|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
Northern Ireland22952 Posts
On February 13 2024 23:39 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 14:03 Fleetfeet wrote:On February 13 2024 08:06 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 07:27 WombaT wrote:On February 13 2024 07:12 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 05:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 13 2024 04:33 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 04:26 Gahlo wrote:
People just want their votes to feel earned, not held hostage. that is not possible in a 2 party system where one party has gone insane. The other one isn't far behind them, demanding people vote for a guy engaged in what his own voters identify as genocide. To save a "democracy" that its own defenders insist leaves people with no choice on who to vote for. If you were able to become a Chinese citizen and the CCP decided to do an actual election with them vs a liberal democracy party. Would the CCP be off your ballot because of their ongoing massive ethnic cleansing with th Uighurs? How about how they committed ethnic cleansing and genocide on Tibet? The forced mass migrations of people when ever they decide to do a mega project like their massive dams? I suspect you would still vote CCP for a whole host of reasons. Hope this gives you some insight on why even if people agreed with you that Israel was ethnic cleansing and Biden was supporting it half way around the world, that it would not be disqualifying for them when it is not disqualifying for you when a government does it as part of its long term colonial strategy of one China. Even further to my point in my example the liberal democracy could promise to stop ethnic cleansing’s and I still doubt they would get your vote. Well that’s absolutely out of left field and apropos of nothing. I mean it’s not as if I haven’t asked multiple times already but I’m curious why you’re absolutely fine to use the ethnic cleansing label on China’s activities whenever it comes up, indeed the even stronger designation of genocide here, but resolutely refuse to accept the term as it pertains to Israel. You really value liberal democracy man, fair enough, but you’re as biased on that as GH is on his flavour of socialism. You’ll accuse him of handwaving Chinese policy on an ideological basis while doing the exact same thing on Israel because they’re a liberal democracy. That is an awful question, but I’ll answer it anyway Because it meets all the criteria of the definition and is universally agreed on. Now on the mass deportations I was speaking about I didn’t call them ethnic cleansing because it does not meet the definition. I’m not a fan of false equivalence. And you completely missed the point. I’m pointing out that other people getting ethnically cleansed is way down the list of peoples voting criteria, so much so that even when it’s certain it is not disqualifying. So his argument which he has been beating a dead horse with to the point there is nothing left of the carcass that people should not vote Biden does not hold water. I picked China because they are a government he support in spite of what he’s saying is disqualifying in an effort to get him to think, maybe this is not an effective argument and move on. There is a chance he just wants to trash Biden, America and Israel and is not trying to make a compelling argument. But I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. And I don’t really value liberal democracy, it’s not even my political system of choice. If you could please stop making false assumptions about me, then making up negative stories on those assumptions it would be much appreciated. I understand what you mean about beating a dead horse regarding "Aiding and abetting an ethnic cleansing campaign". I feel like I've read that phrase 30 times in the last few pages. That said, GH's lament (as I best understand it) is that there is no option. What the unacceptable thing actually is (and I agree, 'foreign country ethnic cleansing' doesn't rank very highly on your average person's day to day priority) isn't relevant, I think. The idea GH is attempting to portray is that there is no 'unacceptable' in the current US political system because ultimately you're powerless anyways. To GH the idea of voting for someone aiding and abetting an ethnic cleansing campaign is wholly morally repugnant. For most, the valuation proceeds from there to 'okay but other party is MORE morally repugnant' where GH is expressing frustration that the system is so broken there is no bar for 'unacceptable' to actually mean anything. Everyone else's immediate response is 'Yeah but the other guy is MORE unacceptable' as though 'unacceptable' is a floating point value, and not binary. GH, obviously, is welcome to correct me. I won't and traditionally haven't ever understood his position completely, and assume I'm still wrong now. Changing it to a hypothetical Chinese government where GH is voting for two hypothetical Chinese parties shouldn't change the core point : Unacceptable should mean unacceptable, not "Unacceptable but you have to accept it because otherwise the communists win" or something. What I hope to illustrate in this, despite my undoubtedly also being wrong about GH's position, is that the last line in your post is deeply hypocritical. Of all people, you can't be starting a dialogue with a person who justly refuses to interact with you based on your shared history, interpret their position as stupid and simple, and then turn around and accuse someone else of having an uncharitable interpretation of your position and negative attitude towards you. Further, I do want to say I appreciate the times lately when you've been extremely rigid in your posting and stuck to the actual topics. You are not a bad poster. Lately you've been frustratingly hypocritical and abrasive, as though you've learned all the worst habits of the worst posters and weaponized those habits for not being banworthy. I for one miss 'old Jimmi' when you didn't just assume everyone was trying to be an asshole to you, and in turn be an asshole to everyone. I appreciate your charitable interpretation, it is nice that he gets them and can pick what he wants. I think it would be very interesting to hear about mass protests, small sit ins or all sorts of public acts that work to disrupt the system. Instead basically everyone interprets his posts as either vote Trump or don’t vote at all. Both accomplish the exact opposite of what he going for. If you were to arrange a sit in and had flags, posters with your message and so on Biden, the DMC and the world would know the reason you were mad the idea would be to spark a large mass movement of the working class, revolutionary socialism. The act of voting for Trump is so obviously against his goals I won’t get into it, but not voting at all is almost as bad as it sends no message since the DNC has no idea if you didn’t vote because they supported Israel, didn’t support Israel enough, or just binged on Netflix and had some Uber Eats. Moralizing is one of the least effective ways to change minds, we all do it at times but if it is the only tool in the tool kit it starts to look like the intent is not to change minds. As for your meta comments on me, much appreciated. I do understand how it looks and how it could be frustrating. + Show Spoiler +I think it is natural to think the person arguing with multiple people is the problem and not the multiple people. However, I would suggest you go through the Israel thread and watch Cerebrate1. He is always polite, respectful and posts tons of very specific information. The hyenas attack him personally all the time. There is never people like you making comments about their posting, no mods telling them to be appropriate. This leaves you with 2 options , completely letting people slide, taking all the shit and always taking the high road (obviously the better choice, but also very hard and unpleasant) or responding in kind to the pile on and looking like the problem.
My preference would be for people to all post well. I try to with those who take the time to read my posts and respond thoughtfully like you have here. I have less patience with those who don’t. And especially with those who constantly personally attack people who are taking the high road without consequence. I have a special and aversion to bullying and my role on my hockey team was to respond to people taking liberties with extreme measures, which at times didn’t work out well for me, so I’m used to that too.
I mean they’d know, as to whether they’d particularly care is entirely dependent on if one is in a swing state or not.
It puts the onus on a particular subset of people to suck it up, which, on occasion may be reasonable. Trump is that bad that I would personally still consider not voting in areas where that’s maybe consequential as irresponsible. His record on reproductive rights is provably bad, he sits atop of a whole miasma of culture war nonsense, with trans folk centre of that particular scope. Never mind migrants or foreign policy.
But, if it’s every electoral cycle where one is expected to make that bargain, well what am I getting out of it in return? If you need me, or my ilk to make your platform electorally viable, well throw me a bone or two. If the Big Bad is that horrendous and must be stopped at all costs, shouldn’t be too onerous to do such a thing. If you’re not willing to do that, well, your imploring of me to vote because if I don’t disaster will follow rings somewhat hollow eh?
I’m not as hardline as a GH on this issue by any means, but I do get the sentiment 100%
I also don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the left to engage in direct political activism to have their voices heard, when the centre have to do nothing whatsoever other than vote. I’m absolutely pro such things and our societies would benefit from more of it, but it should be on one’s own terms.
Being where I am, I can’t actually vote for either of the parties that define the UK’s pseudo-duopoly, but Labour has spent years trying to extricate themselves from left wing politics, and as a left winger myself, with multiple family members who are members, one for 50 years who cancelled their membership I mean why would I vote for them?
|
I’ve gone back and forth with GH on “lesser evilism” before, and I’m not sure there’s much new ground to cover. One thought I’ve had is that I think it partly comes down to the meaning of the word “accept.” GH thinks by voting Biden I’m deeming any and all atrocities attributable to his administration “acceptable,” and that if I sincerely believe they’re as atrocious as they (imo) obviously are, that vote would be immoral. Happy to be corrected if I’m misrepresenting him, but I think that’s the core of it.
And I mean, in a legal settlement that’s exactly what “acceptable” means. If I was hashing out a divorce agreement, and I was presented with terms like “she gets full custody, I get the house,” me judging those terms “acceptable” or not would be about whether I’m willing to forego a trial because this outcome is “good enough” to me. In other words, I would have means to contest that outcome, and a reasonable chance of succeeding if I did, but I’m choosing not to because I’m content with it.
To me the electoral system feels closer to waking up in the passenger seat of a huge, belligerent drunk driving 120 MPH. It’s a horrible situation, and I have extremely limited control inputs; none of that is my fault. If I choose to exercise those inputs (e.g. try to nudge the steering wheel a bit to avoid a bunch of kids getting off a schoolbus), it’s still not my fault. If somebody tries to tell me “by nudging the steering wheel like that, you’re tacitly implying that this situation is acceptable,” I’m kind of inclined to tell them to fuck off. I’m certainly not tacitly saying “I have the means to contest this situation and a reasonable chance of succeeding, but I’m content with the outcome so I won’t.” Indeed, I probably won’t even succeed in my very limited goal of avoiding those kids, and there’s certainly no input to that steering wheel that will improve the situation into an “acceptable” one. In fact, doesn’t focusing on my degree of blame in the situation at all seem pretty selfish? It isn’t really about me at all, except to the extent I am searching for whatever intervention I can do that might even slightly limit the damage.
To the extent I am “accepting” the situation it’s more in an acknowledgement of reality sense, perhaps an “accepting the things I cannot change” sense. I “accept” climate change is reality, not because I approve of it or don’t think we should act to prevent it, but because I recognize that pretending it isn’t won’t protect anyone from its ill effects.
+ Show Spoiler [As an aside] +My galaxy brain take on GH that I’m not sure if I believe is that he doesn’t actually think “choosing the lesser of two evils” is wrong; he just thinks we do actually have the power to change the situation, specifically through violent overthrow of the US government, and merely lack the courage and/or wisdom to recognize that and do it. Of course if he really is actively building a revolutionary vanguard, waiting for their moment to seize power, good opsec would dictate that he can’t really talk about it on a public forum. All he can do is gesture pointedly at the unacceptableness of the situation, and wish someone would “do something” about it.
Of course if that’s the case he doesn’t actually care about how you vote, unless by voting you dissuade yourself from joining his revolution. But in this hypothetical, what he actually wants is for you to join a revolutionary regiment and start drilling tactics for when the day comes; if you do that, what does he care what you do with your ballot?
|
|
|
On February 14 2024 02:35 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 00:04 WombaT wrote:On February 13 2024 23:39 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 14:03 Fleetfeet wrote:On February 13 2024 08:06 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 07:27 WombaT wrote:On February 13 2024 07:12 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 05:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 13 2024 04:33 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 04:26 Gahlo wrote:
People just want their votes to feel earned, not held hostage. that is not possible in a 2 party system where one party has gone insane. The other one isn't far behind them, demanding people vote for a guy engaged in what his own voters identify as genocide. To save a "democracy" that its own defenders insist leaves people with no choice on who to vote for. If you were able to become a Chinese citizen and the CCP decided to do an actual election with them vs a liberal democracy party. Would the CCP be off your ballot because of their ongoing massive ethnic cleansing with th Uighurs? How about how they committed ethnic cleansing and genocide on Tibet? The forced mass migrations of people when ever they decide to do a mega project like their massive dams? I suspect you would still vote CCP for a whole host of reasons. Hope this gives you some insight on why even if people agreed with you that Israel was ethnic cleansing and Biden was supporting it half way around the world, that it would not be disqualifying for them when it is not disqualifying for you when a government does it as part of its long term colonial strategy of one China. Even further to my point in my example the liberal democracy could promise to stop ethnic cleansing’s and I still doubt they would get your vote. Well that’s absolutely out of left field and apropos of nothing. I mean it’s not as if I haven’t asked multiple times already but I’m curious why you’re absolutely fine to use the ethnic cleansing label on China’s activities whenever it comes up, indeed the even stronger designation of genocide here, but resolutely refuse to accept the term as it pertains to Israel. You really value liberal democracy man, fair enough, but you’re as biased on that as GH is on his flavour of socialism. You’ll accuse him of handwaving Chinese policy on an ideological basis while doing the exact same thing on Israel because they’re a liberal democracy. That is an awful question, but I’ll answer it anyway Because it meets all the criteria of the definition and is universally agreed on. Now on the mass deportations I was speaking about I didn’t call them ethnic cleansing because it does not meet the definition. I’m not a fan of false equivalence. And you completely missed the point. I’m pointing out that other people getting ethnically cleansed is way down the list of peoples voting criteria, so much so that even when it’s certain it is not disqualifying. So his argument which he has been beating a dead horse with to the point there is nothing left of the carcass that people should not vote Biden does not hold water. I picked China because they are a government he support in spite of what he’s saying is disqualifying in an effort to get him to think, maybe this is not an effective argument and move on. There is a chance he just wants to trash Biden, America and Israel and is not trying to make a compelling argument. But I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. And I don’t really value liberal democracy, it’s not even my political system of choice. If you could please stop making false assumptions about me, then making up negative stories on those assumptions it would be much appreciated. I understand what you mean about beating a dead horse regarding "Aiding and abetting an ethnic cleansing campaign". I feel like I've read that phrase 30 times in the last few pages. That said, GH's lament (as I best understand it) is that there is no option. What the unacceptable thing actually is (and I agree, 'foreign country ethnic cleansing' doesn't rank very highly on your average person's day to day priority) isn't relevant, I think. The idea GH is attempting to portray is that there is no 'unacceptable' in the current US political system because ultimately you're powerless anyways. To GH the idea of voting for someone aiding and abetting an ethnic cleansing campaign is wholly morally repugnant. For most, the valuation proceeds from there to 'okay but other party is MORE morally repugnant' where GH is expressing frustration that the system is so broken there is no bar for 'unacceptable' to actually mean anything. Everyone else's immediate response is 'Yeah but the other guy is MORE unacceptable' as though 'unacceptable' is a floating point value, and not binary. GH, obviously, is welcome to correct me. I won't and traditionally haven't ever understood his position completely, and assume I'm still wrong now. Changing it to a hypothetical Chinese government where GH is voting for two hypothetical Chinese parties shouldn't change the core point : Unacceptable should mean unacceptable, not "Unacceptable but you have to accept it because otherwise the communists win" or something. What I hope to illustrate in this, despite my undoubtedly also being wrong about GH's position, is that the last line in your post is deeply hypocritical. Of all people, you can't be starting a dialogue with a person who justly refuses to interact with you based on your shared history, interpret their position as stupid and simple, and then turn around and accuse someone else of having an uncharitable interpretation of your position and negative attitude towards you. Further, I do want to say I appreciate the times lately when you've been extremely rigid in your posting and stuck to the actual topics. You are not a bad poster. Lately you've been frustratingly hypocritical and abrasive, as though you've learned all the worst habits of the worst posters and weaponized those habits for not being banworthy. I for one miss 'old Jimmi' when you didn't just assume everyone was trying to be an asshole to you, and in turn be an asshole to everyone. I appreciate your charitable interpretation, it is nice that he gets them and can pick what he wants. I think it would be very interesting to hear about mass protests, small sit ins or all sorts of public acts that work to disrupt the system. Instead basically everyone interprets his posts as either vote Trump or don’t vote at all. Both accomplish the exact opposite of what he going for. If you were to arrange a sit in and had flags, posters with your message and so on Biden, the DMC and the world would know the reason you were mad the idea would be to spark a large mass movement of the working class, revolutionary socialism. The act of voting for Trump is so obviously against his goals I won’t get into it, but not voting at all is almost as bad as it sends no message since the DNC has no idea if you didn’t vote because they supported Israel, didn’t support Israel enough, or just binged on Netflix and had some Uber Eats. Moralizing is one of the least effective ways to change minds, we all do it at times but if it is the only tool in the tool kit it starts to look like the intent is not to change minds. As for your meta comments on me, much appreciated. I do understand how it looks and how it could be frustrating. + Show Spoiler +I think it is natural to think the person arguing with multiple people is the problem and not the multiple people. However, I would suggest you go through the Israel thread and watch Cerebrate1. He is always polite, respectful and posts tons of very specific information. The hyenas attack him personally all the time. There is never people like you making comments about their posting, no mods telling them to be appropriate. This leaves you with 2 options , completely letting people slide, taking all the shit and always taking the high road (obviously the better choice, but also very hard and unpleasant) or responding in kind to the pile on and looking like the problem.
My preference would be for people to all post well. I try to with those who take the time to read my posts and respond thoughtfully like you have here. I have less patience with those who don’t. And especially with those who constantly personally attack people who are taking the high road without consequence. I have a special and aversion to bullying and my role on my hockey team was to respond to people taking liberties with extreme measures, which at times didn’t work out well for me, so I’m used to that too.
I mean they’d know, as to whether they’d particularly care is entirely dependent on if one is in a swing state or not. It puts the onus on a particular subset of people to suck it up, which, on occasion may be reasonable. Trump is that bad that I would personally still consider not voting in areas where that’s maybe consequential as irresponsible. His record on reproductive rights is provably bad, he sits atop of a whole miasma of culture war nonsense, with trans folk centre of that particular scope. Never mind migrants or foreign policy. But, if it’s every electoral cycle where one is expected to make that bargain, well what am I getting out of it in return? If you need me, or my ilk to make your platform electorally viable, well throw me a bone or two. If the Big Bad is that horrendous and must be stopped at all costs, shouldn’t be too onerous to do such a thing. If you’re not willing to do that, well, your imploring of me to vote because if I don’t disaster will follow rings somewhat hollow eh? I’m not as hardline as a GH on this issue by any means, but I do get the sentiment 100% I also don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the left to engage in direct political activism to have their voices heard, when the centre have to do nothing whatsoever other than vote. I’m absolutely pro such things and our societies would benefit from more of it, but it should be on one’s own terms. Being where I am, I can’t actually vote for either of the parties that define the UK’s pseudo-duopoly, but Labour has spent years trying to extricate themselves from left wing politics, and as a left winger myself, with multiple family members who are members, one for 50 years who cancelled their membership I mean why would I vote for them? Every election you are expected to compromise, even more so in a two party system and if not a two party system your party still needs to compromise to make a government work or to form the working government. Basically no one is getting exactly what they want, nor should they. That is not how democracy works. And of course it is reasonable for the left to have resort to activism and put in the work to make their voices heard and change the times of the center. The center don’t need to do so because they do want to change things. And of course it is going to be harder and more work if you want bigger and more extreme changes. It is by design and a good thing, I’ve yet in my lifetime to experience a “enlightened monarch” or whatever you want to call a person who can make all the decisions and have them make it better for all the people. So far it’s been power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely so give me the checks and balances and forced compromise all day. Yes it’s slower, harder and more frustrating. It is also by far the best for the biggest group of people in spite of all its glaring flaws. This is not only true of politics but basically everything in the world. You can go to physics and see how it’s hard to stop or start than keep something going. You can look at a bell curve and see how many more are in the middle. Or even within your life you can try to convince a group who goes for tacos every Tuesday to try a new Vietnamese restaurant. Change is harder and more work than keeping stuff the same, that is just life not some sort of personal attack on anything or anyone. On top of that it is basically the main drive of revolutionary socialism which is not only about violent revolution (though that is more extreme and gets more looks and clicks, which does have values being noticed is important you just have to be careful that your message isn’t over shadowed) it taking action against the wrongs in society and the wrongs done to people. There is a personal cost to trying to make change. Not voting for someone is not taking action it is literally the same action as being completely apathetic. This is why many people keep assuming when GH repeats his bad dem and don’t vote Biden message that he must mean to vote Trump and then he has to say he does not mean that. They can’t fathom that a self proclaimed and passionate revolutionary socialist is advocating for apathy. The thing about voting for the best of two options even if you think they are both unappealing is it an extremely low effort act that makes a big difference. DPB painstakingly wrote out what many of those key differences would be for someone on the left. And because it is so extremely low effort it in no way stops someone from using 364.9 days of the year to do their revolutionary acts. There is absolutely no scenario where putting in such low effort to make such a significant difference (even if it is not nearly the difference one wants) is a bad move. Anyone looking remotely at the game theory would say even for a tiny difference on a small issue it would make sense. But then if you look at something like reproductive rights and there is a massive difference it becomes painfully clear that the only logical choice is to cast a vote for the group that fits your beliefs. All of us can probably name our top 10 issues and one of the parties is significantly better than the other on it even though they are far away from what would be our ideal solution.
You're simply forgetting that GH doesn't have to be remotely worried about his vote causing Trump to win. All the hypotheticals about "what if you were in a swing state" are hypothetical. In reality, GH is totally fine voting for Jill Stein, writing in Bernie Sanders or whatever else he wants with his vote, because he lives in one of the bluest states of the country.
Btw, just to be clear, GH has never told anyone NOT to vote. He doesn't hold any faith in the American political system, but he does acknowledge that it is ATM the only game in town, and despite fighting the system, people should also try to get the best possible outcome from it until it can actually be replaced.
|
On February 13 2024 23:39 JimmiC wrote:
-snip-
+ Show Spoiler +Rock-solid, 10/10 posting. I was expecting a battle but am very happy to be wrong! Thanks for the respectful and measured response.
|
On February 13 2024 18:57 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 15:05 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 12:12 Gahlo wrote:On February 13 2024 05:09 riotjune wrote:
How much you want to bet even if Biden somehow manages to actually pass everything that Bernie wants, you're still not going to vote for him? In fact, you're just going to keep asking for more. After all, there's no limit to how high your unicorn can go, if you add wings onto it maybe it'll fly and you can look down on the rest of us living in reality with a smug satisfaction with yourself. Trying to satisfy these people is a fool's errand because their heads are in the clouds, and they'll never be satisfied.
"If you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk." I can guarantee that I'm voting for Biden because I live in Pennsylvania and don't have the luxury of living in a safely blue state. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Vote for who you want, your vote isn't going to swing the entire election And if 80.000 people think that then their vote did matter and Trump wins the state. In the big picture no single persons vote matters, elections are not won on 1 vote. But its never just 1 person that thinks that, and so big movements can happen.
“1 vote won’t make a difference but if everyone thought like that it could shift the election.” Alternatively, if everyone thought like that we wouldn’t be stuck with only 2 viable parties.
|
Northern Ireland22952 Posts
On February 14 2024 02:35 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 00:04 WombaT wrote:On February 13 2024 23:39 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 14:03 Fleetfeet wrote:On February 13 2024 08:06 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 07:27 WombaT wrote:On February 13 2024 07:12 JimmiC wrote:On February 13 2024 05:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 13 2024 04:33 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 04:26 Gahlo wrote:
People just want their votes to feel earned, not held hostage. that is not possible in a 2 party system where one party has gone insane. The other one isn't far behind them, demanding people vote for a guy engaged in what his own voters identify as genocide. To save a "democracy" that its own defenders insist leaves people with no choice on who to vote for. If you were able to become a Chinese citizen and the CCP decided to do an actual election with them vs a liberal democracy party. Would the CCP be off your ballot because of their ongoing massive ethnic cleansing with th Uighurs? How about how they committed ethnic cleansing and genocide on Tibet? The forced mass migrations of people when ever they decide to do a mega project like their massive dams? I suspect you would still vote CCP for a whole host of reasons. Hope this gives you some insight on why even if people agreed with you that Israel was ethnic cleansing and Biden was supporting it half way around the world, that it would not be disqualifying for them when it is not disqualifying for you when a government does it as part of its long term colonial strategy of one China. Even further to my point in my example the liberal democracy could promise to stop ethnic cleansing’s and I still doubt they would get your vote. Well that’s absolutely out of left field and apropos of nothing. I mean it’s not as if I haven’t asked multiple times already but I’m curious why you’re absolutely fine to use the ethnic cleansing label on China’s activities whenever it comes up, indeed the even stronger designation of genocide here, but resolutely refuse to accept the term as it pertains to Israel. You really value liberal democracy man, fair enough, but you’re as biased on that as GH is on his flavour of socialism. You’ll accuse him of handwaving Chinese policy on an ideological basis while doing the exact same thing on Israel because they’re a liberal democracy. That is an awful question, but I’ll answer it anyway Because it meets all the criteria of the definition and is universally agreed on. Now on the mass deportations I was speaking about I didn’t call them ethnic cleansing because it does not meet the definition. I’m not a fan of false equivalence. And you completely missed the point. I’m pointing out that other people getting ethnically cleansed is way down the list of peoples voting criteria, so much so that even when it’s certain it is not disqualifying. So his argument which he has been beating a dead horse with to the point there is nothing left of the carcass that people should not vote Biden does not hold water. I picked China because they are a government he support in spite of what he’s saying is disqualifying in an effort to get him to think, maybe this is not an effective argument and move on. There is a chance he just wants to trash Biden, America and Israel and is not trying to make a compelling argument. But I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. And I don’t really value liberal democracy, it’s not even my political system of choice. If you could please stop making false assumptions about me, then making up negative stories on those assumptions it would be much appreciated. I understand what you mean about beating a dead horse regarding "Aiding and abetting an ethnic cleansing campaign". I feel like I've read that phrase 30 times in the last few pages. That said, GH's lament (as I best understand it) is that there is no option. What the unacceptable thing actually is (and I agree, 'foreign country ethnic cleansing' doesn't rank very highly on your average person's day to day priority) isn't relevant, I think. The idea GH is attempting to portray is that there is no 'unacceptable' in the current US political system because ultimately you're powerless anyways. To GH the idea of voting for someone aiding and abetting an ethnic cleansing campaign is wholly morally repugnant. For most, the valuation proceeds from there to 'okay but other party is MORE morally repugnant' where GH is expressing frustration that the system is so broken there is no bar for 'unacceptable' to actually mean anything. Everyone else's immediate response is 'Yeah but the other guy is MORE unacceptable' as though 'unacceptable' is a floating point value, and not binary. GH, obviously, is welcome to correct me. I won't and traditionally haven't ever understood his position completely, and assume I'm still wrong now. Changing it to a hypothetical Chinese government where GH is voting for two hypothetical Chinese parties shouldn't change the core point : Unacceptable should mean unacceptable, not "Unacceptable but you have to accept it because otherwise the communists win" or something. What I hope to illustrate in this, despite my undoubtedly also being wrong about GH's position, is that the last line in your post is deeply hypocritical. Of all people, you can't be starting a dialogue with a person who justly refuses to interact with you based on your shared history, interpret their position as stupid and simple, and then turn around and accuse someone else of having an uncharitable interpretation of your position and negative attitude towards you. Further, I do want to say I appreciate the times lately when you've been extremely rigid in your posting and stuck to the actual topics. You are not a bad poster. Lately you've been frustratingly hypocritical and abrasive, as though you've learned all the worst habits of the worst posters and weaponized those habits for not being banworthy. I for one miss 'old Jimmi' when you didn't just assume everyone was trying to be an asshole to you, and in turn be an asshole to everyone. I appreciate your charitable interpretation, it is nice that he gets them and can pick what he wants. I think it would be very interesting to hear about mass protests, small sit ins or all sorts of public acts that work to disrupt the system. Instead basically everyone interprets his posts as either vote Trump or don’t vote at all. Both accomplish the exact opposite of what he going for. If you were to arrange a sit in and had flags, posters with your message and so on Biden, the DMC and the world would know the reason you were mad the idea would be to spark a large mass movement of the working class, revolutionary socialism. The act of voting for Trump is so obviously against his goals I won’t get into it, but not voting at all is almost as bad as it sends no message since the DNC has no idea if you didn’t vote because they supported Israel, didn’t support Israel enough, or just binged on Netflix and had some Uber Eats. Moralizing is one of the least effective ways to change minds, we all do it at times but if it is the only tool in the tool kit it starts to look like the intent is not to change minds. As for your meta comments on me, much appreciated. I do understand how it looks and how it could be frustrating. + Show Spoiler +I think it is natural to think the person arguing with multiple people is the problem and not the multiple people. However, I would suggest you go through the Israel thread and watch Cerebrate1. He is always polite, respectful and posts tons of very specific information. The hyenas attack him personally all the time. There is never people like you making comments about their posting, no mods telling them to be appropriate. This leaves you with 2 options , completely letting people slide, taking all the shit and always taking the high road (obviously the better choice, but also very hard and unpleasant) or responding in kind to the pile on and looking like the problem.
My preference would be for people to all post well. I try to with those who take the time to read my posts and respond thoughtfully like you have here. I have less patience with those who don’t. And especially with those who constantly personally attack people who are taking the high road without consequence. I have a special and aversion to bullying and my role on my hockey team was to respond to people taking liberties with extreme measures, which at times didn’t work out well for me, so I’m used to that too.
I mean they’d know, as to whether they’d particularly care is entirely dependent on if one is in a swing state or not. It puts the onus on a particular subset of people to suck it up, which, on occasion may be reasonable. Trump is that bad that I would personally still consider not voting in areas where that’s maybe consequential as irresponsible. His record on reproductive rights is provably bad, he sits atop of a whole miasma of culture war nonsense, with trans folk centre of that particular scope. Never mind migrants or foreign policy. But, if it’s every electoral cycle where one is expected to make that bargain, well what am I getting out of it in return? If you need me, or my ilk to make your platform electorally viable, well throw me a bone or two. If the Big Bad is that horrendous and must be stopped at all costs, shouldn’t be too onerous to do such a thing. If you’re not willing to do that, well, your imploring of me to vote because if I don’t disaster will follow rings somewhat hollow eh? I’m not as hardline as a GH on this issue by any means, but I do get the sentiment 100% I also don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the left to engage in direct political activism to have their voices heard, when the centre have to do nothing whatsoever other than vote. I’m absolutely pro such things and our societies would benefit from more of it, but it should be on one’s own terms. Being where I am, I can’t actually vote for either of the parties that define the UK’s pseudo-duopoly, but Labour has spent years trying to extricate themselves from left wing politics, and as a left winger myself, with multiple family members who are members, one for 50 years who cancelled their membership I mean why would I vote for them? Every election you are expected to compromise, even more so in a two party system and if not a two party system your party still needs to compromise to make a government work or to form the working government. Basically no one is getting exactly what they want, nor should they. That is not how democracy works. And of course it is reasonable for the left to have resort to activism and put in the work to make their voices heard and change the times of the center. The center don’t need to do so because they do want to change things. And of course it is going to be harder and more work if you want bigger and more extreme changes. It is by design and a good thing, I’ve yet in my lifetime to experience a “enlightened monarch” or whatever you want to call a person who can make all the decisions and have them make it better for all the people. So far it’s been power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely so give me the checks and balances and forced compromise all day. Yes it’s slower, harder and more frustrating. It is also by far the best for the biggest group of people in spite of all its glaring flaws. This is not only true of politics but basically everything in the world. You can go to physics and see how it’s hard to stop or start than keep something going. You can look at a bell curve and see how many more are in the middle. Or even within your life you can try to convince a group who goes for tacos every Tuesday to try a new Vietnamese restaurant. Change is harder and more work than keeping stuff the same, that is just life not some sort of personal attack on anything or anyone. On top of that it is basically the main drive of revolutionary socialism which is not only about violent revolution (though that is more extreme and gets more looks and clicks, which does have values being noticed is important you just have to be careful that your message isn’t over shadowed) it taking action against the wrongs in society and the wrongs done to people. There is a personal cost to trying to make change. Not voting for someone is not taking action it is literally the same action as being completely apathetic. This is why many people keep assuming when GH repeats his bad dem and don’t vote Biden message that he must mean to vote Trump and then he has to say he does not mean that. They can’t fathom that a self proclaimed and passionate revolutionary socialist is advocating for apathy. The thing about voting for the best of two options even if you think they are both unappealing is it an extremely low effort act that makes a big difference. DPB painstakingly wrote out what many of those key differences would be for someone on the left. And because it is so extremely low effort it in no way stops someone from using 364.9 days of the year to do their revolutionary acts. There is absolutely no scenario where putting in such low effort to make such a significant difference (even if it is not nearly the difference one wants) is a bad move. Anyone looking remotely at the game theory would say even for a tiny difference on a small issue it would make sense. But then if you look at something like reproductive rights and there is a massive difference it becomes painfully clear that the only logical choice is to cast a vote for the group that fits your beliefs. All of us can probably name our top 10 issues and one of the parties is significantly better than the other on it even though they are far away from what would be our ideal solution.
Folks should do activism because they care about the issues, not as some notice me senpai to the centre who have to do sweet fanny Adams to have people courting their vote.
I’d wager the more effective currency is votes anyway really, least in shifting big political parties in the medium term.
DPB’s excellent post does absolutely lay out a decent case for Biden if we’re stacking him up against Trump, or indeed individually, but only if you’re relatively left of centre, or in the centre. It’s not a particularly impressive body of work if you’re further left.
Compromise is a two-way street, what have you done for me lately? I can’t be Schrodinger’s vote, too vital that without it I’ll doom the country, but not vital enough seemingly to actually court.
As I said in the particular US dichotomy as things stand I’d still vote Blue, Trump is just that bad. But for most of my adult life, indeed my mid-teens and being interested in politics, the demand has always been dropping politics at my end of the spectrum in the interests of pragmatism and incremental improvement that hasn’t happened in 15/20 years, indeed in many of the areas I’m most concerned about it’s actively gone backwards.
|
On February 14 2024 01:05 ChristianS wrote:I’ve gone back and forth with GH on “lesser evilism” before, and I’m not sure there’s much new ground to cover. One thought I’ve had is that I think it partly comes down to the meaning of the word “accept.” GH thinks by voting Biden I’m deeming any and all atrocities attributable to his administration “acceptable,” and that if I sincerely believe they’re as atrocious as they (imo) obviously are, that vote would be immoral. Happy to be corrected if I’m misrepresenting him, but I think that’s the core of it. And I mean, in a legal settlement that’s exactly what “acceptable” means. If I was hashing out a divorce agreement, and I was presented with terms like “she gets full custody, I get the house,” me judging those terms “acceptable” or not would be about whether I’m willing to forego a trial because this outcome is “good enough” to me. In other words, I would have means to contest that outcome, and a reasonable chance of succeeding if I did, but I’m choosing not to because I’m content with it. To me the electoral system feels closer to waking up in the passenger seat of a huge, belligerent drunk driving 120 MPH. It’s a horrible situation, and I have extremely limited control inputs; none of that is my fault. If I choose to exercise those inputs (e.g. try to nudge the steering wheel a bit to avoid a bunch of kids getting off a schoolbus), it’s still not my fault. If somebody tries to tell me “by nudging the steering wheel like that, you’re tacitly implying that this situation is acceptable,” I’m kind of inclined to tell them to fuck off. I’m certainly not tacitly saying “I have the means to contest this situation and a reasonable chance of succeeding, but I’m content with the outcome so I won’t.” Indeed, I probably won’t even succeed in my very limited goal of avoiding those kids, and there’s certainly no input to that steering wheel that will improve the situation into an “acceptable” one. In fact, doesn’t focusing on my degree of blame in the situation at all seem pretty selfish? It isn’t really about me at all, except to the extent I am searching for whatever intervention I can do that might even slightly limit the damage. To the extent I am “accepting” the situation it’s more in an acknowledgement of reality sense, perhaps an “accepting the things I cannot change” sense. I “accept” climate change is reality, not because I approve of it or don’t think we should act to prevent it, but because I recognize that pretending it isn’t won’t protect anyone from its ill effects. + Show Spoiler [As an aside] +My galaxy brain take on GH that I’m not sure if I believe is that he doesn’t actually think “choosing the lesser of two evils” is wrong; he just thinks we do actually have the power to change the situation, specifically through violent overthrow of the US government, and merely lack the courage and/or wisdom to recognize that and do it. Of course if he really is actively building a revolutionary vanguard, waiting for their moment to seize power, good opsec would dictate that he can’t really talk about it on a public forum. All he can do is gesture pointedly at the unacceptableness of the situation, and wish someone would “do something” about it.
Of course if that’s the case he doesn’t actually care about how you vote, unless by voting you dissuade yourself from joining his revolution. But in this hypothetical, what he actually wants is for you to join a revolutionary regiment and start drilling tactics for when the day comes; if you do that, what does he care what you do with your ballot?
As long as people realize with this framework the thing stopping you/Democrats from voting for someone as awful as Trump (or worse) is Republicans. Not very confidence inspiring.
EDIT: I should add that Democrat dogma (as Wombat has alluded to) is to campaign to their right (especially without a primary) to win the mythical middle. So the worse Republicans get, the worse Democrats get. Won't be long before Obama's "I'd be a moderate [Reagan] Republican" turns into Biden's "I'd be Bush Republican" (Biden's not quite there, but not that far away either). Then we can look forward to the Democrat that tries to convince the right-wing "middle" voters they're basically a Trump Republican and people are making the same argument for why they have to (when they literally don't have to) vote for the guy campaigning on being equivalent to the threat that sent them down this path in the first place.
|
United States41539 Posts
On February 14 2024 04:13 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 18:57 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 15:05 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 12:12 Gahlo wrote:On February 13 2024 05:09 riotjune wrote:
How much you want to bet even if Biden somehow manages to actually pass everything that Bernie wants, you're still not going to vote for him? In fact, you're just going to keep asking for more. After all, there's no limit to how high your unicorn can go, if you add wings onto it maybe it'll fly and you can look down on the rest of us living in reality with a smug satisfaction with yourself. Trying to satisfy these people is a fool's errand because their heads are in the clouds, and they'll never be satisfied.
"If you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk." I can guarantee that I'm voting for Biden because I live in Pennsylvania and don't have the luxury of living in a safely blue state. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Vote for who you want, your vote isn't going to swing the entire election And if 80.000 people think that then their vote did matter and Trump wins the state. In the big picture no single persons vote matters, elections are not won on 1 vote. But its never just 1 person that thinks that, and so big movements can happen. “1 vote won’t make a difference but if everyone thought like that it could shift the election.” Alternatively, if everyone thought like that we wouldn’t be stuck with only 2 viable parties.
We would absolutely still be stuck with a 2 party system. It’s baked in to the electoral system. The first year a party would winner take all with 15% of the votes in an extremely fractured multiparty election. The second year the parties would run as strategic allied coalitions. The third year they’d be in two parties again. Constituency simple plurality cannot result in anything but 2 coalition parties.
|
|
|
On February 14 2024 04:13 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 18:57 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 15:05 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 12:12 Gahlo wrote:On February 13 2024 05:09 riotjune wrote:
How much you want to bet even if Biden somehow manages to actually pass everything that Bernie wants, you're still not going to vote for him? In fact, you're just going to keep asking for more. After all, there's no limit to how high your unicorn can go, if you add wings onto it maybe it'll fly and you can look down on the rest of us living in reality with a smug satisfaction with yourself. Trying to satisfy these people is a fool's errand because their heads are in the clouds, and they'll never be satisfied.
"If you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk." I can guarantee that I'm voting for Biden because I live in Pennsylvania and don't have the luxury of living in a safely blue state. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Vote for who you want, your vote isn't going to swing the entire election And if 80.000 people think that then their vote did matter and Trump wins the state. In the big picture no single persons vote matters, elections are not won on 1 vote. But its never just 1 person that thinks that, and so big movements can happen. “1 vote won’t make a difference but if everyone thought like that it could shift the election.” Alternatively, if everyone thought like that we wouldn’t be stuck with only 2 viable parties. FPTP will basically always result in a 2 party system, the thoughts and feelings of the voters are not relevant to that.
If one side fractures the other side sweeps the nation, and if both sides fracture then whoever consolidates back first sweeps the nation.
|
Northern Ireland22952 Posts
On February 14 2024 05:14 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 04:13 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 18:57 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 15:05 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 12:12 Gahlo wrote:On February 13 2024 05:09 riotjune wrote:
How much you want to bet even if Biden somehow manages to actually pass everything that Bernie wants, you're still not going to vote for him? In fact, you're just going to keep asking for more. After all, there's no limit to how high your unicorn can go, if you add wings onto it maybe it'll fly and you can look down on the rest of us living in reality with a smug satisfaction with yourself. Trying to satisfy these people is a fool's errand because their heads are in the clouds, and they'll never be satisfied.
"If you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk." I can guarantee that I'm voting for Biden because I live in Pennsylvania and don't have the luxury of living in a safely blue state. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Vote for who you want, your vote isn't going to swing the entire election And if 80.000 people think that then their vote did matter and Trump wins the state. In the big picture no single persons vote matters, elections are not won on 1 vote. But its never just 1 person that thinks that, and so big movements can happen. “1 vote won’t make a difference but if everyone thought like that it could shift the election.” Alternatively, if everyone thought like that we wouldn’t be stuck with only 2 viable parties. FPTP will basically always result in a 2 party system, the thoughts and feelings of the voters are not relevant to that. If one side fractures the other side sweeps the nation, and if both sides fracture then whoever consolidates back first sweeps the nation.
Indeed, my other half was quite enthusiastically reading an article about Labour splitting into its left wing and centrist parts and a new party forming from the former, and was confused by my lack of said enthusiasm.
As much as I’d like there to be a more left wing party, in the UK as it stands all that would do is perpetually enshrine our Conservatives in government.
FPTP is an awful system for this, and many other reasons.
|
|
|
United States41539 Posts
On February 14 2024 05:27 JimmiC wrote:
For the record we have a FPTP and it has resulted in 3 parties. Now it is only recently that the three have become relevant and generally in each province only 2 are relevant with which 2 of three changing depending on the province.
That being said I think FPTP sucks.
So within each constituency 2 parties. That’s in line with the point.
|
|
|
On February 14 2024 05:14 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 04:13 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 18:57 Gorsameth wrote:On February 13 2024 15:05 BlackJack wrote:On February 13 2024 12:12 Gahlo wrote:On February 13 2024 05:09 riotjune wrote:
How much you want to bet even if Biden somehow manages to actually pass everything that Bernie wants, you're still not going to vote for him? In fact, you're just going to keep asking for more. After all, there's no limit to how high your unicorn can go, if you add wings onto it maybe it'll fly and you can look down on the rest of us living in reality with a smug satisfaction with yourself. Trying to satisfy these people is a fool's errand because their heads are in the clouds, and they'll never be satisfied.
"If you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk." I can guarantee that I'm voting for Biden because I live in Pennsylvania and don't have the luxury of living in a safely blue state. Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Vote for who you want, your vote isn't going to swing the entire election And if 80.000 people think that then their vote did matter and Trump wins the state. In the big picture no single persons vote matters, elections are not won on 1 vote. But its never just 1 person that thinks that, and so big movements can happen. “1 vote won’t make a difference but if everyone thought like that it could shift the election.” Alternatively, if everyone thought like that we wouldn’t be stuck with only 2 viable parties. FPTP will basically always result in a 2 party system, the thoughts and feelings of the voters are not relevant to that. If one side fractures the other side sweeps the nation, and if both sides fracture then whoever consolidates back first sweeps the nation.
Maybe so but when the consolidation happens that’s where the compromises happen to shift the party in the direction you wanted
|
On February 14 2024 05:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 05:27 JimmiC wrote:
For the record we have a FPTP and it has resulted in 3 parties. Now it is only recently that the three have become relevant and generally in each province only 2 are relevant with which 2 of three changing depending on the province.
That being said I think FPTP sucks. So within each constituency 2 parties. That’s in line with the point.
I am less clear on how US politics works on a grander scale, but as long as I have been of voting age, I've always felt there were three or four 'legitimate voting choices" insofar as I could choose to vote Green and, while they'd never win an election outright my vote could help them win a seat, which has a small measure of political weight.
I haven't felt the same ever be true of US politics, there's no outlier factions like the NDP or Green or Bloc that represent subsets of the voting populace and are willing to form coalition governments or the like. I don't see FPTP being the exclusive reason that doesn't happen in the US.
|
On February 14 2024 04:20 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 01:05 ChristianS wrote:I’ve gone back and forth with GH on “lesser evilism” before, and I’m not sure there’s much new ground to cover. One thought I’ve had is that I think it partly comes down to the meaning of the word “accept.” GH thinks by voting Biden I’m deeming any and all atrocities attributable to his administration “acceptable,” and that if I sincerely believe they’re as atrocious as they (imo) obviously are, that vote would be immoral. Happy to be corrected if I’m misrepresenting him, but I think that’s the core of it. And I mean, in a legal settlement that’s exactly what “acceptable” means. If I was hashing out a divorce agreement, and I was presented with terms like “she gets full custody, I get the house,” me judging those terms “acceptable” or not would be about whether I’m willing to forego a trial because this outcome is “good enough” to me. In other words, I would have means to contest that outcome, and a reasonable chance of succeeding if I did, but I’m choosing not to because I’m content with it. To me the electoral system feels closer to waking up in the passenger seat of a huge, belligerent drunk driving 120 MPH. It’s a horrible situation, and I have extremely limited control inputs; none of that is my fault. If I choose to exercise those inputs (e.g. try to nudge the steering wheel a bit to avoid a bunch of kids getting off a schoolbus), it’s still not my fault. If somebody tries to tell me “by nudging the steering wheel like that, you’re tacitly implying that this situation is acceptable,” I’m kind of inclined to tell them to fuck off. I’m certainly not tacitly saying “I have the means to contest this situation and a reasonable chance of succeeding, but I’m content with the outcome so I won’t.” Indeed, I probably won’t even succeed in my very limited goal of avoiding those kids, and there’s certainly no input to that steering wheel that will improve the situation into an “acceptable” one. In fact, doesn’t focusing on my degree of blame in the situation at all seem pretty selfish? It isn’t really about me at all, except to the extent I am searching for whatever intervention I can do that might even slightly limit the damage. To the extent I am “accepting” the situation it’s more in an acknowledgement of reality sense, perhaps an “accepting the things I cannot change” sense. I “accept” climate change is reality, not because I approve of it or don’t think we should act to prevent it, but because I recognize that pretending it isn’t won’t protect anyone from its ill effects. + Show Spoiler [As an aside] +My galaxy brain take on GH that I’m not sure if I believe is that he doesn’t actually think “choosing the lesser of two evils” is wrong; he just thinks we do actually have the power to change the situation, specifically through violent overthrow of the US government, and merely lack the courage and/or wisdom to recognize that and do it. Of course if he really is actively building a revolutionary vanguard, waiting for their moment to seize power, good opsec would dictate that he can’t really talk about it on a public forum. All he can do is gesture pointedly at the unacceptableness of the situation, and wish someone would “do something” about it.
Of course if that’s the case he doesn’t actually care about how you vote, unless by voting you dissuade yourself from joining his revolution. But in this hypothetical, what he actually wants is for you to join a revolutionary regiment and start drilling tactics for when the day comes; if you do that, what does he care what you do with your ballot? As long as people realize with this framework the thing stopping you/Democrats from voting for someone as awful as Trump (or worse) is Republicans. Not very confidence inspiring. EDIT: I should add that Democrat dogma (as Wombat has alluded to) is to campaign to their right (especially without a primary) to win the mythical middle. So the worse Republicans get, the worse Democrats get. Won't be long before Obama's "I'd be a moderate [Reagan] Republican" turns into Biden's "I'd be Bush Republican" (Biden's not quite there, but not that far away either). Then we can look forward to the Democrat that tries to convince the right-wing "middle" voters they're basically a Trump Republican and people are making the same argument for why they have to (when they literally don't have to) vote for the guy campaigning on being equivalent to the threat that sent them down this path in the first place.
Why would I want to inspire confidence? When have I ever implied anyone should be confident about our future? I think I’ve been pretty clear that the trendline is extremely bad, and no amount of bubbling or not bubbling options on your ballot will reverse that.
Now your hypothetical is that there’s someone even worse than Trump running against a Trump-like candidate – I guess they’re promising to, what, reinstate slavery? Conquer and annex South America? Nuke Portland? Then yeah, my first impulse would be “holy shit, we gotta do what we can to make sure that guy doesn’t get a chance to do that stuff.” So?
I mean, you’re essentially postulating “if the world got even worse than it is now, and you followed the same principle you are now, then the world would still be even worse.” I mean… yeah, I guess so? What I still have yet to hear is any argument for why anything would get better if I left it blank instead. Does it benefit anyone anywhere for me to do that, or would it just be to serve my own ego?
|
On February 14 2024 11:00 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 04:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 14 2024 01:05 ChristianS wrote:I’ve gone back and forth with GH on “lesser evilism” before, and I’m not sure there’s much new ground to cover. One thought I’ve had is that I think it partly comes down to the meaning of the word “accept.” GH thinks by voting Biden I’m deeming any and all atrocities attributable to his administration “acceptable,” and that if I sincerely believe they’re as atrocious as they (imo) obviously are, that vote would be immoral. Happy to be corrected if I’m misrepresenting him, but I think that’s the core of it. And I mean, in a legal settlement that’s exactly what “acceptable” means. If I was hashing out a divorce agreement, and I was presented with terms like “she gets full custody, I get the house,” me judging those terms “acceptable” or not would be about whether I’m willing to forego a trial because this outcome is “good enough” to me. In other words, I would have means to contest that outcome, and a reasonable chance of succeeding if I did, but I’m choosing not to because I’m content with it. To me the electoral system feels closer to waking up in the passenger seat of a huge, belligerent drunk driving 120 MPH. It’s a horrible situation, and I have extremely limited control inputs; none of that is my fault. If I choose to exercise those inputs (e.g. try to nudge the steering wheel a bit to avoid a bunch of kids getting off a schoolbus), it’s still not my fault. If somebody tries to tell me “by nudging the steering wheel like that, you’re tacitly implying that this situation is acceptable,” I’m kind of inclined to tell them to fuck off. I’m certainly not tacitly saying “I have the means to contest this situation and a reasonable chance of succeeding, but I’m content with the outcome so I won’t.” Indeed, I probably won’t even succeed in my very limited goal of avoiding those kids, and there’s certainly no input to that steering wheel that will improve the situation into an “acceptable” one. In fact, doesn’t focusing on my degree of blame in the situation at all seem pretty selfish? It isn’t really about me at all, except to the extent I am searching for whatever intervention I can do that might even slightly limit the damage. To the extent I am “accepting” the situation it’s more in an acknowledgement of reality sense, perhaps an “accepting the things I cannot change” sense. I “accept” climate change is reality, not because I approve of it or don’t think we should act to prevent it, but because I recognize that pretending it isn’t won’t protect anyone from its ill effects. + Show Spoiler [As an aside] +My galaxy brain take on GH that I’m not sure if I believe is that he doesn’t actually think “choosing the lesser of two evils” is wrong; he just thinks we do actually have the power to change the situation, specifically through violent overthrow of the US government, and merely lack the courage and/or wisdom to recognize that and do it. Of course if he really is actively building a revolutionary vanguard, waiting for their moment to seize power, good opsec would dictate that he can’t really talk about it on a public forum. All he can do is gesture pointedly at the unacceptableness of the situation, and wish someone would “do something” about it.
Of course if that’s the case he doesn’t actually care about how you vote, unless by voting you dissuade yourself from joining his revolution. But in this hypothetical, what he actually wants is for you to join a revolutionary regiment and start drilling tactics for when the day comes; if you do that, what does he care what you do with your ballot? As long as people realize with this framework the thing stopping you/Democrats from voting for someone as awful as Trump (or worse) is Republicans. Not very confidence inspiring. EDIT: I should add that Democrat dogma (as Wombat has alluded to) is to campaign to their right (especially without a primary) to win the mythical middle. So the worse Republicans get, the worse Democrats get. Won't be long before Obama's "I'd be a moderate [Reagan] Republican" turns into Biden's "I'd be Bush Republican" (Biden's not quite there, but not that far away either). Then we can look forward to the Democrat that tries to convince the right-wing "middle" voters they're basically a Trump Republican and people are making the same argument for why they have to (when they literally don't have to) vote for the guy campaigning on being equivalent to the threat that sent them down this path in the first place. Why would I want to inspire confidence? When have I ever implied anyone should be confident about our future? I think I’ve been pretty clear that the trendline is extremely bad, and no amount of bubbling or not bubbling options on your ballot will reverse that. Now your hypothetical is that there’s someone even worse than Trump running against a Trump-like candidate – I guess they’re promising to, what, reinstate slavery? Conquer and annex South America? Nuke Portland? Then yeah, my first impulse would be “holy shit, we gotta do what we can to make sure that guy doesn’t get a chance to do that stuff.” So? I mean, you’re essentially postulating “if the world got even worse than it is now, and you followed the same principle you are now, then the world would still be even worse.” I mean… yeah, I guess so? What I still have yet to hear is any argument for why anything would get better if I left it blank instead. Does it benefit anyone anywhere for me to do that, or would it just be to serve my own ego?
Not committing before election day to voting for Biden (or Trump ever obviously) is just about the absolute lowest effort thing one could do to demonstrate their opposition to supporting an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. It's not particularly effective, but it's basically the bare minimum (at least outside of battleground states) for me to take the assertion they don't support an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign much more seriously than I would a Trump voter saying they oppose Trump's bigotry.
One point of this line of discussion was to demonstrate that Democrats and their voters are knowingly following electoralism to their own demise so long as they can hopefully slow it down by sacrificing people outside of their immediate circles of compassion, and they have no backstop for when it gets to them and their loved ones.
They will follow "lesser evilism" until even the illusion of choice is taken from them and they are effectively just obedient implements of a suicidally greedy capitalist hegemony.
Like I've said before, when people recognize the deplorable futility of that, I'd recommend pursuing revolutionary socialism instead.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
