Summary
Key leaders of the “Abandon Harris” movement, which encouraged voters to oppose Kamala Harris due to U.S. support for Israel during the Gaza war, are now expressing unease about Trump’s incoming administration.
Many in the movement, including prominent Muslim leaders, voted for Trump hoping he would bring peace to the Middle East.
However, concerns are growing over his Cabinet picks, such as Mike Huckabee and Tulsi Gabbard, which some see as troubling for Muslim communities.
Harm reduction is bad?
Obviously, it’s not ideal, but one has to act according to the real life conditions… And in 2024, our only two options were “harm reduction,” and literal fascism with literal concentration camps.
Fuck you if you didn’t choose harm reduction.
To be fair to them, we’re just delaying collapse. It is a choice.
I agree with them that there’s no saving this constitutional structure. In one sense it’s cowardly, because there’s no escape from this capitalist slaughterhouse hellscape without collapse. Collapse is necessary. Trump will certainly usher that in faster.
But Im too much of a softy to let the blood that always has to spill be on my hands.
This country was irreparable since Reagan, a zombie nation oligarch piggie bank. My vote was a cowardly one for a few more years of quiet orderly slaughter, NOT peace.
But we lost, so the slaughter will be loud and bigger than it’s ever been, so maybe it’s time for revolution if we want our kids to have anything left.
Because in 4 years the DNC WILL anoint someone to meet Trump’s economy in the middle, and even I may not be able to stomach voting for that.
I think there’s some truth in thinking that continuing to elect milquetoast corporatist neoliberal candidates just builds up more extremism and discontent as people continue to suffer under option A of 2 - so when eventually a neocon breaks through they tend to be bonkers. It’s why I’m so fucking disappointed in Starmier as he’s clearly going to do fuck all and likely hand the next election to the torries.
That said, that’s a pretty fucking abstract view and there’s always a chance we get lucky. I voted for Harris but I was really hoping we’d get Senator Harris who actually gave a shit and, even if I knew for certain she’d be underwhelming I’d still fucking vote for her because Trump was worse on every issue and would directly cause a lot of additional human suffering. Women would be forced into unwanted pregnancies, trans people would be suppressed or worse - deaths would come from increased incidents of suicide and self-medication, and, lastly, (and I know a fuck ton of pushback on this point here) more Palestinians would die as Trump accelerated genocide.
So yea, I really regret that we are constantly dealt such bad hands but harm reduction is always a good thing to pursue in the absence of better actions.
Seriously though, when Biden dropped out fuck absolutely everyone who defended the DNC anointing Harris instead of running a snap primary.
Democrats going the full Florida route and just nominating Mitt Romney for President in 2028.
At which point, I will roll my eyes, tear up my ballot, and go home. 24 years of voting for least worst, and phone banking for a primary candidate I actually liked in two campaigns to no avail will have been enough for me if the 2028 candidate isn’t an economic leftist, because I already feel like a sucker and capitalism enabler.
The oligarchs were never not going to shoot the hostages for a tidy profit.
It doesn’t have to be a total waste, you can still chip your vote towards a third party to help them get that 5% that gets them ballot access and federal campaign funding.
If you’re only voting for harm reduction year after year and doing nothing to try and organize grassroots opposition to the lesser evil, yes constantly voting harm reduction is bad. It’s how you allow lesser evils to grow into the larger evils of the current DNC, who care more about fundraising than winning.
The thing is that this is everyone in America. The left has practically no grassroots organization and expects online complaints about the DNC to magically accomplish something, and the right has astroturfed horse shit that that is on board with whatever the corporatist GOP wants to do.
That been my realization. I voted for harm reduction for what 12 year now like a lot of us and have little to show for it if not less. Yes the other side is a factor but they also seem more successful in their braindead idiot agenda too.
You clearly just weren’t voting hard enough.
The inability to acknowledge the appeal of the opposition and the persistent reliance on “my enemies are only strong because they are dumber than me” have lead to some really depressing political decisions by the Democrats. The Biden/Harris campaign in 2024 really seemed to boil down to saying “If you don’t vote for us, democracy is going away” and “Even Republicans from the Bush-Era like us, so you have to vote for us too”.
And then they lost in a popular landslide, suggesting that (a) democracy is alive and well and (b) neither Republicans nor Democrats seem to like you.
What if its not Republican voters who are stupid for supporting Trump? What if its Democrats who are stupid for supporting candidates lamer and more disappointing than Trump?
I mean I consider myself a progressive so yeah that’s pretty well on mark.
To the lame point, I think a large part of not most Americans think knowledge is lame regardless so arguing things seriously is just dismissed as well.
Le sigh.
People spend a lot of their younger years building an understanding of the world, then become cemented in a particular worldview as they get old.
Trying to introduce new ideas to an old crowd is much more difficult than appealing to an audience of young people without any preexisting priors.
…thirty years of choosing harm reduction brought us to this point…
…i held my nose and voted against fascism, but if you want to blame someone, blame the f*cking fascists and blame the thirty years of harm reduction which enabled them: pluralities win, that’s how american democracy works…
This is such a dumb take. You can’t say “thirty years of harm reduction brought us here” with the implication that if Republicans won every election in the time frame things would somehow be better, unless you’re actually just a right wing voter.
I’ll say it for the thousandth time: voting in national elections in no way affects your ability to do other activism. If your argument is along the lines of “voting for the worst option will unite the resistance and we’ll make real change”, well, I hope you realize that that “real change” is bloody revolution with an uncertain result.
Harm reduction and neoliberalism just wont work, end of discussion. Its fucking 2024, if you want to beat republicans you need to elect progressives
For years I’ve seen leftists complaining about ‘harm reduction’ and ‘lesser evil’ and how the dems are ignoring their vote. But all we ever do is bicker with ourselves. We don’t have a united front. We don’t have any reliable voting bloc.
They literally don’t care about us because there is nothing to care about. If Dems court one leftist group they risk alienating another because of our unnecessary purity tests and virtue signaling. It’s so much easier and more reliable to get votes if you tack to the center so that’s what they do.
Meanwhile we don’t do any meaningful activism or organizing. We don’t vote practically and only get excited about voting when we have an exciting candidate. Leftists seem to expect their vote to have power but it doesn’t have any. And it’s entirely our own fault because you have to actually do the work to get the power.
What work is this? Writing your representatives? Voting in primaries? Voting every year there’s an election no matter how local? Knocking on doors and phone banking? Donating to campaigns?
And if that’s not the work, please tell me what the work actually is because I’ve done all those things and have no power to show for it.
Mad respect to you for the effort you put into it - all those things matter. Problem is we don’t do it as a community. Most leftists think their vote is the be-all end-all if they even vote at all, so of course not enough of us are doing what you’re doing.
Beyond that, getting involved locally and/or running for office would be powerful too. Grassroots movements have been shown to work and we don’t have anything remotely like it.
Well said.
Clinton Clinton Bush 2 Bush 2 Obama Obama Fuckface Biden Fuckface
Its as even as you can get over 9 terms (4:5)
Let’s not forget how much absolute harm Bush and Fuckface caused, and I’m not even counting Fuckface’s homicidal COVID response.
The US would have universal healthcare and a sane supreme Court if it wasn’t for Republicans.
I blame both.
Neoliberalism and harm reduction wont work anymore. What the fuck do you think America has been doing the past three decades? If you want to beat republicans, you need to elect progressives, otherwise fascism will keep on rising.
voting is not harm reduction.
It is when both parties get the same orders from the same bribers on economic policy and merely war on how to or if to address some of the social issue symptoms, the ones that don’t effect their briber’s quarterly results.
Example: they war over forced births, but abortion is often an ECONOMIC decision, and the markets have demanded 2 breadwinners the last few decades to make moar from themselves, which is antisocial and antifuture. You won’t hear either party calling for a single income for most to all being able to support a family. That’s a matter of economic policy. That’s a choice. There would objectively, naturally be fewer abortions without coersion if economic desperation wasn’t defended here by both parties, no threat of state violence required.
No, our choice is on the social issue of forced births? No forced births? Your choice lol… Then get back to work, battery.
There are tons of ways to reduce abortion and, typically, those are supported by Democratic politicians and opposed by Republicans. The concern is not to reduce abortion, there’s actually very little concern about the actual number of abortions that happen by its opponents. The concern is that the opponents want an opportunity for themselves to take a “strong moral stance” against abortion. They prefer a world of more abortions which are illegal to a world of fewer abortions which are legal.
Agreed, but once again, the elephant in the room is not being able to afford to have children. Neoliberals stand in the way with Republicans on human citizens being able to afford a family with one child.
It’s an important social issue, what I’m saying is almost all social issues are heavily informed by and often exacerbated by economic policy that ALEC had more say in than the American people.
I think “one income families” would be a winner if you could convince people it was even possible. I think it’d be a hard sell in the modern culture.
I think the United States, culturally, is on track to have about as much hope in positive change as your average Russian.
That’s what happens when you have a supposed generational leader calling for an age of positive progressive change culminating in… a heritage foundation conceived plan to further enshrine private insurers and the profit motive, the core blight, into our broken healthcare system. Then have his party never stop bragging about doing so. The DNC still acts like we should be thanking them for using their super majority to do… That.
Yeah, at this point, this government is too captured to hope for anything but pain rationally, at least on the timescale of human lifespans.
Unfortunately many don’t take the next step, look at nations that do serve their people like the Nordic model, and revolt for a government that serves them in similar fashion.
Because you do have to be a completely blind, willfully ignorant sucker to still believe our vote can do more than let us tread water.
There’s always a choice. There’s always the possibility of change. The billionaires and party leaders are few, they require our continued cooperation to do these things. We could stop if we wanted. What that would look like is impossible to say but a different world is possible.
none of this makes voting harm reduction.
Got it, no one is receiving literal methadone so it it can’t be. /s
Language evolves.
no one was saved from the horrors of the capitalist system by your vote
Is that the only harm that exists? Maybe you should tell that to trans folks…
You’re talking about these trans folks?
they weren’t helped by people voting for Kamala either, because voting is not harm reduction.
Agreed, but no one would be threatening to annex Canada or abolish income derived repayment for student loans either.
Even one being slightly less harmful is harm reduction. Both are taking us on a train ride to hell, and one going 65 is still harm reduction when the only other choice is a train ride to hell at 75.
Harm reduction means there’s no good option. You can argue accelerating towards collapse with Trump will make things better faster than limping along until capitalist climate change forces it in 20 years or so, but you never know what you’ll get on the other side, could be an iron fisted military dictatorship with Don Jr. As the permanent figurehead.
Sometimes, providing clean needles so the heroin user doesn’t ALSO get HIV is better than not. Something that works as a metaphor, and also a social policy position our two capitalist owned parties do disagree on in practice. That’s something the owners allow us to have an opinion on, as thats a poorie problem that doesn’t meaningfully effect their profit expectations. No skin off their nose.
you voted for Kamala and that’s happening anyway.
voting is not harm reduction.
That’s just fatalistic nonsense.
“I daren’t vote in an election because golly my side my not win and then I’d have wasted my effort.”
If your friend is an alcoholic getting wasted on a bottle of vodka every night, switching them to beer because it has less alcohol is not harm reduction. Rescuing a young woman from Jack The Ripper and giving her to Jeffrey Epstein “for her safety” is not harm reduction. A professional fighter concerned about CTE switching to football is not harm reduction. The lesser of two evils is very much still evil.
Those are all literally harm reduction buddy. If those are the only options available you’d take them because they all mean a better chance of better results in the future. Of course, in these situations you would definitely have better options, but you’re deliberately framing it like there are no others. So are you comfortable saying you’d leave your friend alone with the bottle of vodka, let the woman get disemboweled, and not recommend the sport with helmets?