I’m not even American, so it doesn’t affect me directly, but I am scared to death of a Trump presidency.
I am one of those people here who think that Biden is a far more competent executor of imperialist policies compared to Trump, but what I am even more afraid of is the early death of nascent left wing movements in America.
I am reminded of how the KPD getting its leaders murdered by Freikorps thugs during the Spartacist uprising (mind you, a much stronger party than any leftist movement in America today), and how its continued suppression paved the way to Nazi Germany.
Project 2025 will effectively embolden fascist thugs in America to do the same to the left wing movements, many of which are still in their cradle, and the death of leftist movements in their infancies will inevitably pave the way to a fascist America and undo many of the progress that had been made over decades.
The world cannot afford a fascist America. Imagine Hitler with nukes. The world will have to pay a much, much larger price as a result.
On this reasoning alone, I believe that Trump needs to be stopped at all cost. But many here have disagreed with me, and I need you to persuade me why I shouldn’t be afraid of Project 2025 at all. Even if the chance of that happening is 10%, I’m still not ready to gamble with it.
(I’m not saying we have to support Biden, I believe it is somewhat inevitable, I’m saying that we have to buy ourselves as much time as possible, even if it means strategic voting, to build a resilient leftist movement while delaying the inevitable for as long as we can.)
Liberals aren't opposed to Project 2025.
Have you heard a liberal plan for what they will do to prevent it once they have power? No of course you haven't. Simply having liberals in charge is all they care about, they have no intent to create policy to prevent or reduce its potential later.
Project 2030 will happen if Project 2025 does not, because liberals are not actually opposed to it, they are simply using it as a tool to get votes.
The democrats and the republicans are on the same team. They are tag teaming the working class into this outcome so that the working class does not pursue an option different to either of them. They are content with it happening either in 1 year or in 6 years. They don't mind either of these outcomes, as long as you and everyone else isn't fighting for a real opposition.
They democrats and the republicans are on the same team. They are tag teaming the working class into this outcome so that the working class does not pursue an option different to either of them.
Not only that, but the "ratchet" analogy people use is dead wrong, and it's dangerous that people keep using it. Biden has implemented a bunch of things Trump couldn't because courts, Democrats and their fans, and movements strenuously opposed him. The ratchet hasn't just "stopped" with Biden. It's advanced on slightly different fronts than liberals and the media want to pay attention to. The Democrats don't need to keep it from rolling back to the "left" because there's never any threat of it halting its "rightward" progress.
The world cannot afford a fascist America.
The world has been living with one for a long time now. Way before Trump ever ran for office.
This is just the part where white people are effected. The people who see this as a unique evil come from a position of privilege
Yup its just white people facing the negative consequences of our foreign policynfor a change.
The world cannot afford a fascist America. Imagine Hitler with nukes
we've had this since the 50's? it was not the character of the US regime that stopped the US from using nuclear weapons to enact a genocide, but a credible retaliatory threat from the Soviet Union.
e: we actually have precedent for this, the literal Nazis produced a lot of but did not end up using chemical weapons because the allies also produced a large quantity & kept them in a state of readiness near the front to retaliate.
you should be so scared of project 2025 that you question why the republican's only mainstream opponents don't treat them like the terrorists they are, and instead constantly call for bipartisanship and adopt their policies as their own to compete for the title of 'Most Racist'.
lathe time: even if Genocide Joe wins the election, the democrats will invite Trump to assume the presidency (or some other office of power like the Parliamentarian) using some kind of domestic unrest or geopolitical event as pretext
first as tragedy and all that
It's be a good Onion bit maybe, but I think the Democrats will keep milking Trump as the devil incarnate until the end of time. They don't need him to implement the fascism. They're more than capable of doing it on their own. In fact, they get far less opposition that way.
They already brought Trump in to work on the border bill.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-biden-collide-split-screen-trips-border-immigration-spotlight-rcna140899
I see so much handwringing about stuff like project 2025 but less than zero pushback. Either they don't actually believe it's dangerous or they're lazy.
Even OP says trump must be stopped at all costs, but the party that is supposed to be doing that, are shutting down any effective protest and siding with the fascists at every turn. What do these people even mean by "any means necessary"?
It reminds me of George Bush's "project for a new American century". No pushback, and our lives became worse because of it.
The same as they mean when they say that occupied people are allowed to resist their oppressor by any means possible – quietly and ineffectually, by any means that will not rock the boat but which will signal their virtue.
They need to stop Trump by any means necessary.
Except stopping giving bombs to Isreal, or doing anything about workers protections, or doing anything about the environment, or giving people stimulus money, or vocally supporting abortion rights, universal Healthcare, insider trading ban, election finance reform, breaking up monopolies, opposing the police state....
Basically they're willing to have YOU do whatever is necessary to stop Trump.
Protesting isn't allowed.
Haranguing them in public isn't allowed.
General strikes, hell, normal strikes aren't allowed.
Protest voting in midterms isn't allowed.
The only thing you can do is
for who they tell you to
We are already Hitler with nukes to the rest of the world
You're misrepresenting the meaning of a vote in the general election of a first past the past voting system to select electors who will cast votes later after the result is certified.
If we're being really casual, sure, it's "approval." But what it really is is a selection of the best option out of what is available.
When the votes are tallied and the Electoral College outcome is finalized, it will either be President Biden getting ready for another four years or President Elect Trump getting ready to take office.
So our only choice here is between a bad four more years of Biden doing some good things because he wants to and some when he has no other choice, or a disastrous four years of Trump doing as many terrible things as possible as fast as possible, almost certainly ending our way of government.
We don't have the "luxury" of time but we have to live in the reality of time. Time is something we can't work around. It takes time to organize, time to work within whatever system(s) we're in, time to convince others to join us, ...
Whatever damage we do to the climate becomes more and more difficult to reverse, major and more difficult to adapt to, affects more and more people, as time goes on. But we have to plan for working in that scenario because we still don't have the numbers of people on our side.
I'm not arguing that we should "wait," either. We've seen that Biden can change his mind and change course. We need to work with that, get more progressives and liberals and Democrats elected from medical examiner to dog catcher to school board to state government to federal. And push them left every time. More unions. More corporate regulation. A four day work week with no reduction in pay, or five 6.5-hour days. Universal basic income. Lower the Medicare eligibility age by five years every 2 years until we have Medicare for all. End all fossil fuel subsidies, and transfer 75% of the subsidies to renewables and the other 25% to next gen power research. Give every worker a minimum of 3 weeks paid vacation and 6 months of parental leave. Provide for end of life care. Make abortion legal safe and rare and decided upon by the pregnant person and their doctor. On and on and on.
On foreign policy, basically support actual freedom and oppose oppression. (Not 1960s Cold War "support capitalism" CIA bullshit.)
We can take steps toward that with Joe Biden as president. Not as fast as you or I would want. But we'll get none of that, and probably the opposite of some of it, if Trump is elected.
We can take steps toward that with Joe Biden as president. Not as fast as you or I would want. But we'll get none of that, and probably the opposite of some of it, if Trump is elected.
How? If anything I'd argue the exact opposite
Democratic politicians in blue states may actually make a few half assed attempts at protecting marginalized people if they have Trump to force their hands into opposing him while with Genocide Joe in office red states will still implement project 2025 unimpeded and the libs will suck so hard at messaging as usual that chuds may even manage to take over a blue state
coming around with "pushing the dems left" rhetoric after four years where that specific tactic did jack shit fuck
I hope you didn't waste time typing all that garbage from scratch personally instead of just copying & pasting it from somewhere.
Biden has been president for 4 years. Can you give me exactly one (1) thing that he's done for the left in that time period?
Lol was this before or after he crushed the rail workers strike? Pretty funny that the most "left" thing you can attribute to Biden is performative bullshit while he has actively worked on behalf of capital to limit workers' actions. What level of "left" does that make him?
Right before. And libs excused it by saying "but they got their demands!!" as if the point of labor organizing is to get some benefits and a wage hike ONCE then have it be illegal for the rest of time.
And they didn't get their demands, either. They got some shitty, watered down, pathetic version of their demands that the Biden administration and the boss-friendly union "leadership" told them they should be happy with.
"The workers must
emancipate themselvesbeg for table scraps from the government"- Karl Marx
"But 4 months later they got 90% of their demands"
Damn seems like a huge fucking waste of 4 months considering it was going to happen anyway, oh and look that 10% was all the health and safety stiff they went on strike for in the first place.
Did those goalposts come with the wheels already on or are they an aftermarket modification?
Go back to reddit you smug piece of shit liberal. That isn't even what "moving the goalposts" is you stupid fuck.
Did you also call it moving the goalposts when feminist groups said "Not like that!" as your psychotic politicians used their rhetoric to justify imperialist wars?
Show
Because that's all Genocide Joe is doing, but with labor organizing instead of feminism.
Shut the fuck up about goalposts you debate pervert, this isn't a fucking game to us
Biden is probably the most left wing President since Carter. That's not saying much in a center right country, but that's where we are today.
Jesus Christ. Also, center right? Relative to whom, Saudi Arabia?
That's the American Left as it stands today. That's what we can pull on to drag the Overton Window's left edge farther open.
My brother how in the hell do you think the Overton window shifted to the right in the first place? It was because of tepid endorsement of ever more right wing political parties, because at least they're not as bad as the other guy hyuck
To the extent that thanks is owed to small dollar working and lower class people, to thousands of door knockers and surrogates, that power will be used to their benefit.
I could understand believing this if you lived in Cuba or Vietnam or China but you have the evidence of your own experience and you are just choosing to ignore it for reasons, idk what they are, vibes?
Although I'm guessing the next step on this stairway to purity is to complain that a vote for Biden is approval of everything the Democratic Party has ever done (and on and on) because the foundational motivation here is to feel superior without having to participate in real life politics.
You know what, actually yes, hold people accountable for the crimes of the past, so that you don't just blindly believe them when they tell you things will be different now (and even when they don't)
Maybe we can agree that a vote in our current system means "I approve of this alternative over the others."
Excellent point, this is why you should still make limited use of the electoral system to vote third party
a vote in our current system means "I approve of this alternative over the others"
Almost, but not quite.
What a vote actually means is "I prefer the result I expect from this vote over the result I expect from the other vote."
If withholding your vote this time means they offer more next time, that's a result you might want. On the other hand, if you always vote blue as long as you slightly prefer the democrats, you give the democrats permission to move to the right, slightly behind the republicans, indefinitely.
in practice, though, they'll always find some way to gin up votes without offering substance. that's their whole job.
Political power is wielded by those who hold office, thanks to the people who got them into office. When that is a handful of billionaires and will connected political operatives, that power is used to their benefit. To the extent that thanks is owed to small dollar working and lower class people, to thousands of door knockers and surrogates, that power will be used to their benefit.
This is not true in the slightest.
Why would it be? The Democrats only need to be slightly less bad than the Republicans, and your vote is guaranteed.
And it requires that we acknowledge that we approve of what the American Left has done more than the alternative.
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Democrats are not the American Left.
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What have the Democrats actually done?
The policies of the Democratic party are bought by corporate interests. The material interests of a corporation run directly counter to those of a worker. Workers want higher wages, companies want lower. Workers want public healthcare, insurance companies want private. Workers want less war, the MIC wants more. Workers want lower housing costs, hedge funds and landlords want higher. Who do the Democrats side with? What direction is America headed in?
Is this a democracy or a good-cop bad-cop routine?
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No, you can wrote as many paragraphs as you want to try to define how voting for somebody isn't supporting them but it's obvious bullshit.
Maybe you can manage to convince yourself but "just because I used my vote to say this is my choice for who should be president doesn't mean I think they should be president" is going to continue to fall on its face here.
Political power is wielded by those who hold office
Political power grows out the barrel of a gun. Aiming mine at you
I didn't read everything you had to say because who has the time for that, but wanted to respond to one thing that you said:
Whether or not you feel your vote is an endorsement, they will throw it in your face and treat it as though it is, without nuance. It is mentally excruciating to be told by political leaders YOU WANT THIS, YOU VOTED FOR US, as they carry out their most unhinged plans.
I am sure it has been like this forever, but never more blatant than in the last decade in the UK, with the most pathetic leadership on all fronts falling back on statements like this because they know they have no credibility.
Because it's effectively already happened. The judiciary is fully illegitimate and holds dictatorial power; whether it wields that power now or in two years or in four years barely matters since nothing we can do will prevent it. You can put all your energy into the unfixably broken electoral system in order to barely slow the rot, thereby legitimizing that system, or you can accept now that America is DEAD and begin acting accordingly.
or you can accept now that America is DEAD and begin acting accordingly.
Act accordingly how?
That's up to you to answer, fam. Depends on where you are and the conditions there, as well as your own ideology and your material/class/social conditions.
Sure, but I was hoping you'd give an example of what you're doing
I am developing a self-sustaining eco-socialist community in rural Montana. This is only possible because I was lucky enough to have a friend who sold me property cheaply and then to come into enough of an inheritance to pay it off. Your mileage will absolutely vary.
Hey uhh how big is this community going to be? Montana is the most beautiful state I've been in.
get some people together to buy the adjoining property and it could be a lot bigger
if the hexbear commune in liberal mountain doesn't invite me i'm gonna be so mad 😡
Death to America
OK, create a circle centered on the state capitol. Which multiple of 50 represents the radius in miles required before the circle is big enough to contain the community?
Hopefully there's rivers or a lake nearby for when the nukes start dropping
This is my first thought as well. I have plenty of fairly close relatives in the USA, and if there was some viable method other than, like, them flying here and then refusing to leave — I would see that every single one of them would be moved here.
Imagine Hitler with nukes
The american empire is already commiting a mechanised genocide, this is already happening right now. It is shockingly naive to believe after all we've seen that liberals and the majority of american people (including all thier client states) arent fascist nazis right now.
I am reminded of how the KPD getting its leaders murdered by Freikorps thugs during the Spartacist uprising
These Freikorps thugs were sent by the SPD. It's in the interest of both liberals and conservatives to fight leftists, both liberalism and conservatism are rightwing, capitalist, imperialist and deeply chauvinist ideologies, one is just more focussed on hegemonial control and the other more on open violence. You cannot fight for queer liberation, or the rights of any other marginalized group such as America's black community, immigrants or indigenous peoples, with Bidenite Democrats, the last 4 years with its constant onslaught of anti-queer and especially anti-trans legislation (and also the uninterrupted continuation of an ever brutalizing border regime and the steady increase of police militarization) have proven this. The only Democrat opposition to trans genocide we've seen in that timeframe has been on the state level, by individual actors, the Democrats as a federal-level institution are downright scared of being too openly supportive of trans rights, Clinton as a prototypical member of the DNC establishment has more or less stated that she views our rights as a fringe issue that poses a political liability and Biden has only started voicing support for trans people when election season went into full swing.
I'm not telling Americans not to vote for Biden in November, i honestly may do so if i was Amerikan, but i'd probably do so by mail-in ballot from abroad because if i would live in Amerika, my top priority would be to get the fuck out. These are the reasonable options for US trans people, either leaving the country or work on community organizing and prepare for mass civil unrest, because mass civil unrest is the only thing that will stop the clericofascist mob. Biden won't do that, or he would have put more effort into clamping down on a movement that tried a coup and wanted to murder leading members of his party when he got into office. He's too comfortable with fascism to actually stop it, and he doesn't even meaningfully stall it.
So yes, i'm worried about the trans-exterminationist agenda of the US far right, it's a main political concern of mine because it directly affects my life even here in Europe that Reaganite nazi orgs like the Heritage Foundation are actively financing and supporting anti-trans activism here. But none of this has gotten better under Biden, and he will not change that, because he needs a continued threat to marginalized people to browbeat them into voting for him. Democrats are not allies. All they have to offer is a false sense of safety, the illusion that you can vote yourself out of the existential threat that Republicans already pose. You can't. You can try stalling for four more years, sure, but has that stalling actually worked in the last 4? And even if Biden wins the election, will he be able to govern afterwards or will there be another coup attempt that may work better this time?
When you focus on electoralism as the core strategy, you're playing the wrong game. There is no safe option to vote for trans rights in the US. The American left needs to prepare for worst case scenarios instead of putting its hopes in an eroding system that never was designed to serve their interests in the first place. There needs to be real thought put into all possible outcomes, what to do under another Biden term, what to do when Trump gets elected and what to do when he steals the election, and all of these scenarios are dire for trans people and require strategies that lie outside electoral politics.
I'm not telling Americans not to vote for Biden in November, i honestly may do so if i was Amerikan, but i'd probably do so by mail-in ballot from abroad because if i would live in Amerika, my top priority would be to get the fuck out.
This is absolutely true because of climate change alone, if you're in any way selfish we must admit we lost, we already lost a long time ago, its only up to how we cope and make things a little bit better. If you can move abroad there are better options and if you absolutely must stay in NA then be concious that the choices you make now are choices you're going to regreat even 10 years from now not 25 not 50 years like we previously thought back in 2000s. Though I guess nobody realizes its been 25 years already and nothing was done since the early 2000's climate treaties etc. We are halfway there already. Scary isn't it?
2023-24 will smash temperature records, it will prove the models are all wrong, nothing will be done and everything happening in Gaza will repeated in the US. People are still traumatized by how the west doesn't care about COVID anymore too.
Make absolutely no mistake liberals would not cry one bit if government troops start shooting at chuds looking for aid relief after [insert newest unprecedented hurricane/storm here], all it would take is a premise and an excuse. "Oh they were rebelling actualy so its good" and vice versa.
In that context whatever party is at the helm will make little difference 10-15 years from now IMO.
I'm not telling Americans not to vote for Biden in November, i honestly may do so if i was Amerikan, but i'd probably do so by mail-in ballot from abroad because if i would live in Amerika, my top priority would be to get the fuck out.
where would you go?
Ireland probably, but it's a tough call, the situation for trans people isn't exactly ideal anywhere.
Thailand seems like a decent choice if you can make it there
They were ahead of the curve on trans rights for long before the western libs started pretending to care and their new pro LGBT law is almost as based as Cuba's
The fact that it's a tropical paradise with some of the best cuisine in the world is just bonus
Well as a minority living in America I'm more terrified of the dems normalizing genocide, normalizing the repression of activist groups and charging them thru RICO, normalizing anti immigrant sentiment by surpassing Trump's deportation numbers and making his border laws more repressive
Somehow that shit seems a little more relevant to me than some hypothetical about Republicans fucking up already fucked up courts, taxing poor people more and shuttering an already half shuttered department of education
If Genocide is already normalized wtf do I have to fear anymore? WHY SHOULD I BE SCARED when I've already witnessed more death and depravity these last six months than I can handle for a lifetime
everything I read about Project 2025 sounds like exactly what America already is
You should be afraid of Project 2025, but also recognize that Biden isn't going to stop it. He isn't doing anything to materially oppose fascism, what makes you think that would change if he beats Trump? We did the harm reduction election and now we're in the middle of a genocide and the Democrats are not really getting pushed left at all.
What is to stop them from implementing these plans with Biden in office anyways? He's proven that he won't step up to stop right wing legislation anyways. I highly doubt the color of the presidents tie makes much of a difference here.
This.
If dems win the project will still happen but libs will just call you a rpeublican when you ask why they aren't doing anything.
I am reminded of how the KPD getting its leaders murdered by Freikorps thugs during the Spartacist uprising
The liberals of the time supported and funded the Freikorps in doing this. You couldn't have prevented this by doing the German equivalent of "Vote Blue" Democrats would absolutely support and embolden the mobs if they formed today.
But many here have disagreed with me, and I need you to persuade me why I shouldn’t be afraid of Project 2025 at all. Even if the chance of that happening is 10%, I’m still not ready to gamble with it.
You should be afraid, but voting for Biden won't stop that. Even if it foiled their plans temporarily, which I doubt, you're only delaying the project by 2-4 years. There is no victory, just buying time.
I’m saying that we have to buy ourselves as much time as possible, even if it means strategic voting,
Time to do what? The left's height was probably around 2020 with Bernie. More time to see the decline of leftist politics? More time for people to become even hopeless? I honestly don't see any indication that waiting is going to do anything. We have less political power than even and I don't see that changing.
