this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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When someone says 'your money or your life,' the fact you don't like either option doesn't change your options.
Someone saying "your access to lifesaving medication or your life" is functionally the same thing as them saying "your life (slow) or your life (fast)"
'You're underselling this systemic dilemma by comparing it to being robbed at gunpoint.'
This fucking server.
As we all know, systemic forces can not be worse than being robbed at gunpoint.
You do understand that fucking holocaust survivors have called this anti-trans push genocidal, right? Democrats who are also pushing it are also pushing extermination.
Keep pounding the table about what a bastard Beshear is for doing this - that'll totally prove me wrong when I mention what a bastard Beshear is for doing this.
The immediate alternative was still worse. Unless, as we all know, an anti-trans push cannot be worse than denying medicine in prison.
This is right after the election.The immediate alternative is that democrats don't fucking cave on whether they should take part in genocide, when taking part in that genocide is actually incredibly unpopular with voters.
Do y'all not understand the difference between voters and the party, or do you conflate them deliberately? Because the topic until right this moment was the election.
The immediate alternative, for voters, in the election, was worse. The fact some bastard got in and is doing bastard things is not news, is still not a counterargument, and is not even on-topic to the concept of what voters do now.
Do you not understand that this topic includes democratic politicians straight up being collaborators, and how that might be relevant to the argument you're trying to make?
Now imagine a scenario where if that thief takes your money, you will die relatively soon anyways. Now you understand the third option!
'I would throw a pipe under the trolley,' says yet another person who does not understand metaphor. It's not a roleplaying game. It's an illustration. Changing the map won't change the territory.
There is no third option on any given November. One of two candidates is going to take office. You are effectively offered a binary choice between them. Wishing real hard and playing what-if does not change the 0.0% chances that several million people will suddenly agree with you, out of the clear blue sky.
Okay then your metaphor doesn't work at all, because it implies an individual choice, which voting is not. So maybe you've built your entire ideology on taking a thinking exercise as serious political thought.
Pretending your argument maps perfectly onto a reductive analogy (that you absolutely didn't understand) doesn't make it reality.
If this were the trolley problem, dems and conservatives would be the exact same track, just one option goes quickly and other slowly. Actually changing the track involves choosing to organize and do the work of undermining the capitalist system itself, not the brand of puppet you're gonna get. But liberals dislike this because it's not as easy as literally flipping a lever.
If you're still campaigning for corporate dems, you're insisting on keeping the lever where it is, but the lesser evil would make it run slowly so maybe it'll give others time to stop it, and that way it might not splash guts and blood on you, which is the important part after all.
Do you conceive of your entire political reality as waiting anxiously who to vote for in November? Do you not see any political action you can take outside of elections that are ultimately owned by the capitalist class?
Do you think that's what's implied, whenever someone tells you to stop letting outright fascists take power? 'Pancakes are good.' 'Why do you hate waffles?' Wrong.
If you have a plans for better elections - great! But when the election happens, and your plan didn't work, you have to work with what's real.
If you have plans totally unrelated to elections - great! They won't conflict with voting for less evil, no matter how evil you think "less evil" is. More evil is worse, actually.
Again with the reductionist analogies lmao. Can liberals not defend their positions without pretending it's a fundamentally different situation first?
Read Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt
Read Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by A Sohn-Rethel
Then tell me that it is possible to keep fascism out of power through voting.
So what are you doing right now to fight fascism? If the answer doesn't include being active in a socialist organization, the only people that historically have been effective at opposing fascism, then the answer is effectively "diddly-squat", and you should get your ass in gear.
That's not as easy as lecturing those who do the work for not doing what they wish they'd do instead