So instead of blaming the system that gave us two parties, you blame the voters who had no choice but to vote for two parties?
~Sounds solid. 👍~
Seriously. Someone let me know when we’re getting off the internet and rioting.
Someone let me know when we’re getting off the internet and rioting.
I heard they were just waiting for you, man.
You’re talking to Americans here. Fucking cowards aren’t even willing to block traffic or occupy buildings. The mere suggestion of a response that’s a step or two beyond that, approaching something halfway proprtionate? They’ll piss their pants in fear, clutch their pearls and start attacking YOU more forcefully than they’d ever come at MAGA.
You’re talking to Americans here. Fucking cowards aren’t even willing to block traffic or occupy buildings.
What country are you from again?
A perfect example of this is what happens when you suggest voting third party.
In the US system voting third party IS clown-brain shit, though.
Nope, it’s really not. There’s nothing stopping third parties from winning except for takes like yours.
This is fantastically stupid, we’ve seen the duopoly successfully attack third party candidates before, there’s a whole lot more in the way than the attitudes of random voters
Good intentions mean nothing. Outcomes matter.
And the outcome of voting for dems is genocide
Smarter than voting for genociders
A fun aspect of the American dream is if you fuck around too much you can lose your job. Which I’ll bet true everywhere but an added bonus is you also lose your health insurance and some people need health insurance to stay alive
Have you seen American police? They have machine guns, tanks, and air support. They’ve been trained to see citizens as the enemy for years (see Warrior Cop Training).
And your move is to… keep allowing this and keep your head down?
Congratulations. You have agreed to a political morality where the government’s entitlement to your obedience increases in direct proportion to how willing it is to fucking kill you.
Look, I’m old and have serious health issues. Your comments are ableist and simplistic. I’m not going to unilaterally sacrifice myself.
Americans, forever unable to imagine collective action except as a series of unilateral individual decisions. Okay, great- clearly your best move, then, is to shit-talk direct action in spaces where people considering it are likely to gather.
If you don’t want to put your comfort at risk, fine. Very least you could do is not actively contribute to the problem.
You don’t really understand American life. We work ourselves nearly to death because our unions have been broken and gutted and demonized, we have no decent healthcare and we still have to spend an unacceptable amount of time and money for it, most of us are enslaved by the cost of our enormous cars and by housing that is increasingly exploited by private equity, and we are constantly barraged by divisive propaganda and suspicion campaigns. This all results in a populace that is spent. You may experience some of that, but you cannot imagine the totally of it, which is why it seems so easy for you. Maybe your age is also a factor?
Either way, I’m not changing any minds here. There’s not enough upvotes to worry about, so your complaint seems like looking for a moral panic to pin on me, which is pretty funny.
No they’re completely right, plenty of old people throughout history have managed not to be fucking cowards
Not blocking traffic in a country where running over protestors is fine is not cowardice.
Try protesting armed maybe?
It sure as fuck is.
plus it’s objectively wrong as exemplified by the last election
really it seems like it’s blaming people for just voting & hoping, instead of organizing and building a movement. voting for the lesser evil is not enough.
voting for the lesser evil is not enough.
Evolution can’t work if we back-slide.
just voting & hoping, instead of organizing and building a movement.
Let us know when your clip airs on the news.
Evolution can’t work if we back-slide.
“the lesser” evil is still evil, it is still a backslide in your line of argument
Let us know when your clip airs on the news.
Let me know when your strategy of voting for genociders stops the genocide
Evolution can’t work if we back-slide
Like, for example, if we let a cop run the country? I agree. Let’s force the DNC to back more progressive candidates instead of more conservative ones. Signalling that you’ll vote for literally anyone with a D next to their name only incentivizes them to appeal to the right.
One sec, I’m getting a premonition… You’re going to tell me to ”vOtE iN pRiMaRiEs" as if the DNC doesn’t have a monumental sway in which candidates end up on ballots. I do vote in primaries, for the record
There are always other choices, but those might possibly require actual work and personal risk so they’re too scary for the voter brain to handle
It doesn’t help that the two big parties made it so that only the two big parties get coverage at debates and other nationally televised stuff.
There is also the problem that for presidential elections, the electoral college are the ones who actually choose the president. And, while the college usually chooses based on the will of the people, they are by no means obligated to do so.
There are, of course, other issues too. But it is worth reiterating that it is not my, nor your, fault that things are the way they are.
~I do lay a lot of blame these days on Alito and Citizens United.~
You chose to confine yourself inside that box.
No more than you, who does nothing but complain loudly.
So instead of complaining and bringing attention to a subject we’re supposed to shut up and comply? How good of an authoritarian view you have there.
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Bringing attention to a problem is fine (even though I’d wager we’re all painfully aware of this one already). But blaming the victims is not. So there’s that.
Fucked up to talk about victim blaming in relation to someone critiquing the democrats
How so?
We the people are the victims of a two party system that suppresses our will due to corporate interests. The dems are not innocent in this problem. They are the lesser of two evils, but they are still considered evil (e.g., Kyrsten Sinema, John Fetterman, Chuck Schumer, et all). Meaningful change by us normal people is intentionally difficult; not impossible, I admit, and people Like Mamdani are helping, but the bar is set very high and very expensive.
“…[my] choosing…” is blaming me (and every American) for things I fundamentally have no control over. I do what I can locally, but AOC, Mamdani, and Bernie I am not.
It also really sucks when a member of congress from some other state/district pushes and enacts some imposing change that affects people in other states/districts, and the people in the other states/districts can only write letters/make calls to their reps and if they’re lucky they may receive back some canned form letter written by a staffer. I’m projecting on that one, but I suspect my state and district aren’t unique in that problem.
So yeah, I ask again, how so?
I am not wasting my time reading all that. Joe Biden is a rapist who killed the MeToo movement, the democrats are enacting a genocide and people can vote third party. Pretending like you’re a “victim” when you vote for genociders is insane. And its fucked up to appropriate language used to describe what happens to women who come forward about sexual assault, to shield yourself from critique for voting for rapist genociders.
Nope, it’s also a consequence of often choosing the greater evil.
And for favouring short term over long term planning.
And zero-sum thinking.
And us vs them mentality.
And a lack of critical thinking in general.
Long term thinking would be voting third party.
I think you’re forgetting that this is the most important election of our lifetimes. If we lose this one, there won’t be a next election.
— last election
As of liberals think long term. They are reactionary like their conservative bedfellows
Using AI for some tepid take about evil is fucking hilarious.
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Are you referring to Genocide Joe or Sleepy Don?
genocide joe was still somehow de lesser of the 2 evils
Was he?
Seems to me that, if at the end of your presidency homelessness is up 18% and people can’t afford basic food staples, and you’re still sending billions in free WMD’s to a genocider mid-genocide anyway, maybe you don’t get to claim you’re a ‘lesser evil’.
Americans don’t want to admit it, but what you’re usually getting is two greater evils in different packages.
Was he?
Yes he was
I don’t think that’s a reasonable opinion, but thank you for sharing.
See I think electing the traitorous, racist, malignantly narcissistic, pedophilic rapist who hates the American people just as much as he hates people of every other nation on Earth would have been far less reasonable. And the first two years of Trump’s second administration have proved me right, no speculation necessary. I’d thank you back, but since your opinions are fucking fecal, instead I’ll ask you kindly to stop sharing, thanks.
I understand.
You think that the blue guy doing genocide, poverty, war, and the like is okay because they package themselves as a nice guy. I concern myself more with actions than words personally.
You’re welcome to your opinion. Have a pleasant day.
Just to be clear about language, “lesser evil” and “greater evil” aren’t like, classifications of evil like a tier list or something, they are directly comparative. If comparing two evils and one is greater, then the other is lesser, definitionally.
That’s some good framing if your goal is to give power to great evil. Like, you know that doesn’t let you off the hook for voting for great evil, right? That there is no moral high ground there?
You think that changes the truth?
No, I just think it’s ironic given the community this is posted in.
The only truth here is that this post pushes an objectively false statement.
It doesn’t make something “objectively” false just because you disagree with it.
Did you come to that realization on your own? Good job catching up to the rest of the class, it must’ve been difficult.
You pretending not to understand the intent of a message just makes you look like an idiot, rather than demean the value of the message as you had intended.
I understand both what was intended and what is objective. It’s just a stupid attempt.
They’re right, cry about it
Nah, crying about internet comments is magat behavior.
Your brain is broken
Ooo sick burn. Do another.
Unnecessary
I think that it fucking sucks.
Hmmm. Really seems like the government today is directly the result of not choosing the lesser evil 2 years ago.
The 2024 election was the result of choosing the lesser evil in 2020. You can’t analyze these problems by looking at only one election at a time. In the grand scheme of things, Biden winning in 2020 was a net-negative for the country. It gave us four more years of milquetoast centrism that did nothing to reduce the appeal of MAGA. If Trump had won again in 2020, he wouldn’t have had four years to prepare for a second term. There wouldn’t have been a Project 2025.
Electoral myopia is a mortal sin of Democrats. Every election they pretend that no other election has ever happened before, and no other election will ever happen again.
The 2024 election was the result of choosing the lesser evil in 2020.
Only in that he wouldn’t be able to run again in 2024 if we had let the greater evil win.
If Trump had won again in 2020, he wouldn’t have had four years to prepare for a second term.
So your solution to Trump having a second term, would be to give him a second term?
Your lack of nuance and reading comprehension disturbs me.
And that election came as a result of decades of “lesser evil” “strategic” voting, where each election managed to be a worse more decrepit choice than the previous. Looking at these things through the lens of just this specific election is part of what has got us here. The ahistoric approach to politics is why you end up running defense for a genocider who can’t even win an election against Trump.
Apparently not allowed to have an opinion here due to a one-way application of rule 4 “lessor evil” rhetoric. So enjoy your uninformed circle-jerk in a joke sub that can’t stand up to the simplest of criticisms. You win, congratulations on posting an opinon that is explicitly protected by your mods.
“waaah waaaah you have to hear my clichés about why you have to vote for genociders waaah waaaah”
You could also just formulate what youre saying in a civil manner and not have the issue. Civility is not just about tone, but content and action as well.
If you can’t actually engage with the actual critique and facts of the matter, then why would one want to hear what you have to say?Finally mods applying rules unevenly is something that happens everywhere, stop being pissy because you felt like it happened to you now. When I interact with something on lemmy world and people behave like shit, its me who gets moderated for responding in kind. It sucks, but Im not gonna pretend its something unique to your group.
Now I will say in this instance the rules havent been applied unevenly, youre just a pissbaby.If you can’t actually engage with the actual critique and facts of the matter, then why would one want to hear what you have to say?
I did engage, with facts. My comment was removed because harm reduction is a contraversial topic in this community.
Per the interpretation of rule 4 by the mods, this is a manufactured echo chamber for 2024 non-voters to jack off about how great they are for not voting for a “genocider”. Fine. You all can have your safe space, and I won’t bring in basic facts like “if trump didn’t win the election because we all voted for someone else then we wouldn’t be dealing with 99% of the bullshit we’ve got today”. I get that you all want a fantasy space where people are free to post their protected opinion with uniform agreement enforced by the moderators, you have a right to that. However, you should consider how weak those positions are when people are banned from examining them and poking at the (fairly large and obvious) holes. You know what I’d call a set of unsupported fantasies enforced by authoritarians and banned from basic examination that is detached from the actual results it produces? Religion.
I did engage, with facts. My comment was removed.
As far as I can see you did not do that to my comment. Did you respond to the wrong comment?
Per the interpretation of rule 4 by the mods, this is a manufactured echo chamber for 2024 non-voters to jack off about how great they are for not voting for a “genocider”.
Call it what you want, but just be aware your favorite comm is as much of an echo chamber. The difference is that the people here exist within the same cultural hegemony you do, so they hear plenty of what you say every day. They, unlike you, are not in an echo chamber, since they hear your bs all the time. You have to seek it out.
I won’t bring in basic facts like “if trump didn’t win the election because we all voted for someone else then we wouldn’t be dealing with 99% of the bullshit we’ve got today”
I think I see the confusion. What youre presenting here is an opinion, not a fact. And it is an unfalsifiable opinion. Looking at policies and the history of the party and the candidate, I cannot agree.
However, you should consider how weak those positions are when people are banned from examining them and poking at the (fairly large and obvious) holes.
So I would again point you towards the previous thing I wrote about people hearing your clichés all the time. Id then add to that with a reassurance nobody is missing on anything if your “poking holes” is just more of you aggressively spewing text about how you think Kamala would be better. I think you would get further in these spaces if you:
- Engaged with the critique people give your position
- Differentiate facts from feelings
- Substantiate your feelings with facts
- Present your arguments civilly and engage others with an open mind
You know what I’d call a set of unsupported fantasies enforced by authoritarians and banned from basic examination that is detached from the actual results it produces? Religion.
Seems like an odd definition of religion that excluded quite a few spiritualistic practices.
I would again point you towards the thing I said before: Its like that everywhere, you just dont notice it elsewhere because you rarely spout heterodox opinions. You are now in one of the few online spaces where the western cultural hegemony isn’t the absolute baseline, and so you find yourself as part of the outgroup. Most users here will have similar stories to tell you of whatever comm you think does it well.
I think you also need to get a better understanding of authoritarian, because calling a modaction “authoritarian” is very funny.As far as I can see you did not do that to my comment. Did you respond to the wrong comment?
No. I had a comment removed earlier that would have been basically what I would have sent back to you, but it was removed per a biased application of rule 4, no “Lessor Evil” rhetoric. I’m not going to type it all up again just have it removed. You’re welcome to find some repository of old comments and read it if it is available.
Edit: also the irony of complaining about my civility (without citation) and calling me a whiny pissbaby in the same comment is rich.
You can just find comments in the modlog. I just found yours. It had a bunch “facts” (opinions), some unsubstantiated claims, some statements that were straight up untrue, and finally it was just a disingenuous reductive statement that failed to engage with the other.
It was also a statement that diminished Democrats involvement in many of the things you take issue with. I assume that was the reasoning for having it removed. That or just it being regular trite unsubstantiated text with the regular trite rhetorical tricks that everyone sees through.
Decades of ‘lesser evil’ gave us trump
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Rule 4 “lessor evil rhetoric”
Post is explicitly about “lessor evil” (can’t even spell it right in the side bar)
Lessor is a participant of the lease who takes possession of the property and provides it as a leasing subject to the lessee for temporary possession
Mods, restore my comment, or remove the whole post or admit this is a joke sub that is about idealistic anarchist masturbatory fantasies and just ban my ass so I don’t have to keep reading the smooth-brained drivel that got the orange fascist elected in the first place, whilst being unable to interject with basic logic and facts.
Um, I’m pretty sure some of it was choosing the greater of two evils
OP must be Maga to think that Trump was a lesser evil than Kamala.
Someone doesn’t understand that the Democrats have been running that platform for a while now and been using it as a whipping rallying call to kowtow the actual left into compliance with them without any real consideration given to their ideology. The Democrats are not actually left, they’re at best middle of the road conservatism and people need to realize that.
they’re at best middle of the road conservatism and people need to realize that.
“The lesser of 2 evils.”
America voted for the greater evil and is now experiencing face eating leopard.
Hillary Clinton was the lesser evil against Barack in 2008. Her whole campaign platform was that she was more electable and that voting for Obama was throwing your vote away.
The lesser evil thing doesn’t apply to primaries, you always vote as progressive as possible in the primaries. And anyway, Clinton and Obama were both establishment candidates, they were the same level of evil.
Why doesn’t the same logic apply to primaries?
Not really, because if people consistently choose the lesser evil. Like if 90% voted for lesser evils, then the other party would have to change things up, or there could be a new party that would have a chance of winning because they’re competing for that 90% of people and no way would the evil party win.
But no, problems isn’t choosing lesser evil, it’s that significant people still choose evil
Jeez…I hope this plan of not voting again works out for us this time.
Groceries keep getting more expensive though
Seeing as how that has never been the plan of the majority, its a plan that has never been tried. As opposed to the plan of voting for democrats even though they’re (at best) republicans with a 2 year delay. We’ve tried that plan a bunch and all it has gotten us is genocide, mass deportations, a police state and an ever-worsening climate.
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Voter participation has not been below 50% for any presidential election in modern history - Las time was in the 1920’s and before that it was in the 1880’s.
I was, however, thinking of registered Democrats and organised movements like the Uncommitted movement.
I’m quite sure MAGA is not going to go along with your plan…
Yeah, just as blue-MAGA won’t. Good thing there’s a large group of non-voters and a large group of people who vote against the incumbent because they can tell things are shit, they just dont know why.
Can’t be any worse than what voting alone has gotten for us
That’s just stupid… First of all, what are we supposed to do? Vote for the greater of two evils? Second, we DO vote for the greater of two evils!
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BlueMaga liberals have memory holed the entire Biden administration
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Nice to start off with an insane ad hominem.
Sister, the democrats are fascists too.
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Congratulations, you’re both wrong. As if Russia has money to waste on influencing a tiny number of people on a non-profit social media platform that no one’s heard of.
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“Everyone who disagrees with me is either a foreigner or an unthinking machine” And Other Insane Conspiracies For The Right Wing Mind.
Anyway, why do I never see you accuse people agreeing with you of being bots? The US also has massive bot farms, as does the individual parties. The most active city on Reddit was an air force base, yet I dont see you be cautious about people reinforcing your narrative? Why?
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Plural you, dumbass. As in “you types”.
You want me to cite a comment where you aren’t doing something?Removed by mod
Funny to talk of semantics when you’re the one engaging in it. Do you not know how communication works? I am using you as a jumping off point for a generalisation.
So how would I point to a place where youre agreeing with someone you think is a bot, when I point out people like you don’t accuse those who agree with you of being bots?
That BlueMaga is once again pulling out the same McCarthyism that has failed them for the past decade is also not surprising. Screeching that everyone who disagrees with you is a subhuman foreigner isn’t exactly winning elections for you.
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“Your comment history shows that in the past you held the same beliefs you espouse now, thus proving you’re a subhuman foreigner!”
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Not beliefs, but actual thinly veiled propaganda
Those are the same thing dipshit, just because you call one by a dysphemism doesn’t change the underlying fact that I’m expressing my beliefs and your only response is to call me a subhuman foreigner for it.
You have a trash reputation around here.
Good, I’m glad you fascist fuckers don’t like me
Pretty sure the greater of two evils won a whole bunch of times.
250 years. We’ve had a form of First Past the Post for as long as we’ve has government, and mathematically that always results in two parties, aka lesser of two evils. Without changing that, we can point fingers of blame wherever, but the people don’t get a real choice.
I wonder if this sticker is on the car of someone who always voted third party or abstained? Clearly, since it’s “you” and not “us”, so not taking responsibility for generations of voting. Do they realize that their choice might have caused this outcome too? Probably not, since they’re using a bumper sticker to blame everyone else.
It’s not even a real bumper sticker, this image isn’t a real photo
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Which third party? There’s always more than one, so now the vote is even weaker. And realize that you just also blamed the non-voters. Pointing fingers is very much a keyboard warrior, and it’s what’s always done after a loss caused by third party spoiling. Go ahead, say you didn’t, but the numbers historically show in close races where a third party vote would have settled had they not thought “this time, it’s different”.
To think that a third party could ever win a national election in a Republican/Democrat owned system is fantasy land. At best you do exactly what resulted in MAGA, you splinter the group from within and force the moderate part to follow the radical. That means not playing by rules though, so Democrats have division within but no clear radical that is forcing changes.
As for causes of “this”, meaning the current administration, there’s so much more long term decline damage and not just votes that caused this. Things were not fine before. More fantasy.
You’re ignorant of history. Yes, we’ll have two parties due to our electoral system, but precisely which two parties can easily change. It’s happened before. In fact, that’s how the Republican party came to be. The Abolitionists spent nearly a century doing exactly what you advocate - voting for the lesser evil. Slavery only became more entrenched. It was only when they were willing to abandon the existing parties entirely and support a new third party - the Republicans, that Abolition actually happened.
We would have never had a President Lincoln if our ancestors had followed your advice.
I didn’t realize I was advocating for voting for one of two parties. It almost seemed I was pointing out that we’re stuck in that trap without a change of voting system. Let me reread my post… yeah, that was the point.
As for the rest, you’re sort of right but very, very simplified what was going on. And of course with a different system from the start history would be different… maybe even avoided a Civil War and/or repairing its causes and damage. Oh well…
Should we have chosen the greater evil?
