Abstaining from voting is just a vote to let others choose for you. It does not exempt you from the system.
You’re banned from .ml, !latestagecapitalism and r/Pyongyang.
I am also banned from .ml and LateStageCapitalism. Anyone who isn’t insufferable and possesses a functional brain is or will be banned from those wretched hives of scum and villainy.
BaD jAcKeTiNg
I don’t think the people downvoting this saw the mod who banned kingofras for bad jacketing proceeded to bad jacket someone else in the next thread about this subject.
Probably the same dick who banned me today honestly.
Lol. I think you got banned from Ye Powertrippin’ Bastards by that db0 dipshit right before I did.
It’s literally a sub for complaining about power tripping mods and that dipshit is going through it banning people he disagrees with. The irony is supreme.
I went to his profile and he describes himself as an “Epicurean Revolutionary Libertarian Socialist”, which had me rolling. How can he take himself seriously?
Yep I am fairly sure we’re talking about the same person. Lol
They banned me from countless subs. I actually at that point realized I never have good experiences with that instance so I went ahead and blocked it.
Yeah, his name is literally “db0” because he’s on the dbzer0 instance. Guy’s a creative powerhouse. It had to have been him that banned us because the one other listed mod hasn’t been active in a few weeks.
Lemmy’s great, but it’s unfortunate how many popular subs are moderated by a single basement dwelling sad ass powertripping loser. They kill a significant portion of this platform for anyone that doesn’t want to slurp their shit up.
And yeah, I’m about to hit my 2 year mark on Lemmy and I can confirm that all these losers are coming from the dbzer0 and ml instances. They are a blight on the Lemmiverse. Same vibe I used to get from /r/conservative and /r/The_Donald. Just pathetic losers.
Libertarian lmao. “Leftist” instance run by someone identifying himself as a nazi pedophile. Rich.
One effexor capsule at a time I assume
deleted by creator
Cuck voting
It’s not a protest, it’s a surrender.
Absolutely! You’re part of “the system” due to the fact that you exist…
If you think any of this will convince the commies to vote think again
They are only here too sow doubt and apathy in the interests of certain oligarchs
I prefer this equivalence: abstaining is voting according to the result of the election.
But the bus driver supports genocide. The whole bus is rotten. We should let the bus go off the cliff and then build a new bus. I’m sure enough of us will survive the crash to build a better bus afterwards. Many people will die but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
🤡🤡🤡
But the bus driver supports genocide. The whole bus is rotten.
You ever notice how the ‘burn it down’ people fall into two camps?
- not in the affected area: chicken-hawk types who advocate the sacrifice of others.
- in the affected area: I didn’t know the leopards of societal collapse, starvation, and violence, would eat my face.
Type 2 also includes the “why’s it taking so long? Look at all these people suffering through the collapse. We need to make it collapse faster so we get to the good part faster” people, without acknowledging that this is what collapse looks like: lots of suffering
Yeah but you can just blame all that suffering on the people trying to hold the whole thing together, because obviously if you just let the whole thing collapse then the suffering will end abruptly and a magical utopia can finally descend from the heavens! /s
You joke, but the number of people I’ve seen posting along the lines of ‘I don’t this, I’m exempted!’ Is extremely infuriating. The individualism bubble has them thinking it’s a shield from reality.
Oh, I know. Believe me, do I know…
Who said there was a good part to get to? Turns out damaging the bus in any manner, whether by driving, inaction, or burning it on the road, is all bad. No one has mentioned hitting the brakes… oh wait, which one of you cut the lines?
But the bus driver said it’s going to take a few extra hours to get to the destination because of all the buses creating congestion on the highway. So clearly burning the bus to the ground is the only viable option, and in fact, if you don’t light the match then you actually support traffic jams! /s
Making the downfall faster is fighting stupid with stupid. They are still bringing on the end of the world or whatever evangelicals are imagining.
There will be so much shit to eat your grandchildren will still be at it. I do not understand accelerationism or similar ideas one bit.
Just a bunch of moralists sniffing their own farts.
How about nobody in this situation is virtuous.
Go vote for pedo blue and tell yourself how righteous and great you are compared to the other shitty option camps.
Before you bitch and moan at me for differing from groupthink: I will be voting for blue pedo this turn about but I’m not gonna be online in a fart smelling circle with a bunch of do nothing moralists about it.
Please get over yourselves, you vote for slavery that’s out of sight abroad and pedos who eat babies so you can play gta6, you aren’t righteous.
pedo blue
This reeks of desperation.
I will be voting for blue pedo this turn about
Lol. Immediately abandon your morals. You don’t have a problem calling them pedos but you’ll vote for pedos…this time.
Literally what I’m talking about. Look down on people while you vote for a corporate democrat.
Your comment is exactly what I would expect from someone who just loves the smell of their own shit.
How are people supposed to feel bad about suffering when it’s people who talk down to them like you who will suffer? Maybe I will just not vote with them. Let’s crash the bus.
All in all, a good win for you though. Simpsons memes are always a hoot. I wish I was as moral and just and smart as you.
The fact you assume we aren’t holding our noses while we vote is your problem. You take a morally superior attitude while doing exactly what we’re doing. Except we don’t go around trash talking the people we’re voting for a few weeks before the election, since that might MAKE THEM FUCKING LOSE
Your presumptuousness and hypocrisy are disgusting.
Weird, I thought I was responding to your friends doing it first. Crazy you decided it’s my fault.
Your group is the one that immediately goes to ostracizing others.
I didn’t presume shit. It’s all written out before my response to this shit show. If you’re offended, I wonder why?
Bullshit. Quote me then. Quote me where I say anything close to “I like these candidates. They are my preferred choice out of all proposed options past and present”.
You can’t. Because it’s factually inaccurate. You can’t find that shit for most of us. Because that’s not how we feel. We’re all holding our noses, just like you.
If you can prove otherwise, I encourage you to do so.
How does it feel to sniff your own farts while accusing everyone else of sniffing theirs? Does it make the high you get more intense?
No u!
Exactly, all you have is projection…
“The five non-voters are the true anarchists who see the violence inherent in the system. Actually the two who voted against driving off the cliff are wrong for even supporting a system in which voters can choose to drive the bus off the cliff. They’re actually worse than the three who voted to drive the bus off the cliff, because they tacitly approve of driving the bus off the cliff just by participating in the system which allows the bus to be driven off the cliff, while fooling themselves into feeling morally absolved of the decision to drive off the cliff! So the non-voters are the only virtuous ones in this situation”
(The /s should be clear, right?)
(The /s should be clear, right?)
… are you new to the Fediverse? I encounter such arguments uttered unironically virtually every time I browse here - especially in election season.
You’re… not wrong…
Might I should have included a second “…right?” after that statement
It’s a toughie. Some people think indications of sarcasm ruin the fun.
I’m of the opinion that one should always clearly indicate satire due to Poe’s Law.
I like to put it in italics and sometimes attribute it to the group I’m parodying, or if an individual, I add “probably.” Observe:
“This entire thread is woke garbage. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. I’ll drive this bus off that cliff better than anyone ever has. Better than Biden ever could. Biden tried to stop the bus and fill it with illegals. Putin promised me there’s rainbows at the bottom of that valley, and not the radical left rainbows either. The kind that leads you to beautiful, clean, black gold.”
- Donald Jeffreyepsteinsfavoritecustomer Trump, probably
Anakin stare intensifies
You’ve angered the .ml and .dbzer0 trolls.
Tankie tears are my favorite beverage.
Thank you for the clown emojis because I 100% thought you were seroius because of how many fools there are on Lemmy that believe that exact sentiment and they aren’t joking. Juvenile fools.
I almost added a /s too just to be safe
You can fairly reliably tell whether or not such a post/comment is made genuinely (albeit perhaps astroturfically) or sardonically by merit of the instance from which the commenter posts.
Oops, all of the people who had the institutional knowledge to build a new bus died in the bus accident.
You call it clowning, but this is literally the strategy that was used to defeat slavery. The “play within the system” planned was attempted for nearly a hundred years by the Abolitionists. They tried your way again and again. Slavery only ended when they abandoned your way and started a third party.
Except a third party is still voting? I only clown on third party voters when they:
a) split the vote of a single party instead of pulling from both parties and new voters (because it only helps the remaining party cement their dominance in the next election through gerrymandering etc)
b) have clown policies that appeal only to emotion, with no path to implementation (I’m looking at you, Jill Stein and Ross Perot)
Show me a legitimate third party candidate with good policy proposals and a plan to gain votes without guaranteeing the worst candidate wins and I’ll vote for 'em, campaign for 'em, and more.
Third party isn’t burning the bus down or letting it drive off the cliff. Third party (when done well) is a third bus driver choice. I’m all for that.
Many people will die but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
But not from the genocides?
in both the thought experiment and the US vote, the genocide happens no matter which way you vote, or if you don’t vote at all… there are no choices that have a real chance of reducing the genocide
the genocide happens no matter which way you vote
Im glad yall are finally being honest.
How does social collapse stop the genocides? Explain that part in detail, because I’m pretty sure any global socioeconomic collapse will accelerate existing genocides and probably add quite a few more. Like, do you numpties understand half the world dies in your best case scenarios, the first of which will absolutely be all the people being genocided currently?
It sounds stupid because it is…
But you do need to build a new bus. You should start talking about how to stop the bus, let out the passengers, then setting fire to it.
Meanwhile: .ML BAD
Pedal to the metal, accelerate!
Appropriate emojis considering the message. Hoping they’re in place of a /s
Absolutely in place of /s
Good to know!!
Removed by mod
One side started war with iran while other side didn’t
One side destroyed relationship with strongest allies for nothing while other side didn’t.
One side went to war with people on the streets with ICE and lowered recruitment requirements while other side didn’t.
One side gave us Pete Hegseth while otherside didn’t.
One side started tariff war for nothing while other side didn’t.
Both sides same though I guess?
The dumbest thing is how we still haven’t done anything close to what France and other countries are doing to actually make their voice heard. Won’t change my mind. Yes, you should go vote. You should also overthrow the government.
Nobody is saying you cannot demand better from your elected officials.
But if you sit at home you let fascists win.
It’s not a protest, it’s a surrender.
There are loads of people who think you can’t demand better from your elected officials. People were out protesting Mamdani for being a liberal zionist and I saw plenty of commenters saying how they must’ve been paid opposition because how could anyone be criticising Mamdani?
I imagine they were talking specifically about the “liberal Zionist” thing, since it’s such an absurdly stupid claim to make about him.
You can’t demand better when you give up the only leverage you have against them.
So you can demand better. But actually taking any concrete action to hold a party accountable when they ignore your demands is beyond the pale.
Gotta love the “logic” of ShitLibs.
You make the critical mistake in assuming that not voting for the Dems actually hurts them.
I’d say they’re also happy to be in perpetual “opposition”.
So really the only thing not voting is doing is saying that you want more dead children.
Fucking non-voters complaining why the democratic party doesn’t cater to their whims, never connecting that it’s because they don’t fuckin vote. But you don’t become a tankie through reason or logic.
I vote in every fucking election. I am a former paid Democratic campaign staffer. I also will not cosign on a genocide nor will I vote for any candidate offering less than full-throatednsupoort for trans rights.
I love being Schrodinger’s voter to ShitLibs like you though. Pick a lane: either my vote is worth enough that the DNC should have to earn it by stepping over a bar that’s on the fucking floor, or my vote isn’t needed and the DNC doesn’t have to cater to me. But if you’re telling me it’s my fault when the other capitalist shitweasels win, I’m gonna have to tell you it’s the fault.ofnthe party that doesn’t care enough about my vote to piss off their Wall St Paymasters to earn it.
You’re an accelerationist, a lying ass tankie. You get republicans elected, you’re responsible for everything they do. You have more blood on your hands because of your ignorant principles. You help them kill trans kids. Fuckin worthless single issue trashbag MAGAt ass mindset. You work for fascists. Like a cop but somehow more stupid and useless.
I don’t care if it hurts them or not. I’m not voting for a lesser evil or a greater one. I’ll vote my conscience, and if more of you did we’d live in a better world.
But actually taking any concrete action to hold a party accountable when they ignore your demands is beyond the pale.
Yeah that’s not what they said (nor implied) though, is it?
“We can demand better! We are still going to abdicate power to you regardless of if you listen but we can still technically make the demands!”
The Republican Party thanks you for your service.
But also remember to meet your neighbors, form communities, and join political groups before Election Day.
It’s important to vote, for sure, but if we aren’t part of the selection process that provides good candidates that’s when it feels useless. This is especially true for everyone that hates both parties.Yep voting is distasteful but necessary. People often forget the second half. Of running unworthy hacks out on a rail when they inevitably turn on you. Primaries are some of the most important though often neglected votes. Along with organizing and supporting actual good candidates from the community.
The real kicker is that the guy driving the bus is being paid to drive it off a cliff by the company that makes buses so that they can sell us a new bus even though no one will be left to buy it because the bus futures boost their stock price today.
Uh-oh. You promoted voting. Time for all the dbzer0 and .ml chodes to show up and tell you why you shouldn’t do that.
Which, of course, is all the more reason to vote. If you do the opposite of anything anyone from either of those instances say, you are almost assuredly doing the right thing.
If you sit on the fence as the fence burns down, you’ll end up in the dirt with everyone else.
As a non-American: please vote!!! Your country influences our lives too and we have had enough of that disgusting orange shit! Please vote Democrat
I know you guys won’t, because your job is to convince as many people as possible not to vote after all, but god do I yearn for the day when the Democrats start to appeal to non-voters by other means than “at least we’re not as bad as the other guy”. If you think that this is an effective strategy, you might just be able to wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory. Just keep letting marginalized folk know that they shouldn’t count on their lives improving, because you’re commited to doing just slightly better than the opposition. Don’t campaign on promises of anything materially better, only on being paid off by the same interests groups as the “other side”, except for the fact you’re going to keep doing those things they paid you for - but politely. And if you think that the existence of my argument against your strategy on the internet is going to ruin your chances for it working at all, and you’re going to blame those arguing against it for your loss while you’re blasting the same old points of “we rape and murder arguably less”, then BOY can I figure out the results it’s going to bring.
Anyone who was going to vote for the lesser evil is going to do that anyway. Anyone who’s on the fence will most likely decide to sit this one out (again). Claiming it’s someones moral obligation to vote for terrible (but slightly less) people is going to depress votes, exactly as it did with Harris. Change your strategy or lose.
Just fucking… talk about the affordibility crisis and your plans to end it. About universal healthcare. About how Israel is a bunch on genocidal bastards. Just anything other than this proven, time and again, losing strategy. You have a field full of targets and a loaded gun. Only way you can miss is if you point it at your head. Or go further right to win MAGA voters, I guess…
There are democrats talking about those things, you just aren’t listening.
Yup.
Selective hearing. It’s insane how often people complain about Dems not doing something when it’s literally part of their party’s policy platform and has been for a while.
Or how often I see someone complain about something the Dems aren’t doing when it’s something their party or their president literally passed or signed an EO for. People just don’t pay attention. And then you list out the bills or EO’s in question and they move the goalposts and cry harder to compensate for their inability to pay attention.
Do they need to do more? Duh. Do they actually get stuff done? Yeah, they actually do. And compared to the other party that only works in opposition to Americans, they technically get infinitely more done than their opponents.
It’s a combination really. Of Dems not being good at messaging and people just not fucking paying attention.
Messaging is hampered when the message is delivered by people who oppose you. The Dems don’t need help to shoot themselves in the foot, but they get it anyway.
I am, despite not being from USA I am following the midterm races from the imperial core because I know their results will affect my life, the way they did in previous elections. This post, and the vast majority of the propaganda spouted by Dems, is exactly that, though. There’s more criticism from the estabilishment Dems towards politicians that do make those points, like Mamdani or El-Sayed, than towards their opponents in the White House. And what does most of them do say about their plans in office? How do they campaign? Exactly the way you see here. And don’t get me wrong, I want bad politicians to lose and good ones to win. It’s good some do have reasonable strategy, they will do better than the dumbfucks who keep blasting that uncommited voters that don’t care about politics as much as they’ve been taught not to care, that just want to get through their hard day of work and worries - that those voters have to to make time to go and vote for slightly less known Epstein associate. It’s not even that I want those dogshit politicians to lose, though I can’t claim I see presidency of Newsom going better than Trump’s in terms of quality of living for people in USA, but probably noticably better for me in Europe. It’s just that they WILL LOSE AGAIN unless the messaging capabilities of the propagandists improve.
It’s too bad Harris didn’t during the ‘24 election, though
She did, you just weren’t listening.
She did but all we got was 24/7 coverage of “what do you have to say about israel Palestine” because apparently ukraine doesnt exist and neither do Americans or our healthcare or iran or any other issue in the world that she was infinitely better on.
I think I would have heard about it if she had talked about how Israel is a bunch of genocidal bastards.
Mostly because she would have won the '24 election. It really was down to single-issue “uncommitted” voters in a few states. The exact number of people who voted “uncommitted” in the primary would have turned the election and made Harris president. The DNC has access to all this info just like I do. I dunno why they would wanna lose over supporting Israel, but they did.
if you are presented with a bus driver that, every once in a while, presents you with the choice of either driving off a cliff now or reporting the decision to later, perhaps you should try everything in your power to take control of that bus so you don’t risk death every time
perhaps
Sure, do that. But also vote.
Too many don’t, they vote and consider it done with, but the voting is not the solution part of this. With how things are, particularly under FPTP voting systems, it is mostly holding off the worst of it until enough people feel disenfranchised enough to either not bother or vote for some far right conman or another…
Our only way out is by building systems of mutual support for ourselves and one another, but regrettably voting is much easier than that, so it rarely happens.
And yet so many people don’t vote. And even more people don’t vote in primaries.
Like, I genuinely believe that if everyone just voted on the primaries (incl. for local govt) we’d be fine. That’s where the problem really lies IMO. We get shit candidates because nobody shows up to vote for the good candidates in the primaries.
Voting will not save us, huge numbers of problems stem from fundamental imbalances in power, power which the political class require in order to impose their will (or that of whomever they serve further up the chain), even when their will is genuinely benign.
Voting just decides which people (with already powerful people/structures frequently playing an outsized role in exactly who you get to choose between) get into power, then this power both alters their brain and causes their lived experiences to diverge from those of the electorate.
Our solutions need to include a fundamental redistribution of power or we are just maintaining the conditions (a key component being the concentration of power centres, which has been dramatically accelerating for the past few decades regardless of how people have voted) that will lead us right back here. This redistribution is not going to come from people who, however pure their intentions, require power over others to fulfil these intentions.
I won’t discourage voting,* but we have to stop pretending that we just need the right rulers and everything will be fine, voting is not enough.
*Although I do understand people; particularly in FPTP safe seats; who choose not to play their part in the theatre of pretending that we are granting them some kind of justified authority over us- if not one single vote was placed, they would just choose how to distribute power amongst themselves after all, they wouldn’t leave the seats empty to reflect the outcome of the theatre, because that isn’t where their power actually comes from. This becomes clear when you consider ideas such as designated survivors, they collectively assume power over all of us and have a clear delineation of the rulers and the ruled.
If a primary motivation is fear of the ‘wrong’ people getting into power, that structure was not built to serve you.
That was a whole lot of words without actually providing a single recommended course of action. I continue to hear a lot of general have waving and dissatisfaction from people who say we need a new system, but fail to describe that system in any meaningful detail, or how we will transition to that system without significant bloodshed.
This country has changed a lot over the past 250 years and most of it happened through protest and voting at various levels of government.
You know what the crazy thing is? We have a means to overthrow Congress. We just don’t have the state and local leaders to do it. A second Continental Congress is what we need if we want a massive system overhaul. And for that you need state and local governments in sufficient numbers to act without the approval of the Federal Congress.
Voting fucking matters. The likes of MLK are a once in a century deal. Everything else happens through protest and voting at a variety of levels.
The problem is that people hear “go vote” and all they think about is federal level general elections.
We are going to have bloodshed no matter what, when state power feels threatened it will lash out violently, we don’t get to decide this.
There is already bloodshed, and there always was, states fundamentally rely upon violence to enforce their interests both domestically and internationally. The point is to finally stop this cycle.
Personally, I feel that our best hope lies in parallel power structures, so the best place to start with that would be in trying to organise members of your community to get together and sort x problem yourselves. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, it’s fine to start anywhere, it just seems to me that an important step is in people realising how much power they have when they work together.
Everything else happens through protest and voting at a variety of levels.
That is just simply not true, unless you use a very broad definition of protest which goes up to and including the Coal Wars, but given the general sentiment I expect you have calmly marching along and begging for your masters to consider you for once in mind.
Even if it was true, you still haven’t attempted to address the power problem that I discussed at length (that being the point of my comment, not the broad solutions that you appear to deem a requirement), I have fulfilled your arbitrary demand, now please answer what I actually said.
Edit: Also, to respond to a comment centred on voting not being a solution due to the fundamental structure this takes with “actually, you just need to vote more”, without even mentioning a single point I raised, is incredibly obnoxious.
No thanks. You’ve just admitted your position that you expect, and welcome, bloodshed as a necessary part of progress.
I have no interest in engaging with an anarchist who won’t even consider peaceful progress as an option to pursue.
Nor am I interested in further subsidizing the wealthy by digging even deeper into my paper thin emotional and financial reserves to support the welfare of my community any more than I already am through taxes, charity, and personal outreach to people in need. I am already completely tapped out. And any further subsidy is a tacit admission that the wealthy will never pay their share.
So yeah, hard pass on whatever arguments you want to make.
Have a great day/night!
EDIT: No disrespect, btw. You are welcome to your opinion. I just consider the discussion a waste of time because our fundamental goals are too dramatically different.
But by not voting I show how apathetic I am and that makes me super cool, and then I go online to brag to everyone about how super cool apathetic I am…wait…am I still apathetic if I go online to brag and fight about it?
No.
Go vote in October.
