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.
ITT: people calling for revolution who will never do a damn thing about it. It’s easy to pretend violence is the answer when you’ll never participate, let alone start something.
Way too many of these chucklefucks just want to LARP as pure and radical revolutionaries. My wife and I are disabled and live on a fixed income of her disability payments and the SNAP program. If this “revolution” they want so bad does come, then we’re among the most likely to just fucking starve in the disruption. I’m also one of the people the GOP declared they want to “Eradicate from Public Life” with Project 2025.
Now, I’m not much of a Genocide Enjoyer. I think it’s one of the worst things you can do in fact. But I also don’t take too kindly to being effectively told that I specifically should just die because these wannabe revolutionaries refuse to entertain a world where we both vote for Biden to keep Trump from destroying democracy more than the GOP already has (harm reduction), AND engage in direct action to push Biden away from blindly supporting Israel.
Refusing to vote for a genocide supporter IS a form of direct activism.
Ah yes. Direct action. Famously done by checks notes Not doing something. So brave.
Not doing something would be to continue to vote for a president who is funding a genocide.
Nah, I’m good. I’ll continue to vote for Biden because he’s infinitely more likely to be swayed to stop the genocide than Trump who if I’m not mistaken has literally expressed a desire to accelerate the genocide on top of all the other heinous shit in Project 2025.
You can hate me all you want for not lining my family up to starve to death in “muh glorious revolution” or to lose our means of continuing to live when Trump tries to gut the Social Security that my family lives off of, or the SNAP benefits that feed us, or however they decide they want to eradicate my disabled trans ass from public life. Call me selfish for wanting myself and my family to continue living in addition to doing what I can to stop the genocide. I really don’t care. LARP away my dude.
How does voting for someone who is funding a genocide going to sway that person to stop funding it? It’s just illogical. There are plenty of Democrats who are active Zionists and support the war, probably a fair number are wealthy donors. The only way to sway the policy of the Democratic party is to threaten to their power.
I don’t think you’re selfish, and I don’t hate you lol, I just think you’re not seeing the enormous potential of forming a leftist voting coalition. Imagine how amazing it would be if the Democratic Party was trying to cater to the votes of leftists, and not to “moderates” who think that an openly white nationalist candidate is a viable potential option.
That would be fantastic, I’d love it if the Democrats would stop doing what they’ve been doing the last 30+ years of punching left and chasing the “Moderates” rightward. But let’s think about this logically for a minute. What are the possible outcomes of what you’re proposing?
Maybe we get incredibly lucky and Trump gets screwed over by these prosecutions and splits the GOP thus lowering the threshold for us to get an actual Leftist in? I’m not sure we can count on it with how the Judiciary is bending over backwards to try to delay these prosecutions until the election where presumably they’d all “have to get put on hold because it’s looks bad to be putting a presidential candidate on trial.” Y’know, that old chestnut.
Realistically, we have to reckon with the fact that First Past the Post Winner Take All Voting and the Electoral College screws us here. There’s a reason these systems mathematically tend towards a 2 party system. It’s incredibly frustratingly difficult, nigh on mathematically impossible to break through the tendency for Strategic Voting that this system breeds. It’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but on a massive scale. A scale where we can only afford what, maybe a hundred thousand people getting scared and bailing on the plan at most for us all to get the worst possible outcome?
You act like I’ve never heard any of these arguments before 🙄 when this lesser of two evils, game theory argument is the Democrats’ party line to avoid accountability. Keep voting for us!! We won’t change at all, in fact, we’ll get more conservative, but keep it up! Thanks for the votes!
Why would Biden be conviced to stop funding genocide after we elect him? After he has definitively learned that genocide is not a bridge too far for people to vote Democrat? It’s illogical. You’re just like oh hopes and prayers Biden will change his mind 🙏 YOU’RE the one being illogical.
Threatening re-election is the only power we have to convince high level Democrats to change. I’m suggesting something that has actual power.
We don’t have to limit our political strategy to a single election cycle. If Trump wins, it’s the Democrats fault for not adhering to basic moral values. When Democrats realize they will actually lose elections, they will put up different candidates in the next elections and they will support better policies.
Also easy to call for “harm reduction” when you’re not the one being exterminated as part of the remaining “harm”
Not in America, but I’m trans and have a number of trans friends in the states who are really scared right now. I live in Australia and have participated in pro-Palestine protests (if that’s who you’re implying with that). I loathe Biden, I think he’s a shitty old white dude, and I wish y’all could do better. But if protesting against Biden allows Trump to be elected, then there WILL be far worse consequences, both domestically and abroad. Thousands of trans people will lose their lives, and countless more will lose access to life-saving care. He will likely cut off support to Ukraine considering how he’s ingratiated himself to Putin before. He hasn’t indicated he’d stop supporting Israel either.
That’s 100% on Biden for being a legit protest target, not on the individuals with a moral compass who are pointing out his issues.
If we don’t want our non-fascist option to be protested against because it means they lose then there should be a better choice available
I’m sorry, but I genuinely think that’s reductive and stupid. In Australia, I get to have a choice. And every time I’ve voted, I exercised that choice to put someone other than our Democrats equivalent first on my ballot. Knowing my vote would still flow to them before electing someone who would rather see me dead. You don’t get to have that choice, and you can blame your founding father’s and the various people in control of your government since for that fact. But if you choose not to vote because Biden isn’t good enough, you are making a conscious choice towards fascism.
God. I called it in June 2016 and I’m calling it again now. Y’all are going to end up with Trump again because of people like you. And it’s going to fucking suck to be an Aussie online again for four years. Probably bloody longer.
Edit: It’s not even like 2016 where some people were sounding warning bells that Trump was going to be fascist. He’s been your president before this time around. You have seen what he is capable of, watched as he interfered with the peaceful transfer of power. If he takes office again, from my perspective, it will be the end of democracy in your country. You won’t get that choice again. At least not for a while and not without a lot of suffering first.
It’s fun to watch people write paragraphs of shit acting like they’ve got a point and then say something this objectively stupid because they don’t actually know what they’re on about.
I live in California, if I chose to not vote I’m making a conscious choice to support Biden, as that is who my states electoral votes are going to. If I chose to vote for any third party it’s the same outcome. Only if I explicitly vote for Trump (or another potential fascist) am I actually supporting fascism
I can assure you that’s not happening here, though I’ve seen so many people online try to fear monger that it might. If t actually were a threat I’d get in lock-step for Biden to prevent fascism, but it’s not so I won’t.
if enough Californians opposed genocide to make it so that Biden didn’t get the California electoral votes, imagine the impact. seriously. it would be unprecedented.
Well too bad. This is what we got. Either join the rest of us in reality or become yet another person helping fascists seize power.
See my other comment, I’m not doing that at all.
Stay mad, it’s funny
What group of voters would be exterminated under Biden?
Who said anything about voters?
Then it should be easy for every voter to call for harm reduction.
That’s a pretty selfish thing to say. To borrow from the stupid metaphor, I don’t want the driver to continue to run people over on the way to the ice cream parlor
The route to the cliff would run over way more people, and attempting to wrest control of a speeding bus is liable to hit even more. Why not vote for the ice cream place and make the avoidance of collisions a key priority? That seems like a safer option for everyone.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
As if Trump wouldn’t exterminate them harder. With just the choice between these 2 candidates, I vote for the lesser genocider and then apply as much pressure as possible to lower that genocidey-ness even more. Short of a revolution, it’s the best we can do.
And then they think they’ll be part of the vanguard when the power vacuum opens up, and will give way to a glorious socialist utopia. Guess what, turbo, you’ll be up against that wall too, and it’s just going to be roving gangs of authoritarians.
Even if you assume those LARPers are willing to sacrifice themselves in bloody revolution for the good of the common folk…
Who do you think suffers most when civil war disrupts supply chains, essential services, and the legal system?
It’s the dang common folk they’re supposedly dying to protect!
As easy as it is to vote, its even easier to whine about why not doing it is better(?) Maybe?
Then they come at u like theyre so very superior for not voting. Like theyre going to start a revolution by yelling at the people supposedly closest to them in ideology. Bc, clearly, voting is only done by libs, so if u advocate for voting ur a superlib. Then theyll simp for china or russia, and act like even neoliberal countries dont have leftist parties attempting to participate in the government theyre so keen on making u forsake.
Almost like theres a vested interest in there… somewhere…