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Just vote to change things.
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Last election the choice was between Palestinian genocide and Palestinian genocide. You are smoking crack if you think the oligarchy is ever going to provide you with a meaningful choice to loosen their hold on you through the civic ritual of voting.
This line is smoking gun proof that everyone in this thread trying to engage with you is talking exclusively over your head.
I take it that means you disagree. Well congratulations, your orange man won. Was it worth it?
Bro you've been reduced to yelling "This is what you wanted!!!" at the people telling you none of this was necessary, it's pathetic. Every day liberals prove there is no bottom to how low they will go to drown out their conscience and prject their guilt
Well, you got your "pragmatic" genocide and then some. You got your guy in to stop Trump, and he immediately shit the bed. Hindenburg preceeds Hitler. Here we are again. You've learned nothing.
Is it not what you wanted? It's what you're advocating for.
Wholeheartedly agree, but necessary or not, it is inevitable as long as we allow evil people to run the world. Yes that includes Biden and Harris. It also includes Trump.
The "pragmatic" genocide didn't include the "and then some". That second bit is the one you asked for.
My guy got primaried. No one's guy got in to stop Trump: that orange traitor still hasn't been stopped.
Ah, you must be talking about Biden. Yeah fuck that guy.
Here we are. And no, so far I haven't learned shit. Are you the teacher in this scenario? Cuz so far you've taught nothing. My proposal was to utilize your vote - literally that's it - and so far that's only attracted propaganda about how doing so won't get us systemic change. ...but like... no shit? You gotta do bigger things than just voting to get that. But still do vote. You know you can do that, right? Voting, and other things? The ballot box doesn't lock you out of other actions.
Please let the previous election go. It’s over. Nobody here is advocating for or against what’s already in the rear view mirror. And anyway, what we said on Lemmy last year had fuck-all effect on the election. Let’s “optimistically” say we affected 1,000 votes. Trump didn’t win by a hair’s breadth. What we said didn’t materially matter w/r/t/ the election. And that’s not even what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to agitate & educate people to think beyond/outside of the election cycle, and to break people out of myopic electoralism.
All the people advocating for "less evil" always end up destroying their own argument by immediately descending into apologism and denial to defend that evil. I'm not going to "vote for the lesser evil" if doing so turns me into a genocide denying ghoul, which it certainly has for everyone I've seen advocating it.
Yeah, that's the problem with Trump: he's not loyal enough to the nation that you yourself have admitted has a bipartisan commitment to genocide. This is like condemning Himmler for being a traitor to Nazi Germany. Seriously, you just can't stop yourself from giving up the game: you don't actually think the Democrats are "lesser evil", you don't think they're evil at all.
He’s not our man. Previously:
The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
No, he's not. Despite that, there sure are a lot of folks here who were eager to hand him the keys of the country, and continue to to defend their choice.
Mostly agree, with the caveat that it's not all pomp and circumstance, only mostly pomp and circumstance. Take genocide for example, which seems to be the theme of the thread: we didn't get the choice of no genocide, our only options were more vs less. Those are shitty options, but if we have that wiggle room, it's worth voting for less in order to prevent more. Damage mitigation. Still genocide, still shitty options, but tangibly distinct options.
We're given a crumb of freedom - use it. It's the only official voice we've got.
Fortunately there lots of other options too - everything from shouting into the void like I'm doing here in this thread, to throwing molotovs at Nazis: each tool comes with its own risk-to-impact ratio. Voting is low impact, but it's safe and (for most people) accessible. It's the bare minimum.
There's a lot of strawman in this thread against the non-existent argument of voting and only voting. I'm with you on that one: that would be fucking stupid. But that's not what I'm advocating for.
Trump already has the keys. That ship has sailed. If he has a third term it will be through extralegal measures, not the ballot box.
Correct. That's what I'm bitching about.
Whether it would have been a “lesser” genocide is unfalsifiable. We’ll never really know. But I don’t have the faith in it that you have. I’m not sure what a more competent genocidal administration would have done.
Consider what many US Palestinians did: threaten to withhold their votes if Harris didn’t say there was at least some daylight between herself and Biden regarding Gazans. And she wouldn’t even do that much.
But that’s how you use the vote, if you use it at all. You use it as leverage. If the Democrats know you’ll “vote Blue no matter who” or “vote Blue no matter what,” then they’ll ignore you altogether, because you’re already in their pocket. You’ve made yourself irrelevant.
Correct. But I'm confident the Harris administration wouldn't have taking the swan-dive that Trump's did. Same with all the other evils he's committed outside the scope of genocide: bad under Harris, worse under Trump. Given what we know about the two, that assumption seems pretty reasonable. If you disagree, well like you said, that comes to which candidate we have less faith in. For me, Trump is the obvious rock-bottom worst outcome, but I can't compare to an administration that never happened, so speculate as you will.
Half correct. Withholding votes won't get their attention - we've seen that play out again and again. Democrats would rather lose than change. If you want their attention and real change, you'll need to do things other than vote.
If neither withholding nor not withholding will get their attention, then you’re making an even stronger case against voting’s worth than I am.
Can we please ban this genocide denier?
You genocide denying scum. The genocide was just as bad under Biden, who Harris promised to emulate. Your lie that there was some kind of "swandive" is genocide denying bullshit
Flagrantly false. Gaza has been leveled since Biden left. Not leveled vs leveled =/= just as bad.
Gaza was leveled while Biden was in office you genocide denying scum
Guy got totally lost in their argument.
I don't know but I think at least 90% of the thread is exactly that, vote alone can't solve shit
Mate, everyone told you people that Democrats would lose if they didn't change tact, but you refused. You were the ones who eagerly handed Trump the keys to the country!
No, you were just a genocide denier when it was your team doing it. It took Trump winning for you to actually admit the extent of the genocide.
Mate, I was one of the people saying Democrats would lose if they didn't change tact. But I still advocated against Trump. The Democrats handed the election to him on a silver platter. Fucking twice. But I still advocated against Trump.
Also incorrect. I bit my tongue during the election (did I mention the bit about advocating against Trump?) but was and remain opposed to genocide regardless of who's in power.
Oh, I thought leftists on Lemmy handed him the election. And hear you are now, doing the thing that BlueMAGA keeps telling me made Trump win.
100% correct. You're up and down this thread making the false claim that Democrats were less supportive of the Palestinian genocide.
Except for the part where you will engage in genocide minimisation to defend the Democrats.
So you knowingly voted to throw Palestinians under the extermination bus, is that it? And you consider yourself to be on the right side of history? And you never considered that perhaps your slavish ideological devotion to following the rules of a fascist political system was slow-boiling you into a fascist?
You're talking about the ten years of ethnic cleansing the Ukranian nazi government was doing to ethnic Russians within its borders, right? You wouldn't possibly consider yourself to be against genocide while supporting these guys, right? Because nobody could possibly be that deluded, right? Tell me you're not that programmed.
The bus was already headed for the Palestinians, and we were well past the point of being able to stop it. I voted to make a last ditch effort to turn the wheel toward the part of the crowd with the fewest people. YOU voted to step on the gas.
When did I say to follow the rules? I said use all the tools we've got - whether those tools are legal or not, idgaf. Voting happens to be legal, so yay I guess, but that's not why you should do it.
Why would any of that change my opinion of being against killing the people of Ukraine? Russia's obviously doing some horrible shit, but I'd be against a genocide on them too. Same with Israel or any other nation that's decided to play the villain - none of that shit justifies attacking their civilians. ...is this really a controversial take?
You are doing the thing right now. The other choice is "none of those things," actually, and you don't get that by voting harder because as you've just demonstrated you were not given the choice. Is any genocide acceptable to you? The line is never "less genocide," it is "no genocide."
Liberals can have a little genocide, as a treat.
There was a choice. Primaries. Americans rejected every option of no genocide, so the final round had genocide A or genocide B. Same way that they rejected Bernie Sanders a few times.
At that point, the lesser evil position is which ever will destroy the USs ability to do genocide the fastest
Yeah, the problem with empires is they can only destroy themselves, usually. Which they are on a tremendous path of doing.
ie: the lesser evil position is just Accelerationism
All that does is allow the other voters to make the decision on your behalf - but it's still a dichotomy. We need a fuckton of systemic change before it'll be anything else. You can opt out or vote for a spoiler, but until we see that change it's going to red or blue every time. So why not use your vote for damage control while pushing for real change with your other tools?
What's acceptable to me vs not doesn't determine our options. The only line was between 'more genocide' and 'less genocide'. I wish 'no genocide' was an option, but that's not the reality we live in. Given those options, I'll choose 'less genocide' every time. The majority of our voters disagree, and with the help of propaganda like yours, they succeeded - YOU succeeded - in choosing 'more genocide'. Congrats. Was it worth it?
It's extremely telling that even you "lesser evil" BlueMAGA types can't being yourselves to actually be honest about what you supported: you have to make up this bullshit white washed version of the Democrats that wasn't entirely all in on genocide. Clearly even you know the lesser evil position as it actually exists is indefensible.
You're projecting. Y'all need to get that under control.
Where did I say that? They just don't have the same affinity for it as Republicans, so between the two, blue team is the wildly obvious choice if you want to minimize the suffering.
Correct. The lesser evil is still evil. But contrasted against a greater evil and locked into a dichotomy, the lesser gets my vote despite being indefensible.
If you had me tied up and held a loaded gun to my head and offered the choice of either pulling the trigger or using it to pistol-whip me, your actions would be indefensible either way, but one stands out as significantly worse than the other, so I'll choose the pistol-whip. I'll also be doing other things like trying to fidget my way out of the ties, but I can do that in addition to choosing the lesser evil of a shitty dichotomy.
Alright, fuck off. If you're going to just start sprouting random pre-loaded accusations like this that don't even apply to the context at hand, I'm just going to tell you to fuck off back to reddit and not read the rest of your post.
They're called logical fallacies. The one you just used is called a false dilemma. If you don't like me drawing attention to them, I'd recommend refraining from using them.
Oh my God, is there anything more obnoxious that reddit debate lords that have the Wikipedia list of logical fallacies open in another tab, but never bother to actually learn what they mean, so they just copy paste them like they're magical debate incantations that win arguments.
And no, "projection" is not a logical fallacy, you absolute dumb ass. Accusing people of it to dismiss their argument is though, you fucking idiot. Go back to Reddit, for fucks sake.
Ad hominem
No, an ad hominem is when you attack someones character as a way to dismiss your arguments: like when you tried to dismiss mine by bleating "projection".
I'm not calling you an insufferable reddit shitheal, who spurts copy pasted logical fallacies from Wikipedia because they think they're magic spells, to discredit your argument. I'm calling you that because that's what you are.
😂
The sound of a punch that breaks glasses
You people really are hell bent on reducing the word "genocide" to meaninglessness