Just First Past the Post voting things

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I love how with pure Goebbels-style repetition, the idea "Trump is so horrifying that we should put a stop to him even if you think the alternative isn't great" has become some kind of bogeyman. Bro, it is the reality. It is the unvarnished truth and I can't see how anyone can possibly say it's not.
If you don't like a local police force brutalizing your protest and Biden not doing anything to stop them or even say they shouldn't do that (which, I agree, is bad), you're really not gonna like Trump v2 ordering the National Guard to open fire on you or having federal agents drive around snatching people. And that was last time, before Project 2025 succeeded in its organized effort to remove a lot of the guard rails that prevented, for example, those orders to fire on protestors from actually being carried out.
And yes, working for ranked choice voting, or giving the Democrats a whole bunch of shit for being their corrupt neoliberal selves, both sound like great ideas. I don't see those as mutually exclusive with voting not to end the world in this specific election. Do you know for example how difficult it will be to work for ranked choice voting if Trump's expanded CBP has seized the voting machines and is going to announce who the winner of all the elections at all levels going forward is?
- The last wave of "biden continued 70 yrs of US foreign policy in the mid east by authorizing open arms sales with Israel so hes clearly hitler and not voting for him is critical" has stopped being so effective on here, so its time to shake up the game. It will only get more insidious until the election.
  All the while we ignore the most important point that putin has called Ukraine a stepping stone in the denzaification of eastern europe and that keeping twittler out of office qnd electing dems is the best chance the planet has at avoiding death and destruction on a level not seen since WWII. Also ignoring the fact that the death and destruction in Ukraine alone is still on a greater scale than the atrocities in Gaza or anywhere else on the planet at this time.
  
  Yeah. If it wasn't Gaza, it would be something else. They're just gonna pick whatever is the best thing they can come up with and run with it with whatever consistent day after day flow of non stop memes and bad arguments. With Gaza they kind of have a point, there's plenty of legitimate criticism to be made, but it's not like the whole sub would be organic logical discussion about "hey how are we going to get Ranked Choice Voting actually implemented" and making progress if nothing had happened in Gaza. They'd be back on unions or claiming that he was bad on transgender issues or saying he tripped when he was walking up the stairs or forgot someone's name one day, OMG FUCK FUCK FUCK DON'T VOTE, HE'S TERRIBLE, DON'T VOTE WHATEVER YOU DO.
  Honestly the thing that pisses me off the most about it is that the neverending back and forth of "Biden is bad" "Trump is worse" "but Biden is bad" "but Trump is worse" drowns out anything more pleasant and productive that could be happening instead, and turns people off, because the whole nature of the discussion is overall hostile and unreasonable. I mean that's sort of the nature of the beast as far as politics subs; it doesn't need any extra amplification from outside. I miss the /r/sandersforpresident days when people were organizing and trying to talk about real shit and get things done.
  
  Republicans were always going to go for the low hanging fruit. I do miss when that was "Obama wore a brown suit, REEEEEEE!!!1!11!" though. Depressing that genocide is low hanging fruit, desperately wish it was "democrat primary is demonstrably biased" instead (but they definitely don't want attention to that on themselves either).
  
  Yep, I've said it before, chasing the "Progressive" (as the vocal lemmy base self identify) vote is a futile endeavor. It doesn't matter if Biden cut off support to Isreal today. They would just move the goalposts and harp on about how he's not perfect and therefore not worth their vote.
  I have zero doubt that had Bernie, their messiah, been elected in 2016, they would have turned on him within a year because he necessarily would have had to make concessions to get anything passed, and the progressive base is uncompromising.
  Which isn't to say we shouldn't vocalize our discontent with continued Isreal support during a genocide. Pressure gives them the excuse to slowly dial back the historically unconditional support of Isreal. But they have to tread very carefully, because despite the bubble on Lemmy, withdrawing support for Isreal is extremely politically risky.
  And ultimately, the best chance to shift support to the Palestinians in Gaza is to vote blue across the board, while giving them the feedback that ending support for Isreal is popular. Because the alternative, voting Republican or independent, has zero chance of improving anything for Gazians, Ukrainians, or anyone besides christofacists.
  If you want to shift things more progressive, get involved in campaigning for lower elections. You don't just go straight to the top, you need to get a movement with real traction before you're going to turn any heads.
  You're trying to skip the Montage, and fight the end boss before you can throw a punch.
  
  I wouldnt say that its the progressives shifting the goalposts....
  
  Pretty much, but god youre eloquent! Im glad im not one of the ones trying to argue with u xD
  I do remember r/sandersforpresident when it was good, and i do remember a lot of reddit leftist subs before they turned into "vooting bad!" and "heres the spoonfed opinions u must subscribe to if u want to be a Leftist TM."
  And honestly, as for whats going on on lemmy, ur right that productive conversation gets drowned out, and the shills and their tankie followers tend to drag ppl down to the dregs whenever they try to debate them or are forced to call them out lest others take them seriously.
  Its a brilliant tactic, too. Anyone remotely left leaning- shit, anyone morally sane, really- will look at the Gaza situation and feel for the downtrodden civilians being slaughtered and feel sympathy/take their side. The left is harder than the right to co-opt who will go for anything that tells them theyre better than the next guy so feel free to hate on XYZ, so theyre forced to co-opt the positions we already are bound to hold.
  And ill end with ur daily reminder that actual leftists, like the Zapatistas in Spain who list it as a core tenet, will operate within the bounds of the system (not just outside of it) by voting for the option that most enables (or least obstructs) further mutual aid/direct action.
  
  😃
  Thank you! That's excellent
  And yeah, the whole mindset is very much alien to actual leftist struggle. I get it. It's pretty discouraging if the police come and bear-spray you and arrest you because you're advocating for simple sanity in the system. At the same time, I imagine someone who was involved in struggle for civil rights or someone who's been an undocumented immigrant or something, saying: Yeah. That's what we're up against. If you're all of a sudden gonna get all discouraged about it like WELL IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE NICE THEN I REFUSE TO BE INVOLVED, I DON'T LIKE THIS... like bro what did you think was happening. The wrong people are in charge. That's what's up. Can we get busy on trying to change it? Inside or outside the system or both, or whatever seems like a good way to get rid of the crooks and get some better outcomes?
  The whole "I refuse to engage with this broken system until something comes from above and makes the Democrats 'earn it' by being better all on their own, by magic" is a guaranteed win for all the worst outcomes and all the worst people, who will hurt a lot of people who don't have your luxury of deciding whether or not to involve with the system, and will make it exponentially more difficult to replace the Democrats with something better in the future.
  
  Exactly!!
  This is why i preach leftist solidarity. I get that neolibs are (very much) to the right of me. The tomes we align, however, need to be embraced. Any leftward movement is preferable to none at all. Any leftward movement shifts the overton window in the direction we want. We can worry about arguing when its relevant, not when we need to keep the literal fascist out of office. In general, claiming someone like status quo joe to be a fascist is a hell of a privileged position to hold. Fascists want the outright eradication of some sort of undesirable group and an outright rejection of electoralism or democracy in all its forms, quite unlike status quo joe.
- It's very clear a lot of people didn't pay attention to history or civics class. Party politics always ends up voting for a compromise candidate.
  
  Yeah but these people are so militant about refusing to vote that they didn't even show up for the guy who'd have advocated their side of the compromise in the primaries. Hence all the magical thinking about "well if they counted individual donations instead of votes...!"
  Bernie would be rounding out his second term if these people took half the energy they spent on whining about voting and actually fucking voted.
- I hope you don’t really expect anyone here to understand that nuance exists in the world. Because they’re too busy trying to out-outrage each other.
  I used to say the same shit you’re saying. They’ll just accuse you of supporting gEnOciDe and high fife their little friends.
- If Democrats had actually done anything to make sure this man was jailed or otherwise barred from running for office, then we wouldn't even be in this position. I sadly think they prefer that Trump is the candidate that they run against because they think he's easier to beat.
  This upcoming election should have been our last line of defense, not our first.
  
  Prison is done by the judicial system, not Congress or executive or political parties. You know, separation of powers.
  
  Right, and had Biden appointed a better attorney general, which is totally on his hands, then maybe this would be different.
  Progressives screamed at him to pick somebody else for fear of this exact outcome, but he didn't listen.
  
  Biden and the Democrat party have no direct control over the Attorney General. It's independent. And you want it to be independent. You don't want Biden or political parties locking up people. You want an independent judicial system to do whatever that independent system will do, like I said.
  Oh I recognize your username, well thank you for confirming you're being obtuse.
  
  The preisdent literally picks the AG, yes. Dont be a moron here.

30 comments