Yeah fuck that. We’re throwing the cliff people off the cliff. Y’all can keep playing these stupid games.
Yeah fuck that. We’re throwing the cliff people off the cliff.
Any minute now.
The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
Really? Because Scandinavia has really nice ice cream. Europe too, with some problems.
That’s QUITTER talk! I’m voting for Rocky Road.
I LOVE Rocky Road
So the cliff?
Brick on the pedal.
These kind of idiotic, condescending analogies are all that libs have to offer. That’s literally why they lose.
Keep upvoting tho. Feel good about yourselves. That’s the real win. \s
(edit: Bonus points for this devolving into carnist attacks on veganism.)
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don’t know how to do politics on purpose so they don’t lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There’s a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
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Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No?
What’s the relevance of this inane statement, again?
Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don’t even try to make good ice cream, they don’t even try to get customers or do a good job. It’s still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn’t blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.
Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let’s blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.
Let’s put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn’t straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming “I’m never voting against gay rights!” Cool, so when the other guy wins and it’s way worse, at least you feel good.
I keep voting for ice cream and I get told “we can’t get ice cream because we have to vote to not go off a cliff again”
You get ice cream, just not as much as you want because some people refuse to vote.
Yeah, I think not going off a cliff is pretty important though.
Right, but eventually the cliff guys win and we go off the cliff anyway, and even if they never win we don’t ever get ice cream.
The solution seems we kick them out of the car.
But that’s not how voting for a direction works. I think this analogy is just starting to fall apart after this much discussion, we’ve taken it too far haha.
Listen, I’m all for taking out the trash and not just taking small wins to survive, but I just don’t see the path. I might be missing it, there’s plenty I don’t know, but survival at least would have let us survive a little longer.
I don’t see the path out of just surviving either.
Except maybe jumping out of the car.
Tuck and roll, brother
Can we blast the last point with a megaphone 24/7 in people’s faces or is that too much to get the point across?
There are none so deaf as those who refuse to listen.
As Mark Twain once remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”
I bet a lot of people living in Germany in the '30s said “I don’t do politics” too. Oops.
not voting is a valid strategy but only when it’s NOT apolitical. That’s why many in power want you to either be A or B or apolitical not be neither A or B but still informed and capable.
This one’s much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don’t you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
Pretty accurate portrayal.
There’s a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
They did. They were dumb enough to fall for it and now we have concentration camps.
I had people unironically tell me that Kamala Harris was no better than Hitler, and that she & Trump were the same but just did the exact same harm in “different areas,” which is why it looked like they were any different policy-wise. 💀
Yeah the genocide angle is just “both sides” with sprinkles. It’s a really effective misdirection.
Since both support Genocide I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s nazis vs non-nazis. It’s more like genocide over there vs genocide maybe here and there. That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen. A lot of people are speculating that things will happen that didn’t last time Trump was in charge. It definitely could happen, but I don’t think it’s as likely as people are making out. Trump would have to convince all of the keys to power to abandon democracy, and that hasn’t happened yet. He is already getting push back for certain things, not to mention braking up with Elon.
Anyway I sure am glad I don’t live in the USA. Although honestly my own country is having its own issues. The supposedly left wing party seem to have decided they have the same level of support for trans people that the right wing one does, or at least their leader is willing to follow the conservatives on that issue. I almost regret voting for him now.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
It has happened, is continuing to happen, and will get worse. ICE now has a large budget than most militaries and Trump is exploring ways to “deport” American citizens (probably to concentration camps). They’re exploring ways to essentially make migrant farm workers slaves. The supreme Court just made it harder for judges to pause executive orders. The US (of which I’m a citizen) is fucked.
I also have extensive thoughts about a political system and electorate of which I know very little about.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
Wtf? They already have. They’ve ballooned ICE’s budget to more than that of the marines. They want to deport 65 million latinos. That’s all the Latinos. They’ve already gone full authoritarian dictatorship while you were watching
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The delusion that democrats don’t also put many people in cages is a huge part of how we got here.
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By not voting you promoted to accelerate genocide. You’ve made it worse with your stupidity.
Time to stop thinking this will end in 4 years with an election. American democracy died on January 20th.
Everyone’s upset about the vegan ice cream voters not voting for regular ice cream.
No one is upset at the regular ice cream people for being unwilling to vote for a vegan ice cream place because their choice is default in their mind.
Both sides are holding each other hostage. One has a moral reason and the other just doesn’t want to compromise.
And yet.
This is excellent thanks for sharing
Every time I see people complaining about 3rd party voters all I can picture is the “Am I so out of touch?” meme. Like, y’all already shot yourselves in the face 3 times in a row and it surprisingly didn’t fail 1/3 times, but you’ll blame literally anyone but yourselves. Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money, and we would not be anywhere near where we are now. People vote for trump because they don’t want another fucking “nothing will fundamentally change” politician. The country is already shit. It needs to change. But dems are happy with it how it is. They don’t care about immigrants, or poor people, or social security, or women’s rights, or whatever. They just hold onto those as carrots on a stick. They just want to keep making millions, and would rather trump win so they don’t have to actually embrace populist policy. That’s why people don’t vote. The choice isn’t ice cream or drive off a cliff. Its do we drive into a wall and die now, or drive off a cliff so it takes slightly longer to die, the drive off a cliff people shot the 2 people who asked if they could vote for ice cream and that’s why the others didn’t vote.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Golly gee, if only there were some way that parties decided what candidates they were going to run, and what policies that candidate supported.
Unfortunately, as we all know, such decisions are made by The Secret Cabal and us lowly voters have no part in it.
Signed, someone who had a fever dream in 2016 and 2020 and remembered voting in something called a ‘primary’ for some ‘Bernie Sanders’ guy.
I can count on one finger the times that the person I voted for in a primary went on to win the general election.
And then he got brain damage and became a Republican.
Voting in the primaries doesn’t appear to do anything.
Sure dude, keep pretending the DNC doesn’t run anything and that they have zero influence or agenda and it’s all the perfect will of the people. You’re right, the people with billions of dollars in charge of the party are really just chill dudes who listen to what people really want.
Sorry for not thinking that every public poll was rigged by The Shadow Elite and that Bernie actually won the primaries by millions of votes which were shredded without a single hint of evidence left behind by the Puppetmasters of the DNC.
Maybe people are voting for what they want, and the issue is a lack of education…?
No, no, it must be the Shadow Cabal sabotaging all the polls. I’m SURE of it!
Pug. Long time fan here but I’m curious if you’ve read “Shattered” yet? It is a well researched book about the inner machinations of the Hillary campaign and goes into depth as to what / how things went horribly wrong. I used to think like you, but the reality is it’s a bit of column A and a bit of column B.
Tl;dr: even if Bernie had polled well among mainstream voters, it would have taken mountains to move the whale that is Hillary. She had ties to every corner of the DNC. It’s not totally that she had to rig the primary, but it was a fools errand to run against someone as powerful and well connected as her.
I mean, my argument isn’t that Hillary didn’t have deep ties to the DNC, or that the DNC didn’t want a coronation in 2016, but that the bias of the DNC and the influence of Hillary’s campaign on the primary beyond that of a normal candidate was not significant enough to create the massive amount we lost by. If we’d lost by 1-2%, or even as high as 4-5%, maybe there’d be a stronger argument, but at 12%, without evidence of serious malfeasance beyond favoritism, it’s pretty clear that… Bernie was just not the more popular candidate. While frustrating, the core problem was not Hillary being well-connected - it’s the US still being an immensely right-wing country.
That Bernie polled even lower in 2020 against Biden, losing many of the areas he carried in 2016, also shows that a non-neglible proportion of the votes Bernie did get were from anti-Hillary votes, rather than pro-socialist sentiment.
Fair point. I do agree that the mainstream electorate skews skews further right than terminally ill online leftists. I just think running a robot over a populist against another populist was a severe miscalculation by the DNC, regardless of how well he polled. Hillary had the charisma of a wooden board and a lot of baggage. Polls are useful to getting a pulse of the people at a moment in time. Many polls showed Bernie outperforming Hillary against Trump. The context matters. But I hear you.
Yeah, the DNC is just a long string of unforced errors. I just don’t want people to think that there’s an easy solution that’s been denied them, because… there isn’t.
My brother in christ, could you strawman any harder?
NOBODY thinks bernie ‘actually won’. Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats. You know, the EXACT same thing that’s going on with Zohran Mamdani RIGHT FUCKING NOW. He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
“If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?”
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it’s worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don’t you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Or how about you LEARN from the last decade?
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain’t doing too hot. You look at Trump’s victories and never ask ‘why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?’. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they’re perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it’s important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you’re absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption (‘drain the swamp’) and ran on making things better for the working class (‘price of eggs’). Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was ‘I’m with her’ or ‘Trump bad’ or ‘It’s my turn’.
So, feel free sitting on your high horse saying ‘oh, well if the voters weren’t so dumb we would be at brunch’ instead of focusing on the people whose entire job it was to inspire people to vote for them, and keep dividing the working class more and more. You’re only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you’re sucking off rn.
Both can be true. The major US parties are both rotten to the core and as such the leadership of the democrats has much of the responsibility for this, but people not voting are still fascism enablers, albeit to a lesser degree than those voting for trump for non-fascism reasons.
Voting third party is one thing, it’s the only way outside of revolution you’re going to escape from the established two parties. Not voting only signals apathy and the only explicit statement is “I’m ok with whoever wins, including the raping racist hitler v2”.
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn’t vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn’t vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote… were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can’t? Well that makes sense, because we don’t actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don’t know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don’t know WHAT they were thinking. So, I’d love to know why everyone seems so certain that it was the left who stopped voting entirely as opposed to the non-MAGA right or even the liberal center. And the reseaon everyone is CERTAIN it’s the left if because that’s been the reused talking point that’s been dragged out every time there’s been a lull in the insanity since Jan 20th. Almost like somebody doesn’t want the subject to die. Almost like someone profits off of the left and the center fighting each other instead of fighting the 1%.
People who stopped voting entirely may be facism enablers, I’m not disagreeing. But, there’s no actual, solid evidence to blame that shit on any one group in particular. And even despite that, it’s absolutely INSANE that we’re hyper focused on the imagined people we THINK didn’t vote for the reasons we think they didn’t vote, and yet IGNORE the people we KNOW voted for this and IGNORE the reasons they’re telling us they voted for this.
Like tf? Thinking billionaires have been and are continuing to demonize any actual progressive candidate and are propagandizing broad swaths of the electoral is an inane conspircay theory when it’s something we have seen evidence of time and time and time again, and in the same breath saying that people who voted for trump are lying about why they voted for trump based on ‘just trust me bro’ is absolutely ludicrous.
I never said it was the left lol, everything I said applies regardless of political leanings. Though in all likelihood there were at least some leftists that didn’t.
Also the commenters that were saying as much on this extremely left leaning platform are probably the ones mainly adressed by OP.
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn’t vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn’t vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote… were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can’t? Well that makes sense, because we don’t actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don’t know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don’t know WHAT they were thinking.
If there’s one thing that Lemmy has taught me, it’s that people on the left aren’t any smarter than those on the right. Just less vile.
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NOBODY thinks bernie ‘actually won’
HA! Hahahaha! My dude, just sit here. They will be by. They usually ramp up around elections and the cause of Bernie not being in charge of all things is always DWS and the DNC. He actually won but they stole it by not letting people see how awesome he was. Yes, literally. Yes, a lot of them. Yes, every goddamned time.
unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies.
Bullshit. 100% pure, uncut, arrogant “leftist” bullshit. No, I will not google it for you. PoliSci 101 is over, fascism is in place and it’s time to learn how difficult it is to get three progressives to agree on anything in actual, real-life, not-the-internet practice.
This fucked up “take” is the exact same since NADER and what have you got? A party? A name? A fucking t-shirt slogan ffs? No. Nothing.
Beyond worthless. Actively cancerous to actual progress. It’s painful because everyone goes through it and no one listens to the people with experience and the fascists vote in lock-step and we lose again.
Politics is stuck in a time loop.
NOBODY thinks bernie ‘actually won’.
I have seen numerous people on here say that Bernie actually won.
Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats.
Oh goodness, I’m glad nothing like that would happen in the general election! If only the Dems had played fair, the GOP certainly would have!
Also, would you like to remind me what a smear campaign does? Does it alter the brainwaves of the hapless Moderate Voter™ to obeying their DNC masters or something?
… or does it appeal to their pre-existing ideas and prejudices to sway them towards a candidate?
No, that sounds too much like voters having agency, and not being mere conduits for the Will Of The Proletariat™. It must be the brainwave altering thing.
And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
… okay?
He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And
Yeah, he won in the primary for NYC. Which is good. Great, in fact! But New York City is not all of America, and it’s really quite worrying that so many people here think it is.
“If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?”
What does that say, then, if socialists are constantly losing to liberals in this environment?
If we’re using success as a measure of intelligence or correctness, that would lead to some… very concerning conclusions that I would not buy into. But I’m also not the one connecting intelligence and electoral success.
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it’s worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don’t you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Bruh, in the past few days alone, on this very comm, there have been numerous, highly upvoted memes and comments in which liberals are blamed for the current state of fascism in this country. I don’t think “Antifascist unity, but only for anti-electoralists ^.^” is all that compelling.
And for the record, I do fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff. And I have done so vocally and repeatedly. But for some reason, many online leftists prefer a circlejerk to examining whether advocating against electoral participation may have helped the literal fucking fascist get elected by a single goddamn percentage point.
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain’t doing too hot. You look at Trump’s victories and never ask ‘why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?’. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they’re perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it’s important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you’re absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption (‘drain the swamp’) and ran on making things better for the working class (‘price of eggs’).
Jesus fucking Christ.
The fact that you fell for that shit - that people are just deeply ‘economically anxious’ or ‘anti-corruption’ goes to show how little you’ve spoken with conservative and swing voters in your lifetime.
Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was ‘I’m with her’ or ‘Trump bad’ or ‘It’s my turn’.
Yeah, no one was running on a campaign of increasing the minimum wage, a national ban on price gouging, lowering the cost of living, increasing corporate taxes while reducing taxes on small businesses, legalizing marijuana, forgiving student loan debt, increasing child tax credits, and expanding public healthcare systems.
Imagine if someone did that? It’d be wild. They’d probably get incredible support, especially from leftists, and win in a landslide.
I mean, imagine if one of the major party candidates ran with that platform, and was still smeared as a neoliberal shill by self-proclaimed leftists who treated a Trump victory as a defeat for the dreaded shitlib menace? That would be absolutely ghoulish if people who claimed to be leftists were that dedicated to a Trump victory so they could continue to feel good and pure about being against The Man and The System. They’d have literal blood on their hands.
Good thing nothing of the sort happened, and certainly useful low-information idiots didn’t pass that around, engaging in a level of coprophagic propaganda that would embarrass anyone with a hint of basic decency.
You’re only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you’re sucking off rn.
“When you don’t think everyone is secretly a socialist at heart, you’re sucking off the billionaires!”
I’m so sorry for not spending all of my time circlejerking with other leftists. I have the deep and abiding misfortune of actually living in the USA.
Lmao. You might live in the USA but your posting history tells me exactly what I need to know about how much you actually talk to IRL people. Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE. You don’t actually speak to irl people. And yes, as someone living in a ruby red state, volunteering with mutual aid groups and political action groups in a ruby red state, yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately, along with liberals, leftists, and people who have showered since this election. Get off the computer every minute of every day, actually go out and touch grass and DO something material in your life, because you look like a rage-bait bot with control issues who hasn’t spoken to another living human person before. Assuming, ofcourse, that you’re not just a shill account meant to spread propaganda.
Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE.
Yeah, I take like an hour out of my day before work to make one whole post in each of the ~10 communities I mod. Clearly I’m out of control.
The urge to reply back to people who haven’t the first goddamn clue what they’re talking about is more damning and time-consuming, but I make room for it, out of miserable compulsion to not let idiocy go unchallenged in the comment sections I frequent, if nothing else.
yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately,
And you still believe that they’re just anti-corruption and economically anxious, like some Very Serious Liberal Writer ready to write his sixth consecutive election column about having pancakes with them good holsum country folk?
That’s disturbingly naive that you’d still fall for that. But considering what you’ve said in this comment thread, unsurprising.
I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a concerted op going on to whip people into believing in an unending two party system forever.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Their absolutely pathetic response to Mamdani’s victory in the primary was so flagrant, I’m not even sure how to react to the Democratic party going forward. Not only did they try to stack the deck in Cuomo’s favor, but then they threw a fucking tantrum when Cuomo still lost despite their efforts. They just don’t seem credible to me anymore.
If “harm” and “less harm” are the only two options, then the only question is how quickly you die. There’s the argument that we have to do “harm reduction” in order to buy time to organize for something better, but we’ve been procrastinating for decades apparently. Since all of history informs us that humans act only when inaction is no longer tenable (and sometimes not even then), really the only material difference between “harm reduction” and accelerationism is, again, the timeline.
More like two options: one runs the bus off the cliff while the other sets it on fire. Sure, we’ll live longer in the fire scenario. Maybe we can even put it out!
But I’m still looking for the fucking exit.
Remember, no matter how beautiful, morally righteous, or gratifying your strategy is, you should really look at the results
How are we at a point in time where adults need this explained to them…
