I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-voting sentiment going around. Can’t believe I have to say this, but you need to vote. Not only is there more to the election than just the president. (State policy, Senate, house), but not voting is not an act of protest. C’mon guys
And don’t act like voting is a blood oath. You’re not pledging undying loyalty to a candidate - you’re saying you’d prefer them over the other plausible options. Nobody gives a shit if they’re your special favorite. You think we love these people? No. They’re just the best we could do, arguing with thousands of other assholes.
If that’s “the lesser evil,” sure, why the fuck would you want more evil? It’s not like staying home means nobody gets to be president.
Even Geralt of Rivia eventually had to admit the the path of ‘choosing none of the evils’ Just Does Not Work.
Yeah, a moral dilemma doesn’t just go away if you ignore it. An outcome will happen. You are invited to influence it. Have an opinion, dammit.
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And electing Trump would be different, somehow. The asshole who supported Israel even harder.
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About Trumps (or more that of his advisers) connection to Israel
“According to a LifeWay poll conducted in 2017, 80 per cent of evangelical Christians view the creation of Israel in 1948 as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy.”
“The tenet of Christian Zionism is that God’s promise of the Holy Land to the Jews is eternal. It’s not just something in antiquity,” Ms Oldmixon said. "When we talk about the Holy Land, God’s promise of the Holy Land, we’re talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. It’s viewed as a historical and biblical capital.
Beyond the rebuilding of the temple, Israel is also important to evangelical eschatology because they believe it will be home to the final battle of good against evil in which God obliterates his enemies and ushers in the millennial reign of Christ."
Do you think there’ll be any considerations for the plight of the palestinians left if those absolutely bonkers sect of christo fascists will get their 1000 year reign?
Biden at least adressed his concerns about Netanyahu directly within an interview recently. That would never happen under Trump. So they’re far from being equally horrible.
bOtH SiDeS
If you don’t vote for biden then you too, are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians under Trump. You are personally complicit in the doubling or tripling of deaths, doubled or tripled export of weapons, and the outspoken sentiment of “kill them all” that Trump (your vote) actually expressed.
But good job trying to be a right wing fascist troll and guilting people into not voting so Trump wins.
It is exactly the same as the “personal carbon footprint” BS that corporations pushed to get the attention off the fact that 100 companies that individuals have no control of create over 70% of world emissions. Guilt people into accepting even worse outcomes and conditions by blaming them for things they literally cannot control.
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Ah, so then I assume you are posting this from a government building or prison after being the head of an armed resistance? No?
Oh you are just a basement-dweller who shitposts online to feel morally superior while enjoying the luxury that you hate so much? Imagine that, a hypocrite.
Are you aware that you, personally, are spreading white supremacist ideals and doing absolutely nothing about it besides trashing the others in the working class to feel better about yourself?
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“if you falsely testify that a criminal A didn’t commit the charges against them, you’re contributing to the acquittal of his partner B”
I mean it’s true when you think about it, but at the same time you actually don’t contribute to less evil being there in the world because you’ve breached your oath. Lesser evilism in a nutshell.
And I don’t think I should have to remind y’all that while neither candidate has a good outlook on Palestine… at least one won’t end democracy in the US.
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I wasn’t telling people not to vote. I’m voting
Dunno, looks like there’s more than 2 candidates to me
No there really isn’t, not the way US politics work.
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Create a pledge to vote for a leftist candidate. If it surpasses ~85 million signatures, everyone who signed it will vote for the leftist candidate. Otherwise, they will all vote for Biden, since a minimum of 85 million votes are required to guarantee an election win.
I’d sign that shit, and I bet just about every leftist around here would, too. There’s literally no downside.
It is immensely difficult to get 85 people to agree to do something—never mind 85 million—but still not impossible. You almost definitely won’t be able to get 85 million signatures, but you’re more than welcome to try. If you don’t succeed, however, I encourage you to consider the realm of possibility when filling out your ballot. Voting for a third-party candidate and voting for Mickey Mouse—or a dead guy, or Vermin Supreme, or yourself—are equally irrelevant if the third-party candidate does not stand a chance of winning.
Browbeating people into voting is not helpful.
“The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.
With either of those parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class under the saddle.
Under the administration of both these parties the means of production are private property, production is carried forward for capitalist profit purely, markets are glutted and industry paralyzed, workingmen become tramps and criminals while injunctions, soldiers and riot guns are brought into action to preserve ‘law and order’ in the chaotic carnival of capitalistic anarchy.
Deny it as may the cunning capitalists who are clear-sighted enough to perceive it, or ignore it as may the torpid workers who are too blind and unthinking to see it, the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and as the toiling millions come to see and understand it and rally to the political standard of their class, they will drive all capitalist parties
of whatever name into the same party, and the class struggle will then be so clearly revealed that the hosts of labor will find their true place in the conflict and strike the united and decisive blow that will destroy slavery and achieve their full and final emancipation.” - Eugene V. Debs
I stand with Palestine, and I’ll be voting in the US. Yes, I’m voting for Biden as the lesser of two evils, but I’m also voting for a whole lot of other really good people who are going up against some truly evil people. I’ve got people attacking my schools and libraries at the local level. Not voting to spite Biden will hurt my town a whole lot more than it would hurt Biden.
That’s what I don’t understand from the don’t vote crowd.
Okay, nobody left leaning voted. Now what?
I’d argue it’s not ultra-leftism if both options are reactionary. On the contrary, when going through such a turbulent period, to call yourself a socialist/Marxist and yet tail any anti-worker Democratic crisis cabinet is to compromise yourself just like the Mensheviks did for 8 months in 1917 when they happily took their warm seats and then didn’t do shit to improve the desperate position of the Russian workers and denounce the Russian imperialism.
So what to do instead of voting? Join the revolutionary communists to end the endless cycle of disappointment and picking lesser evil in the system that gives no real agency to 99% of the society.
While I agree with communism in theory, some of the language on the page regarding revolution is problematic IMO and is not going to gain the party any favors.
Also some of the stuff they have listed on the site is pretty hilarious:
The German Revolutions in 1918 and 1923, and the British General Strike in 1926, show us that even in the economic powerhouses of capitalism, the contradictions of capitalism cannot be fundamentally overcome. In fact, in 1968, the largest revolutionary general strike in history shook France. This was a country that had been lauded for its high living standards, and it occurred during a period of economic upswing!
Literally every example they list of “the contradictions of capitalism cannot be fundamentally overcome” is an example of a country that is still capitalist lol. (Maybe because the real life examples of communism objectively haven’t turned out that great.) So they’ve continued to overcome them. And sure you can argue a country like France has a lot of socialist programs and legislation but it’s certainly still a capitalist country.
Because to resolve them a revolutionary situation is necessary first, and then some class leadership ready to lead it towards victory. Instead the impasse or temporary fixes for social peace will just continue into years of unresolved tensions erupting every once in a while but not achieving much. I.e. when
(1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes,” a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time,” but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action.
lol if you want to defend your community, join SRA instead of relying on a state that will not back down when tried, just like the French bourgeoisie used an enemy army to suppress an uprising by the French workers 150 years ago.
Lol, I do far more for my community than joining some neutered gun club, but thank you for your concern.
yet the black panthers actually taught us the value and the power of the oppressed being able to defend themselves. imagine what if they were still around for the BLM movement if it wasn’t for cointelpro.
its funny(?) how i only see posts criticising ppl for not voting/voting third options but i dont currently see anyone actually advocating for doing that
Might depend on how you sort or what instances you have blocked. I’ve seen a few personally, although not in blahaj.zone as far as I can remember.
Not vote squad was in this very apartment😞
It depends on defederation and users banned from this instance (lemmy.blahaj.zone), instance blocks don’t have any affect on user visibility, just communities and posts to those communities.
There are multiple people advocating for it in this thread…
I stand with Israeli and Palestinian civilians, all of whom are victims of Hamas and the Netanyahu regime.
if voting changed shit it would have been made illegal. don’t legitimize slavery by acts of expressing gratitude for being able to pick your masters.
…slavery???
stagnant wages, no real influence on the politics because the Overton’s window is so narrow and all major parties filled with out of touch millionaires and also just because the political system does not really benefit a common person in a meaningful way, the cost of living and debt crisis, needing to join the military for basic public services, creeping corporate censorship and oligopolization creating a generation of dependent, depressed people with growing self-censorship instinct?
Ok but none of this is slavery. I wouldn’t even call it indentured servitude. There’s a million miles between things sucking and being literally enslaved
Yeah I mean police brutality exists and although a peaceful revolution would be preferable to adventurist bloodshed, we must reckon with the high odds of the powers that be not giving up their power to “the mob” peacefully, this bears no comparison to the rampant abuse of the rural south before the Second American Revolution. But still for real emancipation I believe a third revolution is needed, first the colonial rule, then chattel slavery and now the oligarchic, imperialist capitalism need to go. The continued existence of the previous two was an impendance to the proper development of the United States (the latter two also a humanitarian tragedy, first directly, the latter indirectly*) while nowadays it is also and probably even more importantly, not just anymore due to the climate crisis but also due to hawkish foreign policies being on the rise – a threat to the continued existence of humanity.
* I think I get your point. We used to have that buffer called the middle class that for decades ensured some relative social peace and fostered some faith in the American dream because some people were able to advance socioeconomically. But we are the first generation to actually have a worse standard of living than our parents, so all of that is crumbling. I used to be a software developer but the absolute shitshow that has been the 4-month long failed job hunt in the current state of the market forced me to become a food delivery driver. It all feels so disempowering when you feel your efforts amount to nothing. And I believe it’s not just me. Lots of young people have been scammed into wasting their time and money pursuing degrees that produced no ROI for them. I now really think I should’ve trained to become an electrician or other deficient, decently paying blue-collar vocation but now if I don’t find at least a support/admin job in IT soon it will be another couple years of debt and uncertainty and feeling easily replaceable, cheated out of future after being promised an irrationally exaggerated market value.
But I feel like again, I’m not alone in this sentiment and soon we’ll see another wave of people training for highly demanded blue collar jobs, the market will saturate and some people will again end up feeling duped into another Ponzi scheme with their livelihoods. Because capitalism is a permanent crisis of overproduction, chaos and speculation, a dog eat dog world
inb4 Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”
I don’t really care about getting rich. I actually care about my craft and believe everyone should be able to do what they are passionate about without the fear of hunger, not receiving healthcare or homelessness. Most commercial software development is just as wasteful as marketing anyway.
Most brain-dead take right here
They are, especially in the south. Or did you sleep in on 1/6? Express your democratic right, or loose it.
in this day and age, there is no progressive wing of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary communists fight for a workers’ government and do not give any support to any capitalist party or politician. (…) However, mass dissatisfaction with the Democrats does not mean a majority of Americans are right-wing reactionaries. On the contrary, most people merely want stability, good jobs and wages, and a safe and healthy place to raise a family. But this simply isn’t possible for everyone under capitalism. The exploitation of wage-labor by capital and the relentless drive for profits precludes this. As an arch-capitalist himself, Trump can’t square the circle either, and he is merely filling the political vacuum in a temporary and distorted way. If reelected, those workers attracted by his poisonous bravado will eventually realize that no American president can magically wave their problems away.
https://socialistrevolution.org/election-2024-why-genocide-joe-and-trumps-system-has-to-go/
Evil is evil and lesser evilism is a disgusting idea.
And when it comes to Trump, just as Hegel put it, historical necessity is often expressed through accident. Donald Trump is a giant, catastrophic accident for the capitalist class.
Russian spies. Nice try.
Also I hope the Russian government is overthrown by it’s people and that the right to the self determination of the myriad of ethnic groups of Russia is actually honored instead of them being used as a cannon fodder to oppress another nation.
I live in Russia. First, that won’t happen soon, it’s a bad situation with apathy, fragmentation and decay. Second, that myriad of ethnic groups is by geographic distribution mostly unable to secede as states with clearly defined borders. Third, where they can (say, North Caucasus), they depend on central financing to not be terribly poor (and they are still very poor).
isn’t Tuva an exception in this case due to it’s isolation? Also a question of leadership, how relevant was Boris Kagarlitsky, actually?
Not of the third point.
Also a question of leadership, how relevant was Boris Kagarlitsky, actually?
So relevant that I’ve heard about him a few times, but never paid attention.
but election rigging in post-Soviet Russia was actually started by the CIA to not let the communists get back to power in 1996 elections. Which is actually yet another proof that what is needed in any country really is a revolution and actual thorough democratization of every aspect of social and economic life possible, instead of neo-aristocratic electoralism. And that to that goal, a party able to lead a way towards it is needed (instead of trying to work within those that actually just prop up the system and will actively fight back when that is challenged (look up SJ Voralberg case in Austria as the most recent example, or even more glaringly, CPRF purging anti-war faction or the Blairite hostile takeover in Labour a couple years ago)), which was sadly lacking in Russia in the 90s as well as today.
what is needed in any country really is a revolution and actual thorough democratization of every aspect of social and economic life possible
Good luck accomplishing any of that while under a dictatorship :)
the iranians revolted… into another dictatorship…
and the french revolution ended swell! wait
what about the cuban revolution? oh god damn it
lol i’m just kidding, i can think of a few. the italian civil war and the libyan civil war, and technically the russian revolution and german revolution but i guess it helps when the government you’re fighting against is getting brutally beaten in a war against other countries. but i can’t say all of those ended in an extremely democratic system
Incredible how the majority of their comments come at hrs when most Americans are in bed…
Not sure how to tell you this, but the Right has spent years and millions of dollars trying to make voting illegal for its opponents.
So… I guess it does change shit, by your definition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/us/politics/trump-voter-rolls.html
The people of USA succesfully beat two tyrannical systems in 18th and 19th century so why wouldn’t they now if the current state of things deteriorates in that direction. And so did the Russians who have lived under the tsarist tyranny. Or the people oppressed by the colonial regimes who have not attained their independence as a gesture of good will. Or Cubans overthrowing Batista. Or Chileans ousting Pinochet. Or South Africans overthrowing the apartheid.
All of that required militancy. Polite pleas are not a language tyrants understand. But, by extension, blind faith in electoralism has failed when the KPD failed to respond with proper militancy to the Reichstag fire decree in 1933. The militancy must be proactive. One should not be deluded that a “progressive” government will welcome with open arms any advanced, massive expression of social anger any more than a reactionary one would. See France where it is basic street knowledge to wear at least a solid fucking helmet with plexiglass visor to any protest if you don’t want to say, lose an eye under the oh-so-benevolvent rule of the liberal Macron.
Aaron Bushnell had a gun pointed at him as he died.
Yes, that’s all true. But that’s a good argument for “You shouldn’t only vote,” not “You shouldn’t vote.” See the difference?
If the only action we take is voting, then the tyrants who aren’t constrained by law will win. If the only action we take is direct action, then the tyrants win as soon as they outgun us. If we use voting to advance things in civil society inside the lines and direct action to keep the tyrants playing inside the lines, we win.
Reactionaries, like real fucking fascist shock troops are actually a minority compared to interwar period. Most Trump voters are just tired, frustrated and desperate, not actually fanatically rallying behind him. His bravado may resonate with some social anger but it will probably run out of steam as soon as people find out he offers no real solutions. On the contrary, Nazis and fascists were able to rally a significant number of strata of the population. So let’s compare the relevance and position of the groups upon which the Italian, Spanish and German fascists based themselves:
- Demobilized soldiers and mercenaries like the Moroccans in Spain and Freikorps
Nowadays many people join the military in the US just to get free college and healthcare etc. And yet they still fall short of their recruitment targets. See the recent protests in solidarity with Aaron Bushnell. Also after WW I most armies were infantry based and there was initially mass unemployment amongst the veterans.
- Medium to large-scale landowners/peasants
1-3% of the society. And if anything, their militancy at least makes the ruling class tremble, lest it was adopted by workers.
- Clergy
Even in the US religion is losing relevance
- Students
Massively shifted to the left almost everywhere
- Small business owners
They are still getting screwed every once in a while by the ruthless law of the accumulation of capital but still mostly they might be partly correct but still go into some major distortions in their understanding of things. Petty bourgeoisie is not a revolutionary class. But at the same time, they no longer compete with other small business owners of other (Jewish) ethnicity but actually rely heavily on unskilled migrant labor
- Organized criminals
Crime has mostly economic causes. For massive spike in crime that could serve as the manpower pool for the fascist militias, the system would actually need to be built on a prejudice against white males, not just in /pol/cel projections grounded in not seeing shit primarily through economic lenses.
So even if the unavoidable aggravation of capitalism’s agony happens sooner:
- to reject the possibility of emerging from it victorious is actually a defeatist internalization of downplaying the potential of own class, just what the porky wants
- to tail the liberals will not serve in any way to convince the less politically educated people that we are any alternative…
- …and if anything, ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy for their besieged fortress myth about some leftist conspiracy
- most dictators came to power not by election, but by a coup or manipulation
- even if we think about the most notable example when they did, that is in Germany in the 30s, it’s all actually vastly different. While KPD’s sectarianism towards SPD and the refusal to take advantage of several revolutionary situations were what led to it not being able to successfully withstand Hitler, there are some key differences here:
Democrats are as much of a millionaire club as Republicans. SPD was a massive workers’ organization. CPUSA actually endorses Biden because that’s what most IMCWP parties not in power do: legitimize the status quo and maintain a watered-down programme. No diff here with CPRF in Russia. And such sort of passivity and conservatism is what permeated the leadership of KPD under Thälmann and it is the reason why a revolutionary party aspiring to stand as an independent force that won’t ever let itself be co-opted into the system is needed.
I get that feeling of FOMO. But ask yourself, which do you think matters more against millions of other voters whom you’ll never talk to:
a) voting
b) organizing to defend yourself against the Trump regime, by force if necessary where a loud and consequent group can easily sway thousands if not millions under the right conditions. That vs trying to basically convince people why one shade of the same color is better than the other which serves mostly narrowing their worldview and proving that you are not willing to stand up for your ideas.
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If you are against both dominants in a two-party system, vote for the party more likely to win, so that the margin would become bigger, the winning party would split and the losing party would have unpredictable change.
I’m in the second world, just thinking.
In the US this seems to have already happened once, in the 50s.
Oh, I’ll be voting.
For Claudia De La Cruz.
EDIT: People hard mad about this lmao
Ah a Trump supporter! Let me know how that works for you once you get Trump elected!
they clearly said they are supporting de la cruz
So basically you won’t be voting.
You will make no measurable impact on the outcome of the election. The election where one of two specific people will take power. And one of them already tried to end American democracy.
She can win if you vote for her 😘
No she fucking can’t.
Grow up.
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Third party candidates might have a chance if we convince our political leaders to switch to ranked choice voting, so we’ll be able to write “I’d like her to win, but I’d still prefer Biden to Trump” on our ballots. In that case, even if the rest of the nation didn’t agree with us, we still wouldn’t have someone who calls immigrants vermin in the white house. With first past the post, nobody who doesn’t have a D or R next to their name has a ghost of a chance.
No one knows who Claudia de la Cruz even is. Unless you want to become her campaign manager, that will still be true in November. Even if you did, and even if you managed to convince two thirds of the people who would’ve voted for Biden to vote for her instead, Trump would still win because half the nation voted for him and only a third voted for her.
She doesn’t have a chance. Grow up and don’t waste your vote. Way things are right now, you only get one.
Ranked Choice is a specific use of ranked ballots and it kind of sucks. You want Ranked Pairs.
Or just Approval Voting, where people check every name they like. Same ballots as now. Most votes wins. It is literally that simple and it matches optimal results. There is no good reason it’s not the default. What we’re doing now just plain sucks.
Yes, idiot child who thinks alternating caps is a counterargument, grow the fuck up.
I am eligible for the US presidency. I am equally likely to win. I am fucking nobody. So is your masturbatory, performative waste of a vote.
Don’t allow fascism to seize a country just so you can feel smug superiority. Asshole.
Grow up and vote for the genocide, sweaty.
Tell me with a straight face The Idiot would do anything better, vis-a-vis Israel. Lie to me good.
Moral dilemmas don’t go away if you smug at them hard enough.
First candidate to not support genocide gets my vote.
Looked her up. What a legend! Will definitely be using her name in plave of blank “vote third party” from here out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_de_la_Cruz
2000 was decided by hundreds of votes. 2020 was decided by thousands of votes. Don’t play stupid games with democracy, to risk an outright fascist doing the horrible shit he’s openly said he wants to do.
Only two candidates stand any chance of winning.
One of them tried subverting the 2020 election in at least seven distinct criminal attacks. And he’s even more of an Israel fanboy. You gain absolutely fucking nothing by pretending your no-name no-chance nobody is some kind of statement. Make statements with your mouth. Use your ballot to prevent electing a dictator.
Okay I mean this is marginally better, at least you’re voting, but still until some sort of change happens a vote third party is a vote thrown away
I’m not suggesting voting third party or protest voting, I personally plan on voting for whoever has the Democrat party’s backing come the general. However, I do want to ask, what do you believe is a realistic plan for gaining that change?
The people that are voting third party or not voting are doing so because they believe that’s the best option for change. Even if I disagree with that, how can we show them a better path?
On the other hand, not voting or voting uncommitted in the presidential primary is completely fine. Literally no issue with that
unexpected commentary to come from a mod.
based tho. https://www.vote.org/
With some of the rhetoric I was seeing I felt like it was my responsibility to say something.
Love u bae <3
tyyyy
First of all, I will absolutely be voting in the general, for whoever has the backing of the Democrat party, whether that be Biden or someone else if something unforseen happens. However, I think it’s important to recognize a few key key matters.
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Not voting is an act of protest, but it is a largely ineffective form of protest. Protesting is the way the people voice their concerns, and deliberately not voting is in fact a way of voicing concern. However, this is an emotional, unobjective form.
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Biden, and the overall US war machine, is complicit in genocide. This fact should not be denied for the sake of an election. Simply voting third party is unobjective, this results in the outward fascists taking power, but at the same time, toeing the line results in further entrenchment of liberalism.
How can we resolve the former 2 statements? Simple. Protest loud, as much as you can, during the primaries. Force Biden’s hand.
Just as we can hold people responsible if they vote third party during the general, or not voting, we can also hold Biden accountable. This isn’t simply a matter like Single Payer Healthcare, which would take tremendous effort with the support of congress to pass, this is something in his hands.
I’ll reiterate: if your goal is to help the Palestinian people, there is only one correct path: protest as much as you can, as early as you can, until Biden caves and ceases the genocide. If you do not protest Biden now, while we still have the chance to change his course, then we risk protests lasting even longer and hurting his chances during the General, backfiring.
The Condition for Victory is a swift, loud, uncontestable wake-up call for Biden, followed by rallied support once genuine, positive change is shown to happen. Biden has already started to feel the pressure, and has begun sending some petty aid. Biden cannot risk losing the general, and we cannot risk Biden losing the general either, nor can we stand by and watch Biden support genocide.
Vote in the Primary against Biden, and vote in the General for Biden.
Not voting to protest is as effective as setting yourself on fire in a first world country.
It’s not particularly effective, but is still a form of protest. It’s important to recognize it as such, because:
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It means that there are people who are attempting to have their voice heard
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They can be steered towards better forms of getting what they want if they are shown better forms of praxis.
At the end of the day, protestors are people with goals, and if you can convince them that this goal may be met more effectively otherwise, they can be allies.
Unfortunately, lots of folks here on lemmy seem antithetical to the idea that slow or minor progress still counts as progress. Maybe it’s a communication issue inherent to this format, but the crux of the argument I see most often is “Biden did genocide, genocide is bad. Therefore, any support for Biden is support for genocide outright.”
It seems like an inability or unwillingness to recognize degrees of tragedy…it’s the worst case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m getting pretty damn nervous about the number of folks saying outright that they won’t ever vote for Biden because they don’t accept the premise that, as long as we still have FPTP elections and the electoral college, voting anyone other than the mainstream Dem candidate makes a Republican victory more likely, regardless of the candidates either party puts forward. I know that at least some of these folks are just trolls, but we’re on a razor-thin margin, and in a scenario where 100k votes across a handful of states will likely decide the contest, I worry about even a single person being talked out of participating meaningfully in the election.
It’s exasperated by the fact that, for a lot of young voters, every election they’ve been old enough to participate in has been a boring old white person vs a wannabe dictator and so they’ve started feeling like “it’s the most important election ever” is just a scare tactic to make them vote blue.
I think a key issue here is that you’re combining unlike things and trying to make coherent sense of that, rather than analyzing what is driving people to feel this way.
The first part you mentioned, is a key disagreement you have with people opposing reformism. A significant part of leftist history is the conflict between reform and revolution, whether reform is even possible at a large scale or if revolution will ever be more likely to succeed, and so forth. The people opposing reform are not saying that incremental change isn’t good, but that:
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Incremental change is simply too little, too late, in a modern late-stage Capitalist dystopia
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Because the course of politics in modern first world Capitalist counties like the US follows whatever the interests of large Capitalists are, any meaningful reform will be hindered or even reversed unless the system is overthrown in its entirety.
The second claim, that Biden doing genocide is bad and voting for Biden is voting for continued genocide, is built off of the prior point. Because voting for a right winger like Biden or a fascist like Trump will both result in more genocide, their conclusion is that voting for either is to continue genocide, though it remains implicit that if Biden stopped the genocide, they would vote for him.
I of course believe it would get worse under Trump, so as I already mentioned, I will vote for Biden. However, I also understand that protesting against Biden is the best way to change his course now, rather than later.
The final disagreement you have with these people is the idea that Biden is a “slow good” rather than a “slow evil.” You’re not talking to liberals, you’re talking to leftists, who wish to see some form of Socialism take place in America. Biden is continuing the Imperialist project of American Liberalism at the expense of Workers both inside and outside of the US, you can’t convince leftists that Biden is good, actually.
The truly best way to get leftists to vote for Biden is to get them to see what is directly more beneficial to the international Proletariat, protest voting for a third party or picking Biden and trying to use that time to organize on the ground, which is easier than under Trump. That’s the real key, not to try to convince them Biden is good but slow.
This is actually very useful framing…I’m gonna chew on this for a bit and try to untangle some of my own implicit premises.
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Never said it wasn’t a form of protest. I said it’s not effective and I’d like to add that it’s also very dumb. Like setting yourself on fire in a first world country.
That’s why I elaborated, though if you’re only going to read the first sentence then why even bother replying?
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Thank you. So tired of people who never vote in primaries complaining about how the candidates are bad.
Sucky candidates are not merely the product of failing to vote in the primaries. Both parties have systems that favor money and endorsement by legacy establishment figures over popularity, and additional policies are added when a popular antiestablishment candidate slips into office (like Occasio-Cortez).
It’s telling in 2020 the DNC elected the most right-wing, establishment candidate that wasn’t a far right Billionaire when we had numerous more moderate options.
The US is in the iron grip of boomer conservatives clinging to power as demonstrated by multiple officials succumbing to age and dementia. The people really don’t have much say.
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I’ll proceed to describe in this post the gigantic amount of political change and sweeping reforms we will achieve when we valiantly protest against the system by not voting up until we get the turnout to 10%:
Yep. We need A LOT more leftists to show up before protesting the vote is useful. As much as I hate Democrats, we’re not there yet. I’ll vote Biden, but I’ll lose sleep over voting for that disgusting ghoul. Still better than the alternative, until the alternative includes dismantling our whole entire system.
Yes! Under Trump’s dictatorship there WILL sweeping changes, just not the ones you think. I mean ending democracy in this country will be a change. But you’ll sleep well (until the gestapo comes for you) thinking “you showed them!”.
