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[-] brownsugga@lemmy.world 65 points 1 week ago

this is a bullshit argument

one side in US politics is pretty ANTI death camp while the other is very much PRO death camp. lesser evil voting in this case is ANTI death camp

you putz

[-] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago

Except here, in the real world world, one side built the death camps while the other side is filling them up.

[-] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 week ago

How many death camps did Biden build?

And don't start about some other country where they don't have control over.

[-] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

I can start with Gaza because it was US money and weapons that enabled it. In addition to an enormous ICE and immigrant detention center expansion. There are 69 cops cities around the US with cops being trained by IDF because of Biden.

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[-] YoureHotCupCake@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

Except if you consider that one side committed a genocide and then the other side committed even more genocide.

[-] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 1 week ago

And refusing to side with the better options actively works the worse option in the hand.

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[-] jarvis@lemmy.world 49 points 1 week ago

This is a false premise. Instead of choosing which evil we want to accept, we can choose which evil we prefer to resist.

[-] BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.net 15 points 1 week ago

The electoral system also gives that lesser evil legitimacy, insert robot voice: "they were voted for democratically, these protesters all just hate democracy and {country.capitalized()}!".

In all seriousness, what you are putting forward requires actual resistance, not just marching in the streets like is too common nowadays, but actual efforts to make it hell for people in power, and it actually makes it harder if the people in power can make you look unreasonable because you voted for them.

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[-] Signtist@bookwyr.me 13 points 1 week ago

True, and I agree, but we do actually have to resist for that to be the case. Not just with the signs and angry letters we've been using to try to convince the corrupt to simply not be corrupt anymore, but with actions that actually prevent them from making things worse, up to and including their death, if necessary. Until then we really are just voting for the lesser evil and letting them do whatever they want.

[-] PotatoPie@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago

Resist by giving them legitimacy

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[-] plutopos@lemmy.zip 44 points 1 week ago

You vote for the lesser evil because that's the limit of what you can achieve in the voting booth. But voting isn't the only thing you can do to change society, obviously. I think these kinds of posts are missing the bigger picture

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[-] Triumph@fedia.io 38 points 1 week ago
[-] terranoid@lemmy.cafe 25 points 1 week ago

I fucking hate that we keep getting this "both sides bad" ideology, now "both sides deathcamp" ffs, right during Trump's reign where we are seeing concentration camps and illegal wars right after a boring Biden presidency.

[-] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 week ago

Boring? There was and still is literally a genocide going on.

But thanks for proving the meme right.

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[-] gmtom@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago

This is how you know someone only cares about their own moral superiority complex and is the type of person that loves handing out arbitrary purity tests.

People like you are actually just at harmful to left wing goals as any fascist or neoliberal. You are the rot from within.

[-] frisbird@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

I love how you think concentration camps and genocide are "arbitrary purity tests" instead of fully disqualifying positions to hold.

People who do lesser evil voting are, on the whole, far more invested in the morality and virtue signaling and far less invested in the material analysis of what's actually happening and how to change it.

[-] OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago

The problem is, not voting doesn't push the Overton window in your direction. When you choose to simply abstain, rather than voting against the greatest evil, you give up ground to your opponents without getting anything in return.

Voting is a critical part of making lasting change. It might be useless on its own, but that doesn't make it any less necessary.

[-] frisbird@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago

You're mistaken. No one is saying not to vote. They are saying that your vote actually doesn't matter. It is not true that voting pushes the Overton window. Look at the Maine Senate race. We just had a huge campaign between an entrenched war mongering Democrat and literal US military mercenary with a Tottenkopf tattoo (removed recently) who is a petite bourgeois luxury food farmer who organized his neighbors to fight for his private property economic interests against a large capitalist enterprise. The overton window is so far right it's not even funny.

If voting made critical lasting change, it would be outlawed. The founders made sure that the masses could not change the system by voting. That's why 70% percent of the Senate represents only 30% of the population. You can't fix that with voting. The wars planned under Bush 2, which absolutely were influenced by the Bush 1 circle, were carried out by Bush 2, and then by Obama, and then by Trump. The Senate doesn't respond to votes. The president doesn't respond to votes. And the House has over 100 Democrats supporting ICE.

What is it going to take for you to realize this? Go. Vote. But pretending it does anything is delusion. Every single improvement of rights came through violence, from labor rights to civil rights to gay rights. It took riots, it took bloodshed. The system is designed to force this to be true.

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[-] fodor@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ah the irony. A post telling voters to think about more than a single election day, in plain English, and you still can't imagine doing so.

It's a strange world we live in... And I get it, you're too busy to care about politics. You want that one vote to absolve you of responsibility for everything before and after it. Meh.

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[-] BillCheddar@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago

...but you don't live in a world where one party is building 50 and the other 51. That's just a strawman to avoid taking responsibility for having to choose between the actual options, not the options you wish you had.

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[-] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

Idk, if given the choice between 50 death camps or 51 death camps, it would be pretty fucked up to choose 51.

[-] fodor@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago

Precisely. That's why you need to think more broadly. So you don't become evil and pretend it's OK.

[-] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 1 week ago

Nobody is pretending it is okay.

But pretending like refusing to vote is morally superior than actively preventing the extra death camp is not.

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[-] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 week ago

Problem solved! We'll all just go...not vote?

Hmmm...that doesn't seem right. Doesn't that let all the people who really want to vote for the 51 death camps decide who's in charge then?

[-] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Either way you get death camps, get off the trolley and discover there's a no death camp option

[-] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 week ago

What is the no death camp option in the United States? I would genuinely like to know.

The only option I'm aware of is voting more, not less. Vote in every primary and every local election. Make yourself part of the process.

[-] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

By electing the same people that got us into this mess?

[-] gmtom@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

You didn't answer the question. What's the no death camp option?

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What’s the no death camp option?

You have to create it, it wont be handed to you on a silver platter. You can start by not kissing the dems arses and yelling at them to do better or fold up shop. While showing the republicans the back of your hand too, obviously. They are playing you and using your vote like its a foregone conclusion, and you are letting them. Why not stand up for yourself? Or do you have any morals at all? American selfishness is another issue and it disguises itself as learned helplessness.

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[-] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago

Keep going please...Tell me how that would work in the US system of First Past The Post elections.

Or if First Past The Post elections is the problem, tell me how you would get rid of that system.

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[-] resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe 21 points 1 week ago

You only say that because you want the 51 death camps party to win.

[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

For the love of Christ. If it comes down to 50 death camps vs 51 death camps and you couldn't muster up enough loud vocal grass roots support for 'no death camps' to make it feel like there is even an outside chance of winning enough that people don't feel that they have to vote for the lesser 50, then maybe you should examine why that is. I'm tired of this stupid fucking argument.

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[-] BeardededSquidward 19 points 1 week ago

Biden admitted he didn't want the DOJ to go after Trump for sedition in a hope for bipartsianship. He could have released the Epstein files then unredacted but didn't. He has a history of voting for federal increases to police budgets, he was the sponsor on the bill making it nearly impossible to discharge federal student loans in bankruptcy. And that's just Biden.

What to know what's most damning about the Democrats? In the build up to this situation, through it all, when they had enough power to do something they didn't do it. Obama could of put in changes to federal student loans but didn't, they were a problem way before then. They had decades to codify Roe vs Wade into law instead of a supreme court ruling.

At best they're inactive and inattentive.

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[-] Formfiller@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

We need a revolution 🇦🇱✊🏼nothing will improve until the pedophile class lives in fear

[-] Kwiila@slrpnk.net 18 points 1 week ago

Vote local, vote to end FPTP.

[-] gwl 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Tell me, what's the alternative?

I don't see one. You're just fucking grandstanding.

So, I'm what, supposed to not vote at all?

Then the actual evil will win

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Americans seem to think they are due some sort of fair and equitable civil society without having to fight for it. Actual evil will win anyway unless you fight the evil people and take a stand, constantly-- not occasionally when its only relevant to you. The problem is that americans are too spoiled and are lazy with their politics and morals. They just lay there like baby birds waiting to be fed, so the evils take advantage of that lethargy and here we are.

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[-] shweddy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Damn election season already?

[-] harsh3466@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago

This is true. The problem is, in a lot of US elections, you only have bad choices. You have really bad, and a little less bad than really bad. What I wouldn't give for ranked choice voting.

[-] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

lesser evil won in 2020 & we got:

  • genocide
  • record police killings of Black Americans
  • record COVID deaths
  • record trans murders
  • 1st declared LGBTQIA+ emergency
  • homelessness criminalized
  • record inflation

Democrats didn't try to repeal the Patriot Act. They kept reauthorizing it. They didnt try to address Citizens United, they ignored it. They didn't try to close Guantanamo Bay. They didn't try to roll back ICE funding. And all the stuff that Trump is currently doing, they will do absolutely nothing to roll any of it back. Liberal lesser evil enables the greater evil. When liberals say lesser evil, what they mean is the same evil but affects them less.

[-] brian@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago

I will poke only one hole in your little list there.

lesser evil won in 2020

record COVID deaths

pretty sure any number of deaths would've been record numbers...

[-] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And now the bigger evil won in 2024 and we got:

  • even more genocide
  • literal racist death squads (broke record too)
  • return of plenty more diseases
  • even bigger record of trans murders
  • declared LGBTQIA+ as enemies of the state
  • homelessness killings and deportations
  • even bigger record inflation that is making people go bankrupt

Thank you for proving the point that voting lesser evil slows the decline.

Fight for a third party during pre-election, but not during the election when it is obvious to everyone the third party isn't going to do anything.

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[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago

I wish it was possible to get lesser evilists to think rationally and critically examine their ideology, but they've so internalized their ideology as "rational" that they can't even recognize it as an ideology at all. They are exactly the sort of irrational, blind dogmatists they accuse everyone else of being.

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[-] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Lesser evil voting is simply the limited options given to us under a broken system.

Until the system can be broken, I'd still rather attempt to cause less harm and impede the organization to break the system as little as possible.

I'll vote for the least establishment option amongst our de-facto options presented when it's time to vote. In the meantime I'll help with organizing, with advocacy, with 3rd party groups, with building alternatives to our capitalist system to support the revolution when it's time.

Would you rather me not vote and allow one more to not be countered towards the more establishment option that would work towards pulling back our rights even faster?

There shouldn't be any death camps, fucking obviously, but that would be 1 less we have to destroy in the coming days. Work to break the system so we don't have death camps, but also work to slow it down as much as possible so we have less to fight to break the system.

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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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