solid analysis by a comrade
Finding out that the National Parks in the US had lots of people living in them, and that establishing the Parks was one of the last steps in the genocide of Indigenous american societies, really shook me. It seemed so obvious as soon as someone said it out loud, but up until that point I hadn't considered that there must have been people living in those vast spaces.
Genuinely, until a couple years ago I thought the national parks were mostly “Oh hey look at this huge chunk of area no one’s living in, let’s keep it that way!” but it’s the United States so I should’ve assumed it was genocide
I would think that budding leftists by now would know that voting for Democrats is NOT a counter to the Republican party, but rather it legitimizes the existence of the Republican position and acts as a cudgel against the left. These are both rightwing parties that will resort to the same tactics despite different rhetoric. Biden himself said "We need a Republican party, and it has to be strong." Democrats have proven themselves as people who do not reverse damage, they just delay it. They act as seat warmers until their bosses return (the Republicans) and take their seats back.
For the record, I do vote, and I generally vote down ballot for Democrats, but I will under no condition vote for Democratic leadership I do not approve of. If the Democrats are going to pretend to be an opposition party, I am not going to let them be any more than that, and I will hold their feet to the fire promising them that they will never taste power if they don't make concessions to the left. I voted down ballot for democrats in 2020 but did not vote for Biden, I did a write in. If there is any way to nudge things electorally, that is how I tell the Democrats to "go fish". This strategy drives Liberals insane because it leaves them with no excuses and no options if they want more power. It also fires up opposition to the leadership in office that is just the normal political trend of the US. You can't keep teaching the American public that people like Biden is as good as it gets, and increasingly the Democrats are having a harder time trying to spin electoral losses as "being too far left" to their voting base.
Had Biden lost in 2020 we would be sitting with a combined congress against the president, constant public outcry against the administration, and leftist spaces flourishing with the idea that the people demand new direction with the strong presence of an opposition party with no clear leader (as the same old answer just failed). This is why Liberals were really going crazy about Trump in 2020. They were terrified of this result. Not because of Trump but because of how much he fired up leftist populism in response to his leadership and policies. Him festering in the White House for 4 more years could have continued to lead to democratic sweeps around the country. By 2024 with no clear heir for the Republican party, we could have bullied the Democrats into pushing a more progressive platform to reverse the years of damage. Instead we got what is probably the worst result of all. Which granted, was just bound to happen because there is only one direction this country can go. Down.
If you are going to pretend that "to protect Democracy you have to vote blue" then that just tells me democracy is dead anyway because you are saying there is no choice other than voting for the dueling bourgeoisie royal family that your might nebulously benefit from for a couple years. I won't vote as well if the person is truly a scumbag not fit for office. They call that "privilege". I call it standards.
If one wants to rely on shaming someone as being privileged (how liberal of them, and which by the way never works), then maybe we should start making excuses for the lack of terror if things are indeed that bad. But continuing the believe that electoral process or the institutions of America are a path forward is delusional. You can't get to the moon on a sabotaged rocket.
It is interesting how Liberals give themselves all kinds of rules that they operate under. One of them is: "The party is never wrong, it is always the voter."
Letting Republicans win isn't going to allow the revolution be easier to achieve. Republicans have been sliding right on the fascism scale at a frighteningly quick pace compared to democrats.
Remember the saying first they came for the communists? A communist revolution was not possible inside Nazi Germany, because fascism had more power and snuffed them out immediately. The same is going to happen to communists in the US with letting Republicans win, they are already paving the way by labeling democrats as communists.
This is a very dangerous game being played by letting Republicans win. It could let Dems become more progressive to try to win voters or it could shift them more to the right to get more voters, either way it guarantees the more fascist party more power.
Please read my post. I still
And if you consider that dangerous then maybe they should try to win my vote for once.I mean that kind of assumes that they want to win or care if they do
The voters want to win, if the party doesn't they will find someone who does. But that requires people having standards and not just blindly voting bloo no matter who.
Im not really convinced by this, nothing would make liberals more happy than being fraudulently oppressed losers
Oh believe me, I am not standing here saying you have to vote. Not in the slightest.
I vote in a manner that I feel is the most synergistic between what everyone wants to call "harm reduction" without betraying my values. American politics is so binary that I feel that trying to use it to stem the tide of right-wing extremism while trying to find ways to weaken the Democrats from within is the ideal approach. My view is keep them a headless opposition party that maintains as much legislative power as possible to counter any right-wing leadership. Let the Republicans be the face of everything that is wrong, and leave the Democrats unable to follow in their footsteps, but work against them.
There is little to nothing you are going to accomplish electorally, but that little bit I still try to use and leverage. You can say it won't matter, but it won't stop me from trying. I am not advocating that others do the same or vote one way or another. My original post was a explanation of my position while issuing a takedown on the useless Liberals that have no plan or direction other than to be "not the other party".
Saying im not going to vote is the most harmful thing I can do to a liberal, even if I do vote i tell them I dont
Very well. Keep up the good fight comrade.
Edit: I do also tell people I didn't vote for Biden and that is enough. My stepmother had an utter meltdown when I told her wasn't going to... which ultimately I didn't.
There is little to nothing you are going to accomplish electorally
on a national level. You can easily egg the house of your city alderman if you don't like what he's doing and if you're lucky enough to have local comrades maybe you can do more than just keeping out as many christofascists as possible.
Youre not going to have a pleasant time around here if you lib out and also don't read the posts you're replying to.
To point out a flaw in your post unrelated to not reading what the person you're replying to posted, the communists in Germany where crushed on the order of social democrats who were in many ways left of the democratic party. That is why we joke that Bernie killed Rosa. Historically both democrats and Republicans have implemented anti-communist measures.
I would highly encourage you to read a marxist perspective on the lead up to Nazi Germany. I would also recommend "the economy and class structure of german fascism" while you're at it to understand the role of liberals in enabling fascism.
As I’ve said many times and will continue to say:
I’ll let my family getting drone striked by the United States know that I did indeed vote for that to keep happening but if the blue team is doing the drone strikes at least it’s intersectional imperialism
All of this is the genocidal process of primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession.
the first time this process was articulated to me by example was using the "Fortress Conservation" articulated here, where the destruction of people and the severing of them from their land was dressed up in a very lazy ecology, granting incredible power to massive institutional funds.
it's very difficult to talk about to libs, because they have a shitload of unexamined racism and a general bias towards their urban positionality. to live in the World Class City: good, amazing, intelligent, sophisticated. to live in the difficult to reach places, near natural resources they want/need to enchant themselves: bad, backward, stupid, primitive.
they casually believe only the highly educated whites who live in apartments can ever be allowed to appreciate nature in its majesty during their vacations. the great many humans not in this category must be excluded from these places, as they will ruin the nature. nevermind their millenia of stewardship. they should all go get jobs at the nike factory or the palm oil plantation.
There is a balance between how much harm you are preventing by voting for social democrats versus how much harm you are contributing in re-enforcing the system as it exists. For me, in my country, I vote for the soc-dems despite the internal conflict it causes me, to prevent things like the total privatisation of healthcare and total inaction on climate change. I’m not sure, from afar, how much damage the US Democrats prevent. The only reason I could see for voting for them is the insanity and borderline fascism of the GOP, but again that is obviously a product of the system as it exists.
Really what is missing here is proper organisation within the left. If the left withheld their vote in an organised and collective manner, that could be a way to exert real power - the kind of power that would be worth sacrificing the scraps from the table that soc-dems throw. If it’s not organised and the perception is just ‘the youth don’t vote because they can’t be bothered’, then it’s probably valid to argue that not voting is cutting off one’s nose to spite the face, because nothing positive is going to come of it, whereas it may produce significant harm. We can say that electoral politics are worthless, but in reality they do have a significance that can’t be ignored, even if their not the pathway to real change.
Of course the other argument against voting that leftists have is that acceleration would benefit us, but I think that’s a highly dubious and naive argument, based more in wishful thinking than any evidence.
Having said all that, I would never shame anyone for not voting. On a moral level, it is disgusting to actively re-enforce the system. But to be completely realist about it, if there’s no strategy and no organisation in the refusal, then it’s not going to produce a desirable effect.There is at least the beginning of organization in the refusal by voting for third parties with clear leftist platforms.
In most Western countries the ‘far’ left party can usually get anywhere from 5-15% of the vote. That kind of vote would sink the Democrats and maybe shift them, or at least the Overton window, leftwards. But I think third party votes in the US are much smaller right? At least for the left wing parties.
Best case scenario it would take decades for the dem party to bow the knee, they dont care.
possibly faster depending on events. a major recession would cause another leftward swing as people look for alternatives to the democrats.
If they were already extracting conscessions, we wouldn't be debating it. My argument is that they can with a bit more support.
I agree wholeheartedly with the international aspect, but even domestically it's nonsense. From Pew on non-voters:
They’re more racially and ethnically diverse. Fully 43% of those who are not likely to cast ballots Tuesday are Hispanic, African American or other racial and ethnic minorities, roughly double the percentage among likely voters (22%).
They’re less affluent and less educated. Nearly half of nonvoters (46%) have family incomes less than $30,000, compared with 19% of likely voters. Most nonvoters (54%) have not attended college; 72% of likely voters have completed at least some college.
Relevant TrueAnon episode on neo-colonialism disguised as "conservation". CW: It's bleak as fuck.
https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/walk-in-the-park
My moral worth and political identify is mine to create, not theirs to demand.
lib lmao
except the blue party decides to help the red party enact transphobic laws. cf KOSA currently.
So blue is equal to red ok, we should let reds win unopposed then, they totally aren't further right on the fascism scale /s
we should let reds win unopposed then
We don't get to choose in any meaningful capacity. All we get to do is cheer for a team and spend a bunch of money on the merch.
Voting isn't simply a pascal's wager. There's a real cost to political activism in time and money.
What's more, when Leftists do organize politically (for instance, during the '16 and '20 Bernie campaigns), they come under attack from within the liberal party for failing to endorse the correct candidate.
So you still get blamed for Hilary losing, even when you vote for her and she wins the popular vote and she wins your state and she enriches herself on your activism. Trans people still suffer and you're told that its all because you participated in the primaries.
yes, that's precisely the only two options. politics ends at voting.
the democratic ratcheting effect guarantees further fascism, not harm reduction. we have to break the cycle, not persist in it, expecting different results.
Nobody is arguing to only vote and nothing else. You are literally strawmanning an argument out of nowhere. Not voting dem doesn't make a communist revolution magically happen and is in fact going to make it harder.
Republicans are significantly worse and with full power will be more likely to start going full fascist on minorities and vulnerable communities before Dems do.
It is a tactical vote to buy time while we organize a revolution.
it doesn't buy time because of the ratcheting effect. the dems prevent a leftward swing. that's their function in society.
The dems vs republicans is a pre-determined outcome, its an illusion of choice. Just because Biden won doesnt mean the trade war, bad covid policy or immigration detention camps ended, it many cases it got worse. It would of been the same outcome regardless of who won.
The Republicans exist for the purpose of keeping the Democrats perpetually in power. In exchange, the Democrats hardly do anything to oppose Republican interests.
They are one and the same in the sense that they cooperate to play good cop/bad cop.
It's a symbiotic relationship. They will never get rid of each other because they NEED each other to stay in power.
How do you post this image this deep into Biden's presidency while he allows and encourages Trans oppression?
Call me when Biden loses because the economy drops into the shitter after the student loan payments resume and the pandemic relief is all dried up (you know, because of decisions he specifically made, not stuff the GOP did), and then tell me how exactly that counts as supporting trans people.
Biden is pushing an anti-trans law at the national stage and isn't helping trans people while states are actively genociding them. Stop using my people as a political cudgel for a party that hates them.
Do you have any analysis of why transphobia/anti-semitism/every other form of racism and xenophobia is a valuable political tool? Are democrats doing anything that could plausibly make these reactionary forces less useful?
Communists do not cause team blue to lose. There are not enough of us, especially living in the handful of counties that determine your national elections. Blaming the left for the defeats of dems isn't just lib nonsense its reactionary
Yeah, that's the other thing. The dems obstinately refuse to do anything to materially help people.
This might shock you, but voting against the Red Party will, in fact, not cause the Red Party to disappear.
Meaning that you'll need to vote blue every few years under the threat of your life ending, and then do that forever. You have no choice at all. Nice democracy, huh?
This is just coercion. You may as well have a dictatorship ruled by the blue party, where you don't get to vote at all.
In fact, it would be an objectively superior form of government to just have a one-party state ruled by the blue party. That way you won't have to worry about getting exterminated every 4 years. The results will otherwise be the same as if the Blue team won every election normally.
Edit: In short, the entire American election process can be summed up as: "Vote blue, OR ELSE..."
The blue party won, the red party is doing genocide anyway, the blue party is doing little if anything to even slow it down.
I vote, i vote for dems, but afaik the dems aren't doing anything to slow down the gop. I don't think voting can make things worse, but it's also not particularly helpful.
