That's a current picture, not a future picture.

Our first amendment rights are only exercisable with the permission of the government, preferably in silence tucked away where no one can see us.

Our third amendment rights are non-existent because SCOTUS draws a line between the police and soldiers. (Never mind the British soldiers were here to police the colonies)

Our Fourth amendment rights exist only notionally. If officers get a dog to jump at your car or have a "good faith belief" that they're within their rights to search.

Fifth is almost just gone. Civil Asset Forfeiture means only the rich can afford to keep the state from taking their stuff at any time. States routinely re-run criminal trials by deliberately getting a mistrial declared if they're losing.

The sixth is a joke. Public defenders in some places have as little as 7 minutes to look at your case. And if you're accused of a misdemeanor you probably won't have a jury at all. But you will lose your job, your house, and everything else in a chain reaction as you have to figure out how to pay hefty fines with no job. Also you'll probably end up in prison for contempt of court when you have trouble paying.

The eighth amendment is likewise a joke. Instead of protecting poor people in the system, it's used as a cudgel to force confessions.

And this is all on top of decades of wealth transfer out of the working class to the point that it's getting hard to buy food for half the country.

Oh yeah, Trump would be horrible. But he's the guy we've been getting set up for, not the guy the establishment is trying to avoid. I'll probably vote for Biden but I'm not going to be surprised when the "status quo genocide" guy gets his ass handed to him. Democrats needed to fight for this and they just aren't.

Edit to add - Y'all know the second the GOP puts up a reasonable sounding asshole we're fucked right? Like if Nikki Haley got the nomination? All that pressure drops away and she'd still institute project 2025 just like Trump.

As someone who is struggling to find a reason to vote for biden for who he is, rather than vote for him for what he is not, its so disheartening to see the only valid reason to vote for him is just that he isn’t trump.

And I hate that discussion about this is always so black and white about this, and just sneering at people who have no policy reason to vote for biden, throwing shade at people who genuinely hate biden’s neoliberal platform for criticizing because trump is the opponent.

Voting for someone because they aren’t trump didn’t work in 2016, and Im worried it isn’t going to work in 2024. And I’m starting to see why people are feeling so hopeless when it comes to electoralism

The fact that those are your choices should be enough to alert you to the reality - that voting is a charade to make you feel "heard" and to keep you from turning on your overlords, who will continue to wage war for profit (be it on Palestine or on their own poor and marginalised) no matter what.

Sadly the propaganda is so strong that most people can't see beyond the pretend field laid out in front of them and the "blue vs red" mentality that is enforced along with it, so focused on this artificial division that they don't see that the real "teams" are society and those who exploit it for profit and power (and who control the media and the education system, ensuring you're indoctrinated this way from birth).

By all means, vote for the lesser (but still) evil (I'm in the UK, we are able to vote "none" which I will be doing if there is no one on the ballot who represents me), but you don't get to pat yourself on the back for it as if you've just stormed the beach on D day and singlehandedly defeated fascism, because that's nowhere near the truth, which is that you've just participated in a bit of theatre where you were given an illusion of choice. You being uncomfortable doesn't change that.
It could change you, if you decide to engage the discomfort instead of ignoring it, you can start here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230803021951/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/american-democracy-was-never-designed-to-be-democratic

https://truthout.org/articles/fascism-is-possible-not-in-spite-of-liberal-capitalism-but-because-of-it/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/

If those votes are important to him then Biden should earn them by not being complicit in a genocide. Maybe Biden is a Trump supporter by continuing to do so? After all if not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump, Biden doing genocide is also him voting for Trump.

And what did Marx think about voting for the lesser evil:

Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, London, March 1850

Why do Americans only have these two candidate choices in the presidential election? They seem so diametrically opposed, it is difficult to fathom how a majority of Americans could think either align with them politically.

You can look at it that way or you can look at it where Biden won't listen to the people who would elect him and decides to support genocide knowing it will probably mean he won't get re-elected. Why would you blame the voters when it's clearly one person who is making the wrong decision. Edit: it's crazy people are defending Biden while he's supporting genocide and blaming the people who refuse to support it and don't attack the president that doesn't listen to 70% of his own party. If he doesn't listen here why would he listen to us anywhere else.

I just want someone who will live in this country for another 30 or 40 years after they leave office...

The Democratic party when it absolutely refuses to appeal to anyone, but feels entitled to their votes anyway:

"We did Patrick! We saved nothing."

Not voting for my candidate is the same as voting for my opposition, but not voting for my opposition is not the same as voting for my candidate.

Mf-ers out here acting allergic to periods.