For those choosing not to vote for Biden, voting for a genocidist in a US federal election doesn’t put blood on your hands.
This isn’t fabricated consent (I mean it is in that lumpins are told to believe they chose the government when they didn’t).
Here’s the thing: The office seat will be filled whether or not you vote. And you get one non-transferable vote.
This means you get to vote against the worse popular guy by voting for his most likely contender.
It’s the trolley problem, only millions are voting on the position of the lever. What we cannot do is move the lever out of position.
It’s still up to you. Taking action is harder than not taking action, but we are staring down Project 2025, the neutering of elections in the US and one-party autocracy (the Republican party), which will also speed up the dismantling of civil rights in the US. If you don’t want that to happen, please consider voting against Trump and any other Republicans down ballot.
Yes, it sucks the US is reduced to this sorry state.
Neither does mine, but I’m still doing it. Worst cae, the popular vote being very far from the electoral college results highlights some of the absurdity in the system, which is a vital part of accumulating support for changing the system. Best case, I don’t understand the political landscape of my state as well as I think I do, and I contribute to it turning blue, even for a single election.
This post just makes me more convinced that we’re going to see another Trump term… I’m not in the US, but from over here I can’t see how it doesn’t go that way.
I’ve lost faith in the US voters after 2016. We held our nose knowing Clinton was a neoconservative recognizing that Trump would be much much worse (and was pretty terrible!). Trump lost the majority but won the EC, and the EC failed to do what it was supposed to do (conspire to elect someone other than the obvious tyrant) so, well, we got Trump in his pajamas obeying Leonard Leo and Steve Miller while Mattis kept him from nuking North Korea.
It reminded me of George W. Bush, who also lost the popular vote to Gore, but won the EC with a little help from friends in SCOTUS (and Leonard Leo), which was far worse than we imagined it would be after Bush’s compassionate conservative thing. I believed Republicans couldn’t actually get a president elected again, because there was no way we were going to forget the $3 trillion price-tag of Iraq, the torture, the open-ended war on terror, Halliburton’s war profiteering and so on. It was such a shit show I expected it to be seared into the minds of Americans. Heck, Bush crawled away as the subprime mortgage crisis hit, so we were all feeling bummed.
The world gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize just for not being Bush.
Nope, it turns out eight years later (with, granted, the War on Terror and mass surveillance getting worse) we forgot the ones who got us into it in the first place. And as much as Trump looked like a rabid monster, having freshly stolen the GOP from all the other cookie-cutter prospects, ready to bring fascism on like The Producers, Clinton was so hated that they just couldn’t see Trump for what he was. (To be fair, millions of Protestant Evangelist Christians were being told from the pulpit Jesus wanted them to vote for Trump – something they’re not supposed to do while remaining a tax-free church. White Evangelists voted for him at a rate around 80%)
So now we’re here, and I’m reminded of LBJ’s lowest white man comment (attributed), If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. Apparently some Americans really do go all in for that kind of ideology, even as the nation world burns down around them.
There’s also the imminent possibility of civil war. Trump will try to organize a coup d’etat if he loses the election, and it is a matter if it can be adequately detected and repelled (or squelched before it gets started).
The good news is, this sort of thing doesn’t reach the vast majority of Americans, since most of us aren’t hyper online, and definitely not on Twitter.
The bad news is, this rhetoric seems popular (from what I hear) on Tiktok, where the youths are. And if the youths don’t vote for Biden as much as we need, then yeah we’re boned.
Also worth noting, this is not mutually exclusive with other efforts! Keep pressuring the Democratic party, keep protesting, keep boycotting Israel-invested companies!
We didn’t really build any of it. It was all designed by a bunch of old white slave owners over 200 years ago. What we can do now is keep things from getting worse and try to make steady progress along the way. Voting isn’t everything, but it’s still important.
We can and have improved things massively. What we cannot do is fix everything at one time. The most we can realistically hope for is marginal improvement. Demanding perfection or nothing results in us sliding backwards.
But look at 60 years ago. Racial discrimination wasn’t only legal, but state-mandated in much of the country. Interracial marriage was illegal. Being homosexual was illegal. A woman could be fired for not sleeping with her boss or for becoming pregnant. Businesses couldn’t operate on Sundays because it competed with church. Firearms could be purchased by anyone without a background check at any store. Politicians openly ran on the platform that the white race was superior. Poor kids and minorities were drafted and forced to fight in useless wars while rich people could get college deferments.
We’re so, so much better today than we were then. I don’t want to rant forever, so let’s focus on one issue and go even more recent:
30 years ago the general public was so homophobic that a Democratic President signed a law banning openly gay people from serving in the military. Clinton then followed it up by signing the Defense of Marriage Act barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage and allowing states to refuse to recognize marriages granted by another state - even though no states allowed it at the time.
20 years ago gay marriage was still illegal in all 50 states (next Friday is actually the 20th anniversary of gay marriage in Massachusetts!). It wasn’t until 2012 that the first states legalized gay marriage through popular votes.
It’s been less than 10 years since gay marriage was legalized nationwide.
In 2010 the majority of the country was opposed to gay marriage. Today nearly 80 percent supports it. That’s remarkable.
We’ve improved so much very, very quickly. It’s just hard to see when there’s so much more work to be done.
But it took work to make the progress we have. If we’d given up and simply chosen not to vote we’d have empowered those who fought change.
I’m just disappointed with people pretending to be against genocide while bothsidesing an overtly racist fragile demagogue who did a putsch. It’s very clear which direction that party is headed.
You got around 1% of the vote in 2016 up against two of the most hated people on the planet. Unfortunately a third party won’t be anywhere near the executive branch unless the voting system is changed.
If you’re choice is continually between a corrupt carrier politician & a literal facist you don’t really have a functional democracy. I would suggest you go learn how to use a tourniquet/pressure bandage & a rifle.
We haven’t had a functioning democracy since the 19th century.
There’s argument to be made we didn’t have a functioning democracy when the Constitution was ratified in 1789, since segments of it were clearly written in bad faith (like the electoral college, the 3/5s of all non-free persons clause, and arguably, the failure to offer suffrage to all persons including women), but Boss Tweed in 1852 already understood how to game the elections so that only approved candidates might make it to primaries (of New York State elections and Federal elections).
In the aughts (the 2000s), Oxford University did a study regarding elections, public interests and elite interests, and determined the US behaved more like an oligarchy than a democratic republic, so yeah, we’re a plutocracy with some democratic features. However those democratic features, while meager, keep the US from turning into a single-party autocracy like the German Reich or the late-stage USSR.
And we’re moving towards that autocracy, propped up by fascist ideology (with enemy within rhetoric, and purge actions to follow) with every year. The next time the Republican takes control of all three federal branches of government, the game is very likely up.
The US is also on the brink of civil war, and it may be sparked by Trump losing, depending on how large and coordinated the coup d’etat effort is at the time, or if Trump wins, by an attack against those resisting draconian policies.
The ones that get me are the ones that talk about voting 3rd party. A lot of them seem to understand that the 3rd party is not going to win and that their best case scenario is… I guess “Next time they’ll listen to us and we’ll get a real leftist?” So… Your solution to the genocide is wait 4 years to get someone who will directly end it? Bestie, I don’t think Gaza will be around in 4 years. Even if you discount Trump’s stated desire to be a dictator and Project 2025.
Or, what happens by the way if Biden wins in spite of them voting 3rd party? Surely it doesn’t mean that they’ve directly proven to the Democrats that they literally don’t need that voting bloc?
Biden also isnt the one doing a genocide. He’s the one trying to navigate a complex geopolitical clusterfuck, while dealing a genocidal maniac who very clearly wants Donald Trump to win so he can turn the genocide up to 11.
The intentional willingness to suck all nuance out of this conversation and reduce it to a single binary purity test is complete madness. It’s hard to believe anyone pushing this rhetoric is operating in good faith.
Sure maybe not committing genocide with his hands, but hitler also didn’t kill all the jews with his hands. Sending weapons and funding it is just as bad.
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