FAQ
Q: why not organize and stop treating the bus as a legitimate entity? why aren’t you working to stop the bus?
A: do both. cut the fuel line. break windows. put oatmeal in the gas tank. but maybe your efforts don’t succeed this election cycle. and if so don’t fucking throw away your vote if it can help your neighbors fucking survive. “harm reduction” is not a political strategy for action. it is a last minute, end of the line decision to save lives, after all other resources have been exhausted.
My favorite morons ITT:
Yeah because the guy promising to end democracy and bring about Christian nationalism is exactly the same as the moderate we have now. I hope you’re getting paid to be that stupid.
At the end of the day someone becomes president, and spoiler alert the other option is still worse. It’s cute you think your principles are more important than the safety and security of at-risk groups domestically (and frankly abroad as well). Short-sighted and idiotic.
Okay well organize and protest that after we’ve avoided the cliff.
Hope you enjoy your five minutes of smugness, because a Christian nationalist USA doesn’t benefit anyone in the world in the long run.
a lot of the individuals ITT are here in good faith i believe. i’m more trying to get meaningful change to happen than sow discord by calling them morons.
You, i like you
c:
Ive gotten righty whities to agree with me on all sorts of wild leftist ideas, its about finding the angle and humanizing the problem.
A-fuckin-goddamn-men.
You need to communicate with people. Berating them is entirely self serving. No one ever said "you know what? I am a moron, thanks for pointing out my worldview is entirely wrong and I'm an asshole in those exact words."
You can get people to realize they're wrong, but calling them names is exactly the wrong way to do it.
I say "talk to a conservative in conservative language" and they'll understand you. Avoid "trigger" words like redistribution, socialism, LGBT+, etc... use words like "Liberty, freedom of expression, government overreach (when discussing infringement of LGBT+ rights) etc..."
i feel like sometimes people forget the little username in their phone represents a living breathing life that may or may not have had breakfast this morning :(
Well.... with the amount of bots confirmed to be out there.... and some of those living breathing lives are out to convince Americans that what they actually want to do is hand Dr. Fascismo the presidency by not voting or protest voting third party.
Ha, I think at least 70% of Internet arguments are caused by hangryness!
yes and the other 30% are caused by people being bags of flesh with bones and sickness inside
I hear you and I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, though I am skeptical that these people actually are coming here in good faith.
you can do so much more to defeat the reactionaries by visiting:
than a polling station
It's so weird to see it framed as an either/or. Voting is the absolute bare minimum you can do to participate. So yeah go vote, and also organize your friends and network with like minded people around you and work towards the change you want. I doubt any of the ideologically pure abstainers here have even ever turned out to vote much less actually worked on a campaign.
But they are though.
The cliff drivers aren't getting off the bus, even if we vote them down this time, if we don't change the system that allows them equal opportunity to drive us off a cliff they will eventually force it off the cliff.
Biden has long supported the system that allows it, prides himself on being able to find a middle ground with them, and though he talks about not going over the cliff has no long term plan for dealing with those that do, because again he believes in the system that allows them to want to drive off the cliff.
I believe I've stretched this metaphor about as far as it will go, but I'm going to try stretching it further.
There are actually two cliffs, fascism and climate change, even if we pull the bus away from one cliff we've still got the other in front of us and basically no one is even pretending to deal with that.
And to leave the broken bus scenario, I'm just going to say if you believe that a trump win will destroy American democracy, that we can't defeat his corrupt, senile version of fascism then the next republican demagogue will have no problems.
Yeah, and Trump is going to drive you off of both.
If you think that trump is capable of that then you admit the American system is so flawed that a diaper wearing dementia ridden criminal is all it will take to bring it down. That Pax Americana is on the death bed and electing Biden is just kicking the can down the road.
Without the looming existential threat of the climate apocalypse and the inevitability of children born today fighting in the water wars, Biden might be fine, but we need action now and anything else isn't just lesser of two evils, it's complete failure in our lifetimes...
People keep acting like we have forever to make change. Meanwhile we are in the midst of a literal climate crisis, and people are literally starving to death with the help of U.S. dollars.
The problem is that "moderates" are very conservative and fascist-leaning as well. The Biden administration is still funding genocide, still turning away asylum-seeking migrants, hell Biden hasn't even followed through on releasing prisoners convicted of marijuana convictions.
And people ARE protesting now, but not as much as under Trump, and these things haven't changed. Biden allows barely engaged liberals to think everything is okay, but Biden is still AWFUL he just has better optics to liberals.
Trump is literally a fascist. You’re damn right Biden has better optics…because he isn’t a fascist. So who are you voting for then?
Yeah, I agree that it’s a shit situation and an undesirable choice. But the unfortunate political reality we currently live in is that it’s either Biden or Trump.
Yes, the Biden administration is supplying weapons to Israel that are being used for genocide. Trump has commented that Israel needs to “finish the problem.”
Yes, the Biden administration is turning away asylum seekers on our southern border. Trump has said that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of our nation.
I challenge your last point regarding marijuana convictions: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/06/statement-from-president-biden-on-marijuana-reform/
But I will again will contrast that Trump rescinded the Obama-era policy of not pursuing marijuana charges at the federal level in states where it was legal. A clear and significant step backward.
https://www.lastprisonerproject.org/president-biden-issues-additional-cannabis-pardons-but-still-no-one-has-been-released
it's optics
It’s not ”just optics”. Per your source he did pardon 6,500 individuals, which the Last Prisoner Project described as “progress for those eligible for relief.”
Now they do argue that the Biden administration should go further by pardoning 3,000 additional people, which I agree with. But to call this step forward “just optics” is at best disingenuous.
Here’s the fucking frighting thing, the moderates I know(relatives mostly) hate Biden because of the price of gas and groceries, that he isn’t killing everyone trying to cross the southern border, and believe Trump will be better for America in these crazy times. It’s fucking depressing to hear
This is what I'm saying - the moderates fucking suck and it's not worth trying to win them over. Move the party left, the zombified vote-blue-no-matter-who Democrats will vote for a more leftist candidate just like they vote for a more moderate candidate.
I agree with your goal and the spirit of what you’re saying completely, but we’re kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. Unless something completely unexpected like multiple age related deaths or a violent revolt happens there are only two candidates with any chance of attaining the office. Which means we have to make a choice. A choice I hate making but I want to continue to make choices in the future so it’s one I have to make.
I do understand that take and desire for harm reduction. I am a trans person and my and my friend's rights are constantly politicized by both parties. But even under Biden, trans people are actively being targeted in certain states, and under Trump, trans rights were strengthened in other states. The president can only (or chooses to only) do so much. But things the president can change include foreign policy, military actions.... so I think refusing to vote for Biden over the issues he has the most direct power over is absolutely appropriate.
I believe that voting third party could enable long term change, and that voting for Biden is perpetuating the system that is already causing so much harm.
Ok so, Trump and the GOP are marching head first into genocidal fascism and you’re naive to think you’ll ever get to vote again if he’s elected. The president only has so much power because it’s checked, that won’t happen this time as the courts are stacked to allow christofascim and both houses of Congress are hamstrung with infighting. Some state govs will resist and I applaud that but it leads us into constitutional crises and in my mind civil war. As a trans person I think you should understand the threat to your very life if Trump regains power in this current political world we exist in. Biden fucking sucks all around but we buy more time with him, which is a shitty comprise, but Trump term two, signals the end of the United States and puts the final nail in the coffin of doing anything to mitigate climate change. Not to mention the dissolution of nato which he’s verbal said he’s inclined to induce, which means the end of Ukraine as a nation and likely a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, is also suspect a rollback in workers rights and more tax cuts for the rich.
A third party vote only matters when the message sent matters to the recipients. The only way it MIGHT is if Biden wins and democracy continues. Because Trump won’t give a good goddamn.
We don’t have the luxury of that right now and I hate it too, but it’s the lot we’ve all fucking drawn.