Dems were stuck on “but but Israel is an ally” and tried to gently suggest that they stop. But Biden did take some action. The US even built a port to send in aid. Now obviously we had the power to stop sending Israel money and supporting them. That’s where they failed.
Trump however just said good work and keep it up. He’s encouraged Israel to go faster and joked about how great the strip will be once it’s freely developed real estate.
The people who voted 3rd party or didn’t vote because they were mad about Israel only ever cared about their own personal feelings. If they actually gave a shit about Palestine, they would have made the decision that hurt them the least. That’s not what they did.
Sounds like these disgruntled non-voters hold the real key to American political power as they apparently hold sway over who wins and looses these general elections. Maybe the Dems should be more left-wing so that they can coax them back so we can win again.
No you don’t get it, the democrats never fail, they can only be failed. Any energy you could spend on trying to push them left should instead be spent insulting people expressing doubts about voting for a democrat. This is productive and helps the democrats win
insulting people expressing doubts about voting for a democrat.
I don’t insult people who express doubts about voting for a democrat.
I insult dipshits who allow those doubts to cause them to not vote or vote 3rd party for president (which is pointless), thus helping fascists take control of our nation.
Because I don’t respect people that can’t critically think and make intelligent decisions when serious shit is on the line.
Yes, he took the action of sending them even more weapons than what congress had appropriated.
The US even built a port to send in aid.
They built a port and when Israel told them the exact same thing they told everyone else, that they wouldn’t allow aid, they closed the port, accomplishing nothing in a way that was extremely predicable. It never had any purpose other than scoring political points. They got month of pretending it was going to do something out of it, and people like you are still citing it.
Yes, he took the action of sending them even more weapons than what congress had appropriated.
Thank goodness Trump stopped that, oh wait
Also you ever notice that people barely talk about the genocide anymore?
We know there’s no way to change Trump’s opinion on Palestine, and now we are fully focused on stopping him from starting new wars or sending ICE around the country to murder dissenters. Those that cared now have to focus on pressing domestic issues. If Kamala was president we’d still be focused on ending the genocide and there was at least a chance there would have been an end or progress, but now the current trajectory is the genocide will not be stopped and we’ll probably not have elections again
There was no way of “changing Kamala’s mind.” If there was, it would have been through exerting pressure before the election. Once she knew that pro-Palestine people would fall in line even when she was 100% pro-Israel, she would have absolutely no reason to change positions, if anything, she’d be more likely to become more pro-Israel, because the pro-Israel voters would be more likely to be swing voters. This is why the ideology of “lesser-evilism” is fundamentally incorrect, and how it led to politics shifting further and further right to the point we’re at now.
Please explain exactly what mechanism do you think could’ve been employed to change her mind. Protests? There were widespread campus protests during the election season, and she still didn’t respond to them at all.
And why would she? The left has a proven track record of falling in line behind the lesser evil, no matter how much bluster there might be. Based on that assumption, the politically smart move (if all you care about is winning elections) is to completely ignore all of the left’s demands and keep moving further and further right forever. Now, we have something to show that our words are not meaningless, hollow threats. If there is any possibility of stopping the rightward shift through electoralism, this is it.
we’ll probably not have elections again
Obviously we will. Not that it will matter, because the two party system is completely fucked and y’all refuse to do anything about it.
The person you’re responding to literally points out that when a Democrat was president the focus was entirely on Israel/Palestine because people KNOW that Dems can be pressured by their base, which is exactly why Biden was replaced with Kamala. And they even point out that now there’s basically zero focus on Israel/Palestine because everyone knows Republicans don’t give a flying fuck about pressure regarding that subject, or really any subject.
Like, how much more do you need your hand held before grasping a basic concept?
Obviously we will.
Did…did you pass your world history classes? Do you have a firm grasp on world history?
All existing facts point to this administration working to erode our electoral institutions. All existing facts indicate that due to their existing crimes, and those they have yet to commit, the Trump administration will do whatever necessary to remain in power and avoid prison (or worse). You can absolutely expect martial law and an attempt to delay or outright cancel the elections come November 2027. And even worse in the few months between the election and inauguration if Dems somehow win those elections, if they even happen.
If you don’t think it can happen here, you are a fool.
Damn you people are dense. It’s not like the sitting president has been talking about canceling elections…oh wait
All you voting objectors did was lead to more dead minorities. The people Trump’s new Reich is targeting. We have a fascist military in our streets killing people and all you can do is still whine about how Kamala was flawed.
Obviously, you can’t be reasoned with, so I won’t bother. Just know that I’m just as committed to my approach as ever.
When the next election happens (after you wipe the egg off your face) I suggest you take into account that people like me exist, and that we’re not bluffing, and we’re not going to “come to our senses,” and you should factor that into your evaluation of which candidates are actually electable.
Following USA politics as an outsider, this has baffled me greatly the past year and more. Is harm reduction really such a difficult concept? It’s like that damn bus scenario, just with only bad options.
Something like: There’s five people on the bus, and the brakes stop working, so they vote for what they should do. Two say they should drive off a cliff, and one says they should just swerve and crash into the nearby ditch. Two people don’t vote because they want neither. The bus drives off the cliff and everyone dies
Here’s another hypothetical for you. Two people are given $100 to split, one person makes the offer on how to split it, and the other chooses to accept or decline. If they decline, nobody gets anything.
Rationally, the way this plays out is that the first person offers a $99-$1 split, and the other person accepts, because $1>$0. But when researchers have actually run this experiment, they’ve found that people tend to reject offers below $30-$40, and people tend to make offers accounting for that. Somehow, the “irrational” behavior results in a more optimal outcome.
Once upon a time, in the New Deal era, Democrats offered something closer to $30-$40. But somewhere along the line, people started employing this “lesser evil” nonsense, and the offers got worse and worse. Now, we’re past the point where they even offer us $1. Now they offer us “We’ll still commit genocide, but slightly less.”
I’m completely baffled by how anyone can still be committed to this clearly failed and irrational strategy of “lesser evilism.” Even if you personally think it’s the right move, surely you must at least understand that this isn’t how other people are going to behave.
Well your system clearly is completely fucked up, no denying that, you know and can clearly word it out waaayy better than some random internet person like I do. But the bus is still headed off the cliff, so what is the counter plan?
The bus was headed off a cliff regardless of who got elected.
There is no easy fix and no strategy that’s actually likely to work. What we need is an actual left-wing party. We can either try to push the Democrats in that direction, which fundamentally requires holding them to some basic standard and disciplining them when they fail to live up to it, or we can form a new party from the ground up. Both of those strategies are furthered by voting third party. Of course, there are also strategies that don’t rely on electoralism, such as a general strike, but this is also furthered by supporting a third party like PSL which engages in and promotes direct action.
You’re fucking up your own metaphor now because the Dems would have been the ditch crash which is better than the total destruction of driving off the cliff. But it doesn’t matter what anyone says you’ll just both sides it.
Let me try again: Two people are running for the leadership position. The other one says they won’t punch you, but you know they probably will. The other one says he’ll shoot you and your whole family. You won’t vote against the shooter because the puncher is bad and unreliable as well, so now you and your family get shot.
That demented clown was pretty openly saying he’ll turn USA into fascist dictatorship if he’s elected, and now he’s doing it and apparently speedrunning towards ww3 because he didn’t get the nobel peace price or some insane shit. And I still see people online arguing that voting against him didn’t matter?
The other one says they won’t punch you, but you know they probably will. The other one says he’ll shoot you and your whole family.
That’s not the situation. One says that he’ll shoot me and my whole family, the other says she’ll shoot me and my whole family with a rainbow painted gun.
That demented clown was pretty openly saying he’ll turn USA into fascist dictatorship if he’s elected, and now he’s doing it and apparently speedrunning towards ww3 because he didn’t get the nobel peace price or some insane shit.
Frankly, I think every president since at least Bush has been a fascist dictator. Everything that Trump is able to do now is because of the massive expansion of executive power and the massive curtailing of civil rights that happened after 9/11 with full bipartisan support, and the democratic presidents since then have done nothing to rein in or revoke those powers.
Meanwhile, economic conditions have gotten worse and worse, leading to a rise in political extremism, which has no outlet except for the right. Maintaining the status quo is suicide, it guarantees that we will continue sliding into fascism.
The only option is to push for an alternative, no matter how desperate it is. Every political movement starts somewhere.
If what you’re seeing doesn’t make sense, maybe the problem is in your interpretation?
It sounds like you see R promising “bad thing” and D promising “less-bad thing, but we will move right next time” and so you want to just give up because both options are bad.
But I think this involves viewing the parties as monolithic entities that you have no control over (as seen in “the Democratic Part Elite kept out Bernie”) when they’re actually just composed of people. An important factor is that the American people on average are much more conservative/authoritarian/pro-corporation than typical Europeans. Somewhat by history, somewhat by US-sourced indoctrination, somewhat by foreign-sourced indoctrination.
When I see real-life progressives, they’re always taking the most-progressive available action of the moment. In the moment of a US presidential election in a swing state, that most-progressive action may be voting for the slightly-less-bad candidate. But voting for a candidate doesn’t tie them to that candidate’s policies and they can spend the majority of their time and effort focused on progress.
When I see online progressives(?), they’re primarily concerned with giving up: tearing down other progressives’ efforts because they’re not progressive enough but not offering an alternative. The result of this, intended or not, is a populous who doesn’t offer resistance to authoritarianism and probably welcomes it in the end.
There’s nothing “progressive” about supporting genocide.
From the moment I reached the age of reason, I was outraged at the pointless wars of aggression being waged in the Middle East, wars that were supported by the vast majority of the Democratic party. Even when we got a supposedly “progressive” president, Obama, he doubled down on the killing and bloodshed. For twenty years I have been told this lesser evilist nonsense, as the bodies piled higher and higher. Then, almost as soon as the bipartisan forever wars came to a close, they merely shifted focus to killing other Middle Easterners in Palestine through the proxy of Israel, at an even greater intensity than before. Twenty years of patiently waiting, twenty years of no progress being made whatsoever, twenty years of killing for no benefit to anyone but arms manufactures and oil companies, twenty years of Americans never getting a real chance to vote on whether it should continue because both parties supported it, and you have the audacity to call yourself a progressive, and to attack me as not a real progressive, when you’re the one that’s perfectly fine with that?
Maybe you should have been doing something other than waiting patiently for twenty years. I don’t know why people expect something to happen when they do nothing.
Oh, of course, something! If only I had thought to do something, the wars would’ve been stopped, the Patriot Act repealed, and Guantanamo Bay shut down. And the solution is so obvious, staring me right in the face: something.
Is harm reduction really such a difficult concept?
As an American, let me be very clear here. Americans, as a whole, are very, very, very dumb. And dumb people operate almost entirely based off their feelings, not their intellect.
To a dumb person, yeah, harm reduction is actually a difficult concept to wrap their mind around.
I’ve been here my whole life, and honestly, there really are just a lot of dumb people here. Which is why I don’t really see any of this getting better after Trump is gone. We’ll just keep making dumb decisions because dumb people make dumb decisions.
The common sentiment seems to be “I’ll rather live in a fascist dictatorship than vote democrats” while still thinking that’s any different from supporting republicans, so I guess I have to admit you do have a point…
The thing that a lot of people seem to be having trouble grasping is that when voters tell you what they want, and you tell those voters to fuck off, some of those voters won’t vote for you. This is the simple reality of politics, it’s how it has always worked, it’s how it will always work. This is true everywhere, not just the US.
It is not the job of voters to elect democrats, it’s the job of the democrats to win votes. They fucked up and they are to blame more than anyone who sat out the election or voted for a 3rd party.
Right, and my point is that the bus is still headed off the cliff because of the failure of democrats.
Look, let’s rewind a little bit. Your analogy is about the 2024 election. You say the democrats are saying they want to crash it into a ditch, and if that the democrats don’t get charge of the bus, the bus is headed off the cliff. But, at the time of the 2024 election, who was currently in charge of the bus? Who had been in charge of the bus for the past 4 years?
Right, and my point is that the bus is still headed off the cliff because of the failure of democrats.
Look, let’s rewind a little bit. Your analogy is about the 2024 election. You say the democrats are saying they want to crash it into a ditch, and if that the democrats don’t get charge of the bus, the bus is headed off the cliff. But, at the time of the 2024 election, who was currently in charge of the bus? Who had been in charge of the bus for the past 4 years?
What are you smoking! Trump forced ceasefires purely for optics reasons and trying to get a Nobel peace prize, but has demonstrated that the US president could have reigned in Israel at any time if they wanted. And even though the aid is still being restricted and Israel is still killing, despite the “ceasefire”, it is still literally less than if the ceasefire didn’t happen. Israel is literally the only issue that Trump comes out on top on. So quit using that as an example, since that is the only way Trump is better despite being terrible. It is the perfect example of Trump being a terrible fascist, but the Democrats made sure the bar was on the floor!
And the wholesale destruction of USAID and PEPFAR means people are simultaneously starving to death in chunks of the world, not getting vaccines, and also not getting HIV prevention meds, which means long term, HIV infection is going to increase worldwide over time. That is going to be a massive, silent genocide that will be orders of magnitude worse, but largely undocumented.
That was a serious, serious fuckup on voters parts. Not to mention massive cuts to everyday things like critical medical R&D, science R&D, disaster preparedness, NASA, department of education, PBS and Corp for public broadcasting, department of health, FDA + food safety programs, and many other programs that people take for granted without thinking (housing grants for home buying, federal student loans, food stamps, weather prediction for natural disasters, Medicare/ACA/Medicaid, etc)
His cuts to the IRS are going to result in less money for shit like bridges, roads, and electrical grids too.
Purists couldn’t vote for the lesser of two evils. The choice was: vote for genocide or vote for genocide+even more horrible shit. Somehow genocide+even more horrible shit seemed more appealing.
There was this whole argument that vote for genocide or vote for genocide+even more horrible shit was going to turn people off from voting. We now know that definitely happened. Letting that choice run was a pretty guaranteed losing strategy. Anyone with knowledge of American electoral politics knows voter turnoff = Democratic Loss, Republican Victory.
Would you prefer to have your foot stepped on or be tortured to death?
Americans fucking failed. If you think Kamala ran a horrible campaign, I direct your attention to the literal felon and literal rapist with two impeachments who said he had “concepts of plans” while telling people that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield and held rallies with his slogan of “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING” displayed on banners hanging over the stage.
This wasn’t a confusing election. This was the easiest election of our lifetimes and maybe the easiest in the history of this country.
Kamala didn’t fail. Democrats didn’t fail. The American people failed. Because the American people are, by and large, very dumb and easily manipulated by propaganda. Really, really dumb propaganda.
Oh god no. No no no no NO
No, fuck that right off.
The voters ARE too blame.
I mean, yeah, I would agree with you if tRUMP had never been in office before AND was somewhat competent in his business dealings, or wasn’t obviously in the pocket of putin.
However, that orange thing did a terrible job in his first term, just terrible. And anyone with even the slightest resemblance of intelligence could see he was only running again to stop the court cases, etc, and buy more time to keep him out of prison.
It really didn’t/doesn’t matter about her campaign when the person running against her is obviously:
Was wholly incompetent just a few years before.
Racist.
Said he was going to be a dictator from the first day.
Is a confirmed rapist. With loads of other assault cases behind him.
Best friend to Jeffery Epstein who they both said enjoyed “wonderful secrets” together…
Convicted criminal.
Numerous bankruptcies.
Numerous fines for dodgy shit (stealing from children’s charities etc)
Russian money etc etc.
Quite obviously corrupt in just about every way. Etc etc etc etc etc.
These are the things off the top of my head, there’s hundreds of other shit he’s pulled.
So, YES, it was down to all the voters.
Yes, his voters are definitely to blame. But everyone who could vote but didn’t, or protest voted have also enabled this shit to happen so they are to definitely, definitely to blame.
Any people who could have voted against him but didn’t and are now trying to absolve themselves of any guilt then let me help you out. You won’t, you can’t. You are to blame.
The problem wasn’t Kamala or Trump. That’s something coming from decades ago. The real problem is a party system where one of the parties wants to go full throttle to the right and the other party just wants to go slower. That’s a recipe for disaster. Imagine if the Dems had elected Sanders instead of Hillary on the primaries. Trump wouldn’t had have a change in hell to be elected and the policies would have steered the country to the left.
Yes, completely agree that it has been coming for decades. The best time to fight it was decades ago. For this specific type of scum then the best time to fight it was in 2016.
But that didn’t happen. What happened was the orange child rapist got in in 2016, and fucked things up.
Then was -very fucking slowly- convicted of numerous shit during bidens term. And was in the midst of the -also very late and slow- investigations for the stealing of top secret documents and treason stuff (plus other shit) when he said loads of stuff about being a dictator, and how he wouldn’t need people votes again as things would be ‘fixed’ by them etc etc…AND people still decided to either vote for it, or not directly vote against it.
It’s pretty simple. A vote that wasn’t used specifically against this disgusting narcissistic tangerine toddler was a vote that enabled him to do what he is doing right now. If the non voters and protest voters had done the decent thing then almost none of this would’ve happened.
If the majority of people keep on voting for the most decent person then at some point things must get better.
“Come to eat our tasteless food that stinks or you’ll have to eat shit in the other restaurant” is not the best way to attract people to your cause. A lot of people stays at home if those are the options.
God. So fucking stupid. Such an embarrassing thing to admit.
FACT: The 3rd party candidate with the most votes in 2024 (not the PSL candidate) only received a HALF OF A SINGLE PERCENT of the total votes cast. Meaning no 3rd party candidate even stood the remotest chance of winning the presidency.
So, how absolutely mindlessly stupid does one have to be to vote for a candidate that CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES win? Especially when we’re in a situation where a felon rapist insurrectionist who is openly threatening American democracy is one of the candidates likely to actually win?
Describe to me what happened in your life that led you to being this unbelievably dense.
You want to vote 3rd party cuz you’re big mad about the two party system? Great. Do something intelligent and vote for local/state 3rd party candidates so a 3rd party can get more than ZERO members in Congress so they can start building a movement toward getting a candidate elected president. You’re not gonna have a good time though because currently no 3rd party is doing the work necessary to build that kind of movement.
Jesus, it’s almost beyond belief that people like you actually exist. Absolutely no critical thinking capability at all.
PSL votes accounted for 0.11% of the vote. 171,000 people electionwide. Across the entire nation.
I get people are angry and want something smaller than them to attack, but the PSL and Uncommitted primary voters just didn’t swing the election by a longshot.
Like if the entire country’s PSL voting bloc had moved to Michigan in 2024 they could have swung the election for Harris and got 15 electoral college votes. Which would again lose 2024 to Trump, just at 297-241 instead of 312-226. Because the electoral college completely ratfucks our presidential election process.
Instead we resumed the sale of 2000 pound bombs to Israel and found some new countries to bomb. That and the population of Gaza is still dying just after the election the bots seemed to stop caring.
If he doesn’t erode the government intuitions critical to elections
Oh that’s a guarantee. That WILL happen.
Not once in history has a fascist regime given up power without the use of force being applied to them.
Donald Trump and various members of his admin have committed enough actual crimes/atrocities that come 2028 they will have to decide between the very real possibility of spending their lives in prison (or worse) or doing everything in their power to keep the regime in power. We already know what kind of people they are. We already know what their decision will be. And so do they.
Martial law WILL be enacted. An attempt to defer, or outright cancel, the election WILL be made. These things are guaranteed to happen. Hope everyone is preparing themselves.
while nihilism is satisfying to engage with you kinda just have to play with what you got and try to make the best of a terrible situation and feeding your feelings of doom won’t help you get there
Yeah but she loved the genoside, that’s why we have to have utter incompetent apocalypse every goddamned day for three more years.
and also still have the same genocide happening, plus even more acts of war to boot
I’d argue a worse genocide.
Dems were stuck on “but but Israel is an ally” and tried to gently suggest that they stop. But Biden did take some action. The US even built a port to send in aid. Now obviously we had the power to stop sending Israel money and supporting them. That’s where they failed.
Trump however just said good work and keep it up. He’s encouraged Israel to go faster and joked about how great the strip will be once it’s freely developed real estate.
So yeah, one of these is clearly a worse option
Doesn’t matter.
The people who voted 3rd party or didn’t vote because they were mad about Israel only ever cared about their own personal feelings. If they actually gave a shit about Palestine, they would have made the decision that hurt them the least. That’s not what they did.
It was all about their own satisfaction.
Sounds like these disgruntled non-voters hold the real key to American political power as they apparently hold sway over who wins and looses these general elections. Maybe the Dems should be more left-wing so that they can coax them back so we can win again.
The dems could move further left but these people would still find 1 irrelevant issue to purity test on. Its pointless to ever try and cater to them.
No you don’t get it, the democrats never fail, they can only be failed. Any energy you could spend on trying to push them left should instead be spent insulting people expressing doubts about voting for a democrat. This is productive and helps the democrats win
I don’t insult people who express doubts about voting for a democrat.
I insult dipshits who allow those doubts to cause them to not vote or vote 3rd party for president (which is pointless), thus helping fascists take control of our nation.
Because I don’t respect people that can’t critically think and make intelligent decisions when serious shit is on the line.
Nah they weren’t going to vote anyway. Probably don’t know how.
Yes, he took the action of sending them even more weapons than what congress had appropriated.
They built a port and when Israel told them the exact same thing they told everyone else, that they wouldn’t allow aid, they closed the port, accomplishing nothing in a way that was extremely predicable. It never had any purpose other than scoring political points. They got month of pretending it was going to do something out of it, and people like you are still citing it.
Oh well. At least Trump is our president now and everything in Palestine is so much better. Lolz.
I never claimed it would be.
Thank goodness Trump stopped that, oh wait
Also you ever notice that people barely talk about the genocide anymore?
We know there’s no way to change Trump’s opinion on Palestine, and now we are fully focused on stopping him from starting new wars or sending ICE around the country to murder dissenters. Those that cared now have to focus on pressing domestic issues. If Kamala was president we’d still be focused on ending the genocide and there was at least a chance there would have been an end or progress, but now the current trajectory is the genocide will not be stopped and we’ll probably not have elections again
There was no way of “changing Kamala’s mind.” If there was, it would have been through exerting pressure before the election. Once she knew that pro-Palestine people would fall in line even when she was 100% pro-Israel, she would have absolutely no reason to change positions, if anything, she’d be more likely to become more pro-Israel, because the pro-Israel voters would be more likely to be swing voters. This is why the ideology of “lesser-evilism” is fundamentally incorrect, and how it led to politics shifting further and further right to the point we’re at now.
Please explain exactly what mechanism do you think could’ve been employed to change her mind. Protests? There were widespread campus protests during the election season, and she still didn’t respond to them at all.
And why would she? The left has a proven track record of falling in line behind the lesser evil, no matter how much bluster there might be. Based on that assumption, the politically smart move (if all you care about is winning elections) is to completely ignore all of the left’s demands and keep moving further and further right forever. Now, we have something to show that our words are not meaningless, hollow threats. If there is any possibility of stopping the rightward shift through electoralism, this is it.
Obviously we will. Not that it will matter, because the two party system is completely fucked and y’all refuse to do anything about it.
Oof. What a trash take.
The person you’re responding to literally points out that when a Democrat was president the focus was entirely on Israel/Palestine because people KNOW that Dems can be pressured by their base, which is exactly why Biden was replaced with Kamala. And they even point out that now there’s basically zero focus on Israel/Palestine because everyone knows Republicans don’t give a flying fuck about pressure regarding that subject, or really any subject.
Like, how much more do you need your hand held before grasping a basic concept?
Did…did you pass your world history classes? Do you have a firm grasp on world history?
All existing facts point to this administration working to erode our electoral institutions. All existing facts indicate that due to their existing crimes, and those they have yet to commit, the Trump administration will do whatever necessary to remain in power and avoid prison (or worse). You can absolutely expect martial law and an attempt to delay or outright cancel the elections come November 2027. And even worse in the few months between the election and inauguration if Dems somehow win those elections, if they even happen.
If you don’t think it can happen here, you are a fool.
Damn you people are dense. It’s not like the sitting president has been talking about canceling elections…oh wait
All you voting objectors did was lead to more dead minorities. The people Trump’s new Reich is targeting. We have a fascist military in our streets killing people and all you can do is still whine about how Kamala was flawed.
Obviously, you can’t be reasoned with, so I won’t bother. Just know that I’m just as committed to my approach as ever.
When the next election happens (after you wipe the egg off your face) I suggest you take into account that people like me exist, and that we’re not bluffing, and we’re not going to “come to our senses,” and you should factor that into your evaluation of which candidates are actually electable.
Trust me, we know you exist. You’re largely responsible for Trump being in power.
I’ll take egg on my face over blood on my hands.
Here the a list of those you helped ice murder
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline
The irony.
Again, go get yourself enrolled in some world history classes.
Who did you vote for in 2024? Don’t be shy.
Following USA politics as an outsider, this has baffled me greatly the past year and more. Is harm reduction really such a difficult concept? It’s like that damn bus scenario, just with only bad options.
Something like: There’s five people on the bus, and the brakes stop working, so they vote for what they should do. Two say they should drive off a cliff, and one says they should just swerve and crash into the nearby ditch. Two people don’t vote because they want neither. The bus drives off the cliff and everyone dies
Here’s another hypothetical for you. Two people are given $100 to split, one person makes the offer on how to split it, and the other chooses to accept or decline. If they decline, nobody gets anything.
Rationally, the way this plays out is that the first person offers a $99-$1 split, and the other person accepts, because $1>$0. But when researchers have actually run this experiment, they’ve found that people tend to reject offers below $30-$40, and people tend to make offers accounting for that. Somehow, the “irrational” behavior results in a more optimal outcome.
Once upon a time, in the New Deal era, Democrats offered something closer to $30-$40. But somewhere along the line, people started employing this “lesser evil” nonsense, and the offers got worse and worse. Now, we’re past the point where they even offer us $1. Now they offer us “We’ll still commit genocide, but slightly less.”
I’m completely baffled by how anyone can still be committed to this clearly failed and irrational strategy of “lesser evilism.” Even if you personally think it’s the right move, surely you must at least understand that this isn’t how other people are going to behave.
Well your system clearly is completely fucked up, no denying that, you know and can clearly word it out waaayy better than some random internet person like I do. But the bus is still headed off the cliff, so what is the counter plan?
The bus was headed off a cliff regardless of who got elected.
There is no easy fix and no strategy that’s actually likely to work. What we need is an actual left-wing party. We can either try to push the Democrats in that direction, which fundamentally requires holding them to some basic standard and disciplining them when they fail to live up to it, or we can form a new party from the ground up. Both of those strategies are furthered by voting third party. Of course, there are also strategies that don’t rely on electoralism, such as a general strike, but this is also furthered by supporting a third party like PSL which engages in and promotes direct action.
You’re fucking up your own metaphor now because the Dems would have been the ditch crash which is better than the total destruction of driving off the cliff. But it doesn’t matter what anyone says you’ll just both sides it.
Let me try again: Two people are running for the leadership position. The other one says they won’t punch you, but you know they probably will. The other one says he’ll shoot you and your whole family. You won’t vote against the shooter because the puncher is bad and unreliable as well, so now you and your family get shot.
That demented clown was pretty openly saying he’ll turn USA into fascist dictatorship if he’s elected, and now he’s doing it and apparently speedrunning towards ww3 because he didn’t get the nobel peace price or some insane shit. And I still see people online arguing that voting against him didn’t matter?
That’s not the situation. One says that he’ll shoot me and my whole family, the other says she’ll shoot me and my whole family with a rainbow painted gun.
Frankly, I think every president since at least Bush has been a fascist dictator. Everything that Trump is able to do now is because of the massive expansion of executive power and the massive curtailing of civil rights that happened after 9/11 with full bipartisan support, and the democratic presidents since then have done nothing to rein in or revoke those powers.
Meanwhile, economic conditions have gotten worse and worse, leading to a rise in political extremism, which has no outlet except for the right. Maintaining the status quo is suicide, it guarantees that we will continue sliding into fascism.
The only option is to push for an alternative, no matter how desperate it is. Every political movement starts somewhere.
If what you’re seeing doesn’t make sense, maybe the problem is in your interpretation?
It sounds like you see R promising “bad thing” and D promising “less-bad thing, but we will move right next time” and so you want to just give up because both options are bad.
But I think this involves viewing the parties as monolithic entities that you have no control over (as seen in “the Democratic Part Elite kept out Bernie”) when they’re actually just composed of people. An important factor is that the American people on average are much more conservative/authoritarian/pro-corporation than typical Europeans. Somewhat by history, somewhat by US-sourced indoctrination, somewhat by foreign-sourced indoctrination.
When I see real-life progressives, they’re always taking the most-progressive available action of the moment. In the moment of a US presidential election in a swing state, that most-progressive action may be voting for the slightly-less-bad candidate. But voting for a candidate doesn’t tie them to that candidate’s policies and they can spend the majority of their time and effort focused on progress.
When I see online progressives(?), they’re primarily concerned with giving up: tearing down other progressives’ efforts because they’re not progressive enough but not offering an alternative. The result of this, intended or not, is a populous who doesn’t offer resistance to authoritarianism and probably welcomes it in the end.
There’s nothing “progressive” about supporting genocide.
From the moment I reached the age of reason, I was outraged at the pointless wars of aggression being waged in the Middle East, wars that were supported by the vast majority of the Democratic party. Even when we got a supposedly “progressive” president, Obama, he doubled down on the killing and bloodshed. For twenty years I have been told this lesser evilist nonsense, as the bodies piled higher and higher. Then, almost as soon as the bipartisan forever wars came to a close, they merely shifted focus to killing other Middle Easterners in Palestine through the proxy of Israel, at an even greater intensity than before. Twenty years of patiently waiting, twenty years of no progress being made whatsoever, twenty years of killing for no benefit to anyone but arms manufactures and oil companies, twenty years of Americans never getting a real chance to vote on whether it should continue because both parties supported it, and you have the audacity to call yourself a progressive, and to attack me as not a real progressive, when you’re the one that’s perfectly fine with that?
Maybe you should have been doing something other than waiting patiently for twenty years. I don’t know why people expect something to happen when they do nothing.
Oh, of course, something! If only I had thought to do something, the wars would’ve been stopped, the Patriot Act repealed, and Guantanamo Bay shut down. And the solution is so obvious, staring me right in the face: something.
As an American, let me be very clear here. Americans, as a whole, are very, very, very dumb. And dumb people operate almost entirely based off their feelings, not their intellect.
To a dumb person, yeah, harm reduction is actually a difficult concept to wrap their mind around.
I’ve been here my whole life, and honestly, there really are just a lot of dumb people here. Which is why I don’t really see any of this getting better after Trump is gone. We’ll just keep making dumb decisions because dumb people make dumb decisions.
The common sentiment seems to be “I’ll rather live in a fascist dictatorship than vote democrats” while still thinking that’s any different from supporting republicans, so I guess I have to admit you do have a point…
The thing that a lot of people seem to be having trouble grasping is that when voters tell you what they want, and you tell those voters to fuck off, some of those voters won’t vote for you. This is the simple reality of politics, it’s how it has always worked, it’s how it will always work. This is true everywhere, not just the US.
It is not the job of voters to elect democrats, it’s the job of the democrats to win votes. They fucked up and they are to blame more than anyone who sat out the election or voted for a 3rd party.
But the bus is still headed off the cliff
Right, and my point is that the bus is still headed off the cliff because of the failure of democrats.
Look, let’s rewind a little bit. Your analogy is about the 2024 election. You say the democrats are saying they want to crash it into a ditch, and if that the democrats don’t get charge of the bus, the bus is headed off the cliff. But, at the time of the 2024 election, who was currently in charge of the bus? Who had been in charge of the bus for the past 4 years?
But the bus is still headed off the cliff
Right, and my point is that the bus is still headed off the cliff because of the failure of democrats.
Look, let’s rewind a little bit. Your analogy is about the 2024 election. You say the democrats are saying they want to crash it into a ditch, and if that the democrats don’t get charge of the bus, the bus is headed off the cliff. But, at the time of the 2024 election, who was currently in charge of the bus? Who had been in charge of the bus for the past 4 years?
What are you smoking! Trump forced ceasefires purely for optics reasons and trying to get a Nobel peace prize, but has demonstrated that the US president could have reigned in Israel at any time if they wanted. And even though the aid is still being restricted and Israel is still killing, despite the “ceasefire”, it is still literally less than if the ceasefire didn’t happen. Israel is literally the only issue that Trump comes out on top on. So quit using that as an example, since that is the only way Trump is better despite being terrible. It is the perfect example of Trump being a terrible fascist, but the Democrats made sure the bar was on the floor!
And the wholesale destruction of USAID and PEPFAR means people are simultaneously starving to death in chunks of the world, not getting vaccines, and also not getting HIV prevention meds, which means long term, HIV infection is going to increase worldwide over time. That is going to be a massive, silent genocide that will be orders of magnitude worse, but largely undocumented.
That was a serious, serious fuckup on voters parts. Not to mention massive cuts to everyday things like critical medical R&D, science R&D, disaster preparedness, NASA, department of education, PBS and Corp for public broadcasting, department of health, FDA + food safety programs, and many other programs that people take for granted without thinking (housing grants for home buying, federal student loans, food stamps, weather prediction for natural disasters, Medicare/ACA/Medicaid, etc)
His cuts to the IRS are going to result in less money for shit like bridges, roads, and electrical grids too.
Purists couldn’t vote for the lesser of two evils. The choice was: vote for
genocideor vote forgenocide+even more horrible shit. Somehowgenocide+even more horrible shitseemed more appealing.There was this whole argument that vote for
genocideor vote forgenocide+even more horrible shitwas going to turn people off from voting. We now know that definitely happened. Letting that choice run was a pretty guaranteed losing strategy. Anyone with knowledge of American electoral politics knows voter turnoff = Democratic Loss, Republican Victory.Kamala ran a horrible campaign. Blaming voters isnt the way
Would you prefer to have your foot stepped on or be tortured to death?
Americans fucking failed. If you think Kamala ran a horrible campaign, I direct your attention to the literal felon and literal rapist with two impeachments who said he had “concepts of plans” while telling people that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield and held rallies with his slogan of “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING” displayed on banners hanging over the stage.
This wasn’t a confusing election. This was the easiest election of our lifetimes and maybe the easiest in the history of this country.
Kamala didn’t fail. Democrats didn’t fail. The American people failed. Because the American people are, by and large, very dumb and easily manipulated by propaganda. Really, really dumb propaganda.
Maybe select a candidate next time so it wont be evil vs less evil? America is rotting
Oh god no. No no no no NO No, fuck that right off.
The voters ARE too blame.
I mean, yeah, I would agree with you if tRUMP had never been in office before AND was somewhat competent in his business dealings, or wasn’t obviously in the pocket of putin.
However, that orange thing did a terrible job in his first term, just terrible. And anyone with even the slightest resemblance of intelligence could see he was only running again to stop the court cases, etc, and buy more time to keep him out of prison.
It really didn’t/doesn’t matter about her campaign when the person running against her is obviously:
Was wholly incompetent just a few years before.
Racist.
Said he was going to be a dictator from the first day.
Is a confirmed rapist. With loads of other assault cases behind him.
Best friend to Jeffery Epstein who they both said enjoyed “wonderful secrets” together…
Convicted criminal.
Numerous bankruptcies.
Numerous fines for dodgy shit (stealing from children’s charities etc)
Russian money etc etc.
Quite obviously corrupt in just about every way. Etc etc etc etc etc.
These are the things off the top of my head, there’s hundreds of other shit he’s pulled.
So, YES, it was down to all the voters.
Yes, his voters are definitely to blame. But everyone who could vote but didn’t, or protest voted have also enabled this shit to happen so they are to definitely, definitely to blame.
Any people who could have voted against him but didn’t and are now trying to absolve themselves of any guilt then let me help you out. You won’t, you can’t. You are to blame.
The problem wasn’t Kamala or Trump. That’s something coming from decades ago. The real problem is a party system where one of the parties wants to go full throttle to the right and the other party just wants to go slower. That’s a recipe for disaster. Imagine if the Dems had elected Sanders instead of Hillary on the primaries. Trump wouldn’t had have a change in hell to be elected and the policies would have steered the country to the left.
Yes, completely agree that it has been coming for decades. The best time to fight it was decades ago. For this specific type of scum then the best time to fight it was in 2016.
But that didn’t happen. What happened was the orange child rapist got in in 2016, and fucked things up.
Then was -very fucking slowly- convicted of numerous shit during bidens term. And was in the midst of the -also very late and slow- investigations for the stealing of top secret documents and treason stuff (plus other shit) when he said loads of stuff about being a dictator, and how he wouldn’t need people votes again as things would be ‘fixed’ by them etc etc…AND people still decided to either vote for it, or not directly vote against it.
It’s pretty simple. A vote that wasn’t used specifically against this disgusting narcissistic tangerine toddler was a vote that enabled him to do what he is doing right now. If the non voters and protest voters had done the decent thing then almost none of this would’ve happened.
If the majority of people keep on voting for the most decent person then at some point things must get better.
It’s the lesser evil strategy. And it doesn’t work.
Doing nothing and then voting/enabling narcissistic, child raping, mushy brained, confirmed rapist dictators is far worse.
“Come to eat our tasteless food that stinks or you’ll have to eat shit in the other restaurant” is not the best way to attract people to your cause. A lot of people stays at home if those are the options.
He lost. He literally lost the popular vote for the primaries.
I respect the shit out of Sanders, but he isn’t as popular as people on the internet like to think.
We can’t keep saying “what if” regarding candidates that lost the popular vote during primaries. They were never starters.
Please be satire
Little too real for ya eh?
Just bafflingly ignorant and lowkey evil
What do you call what’s happening right now? Highkey evil?
Cool. Thanks for letting me know you voted third party or not at all
Yeah I voted PSL instead of voting for fascism or fascism-lite
Congrats. There’s blood on your hands
Oops, you’ve got it backwards- I’m dyslexic too, I get it. I didn’t vote for a genocider actually
Lmao
God. So fucking stupid. Such an embarrassing thing to admit.
FACT: The 3rd party candidate with the most votes in 2024 (not the PSL candidate) only received a HALF OF A SINGLE PERCENT of the total votes cast. Meaning no 3rd party candidate even stood the remotest chance of winning the presidency.
So, how absolutely mindlessly stupid does one have to be to vote for a candidate that CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES win? Especially when we’re in a situation where a felon rapist insurrectionist who is openly threatening American democracy is one of the candidates likely to actually win?
Describe to me what happened in your life that led you to being this unbelievably dense.
You want to vote 3rd party cuz you’re big mad about the two party system? Great. Do something intelligent and vote for local/state 3rd party candidates so a 3rd party can get more than ZERO members in Congress so they can start building a movement toward getting a candidate elected president. You’re not gonna have a good time though because currently no 3rd party is doing the work necessary to build that kind of movement.
Jesus, it’s almost beyond belief that people like you actually exist. Absolutely no critical thinking capability at all.
Yeah I’m not reading all that
You’re responsible for the shit that’s going on in USA. Keep being a purist moron.
PSL votes accounted for 0.11% of the vote. 171,000 people electionwide. Across the entire nation.
I get people are angry and want something smaller than them to attack, but the PSL and Uncommitted primary voters just didn’t swing the election by a longshot.
Like if the entire country’s PSL voting bloc had moved to Michigan in 2024 they could have swung the election for Harris and got 15 electoral college votes. Which would again lose 2024 to Trump, just at 297-241 instead of 312-226. Because the electoral college completely ratfucks our presidential election process.
Oh is that how that works? Is that your opinion stated as a fact, or is that a conclusion that you jumped to based on feelings?
Instead we resumed the sale of 2000 pound bombs to Israel and found some new countries to bomb. That and the population of Gaza is still dying just after the election the bots seemed to stop caring.
No they still really really care about Harris supporting genocide.
That is all.
We just checked the other day in politicalmemes.
That seems completely reasonable to me.
Oh, my sweet summer child
If he doesn’t erode the government intuitions critical to elections
Oh that’s a guarantee. That WILL happen.
Not once in history has a fascist regime given up power without the use of force being applied to them.
Donald Trump and various members of his admin have committed enough actual crimes/atrocities that come 2028 they will have to decide between the very real possibility of spending their lives in prison (or worse) or doing everything in their power to keep the regime in power. We already know what kind of people they are. We already know what their decision will be. And so do they.
Martial law WILL be enacted. An attempt to defer, or outright cancel, the election WILL be made. These things are guaranteed to happen. Hope everyone is preparing themselves.
while nihilism is satisfying to engage with you kinda just have to play with what you got and try to make the best of a terrible situation and feeding your feelings of doom won’t help you get there
It’s not just doom. It’s fact.
They WILL erode our electoral institutions. They WILL make a play to permanently stay in power.
All existing facts indicate this will happen.
So it’s less doom, and more a warning to prepare.