The theory that Republicans are the Corporate Party and Democrats are not relies upon you ignoring where Democrats get the lion’s share of their fundraising and PAC money from.
I wonder if people realize posts like this only push away potential converts?
Even if Centrists were as good as this post makes them out to be (which sadly they’re not), smugly asserting that everyone else is worse than you is a terrible method of persuasion.
Though I suppose the point is to feel morally and intellectually superior to people who would vote differently. Rather than to actually try to woo the most voters.
Edit: Fwiw, I believe the best option we have currently is to vote for the Democrats. I simply don’t see an alternative option that is as likely to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse again. Though damage mitigation is not my favorite strategy to employ, in this case I believe it is the “strongest” play available.
I often wonder who these are for. It makes no attempt to engage in an honest way with criticisms and hesitations that non-Democrat voters have so it doesn’t have any ability to persuade them. It also infantalizes the view points of both the republican opposition and anyone outside the two party system so it’s not helpful for self-critique for “centrists”. So as far as I can tell it’s just red meat aimed at Democrat supports to keep them all hopped up and believing that they are “the party of responsible governance” (in comparison to the Republicans) and therefore all criticism is invalid and everyone else is childish. Like, if this is supposed to be something else you really need a new way of engaging, because this “there is no alternative” shit is what turned me away from Democrats back in the Obama years.
Loving the parade of the usual suspects in here to tell us that politics ARE about simple issues, ARE easy to fix, and anyway bothsides.
The problem you have there is called a feedback loop. A vicious spiral. The whole thing moves right with each election.
Welp, better to tiptoe to the right than double-time goose step. A slow move to the right is better for leftists than a fast one.
Is it better? It seems like the creeping motion is much better at avoiding opposition than the double-time. Sort of like how the climate is heating just slow enough for most of the humans to think that it’s somewhat normal and usual, and the crises are somewhat normal.
Yeah, however bad the creep is, accelerationism Is way worse
I didn’t say accelerationism. Accelerationism is a fascist position.
I’m saying that the issue here is people not realizing that,
as an analogy,
Being threatened with a gun to the head vs being threatened with a dart containing deadly radioactive oncogenic particles should be treated the same. The problem is optimism and hope, it’s what allows conservatives to play the long game.
And in terms of the strategy you hold dear, understand that capitalists and their fascist pets will bring down the whole biosphere.
Essentially, the ethics of this aren’t about “lesser evil”, they’re about how willing are you to burden the youngest generations and soon to be born with an exponentially more difficult (deadly) challenge, so you can live your life in the “normal” way and keep your head down.
When you’re talking about the merits of the greater evil, i.e. speeding towards fascism so people are more likely to take direct revolutionary action, you’re talking about accelerationism. However you try to justify it to yourself, that’s what you’re promoting. And it’s fundamentally a gamble, you’re hoping that it leads to a regime that can be deposed, and a populace willing and able to depose it. The gamble could very easily just lead to enduring fascism.
I use the tools at my disposal. Voting for the lesser evil buys time and fosters a slightly, but distinctly, more favorable political landscape. That gives people the opportunity to organize, to spread their message, to build campaigns for representatives that represent them, and elevate those representatives to higher offices.
how willing are you to burden the youngest generations and soon to be born with an exponentially more difficult (deadly) challenge, so you can live your life in the “normal” way and keep your head down.
The irony is palpable. This is precisely the outcome of your strategy: give the young generations a despotic fascist regime they’ll have to overthrow with chaos and bloodshed, rather than a functioning democracy that they can push to the left.
Yes, our system is dominated by capitalists and fascists, but that’s precisely because 30+% of people refuse to use their vote. The system has within it the mechanisms for meaningful change, fantasies about a popular uprising against a despotic government are childish and irresponsible.
I guess you’ll learn the hard way.
Learn what, exactly?
Counterpoint, libs cared about kids in cages when it was trump doing it. Ive never seen so many people energetic and aware about government abuses. It was the same with war in the middleast when Obama took over from Bush. All the average antiwar blues stopped watching and couldnt car less about drone bombing funerals and ambulances.
The two party system does not promote engagement or representation. I get this is a bigger issue than the election but my biggest fear is that the slow walk to fascism under the “we’re the good party” will be more enduring and successful than the attempts from Red to March forward.
The average lib “shut up and vote blue or you support fascism” crybully will fall asleep again for four years and sleepwalk their way to the same goal without any self reflection along the way.
Note this is not in favor of accelerationism, but a criticism of this idea that all we can do is slow the roll with a vote every now and then and throw our hands up.
Note this is not in favor of accelerationism, but a criticism of this idea that all we can do is slow the roll with a vote every now and then and throw our hands up.
No one has suggested that idea. It certainly isn’t all we can do, but it is the minimum. The alternative is accelerationism.
Yeah, the Republicans have been successful in accomplishing their goals by not voting repeatedly for 20+ years! /s
ffs
Look, if you were using this extension of time to do something better, to build dual power, to corrode the foundation of the system, I’d agree with you. That’s the point of extensions, no? To get time. The destination is the same in both scenarios, but you have time in the lesser one. Are you using that time on not-you activity?
Okay, but what I don’t get is:
Why would you not want to vote for the centrists?
If you’re (rightfully) getting mad at the republicans for being egocentric and only looking out for themselves, you can’t at the same time not be centrist and want to be egocentric and only look out for yourself
You’d just be a republican representing a different interest group
Since my votes for the presidential race are insulated from the vote count via electors in both the primary and national elections, I choose not to cast a vote for any loudmouth figurehead. Instead, I concentrate my energy on elections that affect my daily life; i.e. local and State races, including Senate and House of Representative races.
Take your “throwing away your vote” and stuff it in the nearest biological ballot box.
this is not accurate
centrists trying to build a big tent for everyone are the pro rich and corporations that are voting against our interests
the “big tent” is just there to fool people with bread and circuses and it has nothing of sustenance that will sustain the people
the throwing your vote away and getting to pretend you hold some high ground (you don’t) is propaganda spread by both parties to keep the power structure intact and to help control the masses by tamping their expectations of leaders
yes life is compromise and nobody gets exactly what they want, but everyone does not get a say in how we work to find a fair balance
some people are hidden away in concrete zoos without adequate ac/heat usually in unsanitary conditions or they just have their votes taken away all together or some other way of quashing votes
centrists are the right wing with sheep’s clothing on designed to give the illusion of choice
the right wing billionaire class always wins and have succeeded at confusing most of the US public into a false dilemma and gets everything they want
voting Democrat or Republican means we give away the opportunity of a third party and the ability to listen to outside voices that may contain a forest of solutions that were unseeable due to the two trees
As someone not from the USA: I guess I agree that, for the upcoming presidential election at least, voting centrist is the only viable option. But the generalized “vote centrist because it could he worse” is infuriating and makes me want to punch whomever made this. Just because they’re not actively anti-working class doesn’t mean they’re in any real way champions of the working class. They’re in the pocket of industrialists just like the right, and thus will never meaningfully challenge the status quo.
thank you for saying this. a lot of us in the USA are plenty pissed at it too. reminds me of this
If they can’t bring in fascism, at least they can suppress progressivism.
I still want to someday vote for better third parties, but that gets a lot less scary when we have FULLY AND UTTERLY ANNIHILATED the COMPLETELY USELESS Republican Party.
The sooner everyone realizes they never have their own useful ideas, the more we can choose between progressive policies without worrying about a wasted vote.
I don’t feel centrist is the right word here. Or at least centrist has been co-opted by a group of right wingers wanting to platform fascists.
I’d go with big tent, labor coalition, or I dunno.
It’s what I’ve been saying for a while now: If you want to be happy with who you vote for, lower your expectations of what you’re gonna get. It will be ugly sausage making and they will make stupid decisions that you will hate, things won’t improve nearly as quickly as you want, and this is the best we can do as a species because coordinating the actions of tens or hundreds of millions of people is going to suck.
That and 40-50 year steady march of the Overton Window to the right won’t be undone with a single election. It’s going to take multiple ones to fix what’s been broken by the Republicans.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Voting is not a medium for self-expression, or at least not a good one. It’s a tool to affect outcomes. People get angry about voting for harm reduction, but choosing to not even do that much just makes everything worse.
Voting is not a medium for self-expression,
LOL
“2020 The Sequel”
Lmao, I don’t think that phrase conveys what they think it conveys
It should count as premeditation though
How are there no truck nuts on that thing?
There is just one nut repeatedly plastered all over
Exactly. In most cultures, keeping who you’re voting for secret, unless specifically advocating for issues or having a discussion about the candidates themselves, is the social norm.
i can’t imagine how not-exhausting that must make everything in life
Honestly if I could get away with it I’d pop that guys tires. His poster is misogynistic as fuck.
Self expression is pasting someone else’s name all over everything you own?
part of the GOP indoctrination is the mindset “you’re not a true american if you’re not shoving the party’s ideology down everyone’s throat”
I hate these groups where they have been conditioned to believe you hate America if you’re not sporting at least 1 flag on your current clothing, a flag on your front porch and some form ideological decal on your vehicle.
welcome to USDPRK
How Christian of them.
want to let other countries know this image does not represent all of the US lol
I both love and hate that image
This is obviously oversimplified, but I agree with the message.
