• Gabe Bell@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I know I have no way of convincing anyone of this, but I am not a Russian bot (living in the UK and not being able to vote in the US election).

    But these are exactly the points of view I have been expressing over here about the Tory and Labour parties. Maybe not so much the “not voting at all” one but the other three? Yeah – that sounds a lot like me right now.

    (I think you should vote for someone you believe in, rather than voting for someone who is not someone else, if that makes sense)

    But definitely not a Russian bot :)

    • Skua@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      I think you should vote for someone you believe in, rather than voting for someone who is not someone else

      This would be the ideal situation, but for so long as we have first-past-the-post it’s a fundamentally ineffective way to vote. Thanks to Duverger’s law, unless one of the two big parties just so happens to coincide with your views then the best you can do is to vote against whichever of the big two you dislike most. “Big two” here depends on your constituency - it may not be Labour and the Conservatives locally, but it is true that virtually every constituency has at most two realistic options. Labour may not be very good, but if they’re in power it’s probably at minimum going to make this a better place for asylum seekers and trans people (or whoever the Tories would go after next), and Labour’s voting record on the environment really is far better than the Conservatives’ too.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Your opinion is that it’s the best you can do. I disagree, because that ignores the medium run.

        It might be a good idea, but it’s not definitely “the best” because reality is more complicated. Politics doesn’t happen exactly once on one day.

        • Donkter@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I agree, but I unfortunately think that’s actually the perspective of anyone who chooses not to vote. Politics doesn’t happen once on one day. But if you haven’t done anything in 4 years the most impactful you’ll be is voting for the lesser of two evils once on election day.

        • Skua@kbin.social
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          6 months ago

          It’s the best you can with with your vote on voting day. It doesn’t stop you doing anything else on any other day.

      • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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        6 months ago

        Yes, definitely a Russian bot, and not someone who works from home and is active during normal waking hours in Minnesota.

        I don’t advocate anyone getting banned but i think it’s a bit naive to accuse someone who you disagree with as being a foreign agent.

        Go ahead and look through my comments, I’ll happily own up to any comment where I said ‘don’t vote for biden’. I think liberals who obsess over the lesser evil binary 6 months out from an election instead of pushing their candidate to be less shit are themselves just looking for an excuse not to critique their own willingness to accept genocidal complicity.

        Shout out to unruffled for tagging me. Glad to know I’m at least memorable.

          • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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            6 months ago

            Jesus bud, take a sec to breathe.

            So… where do you live?

            Minnesota is as specific as i’m willing to be with you, sorry if that’s disappointing. But even if I picked a town like ‘Osseo’ arbitrarily, how’d that satisfy this incessant nagging suspicion of yours more than ‘Minnesota’? That’s why I told you it was ‘unfalsifiable’. So go nuts, pick a standard you’d be willing to accept as satisfactory proof that i’m American. Before you ask me to provide it, though, ask yourself if you’d be willing to provide the same personal details to strangers on the internet - i’m willing to bet there is no proof I could provide you that most people would be willing to offer themselves.

            Weird how you do literally nothing but post “don’t vote biden”, isn’t it?

            Like I said, feel free to find any example of me saying that. The most i’ve said is that I understand not wanting to vote for him over his defense of Israel. Admittedly I got sent by the incessant ‘i’m still voting for him’ apologia i kept seeing in that community, so that’s basically all I did on here for a few days. You should know that your continued reaction over it is scratching something of an itch.

            It’s more likely you just think someone with that negative a view of Biden cannot possibly be real, and if that’s what you need to believe in order to ground yourself back to reality i’m happy to play pretend for you.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          6 months ago

          For what it’s worth, I ended up getting the boot for calling someone a ‘l!b’, though if I’m being honest I expected it sooner for cooking a little too hard

      • Skua@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        The UK is having a general election in a little over a month, and we have a similar electoral system and a similarly miserable political landscape. It’s fairly applicable here too.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Well the part about “not voting will support the least democratic party” would work, if there is any significant support for those parties (which there is), but the choices are far from being as clear as in the US, especially because they’ve had several presidents who lost the popular vote but still got elected. Meaning that the smaller tje discrepancy, the easier it is for the corrupt electoral college to go against the popular vote.

          Refraining from voting can be used to reform a system, but if people don’t honestly see that voting Biden is the only reasonable action to take against Trump, then we’re frighteningly close to pretty literally repeating history. Hell, even if Trump loses and even if he goes to prison, the US pretty much on track to repeat the exact history of Germany 100 years ago.

          https://time.com/4192760/hitler-munich-excerpt/

          • Skua@kbin.social
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            6 months ago

            Did you reply to the comment that you intended to here? I’m not sure I understand why you’ve said what you said. If that’s just me being thick then please clarify for me, I’m lost

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              The point is that not-voting can be a tool for reform, and can be a reasonable choice. CAN be. But it definitely is NOT in the US presidential election, where not voting is pretty much direct support for Trump, one of the most psychotic world leaders in the last decades.

              Without significant cooperation and a very specific situation though, refraining from voting should not be practiced, and currently a vast majority of the people advocating for it are Russian trolls trying to help Putler’s bitch Trump win the election.

              • Skua@kbin.social
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                6 months ago

                Right, but I agree with you about that. I’m just saying the meme also applies well to the upcoming UK election.

                • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  Insofar that apathy is the greatest tool of oppressor, yes, I would have to agree.

          • Skua@kbin.social
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            6 months ago

            Both are first past the post, which is creates a two-party system. There are a lot of other differences, yes, but for the purposes of the post it’s close enough where it counts

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldM
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        6 months ago

        Your submission in “SSDE” was removed for: Attacking other users is against the rules here, too…

      • pop@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        It’s already burning, and you’re actively participating in one, if you haven’t noticed. But hey, my teams going to keep it under controI, the people dying are not even white, so it’s cool.

        It’s optimal for US to come out as fascist and remove all doubts, so that rest of the world can move away from appeasing a military complex disguised as a country. The civilized world will deal with it.

        People actually believe that country that actively supports current and harbors past war criminals is the one that’s keeping the world from burning. No, you’re just like Russia and China with good PR.

        But you can’t make any more arguments without moving to hypothetical bullshit, deflection, personal attacks and whataboutism from brainwashing, so I won’t fault you.

        -Signed, Pick your flavor of bots (Russian/Chinese/NK/Iran/Cuba/Aliens) you like and feel better about yourself

    • goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      It’s easier for them to call you/anyone a bot than admit any of the viable options have many many issues

      Edit: people here don’t seem to like pointing out this fact

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      well that’s because labor did become much more similar to the tories with that cunt blair when thatcher was in office, didn’t it? the difference isn’t as small in the us, however disappointing it might be.

      democrats are center right but not straight up fascist as the republican party is today.

      at the very least they’re trailing behind the population when it comes to social justice. the republicans are completely against anyone except straight cis white males having any rights.

      they talk about trans people a lot but they already started taking women’s rights away. who’s safe? gays? black people? leftists? you can say both parties are disappointing but it’s a joke to say they are “the same.”

      also AOC talking about the election last time had a good argument for Biden despite her differences: forget who you support. but who do you think will be more responsive to arguments and protests? if it’s Biden, you might or might not pressure him to do some things. if it’s the other guy, you know he will not listen.

      the exception seems to be genocide unfortunately, but it won’t be better under the guy who triggered and facilitated all of this while he was in the office in the first place.

      and I’m sorry but you can’t expect the democrats to come to their senses on their own. if you think not voting for them will suddenly make them think they should appeal more to the left, historically you’ve been wrong; the only lesson they learn is that they should appeal more to the right because the right is winning despite being a minority. that’s how their deteriorating minds work.