1511
To those in countries where democracy might last another election - harm reduction is not optional
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
1511 points (95.4% liked)
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Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don't know how to do politics on purpose so they don't lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There's a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don't even try to make good ice cream, they don't even try to get customers or do a good job. It's still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn't blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.
Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let's blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.
Let's put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn't straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming "I'm never voting against gay rights!" Cool, so when the other guy wins and it's way worse, at least you feel good.
I keep voting for ice cream and I get told "we can't get ice cream because we have to vote to not go off a cliff again"
Yeah, I think not going off a cliff is pretty important though.
Right, but eventually the cliff guys win and we go off the cliff anyway, and even if they never win we don’t ever get ice cream.
The solution seems we kick them out of the car.
But that's not how voting for a direction works. I think this analogy is just starting to fall apart after this much discussion, we've taken it too far haha.
Listen, I'm all for taking out the trash and not just taking small wins to survive, but I just don't see the path. I might be missing it, there's plenty I don't know, but survival at least would have let us survive a little longer.
I don’t see the path out of just surviving either.
Except maybe jumping out of the car.
Tuck and roll, brother
You get ice cream, just not as much as you want because some people refuse to vote.
I blame both. The Democratic Party and everybody who did not vote for them. My heart is big, there is enough room to hate everyone!
Do you think Republican politics have the slightest responsibilities or none at all? I think all this thread, and the analogy itself plays into polarization, which is not a good way to actually put the much needed bridges... Everyone can do a lot. There are plenty of tasks and battles. Voting is one, very relevant every X many years. Focus on the everyday too. And on every neighbor. All needs should be covered. Do your best. Allow yourself to rest. We can do this.
That's the spirit!
What's the relevance of this inane statement, again?
The Democrats aren't the ice cream party. They are the "drive off the cliff slowly party" and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn't want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only "harm reduction" in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The point of the term 'harm reduction' is that it is acknowledging that participation in bourgeois democracy is buying time rather than fundamentally reforming the system, I can't believe how many fucking times and in how many fucking ways I have to explain this to a community that is purportedly leftist.
So what do you do with that time? Hillary was buying time, Biden was buying time, Biden/Harris was buying time...
Instead what happened in these times was things to get worse, the "buying time" party bragging about its exploits in mass deportations, wall building and bombing abroad and ferociously fighting anyone that wanted to bring improvements. Even now we see the exact same thing with Mamdani. The DNC has "learned" absolutely nothing, because everything is going according to plan. Mamdani is threatening the plan. Tump is not.
When people decided to prevent ICE gestapo abducting people in their communities in California, Democratic mayors had the police crack down on them.
Your strategy is all messed up and it didn't lead you anywhere. With another four years of far right DNC politics as "harm reduction" you would have only fostered liberal complacency and ignorance and on top of it created the economic conditions for the next iteration of Fascism to hit back even harder. There is no fighting with the US political establishment. There is only fighting against it, if you ever want to see the US become a reasonably okay country.
It sounds like the problem is you don't have enough allies in the fight against either, and your strategy is to bank on getting more allies in a fight against fascists than you would against democrats.
Good luck with that, sincerely; but I think it sounds like a bit of a gamble. Fascists are quite good at terrorising moderates into compliance and killing or imprisoning their opponents.
Well said. I tried to make this point elsewhere in the thread and got showered with downvoted, so it's nice to see there's still some sanity left in the world.
Fucking fantastic that Thalmann is making a comeback.
The amazing thing is that there is no Thalmann. Our Hindenburg is so disliked that nobody has to split the vote for him to lose.
I laugh but I cry. But yes.
My point was more about the attitude of "Let fascism come, it will lead to Better Things(tm)" though.
Thalmann was the only electoral chance at stopping Hitler. We know this, because the alternative got us Hitler.
If only Thalmann had some other choice than being a Stalinist bootlicker who dissolved the successful united front with the SDP, unfortunately, he HAD to make sure that the right-wing was empowered against the dreaded SOCIAL FASCISTS until it was too late to stop Hitler. Luckily, unlike his issues with the SPD, he was perfectly willing to cooperate with the literal Nazis when it suited him. Poor man, really just left with no choice but to enable the literal Nazis. No wonder so many red-painted pro-genocide ghouls in the modern day look up to him.
Not really sure why a Holodomor denier is still allowed on here.
This guy gets it, if the opposition party cares more about maintaining their legal bribes than punishing those doing the bribing and accepting the bribes then they bear an equal responsibility to the destination that those in the car are driven to.