The most amazing mental gymnastics

This is an argument for Trump for all I care. Libs cared about politics under Trump. Now under Biden it was 4 years of respectability politics, and you couldn't complain about anything because it would hurt the vibes and that would give Trump more fuel.

No, the economy is working amazingly for workers, anyone who says otherwise is a Trump concern troll!

No, Israel would be committing genocide even harder under Trump, anyone protesting Biden's support for the genocide is an useful idiot!

No, it's totally fine that we're still jailing immigrants because we nominally aren't splitting up families anymore

Libs just tell themselves these stories then stay home instead of getting worked up and mobilizing like they did in 2020.

I view it the same way. Trump is wildly less competent at managing the Imperial state. He is heavy handed and helps radicalize those on the fence by taking the mask off. He actively undermines American "soft power" across the world. Those are all good things from the perspective of lessening American influence around the world imo
- I'm sorry, no love for Dems but this is another level of cope and mental gymnastics. Trump did not soften any American power. If anything he crested a wave of right wing electoral victories across the world and emboldened white supremacist, Nazi, and transphobic messaging.
  
  Trump radicalized people... To vote for Biden!! People got radicalized to vote for a right wing old senile white man who sniffs kids instead of a far right old senile white man who raped 14yo's. Trump was not a victory for radicalizing people to the left - Trump put the world decades behind in social progress.
  
  If Trump wins but Project 2025 doesn't cement GOP power the way the Christian nationalist power fantasy thinks it will, we're gonna get another fucking Biden all over again. Radicalized to slightly left of far right.
Yeah this is 100% written by someone who only cares about voting every 4 years and wants to "return to normalcy"

this seems like an argument for accelerationism...

The problem with "pick your opponent" is that by this logic the rational choice is surely the disorganized clowncar opponents bent on chuddifying the deep state

Liberals frantically arguing that while their candidates are completely unappealing ghouls who are deeply integrated with the state apparatus, they are still better than the idiot chud competitors because...'vibes', probably.

Okay

I would prefer no enemy, so I am voting for no one jetstream-troll

At least it's an honest argument for once. Not a convincing one but better than most lib appeals to electoralism. The thing is with even some republican congresspeople throwing in behind Harris it's obviously bullshit.

Fair point, had not considered this.

"We can push Biden to the left"

dean-smile

A) I want the enemy who is open about their fascism

B)I want to contribute to de-legitmizing bourgeois democracy in the public eye through mass disengagement

C) I have been assured that not voting for the mostly open fascist is the same as directly voting for the completely open fascist

So by not voting for the blue fascists, I get to pick my enemy (as if i have only one) and weaken the public image and mandate of the entire necrotic edifice.

You see liberals, this is a pro gamer strat known as "pressing an advantage", which as far as I know there are no songs about in Hamilton.

Is she encouraging the left to do what the liberals did with the Pied Piper strategy and pick Trump to be their opponent? Because back in 2016 that's what the liberals did. Promoted Trump because they thought he would be easy to beat.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm

I like this quote, but I think a bit more context drives the point home even better.

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

Rings as true today as it did in his time.
It was also a very optimistic take because he assumed the elections would be fair. Especially optimistic for Lenin who seen like 100 ways to crook it in just few years.

There was a really smug TikTok going around where this person said “you don’t like the way the govt is run, great over 1/3 of the seats are up for re-election go :vote:!!”

And as always… that’s great but when the system limits the choices to ones that benefit it to our expense what’s the meaningful difference at that point?

They’re not gonna let you vote their money away

The last time there were public leaders in this country who did anything to create the conditions for peace or another way forward, they were assassinated for it and there were no repercussions. So if we're powerless in the face of a nebulous constituency of elite & organized criminals colluding with nominal "law enforcement" apparatus, virtually unimpeded in friendly countries with ruling collaborators and each individually disposable and replaceable, then unfortunately we're probably left hoping for external forces outside of our system to change things.