Vote local, vote to end FPTP.
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We need a revolution ๐ฆ๐ฑโ๐ผnothing will improve until the pedophile class lives in fear
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
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.
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.
Lol, imagine saying "godless commie" like it's an insult. Couldn't be me.
We are currently looking at the results of decades of your supposed "pragmatic and realistic steps". Fat lot of good it has done other than to enable the owning class to achieve fascism with minimal and negligible resistance.
Incrementalism doesn't work when the rest of the system is actively undermining what little progress you make faster than you achieve it.
Liberals create these fascist victories by allowing the 50 death camps to exist. 'We are morally Superior because we allow less death camps than the other guys' And then Republicans build the 52nd death camp Democrats will allow 51 to be built because it's less
It's not us that are saying 50 death camps is lesser evil or lesser harm. We advocate for no death camps. You either support it or you don't. What's tiresome is liberal arrogance that theirs is the only correct path forward when history has shown time and time again that they are enabling fascism that led to the creation of those 50 death camps
First of all the 50 vs 51 death camps is a laughable exaggeration and inflation of the relative evils and you all fucking know it.
Second, you can advocate for no evil at all all you want. I, obviously, support that too. But A) evils are relative, sometimes, aren't they. We won't always agree about what is right and wrong. Pretending your perspective is objective and everyone else is an idiot for not agreeing with you isn't working out very well for you, is it? B) Even if we agree completely that one system of goverment, economics, international relations, etc. are all correct, unless we can somehow form a sovereign state of two, we're going to have to coordinate, compromise and agree with others. A lot of others. Come election day under first past the post voting, even if there is a party or candidate that represents every single one of my deeply held ideals, if they don't have competitive levels of support to even have a chance of winning I would probably not vote for them. Because I'm not a moron who cares more about virtue signaling or keeping my perfect principles untarnished than actual outcomes.
Third, again, you need to examine why your alternatives aren't viable. The answer cannot be external. Blaming everyone else for being stupid, brainwashed, etc. is defeatism. You can't control others perspectives, only your own. If the choice is between fascism, fascist enablement and anti-fascism, you gotta figure out why anti-fascism isn't the obvious choice for most people. Then you can start to figure out how to make it the better AND SAFER choice to make.
We know why anti-fascism isn't the default choice - propaganda. So we have these fights with liberals specifically because it creates the opportunities to counter the propaganda. The number of people in this comment section that don't realize that Obama deported far more people than Trump has, and probably ever will, is staggering. The number of people who think that women got the right to vote by voting is staggering.
We know what the problem is, and it's super obvious what the problem is when we say we won't vote for a genocidaire and the liberals all pull out the daggers and screaming that lesser evil voting is literally the only path forward. The problem is fundamentally what people believe about the world and the gap between those beliefs and reality. The process of challenging those beliefs looks a lot like this.
All of which are constrained for you
Yes, of course. What we're talking about is constraints directly on exactly what you think is capable of making change.
You can choose who you vote for, but only among people who support the genocide of Palestinians. You can choose who you vote for, but only among people who agree with the US prison system and military. You can choose who you vote for, but only among people who think we must defend the right of billionaires to buy the news media.
You can choose where you spend your money, but only among the businesses that are allowed to exist. You can choose which foodstuffs you buy, but 90% of food is provided by exactly 8 company's. You can choose which food you buy, unless you live in a food desert.
These constraints make it literally impossible for those choices to create the change you expect to see. Mice in the lab can choose what direction they navigate the maze. Prisoners can choose which gang they provide services to. Slaves can choose which expressions of submission they show to their masters.
None of these incrementally bring us to a better place.
Oh, I'm not a defeatist. I think we can absolutely change the world for the better. I just don't think any of the methods you listed are valid methods to do it. Because they are all structurally captured to ensure that they do not produce the change you're talking about.
In America, your assessment is divorced from reality. 80% of people live in a major city. There is no way they're growing their own food or buying their food from local farmers.
As for running for office, looking at the Senate, 70% of the population is represented by only 34% of the Senators. That means 30% of the population controls 66% of the Senators. Sure, you can run for office, but you're not changing the structural reality of the way decisions get made.
You cannot source the things you need for life 100% illegally. Even if you could, just because they're illegal doesn't mean they're captured. Large amount of heroin and cocaine are produced by the US government through their black operations in places like Afghanistan, Colombia, and Southeast Asia. Illegal doesn't mean subversive.
But let's take farming. In the US, small family farms produce less than 20% of the agricultural outputs in America. There's actually no way to live off farmers markets and small farmers. Sure, you can spend some of your money there. It won't change anything though. Besides, those farmers also need to buy equipment, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and seeds. Most of your money goes to the mega corporations that supply them. Family farms operate on something like 10% margins. Labor costs between 10% and 40% depending on the type of farming. So the vast majority of the money you spend with small family farms goes to the massive corporations like Monsanto, John Deere, Bayer, Cargill, and the 3 or 4 major fertilizer producers.
If youโre in a wealthier country or are a wealthier individual [...] you can change your nationality and thus who you vote for
This is also ridiculous. It's the equivalent of moving to Japan so you can get green tea kitkats. No expats in history have ever formed a voting power strong enough to change politics in the place they moved to. So yes, you can actually change your nationality so that you can cast a different ballot. It doesn't actually DO anything. It's like moving to a different cost so your tears fall into a different ocean.
Your mindset isn't optimistic, it's delusional. So of course my mindset looks defeatist to you, because I can take every single example of "power" that you think you have and demonstrate how it's not power at all. But I am an optimist because I recognize that there's far and away more of us than there are of them, and that we are capable of overcoming the psychological abuse and training they have put us through so that we fight each other and by overcoming these things we can form strong bonds between all of us and together we have the actual power to shut down their systems and build new ones that serve us.
3 boxes and two were already burned.
This is a false premise. Instead of choosing which evil we want to accept, we can choose which evil we prefer to resist.
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.
But even if you don't vote, someone else will, and they will still get to play that "democracy" card.
No one is saying don't vote. They are saying that your vote is impotent.
Your vote is very important, its just most people either don't use it, or only vote at the highest level. Votes for low level local positions can be very impactful and can be decided by dozens of votes. And if more people did that it would have knock on effects down the line all the way up to national government.
That's a god of the gaps argument.
If only people would vote they would have more power
No. People don't vote because their vote doesn't matter. Public opinion doesn't matter. Public support doesn't matter. Gay rights came after violent riots. Civil rights came after violent riots. Labor rights came after violent riots. Because the voting wasn't working.
You have it all backwards. People aren't powerless because they don't vote. People don't vote because they're powerless.
That's a completely reductive and simplistic view on politics.
It's a combination of the 2. Yes civil rights came after violent riots, but only because Kennedy/Johnson were in power at the time. If the republicans were in power in 63, then civil rights wouldn't have been passed.
Gay rights only went through, firstly in states with Dem governments, then nationally because of dem appointed supreme court judges.
This isn't a case of you can only do one or the other, you can and should do both. Because that's the only way you actually get change.
You're describing an actual strategic framing which is voting for the person you would like to be your opponent in the actual conflict that is needed. Vote for Ds not because they'll fix things but because when you decide to finally riot you'd rather have a D in office than an R. That's a valid strategy, but voting doesn't change things. Voting just makes it easier for you to change things.
I do want to point out that corporate profits are higher under D administrations, that it was the D President Truman that oversaw Operation Paperclip to save 10k Nazis from standing trial and that committed genocidal aggression against Korea, that it was the D President Obama that destroyed Libya while it was the most successful and prosperous country in all of Africa, and that it was D President Clinton who saw nothing wrong with having black house slaves in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion when he and Hillary lived there.
You're right that the D's public relations strategy doesn't afford them the operating room to crack down hard on protestors and riots. However, it should also be noted that after Atwater articulated the Southern Strategy and essentially beat the Ds for a decade, the Ds decided that they needed to be more like the Rs and adopt their own version of the Southern strategy, hence Biden's Crime Bill and Clinton's war against welfare. Because the Ds weren't up for the fight, they triangulated in order to win, and by triangulated we mean that they literally took up far-right positions on purpose in order to win. And look what happened? Everything got worse and now the Ds won't even entertain addressing it.
You are wrong.
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.
Resist by giving them legitimacy
That's a very silly take that isnt true at all. How can you say that by not voting you're taking away their legitimacy? This is the kinda shit that makes people think you're anti leftist voting psy op to keep the conservatives in power.
The US does it all the fucking time when they claim such and such a leader is illegitimate because they didn't get enough votes. Not having people vote for you delegitimizes you. How do you not see that?
...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.
The Dems have gleefully supported deportation policies that also put families in cages just like under Trump, they have supported Israel's genocide before Trump and during Trump. The lesser evil is still evil.
The lesser evil is still evil.
Yeah no shit otherwise we wouldn't call it "lesser evil"
"The Dems" don't share opinions on any of those issues, so how the fuck are you going to pretend to slander an entire political party over your ignorance of that reality?
The Democrats range from the far left to the moderate right. You couldn't get five of them to agree on a restaurant, but you're gonna pretend we're all down with genocide and ICE camps? GTFO here and don't come back til you're sober and serious. This is a serious topic and it deserves better than sophomoric, Fox-News-Worthy takes on the Democratic Party.
Obama deported 3 million people when he was in office. Trump hasn't even come close to that. Obama also repatriated 2m at the border. Obama ALSO created the legal, bureaucratic, and operational structure that allowed ICE and BORTAC to be deployed inside US cities. The Republicans are just using what the Democrats handed them and they're not even as prolific as the Democrats were. You are voting for a delusion that doesn't exist. Re-engage with reality.
'Slander' lmfao.
Yeah the DNC, who else lol wtf are you talking about
Idk, if given the choice between 50 death camps or 51 death camps, it would be pretty fucked up to choose 51.
Nobody is pretending it is okay.
But pretending like refusing to vote is morally superior than actively preventing the extra death camp is not.
No one is advocating refusing to vote. The post is explicitly stating that voting isn't helping. It's time to try something new
There are absolutely lots of people advocating refusing to vote. You can argue that OP isn't one of those people, but there are entire instances filled with people saying exactly that.
There are, but they have a very specific reason. And that reason is to discipline the party. That theory of action is pretty solid, but it's not what is being said here what's being said is that voting is impotent. You can vote all you want. You're pissing in the wind.
Nah, that theory of action is dogshit. A smattering of indignant leftists isn't going to discipline the party. Especially when the mechanism of action is... not doing something. That course of action is, in a disciplinary sense, indistinguishable from just being lazy or apathetic. It's not praxis, and it doesn't encourage praxis. 0/5 stars, terrible political action.
Voting isn't impotent. It's very weak, but it isn't impotent. It nudges things slightly, which isn't nothing.
It clearly doesn't, as the Overton window has been sliding right for decades.
As for disciplining the party, you clearly think that if the Republicans lost they would be moved. Why do you think that if the Democrats win on a right-wing platform they'll be nudged to the left instead of learning the lesson that they win more if they slide to the right?
the Overton window has been sliding right for decades.
Yes, sliding, as opposed to speeding. That is something.
you clearly think that if the Republicans lost they would be moved.
Where did you get that idea? I'm just saying your strategy doesn't work.
This is the meme. You're doing the meme. You are convincing yourself that sliding into fascism at our current rate is better than sliding into fascism at a hypothetical faster rate. That's the meme.
My strategy clearly works - civil rights happened because of riots, women's sufferage happened because of radical disobedience, labor rights happened because of literal paramilitary skirmishes, the 7 working class revolutions around the world unseated the ruling class through violence. It works. Hell, the American revolution happened this way.
So what if it's the meme? It's true.
And no, not voting and political demonstration are not the same thing. You can vote for lesser evil to slow fascism in the government while also using other means to facilitate change. They are not mutually exclusive strategies, they are complementary. Refusing to vote has never made a difference, it's a bad strategy.
Again, no on is talking about refusing to vote. We're talking about not spending all of our energy carrying water for fascist collaborators and calling it harm reduction.
You falling for the Good Cop / Bad Cop routine is not harm reduction.
We discussed this already. Yes, they are, and you claimed they had a good reason. It is in fact a terrible reason.
No one is talking about "spending all of our energy carrying water for fascist collaborators". If you don't have the energy to do more than one thing at a time, that's a you problem.
We as a society don't have the time to go door knocking for fascist collaborators who have not only done nothing to stop fascism but have actively created and supported the systems for it. You do not, in fact, need to go campaigning for Democrats with Tottenkopfs on their chest or who were attorneys general and had no problem enforcing the racist police system of the largest prison-industrial complex in the world. You can, in fact, just ignore those people and focus on things that actually get results
Terrible strategy. Do both. There is nothing to gain by not using every tool at our disposal.
Every fascist collaborator you spend labor on only brings us closer to fascism.
And every overt fascist you don't vote against brings us closer to fascism and faster. I don't know why this concept is so difficult to understand.
Because it's just not true.
You keep saying that without any reasoning or evidence. You're just bringing up other unrelated actions. You're wrong, learn from it and adapt as a person. Repeating a lie over and over doesn't change the reality.
You're hilarious. agamemnon, you are making the claim for which there is no evidence. You are the one saying that voting and particularly voting for genocidal war criminal administrators of empire somehow slows fascism down.
Obama shows us that is fundamentally not the case. Trump's entire operational and bureaucratic basis for deploying ICE into cities was created by Obama and Biden. Tom Homan, Trump's main deportation guy, was appointed by Obama and was Obama's main deportation guy. Trump is able to do what he's doing literally because we voted in Obama and Biden.
And after Trump showed us what he and his team would do in Term 1, we voted in Biden and what happened? The Supreme Court gave the president total immunity to anything while in office. Biden decided to do literally nothing to stop Trump coming back to power. He had the Epstein files. He had the same witnesses. He had the immunity. He did nothing. He did worse than nothing, he refused to give Harris the time she needed to run an actual campaign, deliberately driving a nail into the coffin of that absolute shitshow of a campaign. And Biden was a KNOWN fascist. From th Crime Bill to his full-throated support for Israel and their genocide of the Palestinians. He was a fascist, and he oversaw a genocide. It never slowed down.
You're relying on some counterfactual that if we hadn't have had that Biden term it would have been worse, or if we hadn't had those Obama terms, it would have been worse, but there's no way to validate those claims, and all th evidence is that they actively support the trajectory and they completely abandon any responsibility to slow it down or stop it.
Trump: did a bunch of terrible shit
Biden: did nothing
Trump: doing a bunch of terrible ahit
If you can't see how "doing nothing" is preferable to "doing a bunch of terrible shit" then we're at an impasse here.
I'd rather have a donkey trying to pull against me than an elephant. If you can't understand that, you're lost.
Stop viewing the world in imaginary binaries. You can do more than one thing.
Two things can be true at the same time. Biden can "do nothing" and also Biden can support Trump. That's what doing nothing was. You have problem saying that if I don't vote for Harris than it's equivalent to voting for Trump. But you're not willing to say that Biden doing nothing to stop Trump is equivalent to supporting Trump.
Stop believing fairy tales created by white slave owning European colonists who wanted to make sure the masses wouldn't revolt and also that their vote would never really have an impact on their power.
You could not be more wrong. Factually, morally, tactically, strategically, you are wrong along every axis in every dimension of existence.
We can work together by standing together and voting our common interests or we can lose the country.
We should be supporting primary challengers for every Republican. Those moderate, DNC types? We should fund one in every goddamn red district in America.
There are more of us than there are of them. Instead of bitching about voting not mattering, make it fucking matter. Take over the Republican Party. Your local party has a couple thousand voters behind them. That's it. You can't find a couple thousand neighbors who think corruption is bad and kid-fucking is deplorable?
TRY HARDER FOR FUCK'S SAKE. STOP WHINING AND START WINNING.
Oh man if only we got organized and raised a ton of money and got a whole bunch of people connected via a whole communication and logistics and education capability suite. We could even celebrate together when we did it. We could throw a party. Hey. That's what we'll call it, we'll call it a party.
And since it's about voting, and saving democracy, we can call it, The Democratic Party!
This is great. It obviously won't happen overnight, but if we organize our new party, The Democratic Party, we could take that strategy you have and start winning. The leaders of the party will need to be people who understand this, but I mean, of course they would understand it, who wouldn't understand that we have to save democracy or lose it, and that it's not hard we just need to get a few thousand people in each district to overwhelm our opponents with votes.
No, this is great. I love this idea. Let's build...
Wait, there's already something called The Democratic Party? They already oppose the fascist Republicans? They already have a huge operation that's been around for a century? And they have a shit ton of money flowing into them constantly?
So then What the fuck is going on? Why are we in this situation? Are they just that bad at their jobs? Well then we should stop putting our effort behind them and start a new party! Wait, what? That just means the fascists will win? But you just said the Democrats have been around this whole time and the fascists are winning... Oh it's our fault for not voting correctly?
PROPAGANDA is what happened, you dumb fuck.
Republicans bought the airwaves. First they bought AM radio. Then local FM radio. Then local TV news. Then Fox News. Then they bought CNN, CBS etc. They bought all the social media companies. The Fascist Party literally controls all the information for more than half of the country.
That's how they "win."
Has fuckall to do with what the Democratic Party does or does not do.
And you'd already know that if you weren't just an asshole supporting the far-right while pretending to be a leftist rebel.
There are people in this very thread, and other parts of the fediverse, who are only here to attack those that point out it's not okay while they actively pretend it's okay.
If you're stuck in a system that only gives you the options of 50 death camps or 51 and you don't work towards building an alternative system. Then you're just evil lite.
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