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  • mittens [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    I harbor no resentment to people who are going to vote for Biden this election, but if your answer to people who feel powerless in the face of what, for them, could very well be an inconsequential election is to call them selfish and saboteurs, you're no comrade. You're not even tackling this from the left.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        If Bernie was the candidate a good 20 percent of them would be considering shooting left.

    • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      Yeah I think the best position here is exclusively just no voter shaming.

      Biden sucks, but like, if I lived in a swing state I would've voted for him. But then again, I don't really buy the argument that Biden is worse than Trump in any way, I think it evens out with the exception of supporting mask wearing.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        Yeah, Biden will almost certainly kill more people on balance.

        But the US imperial position has been weakened enough that even under Biden its probably not going to be as effective, and Biden is probably going to make things better in the US, maybe, unless he immediately does austerity which he probably will.

        Our tactics should be build our small but growing dual power, keep up the Molotovs and critical support for all (non ISIS level batshit) anti-imperialism.

        it's basically the same situation either way, just the people are dying in different places.

        • the_river_cass [she/her]
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          4 years ago
          1. Biden will kill more people but that's ok because he might have been able to kill even more is... not a great argument
          2. we have no dual power in the US. there are a few projects trying to build it but none are of a sufficient size to call them dual power.

          (the socdem redefinition of dual power as elected leftists is not dual power in the Marxist or anarchist senses of the term, which look to institutions outside the state that can be built up and eventually supplant the state itself)

          • Mardoniush [she/her]
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            4 years ago
            1. The argument is that the amount of harm that Biden can do vs Trump is limited due to the collapse of imperial strength. It doesn't make him a better person, it does make him less materially harmful.

            2. I was thinking more our small but growing mutual aid orgs, the nascent Socialist militias, our much strong socialist cores in unions etc.

            Yes, they're not dual power in the sense of a direct challenge to state institutions even at the local level (yet), but they are in the sense they are an institution providing some of the services a state is expected to, and I expect them to grow dramatically in power over the winter as the state becomes less able to provide.

      • AbolishAmerikkka [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        I think voting biden is un-strategic for the left in the longer term. Trump winning again will be the best thing for the left in the long term.

        If Biden wins and carries on neoliberalism for 4 more years people will be so pissed that they will elect a real fascist not just a conman like trump.

        • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          Yeah I don't really buy this argument as the be all end all.

          I think the argument that centrists going back to not showing up in primaries like they did during the Obama years, leaving room for the left to grow at the state and federal legislative level, is just as valid of an argument as this one.

          I do believe expanded neoliberalism opens the door for more fascism to rise, but I don't think it's 4 years away given how shit the current slate of possible Republican candidates are, alongside the signaling that they want to return to being an economic libertarian party again post Trump.

        • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          See, I'm not certain I ever agree with this. I just think the democrats are more loyal to different countries and political factions in different countries. The damage Trump did to the state department will take far longer than 4 years to fix if ever.

          For example, Trump has emboldened Israel to enact all sorts of damage to the palestinian cause in a way that Biden wouldn't. This said, Biden won't roll back what Trump did, but had Hillary won these things never would've happened to begin with. The same can be said relating to the situation with sanctioning Iran, and past cooling tensions with Cuba.

          Trump may be better for Latin America, but that's it, and I'm not even confident that any particular president matters here, the real debate is between sanctions/other legislative style imperialism vs hard imperialism with bombs. It should however be noted though that the fall of the pink tide happened mostly under Trump even if some of the ground work was laid during the Obama years, they for example didn't follow through on the Bush administration effort to despose of Evo in 2008.