Time to sieze the trolley and build new tracks.
Fun fact: The United States actually has more than 2 parties
The More You Know
Oh, please tell me which third party candidate not only has a real shot at this election but is also not just a far-right grifter in disguise.
Pretty much all but the libertarian party. Turns out if enough people vote for a candidate they get elected. Weird huh?
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This message brought to you by Jill Stein who pops up every four years to grift money and accomplish nothing except cozying up to Putin. I guess there is still the brain worm dead animal guy?
Third parties in the US are unserious. I wish that weren’t the case but that’s the reality.
Let’s steel man your argument and say you’re 100% correct. Throwing away your vote or not voting is still morally better than voting for someone who won’t commit to not enabling a genocide.
And that’s assuming your predicate is correct, which it’s not.
The US rn:
You can fight the trolley itself instead of justifying supporting genocide.
PS this is the real world not a meme. Political power is not a trolley problem, it is a matter of organization and education. You disempower yourself and others by pretending you can only backseat cheerlead a genocide. Instead of supporting this, go and join an organization that is actually opposing it and start doing work.
In the US, every student is eventually presented with lessons on the Holocaust and asked to think about what they would do. Right now, to be honest, your answer would have to be, “support it using poorly thought out propaganda”.
Absolutely. But you should also flip that switch real quick before getting to work fighting it. Just in case.
No, you shouldn’t, because this is the real world and not a trolley problem. Providing electoral support to genociders helps to entrench them and these discussions have the wrong framing when it comes to how political power works. I already mentioned this. Did you read my comment?
Yes you absolutely should. If you can effortlessly vote for the lesser evil in a way that doesn’t take anything away from the other fight, just do it real quick. Any argument to the contrary is accelerationism.
If you are an accelerationist, then get bent, you’re wrong.
Backseat cheerleading genociders, and telling other people to do so, is not helping. It makes you complicit and spreads a false and anemic idea of how political power works. You should be fighting them, not doing mental gymnastics for how you can still justify supporting genociders.
There is nothing strategic in what you are describing, it is actually self-defeating and this is why you are told this logic from on high.
As I originally said, join an org and fo actual work against genociders. Be part of the solution, not part of the genocide-excusing problem.
There’s no mental gymnastics to flipping that switch real quick, then fighting the real fight. It’s you who’s doing gymnastics trying to wrongly convince folks not to. The length of your post alone proves the gymnastics.
There’s no mental gymnastics
You’re using a strained trolley problem analogy.
then fighting the real fight.
Anyone fighting the real fight has already been fighting and knows that your vote shaming for genociders is counterproductive.
It’s you who’s doing gymnastics trying to wrongly convince folks not to.
How am I wrong?
The length of your post alone proves the gymnastics.
My post was not long lol. Though most of it was me repeating myself because your response didn’t address what I said. Same for this last response, too!
you: “Yes you absolutely should tacitly support genocide. If you don’t tacitly support genocide then you’re an accelerationist.”
There are other candidates you can vote for that are vastly lesser evils than both the fascist democrats and fascist republicans; candidates who are not actively funding and perpetrating genocide but actually, get this, opposing it. If instead of voting for one of those, you still choose to support a party committing genocide, you aren’t just an accelerationist and wrong, you’re fucking despicable, evil.
False. It’s too late. We’re a month away from the election. Vote Kamala, the lesser evil, then join the Bernie campaign or the DSA to make some real change over the next 4 years. Now is pragmatically not the time for such battles. Know when to fold em.
“Now is not the time to oppose genocide.”
Your reprehensibility is confirmed. History will look upon people like you as on those who supported Nazis but pretended the concentration camps were just a bit much.
Very long way of saying you’re looking forward to trump being in power again and forever taking away your right to vote.
Very short way of saying you will never lift a finger other than to vote even if Trump takes away your right to vote.
My comment already contradicts your response, even with its inventions. Please try to address what I say rather than making things up.
You said to Organize and admit a genocide is occurring, while not letting yourself be convinced that voting is the only course of action.
I’m saying that’s awesome but what do we do when trump gets elected because no one wants to vote now?
You said to Organize and admit a genocide is occurring, while not letting yourself be convinced that voting is the only course of action.
Of course voting is not the only course of action. Voting is incredibly little. What, you check a box? Maybe wait a few hours at most to get into a pilling station? Dear God.
This is an incredibly limited amount of political action, particularly given the way in which box checking translates into any political action (electoral college, media monopolies, biased education, wage slavery limiting political education, campaigns built on donations from capital).
I’m saying that’s awesome but what do we do when trump gets elected because no one wants to vote now?
You actually do political work. You become educated and join an organization that does more than act as a sheepdog that turns alienatuon into genocide votes.
And in the end Trump wins the vote and you lose your oppurtunity to do any real politcal work! Congrats.
Trump was already president once and my political work was actually easier because liberals were outraged and could not understand the complicoty of their representatives. Their representatives merely reflect the cynical apathy of their position that is shielded when they are in power.
If Trump were an existential threat would you just be sitting around posting bad logic? You know he is just an incremental partial detriment in some ways and some vague miasma in other ways. Biden is, for example, a much more coherent genocidal Zionist, as is Harris.
Rather than quibble about how to appease one’s inner Eichmann, why not fight against it?
I have a plan, hear me out,
A more accurate picture would have all of the people on the republican track on the democrat track too, just covered with a tarp to conceal their real aims.
Also, tha US flag shouldn’t be on either track since neither of the two right wings of the capitalist party would dare throw away the empire that furthers their and their masters’ (the capitalist class) interests.
Real life.
Is not.
A fucking.
Trolley problem.
You are actually allowed to break the car and turn off the power.
Let’s pretend for a second that voting blue would stop the slaughter at “just” the Palestinians (it doesn’t).
If you think you’re knowingly sacrificing an entire people to annihilation just so save your own skin, and you can not only live with that but argue in favor of it instead of redacting your entire government, you’re a fucking nazi. Peddle your them-or-us genocide support somewhere else you blue maga piece of shit.
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There was a nazipost here
It’s gone now
Amerikkkan lives mean nothing to me if those lives support genocide. I welcome the harm that will befall genocide-collaborating settlers.
Just openly admitting you support genocide. Disgusting. And don’t even pretend you care about anyone represented in the bottom half of the image; if Democrats said murdering trans folks was necessary to beat Trump, you’d support that too.
If Democrats said murdering trans folks was necessary to beat Trump that means the overton window is too far gone and I’d be looking to ship as many trans folks out of the country as I could manage with my means. If and when it reaches that point, US democracy would be too far gone to even consider saving it. I don’t believe it is right now, as flawed as it is currently. Which is why engaging in harm reduction is still worth it.
So you believe murdering Palestinians is okay, then, if we aren’t “too far gone” yet.
Harm reduction for me (Imperial Core citizen) but not for thee (2+ million Palestinian men, women and children).
US democracy would be too far gone to even consider saving it.
Always has beenMaybe if any of you harm reducing fools grew a backbone and had some principles on who you’ll vote for we wouldn’t have to think about when that will happen in the US. Watching the Dems slide further and further right while saying they’re better than Republicans is not helping anyone, especially future Americans
One of these parties actively campaigns and passes legislation to block my access to health care and wants to make my existence in public illegal. Their supporters regularly say people like me need to be beat or murdered. I have had this happen in person, to my face, by a family member.
The other party actively tries to block the harmful legislation and passes protections for me. Their supporters are at worse indifferent to my existence but are often supportive of my navigation through my struggles.
To be able to ignore these differences and put words in other other minority’s mouths shows an extreme level of privilege.
The other party is actively engaged in a genocide, but I guess as long as its other people being murdered at an industrial scale, libs don’t give a shit.
Ignoring that genocide is beyond the scope of this meme, both parties are complicit in providing aid to Isreal, who is the party actively committing genocide against Palestinians. It’s important to recognize the difference between not giving a shit and recognizing something can’t immediately be done about a situation. Gaza is not on the ballot in the United States and won’t be until more left leaning individuals take power in congress. This process starts at the local level, and years before an election is held.
But its good to know that the genocide of my people is less important than the genocide of others. The perspective that two genocides is just as bad as one is absurd. Again, being able to believe that the party of liberals and the party of white nationalists are both fascist parties indicates a level of privilege or insulation from living under a fascist regime.
Yes, both parties commit atrocities and crimes against humanity.
But its good to know that the genocide of my people is less important than the genocide of others. The perspective that two genocides is just as bad as one is absurd.
That’s actually your position where you ignore the genocide being conducted by the democrats while talking about what republicans will do to people in US.
Again, being able to believe that the party of liberals and the party of white nationalists are both fascist parties indicates a level of privilege or insulation from living under a fascist regime.
Liberals are fascists, and people who pretend otherwise are the privileged ones who live under a fascist regime and ignore what the regime does. Look in the mirror buddy.
Whole lotta people shouting over actual marginalised peoples in this thread…
With representatives like Democrats, who needs oppressors?
The LDs still barely have any MPs, let along enough to affect policy.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: politicsThere’s a large number of people out there that think “everything sucks right now and there’s a democrat president, so to make things different I should vote republican”
…
Fund schools. Keep the department of Education in existence and quadruple its funding.
You should be against genocide and not vote for genociders.
I agree, but I don’t have that choice right now. The issue of genocide isn’t on the two-party ballot. The issue of public education is. Fewer educated people means fewer people who can even identify genocide when it happens.
“But what good is identifying genocide if you’re not gonna stop it”
HOW THE FUCK CAN I STOP IT?!?!?!?
HOW THE FUCK CAN I STOP IT?!?!?!?
If you actually want to stop fascism in the long term you’ll need to join a socialist org. Liberals have historically acquiesced to fascism because of systemic forces inherent to capitalism.
If you’d like to know more, I’d recommend reading “The economy and class structure of german fascism”
The thing that I think really makes it obvious that your thinking here is completely defective is that you don’t even bring up the question “are you in a swing state?” I’m in a deep-blue state, why the fuck, even by your broken logic, should I vote for Kamala? She’ll win my whole state anyway, so all I’m doing is helping to legitimize her if I vote for her, not do a single thing to keep Orange Man out.
Not voting for Harris sends a message to the democrats that they are not championing human rights strong enough, and that supposedly ought to send their platform in the direction we want, correct? The more people who don’t vote for democrats, the stronger the message is so we should tell more people not to vote for democrats if I understand you correctly.
It should go without saying that if you tell enough people not to vote democrat, even in a deep-blue state, republican votes will win out. I’m not saying that’s a likely scenario, but why when I know people like you will opt not to vote, should I encourage other people anywhere to not vote and even get close to risking that? And before you say “like you said it’s not a likely scenario so there’s no risk” there is absolutely risk. We risk losing public funding for education and we risk further loss of human rights in our own backyard. I’m not sure why that thinking is “defective” but if there is a specific flaw in the logic please point it out.
First of all, no one except for straw-anarchists are saying not to vote. Everyone who objects to Harris says to vote third party. Of course, some people will respond to what’s going on by not voting, but we (leftists) encourage them to vote instead.
There is no viable risk, a plurality of people already either don’t vote or vote third party, the people like me are already accounted for since I wasn’t about to support neoliberals anyway and have already voted third party.
So the only ones left are people who are just starting to vote third party. Let me say simply there is no way for us to just speak into existence a new voting bloc of around 15% of the population of the entire state to spoil your favored cop’s chances of winning. If things were that easy, we could have a communist President within, like, 3 election cycles. No, things move much more slowly than that because you can’t just manifest “Well what if everyone laid down their arms voted for Elizabeth Warren?” on a population like you made a magic wish.
The voteblue philosophy is one of fear, of an overriding fear even at things that are impossible in material reality, and using that fear as an excuse to never fight for someone who is better than center-right while always promising that on some future day we will finally have something better. It’s a psychological hamster wheel, you’ll keep running on it forever and never make progress, so the only solution is to get off.
I agree, but I don’t have that choice right now. The issue of genocide isn’t on the two-party ballot
It’s on there at least twice and you have every choice to not put a checkmark there or tell others to do so.
The issue of public education is. Fewer educated people means fewer people who can even identify genocide when it happens.
Lesser evil genociders is not a good argument, though this premise is also false. Dems cut education budgets as well. Blue states with blue districts in blue cities still underfunded and are at the forefront of charter school “experiments”.
You cannot absolve support for genocide. You get no excuses. You should feel bad for even trying to make them.
HOW THE FUCK CAN I STOP IT?!?!?!?
The first step is to stop supporting it. The next step is to become educated in how the system works. The next step, which you can do simultaneously, is to join and participate in organizations with these same lines: no support for the genocidal capitalist parties, solidarity with Palestine.
You talked about education. You need some yourself but the primary work is in organizing, which includes teaching others. Instead of trying to justify supporting genociders you should be working against them. Stop pretending you have no agency and there is nothing to do.
I do not feel good about voting for genociders. I feel fucking awful about it. But I know with absolute certainty that a democrat or a republican is going to be elected president, and yes democrats also defund schools but I’d way rather not have to start from square zero four years from now.
You will start from square zero either way. They don’t care about you or listen to you. One of the reasons they don’t need to is that there is no organized, disciplined opposition. Dems expect vaguely left people to fall in line, they don’t even pander most of the time. Look at the DNC where they brought in an Israeli to speak, denied a Palestinian, and brought in the daughter of a Contra to lie about Sandinistas. They didn’t even try pandering. They could have picked a comprador Palestinian to say some both sides BS but instead gave you the middle finger and lied about a ceasefire.
Square zero is organizing. You will have to organize just as much in 4 years. Dems will not slow or stop the degradation of conditions, their neoliberal policies are driving that process. And if there is no left, this only fuels an ascendant right. Every election is going to be “the most important one of your life” for the foreseeable future and Dems will be complicit in this. Our only hope is to organize a left opposition as quickly as possible. Part of that requires shedding the false idea that telling people to vote for genociders is helping. It isn’t. It just normalizes genocide.
Genuinely, with no wish to sound snarky or get an “own”: That awful feeling is your conscience and gut telling you that this is both terribly unnatural and entering dangerous territory, respectively. Regardless of how this election goes, the US and it’s vassals are going to get more fascist, and we are all going to be asked, politely at first, to go along with more and more atrocities. The sooner we stop swallowing our humanity and start listening to the blaring alarms in our minds that this is all wrong, the safer everyone will be.
And since enough dumbasses are actually putting forward enough effort to show there is a frighteningly high backing for a candidate that will prevent any presidential voting in the future, I’m gonna have to break my record and vote for one of the major 2 parties for this election.
One of these 2 WILL WIN THE US ELECTION. There is no pretending that, this close to polling date, that there is any other outcome.
We need to start locally and push harder for reforms from there up. Only one of the 2 party systems will allow this in our future at the moment. This is just the sad and horrible truth we face at the moment.
If we really think the system has failed us and will not let us break free of the 2 party bullshit, well, then we need to be better educated and better organized. We have internet and advanced messaging technology. Our past is riddled with those who made amazing changes and voiced mass public opinion with way less.
Knowledge is power. Protect and enhance the education to really power change.
If you want people to work from the bottom up to achieve the necessary changes to prevent this country from being genocidal you will rapidly discover that neither the Democratic nor Republican parties can be that vehicle. They are our enemies and work against us, only dithering with cynical PR and pandering to avoid losing without actually needing to deliver on any demands. Unprincipled attempts to enter and change the Democrats on their terms leads to alienation or cooption, e.g. “the squad” supporting Israel or getting destroyes by capital.
Rather than support a genocoder, please do the actual change work. At least then you can see it fail and then do actually useful things against the genocidal empire.
Uh, duh? So start replacing them at the base levels and change our foundation? I didn’t say to keep voting for them locally?
Do what work? What’s the plan?? Are you running for local government where you are?
ALL CAREER POLITICIANS ARE “GENOCIDERS” from what I have seen so far in my life on this planet. This is why normally I will not vote for a major 2 party candidate. I want to be able to vote again in the future, so I’m willing to do my best to try and make that happen.
What are you actually saying and doing? No where have i found a coherent cohesive plan for us citizens to unite and change this major issue. What’s our truly viable recourse here?
Please explain like I am 5.
Uh, duh? So start replacing them at the base levels and change our foundation? I didn’t say to keep voting for them locally?
Right that’s not going to work. But if you are wed to a failing electoralist strategy that will fail it is better to commit to it so that you can observe that failure sooner.
Do what work?
The work of building socialist organizations.
What’s the plan??
To build the size and quality of socialist organizations until they reach a large enough size to make demands that require real responses. Escalation. And to then depose the capitalist system via the means available to us. And before that, to survive the violence coming for us as conditions degrade and we are not yet big enough.
Are you running for local government where you are?
Why would I?
ALL CAREER POLITICIANS ARE “GENOCIDERS” from what I have seen so far in my life on this planet.
That’s right.
This is why normally I will not vote for a major 2 party candidate. I want to be able to vote again in the future, so I’m willing to do my best to try and make that happen.
What’s the point of your vote if you use it to support genocide? When politicians aren’t really answerable to their voters in the first place? When you have always voted third party, i.e. made your vote into a statement? Instead, just actually be against genocide. Tell others to not support genocide. Do actually helpful political work.
What are you actually saying and doing?
Building socialist and anti-imperialist organizations that are in solidarity with Palestinians. Educating the public. Running BDS campaigns. Materially contributing directly to Gazans.
No where have i found a coherent cohesive plan for us citizens to unite and change this major issue.
The vast majority of people are not organized and are not politically educated. They can’t demand anything because they don’t know what to demand nor do they have discipline to shed the propaganda handed to them by the two major parties. This “left” won’t even withold their votes! Why would anyone ever take them seriously? You must build leverage and make credible threats to have political power.
This starts with the basics of organizing and of political education.
What’s our truly viable recourse here?
The most viable course to stop genocide in Palestine will come from overseas by people actually fighting Israel or undermining its sponsor’s (America’s) ability to isolate and weaken resistance actors. Multipolarity and a decline of the US itself that this would necessarily entail due to the economic system it has maintained. We can help this by helping those doing resistance work and by educating each other. We can minimize the harms of a declining empire by building against militarism locally. Don’t support weapons manufacturers, picket them and make life more expensive for them. Kick their unions out of labor orgs. Fight against the racism and xenophobia that liberals will be embracing evet more in order to justify their warhawk policies.
With organization, you will see escalations and overreactions that build organizations. The Biden admin wanted to ban TikTok because they did not hide the genocidal violence. We should be able to build from these kinds of reactions, all it will take is repeated attempts until it snowballs. Build, act, receive reaction, build from the reaction, act, etc etc.
Please explain like I am 5.
I can’t sorry but please don’t hesitate to ask questions.
ALL CAREER POLITICIANS ARE “GENOCIDERS” from what I have seen so far in my life on this planet.
That’s right.
Why are you even agreeing with him here? Last when i check overwhelming most of coutries, parties and politicians “on this planet” do not commit genocide.
I was assuming they meant that all mainstream US politicians were on board with the genocide of Gaza. But maybe I was being too generous.
Only one of the 2 party systems will allow this in our future at the moment
The Dems sued to remove the PSL from the ballot in my state
So, vote them out. Push for your local areas reform and campaign for a 3rd party replacement that do what the people want.
A maggat republican will go the step further and make a law against it to be brought up for future elections if they think it will ensure their grip.
I really don’t care what party affiliation a representative wants to have. The problem is that too many are easy to figure out they only care about money when they choose to go under our current pairing. We should always look at a candidates stance on issues, the follow through they’ve had in their past positions, and that they are representing the people’s wishes.
Ah yes, vote them out by voting for what candidates? People that use the same rhetoric you’re using also deploy it in “electability pragmatism” during primaries to cull any further left candidates because it “will alienate moderates” in generals. Then you do this stupid shit of eating a turd sandwich and saying next time you’re definitely going to get what you ordered without doing anything different. And that’s all assuming any alternatives aren’t immediately torpedoed by incredible spending differences due to corporate and party backing
I have straight up written in viable candidates in previous, and current local, elections. I have helped friends and family start campaigns for local seats that had ran unopposed.
This one is different at the presidential level. If you can’t see that you have too much privilege to think you can take what will come out of it. Women, minorities, handicap, Trans and gay folk will lose what human rights we are hanging onto while we wait for straight white men to fight it out and give it back again.
Not everyone is physically capable of going into a civil war and fighting for their rights in the streets.
I see a lot of shit talk all over this site but no actionable change showing up in the real world. All this resistance talk is starting to get real old and really sounding more and more like utter bullshit the more it’s all over every political post that’s made, but no viable plan laid out on what’s being done and what steps to take.
You’re not going to change my mind, and it feels like I’m playing into your votescolding fetish which I did not consent to. Good night and good luck washing the stains of genocide from your soul
Hell yeah!
I never had kids, never wanted kids. Have always pushed for education. As a stoner, was crazy excited about talk of legalization and taxes going to schools when the idea was first floated around by us. Happily. Hell yes.
There’s a large number of people out there that think “even though democrats had a disastrous four years, they will magically fund schools and give everyone a pony when they’re back in power.”
ultimately, the federal Depart- ment of Education should be eliminated.
Direct Quote from Project 2025
Thanks to schools, I can read and understand that when someone says “we want to eliminate public education” they mean “we want to eliminate public education.”
This alone is enough reason to vote democrat. Eliminating public education means fewer people will be educated enough to know when they’re lied to. I know the democrats are a bunch of shiteating liars but they have enough of a chance to win and they’re not trying to defund school and those two reasons are literally enough to vote for them.
As long as people in US treat voting as the sole way to participate politically thing will continue on the exact same trajectory they are on now.
I agree. I need to further involve myself in informing more people
You don’t vote for perfection, you vote the party in you can negotiate with
You can’t negotiate with Democrats. This is the great lie of Electoralism.
