They aren't the "harm reduction" party though. They are the "A lot of harm" party, and they are trying to scare you by saying that the other party, the "Potentially even more harm" party is worse.
Would you rather be shot in the arm or the leg? Which one? Obviously you'd rather neither one, but you MUST choose one. You must! And you must choose again in 4 years, where it will be your spine or your lung to choose from, but you MUST choose then as well.
I'm sorry, but participating in this system in the hopes that it "buys more time" for the libs to "wake up" is incredibly stupid. That's like participating in bashing someone up in the hopes that the other people bashing them will one day learn their lesson, while you're actively there, participating in the same actions as them. Don't you think that will just encourage them instead of waking them up?
If you want things to change, you start by making it clear that things need to change, instead of grumbling and accepting the status quo. Educating people on demanding more out of the system, (and hopefully much further than that) will do far, far more than just simply going along with the system and accepting the idea that being forced to pick between two actively genocidal parties is in any way acceptable. People vote because they, like yourself, seem to think that there is "no other option." Things will never change if this is how we operate. The way things change is by teaching people that there are alternatives, and they can actually demand things of their government, instead of grovelling and begging, but always falling in line.
Here's that Malcolm X clip again, since you must've missed it the last time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg3dr-o4_fc
I watched the video. I watched it again here. The problem for me is that Malcom X is talking about black folk. He is talking about their block and advocating for essentially self sacrifice at the hands of his "worse option" to make a point. I am not black. Nor am I queer. Nor am I a woman. I am not a target. It is not my sacrifice to give. It is not within my right I believe to tell someone who will suffer that it's necessary to make a point when I know for a fact that I will not suffer. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be a target. I cannot make that decision in good conscious because I am not the one who will pay that price.
How can you honestly be this dense? We've got a dozen people here, all telling you the same thing, and you refuse to get your head out of your own ass and listen to them. VOTING WILL NOT SAVE ANYONE. VOTING ONLY PROVIDES LEGITIMACY TO THIS CORRUPT AND BROKEN SYSTEM THAT HAS GOTTEN THIS BAD DUE TO THIS KIND OF COMPLACENCY. YOU ARE NOT A HERO FOR VOTING FOR A GENOCIDAL WAR CRIMINAL, EVEN IF HE IS GOING UP AGAINST ANOTHER GENOCIDAL WAR CRIMINAL. YOUR VOTE WILL CHANGE NOTHING, AND WILL DO NOTHING EXCEPT STROKE YOUR SMUG EGO. Fuck you.
Literally since the founding of the country we’ve never had 50% or more turnout. People who abstain from voting have been the majority in this country this whole time. If not voting fixed a broken system why isn’t it fixed if the majority already don’t vote?
Do you ever think about the reasons why voter turnout is so low here? Consider, by comparison, Cuba, which has over 90% voter turnout. What is different there to here? Why do so many more people (percentage-wise) vote in Cuba than in the US?
Instead of spending your time in here getting insulted (which is what is going to happen if you keep commenting in this thread), you might instead go research voting in Cuba. Try to answer for yourself why their voter turnout is so high. Then ask yourself if we here in the US can learn something from the way Cuba does politics.
Or you can stay here and get dunked on. You do you.
Nice of you to acknowledge that I’m mostly being insulted and dunked on, but if that was going to stop me from commenting why would I even use Lemmy, or any social media?
Voting in Cuba is pointless for national elections. It’s a one-party state so each candidate runs unopposed in their district. One-party states are bad. There is nothing the U.S. can learn from voting in Cuba, it is one of the least democratic countries in Latin America.
Voter turnout has been 88% or better in Australia since 1925. Why didn’t you list them as an example? Voter turnout is good there because voters are fined a few hundred dollars for not voting. They have a mandatory voting law. That could increase voter turnout in the United States, but if it didn’t come with rules that employers must give their employees time to vote, and states must have fair standards for registering to vote, then it would just be fining poor people for being poor.
Other things the United States could do to increase voter turnout: make Election Day on the weekend instead of a Tuesday, which was selected so farmers traveling by horse and buggy could get to the polls. We don’t have that many farmers anymore, much less ones that travel by horse and buggy. That’s really the only rule at the federal level on how states run elections, other rules to increase voter turnout would be implemented by individual states. Early voting, mail-in voting, the ability to register to vote when you’re interacting with a state office anyway, like when you get a driver’s license, or pay your taxes. Letting people vote after they’ve served their prison sentence. Letting people vote while serving their prison sentence. &c.
Voting in Cuba is pointless for national elections. It’s a one-party state so each candidate runs unopposed in their district. One-party states are bad. There is nothing the U.S. can learn from voting in Cuba, it is one of the least democratic countries in Latin America.
Ok, thanks for telling me who you are! I can now comfortably join the group of people telling you to fuck off back to reddit.
Man, you can't even name the elephant in the room filling the room with elephant shit: the electoral college makes voting for president outside of like 6 states entirely pointless, which would obviously have an effect on voter turnout. People tend to not want to waste their time voting in a sham election where the results are already decided. You've wasted your time in Hexbear posting a bunch of garbage for what? So people living in New York, Alabama, California, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Texas can be convinced to check Biden's name as if we don't already know who will win those states.
"Hexbear has had a track record of antisocial users who will do anything to get offended at anyone, for any reason." --Hexbear front page
OK, that explains a lot.
I left out abolishing the Electoral College because that would require a Constitutional amendment, which is much more difficult to do than get a bill through Congress, or a state bill through state congress, which is all those other solutions would require. Amending the Constitution is also a possible solution for any political problem in the United States, I thought it went without saying.
Fuck the Constitution, it was written by cracker slaveowners seeking to enrich themselves and create a cracker ethnostate.
I think the US needs to be dismantled and destroyed entirely. No names, monuments, or anything reminiscent of the US needs to be completely destroyed and thrown in the dustbin of history and it's physical lands returned to its original owners, because it's what it deserves, having it's entire history bathed in the blood of colonized people.
Voting in Cuba is pointless for national elections. It’s a one-party state so each candidate runs unopposed in their district. One-party states are bad. There is nothing the U.S. can learn from voting in Cuba, it is one of the least democratic countries in Latin America.
How can you just sit there and type "Cuba has elections where only one person is allowed to run for each office"? It's such a stupid thing to say, as though any country would willingly make an exhibition of its own falseness like that. You would do well to actually research Cuba instead of relying on information you got through cultural osmosis from tar-mongers in Miami. In Cuba, you run as a de-facto independent against everyone else, and indeed that includes challenging incumbents. I hope you weren't the same person pretending to be a communist elsewhere in the thread while spreading the most moronic misinformation about a country you've clearly never researched. Like, you know that the US, the entity that you've admitted was fascist as shit just earlier, has been slandering Cuba for close to a century now, right?
And your a hero for not voting? Neither of us are. We ultimately will not change anything and this argument will do nothing but effect me and you. I have my reasons, I have explained them. I am sorry if I said explicitly and implied that it was a more moral choice to vote than to not. I let myself get emotional and said things I do not really believe. I cannot in my own mind be okay with not voting for the reasons I stated. This is not a judgement. It was, now it is not.
At the end of the day we are comrades. We have the same goal. I'm sorry we both got angry over something so pointless.
You are not a comrade. You are the Dixiecrat Malcolm X was talking about. I see the knife in your hands, you won't stabbing my back.
Don't pull this "we both said some mean things, so let's both say we're sorry and make up" bullshit. I said some mean things, you were advocating for voting for a genocidal war criminal on the grounds that another genocidal war criminal might win if they don't.
Would you have voted for Himmler over Hitler? Picked the "harm reduction" nazi? Would you have been insisting that "sure the system is broken, but we must vote, if voting for the harm reduction nazi would save even one life, then it is a moral duty to participate in their sham elections and give them the legitimacy they need to stay in power!"
Look, I'm done arguing about it. I made my point, you made yours, we both agree it's pointless. Neither of us came in with the possibility of being convinced, and that isn't going to change with more arguing.
I will in fact pull the "we both said mean things, say sorry and make up"
You don't have to say anything. You can keep being angry, I have already gotten you there and I apologize for that. Doing this now I'm sure will just make you even more mad. But please understand that I get your anger. I share it. We are closer than we are apart. We share the same goal.
I already said that I didn't come into this conversation with intent to be convinced. Apologized for that, and tries to disengage on good terms. Call that a fucking high horse all you want, I call it recognizing that I am defensive and needing to settle that mindset back to an open state before being able to do self crit.
That shit takes time and a proper state of mind. Of which I am not in right now. And you instead choose to tell me to die and call me a fascist that you'd beat.
I am being as open about that as possible, your acting as if for every second I don't declare I won't vote for Biden another genocide starts up.
You kept pushing it. I'm not even arguing the idea anymore. I am just arguing about why will you not let me kindly end the discussion on good terms even after I acknowledged that I couldn't, at this moment, dissect my entire stance on voting because I had become emotional. Why did you need to keep pushing it towards hate?
Because I came off as a smug piece of shit? Because I wanted to feel some solidarity with a fellow commie after a disagreement? I'm trying to learn, I have been on a growing journey my whole life. I was a full ass Nazi in a racist ass shit fucking town as a kid and I have done so much to grow past that. All I fucking wanted was to end the conversation so I could think about everything said in a less defensive mindset and feel some good vibes from a peer.
You ruined that for me. You made me feel like shit, I'm even more defensive, and now got to work through all these bullshit feelings of being a "traitor" in some random fuckers eyes before I can begin even considering what you and others said.
You don't share our anger though! We are angry about a genocide that you want to give passive support towards! Ok? You don't "get it" at all, and you need to get off your smug high horse and admit that to yourself, that you do not understand why we are mad at you. Fuck off with this faux "I understand really!" bullshit, you're not fooling anyone except yourself.
You're not a comrade by any definition, you're a fascist sympathizing genocide supporting scumbag who hides behind the struggles of marginalized people to advance an incoherent politics centered around YOUR sense of personnel comfort
It's quite obvious real world suffering has absolutely no valence on your beliefs except as rhetorical tools to bludgeon people who upset your comfort-centered sensibilities
They aren't the "harm reduction" party though. They are the "A lot of harm" party, and they are trying to scare you by saying that the other party, the "Potentially even more harm" party is worse.
Would you rather be shot in the arm or the leg? Which one? Obviously you'd rather neither one, but you MUST choose one. You must! And you must choose again in 4 years, where it will be your spine or your lung to choose from, but you MUST choose then as well.
I'm sorry, but participating in this system in the hopes that it "buys more time" for the libs to "wake up" is incredibly stupid. That's like participating in bashing someone up in the hopes that the other people bashing them will one day learn their lesson, while you're actively there, participating in the same actions as them. Don't you think that will just encourage them instead of waking them up?
If you want things to change, you start by making it clear that things need to change, instead of grumbling and accepting the status quo. Educating people on demanding more out of the system, (and hopefully much further than that) will do far, far more than just simply going along with the system and accepting the idea that being forced to pick between two actively genocidal parties is in any way acceptable. People vote because they, like yourself, seem to think that there is "no other option." Things will never change if this is how we operate. The way things change is by teaching people that there are alternatives, and they can actually demand things of their government, instead of grovelling and begging, but always falling in line.
Here's that Malcolm X clip again, since you must've missed it the last time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg3dr-o4_fc
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I watched the video. I watched it again here. The problem for me is that Malcom X is talking about black folk. He is talking about their block and advocating for essentially self sacrifice at the hands of his "worse option" to make a point. I am not black. Nor am I queer. Nor am I a woman. I am not a target. It is not my sacrifice to give. It is not within my right I believe to tell someone who will suffer that it's necessary to make a point when I know for a fact that I will not suffer. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be a target. I cannot make that decision in good conscious because I am not the one who will pay that price.
How can you honestly be this dense? We've got a dozen people here, all telling you the same thing, and you refuse to get your head out of your own ass and listen to them. VOTING WILL NOT SAVE ANYONE. VOTING ONLY PROVIDES LEGITIMACY TO THIS CORRUPT AND BROKEN SYSTEM THAT HAS GOTTEN THIS BAD DUE TO THIS KIND OF COMPLACENCY. YOU ARE NOT A HERO FOR VOTING FOR A GENOCIDAL WAR CRIMINAL, EVEN IF HE IS GOING UP AGAINST ANOTHER GENOCIDAL WAR CRIMINAL. YOUR VOTE WILL CHANGE NOTHING, AND WILL DO NOTHING EXCEPT STROKE YOUR SMUG EGO. Fuck you.
Literally since the founding of the country we’ve never had 50% or more turnout. People who abstain from voting have been the majority in this country this whole time. If not voting fixed a broken system why isn’t it fixed if the majority already don’t vote?
Yes because its never been a democracy.
Do you ever think about the reasons why voter turnout is so low here? Consider, by comparison, Cuba, which has over 90% voter turnout. What is different there to here? Why do so many more people (percentage-wise) vote in Cuba than in the US?
Instead of spending your time in here getting insulted (which is what is going to happen if you keep commenting in this thread), you might instead go research voting in Cuba. Try to answer for yourself why their voter turnout is so high. Then ask yourself if we here in the US can learn something from the way Cuba does politics.
Or you can stay here and get dunked on. You do you.
Nice of you to acknowledge that I’m mostly being insulted and dunked on, but if that was going to stop me from commenting why would I even use Lemmy, or any social media?
Voting in Cuba is pointless for national elections. It’s a one-party state so each candidate runs unopposed in their district. One-party states are bad. There is nothing the U.S. can learn from voting in Cuba, it is one of the least democratic countries in Latin America.
Voter turnout has been 88% or better in Australia since 1925. Why didn’t you list them as an example? Voter turnout is good there because voters are fined a few hundred dollars for not voting. They have a mandatory voting law. That could increase voter turnout in the United States, but if it didn’t come with rules that employers must give their employees time to vote, and states must have fair standards for registering to vote, then it would just be fining poor people for being poor.
Other things the United States could do to increase voter turnout: make Election Day on the weekend instead of a Tuesday, which was selected so farmers traveling by horse and buggy could get to the polls. We don’t have that many farmers anymore, much less ones that travel by horse and buggy. That’s really the only rule at the federal level on how states run elections, other rules to increase voter turnout would be implemented by individual states. Early voting, mail-in voting, the ability to register to vote when you’re interacting with a state office anyway, like when you get a driver’s license, or pay your taxes. Letting people vote after they’ve served their prison sentence. Letting people vote while serving their prison sentence. &c.
deleted by creator
Seconded, please mods
Thirded plz
Ok, thanks for telling me who you are! I can now comfortably join the group of people telling you to fuck off back to reddit.
Man, you can't even name the elephant in the room filling the room with elephant shit: the electoral college makes voting for president outside of like 6 states entirely pointless, which would obviously have an effect on voter turnout. People tend to not want to waste their time voting in a sham election where the results are already decided. You've wasted your time in Hexbear posting a bunch of garbage for what? So people living in New York, Alabama, California, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Texas can be convinced to check Biden's name as if we don't already know who will win those states.
"Hexbear has had a track record of antisocial users who will do anything to get offended at anyone, for any reason." --Hexbear front page
OK, that explains a lot.
I left out abolishing the Electoral College because that would require a Constitutional amendment, which is much more difficult to do than get a bill through Congress, or a state bill through state congress, which is all those other solutions would require. Amending the Constitution is also a possible solution for any political problem in the United States, I thought it went without saying.
Fuck the Constitution, it was written by cracker slaveowners seeking to enrich themselves and create a cracker ethnostate.
I think the US needs to be dismantled and destroyed entirely. No names, monuments, or anything reminiscent of the US needs to be completely destroyed and thrown in the dustbin of history and it's physical lands returned to its original owners, because it's what it deserves, having it's entire history bathed in the blood of colonized people.
That's the only thing that'll make this right.
deleted by creator
How can you just sit there and type "Cuba has elections where only one person is allowed to run for each office"? It's such a stupid thing to say, as though any country would willingly make an exhibition of its own falseness like that. You would do well to actually research Cuba instead of relying on information you got through cultural osmosis from tar-mongers in Miami. In Cuba, you run as a de-facto independent against everyone else, and indeed that includes challenging incumbents. I hope you weren't the same person pretending to be a communist elsewhere in the thread while spreading the most moronic misinformation about a country you've clearly never researched. Like, you know that the US, the entity that you've admitted was fascist as shit just earlier, has been slandering Cuba for close to a century now, right?
I'd rather have one workers' party than two capitalist parties.
If I wanted to speak to a smug redditor, I'd go to reddit.
And your a hero for not voting? Neither of us are. We ultimately will not change anything and this argument will do nothing but effect me and you. I have my reasons, I have explained them. I am sorry if I said explicitly and implied that it was a more moral choice to vote than to not. I let myself get emotional and said things I do not really believe. I cannot in my own mind be okay with not voting for the reasons I stated. This is not a judgement. It was, now it is not.
At the end of the day we are comrades. We have the same goal. I'm sorry we both got angry over something so pointless.
You are not a comrade. You are the Dixiecrat Malcolm X was talking about. I see the knife in your hands, you won't stabbing my back.
Don't pull this "we both said some mean things, so let's both say we're sorry and make up" bullshit. I said some mean things, you were advocating for voting for a genocidal war criminal on the grounds that another genocidal war criminal might win if they don't.
Would you have voted for Himmler over Hitler? Picked the "harm reduction" nazi? Would you have been insisting that "sure the system is broken, but we must vote, if voting for the harm reduction nazi would save even one life, then it is a moral duty to participate in their sham elections and give them the legitimacy they need to stay in power!"
Look, I'm done arguing about it. I made my point, you made yours, we both agree it's pointless. Neither of us came in with the possibility of being convinced, and that isn't going to change with more arguing.
I will in fact pull the "we both said mean things, say sorry and make up"
You don't have to say anything. You can keep being angry, I have already gotten you there and I apologize for that. Doing this now I'm sure will just make you even more mad. But please understand that I get your anger. I share it. We are closer than we are apart. We share the same goal.
Have a good night friend.
deleted by creator
I already said that I didn't come into this conversation with intent to be convinced. Apologized for that, and tries to disengage on good terms. Call that a fucking high horse all you want, I call it recognizing that I am defensive and needing to settle that mindset back to an open state before being able to do self crit.
That shit takes time and a proper state of mind. Of which I am not in right now. And you instead choose to tell me to die and call me a fascist that you'd beat.
I am being as open about that as possible, your acting as if for every second I don't declare I won't vote for Biden another genocide starts up.
You kept pushing it. I'm not even arguing the idea anymore. I am just arguing about why will you not let me kindly end the discussion on good terms even after I acknowledged that I couldn't, at this moment, dissect my entire stance on voting because I had become emotional. Why did you need to keep pushing it towards hate?
Because I came off as a smug piece of shit? Because I wanted to feel some solidarity with a fellow commie after a disagreement? I'm trying to learn, I have been on a growing journey my whole life. I was a full ass Nazi in a racist ass shit fucking town as a kid and I have done so much to grow past that. All I fucking wanted was to end the conversation so I could think about everything said in a less defensive mindset and feel some good vibes from a peer.
You ruined that for me. You made me feel like shit, I'm even more defensive, and now got to work through all these bullshit feelings of being a "traitor" in some random fuckers eyes before I can begin even considering what you and others said.
Does that mean you'll finally go away?
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
You don't share our anger though! We are angry about a genocide that you want to give passive support towards! Ok? You don't "get it" at all, and you need to get off your smug high horse and admit that to yourself, that you do not understand why we are mad at you. Fuck off with this faux "I understand really!" bullshit, you're not fooling anyone except yourself.
You're not a comrade by any definition, you're a fascist sympathizing genocide supporting scumbag who hides behind the struggles of marginalized people to advance an incoherent politics centered around YOUR sense of personnel comfort
It's quite obvious real world suffering has absolutely no valence on your beliefs except as rhetorical tools to bludgeon people who upset your comfort-centered sensibilities
You are a comrade of genocidaires, not us. You are no more our comrade than the SPD was to Thalmann