https://midwest.social/post/18536008
Edit of yesterday's meme with accounted for non-voters
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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Except, you’re implying that’s not what you’re doing. You want to believe that your vote can accomplish everything you want, as easily snapping your fingers, but that’s not how it works. No positive change in history has happened in a day, but you seem to want to vote as if positive change can happen immediately.
Well, we demanded to do other things than voting to push the Dems to end their support for genocide. And got heavily attacked for it, daring to dirty the nest. We got insulted as being Trump supporters in disguise.
The idea that a serious threat to Dems voting turnout if they continue genocide would force them to change their stance before the election, was immediately met with hostility and gaslighting at worst and "lets wait until after the election" at best. Well waiting until after the election didnt work the past 25 or so years. Not with Clinton, Obama, Clinton or Biden.
We’re not talking about a threat to Democrats, we’re talking about a threat to democracy. Go back in history, and look at Germany between the mid 1920s to the 1940s. Puritanical votes in the face of authoritarianism didn’t empower people to combat genocide, it decimated their ability to do something about it. RFK, Jr., the environmental advocate was so firm in his beliefs that he went groveling to the guy that pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords, doesn’t believe in Climate Change, and just generally doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything unless it benefits him. RFK Jr. wasn’t a serious candidate. Stein? The woman shows up every four years, and didn’t even know how many members of Congress there are — and she’s the one that should be trusted to know the policy and diplomatic complexities to bring peace to an ideological, geo-political battle spanning millennia? Are those the “other things” you demanded? In order to accomplish things in the real world, it takes consensus and working together in order to achieve results without dictatorial power. A vote for Harris isn’t a vote for genocide or a perfect world, it’s a vote for moving forward — or if you want to be super cynical about it, a choice for one of the two candidates that can win who is the least likely candidate to exacerbate tensions and cause the spilling of more innocent blood.
If you can’t understand that, then it just means I can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. There isn’t a third option out there that is coming to save us — it’s up to us to save us, even if we have to do it piece-by-piece because there is no magic snapping of the fingers that is going to fix this.
Good luck dismantling the system with Hitler+ in power. You'd have an easier time dismantling it while 'regular' Hitler is in power.
Hey look, a reason to vote.
Am I allowed to call someone a fascist on here if they say, "Vote for Hitler?"
"In this example, your options are:
A. Voting for Hitler. (Hitler wins)
B. Voting for Super Hitler. (Super Hitler wins)
C. Voting 3rd party (Super Hitler wins)
D. Not voting (Super Hitler wins)"
Me: Ok, those options suck, but 'A' I guess?
"OMG, wow, advocating voting for Hitler? Literal fascist."
I can't believe I have to say this, but "being literally Hitler" should be automatically disqualifying. You should not, under literally any circumstances, support Hitler.
This should not be controversial.
It isn't controversial, but voting isn't the same as supporting.
Nowhere in this scenario between Hitler and Super Hitler would I support Hitler, but I would still vote for Hitler out of the two because it would lead to best results out of the possible outcomes at that time.
Your pearl-clutching is saying you're equally fine with both Hitler and Super Hitler, which is objectively worse.
Yes it is, and it's insanity or butchering of the English language to suggest otherwise.
I am equally fine with Hitler and Super-Hitler, which is to say, not fine at all with either of them. They are both fundamentally unacceptable and I would never vote for or support either of them. I am as opposed to both of them as it is possible to be opposed to.
You either have no understanding of what the word "objectively" means or no understanding of philosophy or politics.
"Objectively" in that in the same situation (i.e. being the deciding vote between Hitler and Super Hitler) you would decide to not vote, allowing Super Hitler to win and I would Vote to have Hitler win.
Super Hitler is objectively worse than Hitler because one is made up and the other is dead, so what are you really arguing with me for?
Lesser-evilism is not objectively correct. It is an ideology, a specific strategy and belief system, and one that is supported by neither reason nor evidence.
Your willingness to potentially support Hitler is what destroys the chance of a non-Hitler candidate winning. It also betrays the people Hitler will harm and who find supporting him completely unconscionable and destroys trust. Voting for Hitler is not a tool that you should have at all in your toolbox of tactics, and if I saw that someone had it there, as I'm seeing now, then I would be extremely concerned and suspicious of them.
I shudder to think what other tools and tactics you're prepared to use if you manage to convince yourself it's a "lesser evil" than the alternative. Unexamined consequentialism is an abhorrent belief system.
Lesser-evilism is not correct, however it's the system we currently have.
It's the natural result of a system with a single vote. You might be able to change enough people's minds to impact a single election, but the system will default back to a two-party system eventually. That is not an ideology you can break people out of, it is simply how the system works.
It sure would be nice to vote FOR someone instead of AGAINST someone else, but that's not a choice we have the luxury of making right now. We have to change the system first before that has a chance of succeeding. Otherwise it's just helping elect Super Hitler.
No, it is not. First-Past-the-Post is the system we have. Lesser-evilism is a specific ideology.
Suppose that a gunman has taken 5 people hostage, and gives you a choice. You can either kill one of them for him, and he says he'll let the rest go, or he will kill all of them himself. The ideology of lesser-evilism says that you should do it. But there are plenty of other belief systems that say you shouldn't. Your ideology of lesser-evilism, which you present as an inevitability, is actually a specific philosophical position, and one that is frankly complete nonsense. But regardless, it is impossible to critically examine any ideology if we cannot identify the fact that it is an ideology.
What if you execute a hostage, and then the gunman says, "Great, you work for me now, my first order is to gather up more hostages so I can do this again. If you don't, I'll kill twice as many people." Is that still ethical? That is what your ideology implies.
What if five people are dying and need transplants, and one innocent person happens to have the exact organs all five of them need to live? Is it ethical to kill them? That is what your ideology implies.
You are completely writing off contrary ideologies and belief systems without even recognizing that they exist, while presenting your own unexamined and indefensible ideology as objectively true and not even an ideology.
None of these examples are government elections, which is the only place where I'm using this ideology.
That's not how logic works. If you believe that lesser evilism is a valid ideology, then you don't get to just arbitrarily exclude the natural conclusions of that ideology whenever they're inconvenient to you. At that point, you should just say, "I'm voting for Kamala because I feel like it" without appealing to lesser evilism, because by presenting lesser evilism as a reason to vote for Kamala, you're arguing that because lesser evilism is true in general, it should be applied in this specific situation. You can't then go back and say, "lesser evilism isn't actually true in general" without undermining that whole argument.
It seems like you expect me to vehemently defend this ideology "in general" when I told you it's only for specific circumstances because of the way the system has been rigged since before we were born.
It's also a smart move to double down bets in specific situations in Vegas, but I'm not going to defend always doing that "in general". Context matters, and you seem to be ignoring the fascist in the room.
You're free to say that you're just voting for Kamala or Hitler or whoever because you want to, but if you try to justify it in terms of choosing the lesser evil then you need to show that the general reasoning of choosing the lesser evil is a valid line of thought. If you abandon it whenever it leads you to a conclusion that you don't like, then you don't really believe that it's valid, you're just doing whatever you feel like and using that as a rationalization.
If you follow some other principle or calculus to reach the conclusion that you should support someone who also happens to be a lesser evil candidate, then sure. But your calculus is just that you should vote for them because they're the lesser evil.
To continue your analogy, it's like if someone says, "I'm doubling down because doubling down is a good strategy," vs "Based on a separate cost benefit analysis, I should double down in this situation."
You haven't offered a reason other than lesser evilism, and you have also applied that logic not just to one specific situation, but also to a hypothetical of "Hitler vs Hitler+." It is therefore completely arbitrary to limit it when it leads to conclusions you don't like, and proves that you don't actually believe it.
I really don't though. There isn't an ethics test after the vote. You don't have to show your work. The fact that you're so hung up on this makes me think you just want to "win" an ideological debate, but I'm not having one of those.
You can vote or not, but there's only two possible outcomes at this point. Believe it or don't. Excuse it or don't.
OK, so you're just speaking complete nonsense that you can't defend at all.
Nah, the problem is that it makes complete sense in the imperfect would we actually live in. You want to have a perfectly logical reason to vote, but you're never going to find it, so good luck. You're going to have to compromise somewhere. I'm just honest about when/where.
It doesn't make any sense in the world we live in, which is exactly why you can't defend your position. If there's no defensible reason to vote for someone, then I'm not going to vote for them, obviously.
You're not really being honest because you don't actually believe in lesser evilism. The reality is that you're voting for Kamala because you're perfectly fine with her, and the lesser evil line is something you use as a rationalization to explain away any cognitive dissonance. There's nothing honest about saying that choosing the lesser evil is the basis for how you act when it isn't.
Sure, Jan.
Well you should do that pissing match during the candidate selection then. Don't drag it out to after the choices are set.
Why was the choice set since like a year already? And we met the same hostility and "reasons" 9 months ago. Truth is not enough people care enough to push for change. They just wanted to feel that their lot is not threatened, solidarity be damned. Well this does not work, as history has infamously shown time and time again. Unless people band together they'll be picked off one by one.
The only time I saw resistance was when people were pitching about Joe or harris without saying, hey vote for candidate x y or z in the primary they are better than Joe or Harris.
If all you do is say so, and so is ship I'm not voting for them, then your just being a nuisance.
And when the context is Trump or Harris being elected, saying "I'm not voting for Harris" means by default you are supporting Trump.
So if i am saying "I'm not voting for Trump" then what happens? By this logic even if i vote the same third party candidate or not at all, i would be supporting Harris.
The only way this "default" works is if people are expected to vote Democrats. And if that is the default expectation it means they can do whatever they want, with no accountability. Instead of politicians having to win your vote with good politics, the blame gets shifted to the voter for not being loyal to the party. That is gaslighting. And when having these discussions it seems a lot of people were gaslit quite successfully by the party elites.
Everybody knows this. We’re just asking people to make the best choice given the circumstance. A protest vote against Harris isn’t going to teach them anything, a loss isn’t going to teach them anything. We’ll be left with a situation worse than we are in now.
They just can't get this. Even Ross Perot, who had 18% of the vote- far better than any third party candidate since- didn't change things.
He didn't, Nader didn't, Jill Stein didn't, none of the others did either.
But this time... THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT!
Nader and Stein certainly changed things. They made them worse.
Ross Perot also changed things, but arguably for the better.
All by fucking with the election and getting the person on the opposite side of the aisle elected.
Because that's how the spoiler effect works.
[Resolved] Third parties splitting the vote
"Working as intended."
Not really. When the Constitution was adopted, there weren't political parties at all, no one knew what the spoiler effect was. The smartest among them might have had an idea that there had to be a better way, but no one knew what it was.
And remember that as bigoted and racist as the founding fathers were, some even considered such for their time, they were extremely egalitarian towards each other. Most of them truly believed in a nation run by free (white) men. A nation of the people (white men).
A few actually voiced displeasure when candidates won with less than half of the vote, and talked about it with their French counterparts. A man named Condorcet actually came up with a few alternative methods of voting, hoping one of them would allow the best candidate to win, now known as the Condorcet winner.
The Condorcet winner is the candidate who could win in a 1v1 race against every other candidate.
Condorcet had a lot to say about elections and such because he was tasked with writing the French constitution. But then a rival power block gained control of the developing government, and they introduced a new constitution that they had written in secret, then ratified it and had Condorcet thrown in prison, where he died two days later.
Anyway, election science has come a long way since then, and the I'd like to think that at least some of the (white) men who first wrote the American constitution would have advocated for a better voting system had one been available. But not the Montagnards. Fuck them for killing someone as cool as Condorcet.
A quote;
@[email protected]
In 90+% of elections people follow your advice and vote along party lines. And they say the same thing then, too.
So your criticism is the same shopworn logic I've heard for five decades. Nothing ever changes, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the wars continue, and you just keep thinking your can, 'vote your way out'.
VOTE HARDER! Then maybe things will change.
#VoteHarder #ThatWillShowThem
And yet people like you keep saying this time, it will work.
What do they call it when you repeat the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?
It is actually you that is saying this. That is the very thing I was criticizing. You seem confused and contradictory.
Your team is not the good guys. There are no good guys. There are the masters and the slaves; the rulers and the ruled. And as long as you keep believing in their game and their rules it will always be so.
"People like you ....?" Are you literally illiterate? You read what I wrote, then accused me of saying exactly the opposite of what I wrote. Read my post again. Realize that you are completely delusional and caught up in the usual election cycle hysteria. I've witnessed this same shitshow for nearly half a century. Nothing ever changes, except the rubes and con men want to keep the slaves invested in the fantasy that participating more fully and robustly in their slavery will liberate them. It is you who is demanding to do the same thing over and over expecting a different result. You are projecting your election cycle hysteria on to me.
Just VOTE HARDER. Maybe then things will change.
#VoteHarder #ThatWillShowThem
What team is my team?
What am I delusional about?
I'm looking forward to learning more about Flying Squid from an expert.
Your unholy flying squid team is trying to compete with the power of the Pastafarian Pirates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
Neither team is the good guys. No matter which team wins, non-evil people who don't want pressed into your chain gang--they all lose.
There are no good guys in politics. Politics exist precisely because the 'teams' involved are ALL evil, delusional, selfish, and dishonest. Call them flying squids, flying spaghetti monsters, vampires, werewolves, leviathans, behemoths, titans, giants ... all political parties are evil and have only the interests of their own power and glut at heart.
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."
What are you even talking about?
I'm the delusional one?
Well what exactly are you doing to dismantle the system? Posting on Lemmy? How's that working out? Not great?
Now get off your lazy, entitled, privileged ass and vote against Hitler+.
So you're someone who pays attention... Then why don't you seem to understand how the system works?
We're one week from the election and we have two choices. Harris and Trump.
Trump is anti-union, anti-democracy, and pro-genocide.
Harris is pro-union, pro-democracy, and anti-genocide (but currently constrained by the law).
That's the two choices. No other choice is valid because the winner will be one of the two.
Vote third party and you have a Jill Stein or Ralph Nader situation where Trump wins.
Don't vote? Well, that too leads to Trump.
What?
What you typed makes no sense. Are you projecting? It seems like you're projecting, but I can't be sure because, again, what you wrote doesn't actually make sense.
I don't remember Hitler lite defending sexual assault victims. Or fighting for justice
By your logic, you're more genocidal because at least she's publicly asking for a ceasefire. You're just ignoring those requests and shouting over her
Imagine fighting for people's rights your entire life only to have nut jobs pretend like you're killing children.
How many people have you helped?