People who refuse to vote when there is a clearly superior option deserve whatever the greater evil brings forth when they win.
Even when there isn't a clearly superior option; there's no excuse to not vote in the U. S. when the right to vote is such a pivotable portion of your history. We are barely over a half century away; only a mere 60 years. Unconscionable.
On the one hand, corporatist party, on the other, literal fascists. Yes, clearly there is no superior option.
In Sweden the far-right tried to play this game. They started chirping about the social democrats being rasist and made a list on like an A4 with names and events. Then the same was done to them, matching the font, their list was taken up a skylift and holding one end they folded it out to the ground in a television program.
It's crazy the amount of people that think the evil voters are at fault and not the political party that made a wedge issue out of fucking genocide of all things.
So glad the current guys got in! How's that going for ya btw? That genocide stop? No? It's accelerating? So glad more children can die so you can still confidently hold your nose in the air.
I hate the current guy even more. It seriously bothers me that the dems lost to him because they thought genocide was more important then you and me. I really wish they would have ran a proper platform, so we didnt have to vote for democracy and genocide at the same time, and still lose.
Keep blaming everyone but them and maybe we can have the same circus next election too. We all just have to come together and accept genocide, apathy and status quo like maybe three or four more times.
Wait, you mean the thing that we told the Dems would happen, happened? Crazy, who could have seen that coming? It's almost like we wanted them to be a party of decency, so we could tell people to vote for them without having to defend the killing of children.
Maybe next time, the Dems should put up a candidate people want to vote for, instead of shaming people for being against Genocide.
Wait I'm lost, are we talking foreign invasions done by the US vs foreign invasions done by China? Or the number of victims of Hamas vs the victims of the IDF? What are we counting here? Military bases abroad?
What are we counting here?
Evil policies supported by democrats vs evil policies supported by republicans
Both sides'd themselves into proto-fascism. And taking us along for the ride.
Fucking morons.
Maybe there would be more than Side A and Side B if we had voting reform and Democrats didn't systematically sue third-parties off the ballot.
People (not just authoritarians) criticize Side A because they have way more tallies than most have been led to believe. Everybody who pays any amount of attention knows that Side B has a lot of tallies. What good comes out of specifically pointing out the tallies of Side B when literally everybody on non-conservative social media is blasted with the knowledge of those tallies? If you want somebody to preach to the choir or inform you about Side B's tallies, just ask. If you think people paying attention to or being informed about Side A's tallies is dangerous and harmful, just say so.
Side A tolerates third-world exploitation (labor, resources, goods) that the US economy still relies on, they tolerate the US economy still relying on slavery and child slavery, they tolerate or support US imperialism and regime change, they refuse to address or come up with solutions for the fresh water crisis (by 2030, demand will exceed supply by 40%), they refuse to properly address many issues that the US people face (the economy, the housing crisis, the health care crisis, etc.), they support harmful policies like fracking, they have allowed corporations/et. al to go out of control under their power, and they generally have not advocated for strong regulation and protections for the American people. Yes, Side B is undesirable, but Side A is insufficient.
If Side A's hands are always tied in a two-party system, then they should impeach the bad actor, push voting/election reform and term limits, and hold fair and democratic primaries and elections. Side A not propping up extreme right-wing candidates (like Trump) and telling the media to take them seriously would be nice, too.
1/3 of Americans don't vote and plenty of people only voted Kamala because they didn't want Trump (and there are other factors than Gaza, misogyny, and Jill Stein voters at play to explain why people didn't come out to vote for her). Plenty of people probably don't want Trump (or anybody like him) if they've been paying any attention and didn't fall for the propaganda.
Side A would get bonus points for not alienating progressives, for supporting the loosening of requirements for ballot access (and stop engaging in lawfare to restrict ballot access), and for supporting fair and inclusive debates on public property where they would have to address perspectives and topics that are potentially uncomfortable or inconvenient for them.
I realize there are plenty of unserious actors who run for president (like Kayne West) who would try their best to poison open debates and abuse expanded ballot access, but there has to be some fair mechanism to filter (openly racist and insane) people like him out. Perhaps a competency test of sorts with independent observation would be appropriate.
And I realize a lot of people find Jill Stein to be harmful (and individuals like her), but maybe we shouldn't arrest her (or any other presidential candidate) and put her in a black site, shackling her to a chair for 8 hours, because she wanted to be present at the presidential debate?
This is an unprecedented time for the American people, with human rights and due process in jeopardy. We are facing multiple serious crises with no solutions or progress in sight - voting and election reform, in addition to term limits, are all urgent and necessary.
I don't care if you want to vote for Side A no matter what — we can only suppress criticism and stay in denial of major issues for so long before (e.g.) the fresh water crisis hits us and humanity is completely and utterly unprepared.
I appreciate the depth of your response. You're right, critiquing Side A doesn't mean endorsing Side B. It means demanding better from those who claim to represent us. The meme calls out false equivalency, but that shouldn't silence legitimate concerns about the system itself.
It’s like this: if the house is on fire, I’ll vote to put out the biggest flame, but I’m also going to ask why the fire keeps spreading, and who’s refusing to fix the wiring. Reform isn’t a distraction; it’s how we stop the next blaze before it starts.
Thanks for adding a more nuanced layer to the conversation.
You're right, Lena.
The voters should just sit in the corner and be joyful about the fact that food staples are becoming cost-prohibitive, and then laugh along with you when you all joke about it and pretend it doesn't matter.
No one cares about the differences between the two parties if your party doesn't care that they can't feed their families.
Would you rather have Trump's fascist regime and be an activist, or have Biden's much less worse administration and be an activist? Voting doesn't decrease your ability to participate in protests and so on.
Voting doesn't decrease your ability to participate in protests and so on.
False. You're significantly more likely to end up being human-traficked to an El Salvador prison under Trump.
that's literally the argument he made.
Vote for dems and be an activist.
Vote for reps and be a political prisoner.
I don't think they were actually disagreeing. Just making a tongue-in-cheek remark.
You're not getting it.
When you're working 100 hours a week at three jobs and all your labor buys for you is a roach-infested studio apartment, it doesn't matter how nice the president speaks. The working class and poor have been living under fascism for years.
The message here isn't: "Vote for us because Trump's a fascist."
The message is: "Trump promised you this, but he's doing this instead and it's hurting your family. Vote for us and we'll put a stop to it." (Not that anyone thinks Democrats actually will, judging by their near-total lack of action so far.)
And for Christ's sake stop joking about how expensive food has become, because that's a very real problem and when people see Democrats joking about it, they think you don't care that they're starving.
If more people had voted for democrats it would've been a lot easier to get out of this shit by campaigning for a ranked choice voting system and taxing the rich. Instead you got fascism × 2 and expensive food.
If more people had voted for democrats it would’ve been a lot easier to get out of this shit
Based on what facts? The impoverishment accelerated in a time when Democrats had the presidency AND Congress.
Not blaming the global post covid inflation solely on the democrats.
Truthfully a lot of it was simply corporate greed, and they should have spoken out against it. They didn't because they're subpar. They ignored the issue of the worsening economy because they're inadequate.
However, we could have had a chance at making at least some changes. Democrats at the very least would have pushed to codify abortion rights and not have tried to dismantle every government agency. But instead we have whatever the hell this is. It's actually delusional to believe Democrats would have been "exactly the same".
I don't love Democrats, but at least I have a basic sense of self preservation
it doesn't matter how nice the president speaks.
So you think the only difference between the two is how "nice the president speaks". I guess which party controls the government doesn't affect you.
Love that for you, you privileged out-of-touch piece of shit.
I don't know that I've ever seen anyone say that both sides are the same. I have seen people (when talking about the US) call out when both sides do the same things, such as: Put forth rapists and child-killers as candidates, back a genocide, send people to torture prisons, refuse to fix the healthcare system, etc.
B is indeed worse than A, but I've seen too many people use that to pretend that one side is "actually good", instead of being able to see that both sides are bad.
Well said, both sides are bad, but one is so much worse than the other
There's two sides to this argument, and one is wrong and the other is right.
One says "Both sides do it, so it's okay that my side does it."
The other says "Your side does it. A few on my side do it, too. But it doesn't matter, we should stop both sides from doing it."
This isn't entirely new or unique to America, but the dynamic is essentially:
Party A improves the odds fascism is successfully implemented.
Party B implements it.
Reducing the conditions for fascism to take hold is strictly off the table for both A and B.
Fundamentally changing the system of Party A (or B for that matter) through voting alone would at least require a Party C.
But even so it is the internal party politics prior to and outside of elections that are keeping this fascism paradigm in place. And that's where people's frustrations tend to lie.
Can we just stop having this discussion? It's so boring. Both sides misrepresent the other. Tankies are stupid. Also nobody is a tankie. The Biden administration sanctioned a genocide. Every other US president is a war criminal. This discussion never goes anywhere.
Leftists: Maybe we shouldn't fund genocide and perhaps the average worker should be able to afford to put food on their table
Liberals: HOW DARE YOU PROMOTE YOUR RADICAL TANKIE AGENDA, DONT YOU KNOW THE GDP AND STOCK MARKET ARE GOING UP WHICH MEANS THE ECONOMY IS GOOD SO STOP COMPLAINING. IN FACT THE POLITICANS DONT EVEN NEED TO GIVE YOU ANYTHING BECAUSE THEY DESERVE YOUR VOTE, NEVER BLAME THE SYSTEM, NEVER ASK FOR CHANGE AND NEVER THINK ABOUT WHO PULLS THE STRINGS
Can we just rename this instance from politicalmemes to tankierants
Man fascists are delusional , scratch a liberal and all that...
If you are confronted with two evils, thus the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. … The weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.
It's very interesting that those who screamed that we had to choose the lesser of two evils in 2020, thereby admitting to the evil of the Democrats, immediately shut up about this evil as soon as Biden took office. Now that the greater evil has taken power, you never talk about actually fighting it, you just spend your time bashing people with a conscience.
People have a hard time with percentages, propensity, likelihood, etc. They can only think in binary terms. I used to think it was the right but looks like it's everyone.
Using the term "tankie" while defending a party carrying out a modern day holocaust is quite something.
Another lemmy.world banger
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