demoralizing those who are also helping on that front
This is the most honest statement I’ve seen on the topic. Yes, absolutely, it is obvious that when we educate people about the lack of impact voting has that people get demoralized. In fact, they think we are attacking them because they feel anxiety, fear, and despondency.
I don’t think there’s any denying that. But it’s basically the same argument as when white parents say that we shouldn’t teach kids about the horrors of slavery because it will make them feel bad about themselves.
The truth is painful sometimes. It is difficult to have your beliefs challenged and more difficult to change your beliefs and your behavior as a result.
All of that is true.
But what Cowbee is saying about wasting millions of dollars and person-hours and political capital and trust on something that is a dead end is worse for harm reduction and liberation. Everyone ought to vote. End of story. No one ought to donate to the DNC. No one should be spending their time door knocking for Democrats. No one should be fighting with their fellow workers if they don’t feel like voting. No one should be spending time getting more people registered to vote. None of it is useful and it propagates a falsehood about the path to liberation.
If you want harm reduction faster and sooner start organizing with revolutionary organizations. You and I do not have enough time to be part of three or for political groups, attend rallies for multiple parties, and to develop the skills and rhetorical training for multiple goals. For anyone who wants the world to change for the better the absolute fastest path is a general strike and literally anything that takes away from that is slowing down justice and harm reduction.
People say we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I agree. Individuals will vote and then do revolutionary organizing. But don’t tell me that someone holding down a full time job can volunteer for the DNC, the WFP, and also do revolutionary organizing at the same time. I’ve tried it. It was impossible for me, there’s just not enough time to do it all, let alone do it well.
We will all see massive harm reduction if we focus on the root cause. That’s what it means to be radical - go to the root. Abortion, medicine, food, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, racialized mass incarceration, homelessness, ecocide, war, human trafficking, the opioid crisis, poverty … you could spend your whole life trying to fix these things by voting for the right candidates and make no progress. Or you could do the root cause analysis and organize to address the root cause. The root cause is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and their maintenance of the imperial capitalist system. That’s it. One solid root cause, one place to focus all of our efforts, all of our messaging, all of our education, all of our training, all of our organizing, and all of our relationships and trust building.
That one thing will protect all of your friends and family and the oppressed in your community and around the world more than 100 years of voting ever will. And that’s why all of the research, evidence, and history proves out. From centuries-ago history to recent history, it all points to the same conclusion.
So yes, this analysis is demoralizing for people who volunteer earnestly every year for a Democrat candidate they really believe in. Yes it’s demoralizing for the people who donate every month, listen to the podcasts, follow the inside baseball, and hang their emotional well being on electoralism on the faulty premise that this is how we will save people and the planet. Yes, of course it’s demoralizing. But just as you have no obligation to make people feel a certain way about their false beliefs, I and those who share my position have no obligation to maintain the morale of people who believe voting will save us or even result in harm reduction. Our obligation is to propagate our analysis of the way the world works, to constantly revise our understanding based on research and data and lived experiences, to debate within our own communities about the various positions we have, and to adapt our understandings and our behaviors to have the maximum positive effect on the world. In our analysis, that means shutting down the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as fast as possible by any means possible. The general strike is the least harmful and most readily available means.
And while people are striking, they can still take time to vote their conscience.
Can I just say I think this was eloquently put, and I philosophically and intellectually largely agree.
In Australia where I live voting is compulsory; in that context there is less conflict in that “d, all of the above” praxis can be actualised simultaneously.
However, I am ambivalent about it in the context of the USA, however, where militating every possible vote against someone as egregiously awful and negatively impactful as Donald Trump seems from the outside to be a no brainer.
I say this admittedly selfishly, as the decisions he/his handlers make particularly in the realm of rolling back of environmental rights seem to impact the entire world for generations to come.
However, maybe this is just our Great Filter ¯\(ツ)/¯
Life will continue, perhaps it’s for the best it does so without H “sapiens”
But Trump is not unique in this. The largest polluter in the world, bar none, is the US military. Every administration, every legislature, every politician, both parties expand the military and use it to bomb people all over the world.
Obama led the greatest expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the US ever.
All of Eurocentric society is guilty of destroying the planet. The Euro-empire developed the extraction processes, separated billions of people from their relationship with the planet (starting with themselves), and then imposed massive environmental destruction on those they subjugated as a condition of their survival.
I hope this is the filter for the eurocentric world and that settler states like your and mine get dissolved in the coming decades and that white people in those settler states become assimilated into the societies that remain connected to the land. The idea that a single group of humans could cause the extinction of everyone else is not something I’m willing to just shrug off. It has to be stopped, and voting hasn’t stopped it or even slowed it down.
Well, that is just not true. And for all the organizing that the crew in MLs claim to be doing there isn’t much to show for. Still I am not going to bad mouth them for working on their front, but I am calling them out for abandoning us here and their lack of strategic perspective. You have to live to fight another day.
And literally no amount of campaigning for the Ds will help you live another day. The Ds supported the creation of the enemy combatant designation. They supported mass domestic surveillance. They pioneered using drones against US citizens abroad. They created the DHS and ICE policies being used against us today. They created the private prison operation contractor market to achieve mass incarceration. They pioneered the mass deportation program. They cross the aisle and collaborate with the Republicans to condemn communism and socialism. They do had the entire Epstein Files in the DOJ and did nothing to stop anyone despite knowing the the Trump Faction’s plans.
You are making claims that sound good but have no basis in reality. Democrats have never allowed us to live another day, its our fellow citizens that do that. And the more we focus on electoralism, the more that protection erodes because it does nothing to address the power system and its root and every day that power system works to split the working class in order to divide and conquer us.
The Ds are not protecting you. They never have and they never will.
D is still here the progressive wing lives and we should grow it as much as possible where they are winning primaries. In other places we are not so privileged as to the purity of our reps. Evey negative thing you have to say about a D is still a preferable outcome to a crusader R in that office. I get your critic, but you are lacking perspective and you are abandoning your allies that have less privileged and unable to move.
Your organizing and grassroots is cool and all, but its not in my corner of the world. And you are not coming out to support me, so… yeah.
You’re imagining things. You are imagining that vote mongering has an effect. The research is pretty clear that it doesn’t have any effect. Again, you could be organizing your community to prepare for a general strike and then go vote and then keep organizing for a general strike. Instead you are clearly establishing yourself as someone who will only engage with people who vote and moralize that failing to vote is a moral failing and that people should follow you to voting booth.
You fail to acknowledge that corporate profits are highest under Ds, that the largest ever expansion of fossil fuels happened under Ds, that the expansion of ICE happened under Ds, that the expansion of racialized mass incarceration happened under Ds, and that everything the Rs want the Ds give them. You fail to acknowledge that the fight for abortion rights is not simply because the Rs took office but because the Ds failed three times to even make a motion to codify into law while they had the trifecta of power. That Trump is in office and not in jail because Biden/Harris explicitly chose to not move on the Epstein Files.
Your beliefs are false beliefs that don’t match reality. The Ds aren’t protecting you. They literally created the second Trump term with their deliberate and open actions. They literally created the ICE crisis we have now with their deliberate and open actions. They literally created the 2008 global financial crisis with their deliberate and open actions. They literally created contemporary the fossil fuel ecocide with their deliberate and open actions.
Voting for Ds created exactly the things you think voting for Ds will mitigate. Your position is not based on reality. It’s based on the desire to not feel demoralized, the emotional need to believe a story that keeps you safe and puts the moral burden on others.
This is the most honest statement I’ve seen on the topic. Yes, absolutely, it is obvious that when we educate people about the lack of impact voting has that people get demoralized. In fact, they think we are attacking them because they feel anxiety, fear, and despondency.
I don’t think there’s any denying that. But it’s basically the same argument as when white parents say that we shouldn’t teach kids about the horrors of slavery because it will make them feel bad about themselves.
The truth is painful sometimes. It is difficult to have your beliefs challenged and more difficult to change your beliefs and your behavior as a result.
All of that is true.
But what Cowbee is saying about wasting millions of dollars and person-hours and political capital and trust on something that is a dead end is worse for harm reduction and liberation. Everyone ought to vote. End of story. No one ought to donate to the DNC. No one should be spending their time door knocking for Democrats. No one should be fighting with their fellow workers if they don’t feel like voting. No one should be spending time getting more people registered to vote. None of it is useful and it propagates a falsehood about the path to liberation.
If you want harm reduction faster and sooner start organizing with revolutionary organizations. You and I do not have enough time to be part of three or for political groups, attend rallies for multiple parties, and to develop the skills and rhetorical training for multiple goals. For anyone who wants the world to change for the better the absolute fastest path is a general strike and literally anything that takes away from that is slowing down justice and harm reduction.
People say we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I agree. Individuals will vote and then do revolutionary organizing. But don’t tell me that someone holding down a full time job can volunteer for the DNC, the WFP, and also do revolutionary organizing at the same time. I’ve tried it. It was impossible for me, there’s just not enough time to do it all, let alone do it well.
We will all see massive harm reduction if we focus on the root cause. That’s what it means to be radical - go to the root. Abortion, medicine, food, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, racialized mass incarceration, homelessness, ecocide, war, human trafficking, the opioid crisis, poverty … you could spend your whole life trying to fix these things by voting for the right candidates and make no progress. Or you could do the root cause analysis and organize to address the root cause. The root cause is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and their maintenance of the imperial capitalist system. That’s it. One solid root cause, one place to focus all of our efforts, all of our messaging, all of our education, all of our training, all of our organizing, and all of our relationships and trust building.
That one thing will protect all of your friends and family and the oppressed in your community and around the world more than 100 years of voting ever will. And that’s why all of the research, evidence, and history proves out. From centuries-ago history to recent history, it all points to the same conclusion.
So yes, this analysis is demoralizing for people who volunteer earnestly every year for a Democrat candidate they really believe in. Yes it’s demoralizing for the people who donate every month, listen to the podcasts, follow the inside baseball, and hang their emotional well being on electoralism on the faulty premise that this is how we will save people and the planet. Yes, of course it’s demoralizing. But just as you have no obligation to make people feel a certain way about their false beliefs, I and those who share my position have no obligation to maintain the morale of people who believe voting will save us or even result in harm reduction. Our obligation is to propagate our analysis of the way the world works, to constantly revise our understanding based on research and data and lived experiences, to debate within our own communities about the various positions we have, and to adapt our understandings and our behaviors to have the maximum positive effect on the world. In our analysis, that means shutting down the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as fast as possible by any means possible. The general strike is the least harmful and most readily available means.
And while people are striking, they can still take time to vote their conscience.
Can I just say I think this was eloquently put, and I philosophically and intellectually largely agree. In Australia where I live voting is compulsory; in that context there is less conflict in that “d, all of the above” praxis can be actualised simultaneously.
However, I am ambivalent about it in the context of the USA, however, where militating every possible vote against someone as egregiously awful and negatively impactful as Donald Trump seems from the outside to be a no brainer.
I say this admittedly selfishly, as the decisions he/his handlers make particularly in the realm of rolling back of environmental rights seem to impact the entire world for generations to come.
However, maybe this is just our Great Filter ¯\(ツ)/¯
Life will continue, perhaps it’s for the best it does so without H “sapiens”
But I weep for my (and all of our) children.
But Trump is not unique in this. The largest polluter in the world, bar none, is the US military. Every administration, every legislature, every politician, both parties expand the military and use it to bomb people all over the world.
Obama led the greatest expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the US ever.
All of Eurocentric society is guilty of destroying the planet. The Euro-empire developed the extraction processes, separated billions of people from their relationship with the planet (starting with themselves), and then imposed massive environmental destruction on those they subjugated as a condition of their survival.
I hope this is the filter for the eurocentric world and that settler states like your and mine get dissolved in the coming decades and that white people in those settler states become assimilated into the societies that remain connected to the land. The idea that a single group of humans could cause the extinction of everyone else is not something I’m willing to just shrug off. It has to be stopped, and voting hasn’t stopped it or even slowed it down.
Well, that is just not true. And for all the organizing that the crew in MLs claim to be doing there isn’t much to show for. Still I am not going to bad mouth them for working on their front, but I am calling them out for abandoning us here and their lack of strategic perspective. You have to live to fight another day.
And literally no amount of campaigning for the Ds will help you live another day. The Ds supported the creation of the enemy combatant designation. They supported mass domestic surveillance. They pioneered using drones against US citizens abroad. They created the DHS and ICE policies being used against us today. They created the private prison operation contractor market to achieve mass incarceration. They pioneered the mass deportation program. They cross the aisle and collaborate with the Republicans to condemn communism and socialism. They do had the entire Epstein Files in the DOJ and did nothing to stop anyone despite knowing the the Trump Faction’s plans.
You are making claims that sound good but have no basis in reality. Democrats have never allowed us to live another day, its our fellow citizens that do that. And the more we focus on electoralism, the more that protection erodes because it does nothing to address the power system and its root and every day that power system works to split the working class in order to divide and conquer us.
The Ds are not protecting you. They never have and they never will.
D is still here the progressive wing lives and we should grow it as much as possible where they are winning primaries. In other places we are not so privileged as to the purity of our reps. Evey negative thing you have to say about a D is still a preferable outcome to a crusader R in that office. I get your critic, but you are lacking perspective and you are abandoning your allies that have less privileged and unable to move.
Your organizing and grassroots is cool and all, but its not in my corner of the world. And you are not coming out to support me, so… yeah.
You’re imagining things. You are imagining that vote mongering has an effect. The research is pretty clear that it doesn’t have any effect. Again, you could be organizing your community to prepare for a general strike and then go vote and then keep organizing for a general strike. Instead you are clearly establishing yourself as someone who will only engage with people who vote and moralize that failing to vote is a moral failing and that people should follow you to voting booth.
You fail to acknowledge that corporate profits are highest under Ds, that the largest ever expansion of fossil fuels happened under Ds, that the expansion of ICE happened under Ds, that the expansion of racialized mass incarceration happened under Ds, and that everything the Rs want the Ds give them. You fail to acknowledge that the fight for abortion rights is not simply because the Rs took office but because the Ds failed three times to even make a motion to codify into law while they had the trifecta of power. That Trump is in office and not in jail because Biden/Harris explicitly chose to not move on the Epstein Files.
Your beliefs are false beliefs that don’t match reality. The Ds aren’t protecting you. They literally created the second Trump term with their deliberate and open actions. They literally created the ICE crisis we have now with their deliberate and open actions. They literally created the 2008 global financial crisis with their deliberate and open actions. They literally created contemporary the fossil fuel ecocide with their deliberate and open actions.
Voting for Ds created exactly the things you think voting for Ds will mitigate. Your position is not based on reality. It’s based on the desire to not feel demoralized, the emotional need to believe a story that keeps you safe and puts the moral burden on others.
It’s time to reexamine your beliefs
Well until the reality of the ML organization is going somewhere, the rest of us still have to deal the the consequence of the election.