Joe Biden is “only” Genocide abroad, and probably less of it.
Therefore, a vote for Joe Biden is a Vote against genocide.
No, it doesn’t matter that he’s an active participant in the apparatus that’s creating the genocide, because if he’s in office there’s less genocide. Which is the important part, and pretending otherwise is sophistry. If you abstain from voting, you are increasing the likelihood of more genocide and if you discourage others from voting, you are an active participant in the overall social apparatus that is probabilistically increasing the amount of genocide.
The utility calculation is dead simple: more votes for Biden in key states makes more genocide less likely, and discouraging people from voting for Biden makes more genocide more likely. Therefore, discouraging people from voting for Biden is a pro-genocide strategy and voting for Biden in battleground states is an anti-genocide strategy. You should vote for Biden unless you live in a solid blue state, and even then it’s not a bad idea.
TLDR: if you encourage people to not vote for Biden, that’s supporting genocide. Accelerationism never works for us.
There are two options: ‘some genocide’, and ‘a lot more genocide’. The race is close, so if not enough people vote for ‘some genocide’, ‘a lot more genocide’ will win. ‘No genocide’ is not one of the options. Do you vote for ‘some genocide’, or do you assent to letting ‘a lot more genocide’ win?
As I said, ‘No genocide’ is not one of the two options that’s going to win. The race is close, not voting for ‘less genocide’ only helps ‘lots of genocide’. So you’re helping ‘lots of genocide’ beat ‘less genocide’, congrats.
Voting against genocide doesn’t reduce genocide. In American elections, the only votes that have an effect are those for one of the two front-runners. Any other vote is an admission of equivocation of the two front-runners. The two front-runners are ‘some genocide’ and ‘lots of genocide’. Equivocating the two means you think ‘some genocide’ and ‘lots of genocide’ are equally acceptable. Q.E.D. you accept lots of genocide.
Unfortunately the American electoral system is not ranked choice, so “bar of acceptability” isn’t a functionally meaningful concept. In American elections, the situation is as I’ve described above. Refusing to choose one of the two primary options functionally means you find both primary options equally acceptable.
That’s not what a tautology is, Duverger’s Law is a mathematical derivative of First Past the Post election systems. Yes, under FPTP systems, voting third party is equivocating support for both primary parties. Performative ethics without pragmatics is moral masturbation.
Splitting your responses is rhetorically ridiculous.
You do not know what a tautology is. You do not know what a false dichotomy is. Your attempt to Gish Gallop is transparent and I won’t be wasting any more time with your childishness.
your accusation of gish galloping is baseless. each of my replies has been a succinct response to one of your claims. the fact that you are able to pack so many fallacious claims into one comment suggests that there is a gish gallop happening, though.
you’re characterization of my actions and motive have no bearing on whether anything I’ve said is correct, and they do not support any of your claims. this is just posturing and rhetoric.
Yes, bc they do this all the time. Its to exhaust u, drag the comment train into the ditches where they may convince at least some young person that you are actually wrong if u ever once misstep or misspeak.
Ive em tagged as “russian shill.” Theyre not the only ones, but take careful note of their rhetorical style, the way they twist words and come off sounding confident and “intelligent” if u dont think about what they’re saying for more than 3 seconds.
Theres more of em, hence why i say again, take note of the “flavor,” shall we say, of debate here. Its easier to catch the others then; they all sound the same. Often they back each other up.
Performative ethics without pragmatics is moral masturbation.
deontological ethics are preferred by professional philosophers and are the basis of most ethical systems. most people grew up with an understanding that “the ends justify the means” can be used to justify some pretty horrific shit.
Tautologies are statements that are necessarily true by virtue of their construction. In order to show that something is tautological, you must reduce it to an open statement and be able to show that it’s true independent of the variables. Tautologies include “Not Q or Q” and the equivalent “If Q then Q”. Furthermore, stating that something is a tautology implies that you believe it’s true. The last time I encountered someone claiming that something didn’t have predictive value “because it’s a tautology” was a creationist saying the same of evolution, and I realized they had essentially granted their opponent’s conclusion.
The last time I encountered someone claiming that something didn’t have predictive value “because it’s a tautology” was a creationist saying the same of evolution
i don’t know the exact context you’re referencing, but i do know that trying to pigeonhole me with creationists is underhanded.
stating that something is a tautology implies that you believe it’s true.
i believe anyone may claim that the price of a good can be described as the point at which temporal demand met temporal supply, but that doesn’t make it a useful observation. it’s not even disprovable, as there is no way to test it. so there is no reason to believe it’s actually true.
I’m not getting in another argument with you; you’re dishonest and annoying. I replied to educate, because despite your claims otherwise you’re clearly ignorant.
in a show of good faith, i’m about to break from my usual rhetorical style. i hope you find this explanation helpful
Duverger’s Law is a tautology because, from a critical rationalist perspective, a tautological statement is one that cannot be empirically tested or falsified—it’s true by definition. Duverger’s Law states that a plurality-rule election system tends to favor a two-party system. However, if this law is framed in such a way that any outcome can be rationalized within its parameters, then it becomes unfalsifiable.
For example, if a country with a plurality-rule system has more than two parties, one might argue that the system still “tends to” favor two parties, and the current state is an exception or transition phase. This kind of reasoning makes the law immune to counterexamples, and thus, it operates more as a tautological statement than an empirical hypothesis. The critical rationalist critique of marginalist economics, which relies on ceteris paribus (all else being equal) conditions, suggests any similarly structured law should be viewed with skepticism. For Duverger’s Law to be more than a tautology, it would need to be stated in a way that allows for clear empirical testing and potential falsification, without the possibility of explaining away any contradictory evidence. This would make it a substantive theory that can contribute to our understanding of political systems rather than a mere tautology.
Nah we can take it up with you, because the choice is Biden or Trump, not Biden, Trump, or time travel. Pull your head out of your ass - your little protest vote doesn’t matter now, but your ACTUAL vote does.
Is your protest vote saving Palestinians? At least my vote conceivably could have an impact
With one term, Trump stacked the federal judiciary for a generation and eroded the administrative state. If he gets another terms he’ll use his stacked bench to pass his agenda and uphold it when it’s inevitably challenged. How do you think progressive causes will fare then? At least you’ll have your protest vote to soothe your conscience as Trump enacts a little genocide on immigrants, trans people, and anyone else he decides isn’t pure enough.
In 2016 people like you were smugly announcing that nothing bad would happen, like Roe being repealed, and everyone was being dramatic, because Clinton was “just as bad” as Trump. So fascinated to hear what your excuses will be this time around.
I can’t bring myself to vote for someone like Joe Biden. Without getting too in depth on my life story, I’ve been falsely arrested before. Hell, I’ve basically paid the price for a crime I didn’t commit. So when someone like Joe Biden promises police reform and then turns around and immediately pours $34 billion dollars into 100,000 more cops and more surveillance, I just genuinely cannot bring myself to vote for him any more than you could bring yourself to vote for your abuser.
At the same time, I have great sympathy for Palestinians. Here in the US and abroad. And I also cannot expect them to vote for someone assisting in the genocide of their friends and family, even if some political arithmetic says they should.
I don’t bemoan you for voting for Joe Biden. But I’m voting third party this time around. Maybe it’ll send a message to the DNC, maybe it won’t. It’s the only voice I got as a singular voter to cast my vote in a democratic process towards what I believe in the most.
We did. They lost the primary in 2020 and now we have Biden. Any other fundamental misunderstandings of American politics or are you done being stupid?
Your solution to losing is to now bandwagon with “the lesser of two evils”? Why wouldn’t you abandon that party entirely? There’s more than two choices.
They’ll kill and take away the rights of people who aren’t you though…yay…
To top it off, you go on to bash those who think that’s not a good choice
There’s two choices. Protests votes in the general election in the system we have today are at best no votes, but are often just votes for the other candidate. Your moral high ground is nothing and smugly voting third party doesn’t actually DO anything right now.
If you think that “protest votes” have any chance of removing the two parties from power, you’re naive. If it were that easy, it would have already happened as people have been voting and advocating for third party votes for generations. The way to actually affect change is to engage vociferously in primaries and lower level offices to get outside voices in at a level to actually change things - specifically abandoning FPTP voting and getting third party candidates in local offices (and eventually ditch the electoral college). Even if you somehow magically convinced everyone that “would like to vote for someone other than D’s and R’s” to actually do so in a national election, having a candidate that adequately represented enough people’s beliefs to win is a statistical impossibility.
The fascists/Christian Nationalists have been methodically working towards their goals for decades; to think that you have any chance of overthrowing the Democratic or Republican party in this election is beyond laughable.
Easy. By eliminating the worse party and transforming the existing one. Parties have already vanished in our system in the past; see the Whigs.If you’re older than 22-years-old you recognize just how much progress Dems have made in the past 15 or so years. So continue promoting progressive candidates in Dems while ensuring GOP go the way of the Whigs. Start advocating for campaign finance / election reform as your primary voting concern and that you’ll donate to anyone who pushes this.
Things take time but a protest vote inevitably leads to the worst evil prevailing.
There’s more than two choices the same way there’s more than two choices for calling a coin. You can call a side. You can call for the edges. You can call that it balances diagonally. You can even call for a unicorn to magically appear over one of the sides. The chances are so slim that you might as well have chosen no side at all, but it could happen, and it is a choice.
Personally, anyone that says there are more than two parties has no idea how statistics and/or voting works, or they don’t really care about the outcome.
Your conscience can be a good indicator that something immoral is happening, but it’s certainly not infallible. While I think abstaining is a worse choice, the most egregious course of action being discussed is actively arguing against voting, which is actively harmful and supports multiple genocides including the one ostensibly being denounced by the people who act as such.
I voted third party too once. I couldn’t in good conscience vote for either major party. I was living in Florida, and voted for Nader in 2000.
I’ve not been so naive since.
Did I not vote for the killing of children in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did I not vote for the curtailing of medical research? Did I not vote for the hundreds of millions that will die due to climate change?
Learn from my mistake. Because the lessons you learn from yours may not be applicable given what will be lost by the time you realize what you’ve done.
I hear you. And I appreciate your candor and politeness, which can be hard to ask for sometimes.
I’m still planning on voting third party. I’ve voted dem every time since I could vote, I feel like I gotta draw a line in the sand somewhere. But! By golly, if he says he’s going to cut some of the money out of the police, and maybe tighten some things up in the Middle East, he’ll have me again. And he’s got months to do that! And I’m hoping. But if that effort isn’t made and he focuses on the center-right… I just can’t do it.
You want very reasonable things in a unreasonable system.
Youll either get the status quo as it stands, or you’ll get Dr. Fascismo doing away with free elections on top of an Eastern European genocide courtesy of trumps master, minorities being actively persecuted for just existing, and saying the things youre saying being documented and held against you as thoughtcrimes.
The US is on the cusp of moving past the stain that is rhe baby boomer voting block that insists on unfettered neoliberalism and conservative social policy by and large. Thisd be the time to ensure we dont double down on it.
I just blocked the whole instance when they removed my comment pointing out that Al Jazeera might not be unbiased in the matters of Hamas vs Israel, because they are funded by Qatar who also shelter Hamas leaders.
And even Al Jazeera think Trump would be an even bigger fucking disaster for Palestine.
I use voyager. I will be looking more into this function. My original thinking was that I would have to switch over to an instance already blocking .ml or start my own.
I am just tired of people getting away with being explicitly pro-terrorism just because they tell other users they are trans, as if that made sociopathy and psychopathy OK.
Idk how much i want to do this… ive been followed around by trolls for being vocal, but i wonder if it’s not a good idea to know what their talking points are. Not to mention the possibility of good daith youngins being attracted to their stink needing to hear something not advantageous to hostile foreign powers.
Also i like linux memes. Lots of linux shit is on .ml bc of it supposedly being sooper extra privacy oriented.
Haha u speak truth! I was blocked from world news.ml right quick. First day or two on lemmy. I was calling out shills for spreading russian/chinese talking points. Shame on me, i suppose!
To think i jumped ship from reddit to escape the bans from the same following the api changes and thought id find refuge here.
They go after leftist spaces in particular with the shit u have seen. They know what theyre doing. That’s why i think the pushback is so necessary. SY what they will, truth is truth, even in the post-truth era. It must be echoed, bans and whines from shills and tankies be damned.
Basically just the trolley problem, but the tracks are already aligned to killing fewer people. There is a vote on whether to divert the trolley to the track which would kill more people or stay the course. Is there blood on your hands if you abstained and convinced others to abstain which resulted in a win for changing tracks?
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
When granted the option between 2 fascist regimes, a man has no choice but to pledge fealty to the fascist regime that targets the population that he like less.
The neolibs are the ones driving the murdering of the Palestinians. Today. Right now.
How do these dumdums not die from trying to eat through their ears?
"Save the Palestinians! Vote for the man who railroaded the UN as hard as he could to stop intervention to save Palestinians, who defunded humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and who is bypassing congress to supply all of the weapons that are being used to kill Palestinians."
It is such a complete nonsensical argument. It is just beyond me.
The simple, and unfortunate, truth that everyone here understands is that as bad as Biden is on this subject, Trump will be so much worse.
Biden is going against the wishes of his base to enable the ethnic cleansing. Trump's base wants the ethnic cleansing to speed up so that Jesus can come back and send all the Jews to hell.
Except that you cannot. Not under our current voting system.
Durvurger's law and Arrow's Theorem both talk about why voting for a third party under Ordinal voting systems, result in a literally wasted vote. But worse, when a third party candidate becomes popular, they actively harm their supporters.
There's zero chance of changing the voting system to something better before the election, so for now, Biden is the least evil option.
Make no mistake, Biden is still an evil, but Trump is so much worse.
Duverger's law holds that in political systems with only one winner (as in the U.S.), two main parties tend to emerge with minor parties typically splitting votes away from the most similar major party.
In short, a vote for a third party is exactly like throwing that vote away, and raising support for a third party is exactly like telling people not to vote at all.
Who the fuck do you think is bankrolling all these Third Party jackasses? The conservative think tanks out there love third parties, because that's the fastest and easiest way to split the left and drag the Overton window further to the right.
Sometimes the third party candidate is a willing participant in this bullshit, knowing that they're actively harming their supporters, but not caring because they get money and attention.
You sweet summer child. If you think the democrats are fascist, then you're in for a rude fucking awakening if Trump steps back into office. Trump has promised to weaponize the DOJ against everyone to the political left of Marjorie Taylor Green.
He will fire anyone who does not comply.
And if you think you're safe because you're a nobody. Well, the local police are sort of held in check by federal oversight. What I'm saying is, the police currently have to at least pretend to not be abusive assholes.
If Trump wins, then the masks come off.
But worse will be the random Trump supporters who now know that the police and DOJ will not protect certain people, that they will not prosecute crimes against certain people by Trump supporters.
If you love your Christian nationalism, that too is in the plan. Seriously, he's laid the plan out in the open. He's honestly telling us that he's going to end American Democracy and install himself as king.
And his plans to the Middle East are whatever the Christian nationalists want. Which is an even harsher genocide so that Jesus can come back and send the Jews to hell.
Then there's you. A person of questionable education who thinks that Biden and Trump are basically the same.
If Biden wins, the die hard Trump supporters will likely stage an attack of some sort. Maybe a series of attacks, And Biden's DOJ will reluctantly prosecute them. Otherwise, it will be business as usual for everyone else.
Biden is also slowly waking up and seeing the fucking obvious about Gaza. Too fucking late, but better late than never.
And make sure to be a white male. Because you're advocating for literal fascism with your both sides, third party bullshit.
You want an actual, viable third party? It cannot happen until we change the voting system to support it.
The math is clear. First Past the Post cannot support anything other than two party dominance, and any third party candidate will always hurt their own supporters via the spoiler effect.
It's far too late to change the voting system for this election, and thanks to the actual fascism of one candidate, if you want future elections at all, you will vote against Trump.
Unless you're fine with a totalitarian dictatorship. In which case, kindly fuck off.
He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
Someone misunderstood math and claimed that more people voted "uncommitted" than had voted for Biden in "last year's" election.
Someone else explained the misunderstanding, and the real explanation (that the "uncommitted" number was higher than Biden's margin over Trump, not Biden's total).
The mod of the liberty place replied "This is a false statement and reeks of debatebro. Please remove this from your comment."
I'll let the rest speak for itself; exactly what you think happened happened.
I kid. What you said sounded fine to me actually; you said something wrong, someone called you out, you said "okay you are right" but defended your overall point which I think was pretty legitimate, there was a little hostility from both sides, the end.
I had nothing to do with the conversation btw, I just observed it. But my comment here was more calling out the mod for telling people directly that they needed to revise their comments to be according to his liking, and deleting them when they weren't, peeking out from behind a fig-leaf of it being because of the hostility instead of the viewpoint that was being expressed.
Am I being combative? I'm being blunt, a little bit, but IDK how you got from "What you said sounded fine to me" to combativeness. All I meant by putting "misspoke" in quotes was, it wasn't a typo or something; you very clearly (edit: misunderstood the math) were wrong and IDK how anybody should be getting mad at someone else coming into it and giving the correct math instead. Doesn't sound like anyone was coming with any bad intention though, just a little arguing about what's going on, normal stuff.
The deleted comment's in the modlog; it was:
I provided sources on how they are incorrect. Provide sources supporting their claims or get fucked. And don't bother with the popularity shit, that isn't what's being contested nor is that what the comment says.
Oh, I thought it was a joke so I deleted my comment.
No, I wrote it wrong. I know what a margin is. Sometimes people just don’t write what they mean to say. This is a social media website, not a fucking essay writing class. I feel like you’re trying to gaslight me or something. I know what a margin is, and moved on when my comment was corrected, why can’t you just believe what someone tells you and move on too?
Literally all I meant by putting "misspoke" in quotes was, as a general rule I think that term is bullshit. It's this kind of Kellyanne Conway thing "let's not examine in detail whether I was mistaken, or lied on purpose, or I fumbled words and didn't mean to say what I said, the important thing is it doesn't count, let's not examine which of those it was..."
I get where it came across as me being rude and sarcastic and I apologize. I walked it back as a joke right after because you actually didn't do any of that -- like I said, I thought what you did was fine and I was just giving you some grief over using the word. And the truth is yeah I have no idea if you really were mistaken or just made some epic typo or something, so maybe I should take your word for it if you really are swearing up and down that you knew the truth and just typed it out the way you typed it for an accidental reason.
I think you're taking this as like a personal thing directed solely at you. It's not. It's just people talking on the internet which sad to say is not always polite. But yeah since I was directing some offensive things at you I apologize about that.
I hear you and totally get that this was a conversation and series of misunderstandings that could really only have happened online …thanks for the apology.
The system in the US necessitates one cast their vote tactically instead of emotionally to effect necessary change, and most of these changes bear out only in the long term by design. Because of this, capital interest toils to encourage voters into precisely the opposite behavior; a populace which is driven to make voting decisions by an atomic, emotionally-charged view of a singular candidate’s actions, as opposed to a contextual view of the broader system which enables such actions to begin with, is a populace which is much easier to fragment—and much easier to control.
Meaningful change requires a path to follow, but results by a reformist method alone come painfully slow—again, by the system’s very design. It’s more comfortable to believe that rallying behind a third party advocating radical change is the better way, but power has been consolidated so heavily into the largest two parties that the effectiveness of any others (outside of very specific circumstances) is gutted almost entirely. It has been this way especially since the campaign finance mal-reforms that followed the Bush v Gore race. Abstaining from participation or jumping to a niche cause in protest of atrocities that are occurring now is an understandable sentiment, but in a system tuned to overlook and perpetuate said atrocities it’s missing the bigger picture.
Try not to look at your vote as a wholesale endorsement; look at it instead as a carefully-considered stake in the ultimate goal to tear down the walls which have kept third parties unfairly irrelevant for decades—centuries, arguably. Stake it with the goal of working to reform or abolish unjust systems. Stake it with the goal of laying the groundwork for more radical progressive change in the future.
Despite all I’ve attempted to lay out, if you insist on voting third party anyways, I urge you to find someone to vote for and make that your movement to stand in contrast against reprehensible genocide-enabling. The time for such a nomination is long overdue, and as it stands a candidate does not seem to currently exist in a way capable of capturing the majority of Americans’ votes—especially in time for election day. This means a lot of work needs to be done if that’s your ultimatum to the current situation, I encourage you to start as soon as you are able. Please understand that the third party route is not only victory or bust, but a bust means the genocide gets considerably and immediately worse if you rally too many to your cause who would have cast their vote for Biden otherwise. This outcome has an extremely well-established historical precedent in the United States, having happened multiple times in elections past, and will continue to be a concern unless/until vote tally reforms are adopted. Such are the considerations in US electoral tactics.
Lmao, I had a chat with a couple of these folks. Keep taunting them and burying them when they step out of their echo chambers. The whole “both sides” and “I’m gonna piss away my vote on a 3rd party in 2 party system” schtick couldn’t be any more hollow than it is this year.
Biden sucks. Trump is a blight on this earth. Like it or not, you get those two choices, and the literal fuckin Nazis and the scum that break bread with them are really motivated to get their dictator “for a day” back in.
Its a terrible tagline, “vote for the one that sucks bc anything else endangers democracy,” and i understand that that makes it feel like nothing is changing, but something thats worth hammering home is, do u realize how nonexistent its been in our countrys history that everyone realizes how radical the change we need is?
The efforts to keep voters home/vote third party to spoil their vote are only this amplified bc thats how much it takes to try and keep the fascist party and their shrinking demographic in power. Theres a young generation rising to ascendency… 10 years from now the overton window is going to be remarkably shifted if the those in power hope to stay there. Of course that wont happen if we dont get to have any more free elections…
(based on my observations) Hexbear users’ typical response is absolutely authoritarian, just extreme left flavor of it.
You can’t, however, build a reasonable discourse with an absolutist pro-authoritarian type, no matter how hard you try. And it’s no wonder they are going for the authoritarian representative one way or another.
Id argue its not left at all. Simping for authoritarian regimes from the east that mask themselves behind pretty images/words of workers’ governments doesnt hand the means of production to the working class, and it most certainly implies one is not so very keen on establishing a classless, cashless, stateless society. They call themselves a dictatorship of the proletariat, but all the emphasis goes on the first part.
I remember meeting a man from Libya at an old job of mine. He was more supportive of Republicans which surprised me . (My initial thought was why would an Arab support Republicans.) He said that Democrats had a stronger tendency to invade other countries. He had a point in that Obama and Hilary absolutely brought upon a Libyan apocalypse but he totally ignored Reagan and both Bushes who are Republicans (who destroyed the Iraqi government).
Though I should stop before it sounds like I’m “both sidings” again.
That’s the thing, democrats and republicans are the same when it comes to many critical problems, stemming from both of them being parties of the rich. Accusations of "both sides"ing is used to shut down any discussions of how the system itself is rotten to the core. Yes, both parties aren’t the exact same but there are enough similarities to show that voting won’t be the solution for a lot of key issues.
The sudden “don’t vote biden” push has always felt like astroturf to me. “Divide the opposition” is literally politics 101, but I guess some people really think doing nothing is going to somehow do something.
Oh, and voting third party counts as not voting. You know that, you’re not fucking stupid.
If you spend time with real boots-on-the-ground activism to support and prop up legitimate leftist candidates, policies, and parties in advance of election years, then yeah fine I’ll accept your righteous abstaining from voting the general election.
But if your “protest” begins and ends with choosing to not vote the lesser of two evils while you’re not doing anything to actually upend the system, fuck you. Your ideological purity is causing real world harm while you pout and expect some other magical force to swoop in and save you.
Nobody is coming to save you.
Nobody.
Either put in the fucking work and put in the real effort to change things, or fall in line. As is, you’re just in everyone’s way.
Well put. Thing is, I don’t see people who don’t vote going around telling people not to vote. They usually want nothing to do with an election and don’t like to hear about it either. So I always assume that the people who are telling you not to vote are doing it specifically to discredit whoever runs against Trump. Which makes them either MAGA shills or russian trolls. Both equally bad.
To your first point, unsurprisingly, the boots on the ground folks typically are fans of damage control in the system as it stands in the first place. Turns out allowing the authoritarians to have their way is not the way to effect leftward change in the slightest.
Dont worry internet stranger, i caught ur drift, but in times like these u can never do without additional clarification/elaboration. I think it helps if the actual leftists take the effort to distance themselves from any efforts that put Dr. Fascismo in the seat of the most powerful nation in the world.
What do you believe is the underlying set of values and principles guiding Hexbear?
What do you believe the goals of people on Hexbear are?
Is it possible to analyze the beliefs that lead them to the conclusions they have, so as to better argue against them, than to call them MAGA supporters?
I myself will probably be voting Biden, for transparency, but this meme is just a gross misunderstanding of how disaffected leftists, and Marxists in general, operate, and why.
Why do you say that? They oppose Capitalism, colonialism, Imperialism, and bigotry. They support Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism. They read Marx, Lenin, and Goldman, and share memes based on Marxist theory.
On what grounds do you decide that they aren’t leftists? Is it because you disagree with their stances, as a presumed leftist, therefore anyone you disagree with cannot be a leftist? Is it because you think they are bad people, and bad people can’t be leftists? Is it just vibes?
What is your coherent and useful definition of leftism? We can compare Hexbear’s stated goals and see if it lines up better with leftism or rightism.
Being a leftist requires one to oppose capitalism.
Leninism is a blatantly capitalist system that pretends otherwise.
Also, they don’t oppose bigotry. Once someone from Hexbear said that Hexbear was more pro-trans than any trans space was, and their fellows seemed to agree with them. Paying lip service to anti-bigotry does not mean one is not an ignorant bigot to the core.
Edit: there are other problems with what you said, but frankly, I’m not going to waste my time addressing every part of the gish-Gallup.
Hexbear is anticapitalist. Like I already stated, they are Marxists and Anarchists, and oppose Capitalism.
Marxism-Leninism is not Capitalist. You don’t have to agree with it being a good idea, or support it, but to pretend that advocating for a worker state and elimination of the bourgeois class is somehow Capitalist is anti-Marxist, not just anti-Lenin.
Hexbear does oppose bigotry. It’s a bannable offense there. Some of the largest trans spaces on Lemmy are on Hexbear, so trans people agreeing that it is a good trans space doesn’t somehow indicate that they are actually pro-bigotry, that’s absurd.
Is it all just vibes from you?
Edit for your Edit: what problems are there with what I’ve said? Do you think a group of right-wingers are reading Marx and supporting trans people for shits and giggles?
What part of refusing to engage with a gish-gallop is difficult to understand?
Let’s talk about one thing: MLs aren’t socialists. And stalinists (the loudest part of Hexbear) definitely aren’t socialists. Capitalism is defined by the employee-employer relationship. MLism enshrines this relationship, and turns the state into a universal employer. That makes MLism a capitalist ideology by definition.
It wasn’t gish-gallop, I had a clear set of questions to ask, to which you ignored.
MLs are Socialists. Stalinists are also Socialists. You do not have to agree with them, in any way, but pretending they are not Socialists is a rejection of Marx himself.
Capitalism is defined not strictly by an employer-employee relationship, but necessarily by Capital production, accumulation, and control via Capitalists in an M-C-M’ circuit of commodity production. A worker state, controlled by the proletariat, is Socialist.
MLism enshrines a worker-state, and a rejection of Capitalism as the basis mode of prodiction. You can agree more with Anarchism, Libertarian Socialism, Syndicalism, Democratic Socialism, and even think MLism evil, all while recognizing it correctly as Socialist.
Have you read Marx? Critique of the Gotha Programme might help you understand Leftism a bit better.
I am neither a tankie nor brigading, but it’s telling that you haven’t actually explained any of your views, and just ran away.
You only successfully managed to say that trans people liking hexbear means hexbear isn’t against bigotry, which is utter nonsense, and that you don’t actually understand the prime distinctions of Capitalism from a Marxist perspective, causing you to misunderatand the entirety of the Marxist history.
Even if you take nothing else away from this conversation, I ask that you make the barest effort to understand Capitalism itself, what drives it, why it must be abolished, and how. Marx is certainly my preference, but Anarchists also have good, modern theory for you to read. Right now, you aren’t yet capable of distinguishing what is Capitalism and what is Socialism, so how can you ever hope to move forward?
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Critique of the Gotha Programme (specifically because it is the closest Marx gets to outlining what a Socialist State may look like, which is also why I recommended it specifically earlier, as opposed to a more beginner-friendly work) so as to point out the important distinctions between Statist Socialism and Capitalism, most notably the fact that in State Socialism, Workers are not alienated from the product of their labor, as instead of belonging to a Capitalist who competes in markets, the products of a Worker State belong to the Workers as a whole, who democratically decide what to do with them:
“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.”
Im with u, but the HBers apparently came out in force. Hexbear regularly has sided with russia over Ukraine, as well, AKA imperialism.
Cashless, classless, stateless does not align with with the ccp or russia who they continually defend and whose talking points they parrot. The gish gallop u called out is a fave of theirs. Just leaving this here so theres more traces of sanity against them.
I live in a swing state and I’m voting third party. It’s not great, but it’s the only thing I can bring myself to do. Between Gaza and Bidens commitment to pour billions of dollars into more cops and more surveillance, I just can’t do it.
If he stepped down or they put someone else up I’d probably be happily voting dem, but they didn’t. It’s a shame. They said themselves that they’re fine to lose some progressive votes if they scoop up 3 or 4 Nikki Haley voters for every progressive lost. I guess I’m one of those. I dunno. I wish it was a better circumstance.
Just say you’re voting for Trump because that is what you’re doing.
You’re just giving yourself deniability to yourself, but no one else is fooled in the slightest. In the general election, a vote for anyone but Biden amounts to a vote for Trump.
Just say you prefer Trump’s approach to Palestine, Ukraine, human rights, women’s health, religious freedom, freedom of speech, gun rights, net neutrality, Healthcare, etc, etc, ect. Just say that.
I’m familiar with these coping mechanisms, and any other year I’d tell you to vote your conscience.
This year, a vote against Biden in a swing state is a vote for Trump and it tells me everything about your conscience I need to know.
People think it’s hyperbole because they’ve heard Wolf too many times, but this is about democracy or not.
I suspect you think you’re sending a message to Biden by voting third party. You’re not. You’re just messaging to the rest of society that you want Trump over Biden. It really is that simple. Don’t insult us by pretending it’s not. You are in a fucking swing state.
I’ve frequently seen this claim, and similar ones, but it doesn’t really make sense. If not voting for Biden or not voting at all is actually a vote for Trump then his votes outnumber Biden’s by a landslide since ~80 million people don’t vote. So, by this logic, Trump should win and it shouldn’t even be close.
Ultimately the problem is Biden choices on Palestine are reprehensible. He doesn’t “deserve” to be president again on that alone. If he was running against someone like mitt Romney , he would be in deep shit, and this discussion would be a total nebulous cloud. (Edit I’m not pro mitt, I’m saying Biden only has a chance because trump is insane.)
Unfortunately, no new candidates are available for this upcoming election.
Trump has made clear his behavior on topics like Palestine, and there are strong inferences to be made.on his potential actions on Ukraine. This is corroborated by government leaders and experts who are already defensively preparing for trump to come fuck their shit up. So that’s foreign policy.
Domestically, Biden is not as egregious a troublemaker. There are SERIOUS issues happening today in America, for which a Biden whitehouse should be doing more. But I think we can agree that trump has both demonstrated in the past, and spoken clearly in the future about the ways he would shift domestic issues for the worse.
So how one votes in the primary is fine, but come the general election, I have not been convinced how abstaining or voting for trump is an appropriate action.
Trump is either as bad, or worse on every topic of significance, and I personally believe America will be drastically worse off with him as president…both domestically and abroad.
Lastly, depending on where you live, abstaining from voting in the general can be very impactful, and may even assist a trump election. It is deeply unsatisfying voting for someone you dislike, with the sole purpose of avoiding someone you hate, but it must be acknowledged.
You’re not going to convince anyone to participate in your game by insulting them. Unfortunately as the party who wants someone else to change their behavior, you have to be the bigger person. If you actually care, ya know.
You’re not going to convince anyone to participate in your game by insulting them. Unfortunately as the party who wants someone else to change their behavior, you have to be the bigger person. If you actually care, ya know.
Isn't this the line milquetoast Dems have been using with regards to lunatic GOP members for the past (checks notes) 30 years?
The only language many understand is humiliation and disdain. This is why the Nazis came back up from under their rocks the past decade. They felt comfortable in common spaces. And allowing them to spread their bullshit causes their talking points to take root.
It's discouraging authoritarian shitheads, and that's a public service.
Okay, give that a try I guess. I’ve never convinced anyone to change their mind with humiliation.
I've convinced plenty of idiots to shut their goddamn traps in public and stop spreading disinformation when their fellow shitheads aren't the only ones watching, and that's almost as good.
I’m going to shut up too, but remember 2016 when everyone went all pikachu face because people who weren’t planning to vote didn’t say shit? I do.
... you think that... 2016... which had turnout on the upper level of 'ordinary' for a presidential election... was troubled because... people who weren't planning to vote didn't speak up?
Weird, because I remember people being quite vocal about how they weren't going to vote.
Because the winner of the popular vote in 2016 lost the fucking election, despite winning by OVER 2 million votes.
Yes, having a majority of over 2 million voters and losing a purportedly democratic election does put a bit of a dampener on one's mood, especially when one realizes that the person who 'won' in that farce was going to be a corrupt bootlicking shithead.
And lo and behold - we spent four years with that corrupt bootlicking shithead, and now plenty of online 'leftists' are trying to argue that another four years wouldn't be so bad, because this time we would Really Show The DNC By Not Voting.
Sort of this, but also the person who is acting like a crazed extremist shilling for a genocidal maniac is accusing the peaceful abstainers of being MAGA.
Biden moving the Democrat party right and courting rightwing voters is what is disenfranchising liberals.
Kind of the irony of these situations. People saying “We all need to vote for Biden and if you don’t you’re a STUPID, CRYING BABY” don’t truly want to get people to vote for Biden. If they did they’d have some tact, maybe made their case and discuss the pros and cons of voting for him and hopefully actually get some conversions in rather than just looking down their nose at people.
It’s little different than the evangelical Christian’s who show up to events with big signs saying “GAYS will burn IN HELL!”. They don’t actually want to convert people. If they did they would be so alienating. They just want to scream their position to feel something.
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