It's like these libs believe that Kamala is entitled to our vote.
If I didn't vote for 
, then I simply would not vote! It's not "PSL or Kamala;" it's "PSL or sit on my ass at home."
I know libs don't understand nuance, but it still is so frustrating that they put this framing on me where they assume that I have any actual interest in a Kamala president over a Trump presidency.
Not only that, but this person called Claudia de la Cruz a "clowny leftist with no choice of winning" (which isn't the point of a third party vote; let's be real), but I just told the lib, "You call her clowny, but you are literally guilt tripping and insulting me just because I won't vote for someone who is actively greenlighting a genocide on Palestinians." and then I blocked.
Whether Trump or Kamala wins, I'll enjoy social media outrage from either side, but it seems like what I'll see from liberals in the case of a Trump election will be more entertaining. I truly think libs are beyond being redeemed, and that even goes for the more "progressive" types who appropriate the label of "democratic socialist" like Bernie and AOC. I don't adhere to lesser-evilism, so I'm not gonna pretend that this one-party state with two parties has one side over the other functioning in a way that could especially benefit me.
Liberals: We have to save democracy!
Also liberals: But also you don't get to choose who to vote for
Also liberals: We're better than China because we have two parties you don't get to choose between instead of one
You have to save democracy, which is why we’ve simplified the process for you by removing all of the incorrect candidates from the ballot.
God dude I had someone yesterday be like “listen if the vote is between a salad and a cyanide pill you can’t vote for pizza just because you want it. You have to vote for salad.” And I’m just… yall just out here saying vote for Kamala or kill yourself? And you’re complaining the other party is facist?
what, you don't remember during Trump's first term when he killed every single American? he'll do it again!
I stick by my guns. All she literally had to do was say she was going to stop sending bombs to Israel for their genocide and to acknowledge that trans rights need to be protected and that she would at the very least work towards passing legislation for those things. That's all she needed to do and she'd have gotten my worthless red state vote.
ETA: Fuck Kamala Harris. ACAB.
...and not even follow through with any of it lol. She'd win while still supporting Isreal. Really easy to do but she can't just put the mask back on for five minutes and wait for the election to be over. Harris has to just rub everyone's noses in it.
Exactly, not even follow through at all. I'll take empty face-saving promises from a piece of shit candidate over laughing at dead Palestinians with her shit-eating "I'm speaking" catch phrase like some Simpsons caricature of herself. Our system is fucking broken so it really doesn't matter.
That was my math. At least fucking lie to me about being harm reduction. Just fucking lie. I know she wouldn't follow through but I would have to vote for moral reasons
No, bourgeois politicians should truthfully declare that they are awful, if they are not going to do anything good.
It's especially funny when they skin leftists and wear their faces, talk a big game, but never go through with any organizational efforts and just vote dem. Or, it would be funny, if it wasn't tragic. Scratch a lib, and a fascist bleeds and all that.
That said, most liberals aren't "beyond redemption," or at least can still be educated and radicalized IMO, we just need to adapt our tactics to newfound results. I imagine I'm not the only former liberal on this site. Debatebroing like I used to do wasn't generally useful. As Imperialism dies, material conditions shift, and more people can be turned towards Leftism, it's important to steer this natural process of radicalization than it is to debatelord IMO.
To be fair, you have a point there. Even I was a lib at one point, but that was way early on when I first started caring about politics, and I wasn't even an adult back then.
It's possible to change minds, but so many of them give off the vibe that they are too stubborn to ever examine the dialectic properly. Situations like these piss me off enough to the point of forgetting that minds can be changed.
To be fair, you have a point there. Even I was a lib at one point, but that was way early on when I first started caring about politics, and I wasn't even an adult back then.
Fair point! Grew out of liberalism in high-school as well.
It's possible to change minds, but so many of them give off the vibe that they are too stubborn to ever examine the dialectic properly. Situations like these piss me off enough to the point of forgetting that minds can be changed.
100%, if you ever saw my Lemmy.ml account all I did with it was debatelord against libs, usually .worlders. I understand exactly what you're talking about here, my point is more that this stubborness isn't an immutable characteristic but one that changes with the Material Conditions. As they decay, the ideas they find acceptable change, and then become more susceptible. Most stubborn turbolibs are privledged, so it takes longer for them to feel the pain others do. However, even among detetiorating conditions, of course
cishet men are going to be impacted the least, so many of course are unreachable.Tbh I miss your ml account debates. It helped assure me that I wasn't the crazy one to see at least one other person agreed with me and give good arguments. But I understand stopping for your own mental health.
I may take it back up again eventually, but right now .world is cracking down hard, they perma'd my account on Political Memes for "misinformation."
Show
I don't intend on dropping combatting liberalism, but instead shifting it to a more effective path. .worlders are largely inconvertible right now, so the best way isn't to fight directly on their turf. Still trying to figure out what a better way to do so is, though I intend on joining FRSO once my life stabilizes more, and doing actual organizing.
On the topic of changing minds I'm personally really interested in learning more about deep canvassing since I listened to the You Are Not So Smart podcast episode about it (I think that was the one at least, cant remember who turned me onto it but it was someone here on lemmy). Gonna hunt down some training when I get a chance. My life is also pretty hectic at the moment as I'm in the middle of becoming a homeowner (!)
And yeah I don't totally understand why .world is so rabid right now. Everything they're expecting from Kamala are almost total fabrications based on the optics of either party, conveniently forgetting that Republicans get whatever they want regardless of who's president and Kamala doesn't even dare to hint at ending that dynamic. It completely lacks any and all analysis on how all these reactionary bills are actually being passed, as in, today, right now, under Biden, and Kamala's total lack of a strategy to address that or win back any ground.
They don't even agree with the platform that they are voting for, it's just, "we can move her" and "she will listen" when she is clearly demonstrating that they cannot, in fact, "move her" and she is not listening and she isn't even running on anything they want. All they have is fear of what even Biden said is fundamentally no different from his own Admin. It's pure copium. sigh.
Side note, am I the only one noticing that the "BoTh SiDeS" argument used to refer to both sides being too extreme on opposite ends of the spectrum (y'know, bullshit that served republicans/enlightened centrists before MAGA came along), and now it's being thrown back at us leftists when we point out that both parties exist on the same end of the spectrum, in service of capital and rightward momentum? Hoping someone else can finish my thought there but it feels like a complete manipulation and rewriting of that fallacy. Maybe I understood it differently when I was a lib though.
Anyways, I realize I'm kinda off the rails and preaching to the choir now but it feels like theres fewer and fewer safe spaces to vent and discuss these frustrations as the election draws near.
One of the things with liberalism is that it's based on Idealism, rather than Materialism. That's why one of the most crucial aspects of training comrades is teaching Dialectical and Historical Materialism. .world is deeply Idealist, fervently so around elections.
Ironically, leftist organizing is stronger when the dems aren't in power. We can use those periods to radicalize and instill lasting values when libs see themselves as opposition, it's sneaky optics. Radicalization also works under the dems of course, it's just a different fight.
Ya, under Dems I feel like the strategy changes to point out the things that Dems are not doing. The hard part is that because they of the way our system is structured they can usually blame it on either Republicans in Congress or one or two scapegoat Dems.
That said, liberals aren't "beyond redemption,"
Except for the fact that they're knowingly backing literal genocide. These aren't 2012 semi-malleable liberals, these are collaborators, compradorés, and kapos.
Death to the settlers; death to their empire.
I don't disagree, my point is more that most aren't proletarianized enough by Imperialist decay to give a fuck. The "true believers?" Fuck them entirely. The ignorant masses? Most can still be persuaded IMO, but have varying degrees of malleability.
The horrible fucking truth is that most of the Amerikkkan people don't give a shit beyond their white picket fences. They are liberals out of convenience, the ones privledged enough to sleepwalk through life, but fortunately for us they can be persuaded when eventually they must care. Are these the most moral people? Absolutely fucking not.
I dunno, maybe I have more internal liberalism I need to kill, but converting libs to comrades still seems possible to me, and necessary for revolution. They just need to kill their inner liberal as well.
That said, liberals aren't "beyond redemption," IMO,
i cant agree with this. anybody who witnessed the government murder over a million people with COVID and then a few short years later double down on supporting the genocide of palestinians is indeed irredeemable. the only libs who aren't are those who aren't really interested in politics enough to be paying attention.
Death to America
Depends. There are ideological full liberals, and there are liberal bystanders that believe their hands are tied. The majority aren't the former, the "true believers," the majority don't care enough because they aren't proletarianized enough.
Yep, that's my point. Within the liberal current that votes Kamala there are the theoryless that vote her out of fear of Trump, and the souless that vote her joyfully. The former are still important to reach, the latter are a lost cause (basically all of Lemmy.world).
It's not "PSL or Kamala;" it's "PSL or sit on my ass at home."
A thing I thought recently is that the types who will outright harass you for not voting for Harris have the same logic as anti-adblock: give me stern warnings about how I'm violating site TOS, and force me to sit through the ads, but I'm still not going to click on the ads — that is after all why I was using an adblocker! So they've really just wasted their own bandwidth and my own time.
Alternatively, it's the same logic as anti-piracy, where every pirated copy of something is seen as lost money, as if every single person who pirated something Would've bought the thing using "legal means" If Only all the pirate sites were taken down... And so they force me to go from one site to the next, as if with just enough pressure I actually would shell out wads of cash for My Shows instead of just finding other things to waste my time on.
I don't even get a vote and I've had to listen to american liberals talk about how I am trying to destroy the country for months, tell these dweebs you're voting PSL for me lol
I don’t even get a vote and I’ve had to listen to american liberals talk about how I am trying to destroy the country for months
:sad sicko emoji:
the "you are wasting your vote when you vote for someone who won't win" is one of those weird frames that Democrats have been deploying since I was young.
it's so deeply stupid it's hard to know where to begin. it made me want to say that I would only vote for whoever looked like was most certain of victory so that I could support the winner and therefore win at this game of voting and brag about being in the winning team.
The only votes that matter are in swing states, and even then, probably down to swing counties. The race at this point is decided by like what, 100,000 people maybe? People want to believe that "Every vote counts!" but, they don't, that's called a popular vote, and we don't do that here.
"Swing counties" don't matter, only state totals.
Dems & their media like to hype up the importance of those counties so they can focus on appealing to conservatives rather than running up the score in urban centers with a progressive agenda.
If Kamala wanted to win, she'd be running for president of Philadelphia, not running ads on how she wants to deport everyone like she's been doing.
And even then we're talking about margins of 100k in most of the "swing" states... so no, your one vote for Jill Stein didn't "steal" anything.
Like others said, if there wasn't a 3rd party option this time I'd leave President blank. I don't want to support the Democrats. I want to DESTROY the Democrats. Fuck em!
it made me want to say that I would only vote for whoever looked like was most certain of victory so that I could support the winner and therefore win at this game of voting and brag about being in the winning team.
this framing is pretty much what libs have internalized. everybody knows, on some level, that there's no hope of turning off the child murdering machine, so there's nothing left to get excited about except whether the child murdering machine will be painted red or blue
Death to America
imagine being such an entitled little baby that you think you deserve the opportunity to vote against genocide 😂😂
Death to America
looking forward to jill stein dramatically revealing that she was secretly evil all along! if you vote for kamala then you know that you’re voting for someone evil but with jill stein, she’s evil and she tried to cover it up! such a trickster.
WOOOOO VOTE PSL. DOES EVERYONE HAVE A PLAN TO VOTE??
[the song "Gloria" but the lyrics are reworked and the chorus is "CLAUDIA! CLAUDIA!"]
Dems chose centrist Republicans with their policy agenda. Go focus your attention on them if you can't muster up meaningful policy to appeal to leftists.
YOU MADE THE TRADE, DONT BE MAD YOU CANT HAVE BOTH!
I'd be #khive right now if Biden stopped providing Israel with weapons. Instead, you are losing my vote forever by excusing genocide. Good job 👍 Hope rehabilitating Dick Chaney was worth it!
Not sure where you live, but if you don't live in a swing state, you're wasting your vote if you DON'T vote third party.
Matching public campaign funds are calculated nationally. If you're in a solid red/blue state then you're 100% wasting your vote on a major party, because they opt out of public funds, an your vote isn't going to change a built-in 10% difference in the tally. But if you vote 3rd party, you're voting into a national pool that could potentially get that 3rd party automatic ballot access and matching federal funds for campaigning.
So if you're like the majority of us, in a state that doesn't matter, then you can just levy the accusation right back at them and ask why they're wasting their vote.
No matter where you live you're wasting your vote if you don't vote third party
Not sure where you live, but if you don’t live in a swing state, you’re wasting your vote if you DON’T vote third party.
This is exactly what I don't understand about this claim lol. Why the fuck does it matter if someone from Minnesota or New York for example votes for a third party. The republicans haven't won MN or NY in decades.
"The only wasted vote is a vote for something you don't believe in."
I heard this from a libertarian but it's still good to throw out.
I truly think libs are beyond being redeemed, and that even goes for the more "progressive" types who appropriate the label of "democratic socialist" like Bernie and AOC.
I used to think they could be moved left -- after all, many did -- but at this point I no longer believe that. So many of the libs who "moved left" under Trump, at least that I know, are now ride or die for Kdolf Hitler. If they won't grow a soul and reject liberalism because of genocide, they're beyond rehabilitating and aren't worth my time anymore. I'd rather engage with the politically unengaged than with the politically engaged liberal. The unengaged can be woken up to the truth, the engaged liberals see the truth and don't care.
They really did. It's been disheartening, alienating, and frightening to watch. I can't be friends with these people anymore, who don't care about genocide, so there go a lot of people I befriended in school.
Guy on an electric bike asked if I would stop funding the genocide in Gaza so he would vote for me and I told him I'm not really "into stopping funding genocides right now" and he said "that's cool" and let me rant about means-tested healthcare but when it was over he said "that's what you're missing" and scooted off into the distance
American political engagement is thoroughly atomized. Americans have no immediate political vehicles for their frustrations or ideals outside of things like charity, they have no ideological struggle into which they can plug in as community or a real participatory agent. Instead, they have media "discourse", like TV, radio, podcasts, streamers, YouTube videos, where their role is as an observer slotting themselves into the chair of some pundit and seeing how far they can agree with or defend them. They do not curiously investigate and inform themselves on a topic, but they feel desperate to have an opinion so that they can "win" and be condescending to their "enemies". Under this thought regime, "I don't know " is a sign of weakness and means you aren't political and don't care and aren't a good person.
It's important to understand that, accorsingly, Americans' political opinions are usually worthless, they are inconsistent propaganda premisesed on contrarian aggressiveness and dismissiveness with nothing below the surface to back it up. This is annoying but it is also fragile, so you, as a much cooler person that does know things, can have a lot of power over a conversation and can go in basically any direction that you would like to - so long as you practice keeping your cool (not that they deserve it, it is just a valuable tool).
For example, let's say this is a friend or family member and you want to convince them. This is actually mostly about how much they like you and whether you can get them to listen to positive cases for what you advocate for. If you make them feel good for listening to you and get them to watch some videos or read a book or attend actions, you will probably eventually win, as in get them to adopt much better positions. They may need to process this information for some time and may come back to you to tell you about them as if they made these discoveries all on their own and without your help, lol. It can be useful to debunk some of the things they say, but without a displacing narrative they will probably not have a good way to resolve the cognitive dissonance this creates. For example, why support PSL? Well you can provide your own case of course, but I might say something like, "we need to advance socialist working class organizations to build a just alternative for humanity's sake and this is one small and easy way to do so." You can of course say why the two genocidal capitalist parties are inadequate, but this will lead to long and rambling discussions. And while doing so, you want a calm, patient, and friendly attitude where what you really want them to do is to read Blackshirts and Reds or something. You want to get to the point of making a specific ask because them understanding your perspective is important to you and it would be a supportive thing for them to do and you will read it with them. That kind of thing. Or get them to join a propaganda action. Move them towards personal connection and involvement. Obviously there is a caveat: if the person is abusive towards you disregard all advice and take care of yourself.
Or let's say they are an acquaintance and you just want to shut them up. Well then you can be critical as shot. They will fall apart in seconds.
