, it's even worse than that.
You’re not wrong. I was keeping it simple.
Both candidates fall under the latter category. An AG that was a prosecutor with a history of perpetuating the war on drugs and arguing in court innocent men should stay imprisoned because prison labor is good for the economy, who was also vice president to one of the most right wing men ever elected?
That's literally the state half of the fascist alignment of corporate and state power.
Yeah, the "you're voting for genocide" argument is also ridiculous, as the choices essentially boil down to:
🔲 One genocide (with a potential of partial mitigation)
🔲 2+ genocides (and the one being even worse)
🔲 Don't care (in green)
🔲 Don't care (in yellow)
etc.
Genocide is bad. That should not be a controversial statement. I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose, and I will use my other energy to advocate for less (and hopefully zero) genocide.
You don't have to like that fact. I certainly don't like it. But this is exactly what harm reduction looks like.
This is just a monstrous reframing of a bipartisan genocide. Voting dem or voting rep is a vote for genocide, full stop, because they support the same genocide to the same magnitude, materially. Pretending Dems are better because genocide makes some of their voterbase sad is wrong.
I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose
Then vote Greens or PSL.
Then vote Greens or PSL.
Sorry, I'm not going to vote "don't care" on genocide no matter how many faux leftists pretend it's the morally superior option.
It's morally superior to vote for genocide but pretend your flavor of genocide isn't the exact same as the other flavor of genocide.
Look, if you don't care about LGBT folks, women who need abortions, asylum seekers, etc. you can pull that "don't care" lever. But "I care about making a symbolic, but ultimately toothless, gesture about Palestine more than I care about the lives of thousands, possibly millions of others" is what voting third-party is telling the system right now. If that makes you feel morally superior, we're at an impasse because I don't know how to explain to someone that an action to save lives is more powerful than an unrealistic gesture about saving even more lives, but which will realistically increase the amount of death and suffering.
Is there a red line for you in the sand, or would you vote for Hitler if 101% Hitler was running? When do you abandon hope in the Democrats, if being genocidal Imperialists doing nothing to help marginalized groups, and are running to the right of Trump in 2016 with respect to immigration, doesn't?
That's a non-sequitur, because that's not what's happening by any means. But thanks for ceding the point that you're okay feeling morally superior by doing something that'll get more people killed.
The US has two parties: center-right and far right.
(This is a lie internet lefties tell each other)
No, this is literally where the U.S. falls on a global political spectrum. The Democrats would be considered center-right in most other nations. Even by their own historical standards, they're center right; if you took a Democrat from 1975 and transported them to 1995, they'd ask you why the party had adopted the Republicans' fiscal policies.
I don't understand how the Democrats in USA can be considered left-wing. Sure, they are more left than the Republicans, but in my eyes they certainly not left-wing.
I don’t know what country you are from or how your voting system works. But I will guess that your country has many parties and after the election, a governing coalition is formed.
In the US voting system, similar parties get punished by stealing votes from each other. So, in effect, we have to form our coalitions before the election and choose the single candidate that will stand for all of us. So, you can think of the Democratic Party as the Democratic Coalition, made up of some truly left-wing factions, as well as some not very left-wing or even centrist factions, and so our candidate will be much more watered down than what you’d see in a different system.
I am from Sweden. You are correct that my country has many different parties that together form a governing coalition.
Thank you for making it a bit clearer to me! I appreciate it.
You said it yourself, they are less far-right than Republicans, so Liberals get to pretend they are punks and rebels despite supporting the status quo.
Easy. We set the FBI on all the actual leftists decades ago. So the movement is having to slowly rebuild itself in the US. As a result Progressives are the farthest left things most Americans have experience with.
The Left begins with anti-capitalism. If you aren't against capitalism, you aren't left.
Libs are seething at this absolute correct take. If you're pro free market, you're a liberal and thats as 'left' as you'll ever be.
Libs are seething, period.
Won’t even draw a hard line at genocide
It sucks. Liberals will be blaming Arab Americans going to Jill Stein if Harris loses, rather than Harris and Biden, just you wait.
when they say they're left, but then they're authoritarian
Marx and Engels were called "authoritarian" so frequently by their contemporaries that Engels wrote On Authority. What's considered "authoritarian" is a moving target, an arbitrary line in the sand just for people who succeed in revolution, or at least in throwing off western Imperialist powers.
If your argument is that Marxism isn't Leftist then that's hilarious
my argument isn't that marx isn't left (especially since I've read his later works), nor that auth-left isn't left... just that I'm an anti authotitarian leftist
Gotcha, you're just anti-Marxist then. Can't say I agree with that, but that's less nonsensical than saying Marx isn't left.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were ridiculously handsome dudes
Sankara too, holy moly
Radicalization vs. sensibility
I wouldn't call Kamala a radical, but I guess I could see why you think that.
I mean she is very radical, in support of Israel.
"Sensibility" is maintaining a dying genocidal Empire?
Memes
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