I’m a raging leftist but I’m getting tired of “deontologists” telling me they refuse to vote for Biden then telling me how great Xi Jinping is.
I have to caulk it up to young people learning about socialism and communism for the first time, but they’re only reading Marx and Lenin.
Like hey guys, they lost pretty hard. Maybe we shouldn’t do exactly the same thing and in fact there’s decades of work outlining what we should do instead?
That’s the charitable interpretation. The less charitable one is astroturfing aiming to further destabilize “the west”
Yes! Their positions and actions are suspiciously very demobilising.
No unity even in the most basic stuff. No willingness to hold a constructive conversation. Things have to be done in their way or you’re labeled an enemy. Doctrine above humanity. Incessant nitpicking.
How do they intend to build socialism if they can’t even have an honest, good faith conversation?
A “leftist” earlier this week told me that Joe Biden is responsible for Dobbs because it happened in 2022. That’s a cosplaying Republican. The red hat will be back on his head end-of-day November 3rd.
I can understand looking back to them for some useful stuff. “Commieblock” housing served a purpose at the time, for example. They brought huge masses of people into an urban environment with indoor plumbing, electricity, and climate control, which were not a given in their previous living situations. They were meant as an interim solution to last a few decades. For what they set out to do, they were a great success. The only problem was that the followup to better options was never done.
But the Leninist/Maoists can never leave it at pulling out successes like that. It’s almost always “America bad”, “Holodomor isn’t real”, or “Cuba only sucks because of sanctions”.
you kinda had me in the first half, ngl.
america is bad, research by anticommunist historians after the fall of the soviet union lead to the irrefutable conclusion that holodomor isn’t real (holodomor means intentional genocidal famine, not just that there was a famine that lots of people died in) and cuba has problems but the main reason it sucks is because of sanctions.
Famine because of bad policy is not a win, either. That’s the best case interpretation. However, there are plenty of tankies who will tell you there were no mass deaths at all.
may i see the tankies saying there was no mass death during the famine? I have never in many years of interacting with communists heard someone say that.
Sure, I’ll just wade through a decade of Reddit comments to find some to satisfy your curiosity.
Maybe don’t make shit up then if you don’t have examples
Fuck man, even Marx and Lenin don’t cotton to the common tankie arguments about all non-socialist movements being the same.
Is what we’ve been doing in the US working very well? Maybe the democrat party should look at why nobody is fired up to vote for them, even though the alternative is people like trump. It should be very easy to appeal to normal people, but even with cartoonish opposition, the democrats can’t bring themselves to much better. All I’m saying is you’re asking some tiny minority of the electorate (socialists) to introspect, when you’re better off asking the same of the people and parties that actually have power.
Cynical tinfoil hat moment but — making concessions to voters to beat the GOP means giving away valuable capital (physical and political) that those at the top would rather retain for themselves. It would certainly explain how both sides only ever get worse instead of better, and how ejections continuously come down to 51/49. They don’t have to be any good, they just have to be 1% better than the other one. A race to the bottom.
Now realize that the people at the top win no matter which party is in power.
“Democrat party”
Good point.
IYKYK
CMYK
This is why I pull largely from my half crazed redneck version of leftism. Cant make an authoritarian out of someone who doesnt listen to aurhority outside of his fucken clan. I will listen to cops and be polite because I dont want the dumbfuck gorilla with a gun to shoot me. Makes it harder to spread the ideas of militant unions.
You’re not a “raging leftist” if you vote for Biden. At least vote PSL or Green
This post is about you, you idiot.
Your vote for Dems is what endangers the vulnerable like those in poverty. You consent to wealth and income inequality with your vote, and can only blame yourself for not improving your country.
What do you think happens if I do that?
Actual progress towards changing the Democratic party instead of consenting to it’s right wing policies that are enabled by your vote.
I did that in 2016 and it didn’t progress shit. It made it worse like it will if we do that this year. I organized and pushed leftists in primaries and I was beaten by “moderates.” Specifically, nobody had a chance against the incumbent. It fucking sucks but I don’t want a declared fascist putting more assholes on judicial benches or pushing anti-trans, anti-women policies.
I’m with you on both parties sucking. But please, grow up. If you want to help, do it before the nominees are set. And don’t drag others into your misguided principles.
I did that in 2016 and it didn’t progress shit.
Did your lazy ass do anything else?
If you want to help, do it before the nominees are set.
Jill Stein is a good candidate in a historically weak election for the ruling class.
I’ve gotten dozens of people to vote Green in my state, what have you done?
“There are dozens of us.” lol
wtf have I done? I already said. Organized and gotten people elected to school boards, city council, and our mayor too. We primaried for state and federal elections but didn’t get our candidates. We didn’t pout and waste our votes on people who had no chance of getting elected. We sucked it the fuck up and tried to make sure Republicans didn’t get elected.
I don’t believe you at all. Any person informed enough to do what you said knows voting for Democrats only makes out situation worse by consenting to neoliberal capitalism. None of the hundreds of people affiliated with the Green party I’ve met have said that, so you’re lying.
I’ve been looking through your comments and have confirmed you are a fake. Where can I see any evidence of your “efforts” to help the Green party?
Project 2025, stupid. Letting Trump win means no progressive wins again in this country. Anti progress.
Letting
TrumpBiden win means no progressive wins again in this country.Imagine thinking you’re defending democracy by voting for someone you don’t want. LOL
Wow, you can type the opposite thing that someone said and pretend that you have a point. How incredibly stupid of you.
What exactly is Biden’s plan to avoid letting a progressive win in the country ever again? Because Trump is the one with Project 2025.
Imagine thinking you’re defending democracy by voting for someone you don’t want. LOL
I, on the other hand, express democracy by voting for a candidate that I support, Jill Stein.
What exactly is Biden’s plan to avoid letting a progressive win in the country ever again?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dnc-war-third-party-candidates-rcna143290
You’re not a “raging leftist” if you vote for Biden. At least
vote PSL or Greenuse a brutal domestic terrorism campaign as leverage to blackmail politicians into overturning first-past-the-post as part of a multi-prong strategy that, even as extreme as you are, still includes a pragmatic hedge in the form of a vote for the lesser of two evilsOf course nobody should be terrorizing anyone. What I’m riffing off of is a perspective someone shared that basically you don’t protest with a vote for a loser, you protest by agitating for systemic change.
In the meantime while the broken system is in place, you feed it a minimally shitty input.
use a brutal domestic terrorism campaign
The fuck? Just vote for third parties where did you get that bullshit from?
In the meantime while the broken system is in place, you feed it a minimally shitty input.
You consent to this system with a vote for Dems.
Reasonable people can definitely disagree on this.
One thing that may be interesting to think about: some percentage of the time an argument is made disingenuously to try to siphon off votes. An entirely genuine recommendation of an identical strategy is fair – as I said reasonable people can disagree – but perhaps calls for some introspection.
It’s too bad when your strategy mirrors that of your worst enemy! So the far leftist could perhaps instead chain himself to legislators’ doors (vehement objection to the system) while consenting to acknowledge reality with a disgusted harm reduction vote for the marginally less-bad elderly man.
Do you think being incredibly stupid is a prereq for being a raging leftist or something?
Do you think being incredibly stupid is a prereq for being a raging leftist or something?
It is a prereq for voting for Biden
No, understanding how the voting system works isn’t stupid
You misunderstand the voting system because you vote for someone you don’t like.
The best available choice isn’t always one that you want to make. It’s fine to hate the idea of voting strategically, I hate it too, but it’s naive to think you can positively affect the system by going with the option you want the most.
Voting for someone you disagree with is not voting strategically, it’s voting against your interests based on what you assume others will do.
Conservatives are just shuffling cards.
I guess I’ll say it for the record but Kris Mayes is a woman.
Hard to believe I had to scroll down so far for this. I heard HER on NPR this morning, did a doubletake when reading the post. Thank you. Is it surprising it’s a woman protecting women from the dictates of long-dead ignorant men? No, although sadly it’s not a given. Is it surprising an AG is assumed to be male? Even by a person who supports what they do? Just shows how far we have yet to go.
“Sadly” it’s not a given?
Please tell me you don’t mean to imply that protecting women from the dictates of long-dead ignorant men is only good if a woman is doing it?
No sorry, I meant it’s sad there are some horrible right-wing women in positions of power.
👍
Also 280 votes, but simple math is hard for Americans.
This just emphasizes to me that every vote matters. Sure, both parties are terrible and the chance of a third party making any headway, nevermind winning an election is, at best, unlikely.
But not voting is being complicit in what comes next. Good or bad, you’re okay with whatever happens.
Harm reduction through voting is surreal, but it’s required at this point. Don’t be a filthy fucking collaborator, go vote.
They are both imperfect but only one is legitimately terrible. I’m actually pretty tired of everyone feeling the need to qualify this sentiment, as if the Democrats haven’t been behind basically every bit of progress in the US going back a century or more.
It’s like someone who keeps pointing out “Yeah, but we’re also running low on food!” on an spacecraft that is almost out of air.
True, these are both problems, but one is a MUCH bigger immediate threat and needs to be solved before we can spend time on the other, and doing nothing simply isn’t the correct option.
* 50 years or more
Not that I’m disagreeing with your thesis as applied to the modern day, but pre-Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats were the racist party. There was a massive sea change during the era of Nixon, when the Democrats decided after quite a bit of heated internal debate that they couldn’t possibly stomach depending on the support of the segregationists, whatever the cost, and the Southern Strategy scooped all the for real lynch-mob enthusiasts all up for Nixon. Except for Carter’s brief flirtation with actual human decency, which the US isn’t okay with for some reason, the Democrats got accustomed to losing elections for quite a while, until Clinton decided to make a pact with the neoliberal bastards since all the actual progressives were so ground down into not-voting-land that they weren’t even worth appealing to anymore. That worked and that set the tone which has continued to the modern day of slight steady progress under Democrats versus absolute naked fascism under the Republicans (accelerating year by year to its current breakneck pace.)
Side note, if you want to have your heart broke a little bit, read Hubert Humphrey’s speech at the DNC in NINETEEN FUCKING FORTY EIGHT, where he calls out the Democratic party for their acceptance of racism:
My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.
He was still around in 1968, in the literal bloody battle, inside and outside the convention hall, for what the Democrats were going to be. They never fulfilled their promise completely, and they still haven’t, and that year it cost them the presidency, just like it did in 2016.
I say this 1,000% agreeing that Biden has represented a big step forward and accomplished some genuine impressive things, and that voting for him in November is an affirmative good thing and not just a way to prevent Trump’s end of the world. But the Democrats had to be dragged kicking and screaming by their progressive wing into doing good things, just as they have to be now on Israel among some other issues.
The difference is that they can be dragged into good things, which is enough. And they’ve done pretty much all of the progress the country has made since 1976; I’ll fully agree with you there.
A hundred years ago the Republicans were still ok and the dems were well, pretty bad. Reminder that by 1924 the last Democratic president was fucking Wilson, ya know the man who showed birth of a nation at the whitehouse. It wouldnt be until FDR that the Democrats started to not be fucken horrible.
Conservatives have always been terrible, no matter the political party.
You need a different voting system for third parties to be viable
Yes ok but still…
Genuinely not trying to be a dick, but I don’t understand what your response means?
The response means, “I agree, but it’s not relevant to the topic at hand.”
Yes, we need a better system. In the meantime, we need to work with what we have.
OK. The op mentioned voting third parties so my comment was a response to that. Thanks for explaining thou
I agree. The problem is getting a new voting system to be implemented. Neither of the two parties want third parties to get a decent shot at dethroning them, so the two parties right now, are not going to willingly go for a new voting system since the current one ensures that they only have one rival during elections.
It doesn’t benefit either party, so neither is going to agree to change it.
Wasn’t sure at first but you brought me home safe in the second half
Been arguing with a tankie about this, decided to stop after they said a civil war and another genocide was preferable to voting for Biden because he supports Israel. Yeah ok bud
Yeah see, I don’t care for genocide. Genocide is not very cash money at all. So, see, in opposition to genocide, I’m gonna sit over here have a preference for a different not cash money genocide, you know, not really but yeah. Oh, and I’ve read accounts of war. I can handle it, I’m well read on the topic. Blood, guts, spit, and ass aren’t that scary. With all of my experience reading about war, I’m practically a shell shocked WWI vet anyway, hehe.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
I’m absolutely shocked that my comment calls for a /s.
Like, have things got so bad that obvious satire isn’t obvious anymore?
Like, have things got so bad that obvious satire isn’t obvious anymore?
You must be new here.
“President stares directly at Sun” isn’t satire anymore.
Ok, yeah. Haha. What a moment that was. God bless former president (hopefully forever) Donald J. Trump. Haha.
Yes, they have. I took it as satire but I can easily see people actually believing it.
Hell, just yesterday there was a guy still arguing that masks didn’t really make a difference for COVID. That improved hygiene, lock downs/isolation, and social distancing was what made all the difference.
I then made a comparison to seat belts, airbags, and bicycle helmets and he then made arguments against those too. I just left the “conversation” at that point. I’m really hoping it was just a bot. The responses were pretty long.
It was pretty obvious to me, but I’ve certainly missed /s before, so…
Don’t worry I understood your comment was satire but honestly it’s not far off from the tankie I was arguing with.
As if they would be there in the frontlines when shit hits the fan. It shows very clearly they don’t risk much (and lack the most basic level of empathy) if they really think Trump and Biden are the same. Ask our trans comrades. Or homeless people. Or journalists.
In abstention, they just found a way of feeling good about doing nothing at all. Voting is literally the least you could do and they won’t do even that.
Not to mention that the less people think their votes are worth, the more every individual vote is actually mean.
If you have two elections, one with a 40% turnout and one with an 80% turnout, in the one where 40% of people voted, each voter was as important as two voters in the 80% one.
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Is this some kind of new annoying bot? I refuse to believe a real person could be this stupid.
I think they are a very, very funny and clever troll. (sarcasm)
I checked their posting history and, nope, they’re just a moron.
I mean the fewer people vote, the more power those who do vote end up having.
Your country’s youth didn’t vote? Enjoy the regressive concervatives that the old people elected taking away minority rights, reproductive rights, LGBT rights.
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What do you mean by this precisely?
What do you mean by this precisely?
Call the zoo, the sea lion escaped!
I mean the ones who vote choose who makes decisions and passes laws.
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Are you okay?
The outcome of the election, by vote percentage, is altered more by one vote if the total vote is 400 than it would be if the total vote was 800.
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Impactful.
2.4 MILLION PEOPLE… Why the fuck is every goddamn election 50/50!? Why the hell is it always the fucking razors edge!?
I’m no math guy but I feel like statistically it shouldn’t be possible for almost every goddamn election to be 50/50… 49/51… For fucks sake…
It didn’t used to be that way. Big blowouts used to be common.
I think it’s a result of the GOP holding on to electoral legitimacy purely through electoral tricks which are expensive / criminal to a pretty large degree, since except for a little violent minority, almost all of the country has moved on from supporting them or anything they stand for. They don’t want to expend more money or risk than is needed, so they’ll do more or less the minimum that seems like it’ll let them hold on to power. Even that isn’t really working that well anymore, and so their grip is slipping, and with Trump now running the show and demolishing the RNC’s effectiveness just as thoroughly as he does everything else he touches, all bets are off for the upcoming election.
I think they’re planning to move to simple explicit violence during this election, since that’s all that is left if they want to avoid defeat, but you can’t completely write off how effective their propaganda is at convincing people.
The propaganda has always been my gripe. I definitely blame people for having such hate in their hearts that it works on them, but it’s the propagandists that twist reality in a way that make it “logical” for the average voter to believe their candidate is the “one who can save us.”
I don’t believe my father is that hateful, but boy did Fox News really get to him as far as “evil Democrats.” His arguments are always economic, he doesn’t care one way or the other about trans issues, immigration, etc, but he’ll eat up anything Fox has to say about “whales dying due to wind powered generators.”
Yeah. I really don’t like the mindset that Trump voters are evil or racist, they fully understand what he’s about and they want it. A tiny percentage of them are that way; most are not. In my experience, Trump supporters I’ve talked to have been victimized by extremely powerful extremely expensive / well produced propaganda that’s created this whole alternate reality in their minds that’s extremely convincing, and they’re just trying to do the right thing within that reality.
I don’t know what the solution to that is, but treating them as bad people (and particularly, ignoring or downplaying the economic / societal abandonment of them that created legitimate anger and resentment which the propaganda can play into) is definitely not the answer.
I’m sorry, but those people have access to the exact same information I do. Maybe at first it was understandable that some people got taken in by it, but at this point there is no mistaking what Trump stands for, and anyone who continues supporting him is outright malicious or so ego driven they can’t possibly admit a mistake and will definitely follow him to untold atrocities.
I hate the terms “both sides” and “America is divided” because it implies that there is some form of symmetry to this madness. This is not the case. Trump supporters can come back to earth any time they want, but I am absolutely not going to meet them halfway to their shitty fascist endgame, even if that means we get another decade of milquetoast liberal democrats.
I’m sorry, but those people have access to the exact same information I do.
No they don’t. Or rather, the ones I’ve talked with extensively had no idea what was going on; media they genuinely trusted had given them this very incomplete, bizarre, and specifically constructed view of the world that was perfectly believable to them, but which bore absolutely no resemblance to reality. In particular it even has specific features to make it harder to be able to break yourself out of, make you resist learning new information that might challenge it. If you haven’t had your brain inside that type of box or talked extensively with people who did it’s sometimes hard to appreciate how pervasive and reality-defining it can be.
So like think of all those guys who went down to the border expecting there to be this army of Mexicans coming over and terrorizing the whole town, and they were ready to go down and help sign up for their patriotic duty to help, and they were surprised and confused when they got there and it was just a normal town. It’s not like they were like “oh okay let me start shooting any Mexicans I see on the street because that’s my main goal” – they had a perfectly humane reason for being there, in their minds. They had a perfectly humane response (like “wtf these guys lied to me, what even is going on here”). It’s easy to laugh at them because they were so wrong, but they really believed it. Because all the news they watch and all their friends they talk to and all the internet they observe told them that’s what’s going on.
I definitely will agree that there’s a way-too-large minority that’s like “hey I always wanted to shoot Mexicans / shoot up the Ramadan celebration / kill my family member who I suspect of being a Democrat.” I’m not trying to give everyone a free pass. I’m saying that the root of it for a lot of the rank and file is being duped, not being evil.
(Not that that makes them any less dangerous of course)
I hate the terms “both sides” and “America is divided” because it implies that there is some form of symmetry to this madness. This is not the case.
Fully agree on this part. The movement as a whole and its leaders are extremely dangerous and evil, and the media for the most part is looking for any excuse to avoid saying “these guys are Nazis WTF how do we stop them,” and “both sides” is one convenient excuse.
Trump supporters can come back to earth any time they want
Well, but they can’t. Not on their own. They’re either going to realize the reality through some outside force helping them see the truth, or they’re going to keep growing in numbers and fervor until their leaders can use them to enact a for-real fascist takeover.
So these guys who went to the border… Once they realized it was all fake, they swore off this media and stopped voting Republican?
Some of them, yeah. Not all, and maybe that’s a pretty valid reason to criticize their moral courage. But Jordan Klepper has done some pretty fascinating interviews with e.g. Nikki Haley supporters who have realized what a monster Trump is.
(Some of whom say they’ll maybe still vote for him…)
I like the cut of your jib! It’s too often I see blanket statements about all Republicans are Nazis, racist, etc. You can’t understand your opposition or why they might believe what they believe if you just see everyone as cartoon evil.
I like the idea that “no person is the villain of their own story.” As you say, they for the most part believe they are doing the right thing according to the information they’ve been subjected to. It’s an incredibly difficult problem especially as we understand the importance of a free press.
No person is the villain in their own story, yet I see people blatantly run red lights nearly every day. Most people know perfectly well the shit they do is atrocious.
In my experience, it’s mostly been the “You’re one of the good ones!” type of racist that gets sucked in and consider it reasonable.
As in, without some seed of racism/misogyny/etc that propaganda fertilizer would mean nothing.
But that’s my experience with magats I know.
In Arizona it’s simple. The Democrats are rising and the Republicans are falling. If the Arizona State Republicans don’t make a substantive change it will go back to blowouts, just in favor of Democrats instead.
In Arizona it’s because the Democrats are rising. Elections used to be blowouts for Republicans.
If it’s a huge Democratic turn out in year X, then there’s going to be a lot of Dem voters that say “well, my vote doesn’t really matter so why bother” in year X+1. And vice versa.
So the turnout is going to edge closer and closer to equilibrium over time.
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It’s like the people who try to run from the cops and then once they get caught and asked why they did it, they say “because I didn’t want to go to jail.” My bro you have articulated the problem and I get it, but the solution you have chosen is going to make it quite a lot worse.
Maybe people who don’t vote are not trying to express dissatisfaction. Maybe they feel like there are more productive uses of their time.
(I usually vote. But in my area, my preferred candidates have no serious chance of winning. Meh. Everyone’s equal on election day, but only if they’re in a swing state (or district).)
Voting is the same as the trolley problem. You can make a conscious choice between two bad outcomes, but if you do nothing then one of those outcomes will happen anyway.
The trolley problem is usually a useful tool and nothing more, but it’s actually a great analogy for voting. You have two choices. Let the trolley continue or change its path. You may have different reasons for your choices, but those are the only two real choices. You can leave a note on the lever expressing your displeasure, but it still doesn’t get pulled. Not pulling it is as much a choice as pulling it. You’re a participant either way.
Except there’s not really a correlation between me pulling the lever in the voting booth and something happening.
Even if I vote as hard as I can the more bad thing can still happen because our system has big problems.
When people say “both sides are the same” they’re coming from a point of frustration with the system in general.
Signed,
An anarchist who’s had to pull the lever for a capitalist in every election he’s ever voted in.
Honestly, if leftist spaces on the internet weren’t so infested with insufferable ML campists, I feel like we could actually move the Overton window a bit more among progressive liberals. Libertarian left ideas are pretty popular when presented in the right context. The thing which turns your average person off is the historical association with autocracy and oppression that MLs cling to for some reason.
I have been pretty vocal about this, but I just run into a sectarian wall over and over again. I wish more like-minded people would spend more time challenging ML orthodoxy and less time bashing liberals. I honestly feel like most liberals aren’t nearly as far gone as your average Lenin simp.
I always say, and I’m fairly confident it’s true, they’re more pro-autocracy than they are pro-leftist. They will defend a dictator when they harm people before they back the people being harmed. That’s not leftist. Leftism is on the side of the people being oppressed. They absolutely do more harm than good by making people think being left they have to agree with that group, but they’re a very loud minority.
While I don’t disagree that MLs online cause harm, it would be remiss of me not to point out that the root of the issue is decades of intergenerational indoctrination during the cold war that anything democratically socialist was directly equivalent to autocratic communism. There is a deep, cultural cognitive dissonance that occurs in the US about things like socialised medicine and welfare that I just don’t think tankies online influence as much as you think they do.
That’s true. I guess you could expand the analogy to a very heavy lever that needs a lot of people to pull, and if not enough people pull it the right way the other thing happens. That’s really butchering the analogy though and I don’t think it’s required. The point is to show that “not participating” is still a choice and still has an effect, so you are still playing a part just not one that’s useful.
Considering that someone can win the presidency without winning the popular vote, and that the Senate gives states with tiny populations equal power, and that the House should have over a thousand members if we kept the same ratio, sometimes it doesn’t matter if more people are pulling along with yout.
There’s so many undemocratic things built into our government - mainly to appease slaveowners - it’s really hard for me to work up any enthusiasm that my vote will do anything at all.
I can empathize with the people who have given up on voting, because I was at that point many times. Now I’ve lowered my expectations and given up hope, and I just vote because it means I don’t get told I’m not allowed to complain.
Totally agree with everything. Voting is pretty quick and easy though. I absolutely agree with people performing other actions that can possibly be more effective as well, but those take much more time and effort. Everyone should vote because, even if it doesn’t have much effect, the amount of effect it has compared to the amount of effort it takes is high.
Now that I can vote by mail I agree that the effort is worth the effect. But if I had to stand in line for hours just to see the Supreme Court or electoral college or Congress or a bunch of states jam the trolley handle in the other direction I don’t think I could bring myself to do it if it didn’t also mean I’m allowed to complain.
What bothers me, and I’ve seen expressed in other comments, is that the response to “voting doesn’t matter” or “both sides are the same” is immediate dismissal, as if nobody should have any problem with the way things work.
Even the line “If you don’t vote you can’t complain” is mean and dismissive.
You keep talking about every vote not mattering in a vote that was won by 200-some-odd people with over 3000 write-ins. That person who can make a measurable impact wouldn’t have been in the position to do anything if just a few hundred more people had believed it was hopeless and just stayed home. So how do you justify that with your beliefs?
I get that the presidential election is broken on many levels, and many people’s votes have little or no bearing on the final outcome, or that any likely outcome will even be ideal, but the implausible has happened before, depending on how people vote.
The one thing that has never improved the outcome is to shrug your shoulders and do nothing.
You have more than two choices. Stop giving false information.
You really only havw two choices (for most elections) though. You can vote for the side you agree with more or not. Sure, there are lots of ways to do the latter, but it’s that. I guess you also have the choice to vote against the side you agree with more, but that’s not really a choice. In this case, it isn’t a false binary.
You can also participate in many other things outside of voting, but that’s totally separate and you can always do more separate things for anything. You can always follow a choice with other choices, but it doesn’t change the effect of the first choice.
You really only havw two choices (for most elections IN THE US) though.
ftfy
not effectively, you don’t.
Yeah, you could vote for someone who isn’t going to win (voting this way helps Trump win)
I call bullshit on voting that way helps Trump win.
Ok. You’re wrong, but you do you I guess
Well put
Anyone who genuinely believes that voting doesn’t matter should ask themselves why conservatives ALWAYS make sure to vote, come hell or high water.
Problem is even if the attorney general doesn’t prosecute, local
courtsprosecutors can. We need votes for local elections THE MOST, so please vote for every small thing.Courts don’t prosecute. District and AG’s bring charges to the court. By itself, the court has no executive powers.
Thanks for the correction, you are correct. I’ll edit
That’s a very strong statement, respect
it’d be cool if we could like vote for shit. But like, also fix the fucking voting system.
Would like to see more talk about that alongside voting itself. People seem too content with the shitty system we have. And i get it, it’s a kill or be killed world out there or whatever the fuck, but like, we should have standards also.
Currently our standard is “literally fucking doing the bare minimum possible” and i honestly just cant fucking take this shit seriously anymore.
FPP is the problem with the US. And electoral colleges. And Gerrymandering the vote. Electoral oversight needs to be non-partisan. So much needs to change
Liberals not voting is the problem with the US. We sure as fuck aren’t getting national ranked choice voting out of the party of fascism. We aren’t getting any Democrat favored legislation without a clear majority. Not a ‘well the VP can be the tiebreaker in the senate if the 2 right leaning Democrats agree to it’ majority. Not even a ‘well as long as Joe Lieberman goes along we can break the filibuster’ majority is good enough.
Republicans need to be made utterly unelectable before a left leaning party can be viable.
i don’t disagree but please tell me if you think joe biden is going to magically create ranked choice voting. WE have to make this a ballot problem, WE need to incentivize these fucks to care.
Voting in primaries is important, but without fail, what happens every time, is that we go “oh shit this one is going to be bad” and then everyone tries to make everyone vote (which never works btw) and then we either lose, and we go “ok time to dissociate for 4 years” and or “well shit, better luck next time, hopefully i don’t die.” and then if we win we all kinda just sit there decompressing from the last one.
They are not mutually exclusive. You can advocate for reform to the voting system, which is a massive undertaking which will take quite a long time and a lot of effort and may or may not succeed, while still showing up one day and taking one action which (aggregated together with millions of other people doing the same) may save us from impending fascism.
If you think that not voting will “incentivize” the institution of ranked choice voting you are living in a pure fantasy world. In this specific election though it will incentivize the creation of a fascist dictatorship. If you thought FPTP voting was bad wait until “the state legislature overrules everyone’s votes” past the post.
They are not mutually exclusive. You can advocate for reform to the voting system, which is a massive undertaking which will take quite a long time and a lot of effort and may or may not succeed, while still showing up one day and taking one action which (aggregated together with millions of other people doing the same) may save us from impending fascism.
i get it, but like, unless we do both of them simultaneously, we’re just going to end up subjecting ourselves to what is currently happening, but in increasingly more polarized increments. We need to start a bipartisan voting reform, and we need to vote. Voting right now will fix short term fascism. But only for the period of about 4 years, then we have no immediate guarantee anymore.
4 years is a very short period of time.
If you think that not voting will “incentivize” the institution of ranked choice voting you are living in a pure fantasy world. In this specific election though it will incentivize the creation of a fascist dictatorship. If you thought FPTP voting was bad wait until “the state legislature overrules everyone’s votes” past the post.
That’s not what i said. You are literally pulling this out of your ass. I literally said, we need to make this a ballot problem, we need to give the people that we are collectively putting in power, a reason to care about this shit. It’s happened with abortion, it can happen again with voting. If we demand a candidate who supports voting reform, we will get a candidate who supports voting reform.
This kind of reactionary rhetoric (oh the irony) is the problem that i currently have with democrats. We’re content to prevent fascism from immediately happening, but then apparently not in improving the situation any further, apart from “man they should really prevent this trump guy from running again, would be a shame if fascism were to happen”
We need to start a bipartisan voting reform, and we need to vote. Voting right now will fix short term fascism. But only for the period of about 4 years, then we have no immediate guarantee anymore.
Yeah, 100% agreed. How do I advocate for voting reform? The big thing I’m coming to talking about all this stuff is, I should be doing something besides just bullshitting about it on the internet.
That’s not what i said.
Sounds like I misinterpreted “WE have to make this a ballot problem, WE need to incentivize these fucks to care.” – all good. It kinda sounds to me like we’re saying the same thing (and I would add reforming a bunch of things besides the voting system, too). How can I help to make that happen?
Yeah, 100% agreed. How do I advocate for voting reform? The big thing I’m coming to talking about all this stuff is, I should be doing something besides just bullshitting about it on the internet.
ultimately, even just talking about it like i did is going to do something productive. Talk about it to friends and family, bring it up to local politicians. If you have any new candidates running, or incumbents struggling, perhaps give em a call as well. Realistically as long as you can convince people that the current system doesn’t work, and that something better is needed, regardless of how partisan. People are tired of the same shit, give them something new and they’ll vote for it, that’s literally how trump won (i mean he also spent shit tons of money on it as well but whatever)
Unfortunately, i’m not super involved myself, aside from mostly yelling at people on the internet, (ironic i know) realistically, i think with something as simple as this, if enough people have a problem with it, it’s just going to change. It’s such a simple issue, and such a big problem. Ironically, the current voting system is part of the problem, we as constituents, don’t have a whole lot of say over what goes on government side, we should probably have a hell of a lot more influence. I.E. stop electing people with values aligned to you, and start pushing issues onto the voting public, actually give them a reason to vote.
Sounds like I misinterpreted “WE have to make this a ballot problem, WE need to incentivize these fucks to care.” – all good. It kinda sounds to me like we’re saying the same thing (and I would add reforming a bunch of things besides the voting system, too). How can I help to make that happen?
pretty much yeah, i’m mostly focused on the more impactful things first and foremost, realistically if we can push new voting legislature through, we can push more productive laws and legislation through afterwards. Though i wouldn’t be complaining about doing more at once i suppose, scope can make or break things like this unfortunately. I think at the end of the day, stuff like this is more about making an individual feel like they have an impact, or feeling like they’re involved more than anything. It’s why the government keeps trying to take that shit away. It makes us defeated and unmotivated.
Hell, a fun fact about this kind of a thing. A kid wrote a paper in college about the 27th amendment, and the fact that it could technically still get ratified. Got a shit grade on it, and then decided that it would be funny to get it ratified, and so he did. It was ratified after sitting dormant for 200 years. If that kid can get that amendment ratified, there is a pretty damn good chance we can get better voting systems for ourselves. Or we could pull a vermin supreme, put a boot on our head and start shitposting. That’s another option.
My favorite way to make conservatives start questioning the electoral college is asking them which state had the most votes for Trump.
It was California, right?
Yep. Makes usually makes them have a high amount of cognitive dissonance. “But…but it’s full of nothing but liberal commies and…their votes mean nothing! My people!”
At the same time, I believe California is the state where your vote matters the least as things have not kept up proportionally.
So the most votes for Trump being degraded the most.
(Edit: this might be more true in the house than presidential EC though)
yeah, there’s a lot between us and voting, and given the current state of technology, it doesn’t exactly need to exist.
Maine and Alaska have ranked choice (also called instant runoff) now. Nevada is on track to also go this way. Change is slow, but it has started.
thats cool. Can’t wait till it makes it way to the rest of the states, and federal government, at this rate it definitely won’t take a half century.
Your voting system is so fucked. Like voting should be something that people like to do. I want to vote for people that align with my values the most. But no, you have to be strategic and choose the lesser evil to not accidentally end up with fucking fsscists like Trump again. It’s fucked. Still tho, please prevent Trump.
We already know that the problem is First Past The Post (FPTP) voting. Literally everyone qualified to hold office in the USA knows it. But would you vote for someone who’s incompetent at best, making things only slightly worse for 4 years?
Every election, the answer is a resounding yes. Vote for the lesser evil, and then we’ll rely entirely on direct action between elections, like strikes.
Then the lesser evils shut down a badly needed rail strike, at a time when that could have been the start of something big.
So you tell me what you’d do, I’m genuinely curious.
non-US people try not to blame US people for their own oppression challenge (impossible) (it happens every thread)
This is like a teenager getting all upset that the family can’t go on a trip because money is tight and saying it’s not faaaaaaaaaiiir.
Yes, powerful people are trying to do evil with the levers of government. There are people who wake up all day every day and try to prevent them, or to make good things happen anyway, with varying levels of success. Just getting all whiny about it because everything’s not automatic or already fixed for you, and you have to either do what you can within the system or work for change outside the system or else get used to things being shitty (and with Trump maybe get exponentially worse), shows a lack of understanding of how the world works.
What the fuck arenyou even talking about lol
Did an LLM write this?
Seriously wondering the same thing. This account seems to have no real ideology and makes obviously incorrect observations.
Such as?
Insufficient data for meaningful response
Both users show a degree of logic in their arguments: User A’s concern about the need for a fairer voting system and User B’s point about the necessity of working within or outside the system to enact change. However, the conversation seems to falter in terms of constructive engagement and empathy towards each other’s views. Each response escalates the emotional charge and distance between their positions, reducing the potential for a reasoned, good-faith discussion. The mutual misunderstanding—highlighted by User A questioning if an LLM (language model) wrote User B’s response—suggests a breakdown in communication where the logic and intentions of the arguments might be overshadowed by their emotional expressions and rhetorical tactics.
So yes.
Look at the number of people who want human rights and fair living conditions. If we had a voting system that would allow us to score or rank multiple candidates we’d have a functioning country even despite the gerrymandering and Electoral College bullshit.
Even in countries where it’s undoubtedly a LOT better like Germany, I vote purely strategically. No super small parties that won’t make it into parliament cause that vote would be wasted. Stuff like that. And I would absolutely vote for the conservatives to prevent the fascists. Basically, don’t take it for granted and try to get the most out of it every time.
the “Voting is Not Harm Reduction” article is possibly the most covert insidious thing that’s happened to online political discourse since 2019.
somehow, it’s managed to SEO weasel its way on top of every other article since the dawn of the internet for the search terms “voting harm reduction” and similar. and not just once, but reposted to every corner of the internet imaginable. literally try it now, if you set your google search to find articles before February 5, 2020, you will see inumerable articles with diversity of positions on the topic. after that? literally just the same article reposted and crosslisted, with the occasional reddit/twitter/tumblr comment thread.
it’s not even a bad article per se, it’s just indecently self-contradictory as OOP says, admitting at the beginning that small rights can be preserved by engaging in voting, and then pulling a 180 and accusing those who vote of perpetuating white supremacy.
like i get it, harm reduction has a specific meaning originating in addiction treatment. but for heavens sake, this flub of language doesn’t mean you should throw away one of the only miniscule rights the oppressor class has granted you to help your neighbors.
editing to add this comment thread and article which i think give helpful insight.
Almost as if someone was trying to specifically engineer that type of result
I’m gonna start my own little Alex Jones show where I’m convinced everything is a conspiracy
obviously i have no proof, but if presented with further evidence of conspiracy i wouldn’t doubt it. probably not even the author’s fault, but more of an “unwitting pawn” situation.
end point, the material consequences of this article being pervasive is an advantage to conservative power, moreso than it is to indigenous people.
Honestly, this kinda shit probably wouldn’t be that difficult to pull on the other side.
Spin up some bigoted rightwing shithead as a persona to get a conservative audience, then manipulate them to undermine the right’s goals. They’re already so primed to fall for bullshit conspiracy theories and magical thinking they’d probably be pretty easy to manipulate.
I thought about it. Like create a Truth Social account as be all vocal about “Yay Trump” and “The election is rigged fuck voting I don’t care” and talking up RFK and Qanon and accusing different people of crimes against conservatism if they don’t agree with me.
I decided (1) I’m not quite sure how to go about it or even good strategies, it seems like you need an army of people making 8 rubles an hour or whatever to really make an impact (2) I’m not a whore; just doing destructive lying all day doesn’t seem honorable or fun.
Or (3) it simply would still be facilitating the goal of right wing discourse.
Which is usually the issue at hand. Most right wing discourse is just monkeywrenching progress be it civil, social, scientific, etc. It isn’t something you can invert.
The anti harm-reduction crowd:
that’s how it feels fr sometimes :(
I ran into someone like this on Lemmy just yesterday. They said that “we” deserve to suffer if Trump gets elected. I said that I was guessing they weren’t queer or a person of color. They were not. Therefore they were not part of “we.” ‘Innocent people that are definitely not me deserve to suffer so that America gets what it deserves’ is a really fucking galling attitude.
Paraphrasing Contrapoints: you only get to ‘watch the world burn’ when you have the privilege of not being on fire.
