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Americans dont know how to fight
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2026
816 points (86.8% liked)
Late Stage Capitalism
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No, its not. Liberals just imagine it is whenever anyone points out how the Democrats suck.
Yes it is, I have had an argument several times with .ml folks who articulated that voting legitimised the system making you culpable for its shortcomings.
Very common around election season, I think the first time I heard it was actually last midterm in 2022.
Hell there are 3 comments on this post saying don't vote. There's no ambiguity they aren't saying voting isn't enough, in no uncertain terms they are saying don't vote.
Is there an argument to be made that the ratcheting mechanisms of FPTP skew the results towards the lesser of two evils? Absolutely, especially at the presidential level.
Where that is less true is the midterms and municipal elections. We've seen proof that we can have real progressives like Mamdani and we need even more like Abdul El-Sayed. Progressive policy is popular and any movement needs allies.
I'm not saying don't protest, I'm not even going to say do it peacefully but voting still has it's place.
Please cite your examples.
No, thank you, you are very capable of reading through this very low comment post to find them. I'm not going to litigate reality with you.
Yes, but I don’t know which ones you’re referring to so in order to have a productive conversation I need to know specifically what you’re referring to.
This is not the first time I’ve seen this conversation play out like this.
Or in the rare instance where the liberal does actually cite a source, the source isn’t saying what the liberal is saying they said.
I will continue to believing this is self-soothing delusion by liberals until they can provide some evidence for their claims.
Like, What you’re saying is so grossly untrue you don’t even want to take an opportunity to cherry pick someone saying something not broadly supported by leftists?
You think needing to provide evidence for your claims is satire? It seems like a pretty basic thing to ask someone.
It's just that I offered you the same proof you ordered me, none, which is fine, we are sharing lived experience on social media.
However, It comes off arrogant, almost as if you're saying "my reality is objectively correct and everyone else's is delusional unless they take time out of their life to write me a dissertation."
Believe me or don't but you need to practice what you preach
Great! I believe you when you say you don’t consider yourself a liberal and I respect that. As not a “liberal” I would think you understand how its pretty annoying to constantly see your beliefs being misrepresented on this forum.
In that spirit I think it’s a pretty low bar to copy and paste a link to your source for why you believe what you say you believe. You’ve written several paragraphs, that’s already much more effort than what I’ve asked.
Edit: I will add to this whether or not you consider yourself to be a liberal, you are taking the liberal position.
It's a liberal position to express that people have argued with me about whether voting makes you culpable or not?
I did not misrepresent your beliefs because I never once tried to say that you hold those beliefs.
You made a claim that plays into those narratives then refused to back up those claims with any evidence.
Look, its fine, its easy to fall into reactionary narratives, it can happen to anyone, they can be like a warm blanket at times… its comfortable to tell yourself… “If everyone votes the right way everything will be fine, its the evil leftist tankies ruining everything”… Perhaps you don’t fully even buy into that narrative, but you clearly bought into part of it. Everything won’t be fine even if everyone votes the right way, and more realistically everyone won’t vote the right way no matter how much we argue about it on Lemmy.
Appreciate you engaging with me today, try to consider my arguments without feeling personally attacked. These narratives are put out there by powerful forces trying to divide us.
Your arguments are immaterial to interactions with other people though. You may have a perfectly reasonable position, that's never what I was talking about and I'm not interested in you moving the goal posts on someone else's argument.
I’m not moving the goal post. I litterally repeated what I said in my first (long) post in terms that sound more understanding to your position.
If anything you’re moving the goalpost by saying your opinion is more complicated than what you origianally posted. Which I have tried to take in good faith.
At this point, I gotta be honest I’m more flabbergasted by the idea that anyone actually thinks it’s a compelling response to say “no copying and pasting links is hard” to “the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim” than anything else.
I don't owe you proof of an anecdote. Something clearly felt by the community given the reactions to this post. Again none of this is about you, so you cannot defend it, it if about .ml users in my case and maybe others from everyone else. Regardless you're asserting that everyone has collective hysteria rather than engaging with the possibility that people hold those opinions.
You do if you want to defend the claim you made. We’re going in circles, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. This is like first week of rhetoric 101 stuff here.
Right, like I already said, it’s a self soothing narrative for liberals, that’s why they buy into your claims even while you’re openly saying you aren’t going to provide evidence for your claims.
Maybe getting a little deeper into will help you to understand the point I’m getting at. I kind of wanted to avoid getting this deep into this because its honestly pretty heavy and complicated and there are a lot of moving parts. I am defending the ml’s position, you just don’t understand the ml position.
This may seem like a strange place to start but I think if I start with a simplier example you’re primed to understand maybe you’ll see more of what I’m saying.
The self soothing thing — it’s ideological function is the same thing as MAGA saying immigrants are criminals. Sure you can find examples of immigrants committing crimes, but on average immigrants commit less crimes than native born citizens.
So why do they buy into this narrative about immigrants being criminals? You could say racism and that is absolutely part of it. But almost more importantly if the immigrants aren’t the problem that means conservatives and republican leaders are a big part of the problem or even more scary maybe capitalism is part of the problem. They can’t accept that, so they scapegoat immigrants. It's pretty simple psychology to understand in this case.
To start the parallel the democrats are also part of the problem. But liberals can’t accept that in the same way that conservatives their leaders are part of the problem.
So what is the failure that liberals can’t accept about their leaders? Well, Biden then later Harris funded the genocide in Gaza, that cost them Michigan, there was no path for the democrats to win the presidency in 2024 without Michigan. It was the same in 2020 and 2016.
Let’s get into the specifics of why Kamala couldn’t win Michigan. In Dearborn, Michigan there is a large Palestian-sympathetic Arab community. People who literally have family members in Gaza.
Here’s the meat and potatoes of the point I’m trying to get to. There is nothing you can say to someone who is actively having a genocide committed against their family to get them to vote for the person funding the genocide. Michigan was gone if Biden and later Harris didn’t change on this issue, the election was over before it started.
The response to this situation was the uncommitted movement. The uncommitted movement —which was largely organized by the Arab community in Dearborn— was uncommitted to vote for the democratic candidate if the candidate didn’t change course on the issue of the genocide in Gaza. They voted ‘uncommitted’ on the 2024 democratic primary ballot, they had an impressive turnout. Definitely enough that Biden/Harris should have taken it seriously.
The ‘tankie’ response to the uncommitted movement was to have solidarity with the Palestian-Dearborn community and put more pressure on the democratic candidate try to get them to change course. The liberal response was basically to scream VOTE at ‘tankies’ and refuse to engage with the problem, kinda similar to what has happened on this thread.
If instead the liberals had taken the time to listen to the more complicated and nuanced point ‘tankies’ and put more pressure on Harris, she might changed course and she might be president today. So contrary to the narrative that was implied by your little comment the ‘tankies’ were actually doing more to try to help Harris win than the liberals were. Not necessarily by voting but by putting the pressures on Harris in ways that she needed to get over the finish line.
Back to the self soothing, it’s an attempt by liberals to wash their hands of their complicity in this genocide, “its not my fault its those “tankies” posting “don’t vote” on social media made Harris loose” they say to themselves. It’s the same scapegoating behavior that conservatives engage in. It’s bullshit.
I understand this very heavy shit, you probably want to reject everything I’ve said, and you’ll probably find a way to rationalize doing so. But everything I’m saying is true.
Seems like a false dichotomy, it seems like its probably both to me. These are deeply held beliefs that many people have very good reason to be hysterical about.
You should look up the motte and bailey fallacy.
Respectfully, no I don't. Because the validity of my claim is not in question because the only relevance it has to my assertion is whether or not I talked to ml folks with that opinion and I'm not digging back through years of DMS to find it for you. So again, take my word for it or don't. I'm fine if you don't believe me.
We've both wasted enough time and you just litetially called everyone else delusional so that's a logical stopping point. If you have more I will read it but I will not reply.
Its OK I think its better we both stop running around circles in this discussion too.