You're right - it's more like one group voting to drive off a cliff and the other voting to just drive really close to the cliff in case we decide to go off on some other vote, but so long as the cliff doesn't win now, we can focus on convincing people ice cream is the better option. We don't, and instead wait 4 more years to complain about the lack of ice cream, but that's a separate problem.
The problem is people have voted for ice cream. They have read about people voting for ice cream for years before they were even born.
Lots of people want ice cream but we are at a point where people KNOW the cliff exists. They DO NOT know the ice cream shop exists because all the times they were PROMISED ice cream the bus just stopped at a sewage treatment plant.
The voters are not the problem. They have zero reason to trust the bus driver. Because the bus driver refuses to throw the cliff voters off the bus. Bad optics.
Yes, they do. The voters get a chance to decide who those two drivers are, and 85% of them stay home. Then they got to choose between the driver that wants to drive off the cliff, and the driver who swears they'll go get ice cream. And then 40% of the voters stay home.
Now the driver's taking us off the cliff, and you're whining that the driver that got the most votes is doing exactly what they said they would.
They have every reason to care, but they don't anyway. You can't abdicate your power and then complain no one listens to you. We had a chance to have better choices, but no one but retirees reliably show up to primaries.
If you think literally saying "they're definitely different, but the difference is smaller than ideal" means "they're the same" then things will never be fixed.
Dude you changed this it from "we want ice cream" to "we want to drive next to the cliff so we can drive off it later". That's not smaller than ideal, you literally changed it both sides the same, just later.
No, I changed it to "one side killing us, the other not, but still leaving it on the table" Which is a huge difference, but still a troubling scenario. Not driving off a cliff is orders of magnitude better than driving off a cliff, but still significantly worse than ice cream.
Dude one side wanted to get ice cream and you changed it to "nah, not that. I'm gonna change it to what the other side wants, just later. Change it to the complete opposite". You completely changed it. Changed everything. Smh. That you either don't want to see that or can't see that... I'm out.
Again, I didn't change it to "later" I changed it to "if the cliff drivers win the next vote, it'll be a short drive." Do you really think that's inaccurate? Look at how Trump drove the country into the ground in his first 4 years, and how easy it was to just keep doing it even after we had 4 years of democratic leadership that was meant to get things back on track. I don't call that "ice cream," I call that "sitting by the cliff waiting for the cliff drivers to be in power again." We need leadership that will drive away from the cliff even if it upsets the people and politicians that want to drive off it.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we've already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They're wrong, but they believe it, and people's beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren't on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don't know how to do politics on purpose so they don't lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There's a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
Do you think Republican politics have the slightest responsibilities or none at all? I think all this thread, and the analogy itself plays into polarization, which is not a good way to actually put the much needed bridges... Everyone can do a lot. There are plenty of tasks and battles. Voting is one, very relevant every X many years. Focus on the everyday too. And on every neighbor. All needs should be covered. Do your best. Allow yourself to rest. We can do this.
Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don't even try to make good ice cream, they don't even try to get customers or do a good job. It's still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn't blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.
Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let's blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.
Let's put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn't straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming "I'm never voting against gay rights!" Cool, so when the other guy wins and it's way worse, at least you feel good.
But that's not how voting for a direction works. I think this analogy is just starting to fall apart after this much discussion, we've taken it too far haha.
Listen, I'm all for taking out the trash and not just taking small wins to survive, but I just don't see the path. I might be missing it, there's plenty I don't know, but survival at least would have let us survive a little longer.
The Democrats aren't the ice cream party. They are the "drive off the cliff slowly party" and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn't want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only "harm reduction" in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The Democrats aren’t the ice cream party. They are the “drive off the cliff slowly party” and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn’t want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only “harm reduction” in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The point of the term 'harm reduction' is that it is acknowledging that participation in bourgeois democracy is buying time rather than fundamentally reforming the system, I can't believe how many fucking times and in how many fucking ways I have to explain this to a community that is purportedly leftist.
So what do you do with that time? Hillary was buying time, Biden was buying time, Biden/Harris was buying time...
Instead what happened in these times was things to get worse, the "buying time" party bragging about its exploits in mass deportations, wall building and bombing abroad and ferociously fighting anyone that wanted to bring improvements. Even now we see the exact same thing with Mamdani. The DNC has "learned" absolutely nothing, because everything is going according to plan. Mamdani is threatening the plan. Tump is not.
When people decided to prevent ICE gestapo abducting people in their communities in California, Democratic mayors had the police crack down on them.
Your strategy is all messed up and it didn't lead you anywhere. With another four years of far right DNC politics as "harm reduction" you would have only fostered liberal complacency and ignorance and on top of it created the economic conditions for the next iteration of Fascism to hit back even harder. There is no fighting with the US political establishment. There is only fighting against it, if you ever want to see the US become a reasonably okay country.
This guy gets it, if the opposition party cares more about maintaining their legal bribes than punishing those doing the bribing and accepting the bribes then they bear an equal responsibility to the destination that those in the car are driven to.
Well said. I tried to make this point elsewhere in the thread and got showered with downvoted, so it's nice to see there's still some sanity left in the world.
It sounds like the problem is you don't have enough allies in the fight against either, and your strategy is to bank on getting more allies in a fight against fascists than you would against democrats.
Good luck with that, sincerely; but I think it sounds like a bit of a gamble. Fascists are quite good at terrorising moderates into compliance and killing or imprisoning their opponents.
This is why I voted for Kamala, as it would've reduced harm for a little while...Long enough to figure out an effective counter. Right now, I am using my voice as best as possible to reduce further harm (with the Big Bad Bill coming into effect soon) I dread losing my insurance and wasting away because untreated it's a guarantee. Given that I live in a mostly Red State, I could be one of the 17 million affected, or spared because I work part-time... If there are elections in the future, I will be voting with harm reduction in mind every time. Unless America becomes a doomed Fascist Nation which devours itself from within.
Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.
In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.
People often downplay associativity and are often encouraged to because power to the people scares the oligarchs. You're easier to subdue if you're alone.
Join your local community in any ways you can.
As I am socially anxious; it's rough to interact with others. However, I will stay strong and try to participate when possible. As, communities do survive if they actually work with one another despite their differences. We can survive Trump's cursed presidency through working together. The rich fear that shit, this is why the policies Republicans are pushing are so disruptive for the working class. To reduce the odds of them being able to work communally to fight against oligarchs and their mouthpiece Republicans/MAGA sympathizers.
This one's much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don't you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
There's a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
I had people unironically tell me that Kamala Harris was no better than Hitler, and that she & Trump were the same but just did the exact same harm in "different areas," which is why it looked like they were any different policy-wise. 💀
Since both support Genocide I don't think it's fair to say it's nazis vs non-nazis. It's more like genocide over there vs genocide maybe here and there. That's assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn't necessarily going to happen. A lot of people are speculating that things will happen that didn't last time Trump was in charge. It definitely could happen, but I don't think it's as likely as people are making out. Trump would have to convince all of the keys to power to abandon democracy, and that hasn't happened yet. He is already getting push back for certain things, not to mention braking up with Elon.
Anyway I sure am glad I don't live in the USA. Although honestly my own country is having its own issues. The supposedly left wing party seem to have decided they have the same level of support for trans people that the right wing one does, or at least their leader is willing to follow the conservatives on that issue. I almost regret voting for him now.
That's assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn't necessarily going to happen.
It has happened, is continuing to happen, and will get worse. ICE now has a large budget than most militaries and Trump is exploring ways to "deport" American citizens (probably to concentration camps). They're exploring ways to essentially make migrant farm workers slaves. The supreme Court just made it harder for judges to pause executive orders. The US (of which I'm a citizen) is fucked.
That's assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn't necessarily going to happen.
Wtf? They already have. They've ballooned ICE's budget to more than that of the marines. They want to deport 65 million latinos. That's all the Latinos. They've already gone full authoritarian dictatorship while you were watching
We need a "neither" option. If that one wins neither candiate gets to be president and the parties have to pick someone else. Not voting counts as neither.
Every time I see people complaining about 3rd party voters all I can picture is the "Am I so out of touch?" meme. Like, y'all already shot yourselves in the face 3 times in a row and it surprisingly didn't fail 1/3 times, but you'll blame literally anyone but yourselves. Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money, and we would not be anywhere near where we are now. People vote for trump because they don't want another fucking "nothing will fundamentally change" politician. The country is already shit. It needs to change. But dems are happy with it how it is. They don't care about immigrants, or poor people, or social security, or women's rights, or whatever. They just hold onto those as carrots on a stick. They just want to keep making millions, and would rather trump win so they don't have to actually embrace populist policy. That's why people don't vote. The choice isn't ice cream or drive off a cliff. Its do we drive into a wall and die now, or drive off a cliff so it takes slightly longer to die, the drive off a cliff people shot the 2 people who asked if they could vote for ice cream and that's why the others didn't vote.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Their absolutely pathetic response to Mamdani's victory in the primary was so flagrant, I'm not even sure how to react to the Democratic party going forward. Not only did they try to stack the deck in Cuomo's favor, but then they threw a fucking tantrum when Cuomo still lost despite their efforts. They just don't seem credible to me anymore.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Golly gee, if only there were some way that parties decided what candidates they were going to run, and what policies that candidate supported.
Unfortunately, as we all know, such decisions are made by The Secret Cabal and us lowly voters have no part in it.
Signed, someone who had a fever dream in 2016 and 2020 and remembered voting in something called a 'primary' for some 'Bernie Sanders' guy.
Sure dude, keep pretending the DNC doesn’t run anything and that they have zero influence or agenda and it’s all the perfect will of the people. You’re right, the people with billions of dollars in charge of the party are really just chill dudes who listen to what people really want.
Sorry for not thinking that every public poll was rigged by The Shadow Elite and that Bernie actually won the primaries by millions of votes which were shredded without a single hint of evidence left behind by the Puppetmasters of the DNC.
Maybe people are voting for what they want, and the issue is a lack of education...?
No, no, it must be the Shadow Cabal sabotaging all the polls. I'm SURE of it!
My brother in christ, could you strawman any harder?
NOBODY thinks bernie 'actually won'. Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats. You know, the EXACT same thing that's going on with Zohran Mamdani RIGHT FUCKING NOW. He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
"If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?"
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it's worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don't you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Or how about you LEARN from the last decade?
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain't doing too hot. You look at Trump's victories and never ask 'why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?'. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they're perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it's important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you're absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption ('drain the swamp') and ran on making things better for the working class ('price of eggs'). Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was 'I'm with her' or 'Trump bad' or 'It's my turn'.
So, feel free sitting on your high horse saying 'oh, well if the voters weren't so dumb we would be at brunch' instead of focusing on the people whose entire job it was to inspire people to vote for them, and keep dividing the working class more and more. You're only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you're sucking off rn.
HA! Hahahaha! My dude, just sit here. They will be by. They usually ramp up around elections and the cause of Bernie not being in charge of all things is always DWS and the DNC. He actually won but they stole it by not letting people see how awesome he was. Yes, literally. Yes, a lot of them. Yes, every goddamned time.
unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies.
Bullshit. 100% pure, uncut, arrogant “leftist” bullshit. No, I will not google it for you. PoliSci 101 is over, fascism is in place and it’s time to learn how difficult it is to get three progressives to agree on anything in actual, real-life, not-the-internet practice.
This fucked up “take” is the exact same since NADER and what have you got? A party? A name? A fucking t-shirt slogan ffs? No. Nothing.
Beyond worthless. Actively cancerous to actual progress. It’s painful because everyone goes through it and no one listens to the people with experience and the fascists vote in lock-step and we lose again.
Both can be true. The major US parties are both rotten to the core and as such the leadership of the democrats has much of the responsibility for this, but people not voting are still fascism enablers, albeit to a lesser degree than those voting for trump for non-fascism reasons.
Voting third party is one thing, it's the only way outside of revolution you're going to escape from the established two parties. Not voting only signals apathy and the only explicit statement is "I'm ok with whoever wins, including the raping racist hitler v2".
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn't vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn't vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote... were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can't? Well that makes sense, because we don't actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don't know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don't know WHAT they were thinking. So, I'd love to know why everyone seems so certain that it was the left who stopped voting entirely as opposed to the non-MAGA right or even the liberal center. And the reseaon everyone is CERTAIN it's the left if because that's been the reused talking point that's been dragged out every time there's been a lull in the insanity since Jan 20th. Almost like somebody doesn't want the subject to die. Almost like someone profits off of the left and the center fighting each other instead of fighting the 1%.
People who stopped voting entirely may be facism enablers, I'm not disagreeing. But, there's no actual, solid evidence to blame that shit on any one group in particular. And even despite that, it's absolutely INSANE that we're hyper focused on the imagined people we THINK didn't vote for the reasons we think they didn't vote, and yet IGNORE the people we KNOW voted for this and IGNORE the reasons they're telling us they voted for this.
Like tf? Thinking billionaires have been and are continuing to demonize any actual progressive candidate and are propagandizing broad swaths of the electoral is an inane conspircay theory when it's something we have seen evidence of time and time and time again, and in the same breath saying that people who voted for trump are lying about why they voted for trump based on 'just trust me bro' is absolutely ludicrous.
I never said it was the left lol, everything I said applies regardless of political leanings. Though in all likelihood there were at least some leftists that didn't.
Also the commenters that were saying as much on this extremely left leaning platform are probably the ones mainly adressed by OP.
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn’t vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn’t vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote… were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can’t? Well that makes sense, because we don’t actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don’t know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don’t know WHAT they were thinking.
I have seen numerous people on here say that Bernie actually won.
Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats.
Oh goodness, I'm glad nothing like that would happen in the general election! If only the Dems had played fair, the GOP certainly would have!
Also, would you like to remind me what a smear campaign does? Does it alter the brainwaves of the hapless Moderate Voter(tm) to obeying their DNC masters or something?
... or does it appeal to their pre-existing ideas and prejudices to sway them towards a candidate?
No, that sounds too much like voters having agency, and not being mere conduits for the Will Of The Proletariat(tm). It must be the brainwave altering thing.
And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
... okay?
He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And
Yeah, he won in the primary for NYC. Which is good. Great, in fact! But New York City is not all of America, and it's really quite worrying that so many people here think it is.
“If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?”
What does that say, then, if socialists are constantly losing to liberals in this environment?
If we're using success as a measure of intelligence or correctness, that would lead to some... very concerning conclusions that I would not buy into. But I'm also not the one connecting intelligence and electoral success.
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it’s worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don’t you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Bruh, in the past few days alone, on this very comm, there have been numerous, highly upvoted memes and comments in which liberals are blamed for the current state of fascism in this country. I don't think "Antifascist unity, but only for anti-electoralists ^.^" is all that compelling.
And for the record, I do fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff. And I have done so vocally and repeatedly. But for some reason, many online leftists prefer a circlejerk to examining whether advocating against electoral participation may have helped the literal fucking fascist get elected by a single goddamn percentage point.
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain’t doing too hot. You look at Trump’s victories and never ask ‘why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?’. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they’re perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it’s important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you’re absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption (‘drain the swamp’) and ran on making things better for the working class (‘price of eggs’).
Jesus fucking Christ.
The fact that you fell for that shit - that people are just deeply 'economically anxious' or 'anti-corruption' goes to show how little you've spoken with conservative and swing voters in your lifetime.
Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was ‘I’m with her’ or ‘Trump bad’ or ‘It’s my turn’.
Yeah, no one was running on a campaign of increasing the minimum wage, a national ban on price gouging, lowering the cost of living, increasing corporate taxes while reducing taxes on small businesses, legalizing marijuana, forgiving student loan debt, increasing child tax credits, and expanding public healthcare systems.
Imagine if someone did that? It'd be wild. They'd probably get incredible support, especially from leftists, and win in a landslide.
I mean, imagine if one of the major party candidates ran with that platform, and was still smeared as a neoliberal shill by self-proclaimed leftists who treated a Trump victory as a defeat for the dreaded shitlib menace? That would be absolutely ghoulish if people who claimed to be leftists were that dedicated to a Trump victory so they could continue to feel good and pure about being against The Man and The System. They'd have literal blood on their hands.
Good thing nothing of the sort happened, and certainly useful low-information idiots didn't pass that around, engaging in a level of coprophagic propaganda that would embarrass anyone with a hint of basic decency.
You’re only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you’re sucking off rn.
"When you don't think everyone is secretly a socialist at heart, you're sucking off the billionaires!"
I'm so sorry for not spending all of my time circlejerking with other leftists. I have the deep and abiding misfortune of actually living in the USA.
Lmao. You might live in the USA but your posting history tells me exactly what I need to know about how much you actually talk to IRL people. Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE. You don't actually speak to irl people. And yes, as someone living in a ruby red state, volunteering with mutual aid groups and political action groups in a ruby red state, yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately, along with liberals, leftists, and people who have showered since this election. Get off the computer every minute of every day, actually go out and touch grass and DO something material in your life, because you look like a rage-bait bot with control issues who hasn't spoken to another living human person before. Assuming, ofcourse, that you're not just a shill account meant to spread propaganda.
Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE.
Yeah, I take like an hour out of my day before work to make one whole post in each of the ~10 communities I mod. Clearly I'm out of control.
The urge to reply back to people who haven't the first goddamn clue what they're talking about is more damning and time-consuming, but I make room for it, out of miserable compulsion to not let idiocy go unchallenged in the comment sections I frequent, if nothing else.
yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately,
And you still believe that they're just anti-corruption and economically anxious, like some Very Serious Liberal Writer ready to write his sixth consecutive election column about having pancakes with them good holsum country folk?
That's disturbingly naive that you'd still fall for that. But considering what you've said in this comment thread, unsurprising.
Pug. Long time fan here but I'm curious if you've read "Shattered" yet? It is a well researched book about the inner machinations of the Hillary campaign and goes into depth as to what / how things went horribly wrong. I used to think like you, but the reality is it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B.
Tl;dr: even if Bernie had polled well among mainstream voters, it would have taken mountains to move the whale that is Hillary. She had ties to every corner of the DNC. It's not totally that she had to rig the primary, but it was a fools errand to run against someone as powerful and well connected as her.
I mean, my argument isn't that Hillary didn't have deep ties to the DNC, or that the DNC didn't want a coronation in 2016, but that the bias of the DNC and the influence of Hillary's campaign on the primary beyond that of a normal candidate was not significant enough to create the massive amount we lost by. If we'd lost by 1-2%, or even as high as 4-5%, maybe there'd be a stronger argument, but at 12%, without evidence of serious malfeasance beyond favoritism, it's pretty clear that... Bernie was just not the more popular candidate. While frustrating, the core problem was not Hillary being well-connected - it's the US still being an immensely right-wing country.
That Bernie polled even lower in 2020 against Biden, losing many of the areas he carried in 2016, also shows that a non-neglible proportion of the votes Bernie did get were from anti-Hillary votes, rather than pro-socialist sentiment.
Fair point. I do agree that the mainstream electorate skews skews further right than terminally ill online leftists. I just think running a robot over a populist against another populist was a severe miscalculation by the DNC, regardless of how well he polled. Hillary had the charisma of a wooden board and a lot of baggage. Polls are useful to getting a pulse of the people at a moment in time. Many polls showed Bernie outperforming Hillary against Trump. The context matters. But I hear you.
Yeah, the DNC is just a long string of unforced errors. I just don't want people to think that there's an easy solution that's been denied them, because... there isn't.
I only voted to drive off of a cliff as a joke. I wanted to trigger those sweet tooth ice cream eaters. I didn't want to die.
Someone told me about people, who regretted eating ice cream. What if you are allergic to milk, amd die from eating ice cream? What if ice cream is a recent creation by to make children and adults addicted to ice cream, to the rest of their lives? Driving off from a cliff is therefore preferable to ice cream, and someone told me only ice cream eaters will die in a fire.
More like two options: one runs the bus off the cliff while the other sets it on fire. Sure, we'll live longer in the fire scenario. Maybe we can even put it out!
You're on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
The options are:
a) convince Hamas to release the hostages
b) convince Israel to abandon their people
c) wait for the IDF to find where Hamas is hiding and free the hostages (or more likely in most cases, find the bodies of those abducted) while urging restraint.
Option a) is difficult because Hamas is a group of psychopaths. There have been some hostages released in exchange for ceasefires and release of Hamas fighters from prison, but then that just means more people the IDF will fight when Hamas stops releasing hostages. If this were a conflict out in an empty field then whatever, but since the battlefield is a densely populated urban environment, this means civilian casualties.
Option b) just isn't going to happen.
So option c) is the only one left while there's constant talks to negotiate a ceasefire. Current status on that: Israel has agreed to a ceasefire if Hamas releases the hostages and Hamas has said they "look favourably on a ceasefire" but they always say that.
Funny how Democrats never used to have to complain about Purity Tests back when they were doing things like attempting to pass universal healthcare. In fact I’d literally never even heard the phrase (in that context) before last year and suddenly it’s everywhere.
Yeah the downvotes you're getting really illustrate the three monkeys approach of centrists. Outright denial not only of opinions, but objective facts. Trump immigration policy is just Biden's turned up a notch, but with a lot of performative cruelty thrown in. Biden's immigration policy is just Trump's turned down a notch, with less performative cruelty. Trump vice signals, Biden virtue signaled. But their actual policies on immigration are very very similar.
Trump immigration policy is just Biden's turned up a notch, but with a lot of performative cruelty thrown in
So what you're saying is it's not just Biden's turned up a notch, he's doing it differently and much, much worse. The idea that, because both of them are immigration policies that include deportation, they must be the same thing is infantile
One of them is in favor of deporting all of the Latinos, but really it's the same policy lmao
JFC deporting people if their asylum claim fails isn't the same as what trump is doing. That you're trying to equate them is mind bogglingly bad. Anything to confuse the issue and say b b both sides same, huh. I recognize your name so I'm not going to reply further.
Both parties are equally bad, that's why we're letting 65 million Latinos get deported instead of not letting 65 million Latinos get deported. Less genocide is actually just as bad as more genocide
You are pretending Biden/Harris were promising less genocide, which is wishful thinking on your part. Biden/Harris let them do what they wanted to whatever degree they wanted, and pretended to fight back.
You are pretending Biden/Harris were promising less genocide, which is wishful thinking on your part.
Nope. I feel like we're looking at this from two different perspectives. Comparing 2025 to 2024, there was always going to be more genocide. Comparing the two potential 2025s (the one in which Trump wins and the one in which Harris wins), one of them has more genocide than the other, and one of them has less genocide than the other.
Maybe if I put it this way it'll make more sense: a smaller increase in deaths is preferable to a larger increase in deaths. Of course, a reduction in deaths would be preferable to both, but that option wasn't available.
Where you and I will probably never agree is that you think Harris/Biden would have meant less genocide.
Biden did a bunch of lying about that, but you give him the benefit of the doubt and I cant. And Harris had a prominent bloodthirsty zionist as a husband (recent marriage) and a bloodthirsty zionist campaign manager. Thinking she'd break left after her actions and words to the contrary was never realistic. Emhoff explicitely said he'd spend his time in office fighting antisemitism, which he equates with any criticism at all of Israel.
When both Trump and Biden give the zionists full support and free reign, theres no real distinction to be had around more or less genocide. It just doesnt exist. Harris and Biden were there to soak up campaign donations and ignore their base.
I mean if we want a better analogy, Harris represented the "crash the bus into a building" party, and Trump represented the "crash the bus into a building and explode" party. 3 people are voting for building, 4 people are voting for building and explode, and 4 people are saying "I don't care whether we explode."
One of those 4 thinks they're making some kind of statement by saying "I don't want to crash at all, so I won't be voting." He is indistinguishable from the 3 that just don't care
Maybe stop with the dumb fucking analogies and talk about the real situation for a change. It's not too complex to talk about (and if it is to you, holy fuck, maybe shut up and do some reading first?) and you're fooling nobody with your deflections.
I have no problem talking about the real situation. One of the parties is in favor of less genocide, one of the parties is in favor of more genocide, and non voters don't care whether we get less or more genocide.
Of course it would be better for everyone we could have elected a third party, but the choice was between Harris (sells weapons to Israel) and Trump (sells more weapons to Israel and also starts a genocide here in America), and non voters didn't care which side won. In the absence of the option you want, you have to make the best available choice.
Less genocide, but not the stopping of genocide? Man, do I not feel sorry for gringos when they act like this is a moral choice.
How would you know, anyway? They refused to acknowledge there was a genocide in the first place while they sent a record amount of money and weapons. Oh wow, such harm reduction.
Analogies are useful, not just for understanding a difficult subject, but for seeing a familiar subject in a new perspective. When your audience is eschewing logic due to compartmentalized thinking, analogies can help break them free.
The other four didn't think this through because only one party had a subset of their coalition who opposed genocide, and also opposed 2 other genocides: the one Russia perpetrates against Ukraine, and climate change (leaving aside things like, you know, women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights... And not as a case-in-point the internal genocide of poor people when 50,000 Americans will now die from being dropped from Medicaid thanks to a bill that only Republicans the cliff-divers would have passed).
Fully agree with Nina Turner. If you don't wanna do politics, you blindly leave major decisions over your life to others, who - as we can see world-wide - don't necessarily have your interest at heart. Democracy, human rights, freedom or any other such ideas require a populace to vigilantly fight for them and not let those with opposed agendas undermine them.
But that analogy afterwards is simply dishonest on many levels.
Firstly, if you are talking about "harm reduction" or the "lesser of two evils", ice cream is hardly a fair representation of the lesser evil.
Secondly this mixes in non-political people, who do not participate in the democratic process with moral objectors and the duped.
Thirdly: It diverts equal blame (literally in the response) to those groups and to the voters, who actually want the bigger evil or the powerful actors enacting it. This presupposes some moral value on active vs. passive behavior, which can be argued.
And lastly: Even if we find a fitting ice-cream substitute like throwing one of the passengers under the still moving bus, or - how another user suggested - braking before driving off the same cliff: The two who voted for that lesser evil also fight the four voters who are against evil harder, than they are fighting the ones who want the bigger evil. Why? Because they'd rather still drive off the cliff than not. And then they turn around and dishonestly shame the anti-driving-off the-cliff crowd for wanting to speed up instead. That is not a very good strategy.
Are they the same? No. But please keep your arguments honest, or you might get the exact opposite reaction from people, than you are hoping.
Even if you engage in politics you have such a small amount of power that it’s effectively the same as letting other people make decisions for you.
Republicans in Congress just made a bunch of decisions for me that I had no influence over despite having voted every time for the past quarter century.
Although I understand your point and would want to add that something like the Citizens United decision further diminishes power of the people without immense funds, I would like to point out, that participating in a democratic process doesn't merely mean drawing a cross onto a piece of paper every 2 or 4 years. Much more is possible and in fact necessary.
As an example and can be witnessed right now, there is a severe lack of organizing of pro democratic forces. Which is also the result of a decades-long campaign by the capital-interest-serving political establishment to delegitimize or outright destroy such movements and organizations, from worker's unions to independant media to the "Bernie Bros".
Make no mistake though. They did this, because they know, that this type of collective political actions bare real power. It is upon each one of us wanting to defend democracy, basic rights and the rule of law to do our part to take back that power. Voting is but a small part of that, if you don't have the people you need actually running, because they can't afford to and you cannot seriously pressure those elected like the donor-class does.
I'm sorry you feel that way and I find myself having the same thoughts from time to time. I have to concede though, that the US is in fact the center of modern Neoliberalism and legal bribery.
Yet... You know who the lobbyists and donors don't bother talking to? Bernie Sanders (and Ron Paul when he was still in office). Why? Because they know that they have core principles. Then the question becomes: How do we organize (meaning financial resources, outreach, strategy, know-how, recruitment, analysis, policy creation, media and many more) to get more of these people into office? And how can we put pressure on elected officials to enact "our" policies?
Agenda 2025, or the decades long judicial take-over did not come from Trump, but from such organizations like the Heritage Foundation. Which of course are funded by billionaires like Peter Thiel. These people and organizations have huge advantages over the rest, that is clear. But they need more than just money to be able to put public pressure on elected officials, to the point where 25% of voters are ride-or-die with that program and a further 25% are at least ok with it or were duped.
And yes, I am well aware it is an uphill fight. But please: Don't let bad experiences doom you to inaction. Especially when this very moment, with the daily over-reach of the republican regime, there is real potential to galvanize an effective resistance.
Many countries claim to be democracies but if the available choices are only x, y or z. The people are not truly expressing their will, 30% could like x, 30% could like y, they could all hate z but z gets elected because 40% like z.
Ranked choice means it's easier for voters, but when it's not available voters are capable of understanding the scenario you describe and voting accordingly.
Many times I haven't voted for my preferred candidate and instead voted for the candidate most likely to defeat the candidate I couldn't stomach getting into power. Here in Canada we call it voting strategically and if you look at the polling data it definitely happened last election (and in many others in the past).
I'd like to have ranked choice, but it's insane to say it's not a democracy without it. But multiple rounds of voting (like France has) is better than ranked choice as it gives a clear choice to voters in the final round. But having multiple voting rounds is expensive and people might prefer to just vote once and have it done with, so ranked choice may be preferable for many people.
Dunno, the most recent example was Romania. In the first round, 40% voted for the far right cunt and all the others had 20% or less. In the second round where there were only 2 candidates left, Nicușor Dan won with 53% and the far right cunt got 46%. So.. Z doesn't always win.
I'm referring to / summarizing the Ratchet Effect.
Obviously movement for the sake of movement is not inherently good. But when our only allowed form of action is to vote and we see that voting has no or negative effect, it seems fruitless.
Because a slightly more realistic scenario is that the Dems vote to just throw some people off the cliff, and that's agreed between the two parties.
Allowing the Democratic Party to keep fielding right-of-center neoliberals who've consistently and repeatedly made concessions to the far right over the last four decades without ever demanding anything back, and allowed them to shift the Overton Window way over to Nazi territory, is NOT harm reduction. If you hadn't been such cowards the last three elections, there could have been a credible opposition party by now, but no, you're just going to keep chickening out every single "most important election in history" (aka every election ever).
Its more like 9 people on a bus, 3 vote to drive off a cliff, 2 vote for a break to get ice ream and then continue driving towards the edge of the cliff after, 2 scream why the fuck are we continuing to drive towards the edge of the cliff, the other two believe things will just be the same regardless if they vote or not. Meanwhile the people who want other people to vote for a pitstop on the way to impending doom and death are complaining that the people with the most realistic assessment of the situation are being unreasonable, unrealistic and and/ or unwilling to compromise and if we are going to die anyway we might as well have some icecream (delay the inevitable and hope we can fix things before we get to the edge of the cliff but at this rate it looks like it’ll only get worse because one side turns the mechanism as far as they can get away with and the other ratchets back into a convenient position for the other side to turn the mechanism to their advantage again) this is the more accurate assessment and it’s because education standards were destroyed and the ego’s of people who are too gullible for their own good and don't understand the scope of the corporate apparatus/ system where the ultra rich all collude and work together because they have like interests and the people who don't want to understand this, or can’t because they are naive just keep telling us we need to continue to participate in a system that disenfranchises us not because its been temporarily broken and needs fixing through participation but instead because the entire purpose of the system is to disenfranchise us and the only solution is to implement democratic representation that addresses the economic issues being manipulated without our input or consent. Any system of democratic representation that aims to exclude economically democratic governance is nothing but a class dictatorship.
Being made aware I’m lashed to a bunch of psychotic apes is terrifying and makes me want to kill the rest of the people on the bus and take control myself.
"I voted for the cliff because I know the ice cream place is down below it and I wanted to get there faster." - Have to assume this person exists, but I'm not sure who they would be in the analogy. 🤔
Edit: Oh, I just had to scroll down a few more comments to find them.
This is why the Democratic Party sucks so bad. The never offered people something to vote for. They didn't even offer something harmless - they only ever offered to drive off a cliff more slowly. When in power, they never did anything against the DHS, the MIC, ICE, the Patriot Act. They didn't even talk about fighting landlords, the bosses, the rich. The Dems even refused police reform, instead increasing budgets. The only thing the party elites ever fought fiercely is Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus.
The Democratic Party is just as much to blame for Trump as the GOP. Stop blaming progressives for this miserable one party state - start holding your politicians accountable.
What everyone forgets is that the actual voting already happened. The bus company, Cliff driving Committee, voted before the bus embarked. They voted for the bus driver to drive off the cliff to cut spending to maintenance and health insurance to the driver and bus. There only so much the riders can say at that point
But if we vote for the non-vegan ice cream place, we're telling the leadership that we're okay with non-vegan options and no progress will ever be made!
Trying to reach the "I don't do politics" crowd with "harm reduction" doesn't really work as a strategy.
Like, they're already admitting that when something is an unappealing and controversial, they'd rather check out than engage. Going on to explain the gritty strategy for approaching unappealing and controversial politics is just adding more reasons onto the "I don't do politics" pile.
It's a crass comparison, but it would be like if someone said "I don't play MOBAs" and the response was to immediately launch into an explanation of League's current meta-strategy. Don't be surprised when they immediately check out of the conversation. (Yes I know games are frivolous and politics is life and death -- but the people who "don't do politics" don't see it that way)
More than that, nearly all of the "I don't do politics" people are almost certainly never going to see this image. We're in an online forum dedicated to talking about politics. The only people who see this are the people who already choose to spend their personal time on the subject. So ask yourself, is this image really about the people who are checked out of politics? Because, practically (regardless of intent) all this really seems to be is a thought-terminating cliche to throw at anyone who points out that running a "We're the lesser evil candidate!" doesn't actually engage or activate anyone who's already checked out!
More than that, nearly all of the “I don’t do politics” people are almost certainly never going to see this image. We’re in an online forum dedicated to talking about politics.
And yet plenty of people here insist that they don't do bourgeois politics.
But bourgeois politics is sure as fuck going to do them.
20 people voted to drive over the cliff. 30 people voted to fucking gun it and send that shit straight into the abyss. 1 person voted for ice cream but the cliff voters beat him to death. 50 people didn’t vote
The "drive off the cliff" party vs the "drive off the cliff, but ever so slightly slower and also we'll wave some rainbow flags I guess" party. I know who I'm voting for!
If "harm" and "less harm" are the only two options, then the only question is how quickly you die. There's the argument that we have to do "harm reduction" in order to buy time to organize for something better, but we've been procrastinating for decades apparently. Since all of history informs us that humans act only when inaction is no longer tenable (and sometimes not even then), really the only material difference between "harm reduction" and accelerationism is, again, the timeline.
Yeah.... But also, Carlin was right saying this shit is all a stage. We've got groups of bullies picking on us, and I'd rather throw bricks than help them decide who to pick on next.
I just knew the comments were going to be us tearing each other apart.
I'm just thinking out loud here. What if Progressives that are registered as Democrats changed their registration to independent? Also, stop sending them your money. We could organize it to happen over one week. Then keep it that way for 30 days. See how much power we truly have. If we can show the Democratic party that they would never win another election without us, maybe they would be more likely to listen.
We have to be careful though, I know this President is running roughshod over the Constitution with the blessing of SCOTUS and Congress but they don't have enough votes or State legislatures to amend the Constitution. If they get that, then that truly is the end of this experiment.
Not necessary in actual democracies where you have 10+ different parties.
There, abstaining is just an other party. One with a powerful voice telling the politicians that if enough people not vote, it is a big sign that something is wrong with the system and things will need to change to prevent riots.
It is not the same as voting blank, which is also possible. Then your vote gets added to the most popular vote. In a way of saying that you are content with any.
That's BS. Removing yourself just removes yourself, nothing more. 70% of the population not voting just means 16% get to decide - there's no redo.
After all, you not voting because you didn't like the options is indistinguishable from you not voting because you didn't care.
In order to protest you need to participate in the process. Even invalidating your ballot is a stronger sign than not voting.
I live in Switzerland where low voter turnout is common, yet the population prides itself for its direct democracy. This discussion comes up every election cycle and it's always the same. Nothing happens because of low turnout and nobody thinks twice about why.
Here, voting blank is the same as not voting, btw. It's the way to correctly Not Care in cantons that mandate voting.
Well there's also a different mindset behind voting, if you can directly weigh in on important issues every few months. It's not like in other countries where direct ballot measures are much more rare. But yes, I wished more people would try to participate in a responsible manner.
Is voting for controlled opposition harm reduction?
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
Reminds me of this really annoying "I don't do politics" advert that was airing on British TV two decades ago. Like, I'm surprised the ad didn't end with a punch to the face.
Pugjesus doesnt seem to understand that you can elect people with a D by their name who will vote with republicans on critical votes. But hey as long as the D team wins on election day, thats all that matters I guess, right Pug?
The people who don't vote don't care when it comes down to it. its like when people call Nazis Nazis as if offends them. Or when someone calls a gay person gay... It's just like... Oh okay.
You would eventually "drive off a cliff" with either party, as they will softlock you into never having better choices, and the overton window will keep moving to the right. The only possibility out is to vote third party.
Do you think people who are too stupid to vote for their own and their fellow citizens’ best interests are going to understand it in analogy form? Just try a straight forward “Hey, when you use a stapler on your own forehead, it actually hurts you, believe it or not, you fucking moron.”
Where I'm from we have coalition governments. It's very rare for one party to have a majority. So they have to argue for months and come to some kind of agreement with other parties. The good thing is that everyone can vote for what they really want. There's not really any 'lost votes'. The bad thing is that the coalition forming process is messy and slow and the result is much watered down. But I'd much rather have this than a two party system.
If I had been a US citizen I'd have voted for Harris though.
I'm sorry but this is an old tactic in my country. 2 major parties always fighting for power, and the one always ask to vote them because the other party will destroy the country.
And the blame goes to the no voters or the ice-cream voters or the voters that turn their back, not to the party itself or to their voters that did shit when they were in power for many years. Maybe its time to pay attention to what caused the problem and not to the result.
As for the USA, Trump is the outcome of the Democrats acting as Republicans for decades.
Edit: Last sentence is a bit oversimplification of the story, but Democrats had abandoned the working class and the low income people. They acted like moderate Republicans, especially in the economy.
Another day, another Pug punching left to cover for ranking democrat mistakes. Do you ever get tired or do they reward you for your allegiance? Perhaps you get left nice little scooby snacks.
One one hand harm reduction is nice, but on the other I have seen exactly nothing from Western politics these past few years to convince me that any harm is being reduced. The principle of harm reduction requires serious, productive action (so not canvassing and voter drives, for the love of God stop doing voter drives) to be taken during the period when the harm is reduced to push democracy off its collision course with fascism. When progressives don't take that serious action—or worse, actively shut down said action—they're simply kicking the can down the road, turning harm "reduction" from a credible strategy to a farce. I don't disagree with the principle, but where's the action necessary for any of this to make sense? Because as far as I can see, harm reduction in America was the farce version.
One one hand harm reduction is nice, but on the other I have seen exactly nothing from Western politics these past few years to convince me that any harm is being reduced.
For fuck's sake, have you not looked around to see what's happened these past six fucking months?
The principle of harm reduction requires serious, productive action (so not canvassing and voter drives, for the love of God stop doing voter drives)
"Stop performing one of the core functions of harm reduction that attempts to reduce harm!"
...
to be taken during the period when the harm is reduced to push democracy off its collision course with fascism.
Pointed out below. But I guess it's not fast enough for your tastes, so let's do nothing and usher in the fascists to power instead. After all, politics are like a magical pendulum, where one side winning means the other side must get an equivalent win eventually!
When progressives don’t take that serious action—or worse, actively shut down said action—
When the fuck are progressives shutting down serious action?
they’re simply kicking the can down the road, turning harm “reduction” from a credible strategy to a farce.
You're absolutely right. In the wise words of a political party canvassing for seemingly everything a good fucking third of the 'left' commenters here have come to adore, we're all going to die someday. So why not as soon as possible?
Critical support for harm acceleration! Fuck those minorities anyway.
I don’t disagree with the principle, but where’s the action necessary for any of this to make sense? Because as far as I can see, harm reduction in America was the farce version.
"We've managed to make 'socialism' into an acceptable word in politics and almost got a democratic socialist into a major party's nomination twice in the past ten years, in a country which has been immensely hostile to any socialist ideas for at least 70 years, and in an intensified period of anti-government right-wing insanity since 1980."
"Clearly you haven't been making any progress, shitlib! Time to abandon all levers of power to the fascists."
For fuck's sake, have you not looked around to see what's happened these past six fucking months?
I have, and I know that without the serious action I was talking about it was a question of whether Alligator Alcatraz would've been opened in 2025 or 2029, with maybe a small chance of 2033. There was nothing unique about 2025 that made it the ideal timing for a fascist takeover.
"Stop performing one of the core functions of harm reduction that attempts to reduce harm!"
Well as long as all or most of your energy is going to harm reduction you'll only ever end up with fascism.
Pointed out below. But I guess it's not fast enough for your tastes, so let's do nothing and usher in the fascists to power instead. After all, politics are like a magical pendulum, where one side winning means the other side must get an equivalent win eventually!
Oh I'm under no illusion that fascists winning would (or, well, will given that they've pretty much already won) bring about a socialist revolution or any of that stuff.
When the fuck are progressives shutting down serious action?
Remember Uncommited? Palestine protests? Calls for Biden to step down? I have seen all three get called Russian psy-ops by supposedly left-leaning people on Lemmy. You probably know better than me whether that's a representative sample of American politics, but holy hell for a time you couldn't say anything bad about Biden without getting showered with downvotes around here. This sort of cannibalism was one of the many forms of complicity that allowed the march to fascism to proceed unimpeded.
You're absolutely right. In the wise words of a political party canvassing for seemingly everything a good fucking third of the 'left' commenters here have come to adore, we're all going to die someday. So why not as soon as possible?
I mean, in this case we're more talking about whether it's worth it to pay through the nose for life support when you already know what you have is terminal.
"We've managed to make 'socialism' into an acceptable word in politics and almost got a democratic socialist into a major party's nomination twice in the past ten years, in a country which has been immensely hostile to any socialist ideas for at least 70 years, and in an intensified period of anti-government right-wing insanity since 1980."
That would be nice-ish progress in saner times, and a few decades of it and you might've had a shot at sane government (if the establishment didn't manage to tank the whole affair, anyway), but like what makes you think you ever had that kind of time? The clock was already ticking with Bush, really got going with Obama and Trump 1 pretty much sealed the deal. When I say fascism was inevitable I don't mean it was coming within decades; I mean America was going to be fascist by 2033. Much more direct action was needed to prevent fascism within that timeframe. So with that in mind,
But I guess it's not fast enough for your tastes
No, it's not fast enough for the reality on the ground.
What? No. Accelerationism would be "we should vote for fascists/not vote at all," which is not at all what I'm saying here. My point is that the left's strategy needs to radically change if it wants to have a hope of stopping fascism. To repeat, I want fascism to be stopped here; my argument is that the way the left has been attempting to do so is woefully inadequate.
My point is that the left’s strategy needs to radically change if it wants to have a hope of stopping fascism.
Cool, so, the thinking is to buy yourself enough time to convince the left to radically change?
No? "We haven't changed enough yet for my tastes, so this is all pointless"?
To repeat, I want fascism to be stopped here; my argument is that the way the left has been attempting to do so is woefully inadequate.
And that you see no point in buying more time, don't forget, calling it a 'farce' at first, and then, after conceding that there was significant progress, dismissing it as 'not fast enough' to be worth considering.
There's a good fucking chance that I'm a dead man walking. The projections for additional deaths caused directly by this administration are in the millions. Quite literally every fucking left-wing cause in this country has been set back immensely by this fascist victory, and fascists internationally significantly strengthened. And yet there are people here, people like you, who aren't stupid but seem quite content to bang a very stupid drum, insisting that preventing this would not have been all that big an issue - because we're all going to die become fascist in the end anyway, so what does it matter if it's four years from now or today?
I fucking take my meds every day not because I think I'll gain immortality if I keep doing it, I do it because it staves off death one more day at time. Despite the fact that it doesn't cure the underlying problem of chronic illness/mortality.
So yeah, I'm a little fucking pissed whenever this comes up.
I agree people should have voted kamala to prevent what's happening now...
But for progression now, nothing about shaming the voters disenfranchised by the Democrats is worthwhile.
The Democrats were never entitled to any votes, they shouldn't have been so conceited as to tank their own popularity with conceit in the interest of capital.
The ones who voted for trump are to blame in the immediate for sure, what's happening right now in the US is tragic. But to be so myopic as to pretend that's all that matters is foolish.
Here we go again. Not voting for the Dems was fine, because Dems aren't 'entitled' to anyone's vote. So glad people chose to punish the Dems at the expensive of the lives of millions of actual human beings. But surely, the Dems will learn not to act entitled after THIS defeat. I mean, it didn't work the last fifty fucking times, but THIS time, they'll learn their lesson, and all those people murdered by the fascist ghouls that abstainers let into power will at least have their deaths be for a worthy cause!
Yes, the Dems'll learn any day now... if only we let a few million more minorities get murdered, they'll surely learn...
It's not accelerationism. Accelerationism presumes that a good result will follow the bad one. This is more "Fascism is going to come, and it's not going to usher in a socialist revolution, so just let it come as quick as it wants to."
I have, and I know that without the serious action I was talking about it was a question of whether Alligator Alcatraz would’ve been opened in 2025 or 2029, with maybe a small chance of 2033. There was nothing unique about 2025 that made it the ideal timing for a fascist takeover.
Jesus fucking Christ. Do you know nothing of the history of this fucking country?
Oh, what am I saying? History is terribly inconvenient.
Well as long as all or most of your energy is going to harm reduction you’ll only ever end up with fascism.
Therefore, power should be handed over to the fascists as quick as possible. Great.
Oh I’m under no illusion that fascists winning would (or, well, will given that they’ve pretty much already won) bring about a socialist revolution or any of that stuff.
So your opposition to harm reduction is... what? The belief that getting fascism sooner is Good, Actually?
Remember Uncommited? Palestine protests? Calls for Biden to step down? I have seen all three get called Russian psy-ops by supposedly left-leaning people on Lemmy.
All three of those were championed primarily by progressives.
You probably know better than me whether that’s a representative sample of American politics, but holy hell for a time you couldn’t say anything bad about Biden without getting showered with downvotes around here.
Golly gee, I wonder why people might be hostile towards beating the "BIDEN BAD" drum during the period of 2024 when he was the only non-fascist candidate with a serious chance of winning the 2024 election.
It must be because we're secretly shitlibs. It's that deeply engrained desire to not lose an election to a fascist that gives us away - don't we know that both sides are basically fascists anyway?
In any case, the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' has passed, so I get to have my healthcare stripped away and vomit blood on the floor until I bleed out, so thanks for your unrelenting support for anti-anti-fascism for being insufficiently pure! If you want, I'll send you a selfie once the black-flecked puke starts coming up, so you have a nice little souvenir to celebrate with.
Maybe you can find another country to asspat accelerationists in until the fascists win, and get a few more selfies of that sort. Then you'll REALLY be owning the libs!
This sort of cannibalism was one of the many forms of complicity that allowed the march to fascism to proceed unimpeded.
... the sort of cannibalism of... trying to push the necessity of a united front against a literal and outright fascist who was projected to win nearly half the vote?
If that's cannibalism, I shudder to think what you consider attacking the anti-fascist coalition candidate as.
I mean, in this case we’re more talking about whether it’s worth it to pay through the nose for life support when you already know what you have is terminal.
"You see, if we operate under the axiom that our fate is inevitable, our fate is inevitable."
The fuck are you 'saving' that money for, anyway, if the end result is that you're going to die? Pure thrift? Want to be buried with it?
That would be nice-ish progress in saner times, and a few decades of it and you might’ve had a shot at sane government (if the establishment didn’t manage to tank the whole affair, anyway), but like what makes you think you ever had that kind of time? The clock was already ticking with Bush, really got going with Obama and Trump 1 pretty much sealed the deal. When I say fascism was inevitable I don’t mean it was coming within decades; I mean America was going to be fascist by 2033. Much more direct action was needed to prevent fascism within that timeframe.
If you were alive in 1950, you'd be saying the American Auschwitz was going to open by 1960 or 1962 anyway, so harm reduction was pointless. We were on the inevitable path to fascism within a decade, and there was nothing that could be done about it so long as the SHITLIBS were still in power.
No, it’s not fast enough for the reality on the ground.
Therefore, power should be handed over to the fascists as quick as possible. Great.
Again, that is literally not what I'm saying, and at this point you seem to be arguing with a strawman. I'm not anti-harm reduction; I simply believe that the efficacy of harm reduction is predicated on effective action that simply does not exist at present. What I'm calling for is for the left to shift gears to direct action to coerce the system into getting its shit in order. Also vote for the less shitty candidate, but that shouldn't be where you put all or even most of your energy, because losing that particular bet is a mathematical certainty.
So your opposition to harm reduction is... what?
See above.
All three of those were championed primarily by progressives.
Yes, there's a reason I called it cannibalism.
Golly gee, I wonder why people might be hostile towards beating the "BIDEN BAD" drum during the period of 2024 when he was the only non-fascist candidate with a serious chance of winning the 2024 election.
See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. Biden 2024 wasn't an outlier in an otherwise sane political climate; that shit was the new post-2016 normal. Any credible strategy needed to provide a path to victory through that new normal within a decade (more realistically five years, but eh) without letting fascists win in the meantime. So-called harm reduction focuses so much on the latter that it does nothing substantial to address the former.
If you want, I'll send you a selfie once the black-flecked puke starts coming up, so you have a nice little souvenir to celebrate with.
Looking forward to it ;).
If you were alive in 1950, you'd be saying the American Auschwitz was going to open by 1960 or 1962 anyway, so harm reduction was pointless.
American Hitler wasn't winning elections in 1950 so... no?
there was nothing that could be done about it so long as the SHITLIBS were still in power.
Okay it's starting to feel like you're scanning my responses for keywords rather than actually reading what I'm saying.
Again, that is literally not what I’m saying, and at this point you seem to be arguing with a strawman. I’m not anti-harm reduction; I simply believe that the efficacy of harm reduction is predicated on effective action that simply does not exist at present.
Except your entire argument here is positing that harm reduction is worthless because it doesn't serve the long-term goals you see as necessary fast enough.
What I’m calling for is for the left to shift gears to direct action to coerce the system into getting its shit in order.
And reminding everyone that harm reduction under current circumstances is pointless, don't forget.
Also vote for the less shitty candidate, but that shouldn’t be where you put all or even most of your energy, because losing that particular bet is a mathematical certainty.
... losing elections is a mathematical certainty?
Yes, there’s a reason I called it cannibalism.
Because... progressives made campaigns, and largely, simultaneously, supported the Dem candidate...?
See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Biden 2024 wasn’t an outlier in an otherwise sane political climate; that shit was the new post-2016 normal.
Okay? What the ever-loving fuck does that have to do with ensuring Biden in 2024 didn't lose, because his opponent was a literal fascist?
"He wasn't giving us a long-term strategy for victory, so fuck your anti-fascist coalition!"
This is the doomer equivalent of accelerationism.
Any credible strategy needed to provide a path to victory through that new normal within a decade (more realistically five years, but eh) without letting fascists win in the meantime. So-called harm reduction focuses so much on the latter that it does nothing substantial to address the former.
"I wonder why these people are so worried about not dying of thirst today??? Don't they know that they haven't fixed the problems in water supply over the next decade???"
If only we worried less about dying of thirst today. Such short-term thinking!
Looking forward to it ;).
Unsurprising. The lives of marginalized groups don't matter if they're insufficiently ideologically pure. I guess I was too interested in not dying because of a fuckwad fascist administration.
American Hitler wasn’t winning elections in 1950 so… no?
Oh, sorry, so you prefer 1896 or 1912 or 1968 or 1980 for your narrative of "America was going to fall forever to fascism in ten years, and there's nothing these silly 'harm reducers' can do about it"?
Okay it’s starting to feel like you’re scanning my responses for keywords rather than actually reading what I’m saying.
Your entire fucking point is predicated on the idea that fascism is inevitable because change wasn't happening fast enough, so harm reduction was functional worthless to pursue. I am absolutely reading what you're saying; the problem is you aren't following the logical conclusions of what you yourself are saying.
This isn't going anywhere, so I'll clarify my position one final time before I disengage.
Your entire fucking point is predicated on the idea that fascism is inevitable because change wasn't happening fast enough, so harm reduction was functional worthless to pursue.
Harm reduction alone was functionally worthless to pursue, yes. Harm reduction is fine, desirable even, but not at the expense of antagonistic action. Prioritizing harm reduction over the antagonistic action that's supposed to be facilitated by that harm reduction is putting the cart before the horse and self-defeating. By antagonistic action I'm mostly thinking of protests, civil disobedience, strikes and whatever Uncommitted was here, but for an easy example I'll use the early to mid-2024 calls for Biden to step down. Doubling down on hard reduction entailed shutting down calls for Biden to step down to not jeopardize the anti-fascist united front, but I believe that to have been a mistake. The play was to jump on and amplify these calls so that Biden would step down sooner and open the way for a real primary, because it's these sort of actions that give harm reduction meaning, otherwise it becomes simply kicking the can down the road. Harm reduction is necessary but not sufficient for fighting fascism, so it cannot happen at the expense of other necessary actions, such as coercing the Democrats into providing a viable unity platform. That's why I called it farcical (which, yeah, I still stand by that characterization); it's like filling a bowl with eggs and trying to make cake.
Another day of pretending that voters gaza concerns wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world to adress. But no not even a speaking spot at the democratic conversation. But please growel more, surely you are bound to be treated with the respect in the future.
This is a bad analogy. Harris wasn’t fucking ice cream. A better analogy would be the trolley problem. People get killed no matter what choice you make.
But you know what? The solution to the trolley problem is to not play. I’m not to blame, the people who laid down the track, strapped down the people, and sent a train hurtling towards them are entirely responsible.
Edit: as others have commented - the real solution is to blow up the train before it hits anybody and go hunt down the sick bastard who set up the problem. (In other words - direct actions like sabotage and revolution).
not voting is a valid strategy but only when it's NOT apolitical. That's why many in power want you to either be A or B or apolitical not be neither A or B but still informed and capable.
If you want my vote then stop telling me leftists can't win. If the lesser of two evils is the best we can hope for then I'll vote for the cliff with rusted spikes at the bottom. You can attack me over that view but all that will buy you is a self righteous feeling as our bus plunges over the edge.
PS. I've reliably voted the lesser of two evils for as long as I can remember and the outcome is that it always gets worse. A slow swing towards a totalitarian society just makes people feel like everything is normal. Especially to younger people who have never seen a better life for average Americans and don't realize were sliding until its too late. Chuck Shumer isn't going to stop our slide but like the Trump BBB he may fight to change the name.
Look, I really appreciate the sentiment, but it's time to acknowledge that those non-voters are not "misinformed future allies" any more than the MAGAs are. They are either accelerationists or fundamentally broken logically, and which form their indecision takes makes no difference -they are enemies of progress all the same, and to the extent there is ANY hope for the future, it relies on building a path AROUND them, not WITH them.
Yeah, it's the height of cluelessness that Democrats act like anyone who isn't a Trump supporter somehow owes their vote to the Democratic Party. If the only thing your party has to offer is Not Being Republicans then why should anyone owe them anything.
If the only thing your party has to offer is Not Being Republicans then why should anyone owe them anything.
Your moral purity in refusing to give the Dems an 'unowed' victory will be written on the tombstones of millions of people that the fascists are murdering. Thank you for your service in teaching those damn dirty Dems a lesson o7
You do realize this is exactly the kind of melodramatic over-the-top garbage that puts people off wanting to engage with politics in the first place, yeah?
I mean, I'm over it. Do what you feel like. It's clear whatever the future is, this argument we're having now? Has no part in it. Vote or don't vote for whoever you want. Feel or don't feel guilt. I don't particularly care about the details of how you see it. The time when it might have mattered either way? Is over. Sure, maybe pre-election it was like trying to convince you not to kill the hostage - but the hostage is dead now. Not arguing that battle anymore. It's irrelevant. You do whatever it is you like, but I'm never, ever, ever going to see the action in any other way, and at this point there's absolutely ZERO point in discussing otherwise. It's all academic. The trolley problem stops being a moral quandry when everyone is dead already. If you feel good? Great! You get my unironic and genuine thumbs up. Live your best life, my friend.
I’m not entirely following the thread here because it feels like I’m simultaneously being told that it’s already Game Over but also that only the Democrats can save us.
They’ve shown very clearly the last five years that they have neither the ability nor the interest to do that. If anyone’s going to save the country, it’s not going to be them.
You do realize this is exactly the kind of melodramatic over-the-top garbage that puts people off wanting to engage with politics in the first place, yeah?
Sorry, I understand my death and the deaths of millions of other people are too 'melodramatic' for the tastes of middle-class suburbanites for whom politics is a species of sport.
Yeah keep ranting and accusing people of mass murder for not voting for your guy, that’ll win us over
If only the Dem circus was more entertaining, then you could've been convinced to vote against the slaughter of disadvantaged groups by literal fascists. But it wasn't entertaining enough, so the lives of marginalized groups was a price you were willing to pay to give the Dems a 'thumbs-down'.
At least some of them need to be peeled off, however, considering the raw numbers. If there are no gains at all in votes for the anti-fascist candidate, that just means the fascists would continue winning, indefinitely.
... assuming, of course, elections matter going forward.
There's a third, less pleasant option that you're avoiding. I understand why - I don't relish it. But the ballot box has failed. Even if it hasn't COMPLETELY yet, we are not even 5 months into this term, and look where we are. Harping on getting non-voters to vote is the 2025 equivalent of the reactionary generals running cavalry charges across no-man's land in WW1. It is fighting the last war. But that war is lost.
Not avoiding. The cartridge box may end up as necessary. But regardless of whether fascism ends like Franco (by luck), like Pinochet (by ballot), like Portugal (by mass resistance), or like Italy (by the bullet), the ballot is both a useful addition (insofar as it can reduce the legitimacy of the government) and a necessary tool for the postwar society. I don't want to endure a fascist government now because people were too stupid to vote, so I can say that I definitely don't want to get rid of these fascist fucks only for it to happen the same way again.
If we let the principle of "Not voting against fascism is okay if you feel really strongly about teaching the shitlibs a lesson!" endure, we will be seeing it make additional visits, along with the fascist ghouls it benefits.
Also, I noted in the title that I was speaking to an international audience, and not just... here, in the US.
Oh, I'm not saying it's okay. I would never say it's okay. I AM saying that they're a stubborn distraction, and engaging with them is a waste of time. It took us a good long time for people to finally realize that the MAGAs and Republicans were unreachable, and by then, how many millions of collective man-hours were wasted? The stakes in 2024 could NOT have been clearer, and these non-voters STILL rejected the logic. We don't have the time or energy to waste now pursuing THEM either. Now is the time to engage in asymmetric warfare of various kinds, including not only protests, but ensuring continued access to "subversive" information despite the tightening noose of control by setting up reliable hosting for it outside of the US government's control, and otherwise generally trying to preserve what we can in the face of what's going to become an ever worsening environment. We simply don't have the time to waste on these people.
Interesting... but the ice cream is supporting genocide. Some would rather die than vote for that. And I guess it could be argued that at least the people dieing by going over the cliff had a chance to vote. The ones dieing from genocide didn't.
I really don't understand the issue people have with individuals who are in safe red or blue states voting in protest
Because if all the individuals who think they're in safe zones actually got out and voted seriously instead of protest voting or abstaining, THERE WOULD NOT BE ANY SAFE RED AREAS.
For that to actually for real happen, there would have to be a campaign and a candidate to convince enough people to do that. "We're the harm reduction option" clearly isn't that campaign.
I really don’t understand the issue people have with individuals who are in safe red or blue states voting in protest
It's less problematic, but still not great. Elections maintain legitimacy on the perception of democracy - the more the democratic result is at variance with the results of the system, the greater the 'winning' candidate is undermined. A clear vote against the fascist discourages cooperation from various fence-sitting ghouls who, nonetheless, retain significant power to hinder the incoming administration. A significant enough disconnect between the democratic result and the result of the system can, and historically has in other countries, led to mass unrest and the overthrow of 'illegitimate' victors, though in the US the difference between winner and loser in this area has never been above statistical noise.
By contrast, a victory of the plurality of the vote is seen as legitimizing, encouraging careerist middle-of-the-road ghouls, both politicians and bureaucrats, to cooperate with and enable the regime to a greater degree.
Put less verbosely:
It's best to deny fascists victory. However, if the circumstances (of the nation or your vote specifically) do not allow for that, it's best to deny fascists the perception of a democratic mandate.
Protest voting in a safe state is better than non-voting, but it still has a negative effect in the case of a fascist victory.
Calling it harm reduction is thinly veiled 'both sides same" nonsense / "n n not enough". Dems deliver when they get a majority in all 3 houses. Want more? Then give them more majorities.
*I think one point of confusion is I see the term "harm reduction" originating from the "both sides same" people. They use it to say "it's only harm reduction, it's still harm, therefore I won't vote for it". Or "Dems only reduce harm, not help, therefore I won't vote for them". Don't fall for their trick, and don't let them fall into that trap of what's basically both sides same.
It's basically saying one side harms, the other side harms less. Aka both sides harm. Aka both sides same. I see it as "both sides same" lite.
People got called out on "both sides same" so they switched the term to "harm reduction" to slip in the notion that both sides harm. I already see it in this thread.
You don't understand the intended message of this post. The people abstaining from voting because the ice cream is not vegan ARE the "both sides are the same, none will bring real change, that's why I won't vote/vote 3rd party" people that ultimately help steer the bus off the cliff. "Harm reduction" as used in this post is an argument for voting for the better of two realistic outcomes, even if that outcome doesn't meet your purity standards. The point being that one option (bus driving off the cliff) is much much worse than the other.
Letting them think/use the term "harm reduction" lets them mentally put in the category of harm. I'm saying you can't let them mentally put it into the category of harm or less harm or harm reduction, because they still see it as harm and thus won't vote for it.
I understand the intended message. I'm saying it doesn't work because to them it's still harm.
(*I think this is flipped around. I see the term "harm reduction" originating from the "both sides same" people. They use it to say "it's only harm reduction, it's still harm, therefore I won't vote for it". Or "Dems only reduce harm, not help, therefore I won't vote for them". Don't let them fall into that trap of what's basically both sides same.)
I think the main target audience here are people who already think that both sides do harm. I think what is being told here is that "even if we were to accept that both sides do harm, then the other side does it magnitudes more than the other one."
Couple thoughts on that 1) Don't play into their notion that both sides harm/both sides the same. That's what they want. 2) We need to show them dems actually deliver. That's not harm reduction, that delivering. Then the conversation turns to how to get more.
I'm realizing lots of people have binary thinking. It's either harm or help. So the idea of harm reduction allows them to mentally put it in the same camp as harm. And once it's in the same camp, then they think it's all the same, and then they think there's no point in it.
If a person is anti-dem, there's no way you'll convert them with logical arguments. Or with any arguments at all. But you can get them to vote anti-Trump.
Different strategies for different situations. And, from a European viewpoint, it sounds ridiculous that Dems somehow "deliver". From my perspective they are a massively lesser evil. But, in USA I would definitely vote for them just to vote against fascism. They might be stupid, but they are not malevolent. Trump is. (And stupid as well.)
You wouldn't be able to convince me to like a party as far right to as the Democratic party. I wouldn't like even the European right-wing parties, and they are – even in places such as Poland – to the left of anything USA has to offer. And if you tried spending your effort into making me actually think I might want more of what Democrats can offer, you'd be wasting your effort. I could vote such a party for what they offer less, but definitely not for what they offer more!
I'm going to post this first; I think one point of confusion is that I see the term "harm reduction" originating from the "both sides same" people. They use it to say "it's only harm reduction, it's still harm, therefore I won't vote for it". Or "Dems only reduce harm, not help, therefore I won't vote for them". Don't let them fall into that trap of what's basically both sides same.
If a person is anti-dem, there's no way you'll convert them with logical arguments.
That's part of the problem with trying to argue "harm reduction". You'll never convince them trying to argue "harm reduction". It plays right into what they want: to portray Dems as harm, just harm lite. That's what they want, for you to call it harm reduction, which is harm lite, which is on the same side as harm, which they won't vote for.
For the rest of this message, you've fallen for their trick. I started to elaborate but I'm going to cut it off there.
I don't think I've fallen for their trick, because this is the first time I'm even observing a conversation on this topic. It hasn't traditionally been a very relevant subject on this side of the pond.
Do you not see it already on this thread? I already saw "more like the ice cream does not exist" and "more like one side wants to drive off, the other wants to drive really close so they can decide to drive off later."
And that's the problem. Letting them use the term "harm reduction" lets them categorize it as "harm", therefore they won't vote for it. Because they see it as harm. Because they see it as all on the same side of harm (both sides harm/both sides same). There's longer explanations in my other replies.
Okay, but there are three problems with that approach:
That is even more starkly against their worldview than "Dems do less harm", which, as responses in this fucking thread show, they are already reluctant to accept even outside of the context of harm reduction.
That 'Dems help' has to necessarily point towards specific issues of policy, and policy tends to be much more contentious as to whether any given policy is actually helpful in the long run or just less-bad than the alternative.
The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
That's QUITTER talk! I'm voting for Rocky Road.
So the cliff?
Brick on the pedal.
I LOVE Rocky Road
So have another triple scoop with me! OW!
You're right - it's more like one group voting to drive off a cliff and the other voting to just drive really close to the cliff in case we decide to go off on some other vote, but so long as the cliff doesn't win now, we can focus on convincing people ice cream is the better option. We don't, and instead wait 4 more years to complain about the lack of ice cream, but that's a separate problem.
Still better than not voting to not go off the cliff.
The problem is people have voted for ice cream. They have read about people voting for ice cream for years before they were even born.
Lots of people want ice cream but we are at a point where people KNOW the cliff exists. They DO NOT know the ice cream shop exists because all the times they were PROMISED ice cream the bus just stopped at a sewage treatment plant.
The voters are not the problem. They have zero reason to trust the bus driver. Because the bus driver refuses to throw the cliff voters off the bus. Bad optics.
The voters chose the bus driver.
No they don't.
Voters are told to pick which driver they want and both drivers don't listen to directions and can't read a map.
So some voters don't care who's driving the bus or where it's going.
Because they have no reason to care.
They tolerate the shitty ride and shitty passengers while looking out the window. Waiting for the ride to end. But it never does.
Yes, they do. The voters get a chance to decide who those two drivers are, and 85% of them stay home. Then they got to choose between the driver that wants to drive off the cliff, and the driver who swears they'll go get ice cream. And then 40% of the voters stay home.
Now the driver's taking us off the cliff, and you're whining that the driver that got the most votes is doing exactly what they said they would.
They have every reason to care, but they don't anyway. You can't abdicate your power and then complain no one listens to you. We had a chance to have better choices, but no one but retirees reliably show up to primaries.
Jeez more of this b b both sides same stuff.
If you think literally saying "they're definitely different, but the difference is smaller than ideal" means "they're the same" then things will never be fixed.
Dude you changed this it from "we want ice cream" to "we want to drive next to the cliff so we can drive off it later". That's not smaller than ideal, you literally changed it both sides the same, just later.
No, I changed it to "one side killing us, the other not, but still leaving it on the table" Which is a huge difference, but still a troubling scenario. Not driving off a cliff is orders of magnitude better than driving off a cliff, but still significantly worse than ice cream.
Dude one side wanted to get ice cream and you changed it to "nah, not that. I'm gonna change it to what the other side wants, just later. Change it to the complete opposite". You completely changed it. Changed everything. Smh. That you either don't want to see that or can't see that... I'm out.
Again, I didn't change it to "later" I changed it to "if the cliff drivers win the next vote, it'll be a short drive." Do you really think that's inaccurate? Look at how Trump drove the country into the ground in his first 4 years, and how easy it was to just keep doing it even after we had 4 years of democratic leadership that was meant to get things back on track. I don't call that "ice cream," I call that "sitting by the cliff waiting for the cliff drivers to be in power again." We need leadership that will drive away from the cliff even if it upsets the people and politicians that want to drive off it.
Really? Because Scandinavia has really nice ice cream. Europe too, with some problems.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we've already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They're wrong, but they believe it, and people's beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren't on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don't know how to do politics on purpose so they don't lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There's a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
I blame both. The Democratic Party and everybody who did not vote for them. My heart is big, there is enough room to hate everyone!
That's the spirit!
Do you think Republican politics have the slightest responsibilities or none at all? I think all this thread, and the analogy itself plays into polarization, which is not a good way to actually put the much needed bridges... Everyone can do a lot. There are plenty of tasks and battles. Voting is one, very relevant every X many years. Focus on the everyday too. And on every neighbor. All needs should be covered. Do your best. Allow yourself to rest. We can do this.
Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don't even try to make good ice cream, they don't even try to get customers or do a good job. It's still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn't blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.
Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let's blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.
Let's put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn't straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming "I'm never voting against gay rights!" Cool, so when the other guy wins and it's way worse, at least you feel good.
I keep voting for ice cream and I get told "we can't get ice cream because we have to vote to not go off a cliff again"
Yeah, I think not going off a cliff is pretty important though.
Right, but eventually the cliff guys win and we go off the cliff anyway, and even if they never win we don’t ever get ice cream.
The solution seems we kick them out of the car.
But that's not how voting for a direction works. I think this analogy is just starting to fall apart after this much discussion, we've taken it too far haha.
Listen, I'm all for taking out the trash and not just taking small wins to survive, but I just don't see the path. I might be missing it, there's plenty I don't know, but survival at least would have let us survive a little longer.
I don’t see the path out of just surviving either.
Except maybe jumping out of the car.
Tuck and roll, brother
You get ice cream, just not as much as you want because some people refuse to vote.
What's the relevance of this inane statement, again?
The Democrats aren't the ice cream party. They are the "drive off the cliff slowly party" and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn't want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only "harm reduction" in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The point of the term 'harm reduction' is that it is acknowledging that participation in bourgeois democracy is buying time rather than fundamentally reforming the system, I can't believe how many fucking times and in how many fucking ways I have to explain this to a community that is purportedly leftist.
So what do you do with that time? Hillary was buying time, Biden was buying time, Biden/Harris was buying time...
Instead what happened in these times was things to get worse, the "buying time" party bragging about its exploits in mass deportations, wall building and bombing abroad and ferociously fighting anyone that wanted to bring improvements. Even now we see the exact same thing with Mamdani. The DNC has "learned" absolutely nothing, because everything is going according to plan. Mamdani is threatening the plan. Tump is not.
When people decided to prevent ICE gestapo abducting people in their communities in California, Democratic mayors had the police crack down on them.
Your strategy is all messed up and it didn't lead you anywhere. With another four years of far right DNC politics as "harm reduction" you would have only fostered liberal complacency and ignorance and on top of it created the economic conditions for the next iteration of Fascism to hit back even harder. There is no fighting with the US political establishment. There is only fighting against it, if you ever want to see the US become a reasonably okay country.
This guy gets it, if the opposition party cares more about maintaining their legal bribes than punishing those doing the bribing and accepting the bribes then they bear an equal responsibility to the destination that those in the car are driven to.
Well said. I tried to make this point elsewhere in the thread and got showered with downvoted, so it's nice to see there's still some sanity left in the world.
It sounds like the problem is you don't have enough allies in the fight against either, and your strategy is to bank on getting more allies in a fight against fascists than you would against democrats.
Good luck with that, sincerely; but I think it sounds like a bit of a gamble. Fascists are quite good at terrorising moderates into compliance and killing or imprisoning their opponents.
Fucking fantastic that Thalmann is making a comeback.
The amazing thing is that there is no Thalmann. Our Hindenburg is so disliked that nobody has to split the vote for him to lose.
I laugh but I cry. But yes.
My point was more about the attitude of "Let fascism come, it will lead to Better Things(tm)" though.
This is why I voted for Kamala, as it would've reduced harm for a little while...Long enough to figure out an effective counter. Right now, I am using my voice as best as possible to reduce further harm (with the Big Bad Bill coming into effect soon) I dread losing my insurance and wasting away because untreated it's a guarantee. Given that I live in a mostly Red State, I could be one of the 17 million affected, or spared because I work part-time... If there are elections in the future, I will be voting with harm reduction in mind every time. Unless America becomes a doomed Fascist Nation which devours itself from within.
Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.
In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.
People often downplay associativity and are often encouraged to because power to the people scares the oligarchs. You're easier to subdue if you're alone.
Join your local community in any ways you can.
As I am socially anxious; it's rough to interact with others. However, I will stay strong and try to participate when possible. As, communities do survive if they actually work with one another despite their differences. We can survive Trump's cursed presidency through working together. The rich fear that shit, this is why the policies Republicans are pushing are so disruptive for the working class. To reduce the odds of them being able to work communally to fight against oligarchs and their mouthpiece Republicans/MAGA sympathizers.
Best of luck. Whatever else happens, I hope you manage to make it through to the other side.
You just had 4 years of Biden "reducing harm". How did that work out?
Has 'harm reduction' not been explained to you in simple enough terms yet, or are you just pretending to be incapable of digesting simple concepts?
This is just a troll, clearly wants to argue unnecessarily.
This one's much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don't you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
There's a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
I had people unironically tell me that Kamala Harris was no better than Hitler, and that she & Trump were the same but just did the exact same harm in "different areas," which is why it looked like they were any different policy-wise. 💀
Yeah the genocide angle is just "both sides" with sprinkles. It's a really effective misdirection.
They did. They were dumb enough to fall for it and now we have concentration camps.
Since both support Genocide I don't think it's fair to say it's nazis vs non-nazis. It's more like genocide over there vs genocide maybe here and there. That's assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn't necessarily going to happen. A lot of people are speculating that things will happen that didn't last time Trump was in charge. It definitely could happen, but I don't think it's as likely as people are making out. Trump would have to convince all of the keys to power to abandon democracy, and that hasn't happened yet. He is already getting push back for certain things, not to mention braking up with Elon.
Anyway I sure am glad I don't live in the USA. Although honestly my own country is having its own issues. The supposedly left wing party seem to have decided they have the same level of support for trans people that the right wing one does, or at least their leader is willing to follow the conservatives on that issue. I almost regret voting for him now.
That's assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn't necessarily going to happen.
It has happened, is continuing to happen, and will get worse. ICE now has a large budget than most militaries and Trump is exploring ways to "deport" American citizens (probably to concentration camps). They're exploring ways to essentially make migrant farm workers slaves. The supreme Court just made it harder for judges to pause executive orders. The US (of which I'm a citizen) is fucked.
Wtf? They already have. They've ballooned ICE's budget to more than that of the marines. They want to deport 65 million latinos. That's all the Latinos. They've already gone full authoritarian dictatorship while you were watching
I also have extensive thoughts about a political system and electorate of which I know very little about.
Pretty accurate portrayal.
The delusion that democrats don't also put many people in cages is a huge part of how we got here.
By not voting you promoted to accelerate genocide. You've made it worse with your stupidity.
Time to stop thinking this will end in 4 years with an election. American democracy died on January 20th.
Meanwhile both parties massacre people in other countries by the tens of thousands, sometimes by the millions.
If caring about that is bullshit to you, i find it rich that you expect anyone to care about the life of you or the people you care about.
We need a "neither" option. If that one wins neither candiate gets to be president and the parties have to pick someone else. Not voting counts as neither.
If only.
Every time I see people complaining about 3rd party voters all I can picture is the "Am I so out of touch?" meme. Like, y'all already shot yourselves in the face 3 times in a row and it surprisingly didn't fail 1/3 times, but you'll blame literally anyone but yourselves. Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money, and we would not be anywhere near where we are now. People vote for trump because they don't want another fucking "nothing will fundamentally change" politician. The country is already shit. It needs to change. But dems are happy with it how it is. They don't care about immigrants, or poor people, or social security, or women's rights, or whatever. They just hold onto those as carrots on a stick. They just want to keep making millions, and would rather trump win so they don't have to actually embrace populist policy. That's why people don't vote. The choice isn't ice cream or drive off a cliff. Its do we drive into a wall and die now, or drive off a cliff so it takes slightly longer to die, the drive off a cliff people shot the 2 people who asked if they could vote for ice cream and that's why the others didn't vote.
Their absolutely pathetic response to Mamdani's victory in the primary was so flagrant, I'm not even sure how to react to the Democratic party going forward. Not only did they try to stack the deck in Cuomo's favor, but then they threw a fucking tantrum when Cuomo still lost despite their efforts. They just don't seem credible to me anymore.
I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a concerted op going on to whip people into believing in an unending two party system forever.
Golly gee, if only there were some way that parties decided what candidates they were going to run, and what policies that candidate supported.
Unfortunately, as we all know, such decisions are made by The Secret Cabal and us lowly voters have no part in it.
Signed, someone who had a fever dream in 2016 and 2020 and remembered voting in something called a 'primary' for some 'Bernie Sanders' guy.
Sure dude, keep pretending the DNC doesn’t run anything and that they have zero influence or agenda and it’s all the perfect will of the people. You’re right, the people with billions of dollars in charge of the party are really just chill dudes who listen to what people really want.
Sorry for not thinking that every public poll was rigged by The Shadow Elite and that Bernie actually won the primaries by millions of votes which were shredded without a single hint of evidence left behind by the Puppetmasters of the DNC.
Maybe people are voting for what they want, and the issue is a lack of education...?
No, no, it must be the Shadow Cabal sabotaging all the polls. I'm SURE of it!
My brother in christ, could you strawman any harder?
NOBODY thinks bernie 'actually won'. Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats. You know, the EXACT same thing that's going on with Zohran Mamdani RIGHT FUCKING NOW. He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
"If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?"
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it's worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don't you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Or how about you LEARN from the last decade?
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain't doing too hot. You look at Trump's victories and never ask 'why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?'. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they're perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it's important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you're absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption ('drain the swamp') and ran on making things better for the working class ('price of eggs'). Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was 'I'm with her' or 'Trump bad' or 'It's my turn'.
So, feel free sitting on your high horse saying 'oh, well if the voters weren't so dumb we would be at brunch' instead of focusing on the people whose entire job it was to inspire people to vote for them, and keep dividing the working class more and more. You're only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you're sucking off rn.
HA! Hahahaha! My dude, just sit here. They will be by. They usually ramp up around elections and the cause of Bernie not being in charge of all things is always DWS and the DNC. He actually won but they stole it by not letting people see how awesome he was. Yes, literally. Yes, a lot of them. Yes, every goddamned time.
Bullshit. 100% pure, uncut, arrogant “leftist” bullshit. No, I will not google it for you. PoliSci 101 is over, fascism is in place and it’s time to learn how difficult it is to get three progressives to agree on anything in actual, real-life, not-the-internet practice.
This fucked up “take” is the exact same since NADER and what have you got? A party? A name? A fucking t-shirt slogan ffs? No. Nothing.
Beyond worthless. Actively cancerous to actual progress. It’s painful because everyone goes through it and no one listens to the people with experience and the fascists vote in lock-step and we lose again.
Politics is stuck in a time loop.
Both can be true. The major US parties are both rotten to the core and as such the leadership of the democrats has much of the responsibility for this, but people not voting are still fascism enablers, albeit to a lesser degree than those voting for trump for non-fascism reasons.
Voting third party is one thing, it's the only way outside of revolution you're going to escape from the established two parties. Not voting only signals apathy and the only explicit statement is "I'm ok with whoever wins, including the raping racist hitler v2".
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn't vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn't vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote... were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can't? Well that makes sense, because we don't actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don't know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don't know WHAT they were thinking. So, I'd love to know why everyone seems so certain that it was the left who stopped voting entirely as opposed to the non-MAGA right or even the liberal center. And the reseaon everyone is CERTAIN it's the left if because that's been the reused talking point that's been dragged out every time there's been a lull in the insanity since Jan 20th. Almost like somebody doesn't want the subject to die. Almost like someone profits off of the left and the center fighting each other instead of fighting the 1%.
People who stopped voting entirely may be facism enablers, I'm not disagreeing. But, there's no actual, solid evidence to blame that shit on any one group in particular. And even despite that, it's absolutely INSANE that we're hyper focused on the imagined people we THINK didn't vote for the reasons we think they didn't vote, and yet IGNORE the people we KNOW voted for this and IGNORE the reasons they're telling us they voted for this.
Like tf? Thinking billionaires have been and are continuing to demonize any actual progressive candidate and are propagandizing broad swaths of the electoral is an inane conspircay theory when it's something we have seen evidence of time and time and time again, and in the same breath saying that people who voted for trump are lying about why they voted for trump based on 'just trust me bro' is absolutely ludicrous.
I never said it was the left lol, everything I said applies regardless of political leanings. Though in all likelihood there were at least some leftists that didn't.
Also the commenters that were saying as much on this extremely left leaning platform are probably the ones mainly adressed by OP.
Wouldn't it be fascinating if there was an entire field of study dedicated to questions just like that? Unfortunately, no such thing exists, so we all get to rely on our gut feelings and whatever information passed around the circlejerk that makes us feel self-satisfied about our preconceptions
If there's one thing that Lemmy has taught me, it's that people on the left aren't any smarter than those on the right. Just less vile.
I have seen numerous people on here say that Bernie actually won.
Oh goodness, I'm glad nothing like that would happen in the general election! If only the Dems had played fair, the GOP certainly would have!
Also, would you like to remind me what a smear campaign does? Does it alter the brainwaves of the hapless Moderate Voter(tm) to obeying their DNC masters or something?
... or does it appeal to their pre-existing ideas and prejudices to sway them towards a candidate?
No, that sounds too much like voters having agency, and not being mere conduits for the Will Of The Proletariat(tm). It must be the brainwave altering thing.
... okay?
Yeah, he won in the primary for NYC. Which is good. Great, in fact! But New York City is not all of America, and it's really quite worrying that so many people here think it is.
What does that say, then, if socialists are constantly losing to liberals in this environment?
If we're using success as a measure of intelligence or correctness, that would lead to some... very concerning conclusions that I would not buy into. But I'm also not the one connecting intelligence and electoral success.
Bruh, in the past few days alone, on this very comm, there have been numerous, highly upvoted memes and comments in which liberals are blamed for the current state of fascism in this country. I don't think "Antifascist unity, but only for anti-electoralists ^.^" is all that compelling.
And for the record, I do fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff. And I have done so vocally and repeatedly. But for some reason, many online leftists prefer a circlejerk to examining whether advocating against electoral participation may have helped the literal fucking fascist get elected by a single goddamn percentage point.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The fact that you fell for that shit - that people are just deeply 'economically anxious' or 'anti-corruption' goes to show how little you've spoken with conservative and swing voters in your lifetime.
Yeah, no one was running on a campaign of increasing the minimum wage, a national ban on price gouging, lowering the cost of living, increasing corporate taxes while reducing taxes on small businesses, legalizing marijuana, forgiving student loan debt, increasing child tax credits, and expanding public healthcare systems.
Imagine if someone did that? It'd be wild. They'd probably get incredible support, especially from leftists, and win in a landslide.
I mean, imagine if one of the major party candidates ran with that platform, and was still smeared as a neoliberal shill by self-proclaimed leftists who treated a Trump victory as a defeat for the dreaded shitlib menace? That would be absolutely ghoulish if people who claimed to be leftists were that dedicated to a Trump victory so they could continue to feel good and pure about being against The Man and The System. They'd have literal blood on their hands.
Good thing nothing of the sort happened, and certainly useful low-information idiots didn't pass that around, engaging in a level of coprophagic propaganda that would embarrass anyone with a hint of basic decency.
"When you don't think everyone is secretly a socialist at heart, you're sucking off the billionaires!"
I'm so sorry for not spending all of my time circlejerking with other leftists. I have the deep and abiding misfortune of actually living in the USA.
Lmao. You might live in the USA but your posting history tells me exactly what I need to know about how much you actually talk to IRL people. Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE. You don't actually speak to irl people. And yes, as someone living in a ruby red state, volunteering with mutual aid groups and political action groups in a ruby red state, yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately, along with liberals, leftists, and people who have showered since this election. Get off the computer every minute of every day, actually go out and touch grass and DO something material in your life, because you look like a rage-bait bot with control issues who hasn't spoken to another living human person before. Assuming, ofcourse, that you're not just a shill account meant to spread propaganda.
Yeah, I take like an hour out of my day before work to make one whole post in each of the ~10 communities I mod. Clearly I'm out of control.
The urge to reply back to people who haven't the first goddamn clue what they're talking about is more damning and time-consuming, but I make room for it, out of miserable compulsion to not let idiocy go unchallenged in the comment sections I frequent, if nothing else.
And you still believe that they're just anti-corruption and economically anxious, like some Very Serious Liberal Writer ready to write his sixth consecutive election column about having pancakes with them good holsum country folk?
That's disturbingly naive that you'd still fall for that. But considering what you've said in this comment thread, unsurprising.
Pug. Long time fan here but I'm curious if you've read "Shattered" yet? It is a well researched book about the inner machinations of the Hillary campaign and goes into depth as to what / how things went horribly wrong. I used to think like you, but the reality is it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B.
Tl;dr: even if Bernie had polled well among mainstream voters, it would have taken mountains to move the whale that is Hillary. She had ties to every corner of the DNC. It's not totally that she had to rig the primary, but it was a fools errand to run against someone as powerful and well connected as her.
I mean, my argument isn't that Hillary didn't have deep ties to the DNC, or that the DNC didn't want a coronation in 2016, but that the bias of the DNC and the influence of Hillary's campaign on the primary beyond that of a normal candidate was not significant enough to create the massive amount we lost by. If we'd lost by 1-2%, or even as high as 4-5%, maybe there'd be a stronger argument, but at 12%, without evidence of serious malfeasance beyond favoritism, it's pretty clear that... Bernie was just not the more popular candidate. While frustrating, the core problem was not Hillary being well-connected - it's the US still being an immensely right-wing country.
That Bernie polled even lower in 2020 against Biden, losing many of the areas he carried in 2016, also shows that a non-neglible proportion of the votes Bernie did get were from anti-Hillary votes, rather than pro-socialist sentiment.
Fair point. I do agree that the mainstream electorate skews skews further right than terminally ill online leftists. I just think running a robot over a populist against another populist was a severe miscalculation by the DNC, regardless of how well he polled. Hillary had the charisma of a wooden board and a lot of baggage. Polls are useful to getting a pulse of the people at a moment in time. Many polls showed Bernie outperforming Hillary against Trump. The context matters. But I hear you.
Yeah, the DNC is just a long string of unforced errors. I just don't want people to think that there's an easy solution that's been denied them, because... there isn't.
I can count on one finger the times that the person I voted for in a primary went on to win the general election.
And then he got brain damage and became a Republican.
Voting in the primaries doesn’t appear to do anything.
This is kind of a good analogy for ranked choice voting, to be honest.
Remember, no matter how beautiful, morally righteous, or gratifying your strategy is, you should really look at the results
Also
More like two options: one runs the bus off the cliff while the other sets it on fire. Sure, we'll live longer in the fire scenario. Maybe we can even put it out!
But I'm still looking for the fucking exit.
You're on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
FPTP is the real winner here. It's why we have Trump. Why can't we vote for proportional representatives or ranked choice?
The other four didn't vote because there wasn't a party against genocide.
Single issue voter is still committed to being uncommitted.
An issue easily adressed but stubbornly dismissed for no reason
Only simple according to the internet narratives.
The options are: a) convince Hamas to release the hostages b) convince Israel to abandon their people c) wait for the IDF to find where Hamas is hiding and free the hostages (or more likely in most cases, find the bodies of those abducted) while urging restraint.
Option a) is difficult because Hamas is a group of psychopaths. There have been some hostages released in exchange for ceasefires and release of Hamas fighters from prison, but then that just means more people the IDF will fight when Hamas stops releasing hostages. If this were a conflict out in an empty field then whatever, but since the battlefield is a densely populated urban environment, this means civilian casualties.
Option b) just isn't going to happen.
So option c) is the only one left while there's constant talks to negotiate a ceasefire. Current status on that: Israel has agreed to a ceasefire if Hamas releases the hostages and Hamas has said they "look favourably on a ceasefire" but they always say that.
Electoral puritanism like this is a big part of why we now have concentration camps in America.
Thanks for that.
Funny how Democrats never used to have to complain about Purity Tests back when they were doing things like attempting to pass universal healthcare. In fact I’d literally never even heard the phrase (in that context) before last year and suddenly it’s everywhere.
The camps already existed with Biden, Trump is just putting more money into them
Yeah the downvotes you're getting really illustrate the three monkeys approach of centrists. Outright denial not only of opinions, but objective facts. Trump immigration policy is just Biden's turned up a notch, but with a lot of performative cruelty thrown in. Biden's immigration policy is just Trump's turned down a notch, with less performative cruelty. Trump vice signals, Biden virtue signaled. But their actual policies on immigration are very very similar.
So what you're saying is it's not just Biden's turned up a notch, he's doing it differently and much, much worse. The idea that, because both of them are immigration policies that include deportation, they must be the same thing is infantile
One of them is in favor of deporting all of the Latinos, but really it's the same policy lmao
Biden ran concentration camps. I'm sorry to have to inform you of this.
I'm aware of this. Trump's are worse.
Your moral compass is broken.
Bullshit.
Found Blue MAGA.
JFC deporting people if their asylum claim fails isn't the same as what trump is doing. That you're trying to equate them is mind bogglingly bad. Anything to confuse the issue and say b b both sides same, huh. I recognize your name so I'm not going to reply further.
The puritanism is that both parties are fascist.
Both parties are equally bad, that's why we're letting 65 million Latinos get deported instead of not letting 65 million Latinos get deported. Less genocide is actually just as bad as more genocide
You are pretending Biden/Harris were promising less genocide, which is wishful thinking on your part. Biden/Harris let them do what they wanted to whatever degree they wanted, and pretended to fight back.
Nope. I feel like we're looking at this from two different perspectives. Comparing 2025 to 2024, there was always going to be more genocide. Comparing the two potential 2025s (the one in which Trump wins and the one in which Harris wins), one of them has more genocide than the other, and one of them has less genocide than the other.
Maybe if I put it this way it'll make more sense: a smaller increase in deaths is preferable to a larger increase in deaths. Of course, a reduction in deaths would be preferable to both, but that option wasn't available.
Where you and I will probably never agree is that you think Harris/Biden would have meant less genocide.
Biden did a bunch of lying about that, but you give him the benefit of the doubt and I cant. And Harris had a prominent bloodthirsty zionist as a husband (recent marriage) and a bloodthirsty zionist campaign manager. Thinking she'd break left after her actions and words to the contrary was never realistic. Emhoff explicitely said he'd spend his time in office fighting antisemitism, which he equates with any criticism at all of Israel.
https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-biden-administrations-false-history-of-ceasefire-negotiations/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/doug-emhoff-kamala-harris.html
When both Trump and Biden give the zionists full support and free reign, theres no real distinction to be had around more or less genocide. It just doesnt exist. Harris and Biden were there to soak up campaign donations and ignore their base.
...than trump. Less genocide than Trump. Who is presently committing a genocide against the Latino population in the US.
And those four are functionally equivalent to people who didn't vote because they're okay with either option
Genocide is much more like driving off a cliff than having ice cream or not voting.
It's kind of sad that I even have to say this.
I mean if we want a better analogy, Harris represented the "crash the bus into a building" party, and Trump represented the "crash the bus into a building and explode" party. 3 people are voting for building, 4 people are voting for building and explode, and 4 people are saying "I don't care whether we explode."
One of those 4 thinks they're making some kind of statement by saying "I don't want to crash at all, so I won't be voting." He is indistinguishable from the 3 that just don't care
Maybe stop with the dumb fucking analogies and talk about the real situation for a change. It's not too complex to talk about (and if it is to you, holy fuck, maybe shut up and do some reading first?) and you're fooling nobody with your deflections.
I have no problem talking about the real situation. One of the parties is in favor of less genocide, one of the parties is in favor of more genocide, and non voters don't care whether we get less or more genocide.
Of course it would be better for everyone we could have elected a third party, but the choice was between Harris (sells weapons to Israel) and Trump (sells more weapons to Israel and also starts a genocide here in America), and non voters didn't care which side won. In the absence of the option you want, you have to make the best available choice.
Less genocide, but not the stopping of genocide? Man, do I not feel sorry for gringos when they act like this is a moral choice.
How would you know, anyway? They refused to acknowledge there was a genocide in the first place while they sent a record amount of money and weapons. Oh wow, such harm reduction.
Analogies are useful, not just for understanding a difficult subject, but for seeing a familiar subject in a new perspective. When your audience is eschewing logic due to compartmentalized thinking, analogies can help break them free.
When your main issue isn't on the ballot, it doesn't matter in the election.
The other four didn't think this through because only one party had a subset of their coalition who opposed genocide, and also opposed 2 other genocides: the one Russia perpetrates against Ukraine, and climate change (leaving aside things like, you know, women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights... And not as a case-in-point the internal genocide of poor people when 50,000 Americans will now die from being dropped from Medicaid thanks to a bill that only
Republicansthe cliff-divers would have passed).Hey thanks for not helping. Wait, no. No thanks. You failed everyone and yourself, guaranteed extra double genocide and learned nothing.
There's a genocide on the bus too?
Libs will tell the craziest stories just to avoid reality.
Fully agree with Nina Turner. If you don't wanna do politics, you blindly leave major decisions over your life to others, who - as we can see world-wide - don't necessarily have your interest at heart. Democracy, human rights, freedom or any other such ideas require a populace to vigilantly fight for them and not let those with opposed agendas undermine them.
But that analogy afterwards is simply dishonest on many levels.
Firstly, if you are talking about "harm reduction" or the "lesser of two evils", ice cream is hardly a fair representation of the lesser evil.
Secondly this mixes in non-political people, who do not participate in the democratic process with moral objectors and the duped.
Thirdly: It diverts equal blame (literally in the response) to those groups and to the voters, who actually want the bigger evil or the powerful actors enacting it. This presupposes some moral value on active vs. passive behavior, which can be argued.
And lastly: Even if we find a fitting ice-cream substitute like throwing one of the passengers under the still moving bus, or - how another user suggested - braking before driving off the same cliff: The two who voted for that lesser evil also fight the four voters who are against evil harder, than they are fighting the ones who want the bigger evil. Why? Because they'd rather still drive off the cliff than not. And then they turn around and dishonestly shame the anti-driving-off the-cliff crowd for wanting to speed up instead. That is not a very good strategy.
Are they the same? No. But please keep your arguments honest, or you might get the exact opposite reaction from people, than you are hoping.
Even if you engage in politics you have such a small amount of power that it’s effectively the same as letting other people make decisions for you.
Republicans in Congress just made a bunch of decisions for me that I had no influence over despite having voted every time for the past quarter century.
Although I understand your point and would want to add that something like the Citizens United decision further diminishes power of the people without immense funds, I would like to point out, that participating in a democratic process doesn't merely mean drawing a cross onto a piece of paper every 2 or 4 years. Much more is possible and in fact necessary.
As an example and can be witnessed right now, there is a severe lack of organizing of pro democratic forces. Which is also the result of a decades-long campaign by the capital-interest-serving political establishment to delegitimize or outright destroy such movements and organizations, from worker's unions to independant media to the "Bernie Bros".
Make no mistake though. They did this, because they know, that this type of collective political actions bare real power. It is upon each one of us wanting to defend democracy, basic rights and the rule of law to do our part to take back that power. Voting is but a small part of that, if you don't have the people you need actually running, because they can't afford to and you cannot seriously pressure those elected like the donor-class does.
It felt the same way before Citizens United. I vote and write letters and organize and the government does what it wants.
I'm sorry you feel that way and I find myself having the same thoughts from time to time. I have to concede though, that the US is in fact the center of modern Neoliberalism and legal bribery.
Yet... You know who the lobbyists and donors don't bother talking to? Bernie Sanders (and Ron Paul when he was still in office). Why? Because they know that they have core principles. Then the question becomes: How do we organize (meaning financial resources, outreach, strategy, know-how, recruitment, analysis, policy creation, media and many more) to get more of these people into office? And how can we put pressure on elected officials to enact "our" policies?
Agenda 2025, or the decades long judicial take-over did not come from Trump, but from such organizations like the Heritage Foundation. Which of course are funded by billionaires like Peter Thiel. These people and organizations have huge advantages over the rest, that is clear. But they need more than just money to be able to put public pressure on elected officials, to the point where 25% of voters are ride-or-die with that program and a further 25% are at least ok with it or were duped.
And yes, I am well aware it is an uphill fight. But please: Don't let bad experiences doom you to inaction. Especially when this very moment, with the daily over-reach of the republican regime, there is real potential to galvanize an effective resistance.
Too late. I hate this country and the people in it too much to care anymore.
I’ve been doing the organize thing and the pressuring thing and nothing works and things are worse than they’ve ever been.
If you don’t have ranked choice voting you do not live in a democracy
Til that only Australians and the Irish live in democracy. It's used in other places, ofc, but on smaller scales.
Not to say I'm against it or anything, I'm all for it, but your statement is a bit exaggerated.
Many countries claim to be democracies but if the available choices are only x, y or z. The people are not truly expressing their will, 30% could like x, 30% could like y, they could all hate z but z gets elected because 40% like z.
That’s not democracy.
Ranked choice means it's easier for voters, but when it's not available voters are capable of understanding the scenario you describe and voting accordingly.
Many times I haven't voted for my preferred candidate and instead voted for the candidate most likely to defeat the candidate I couldn't stomach getting into power. Here in Canada we call it voting strategically and if you look at the polling data it definitely happened last election (and in many others in the past).
I'd like to have ranked choice, but it's insane to say it's not a democracy without it. But multiple rounds of voting (like France has) is better than ranked choice as it gives a clear choice to voters in the final round. But having multiple voting rounds is expensive and people might prefer to just vote once and have it done with, so ranked choice may be preferable for many people.
Dunno, the most recent example was Romania. In the first round, 40% voted for the far right cunt and all the others had 20% or less. In the second round where there were only 2 candidates left, Nicușor Dan won with 53% and the far right cunt got 46%. So.. Z doesn't always win.
Wow. Really? Preferential voting should absolutely be more common.
Was just as surprised as you are. And yeah, it really should be. Shame
It's not bad to have high standards, as long as they don't get in the way of making things better
Yes, you do. Just a shit one. I hope I don't have to explain how that it still a lot better than fascism.
It just puts you on the top of the slide towards fascism
So you'd let the bus drive off the cliff because non-vegan ice cream doesn't fulfill your standards for ice cream?
No, I'd rather vote for vegan ice cream first, then vote against driving off a cliff.
Unfortunately our current system doesn't allow for that, so obviously I vote against driving off a cliff, but it feels so stagnating.
You will be please to hear that we are currently driving off the cliff. No more stagnation, isn't this great?
I'm referring to / summarizing the Ratchet Effect.
Obviously movement for the sake of movement is not inherently good. But when our only allowed form of action is to vote and we see that voting has no or negative effect, it seems fruitless.
Because a slightly more realistic scenario is that the Dems vote to just throw some people off the cliff, and that's agreed between the two parties.
False analogy. The actual choice was had in 2024 was "drive of the cliff at 40 mph, or drive off a cliff at 38 mph."
And you'd choose 40?
The problem is you only look one election ahead. You're myopia is what made you drive off a cliff in the first place.
Even if you have ranked choice voting, you probably still do not live in a democracy.
I bet a lot of people living in Germany in the '30s said "I don't do politics" too. Oops.
Allowing the Democratic Party to keep fielding right-of-center neoliberals who've consistently and repeatedly made concessions to the far right over the last four decades without ever demanding anything back, and allowed them to shift the Overton Window way over to Nazi territory, is NOT harm reduction. If you hadn't been such cowards the last three elections, there could have been a credible opposition party by now, but no, you're just going to keep chickening out every single "most important election in history" (aka every election ever).
Who let Tim Pool in here
A world with half as many people in it would be so nice. Thanos had the right idea.
Its more like 9 people on a bus, 3 vote to drive off a cliff, 2 vote for a break to get ice ream and then continue driving towards the edge of the cliff after, 2 scream why the fuck are we continuing to drive towards the edge of the cliff, the other two believe things will just be the same regardless if they vote or not. Meanwhile the people who want other people to vote for a pitstop on the way to impending doom and death are complaining that the people with the most realistic assessment of the situation are being unreasonable, unrealistic and and/ or unwilling to compromise and if we are going to die anyway we might as well have some icecream (delay the inevitable and hope we can fix things before we get to the edge of the cliff but at this rate it looks like it’ll only get worse because one side turns the mechanism as far as they can get away with and the other ratchets back into a convenient position for the other side to turn the mechanism to their advantage again) this is the more accurate assessment and it’s because education standards were destroyed and the ego’s of people who are too gullible for their own good and don't understand the scope of the corporate apparatus/ system where the ultra rich all collude and work together because they have like interests and the people who don't want to understand this, or can’t because they are naive just keep telling us we need to continue to participate in a system that disenfranchises us not because its been temporarily broken and needs fixing through participation but instead because the entire purpose of the system is to disenfranchise us and the only solution is to implement democratic representation that addresses the economic issues being manipulated without our input or consent. Any system of democratic representation that aims to exclude economically democratic governance is nothing but a class dictatorship.
Being made aware I’m lashed to a bunch of psychotic apes is terrifying and makes me want to kill the rest of the people on the bus and take control myself.
People are the absolute worst.
Chuck Schumer: we beat them at their own game and got them to agree to only drive the buss halfway off the cliff as long as we all stand at the front.
clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap
A vote is not an endorsement, it's a move.
"I voted for the cliff because I know the ice cream place is down below it and I wanted to get there faster." - Have to assume this person exists, but I'm not sure who they would be in the analogy. 🤔
Edit: Oh, I just had to scroll down a few more comments to find them.
This is why the Democratic Party sucks so bad. The never offered people something to vote for. They didn't even offer something harmless - they only ever offered to drive off a cliff more slowly. When in power, they never did anything against the DHS, the MIC, ICE, the Patriot Act. They didn't even talk about fighting landlords, the bosses, the rich. The Dems even refused police reform, instead increasing budgets. The only thing the party elites ever fought fiercely is Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus.
The Democratic Party is just as much to blame for Trump as the GOP. Stop blaming progressives for this miserable one party state - start holding your politicians accountable.
What everyone forgets is that the actual voting already happened. The bus company, Cliff driving Committee, voted before the bus embarked. They voted for the bus driver to drive off the cliff to cut spending to maintenance and health insurance to the driver and bus. There only so much the riders can say at that point
But if we vote for the non-vegan ice cream place, we're telling the leadership that we're okay with non-vegan options and no progress will ever be made!
/s for the illiterate
Trying to reach the "I don't do politics" crowd with "harm reduction" doesn't really work as a strategy.
Like, they're already admitting that when something is an unappealing and controversial, they'd rather check out than engage. Going on to explain the gritty strategy for approaching unappealing and controversial politics is just adding more reasons onto the "I don't do politics" pile.
It's a crass comparison, but it would be like if someone said "I don't play MOBAs" and the response was to immediately launch into an explanation of League's current meta-strategy. Don't be surprised when they immediately check out of the conversation. (Yes I know games are frivolous and politics is life and death -- but the people who "don't do politics" don't see it that way)
More than that, nearly all of the "I don't do politics" people are almost certainly never going to see this image. We're in an online forum dedicated to talking about politics. The only people who see this are the people who already choose to spend their personal time on the subject. So ask yourself, is this image really about the people who are checked out of politics? Because, practically (regardless of intent) all this really seems to be is a thought-terminating cliche to throw at anyone who points out that running a "We're the lesser evil candidate!" doesn't actually engage or activate anyone who's already checked out!
And yet plenty of people here insist that they don't do bourgeois politics.
But bourgeois politics is sure as fuck going to do them.
The problem with this is that the choice isn't cliff or ice cream. The choice is the cliff in front of us or the cliff around the corner.
20 people voted to drive over the cliff. 30 people voted to fucking gun it and send that shit straight into the abyss. 1 person voted for ice cream but the cliff voters beat him to death. 50 people didn’t vote
Not really
im sure the illogical thinkers will start thinking logically any day now
The "drive off the cliff" party vs the "drive off the cliff, but ever so slightly slower and also we'll wave some rainbow flags I guess" party. I know who I'm voting for!
Yeah fuck that. We’re throwing the cliff people off the cliff. Y’all can keep playing these stupid games.
Any minute now.
If "harm" and "less harm" are the only two options, then the only question is how quickly you die. There's the argument that we have to do "harm reduction" in order to buy time to organize for something better, but we've been procrastinating for decades apparently. Since all of history informs us that humans act only when inaction is no longer tenable (and sometimes not even then), really the only material difference between "harm reduction" and accelerationism is, again, the timeline.
Yeah.... But also, Carlin was right saying this shit is all a stage. We've got groups of bullies picking on us, and I'd rather throw bricks than help them decide who to pick on next.
I just knew the comments were going to be us tearing each other apart.
I'm just thinking out loud here. What if Progressives that are registered as Democrats changed their registration to independent? Also, stop sending them your money. We could organize it to happen over one week. Then keep it that way for 30 days. See how much power we truly have. If we can show the Democratic party that they would never win another election without us, maybe they would be more likely to listen.
We have to be careful though, I know this President is running roughshod over the Constitution with the blessing of SCOTUS and Congress but they don't have enough votes or State legislatures to amend the Constitution. If they get that, then that truly is the end of this experiment.
Not necessary in actual democracies where you have 10+ different parties.
There, abstaining is just an other party. One with a powerful voice telling the politicians that if enough people not vote, it is a big sign that something is wrong with the system and things will need to change to prevent riots.
It is not the same as voting blank, which is also possible. Then your vote gets added to the most popular vote. In a way of saying that you are content with any.
Exactly! Having “ice cream” and “death” as the only options doesn’t exactly foster a great discourse..
here it's reversed. blank votes are counted separately, meaning that you want to participate but no option is good. abstaining means you don't care.
That's BS. Removing yourself just removes yourself, nothing more. 70% of the population not voting just means 16% get to decide - there's no redo.
After all, you not voting because you didn't like the options is indistinguishable from you not voting because you didn't care.
In order to protest you need to participate in the process. Even invalidating your ballot is a stronger sign than not voting.
I live in Switzerland where low voter turnout is common, yet the population prides itself for its direct democracy. This discussion comes up every election cycle and it's always the same. Nothing happens because of low turnout and nobody thinks twice about why.
Here, voting blank is the same as not voting, btw. It's the way to correctly Not Care in cantons that mandate voting.
Well there's also a different mindset behind voting, if you can directly weigh in on important issues every few months. It's not like in other countries where direct ballot measures are much more rare. But yes, I wished more people would try to participate in a responsible manner.
I feel like even a protest party would be a louder statement than abstaining, but yes, this is most applicable to ultra-fucked two-party FPTP systems.
A big sign that is ignored and not counted.
If abstaining would mean empty seats then it would matter. The way it is, it's just irrelevant.
Is voting for controlled opposition harm reduction?
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
i mean i've had some ice cream, i contest the validity of the last position
Reminds me of this really annoying "I don't do politics" advert that was airing on British TV two decades ago. Like, I'm surprised the ad didn't end with a punch to the face.
Pugjesus doesnt seem to understand that you can elect people with a D by their name who will vote with republicans on critical votes. But hey as long as the D team wins on election day, thats all that matters I guess, right Pug?
I do agree with people voting. But the disanalogy is that in the last one both parties wanted to drive off the cliff. Neither stood against genocide.
I love how everyone in this thread agreed to move forward and support the Dems
Replace ice cream with cocaine and that's more realistic
Only organic cocaine for me, thank you.
The people who don't vote don't care when it comes down to it. its like when people call Nazis Nazis as if offends them. Or when someone calls a gay person gay... It's just like... Oh okay.
You would eventually "drive off a cliff" with either party, as they will softlock you into never having better choices, and the overton window will keep moving to the right. The only possibility out is to vote third party.
Everyone's upset about the vegan ice cream voters not voting for regular ice cream.
No one is upset at the regular ice cream people for being unwilling to vote for a vegan ice cream place because their choice is default in their mind.
Both sides are holding each other hostage. One has a moral reason and the other just doesn't want to compromise.
And yet.
Can we blast the last point with a megaphone 24/7 in people's faces or is that too much to get the point across?
There are none so deaf as those who refuse to listen.
As Mark Twain once remarked, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."
Do you think people who are too stupid to vote for their own and their fellow citizens’ best interests are going to understand it in analogy form? Just try a straight forward “Hey, when you use a stapler on your own forehead, it actually hurts you, believe it or not, you fucking moron.”
We tried. Unfortunately, they're too stupid to understand that too.
I realized after I wrote that that that, itself, is an analogy. So, maybe just carry a stapler. :)
Is that bold in a title?
Yes.
That's cool, I didn't know you could do that. Does all markdown work or only a subsection?
The analogy is wrong right analogy would have been either drive of the cliff or push a kid bound to wheelchair off the cliff.
The problem here is having only two choices.
Where I'm from we have coalition governments. It's very rare for one party to have a majority. So they have to argue for months and come to some kind of agreement with other parties. The good thing is that everyone can vote for what they really want. There's not really any 'lost votes'. The bad thing is that the coalition forming process is messy and slow and the result is much watered down. But I'd much rather have this than a two party system.
If I had been a US citizen I'd have voted for Harris though.
Na, nine people are told the bus is bad. So they vote to drive it off the cliff.
Don't get me wrong, of course voting is important.
Its just that the busdriver is drunk, and the bus falls apart.
Even if all scream for ice cream we might not get there.
Its time to get of the bus and walk.
These kind of idiotic, condescending analogies are all that libs have to offer. That's literally why they lose.
Keep upvoting tho. Feel good about yourselves. That's the real win. \s
(edit: Bonus points for this devolving into carnist attacks on veganism.)
I'm sorry but this is an old tactic in my country. 2 major parties always fighting for power, and the one always ask to vote them because the other party will destroy the country.
And the blame goes to the no voters or the ice-cream voters or the voters that turn their back, not to the party itself or to their voters that did shit when they were in power for many years. Maybe its time to pay attention to what caused the problem and not to the result.
As for the USA, Trump is the outcome of the Democrats acting as Republicans for decades.
Edit: Last sentence is a bit oversimplification of the story, but Democrats had abandoned the working class and the low income people. They acted like moderate Republicans, especially in the economy.
The people who want to get ice cream are also helping a psychopath murder innocent civilians so it's a bit of a toss up
Meanwhile, the people who want ice cream:
I keep being told I'm a fascist for voting for the harm reduction by people on lemmy though.
Oh, now that Americans are suffering, foreigners will suffer less, right?
... right...?
Indeed, "word up." Although, the voting machines received upgrades and who knows what really occurred.
Another day, another Pug punching left to cover for ranking democrat mistakes. Do you ever get tired or do they reward you for your allegiance? Perhaps you get left nice little scooby snacks.
Posts like this are literally driving a wedge into the people who don't want the bus to fall off the cliff, and dividing them.
This has to be a psyop launched by cliff voters, right? They are probably laughing looking at y'all tearing into each other....
One one hand harm reduction is nice, but on the other I have seen exactly nothing from Western politics these past few years to convince me that any harm is being reduced. The principle of harm reduction requires serious, productive action (so not canvassing and voter drives, for the love of God stop doing voter drives) to be taken during the period when the harm is reduced to push democracy off its collision course with fascism. When progressives don't take that serious action—or worse, actively shut down said action—they're simply kicking the can down the road, turning harm "reduction" from a credible strategy to a farce. I don't disagree with the principle, but where's the action necessary for any of this to make sense? Because as far as I can see, harm reduction in America was the farce version.
For fuck's sake, have you not looked around to see what's happened these past six fucking months?
"Stop performing one of the core functions of harm reduction that attempts to reduce harm!"
...
Pointed out below. But I guess it's not fast enough for your tastes, so let's do nothing and usher in the fascists to power instead. After all, politics are like a magical pendulum, where one side winning means the other side must get an equivalent win eventually!
When the fuck are progressives shutting down serious action?
You're absolutely right. In the wise words of a political party canvassing for seemingly everything a good fucking third of the 'left' commenters here have come to adore, we're all going to die someday. So why not as soon as possible?
Critical support for harm acceleration! Fuck those minorities anyway.
"We've managed to make 'socialism' into an acceptable word in politics and almost got a democratic socialist into a major party's nomination twice in the past ten years, in a country which has been immensely hostile to any socialist ideas for at least 70 years, and in an intensified period of anti-government right-wing insanity since 1980."
"Clearly you haven't been making any progress, shitlib! Time to abandon all levers of power to the fascists."
I have, and I know that without the serious action I was talking about it was a question of whether Alligator Alcatraz would've been opened in 2025 or 2029, with maybe a small chance of 2033. There was nothing unique about 2025 that made it the ideal timing for a fascist takeover.
Well as long as all or most of your energy is going to harm reduction you'll only ever end up with fascism.
Oh I'm under no illusion that fascists winning would (or, well, will given that they've pretty much already won) bring about a socialist revolution or any of that stuff.
Remember Uncommited? Palestine protests? Calls for Biden to step down? I have seen all three get called Russian psy-ops by supposedly left-leaning people on Lemmy. You probably know better than me whether that's a representative sample of American politics, but holy hell for a time you couldn't say anything bad about Biden without getting showered with downvotes around here. This sort of cannibalism was one of the many forms of complicity that allowed the march to fascism to proceed unimpeded.
I mean, in this case we're more talking about whether it's worth it to pay through the nose for life support when you already know what you have is terminal.
That would be nice-ish progress in saner times, and a few decades of it and you might've had a shot at sane government (if the establishment didn't manage to tank the whole affair, anyway), but like what makes you think you ever had that kind of time? The clock was already ticking with Bush, really got going with Obama and Trump 1 pretty much sealed the deal. When I say fascism was inevitable I don't mean it was coming within decades; I mean America was going to be fascist by 2033. Much more direct action was needed to prevent fascism within that timeframe. So with that in mind,
No, it's not fast enough for the reality on the ground.
What? No. Accelerationism would be "we should vote for fascists/not vote at all," which is not at all what I'm saying here. My point is that the left's strategy needs to radically change if it wants to have a hope of stopping fascism. To repeat, I want fascism to be stopped here; my argument is that the way the left has been attempting to do so is woefully inadequate.
Cool, so, the thinking is to buy yourself enough time to convince the left to radically change?
No? "We haven't changed enough yet for my tastes, so this is all pointless"?
And that you see no point in buying more time, don't forget, calling it a 'farce' at first, and then, after conceding that there was significant progress, dismissing it as 'not fast enough' to be worth considering.
There's a good fucking chance that I'm a dead man walking. The projections for additional deaths caused directly by this administration are in the millions. Quite literally every fucking left-wing cause in this country has been set back immensely by this fascist victory, and fascists internationally significantly strengthened. And yet there are people here, people like you, who aren't stupid but seem quite content to bang a very stupid drum, insisting that preventing this would not have been all that big an issue - because we're all going to
diebecome fascist in the end anyway, so what does it matter if it's four years from now or today?I fucking take my meds every day not because I think I'll gain immortality if I keep doing it, I do it because it staves off death one more day at time. Despite the fact that it doesn't cure the underlying problem of chronic illness/mortality.
So yeah, I'm a little fucking pissed whenever this comes up.
I agree people should have voted kamala to prevent what's happening now...
But for progression now, nothing about shaming the voters disenfranchised by the Democrats is worthwhile.
The Democrats were never entitled to any votes, they shouldn't have been so conceited as to tank their own popularity with conceit in the interest of capital.
The ones who voted for trump are to blame in the immediate for sure, what's happening right now in the US is tragic. But to be so myopic as to pretend that's all that matters is foolish.
Here we go again. Not voting for the Dems was fine, because Dems aren't 'entitled' to anyone's vote. So glad people chose to punish the Dems at the expensive of the lives of millions of actual human beings. But surely, the Dems will learn not to act entitled after THIS defeat. I mean, it didn't work the last fifty fucking times, but THIS time, they'll learn their lesson, and all those people murdered by the fascist ghouls that abstainers let into power will at least have their deaths be for a worthy cause!
Yes, the Dems'll learn any day now... if only we let a few million more minorities get murdered, they'll surely learn...
It's not accelerationism. Accelerationism presumes that a good result will follow the bad one. This is more "Fascism is going to come, and it's not going to usher in a socialist revolution, so just let it come as quick as it wants to."
Jesus fucking Christ. Do you know nothing of the history of this fucking country?
Oh, what am I saying? History is terribly inconvenient.
Therefore, power should be handed over to the fascists as quick as possible. Great.
So your opposition to harm reduction is... what? The belief that getting fascism sooner is Good, Actually?
All three of those were championed primarily by progressives.
Golly gee, I wonder why people might be hostile towards beating the "BIDEN BAD" drum during the period of 2024 when he was the only non-fascist candidate with a serious chance of winning the 2024 election.
It must be because we're secretly shitlibs. It's that deeply engrained desire to not lose an election to a fascist that gives us away - don't we know that both sides are basically fascists anyway?
In any case, the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' has passed, so I get to have my healthcare stripped away and vomit blood on the floor until I bleed out, so thanks for your unrelenting support for anti-anti-fascism for being insufficiently pure! If you want, I'll send you a selfie once the black-flecked puke starts coming up, so you have a nice little souvenir to celebrate with.
Maybe you can find another country to asspat accelerationists in until the fascists win, and get a few more selfies of that sort. Then you'll REALLY be owning the libs!
... the sort of cannibalism of... trying to push the necessity of a united front against a literal and outright fascist who was projected to win nearly half the vote?
If that's cannibalism, I shudder to think what you consider attacking the anti-fascist coalition candidate as.
"You see, if we operate under the axiom that our fate is inevitable, our fate is inevitable."
Wow, I'm just blown away by the complexity of that analysis. I guess we're all going to die, though, so we might as well hand over all power to the fascists as soon as we can.
The fuck are you 'saving' that money for, anyway, if the end result is that you're going to die? Pure thrift? Want to be buried with it?
If you were alive in 1950, you'd be saying the American Auschwitz was going to open by 1960 or 1962 anyway, so harm reduction was pointless. We were on the inevitable path to fascism within a decade, and there was nothing that could be done about it so long as the SHITLIBS were still in power.
"It's not fast enough, so stop, give up, and die"
Again, that is literally not what I'm saying, and at this point you seem to be arguing with a strawman. I'm not anti-harm reduction; I simply believe that the efficacy of harm reduction is predicated on effective action that simply does not exist at present. What I'm calling for is for the left to shift gears to direct action to coerce the system into getting its shit in order. Also vote for the less shitty candidate, but that shouldn't be where you put all or even most of your energy, because losing that particular bet is a mathematical certainty.
See above.
Yes, there's a reason I called it cannibalism.
See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. Biden 2024 wasn't an outlier in an otherwise sane political climate; that shit was the new post-2016 normal. Any credible strategy needed to provide a path to victory through that new normal within a decade (more realistically five years, but eh) without letting fascists win in the meantime. So-called harm reduction focuses so much on the latter that it does nothing substantial to address the former.
Looking forward to it ;).
American Hitler wasn't winning elections in 1950 so... no?
Okay it's starting to feel like you're scanning my responses for keywords rather than actually reading what I'm saying.
Except your entire argument here is positing that harm reduction is worthless because it doesn't serve the long-term goals you see as necessary fast enough.
And reminding everyone that harm reduction under current circumstances is pointless, don't forget.
... losing elections is a mathematical certainty?
Because... progressives made campaigns, and largely, simultaneously, supported the Dem candidate...?
Okay? What the ever-loving fuck does that have to do with ensuring Biden in 2024 didn't lose, because his opponent was a literal fascist?
"He wasn't giving us a long-term strategy for victory, so fuck your anti-fascist coalition!"
This is the doomer equivalent of accelerationism.
"I wonder why these people are so worried about not dying of thirst today??? Don't they know that they haven't fixed the problems in water supply over the next decade???"
If only we worried less about dying of thirst today. Such short-term thinking!
Unsurprising. The lives of marginalized groups don't matter if they're insufficiently ideologically pure. I guess I was too interested in not dying because of a fuckwad fascist administration.
Oh, sorry, so you prefer 1896 or 1912 or 1968 or 1980 for your narrative of "America was going to fall forever to fascism in ten years, and there's nothing these silly 'harm reducers' can do about it"?
Your entire fucking point is predicated on the idea that fascism is inevitable because change wasn't happening fast enough, so harm reduction was functional worthless to pursue. I am absolutely reading what you're saying; the problem is you aren't following the logical conclusions of what you yourself are saying.
This isn't going anywhere, so I'll clarify my position one final time before I disengage.
Harm reduction alone was functionally worthless to pursue, yes. Harm reduction is fine, desirable even, but not at the expense of antagonistic action. Prioritizing harm reduction over the antagonistic action that's supposed to be facilitated by that harm reduction is putting the cart before the horse and self-defeating. By antagonistic action I'm mostly thinking of protests, civil disobedience, strikes and whatever Uncommitted was here, but for an easy example I'll use the early to mid-2024 calls for Biden to step down. Doubling down on hard reduction entailed shutting down calls for Biden to step down to not jeopardize the anti-fascist united front, but I believe that to have been a mistake. The play was to jump on and amplify these calls so that Biden would step down sooner and open the way for a real primary, because it's these sort of actions that give harm reduction meaning, otherwise it becomes simply kicking the can down the road. Harm reduction is necessary but not sufficient for fighting fascism, so it cannot happen at the expense of other necessary actions, such as coercing the Democrats into providing a viable unity platform. That's why I called it farcical (which, yeah, I still stand by that characterization); it's like filling a bowl with eggs and trying to make cake.
Another day of pretending that voters gaza concerns wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world to adress. But no not even a speaking spot at the democratic conversation. But please growel more, surely you are bound to be treated with the respect in the future.
How are we at a point in time where adults need this explained to them..
This is excellent thanks for sharing
Lol like "harm reduction" is going to save us.
Bad analogy anyway bc the effects are immediate anyway.
If we taxed everybody who didn't vote there be a lot more can you spend your money voter since there is an immediate consequence for not voting.
I'm going to engage in local organizing. I feel like that's much better and I'll be able to protect my community and my family
This is a bad analogy. Harris wasn’t fucking ice cream. A better analogy would be the trolley problem. People get killed no matter what choice you make.
But you know what? The solution to the trolley problem is to not play. I’m not to blame, the people who laid down the track, strapped down the people, and sent a train hurtling towards them are entirely responsible.
Edit: as others have commented - the real solution is to blow up the train before it hits anybody and go hunt down the sick bastard who set up the problem. (In other words - direct actions like sabotage and revolution).
not voting is a valid strategy but only when it's NOT apolitical. That's why many in power want you to either be A or B or apolitical not be neither A or B but still informed and capable.
If you want my vote then stop telling me leftists can't win. If the lesser of two evils is the best we can hope for then I'll vote for the cliff with rusted spikes at the bottom. You can attack me over that view but all that will buy you is a self righteous feeling as our bus plunges over the edge.
PS. I've reliably voted the lesser of two evils for as long as I can remember and the outcome is that it always gets worse. A slow swing towards a totalitarian society just makes people feel like everything is normal. Especially to younger people who have never seen a better life for average Americans and don't realize were sliding until its too late. Chuck Shumer isn't going to stop our slide but like the Trump BBB he may fight to change the name.
Look, I really appreciate the sentiment, but it's time to acknowledge that those non-voters are not "misinformed future allies" any more than the MAGAs are. They are either accelerationists or fundamentally broken logically, and which form their indecision takes makes no difference -they are enemies of progress all the same, and to the extent there is ANY hope for the future, it relies on building a path AROUND them, not WITH them.
Yeah, it's the height of cluelessness that Democrats act like anyone who isn't a Trump supporter somehow owes their vote to the Democratic Party. If the only thing your party has to offer is Not Being Republicans then why should anyone owe them anything.
Your moral purity in refusing to give the Dems an 'unowed' victory will be written on the tombstones of millions of people that the fascists are murdering. Thank you for your service in teaching those damn dirty Dems a lesson o7
You do realize this is exactly the kind of melodramatic over-the-top garbage that puts people off wanting to engage with politics in the first place, yeah?
"How dare you be such a jerk? Guess I have no choice but to make innocent people suffer over it. That'll show you!"
Incredible, it’s like a constant stream of disingenuous mischaracterisation. You’re proving my point far more than you’re dispelling it.
I mean, I'm over it. Do what you feel like. It's clear whatever the future is, this argument we're having now? Has no part in it. Vote or don't vote for whoever you want. Feel or don't feel guilt. I don't particularly care about the details of how you see it. The time when it might have mattered either way? Is over. Sure, maybe pre-election it was like trying to convince you not to kill the hostage - but the hostage is dead now. Not arguing that battle anymore. It's irrelevant. You do whatever it is you like, but I'm never, ever, ever going to see the action in any other way, and at this point there's absolutely ZERO point in discussing otherwise. It's all academic. The trolley problem stops being a moral quandry when everyone is dead already. If you feel good? Great! You get my unironic and genuine thumbs up. Live your best life, my friend.
I’m not entirely following the thread here because it feels like I’m simultaneously being told that it’s already Game Over but also that only the Democrats can save us.
They’ve shown very clearly the last five years that they have neither the ability nor the interest to do that. If anyone’s going to save the country, it’s not going to be them.
Sorry, I understand my death and the deaths of millions of other people are too 'melodramatic' for the tastes of middle-class suburbanites for whom politics is a species of sport.
Yeah keep ranting and accusing people of mass murder for not voting for your guy, that’ll win us over
If only the Dem circus was more entertaining, then you could've been convinced to vote against the slaughter of disadvantaged groups by literal fascists. But it wasn't entertaining enough, so the lives of marginalized groups was a price you were willing to pay to give the Dems a 'thumbs-down'.
At least some of them need to be peeled off, however, considering the raw numbers. If there are no gains at all in votes for the anti-fascist candidate, that just means the fascists would continue winning, indefinitely.
... assuming, of course, elections matter going forward.
There's a third, less pleasant option that you're avoiding. I understand why - I don't relish it. But the ballot box has failed. Even if it hasn't COMPLETELY yet, we are not even 5 months into this term, and look where we are. Harping on getting non-voters to vote is the 2025 equivalent of the reactionary generals running cavalry charges across no-man's land in WW1. It is fighting the last war. But that war is lost.
Not avoiding. The cartridge box may end up as necessary. But regardless of whether fascism ends like Franco (by luck), like Pinochet (by ballot), like Portugal (by mass resistance), or like Italy (by the bullet), the ballot is both a useful addition (insofar as it can reduce the legitimacy of the government) and a necessary tool for the postwar society. I don't want to endure a fascist government now because people were too stupid to vote, so I can say that I definitely don't want to get rid of these fascist fucks only for it to happen the same way again.
If we let the principle of "Not voting against fascism is okay if you feel really strongly about teaching the shitlibs a lesson!" endure, we will be seeing it make additional visits, along with the fascist ghouls it benefits.
Also, I noted in the title that I was speaking to an international audience, and not just... here, in the US.
Oh, I'm not saying it's okay. I would never say it's okay. I AM saying that they're a stubborn distraction, and engaging with them is a waste of time. It took us a good long time for people to finally realize that the MAGAs and Republicans were unreachable, and by then, how many millions of collective man-hours were wasted? The stakes in 2024 could NOT have been clearer, and these non-voters STILL rejected the logic. We don't have the time or energy to waste now pursuing THEM either. Now is the time to engage in asymmetric warfare of various kinds, including not only protests, but ensuring continued access to "subversive" information despite the tightening noose of control by setting up reliable hosting for it outside of the US government's control, and otherwise generally trying to preserve what we can in the face of what's going to become an ever worsening environment. We simply don't have the time to waste on these people.
Interesting... but the ice cream is supporting genocide. Some would rather die than vote for that. And I guess it could be argued that at least the people dieing by going over the cliff had a chance to vote. The ones dieing from genocide didn't.
Nine people get on a bus, but it is decided that only votes cast from the 3 people sitting at the front of the bus will get to decide the direction.
Why shouldn't people trapped at the back of the bus with no sway over the vote express their opposition to the system itself?
I really don't understand the issue people have with individuals who are in safe red or blue states voting in protest
safe is not safe… in australia this most recent election we had a lot of “safe” conservative seats switch (🥳)
Because if all the individuals who think they're in safe zones actually got out and voted seriously instead of protest voting or abstaining, THERE WOULD NOT BE ANY SAFE RED AREAS.
Don't be so sure.
Key sentence in that article: "The findings suggest that Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism once again turned politics-as-usual upside down"
As in: people don't fucking want status quo.
Democrats: if we just status quo harder we'll attract the unicorn moderates and win!
/Wrist
For that to actually for real happen, there would have to be a campaign and a candidate to convince enough people to do that. "We're the harm reduction option" clearly isn't that campaign.
It's less problematic, but still not great. Elections maintain legitimacy on the perception of democracy - the more the democratic result is at variance with the results of the system, the greater the 'winning' candidate is undermined. A clear vote against the fascist discourages cooperation from various fence-sitting ghouls who, nonetheless, retain significant power to hinder the incoming administration. A significant enough disconnect between the democratic result and the result of the system can, and historically has in other countries, led to mass unrest and the overthrow of 'illegitimate' victors, though in the US the difference between winner and loser in this area has never been above statistical noise.
By contrast, a victory of the plurality of the vote is seen as legitimizing, encouraging careerist middle-of-the-road ghouls, both politicians and bureaucrats, to cooperate with and enable the regime to a greater degree.
Put less verbosely:
It's best to deny fascists victory. However, if the circumstances (of the nation or your vote specifically) do not allow for that, it's best to deny fascists the perception of a democratic mandate.
Protest voting in a safe state is better than non-voting, but it still has a negative effect in the case of a fascist victory.
Yes, it's exactly like this dumb, unnecessary analogy! Just that they didn't tell you the ice cream parlor is at the bottom of the cliff anyway.
Calling it harm reduction is thinly veiled 'both sides same" nonsense / "n n not enough". Dems deliver when they get a majority in all 3 houses. Want more? Then give them more majorities.
*I think one point of confusion is I see the term "harm reduction" originating from the "both sides same" people. They use it to say "it's only harm reduction, it's still harm, therefore I won't vote for it". Or "Dems only reduce harm, not help, therefore I won't vote for them". Don't fall for their trick, and don't let them fall into that trap of what's basically both sides same.
Harm reduction is highlighting that both sides are not the same. Fuck's sake.
It's basically saying one side harms, the other side harms less. Aka both sides harm. Aka both sides same. I see it as "both sides same" lite.
People got called out on "both sides same" so they switched the term to "harm reduction" to slip in the notion that both sides harm. I already see it in this thread.
You don't understand the intended message of this post. The people abstaining from voting because the ice cream is not vegan ARE the "both sides are the same, none will bring real change, that's why I won't vote/vote 3rd party" people that ultimately help steer the bus off the cliff. "Harm reduction" as used in this post is an argument for voting for the better of two realistic outcomes, even if that outcome doesn't meet your purity standards. The point being that one option (bus driving off the cliff) is much much worse than the other.
Letting them think/use the term "harm reduction" lets them mentally put in the category of harm. I'm saying you can't let them mentally put it into the category of harm or less harm or harm reduction, because they still see it as harm and thus won't vote for it.
I understand the intended message. I'm saying it doesn't work because to them it's still harm.
(*I think this is flipped around. I see the term "harm reduction" originating from the "both sides same" people. They use it to say "it's only harm reduction, it's still harm, therefore I won't vote for it". Or "Dems only reduce harm, not help, therefore I won't vote for them". Don't let them fall into that trap of what's basically both sides same.)
I think the main target audience here are people who already think that both sides do harm. I think what is being told here is that "even if we were to accept that both sides do harm, then the other side does it magnitudes more than the other one."
The target audience is people who will upvote any shitty meme that affirms their shitty politics.
Couple thoughts on that 1) Don't play into their notion that both sides harm/both sides the same. That's what they want. 2) We need to show them dems actually deliver. That's not harm reduction, that delivering. Then the conversation turns to how to get more.
I'm realizing lots of people have binary thinking. It's either harm or help. So the idea of harm reduction allows them to mentally put it in the same camp as harm. And once it's in the same camp, then they think it's all the same, and then they think there's no point in it.
If a person is anti-dem, there's no way you'll convert them with logical arguments. Or with any arguments at all. But you can get them to vote anti-Trump.
Different strategies for different situations. And, from a European viewpoint, it sounds ridiculous that Dems somehow "deliver". From my perspective they are a massively lesser evil. But, in USA I would definitely vote for them just to vote against fascism. They might be stupid, but they are not malevolent. Trump is. (And stupid as well.)
You wouldn't be able to convince me to like a party as far right to as the Democratic party. I wouldn't like even the European right-wing parties, and they are – even in places such as Poland – to the left of anything USA has to offer. And if you tried spending your effort into making me actually think I might want more of what Democrats can offer, you'd be wasting your effort. I could vote such a party for what they offer less, but definitely not for what they offer more!
I'm going to post this first; I think one point of confusion is that I see the term "harm reduction" originating from the "both sides same" people. They use it to say "it's only harm reduction, it's still harm, therefore I won't vote for it". Or "Dems only reduce harm, not help, therefore I won't vote for them". Don't let them fall into that trap of what's basically both sides same.
That's part of the problem with trying to argue "harm reduction". You'll never convince them trying to argue "harm reduction". It plays right into what they want: to portray Dems as harm, just harm lite. That's what they want, for you to call it harm reduction, which is harm lite, which is on the same side as harm, which they won't vote for.
For the rest of this message, you've fallen for their trick. I started to elaborate but I'm going to cut it off there.
I don't think I've fallen for their trick, because this is the first time I'm even observing a conversation on this topic. It hasn't traditionally been a very relevant subject on this side of the pond.
Holy fucking shit
Do you not see it already on this thread? I already saw "more like the ice cream does not exist" and "more like one side wants to drive off, the other wants to drive really close so they can decide to drive off later."
Yes, but they're explicitly in opposition to harm reduction as illustrated in the meme.
And that's the problem. Letting them use the term "harm reduction" lets them categorize it as "harm", therefore they won't vote for it. Because they see it as harm. Because they see it as all on the same side of harm (both sides harm/both sides same). There's longer explanations in my other replies.
Convince them that Dems help.
Okay, but there are three problems with that approach:
That is even more starkly against their worldview than "Dems do less harm", which, as responses in this fucking thread show, they are already reluctant to accept even outside of the context of harm reduction.
That 'Dems help' has to necessarily point towards specific issues of policy, and policy tends to be much more contentious as to whether any given policy is actually helpful in the long run or just less-bad than the alternative.
The fucking Dems themselves.