FAQ
Q: why not organize and stop treating the bus as a legitimate entity? why aren’t you working to stop the bus?
A: do both. cut the fuel line. break windows. put oatmeal in the gas tank. but maybe your efforts don’t succeed this election cycle. and if so don’t fucking throw away your vote if it can help your neighbors fucking survive. “harm reduction” is not a political strategy for action. it is a last minute, end of the line decision to save lives, after all other resources have been exhausted.
Flipently equivocating people horrified with deliberately acts of mass genocide with being overly fussy about choice of icecream is not going to win you any support from people who refuse to vote Dem.
In fact it just makes me more disgusted with the “vote blue, no matter who” crowd.
Have fun sailing off the cliff.
And you wonder why you can’t convince people to vote for your ghoul.
The box is empty, isn’t it?
Great zinger. Still not voting for Genocide Joe.
Wouldn’t expect a Trumper to. Did I say Trumper? I wanted to say ‘fascist enabling fuckwit’.
I understand your position and hate that we live in a shitty world where that choice is forced on people, but from what i see it from here, you guys have a choice between choosing the guy who’s not good but is at least doing some good, and the active fascist idolizing Hitler, with every neutral vote being effectively helping the fascist.
Not much of a choice, yes, but that’s where you are, and any vote not going to the not good guy will help the fascist. So that’s your choice, will you choose to fly over the cliff along with everybody else in the rest of the car or help avoiding that?
Biden isn’t doing any harm reduction for anyone right now. Maintaining the status quo will just put us right back here in 2-4 years time. Holding Biden’s feet ti the fire and making him implement actual harm reduction now in return for voting for him in November is what any sane voting block needs to do.
If I have to read one more both sides are terrible “take” that encourages voter apathy I’m going to lose my mind. Vote, people I don’t care who you vote for but you have to vote because apathy is how we get fascism.
Do something rather than just throwing a piss fit and encouraging others to do nothing.
Tell the DNC to pick somebody else?
I guess it depends on the country, but here in France, our last two presidential elections were about choosing how fast fascism would come.
This argument is so archaic. The world isn’t an us vs them.
This analogy is so absurd. Like if you have a vote on driving off a cliff, the answer is not to treat the vote as legitimate. The answer is to attempt to stop the bus by any means necessary. Pry open the engine panel and chuck a wrench in the gears, cut the fuel line, break the shifter lever, anything, just get off the fucking bus. Neither driver should be trusted.
EDIT: I am sick of hearing “WHY WON’T YOU VOTE THO”
First of all, I already said this:
The only reason to vote for the less-immediate cliff driver is to give you more time to stop the bus.
That’s the other problem with this post: the non-voter is a strawman. Most people with real critiques of the bus vote too because they understand this. Voting barely matters for the most part but you may as well do it. Most people yelling about “don’t vote it’s pointless” are like 15 years old doing baby’s first radical politics.
I just don’t understand why every time we criticise the bus we have to deal with loads of people yelling about why we don’t take the voting more seriously, as if who we vote for is the bigger issue than the fact that we’re stuck on a careening death machine with a bunch of people calmly debating how fast we should all die.
The thing is, doing that is a great way to lose credibility. You’re basically sinking to the same level as the fascists.
Anti fascist sabotage is bad because violence, hmm 🧐
As long as you don’t physically harm people, sabotage all the fascists you want. Just remember to vote.
I was very careful to avoid actual violence in my language. You were the one that equated it to fascism, which I assume you mean is the cliff driver.
Of course stopping the bus isn’t violent, and is not at all equivalent to the cliff driver.
My logic is what about vote and pry the bus apart? If you have the option to might as well go for it as part of the ‘any means necessary’, a tool is a tool.
I will not be voting for anyone who supports a genocide. That will not change. Now there are two ways to change the outcome.
- If you are a genocide supporter who wants to be elected, you could stop supporting genocide, and be vocal about it.
- If you are someone who wants me to vote for your candidate, you could demand that they stop supporting genocide. Or demand that whatever party you like stops nominating people who support genocide.
I will not budge. Will you?
Two candidates that support genocide, but one is a christofascist. No matter who you vote for, genocide support wins. But you think it’s better to give the christofascist better odds than to inconvenience yourself with a vote you don’t 100% agree with, and possibly abstain from your chance to ever vote again. Not voting won’t fix the issue, since there’s no threshold on voter turnout for the election to count. The struggle against genocide must be fought in other ways. So unfortunately, this fall you’re getting genocide, so please make sure you don’t get fascism too.
I’d rather just not vote for genocide.
Aside from the obvious, that will just be continuing to tell the two parties that nominating genocide supporters is good. You can continue telling your favorite party that you are okay with genocide, but I will not, thank you very much. This is why you are stuck between two genocide supporters. When your chosen party leaves you with a genocide supporter as your only choice, you tell them that’s good.
And you are not going to fight the genocide in any other way, so don’t pretend. Your chosen party is one of the two that ratified bills to make any attempts at boycotts or sanctions illegal.
Also, both candidates are fascists. Look at what’s happening on our Southern border, look at just our recent history in the Middle East, and look at the fascist government committing genocide that we are supporting.
You don’t fight fascism in the ballot box. Every single example in history teaches you that.
My favorite morons ITT:
”Both options are cliffs!”
Yeah because the guy promising to end democracy and bring about Christian nationalism is exactly the same as the moderate we have now. I hope you’re getting paid to be that stupid.
”I won’t vote to support genocide!”
At the end of the day someone becomes president, and spoiler alert the other option is still worse. It’s cute you think your principles are more important than the safety and security of at-risk groups domestically (and frankly abroad as well). Short-sighted and idiotic.
”We might not even get ice cream!”
Okay well organize and protest that after we’ve avoided the cliff.
”Haha Americans are stupid for the entrenched political system that they find themselves in”
Hope you enjoy your five minutes of smugness, because a Christian nationalist USA doesn’t benefit anyone in the world in the long run.
a lot of the individuals ITT are here in good faith i believe. i’m more trying to get meaningful change to happen than sow discord by calling them morons.
You, i like you
c:
Ive gotten righty whities to agree with me on all sorts of wild leftist ideas, its about finding the angle and humanizing the problem.
A-fuckin-goddamn-men.
You need to communicate with people. Berating them is entirely self serving. No one ever said “you know what? I am a moron, thanks for pointing out my worldview is entirely wrong and I’m an asshole in those exact words.”
You can get people to realize they’re wrong, but calling them names is exactly the wrong way to do it.
I say “talk to a conservative in conservative language” and they’ll understand you. Avoid “trigger” words like redistribution, socialism, LGBT+, etc… use words like “Liberty, freedom of expression, government overreach (when discussing infringement of LGBT+ rights) etc…”
i feel like sometimes people forget the little username in their phone represents a living breathing life that may or may not have had breakfast this morning :(
”Both options are cliffs!”
But they are though.
The cliff drivers aren’t getting off the bus, even if we vote them down this time, if we don’t change the system that allows them equal opportunity to drive us off a cliff they will eventually force it off the cliff.
Biden has long supported the system that allows it, prides himself on being able to find a middle ground with them, and though he talks about not going over the cliff has no long term plan for dealing with those that do, because again he believes in the system that allows them to want to drive off the cliff.
I believe I’ve stretched this metaphor about as far as it will go, but I’m going to try stretching it further.
There are actually two cliffs, fascism and climate change, even if we pull the bus away from one cliff we’ve still got the other in front of us and basically no one is even pretending to deal with that.
And to leave the broken bus scenario, I’m just going to say if you believe that a trump win will destroy American democracy, that we can’t defeat his corrupt, senile version of fascism then the next republican demagogue will have no problems.
People keep acting like we have forever to make change. Meanwhile we are in the midst of a literal climate crisis, and people are literally starving to death with the help of U.S. dollars.
There are actually two cliffs
Yeah, and Trump is going to drive you off of both.
If you think that trump is capable of that then you admit the American system is so flawed that a diaper wearing dementia ridden criminal is all it will take to bring it down. That Pax Americana is on the death bed and electing Biden is just kicking the can down the road.
Without the looming existential threat of the climate apocalypse and the inevitability of children born today fighting in the water wars, Biden might be fine, but we need action now and anything else isn’t just lesser of two evils, it’s complete failure in our lifetimes…
The problem is that “moderates” are very conservative and fascist-leaning as well. The Biden administration is still funding genocide, still turning away asylum-seeking migrants, hell Biden hasn’t even followed through on releasing prisoners convicted of marijuana convictions.
And people ARE protesting now, but not as much as under Trump, and these things haven’t changed. Biden allows barely engaged liberals to think everything is okay, but Biden is still AWFUL he just has better optics to liberals.
Here’s the fucking frighting thing, the moderates I know(relatives mostly) hate Biden because of the price of gas and groceries, that he isn’t killing everyone trying to cross the southern border, and believe Trump will be better for America in these crazy times. It’s fucking depressing to hear
This is what I’m saying - the moderates fucking suck and it’s not worth trying to win them over. Move the party left, the zombified vote-blue-no-matter-who Democrats will vote for a more leftist candidate just like they vote for a more moderate candidate.
I agree with your goal and the spirit of what you’re saying completely, but we’re kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. Unless something completely unexpected like multiple age related deaths or a violent revolt happens there are only two candidates with any chance of attaining the office. Which means we have to make a choice. A choice I hate making but I want to continue to make choices in the future so it’s one I have to make.
I do understand that take and desire for harm reduction. I am a trans person and my and my friend’s rights are constantly politicized by both parties. But even under Biden, trans people are actively being targeted in certain states, and under Trump, trans rights were strengthened in other states. The president can only (or chooses to only) do so much. But things the president can change include foreign policy, military actions… so I think refusing to vote for Biden over the issues he has the most direct power over is absolutely appropriate.
I believe that voting third party could enable long term change, and that voting for Biden is perpetuating the system that is already causing so much harm.
Yeah, I agree that it’s a shit situation and an undesirable choice. But the unfortunate political reality we currently live in is that it’s either Biden or Trump.
Yes, the Biden administration is supplying weapons to Israel that are being used for genocide. Trump has commented that Israel needs to “finish the problem.”
Yes, the Biden administration is turning away asylum seekers on our southern border. Trump has said that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of our nation.
I challenge your last point regarding marijuana convictions: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/06/statement-from-president-biden-on-marijuana-reform/
But I will again will contrast that Trump rescinded the Obama-era policy of not pursuing marijuana charges at the federal level in states where it was legal. A clear and significant step backward.
That Christian Nationalist USA is already present. It’s emboldening is inevitable due to the inaction from Democrats and especially Biden: the alleged “moderate” president.
Biden is also actively arming a genocide in Gaza. A move I would say is extremely far from moderate in any position. Trump is a horrible choice for president. It was true in 2016 and it’s true now. But if Biden refuses to do even the barest of minimums to defeat him in an election what does that say about Biden?
So sure, call it smugness, call it idiotic or whatever bullshit; continue to vilify those tired of voting for bullshit candidates and inaction. I’m sure that will help prove your point; as Biden does literally nothing to combat any of increasingly tense situations rising in the US under his tenure.
Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not thrilled about the situation either.
But I’m also not going to coddle anyone that thinks making things significantly worse for untold millions to maintain some kind of ideological purity makes them somehow superior or less culpable.
I wouldn’t water opposing genocide down to “ideological purity”. It’s opposing genocide, and that’s objectively right every time.
And that’s before getting into Joe’s inaction on pretty much any important issues during his term. If Trump wins the 2024 election then outside of the GOP that’s entirely on Joe Biden for failing to oppose genocide and run any sort of compelling administration.
The reality of the shitty political system of the US means that it comes down to two bad choices.
However one of the bad choices would see the genocide of the Palestinian people accelerated. Not only that, but Trump has tried to oppose aid to Ukraine, which would allow for genocide of the Ukrainian people to occur unabated.
So if your actions to oppose one genocide results in the continuation of that genocide plus one more, is what you did objectively right every time?
Yes, it is still objectively right. Anyone deciding not to vote for Biden isn’t automatically culpable for any Trump victory unless they voted for him personally.
Again, Biden has had plenty of time to prove that he’s against genocide. To take any sort of major action to try and stop this genocide from continuing the way that it has. Or at the very least taking away all US military funding from Israel. He has done none of that while approving additional military funding for Israel.
This is of course before bringing up the electoral college and how the majority of states don’t even get a say in the presidential election outside of their states predetermined answer.
I will not vote for anyone funding genocide. Again, if Trump wins that’s entirely on Biden and the Democrats for failing to do anything. The signs have been here for months if not years in terms of voter disatisfaction: and they continue to do fuck all.
Yes, it is still objectively right. Anyone deciding not to vote for Biden isn’t automatically culpable for any Trump victory unless they voted for him personally.
This is an incredibly naïve and privileged perspective, clearly held by someone who has nothing to lose if Trump were to win.
All the anarkiddies that think the revolution is right around the bend forget that the reason vulnerable groups dont typically get any better treatment post revolution is bc they are the first to be destroyed when the revolution kicks up and the fascists double down.
These sorts of takes kill me. There is nothing stopping you from taking revolutionary courses of action right fucking now. The doors wide fucking open. Youll find that those doors will inch closed real fucking quick under trump.
The Spanish anarchists still have a political party active in Spain whose history runs right back to the civil war in which they fought. The very second of their posted tenets is (paraphrasing), making conditions under the current agenda more tolerable.
Meanwhile, russia has a single communist party formed in the 90s. Why? Bc all others were singularly crushed. They left the one that offers least opposition to the status quo.
That situation hasnt arrived yet. You are free to organize, you are free to aggregate in groups. You can spread your own propaganda, just as you can form or join labor unions, and you are free to try and create new communities of mutual aid. Those are all viable (read: necessary) steps to take.
Good luck taking them when the boot comes crashing down harder than this country has ever seen or was ever prepared for. Voting for Status Quo Joe isnt an endorsement of him, his policies, or the neoliberal status quo. Its just that, a vote. You can use it strategically to buy more time to make evasive maneuvers, or u can forfeit ur vote and lose it all. Then theres always throw it to the dogs via third party the way the american libertarians tried in 2012 when ron paul didnt get the repub nom the way they wanted. Guess what happened then… Johnson still get way under the 5% of the vote needed to give third parties greater tv time next time around. And this time, if dump wins, thats probably going to be the last ur able to vote for a third party president anyway.
We (the left) have been hit by foreign astroturfing the way the right was in 2016. The influx of youth that was supposed to save us by their leftward skew is running away from the political process bc they think theyre going to be revolutionaries. Sorry boys and girls, anarchy/communism wont be brought about by memes, sitting at home, or pretending that you can convince ppl to join ur cause after trumps elected when their lives are going to be all the more consumed and their free time dwindles away as we all work heavier and heavier hrs and the retirement age slips further and further away.
Really sick of hearing it all.
Biden is president now and trans kids rights are being taken away, black people still disproportionately victimized by police violence, asylum seeking immigrants turned away at the border, and we are funding genocide!!!
It’s naive to think that Biden and the Democratic Party has any incentive to change their policies when people will blindly vote them in no matter what they do.
I’m actively watching the rights of my loved one literally be stripped away while Biden does fuck all. You can call me whatever you want, but the point remains that Biden has done fuck all and is actively promoting genocide.
You don’t know the first thing about me; so don’t condescend to me while ignoring everything else I’ve said.
you can do so much more to defeat the reactionaries by visiting:
- a gym
- a shooting range
- a library
- your local revolutionary organization’s meeting
than a polling station
It’s so weird to see it framed as an either/or. Voting is the absolute bare minimum you can do to participate. So yeah go vote, and also organize your friends and network with like minded people around you and work towards the change you want. I doubt any of the ideologically pure abstainers here have even ever turned out to vote much less actually worked on a campaign.
People frame it as an either/or because the reality is that voting doesn’t hold the personal power you think it does.
Due to how our elections work your vote just might be worthless. Add on all of the other issues at hand, and the prospective of voting is absolutely depressing for some of us.
This still doesn’t really make it an either/or situation, but one situation gives you the ability to potentially make a positive difference in the world, whereas the other, not so much.
ITT: people calling for revolution who will never do a damn thing about it. It’s easy to pretend violence is the answer when you’ll never participate, let alone start something.
Way too many of these chucklefucks just want to LARP as pure and radical revolutionaries. My wife and I are disabled and live on a fixed income of her disability payments and the SNAP program. If this “revolution” they want so bad does come, then we’re among the most likely to just fucking starve in the disruption. I’m also one of the people the GOP declared they want to “Eradicate from Public Life” with Project 2025.
Now, I’m not much of a Genocide Enjoyer. I think it’s one of the worst things you can do in fact. But I also don’t take too kindly to being effectively told that I specifically should just die because these wannabe revolutionaries refuse to entertain a world where we both vote for Biden to keep Trump from destroying democracy more than the GOP already has (harm reduction), AND engage in direct action to push Biden away from blindly supporting Israel.
Refusing to vote for a genocide supporter IS a form of direct activism.
Ah yes. Direct action. Famously done by checks notes Not doing something. So brave.
Not doing something would be to continue to vote for a president who is funding a genocide.
Nah, I’m good. I’ll continue to vote for Biden because he’s infinitely more likely to be swayed to stop the genocide than Trump who if I’m not mistaken has literally expressed a desire to accelerate the genocide on top of all the other heinous shit in Project 2025.
You can hate me all you want for not lining my family up to starve to death in “muh glorious revolution” or to lose our means of continuing to live when Trump tries to gut the Social Security that my family lives off of, or the SNAP benefits that feed us, or however they decide they want to eradicate my disabled trans ass from public life. Call me selfish for wanting myself and my family to continue living in addition to doing what I can to stop the genocide. I really don’t care. LARP away my dude.
How does voting for someone who is funding a genocide going to sway that person to stop funding it? It’s just illogical. There are plenty of Democrats who are active Zionists and support the war, probably a fair number are wealthy donors. The only way to sway the policy of the Democratic party is to threaten to their power.
I don’t think you’re selfish, and I don’t hate you lol, I just think you’re not seeing the enormous potential of forming a leftist voting coalition. Imagine how amazing it would be if the Democratic Party was trying to cater to the votes of leftists, and not to “moderates” who think that an openly white nationalist candidate is a viable potential option.
That would be fantastic, I’d love it if the Democrats would stop doing what they’ve been doing the last 30+ years of punching left and chasing the “Moderates” rightward. But let’s think about this logically for a minute. What are the possible outcomes of what you’re proposing?
- Coalition Victory. We install an actual leftist in the White House. Fantastic. No more Genocide. We have a little socialism as a treat maybe? No notes. I love it. But that means we have right now about 7 months to produce or align behind a 3rd party candidate, one who likely won’t be allowed on the ballot in several states, Then that candidate has to get enough votes to beat BOTH Biden and Trump meaning they basically have to pull at least like 18% of the vote from both sides in enough states to win the Electoral College.
- Trump Victory. Considerably less fantastic. Democrats blame the Leftists for Biden’s loss as usual. Okay, we threatened their power and now maybe we can convince them that they need us to win in 2028 rather than them moving even further right as they have since Clinton. But meanwhile we still haven’t stopped the Genocide, Donnie’s probably gonna attempt to speedrun it in fact, we’ve got Project 2025 to worry about. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Gaza’s going to last until 2028.
- Biden Victory. Not as bad as Trump winning. Genocide is still happening in Gaza, unlike Trump he at least might be able to be convinced to end the genocide in a sense other than the Completionist one. Only now we’ve proven to the Democrats that they don’t need the leftists at all actually and they’re free to move as far right as they wish. So maybe we even lose that.
Maybe we get incredibly lucky and Trump gets screwed over by these prosecutions and splits the GOP thus lowering the threshold for us to get an actual Leftist in? I’m not sure we can count on it with how the Judiciary is bending over backwards to try to delay these prosecutions until the election where presumably they’d all “have to get put on hold because it’s looks bad to be putting a presidential candidate on trial.” Y’know, that old chestnut.
Realistically, we have to reckon with the fact that First Past the Post Winner Take All Voting and the Electoral College screws us here. There’s a reason these systems mathematically tend towards a 2 party system. It’s incredibly frustratingly difficult, nigh on mathematically impossible to break through the tendency for Strategic Voting that this system breeds. It’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but on a massive scale. A scale where we can only afford what, maybe a hundred thousand people getting scared and bailing on the plan at most for us all to get the worst possible outcome?
Also easy to call for “harm reduction” when you’re not the one being exterminated as part of the remaining “harm”
What group of voters would be exterminated under Biden?
Who said anything about voters?
Then it should be easy for every voter to call for harm reduction.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
That’s a pretty selfish thing to say. To borrow from the stupid metaphor, I don’t want the driver to continue to run people over on the way to the ice cream parlor
Not in America, but I’m trans and have a number of trans friends in the states who are really scared right now. I live in Australia and have participated in pro-Palestine protests (if that’s who you’re implying with that). I loathe Biden, I think he’s a shitty old white dude, and I wish y’all could do better. But if protesting against Biden allows Trump to be elected, then there WILL be far worse consequences, both domestically and abroad. Thousands of trans people will lose their lives, and countless more will lose access to life-saving care. He will likely cut off support to Ukraine considering how he’s ingratiated himself to Putin before. He hasn’t indicated he’d stop supporting Israel either.
But if protesting against Biden allows Trump to be elected, then there WILL be far worse consequences
That’s 100% on Biden for being a legit protest target, not on the individuals with a moral compass who are pointing out his issues.
If we don’t want our non-fascist option to be protested against because it means they lose then there should be a better choice available
Well too bad. This is what we got. Either join the rest of us in reality or become yet another person helping fascists seize power.
helping fascists seize power.
See my other comment, I’m not doing that at all.
Stay mad, it’s funny
I’m sorry, but I genuinely think that’s reductive and stupid. In Australia, I get to have a choice. And every time I’ve voted, I exercised that choice to put someone other than our Democrats equivalent first on my ballot. Knowing my vote would still flow to them before electing someone who would rather see me dead. You don’t get to have that choice, and you can blame your founding father’s and the various people in control of your government since for that fact. But if you choose not to vote because Biden isn’t good enough, you are making a conscious choice towards fascism.
God. I called it in June 2016 and I’m calling it again now. Y’all are going to end up with Trump again because of people like you. And it’s going to fucking suck to be an Aussie online again for four years. Probably bloody longer.
Edit: It’s not even like 2016 where some people were sounding warning bells that Trump was going to be fascist. He’s been your president before this time around. You have seen what he is capable of, watched as he interfered with the peaceful transfer of power. If he takes office again, from my perspective, it will be the end of democracy in your country. You won’t get that choice again. At least not for a while and not without a lot of suffering first.
you are making a conscious choice towards fascism.
It’s fun to watch people write paragraphs of shit acting like they’ve got a point and then say something this objectively stupid because they don’t actually know what they’re on about.
I live in California, if I chose to not vote I’m making a conscious choice to support Biden, as that is who my states electoral votes are going to. If I chose to vote for any third party it’s the same outcome. Only if I explicitly vote for Trump (or another potential fascist) am I actually supporting fascism
But what if too many of you Californians think that and Biden loses?!
I can assure you that’s not happening here, though I’ve seen so many people online try to fear monger that it might. If t actually were a threat I’d get in lock-step for Biden to prevent fascism, but it’s not so I won’t.
if enough Californians opposed genocide to make it so that Biden didn’t get the California electoral votes, imagine the impact. seriously. it would be unprecedented.
Not voting is lazy in most circumstances for sure. What I hate is that people equate voting third party with not voting. I’m not voting blue. Y’all can’t guilt me into it. I’m voting for a third party socialist. 😏
i gently would encourage you to look into game theory and the far reaching implications of the spoiler effect under first past the post
i do applaud your commitment to morally tenable candidates, however many folks find there is a deeper opportunity for good in the voting process, at least in the current environment, and i generally concur
I appreciate you being nice. I understand the concern you have with the spoiler effect. But our country has been stuck in this lesser evil game for my whole life. That being said I also live in a very blue state. If my state were to go red it won’t be because of the few people like that vote third party.
You have to change the voting system if you want to change the game. I suggest volunteering with Election Science to switch your elections to Approval Voting, so you can vote for everyone you like, instead of just the person you hate least.
Yep I know. Sadly elected officials are needed to change the voting system so that’s largely unhelpful.
I’d love to have ranked choices voting. But like only the third party candidates would possibly do that. Candidates from team red or blue have nothing to gain by doing that and stand to lose everything by doing it.
They’re not needed in every jurisdiction. In some places you can change the voting method through referendum. It does suck when you can’t do that though. I still like approval voting over rcv, but anything is better than choose one.
