Saw this in hexbear memes yesterday. To me it reads as a satire of the holier than thou attitudes I see around here. But it also had no downvotes and nobody was challenging it, so I wonder if it reads differently to you, and how if so.
I tried asking the OP but I was told not to expect discussion in the memes community
Is the "holier than thou attitude" refusing to be Hitler lite?
It's valuing spiritual cleanliness (intellectual opposition to genocide) as much, if not more than material effects of real world actions. Or in the case of this meme, acting as if choosing an unrelated empty track is morally superior to pulling a lever that controls nothing.
I don't intend to change anyone's minds, I just thought the meme was too on the nose to be genuine
It depends on your perspective. From our perspective, we're powerless people who are on the extreme fringes of politics, completely alienated from actually holding power. We are totally opposed to genocide and horrified at the people who are willing to cut a deal and do 1% less genocide.
If you look at it from the perspective of someone who thinks 1% less genocide is an acceptable value proposition, the communists are the unreasonable ones. The meme looks like it's parodying them, because they don't see why 1% less genocide is actually a great deal.
But the truth is, even the people who wanted 1% less genocide didn't have power either.
If the lever controls nothing, by which you probably mean elections in which case I totally agree, then doesn't that also mean that the material effects of pulling it don't exist?
This isn't a democracy and capitalists will still do what capital needs after the election. If that is genocide, then genocide it is. Real change cannot happen from within capitalist institutions, it happens by workers organizing.
Even if elections did matter, what exactly have the Democrats done to prove that they aren't willing to do just as much as their counterparts? The "debates" were literally a contest of who is more willing to spend more on the war machine, instead of things like public health and housing, things that the working class really need and care about.