The election discourse has become cancerous because it keeps going in circles. This is because liberals have become fixated on the narrative of there being some large bloc of leftists who are going around trying to convince people to not vote. However, this contingent, does not actually exist? Most of the people I have seen take a stance against voting for Biden aren't telling other people to not vote. Some are, but the number of these people is so vanishingly small (compared to the rest of the electorate) that it becomes clear that the election discourse is entirely a waste of time.
Liberals are also really trying hard to convince these people to vote (by berating them online), and it just seems like this is the most idiotic and time wasting strategy possible. These people have negative charisma.
Even if they actually could actually speak persuasively, wouldn't it be far better to target the large number of non-voting centrists/apathetic people rather than leftists who have taken a principled stance (and thus could only be convinced if you knew more about American and world history, which liberals are blissfully unaware of)?
For as much as liberals are fond of accusing leftists of being impotents on a moral high horse, the election memers aren't accomplishing anything either.
Honestly the reaction they've had to the debate just proved to me that Biden could literally kick a dog live on TV and they'd still vote for him.
"Well yes, kicking dogs is bad. But imagine all the horrible things Trump would do to dogs if he got elected. This is far too important a cause if you care about animal rights!"
In that discourse, I often try to address electoralism directly, and try to shake people out of their belief in the system itself and their belief that the Democratic party is actually interested in representing us. At this point I’ll often reuse my own past posts as copypasta:
The French & American Revolutions were bourgeois revolutions. The US Founding Fathers, who were wealthy land owners and chattel slave owners, intentionally constructed a bourgeois democracy, which was never meant to represent the working class, and it never has, despite later allowing non-landowners, women, and non-whites (those not re-disenfranchised by the carceral system, anyway) to vote.
[Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
The Separation of Powers is BROKEN, Here’s Why
Edit to add: I should sprinkle more labor militancy into these copypastas, thus giving people alternatives to work toward.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
They try to convince us because they know that we actually have convictions (unlike your average centrist) and they would like our convictions to be in their favor. It is a purely cold and detached decision to attempt (poorly) to recruit us to their cause as they recognize (on some level) that we actually will do things to advance the cause we believe in.
It's part of the cycle of blame. Liberals can't take responsibility for failing cause that'd mean they have to actually do something more than whine about what the rightists are doing; they would have to both obtain power and leverage the organized violence of that power in order to suppress any and all rightist influence. But they don't and in practice, often ally with and enable them instead. That leaves them blaming the nebulous, shifting, ill-defined entity "the left". An entity which is portrayed as both weak and strong; on the one hand, "the left" is viewed by liberals as an inconsequential sample of the population and thus something that should be ignored when it comes time to legislate or court votes. On the other hand, "the left" is viewed by liberals as a serious threat that undermines their ability to win elections by refusing to support them and carrying water for what they label rightist talking points, such as (at this point, with the vote blue no matter who nonsense) criticizing anything a liberal in charge is doing.
If they took responsibility, they would have to admit that the liberal order they idealize is impossible to manage or sustain or implement meaningfully much at all without the contradictions building over time rather than lessening. They would have to admit that where they stand isn't in any kind of middle, but is in direct opposition to the marginalized, the colonized, the working class. And the best they can ever do as liberals is the political worldview equivalent of Scrooge voluntarily becoming a good guy in A Christmas Carol. They can't take it further than charity unless they take power seriously and for them to take power seriously, they either end up aligning with the rightists or they figure out they've got to reject liberalism and embrace a dialectical liberation as laid out by communists.
Vote with your money (unironically)
Note: The above advice doesn't apply if you're not a billionaire.
Liberals are also really trying hard to convince these people to vote (by berating them online), and it just seems like this is the most idiotic and time wasting strategy possible. These people have negative charisma.
Show: These fools are wrong, so so wrong. Set them back on the proper path before it is too late.
Show[suggestion easy: critical failure]: You just tell them how stupid you think they are, surely showing them how much better than them you are will make them want to think like you.
You're right, there are people out there that literally say don't vote and try to convince other people not to vote. But I think most of us are reasonable enough to understand that it really doesn't matter if you vote, so it also doesn't matter if you convince someone not to vote. We're not going to vote because we think there's no utility in it. That is that.
But the liberals are in a political game, and they need as many players as possible, and they call themselves lefties, and so they go to the lefties and say, hey, we're on the same side, right? And we're like, no, fuck you, go away. And they're like, aw, please? And we're like, no, you basically side with fascists, go away. And then they get all pissed off of with us, then they claim that we side with fascists, and it's all a big clusterfuck.
That's the perspective I have now that I switched from being one of those liberals to being a leftist.
I say vote but vote against the uniparty. Vote only for people who are not only not associated in any way with either side of the uniparty, but who are actively opposed to it.
The most delusional stance is not so much thinking that voting makes a difference (which it barely does, if at all), rather it's thinking that anyone can ever "change things from the inside". Once you are in the uniparty system it swallows you up and assimilates you like the Borg.
We've seen this over and over again. Even so-called "independents" more often than not end up in the ecosystem of one or the other part of the duopoly, and they justify it by telling themselves it's only for fundraising purposes or whatever, but that's just how you become part of the blob.
That is a subtle and more correct point. Thank you for pointing that out. There is some utility in voting for a third party that at least has some chance of dismantling the system.
