That’s why you vote for change in the primary. When it comes to the general election, if the choices are Status Quo, Literal Fascism, and shooting myself in the dick, I’m going to vote for the Status Quo, even if I’m not a huge fan. You’re happy to let Literal Fascists win, it seems. That’s why our country is in this predicament.
We used to call that “machine learning” but the tech bros developed a god complex.
Not just phone. All electronics. And your car, which also has a modem talking to every coms tower and GPS at all times.
I understand your frustration, but if you stick to this, you will be abstaining entirely from the electoral process.
Once again, there are only three choices:
Party that can win.
Other party that can win.
Shooting yourself in the dick.
You seem to be a #3 voter. Is feeling good about shooting yourself in the dick really better than effecting real change? Nah.
Check out some Doom Eternal speedruns. (I guess 100% speedruns so you aren’t seeing people glitching through the game.) That game is actually extremely fast-paced. Good players are swapping through all fifty of their weapons every 4 seconds. Come to think of it, I wonder if the need for gore kills is a consequence of me sucking. (I think the chainsaw for ammo is unavoidable, though.)
As you said, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live in anything resembling a swing state, but for those of us who do: please vote strategically. Vote for whomever you like in the primary. (And DO vote in the primary, for fuck’s sake!) Vote for Bernie Sanders. (I did!) Vote for the DSA candidate. (I often do.) Vote for the green party, or libertarians, or write in your cool uncle. Whatever! The primary is your time to vote for who you really want. But when it comes to the general election, please vote for the left-most nominee of the party that has a realistic shot at winning. It doesn’t always feel good, but there are exactly three options in a first past the post general election:
Voting for the party that can win.
Voting for the other party that can win.
Not participating. You might think your write-in or third party is distinct from Option #3. I regret to inform you that it isn’t.
If we were to do this for a decade or so, the GOP would evaporate and the Dems would eventually split into a neoliberal pro-business party and a progressive pro-labor party. Do I want Newsom to be the nominee? Fuck no. I hate that prick. But if he’s the one running against Marco Rubio or whoever? Yeah, I can hold my nose and fill in that bubble.
If we fail to do this, we only empower fascists. Look around.
(And BTW, the party more likely to give us Ranked Choice so we don’t need to do this is, you guessed it, the Democrats…)
We’re not going to know if the accelerationist strategy of making the Democrats powerless to encourage people to elect Dem Socs will work for years. What I know is that fractally corrupt fascists are in power now, ICE gestapo are in my streets now, we are at war with Iran now, and Israel has accelerated its ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Lebanon now. Am I happy DSA candidates are winning? Sure! Was it worth it? Nah. New York could have tolerated another round with Cuomo, but can America withstand four more years of Trump? We’ve lost so much in 18 months, and he has another two years and change. (At least.)
I’m not trivializing people’s reasons for not voting for Harris. Those reasons, set across from the alternative, were objectively trivial. If your key issue was Gaza, Trump is worse. If your key issue is the economy, Trump is worse. If your key issue is privacy, government overreach, persecution of whistleblowers, freedom of the press. Name any issue and Trump is worse, and it was obvious he is worse from the first go 'round. It’s hard to treat someone’s reasons for voting MAGA or not voting at all as legitimate or informed when the alternative is voting for the worse option or declaring that both options are equally bad. I’m honestly more angry with the self-righteous abstainers than I am with MAGA dolts. MAGA is a cult. I don’t expect those people to know better or make good choices. The people who are chronically online following every political scandal? They knew better and they failed to do their duty as citizens.
I didn’t like the mandatory finishing moves either, and to be honest, I didn’t finish the game, but I got a lot further than DOOM 2016 and I thought the gunplay felt really snappy and satisfying in the way the OG games did. The levels were diverse and I actually liked the platforming puzzles, but I’m also the kind of guy who played surf maps in CounterStrike and strafejump races in Quake, so I’m predisposed to that sort of thing.
Oh well. They made a thing and it’s not for everyone. I wonder if you’d like The Dark Age. I haven’t played it yet.
tldr.
I don’t interact with people who are too self important to vote against ethnic cleansing and fascism. Enjoy your clear conscience as entire villages in Lebanon get wiped out. You know who would still be alive if you voted strategically to defeat fascism? Two hundred Iranian schoolgirls. Good job. I guess child rape wasn’t even bad enough to suck it up and do your civic duty.
it’s easy to just completely avoid interacting with LLMs.
I wish that were true. Have you seen reddit lately? Lemmy isn’t immune but I haven’t encountered any obvious bot posts here yet.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
It seems like we’re plunging into fascism, but maybe this upcoming midterms will (not be rigged and) prove to be an effective backlash to the US’ reactionary coup. What do you figure the odds are we pull out of this and say, “huh actually let’s try that FDR thing instead of this Nazi shit”?
It sure seems to be when it’s convenient for them. Biden had the power to go after Trump, and decided to slow-walk the entire process.
The slow walking happened because of the courts, or if you must blame the executive branch, because of Garland. The justice system is famously slow. You know what would have been faster? Not electing fascists.
That’s literally what the Executive branch does. It didn’t even have to be a “personal hit squad” kinda thing, the crimes were public. Biden just didn’t care.
The DOJ is an independent federal agency. Only in a failed state does a politician wield the legal system against political opponents. Oh hey look! We’re sitting in the failed state you, yes you personally, voted for.
I do know how it works.
You don’t. There are actually three options and exactly three options in every national election.
Democrat
Republican
Not participating. Sitting at home? Not participating. Jill Stein? Not participating.
Nobody “learns a lesson” when you write in your mom for president. The message you’re sending is, “progressives are too stupid to vote strategically, so by all means, try to appeal to more moderates.” What we could do, if you weren’t standing proudly in the way, is make the GOP irrelevant by consistently turning out for Democrats, then primary the Democrats from the left to split the party into its pro-business neoliberal wings and its pro-labor progressive wings. Unfortunately for us, and especially unfortunately for children in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, you want to feel good about voting more than you want to effect change.
Let me say this again: tens of thousands of children are dead because you wanted to feel smug about voting against both major parties. Good fucking job. A real hero. I bet they’re erecting a statue to you in Gaza City right now out of the rubble you buried children under.
Biden wasn’t interested in any of that.
The DOJ isn’t supposed to be the president’s personal hit squad. That’s what Trump and tinpot dictators do. That said, the DOJ did go after Trump. He was indicted on the mishandling of classified information, election interference, and the Jan 6th case was the biggest case ever prosecuted by the FBI, and would have likely culminated in charges being filed against the ringleaders, including Trump. If only…
I […] voted against both of them
If only you knew how your democracy works and wanted to participate in it. The only way to vote against Harris was to vote for Trump. The only way to vote against Trump was to vote for Harris. You chose neither. You may as well have stayed home. Thanks for this bullshit. It’s really great, isn’t it?
OK well Harris sucks but there were only two horsies in the race. Did you vote strategically for the objectively better candidate?
Safe space? I’m an OG internet troll. You suck at this.
Selective enforcement is how you get a society that throws the book at black dudes smoking weed and looks the other way on white college kids doing the same. As a general rule I think it’s a terrible way to structure a legal system, and I find it hard to blame a DA for doing DA shit.
DAs are always in an awkward compromise where they are reliant on police but also in the position to oversee and discipline them. If you go too far one way, you’ll be unable to hire cops and do your job. Is there any evidence Harris looked the other way on some big scandal?
And anyway, this is all a distraction from the choice between Harris and Trump being plainly fucking obvious. Did you make the right choice or fail to be an adult?
Not really. I don’t engage with maga edgelords.
she wanted to make Israel the most violent army in the world
lmao. People don’t take you seriously because you say shit like this.
Every year, take the 500 wealthiest people and…
What irony? However bad you think Biden was, Trump is worse, and it’s not close. I don’t remember Biden endorsing ethnic cleansing of Gaza. A vote against fascism would have been a vote for Gazans and Lebanese. Instead we got the one president in 40 years stupid enough to invade Iran on Israel’s behalf. Great fucking job!
Adults vote strategically.