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Misunderstood posted:Yes. That's the sad reality of living in America in 2024, and literally nothing any of us do can change it. There is no reason to wallow in it when we can focus on doing whatever we can to improve that, or any other situation, which, for people with no official power, means convincing people that what's happening is bullshit and should be stopped. The fact that US public sentiment, particularly on the left and among liberals, has started to tilt against Israel's atrocities is starting to seep into the discourse of the highest levels of media that directly influence the actions of politicians, and are influenced themselves by the opinions and desires of those same politicians. Here are some New York Times opinion columns and op-eds from the last two days: quote:‘We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit’ - Israel has every right to defend itself and fight terrorists. But is this really the best way? edit: IOW, I think Joe Biden thinks it is the right thing morally for the war to end as quickly as possible, and I think he is the thinks it is the best thing for him politically for the war to end quickly, and I think he is doing everything he can to make it end quickly. It's just that, because of hundreds of decisions that have been made since 1948, we have put ourselves in a position where this sorry display may actually be the best effort we can practically make at doing so, at least without directly empowering fascists in our country, who would then be in control of the same gigantic military. They would let Israel do whatever they wanted and then go do their own damage elsewhere. Misunderstood fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 20:18
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Misunderstood posted:This is a terribly toxic attitude and not at all the correct way to think about global injustice, or a way of thinking about it that is going to make it improve. If you are willing to be more understanding of people who make complex choices, to have whatever influence they can on the effed situation they find around themselves, you will also be able to extend that kindness to yourself, and your life will be better for it. There are plenty of things I can do to better the world without immiserating myself. There are further things I can do by immiserating myself, such as living in my car and sending the money I am then not spending on rent to various charities. I do not do these things. I do not care that I do not do these things. I will support for things that I will support, when I support them, and because where and when I do this is effectively random due to not having a say as to where my existence began I have no delusions that anything I do is moral.
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Oct 29, 2023 20:26
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Tnega posted:I will support for things that I will support, when I support them, and because where and when I do this is effectively random due to not having a say as to where my existence began I have no delusions that anything I do is moral.
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Oct 29, 2023 20:37
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Misunderstood posted:I don't think you support genocides, and I think it's weird that you think people who vote for abortion rights and wealth redistribution do, especially when voting against those people would have no effect on whether or not there's a genocide. I don’t believe I’ve said that I think that people who vote for abortion rights and wealth redistribution also support genocide. All I can do is explain my reasoning for who I vote for or not. One thing I am curious about is how one would go presenting the same arguments to those directly affected by the actions of Israel. I posted an article earlier about how Arab Americans are angry with Biden. A lot of people who work for the administration know people in Gaza and a lot of them have been pressured by families and friends to leave because of the actions of Biden and how he dismissed the number of deceased from Gaza’s Ministry of Health. There are Arab Americans who are threatening to note vote for Biden. What would you say to convince them that they should?
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Oct 29, 2023 20:55
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My opinion as someone who doesn't live in the US but nonetheless feels the full impact of US foreign policy whenever it swerves on and off the wagon is that americans voting for team blue has significantly better outcomes for most of the world. Like sure the US still finds ways to muck about even with sane leadership because that's what big countries do, that's always the case, but at least there isn't this element of utter insanity. I could easily have seen Trump trying to support a coup in Brazil for example, while Biden largely seemed to have recognized the results and completely deflated the outgoing Presidents hopes of getting US support? I think the sad fact is politics is complicated, and there's no way to not have bloodied hands somewhere. Someone supporting revolution in Russia in the 1920s couldn't have predicted all the things Lenin and Stalin would ultimately do, or the nations they would support who were equally bloody; even if you think in terms of left wing movements, revolution and organizing and "replacing structures", politics are going to keep doing politics stuff, its unavoidable. Arguing in terms of wanting to avoid supporting something that might be bad on principle, instead of the utilitarian approach of looking at reducing harm and maximizing benefits, is definitely barking up the wrong tree as this would mean not supporting left wing movements under the same principles, because even left wing movements, and in fact every remotely successful left wing movement, have all had to make difficult and morally compromising choices. There's no one you can support, whether it is a political party, a movement, or any politician who doesn't have to at some point make this kinds of hard and difficult and morally compromising decisions. It didn't use to be the case that the US were this automatically supportive of Israel, the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords were by US administrations actively supporting and trying to get Israel to agree to a two state solution. And even under Obama you saw reluctance, probably complicated because Bibi didn't like him and played politics in ways that likely equally annoyed Obama in the same sort of way Biden being Irish annoys the UK and complicates the "special relationship". The problem is that the US political scene has become so increasingly polarized that even minor wedge issues could affect electoral outcomes, the Democrats can't afford to utterly alienate AIPAC with even minor policy disagreements, if the GOP rapidly lost influence and lost over 100 seats and over a dozen senate seats, I don't think Israel would be as critically necessasary for the US to show such deference towards. Politics sucks because doing the right thing is just so rarely something that actually helps you win elections. It's also a lot less convincing given everything Biden has managed to pass, all of the good things his administration has just objectively managed to do, to argue as if its still 2018 that they won't do anything to help people when it seems like they've done a lot? Despite some of the disappointing compromises with BBB or the IRA, its insane how much better with domestic politics Biden has been over Obama, with how much more pro-labour he's been, if he manages to get the House back and a larger senate lead this November there's no telling what he might accomplish at their current trajectory, especially if Sinema is replaced with a vastly better Dem. It sucks whats happening to Gaza, but it's not going to be any better under Trump, and at the very least if Dems can keep holding national office and making gains and try to out wait the Republicans, if they collapse then maybe that opens up the opportunity for something better, not just domestically but internationally. It's also a little strange to me, like there's a lot of genocides happening around the world, some more directly impacted by whose in the whitehouse than others. Should we not also care about what's happening in Ukraine? Supporting Biden means Ukraine is more likely to avoid Russia genociding them. Then there's the Uyghurs or Tibetans in China who Dems more recently tend to be more consistently and competently "tough" on China; or what about the Kurds? Trump tried to leave them to die to Turkey which a Democrat wouldn't have removed the tripwire force protecting them. Then of course when it comes to foreign policy Obama did try to normalize relations with Iran and Cuba which had it continues would have saved tens of thousands of lives if not hundreds of thousands (imagine if Trump's actions escalated into a war with Iran back then); Biden has not been as good as Obama on this specific matter but its hard to know how much that is just Menendez's fault. Foreign and domestic policies in a nation like the US is constantly an ever shifting confluence of competing interests and making any choice is inevitably going to be lovely; even if the US as an "Empire" ended, the choices would still be lovely for someone somewhere. Voting is important, especially in local level politics often dominated by affluence retirees with too much free time; participate, organize, and vote to do even small amount of harm reduction. It really isn't a great moral stand to not participate.
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Oct 29, 2023 21:04
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Misunderstood posted:OK, well if you want to argue that being a "monster" is part of the human condition, I'm not going to fight you on that one. We are an extremely bizarre and terrifying animal and it seems like a good word. You monster! Exactly! Humans are doomed to gather information, store information, and retrieve it! Some people hide behind the phase "I didn't know!" and think that resolves them of blame, but as I said before: If not knowing resolves you of blame, then intentionally not analyzing the world becomes moral in and of itself. (I will take being a monster over a beast any day.)
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Oct 29, 2023 21:18
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I think this conversation really just highlights how fundamentally broken our national political system is. I totally get why someone doesn't want to vote for Biden over this (and I won't be voting for him either unless he calls for a ceasefire). But it's not actually going to change anything will it? Biden won't suffer any meaningful consequences for this. At worst he won't get reelected. And I don't even think that will happen, because he's probably made the mathematically correct decision that any votes he loses from pro-Palestinian voters won't outweigh the votes he would lose from pro-Israel voters (or more likely the money he would lose by pissing off AIPAC). It would be nice if there was a "genocide Palestinians y/n" referendum that we could organize and vote against, but that's just not how it works. Instead we vote for a king and then he's basically free to do whatever he wants for the next four years. Theoretically the other branches are supposed to keep him in check, but they're also fundamentally broken in different ways. Impeachment is a completely toothless mechanism with the way that party lines are drawn. And the two party system effectively turns into a good cop/bad cop relationship, with minorities bearing the brunt of the bad cop's wrath. And it's understandable that you'd want the good cop, but you still end up losing either way. So yeah the system is broken and it's not going to fix itself. It's going to steadily get worse until things fall apart. This isn't doomerism or nothing matters, but an assessment of how our political system on the national level is deliberately constructed to be as unresponsive to the will of the people as possible. My point isn't that nothing matters, but specifically that voting or not voting for president doesn't really matter. Do it or don't depending on your conscience, but don't be under the impression that you're having any kind of meaningful impact. We're all complicit in this to some degree. If you want to have an actual impact, there are several things you can do: -Join a protest, of which there are many across the US and the world. It's possible that you will be arrested at one of these so be ready for that. -Call your senator and representative and demand a call for ceasefire. They are unfortunately also going to have the same incentives as the president to not do so, but being closer to the ground at least makes them more responsive in theory. -Donate to a Palestinian aid charity. There's a stickied thread in CSPAM with links to several reputable organizations. Everything loving sucks but I don't think any good can come out of yelling at each other over what is ultimately a private moral decision with extremely marginal effects.
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Oct 29, 2023 21:27
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What does the system being "broken" mean though? To me, the system is "broken" because it is highly polarized, and the minority party is able to very successfully obstruct what the majority wants, such that the majority needs either a super majority of its caucus 100% unified. There's also a lot of money in politics, its skewed towards the wealthy. Land has more voting power than people, although in theory if population trends continue the Presidency will be locked in to whomever can reliably win the largest most populace states; which is maybe another way of being broken; and of course the Senate and the way even some liberals balk at say, DC statehood and doing hardball politics to "win". The media and the way it can sometimes serve to "manufacture consent" is also problematic, but not on its own. But mainly the way it sets the idea that it is "normal" for Dems to be expected to "fix things" the Republicans do and treat Republican being dysfunctional as a given that isn't ever questioned. And of course FPTP voting which increases the dangers of spoilers and reinforces the need to strategically vote, and punishes people who live in stronghold non-swing states. Gerrymandering which further dillutes the peoples right to vote and right to be represented (Single Transferable Vote would fix this of course, expanding the House would also help). The debt ceiling is also a little bit broken, most functional governments don't have this, especially since it exists for political football. And of course one party is openly fascistic and genocidal without the people outright rejecting them; due to a combination of the above. But to a large extent the problem does lie with a majority of the populace, simply decided that it is willing to tolerate some combination of the above to some tolerable degree, and not vote in a government whose mandate is to fix those problems. I don't think the problem that indicates that government is broken is because Biden won't be punished by the electorate that frankly doesn't see him doing anything wrong. The problem is the combination of factors that led to this, and not voting isn't going to fix it. I'm not really convinced given the past nearly 4 years that it is inevitable that things just get worse; it seems to me whether its climate change, or improvements to social services, and the judiciary, there's a lot that can be done to improve things. It's unfortunate that foreign policy except in some aspects are only likely to improve last.
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Oct 29, 2023 21:53
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Fister Roboto posted:And I don't even think that will happen, because he's probably made the mathematically correct decision that any votes he loses from pro-Palestinian voters won't outweigh the votes he would lose from pro-Israel voters (or more likely the money he would lose by pissing off AIPAC) This is kind of a tangent, but because I've been trying to demonstrate the power of voter sentiment, I just wanted point out that this overly cynical. The votes matter more than the AIPAC money, by a lot. AIPAC donates about $13,000,000 a year to political candidates. These contributions are not terribly tilted towards party or the other. That means if the Democrats told AIPAC to go pound sand, they'd lose $7,000,000. The total spending in the 2020 election was 14.4 billion (almost $50 per American.) The loss of AIPAC funds would be 0.01% of that amount. (And of course they wouldn't lose all funding, there are extremely pro-Zionist Democrats who would continue to receive funding no matter what the President did.) Meanwhile, we're talking about an issue that people are so passionate about that it has completely dominated the news for three weeks and generated more strong public opinion than any foreign policy event since arguably the beginning of the war in Iraq. The political calculations the administration makes are based on how voters feel, not campaign contributions, and it's not even close. While I do not think Ilhan Omar was being anti-Semitic when she said it was all about the Benjamins, I don't think she was right. (And I think she was mostly just making a pun about the PM's name while also calling attention to fundraising ethics issues, not literally saying US support for Israel was 100% bought.) Fister Roboto posted:This isn't doomerism or nothing matters Fister Roboto posted:Everything loving sucks but I don't think any good can come out of yelling at each other over
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Oct 29, 2023 21:56
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Political support for Israel is the new 'third rail' of US politics. It used to be Medicare/Social Security, but Republicans have spent the last 10 years slowly moving towards just openly talking about getting rid of those. Look at who has actually come out strongly against Israel's actions in US politics. It's pretty much just a Palestinian woman and a Somali Muslim woman. Both of whom have obvious personal stakes in what Israel is doing. Meanwhile nobody else wants to slightly criticize Israel, even the most 'left-wing' of the Democrats. Even calling for a ceasefire is being labeled as being opposed to Israel. You can say 'oh, AIPAC just gives a few million dollars, it's nothing special', but we can see that they have WAY more influence compared to what they spend. It also doesn't hurt that there is no Palestinian lobbying group.
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Oct 29, 2023 22:05
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Misunderstood posted:If "I am 100% sure that the system is going to fail completely and nothing can be done that will change that" isn't "doomerism" then "doomerism" has no coherent meaning. You are literally saying the country has a fate that cannot be changed. That's what doom is! That's only if you think that we're doomed if the American political system falls apart. No it won't be great obviously, but it won't be the end of the world either. We're not going to wake up one morning and find ourselves in Mad Max world. But I think that things are steadily going to get worse, given the problems that we face and the government's structural inability or unwillingness to adequately deal with them. Maybe my choice of words was too dramatic, so sorry for that. And I think that that fate can be changed, just not through voting. Fister Roboto fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 22:08
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It’s wrong to conflate one’s personal morality with the morality of the group, because the group is always less moral than individuals the solution is to use class analysis to understand the dynamics within the group between classes to try to make the group more moral. But here’s the thing all, the groups the “I’m not going to vote” crowd participates in, those groups are immoral too and the moral superiority they assert is an illusion. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 23:06
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Raenir Salazar posted:What does the system being "broken" mean though? Yeah I think that pretty much sums up what I think. I would add that another key aspect is that, by design, our government is a representative democracy. So on the national level we can't vote for specific issues, instead we elect representatives that we hope will do their best to implement laws to deal with those issues. But the big problem is that they can just not do that. In theory they don't have to do a drat thing that their voters elected them to do. The two party system means that the other guy is always going to be worse, so what are you going to do, let the other guy win? In theory they can be primaried, but the longer they stay in power the easier it is for them to defeat any challengers. quote:I don't think the problem that indicates that government is broken is because Biden won't be punished by the electorate that frankly doesn't see him doing anything wrong. The problem is the combination of factors that led to this, and not voting isn't going to fix it. I'm not really convinced given the past nearly 4 years that it is inevitable that things just get worse; it seems to me whether its climate change, or improvements to social services, and the judiciary, there's a lot that can be done to improve things. It's unfortunate that foreign policy except in some aspects are only likely to improve last. Biden being unaccountable for enabling genocide is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself, so yes I agree on that. But I also don't think that voting will fix it either. And again, my point isn't that things are inevitably going to get worse, but that voting is not the way to fix them, at least not on the timescale that they need to be fixed. It's time to look outside of electoralism, and by that I mean a massive, organized, sustained, and disruptive protest movement.
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Oct 29, 2023 23:47
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If you have the numbers for that kind of protest, you have the numbers for electoralism to work faster.
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Oct 29, 2023 23:57
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7c Nickel posted:If you have the numbers for that kind of protest, you have the numbers for electoralism to work faster. And it would be important to both protest and vote with that type of movement
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Oct 29, 2023 23:58
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7c Nickel posted:If you have the numbers for that kind of protest, you have the numbers for electoralism to work faster. That is absolutely not true considering the problems that I already pointed out: voting on the national level is infrequent (every other year at best); you can't vote on specific issues on the national level; and the representatives that you do elect aren't necessarily bound to do the things that they promised to do. Furthermore, a large and disruptive enough movement doesn't have to be a majority or even a plurality of the people, while voting does. I mean, just look at the Civil Rights movement. Did they get what they wanted by just voting the right people into office? Hell no, they got out and marched.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:05
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Fister Roboto posted:That's only if you think that we're doomed if the American political system falls apart. I guess I was pulling a  and using "doom" to mean "an inescapable destiny." But that's semantics. Sorry for the brief silly derail. Anyway... I think there is still a gigantic variability in outcomes in the extremely near-term future, and also no reason that the low point of the medium- or long-term future has to be at any particular level. The world could be slowly healing or a smoking crater in 2025 based on the vagaries of the oil market in October 2024. That's scary as hell, but it's how it is. I just don't think there's any particular reason that the range of future outcomes doesn't include "the system limps along, indefinitely," or "the situation improves at a frustratingly slow pace." Today's administrative centers of global power came all the way back from two world-rending global wars in a 30 year span, and things have not gotten anywhere near as bad as they did that era, to say the least, or even the late 1960s. I'm sure there were plenty of people in any of those eras, perhaps even a majority of educated people, who would've strongly doubted you if you would've told them that the world map was basically unchanged in the year 2023 (outside of the USSR losing 20% of its territory), or that we'd still be tracking the "Dow Jones", or that global population and GDP would still be increasing apace, in the wake of a pandemic no less, or that the same three corporations (bloated with decades of acquisitions) would still control American mass media. In the early 1950s half of scholars believed civilization would have been totally extinguished by now. The world order has proven much, much more stable than people have tended to expect. In any case, I think as long as the step between "better world" and "collapse of existing global order" remains "????" then preferring the existing global order not collapse, or that it slowly break apart rather than implode spectacularly, doesn't really require some ideological fealty to the status quo. Fister Roboto posted:That is absolutely not true considering the problems that I already pointed out: voting on the national level is infrequent (every other year at best); you can't vote on specific issues on the national level; and the representatives that you do elect aren't necessarily bound to do the things that they promised to do. Voting does not change things on its own and it's weird how many times people have to keep saying that when nobody has said that it does. But what would have happened if everybody let conservatives win all the elections in the 1960s, and put fierce opponents of LBJ's policies in office? Would the protests have worked even better, or would those protests have been brutally put down? In the political system that is currently dominant in most of the world, voting is not sufficient, but it hard to imagine how it is not a prerequisite for major change.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:37
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Climate change has already begun to have an effect on the global status quo, and it's just going to increase as the climate becomes more unstable.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:42
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I suppose I could imagine a political force in the US making an impact without an electoral process but it's the one whose followers average like six guns a head, not us.FlamingLiberal posted:Climate change has already begun to have an effect on the global status quo, and it's just going to increase as the climate becomes more unstable. Misunderstood fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 00:42
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Fister Roboto posted:I mean, just look at the Civil Rights movement. Did they get what they wanted by just voting the right people into office? Hell no, they got out and marched. The civil rights movement was rooted in a rigorous class analysis and the knowledge that groups are less moral then individuals.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:48
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At some point very soon it's not going to be possible to live in the ME in the summer. That's going to cause a lot more climate refugees to try and go to Europe. We've already seen how refugees from things like the Iraq war and later the Syrian Civil War have messed with politics there. Now imagine that but on a vastly larger scale.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:49
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Fister Roboto posted:That is absolutely not true considering the problems that I already pointed out: voting on the national level is infrequent (every other year at best); you can't vote on specific issues on the national level; and the representatives that you do elect aren't necessarily bound to do the things that they promised to do. Furthermore, a large and disruptive enough movement doesn't have to be a majority or even a plurality of the people, while voting does. The Civil Rights movement is a great example since, like the suffrage movement before it included the very specific problem of "secure voting rights for people who have been denied the vote" and along with all of its protest movements it still relied on relentless electoralism, pushing parties into supporting it and getting friendly politicians in office even when that had to be done through convincing mainstream liberals that didn't have a personal stake in it due to those that did literally not having a voice. It's fair to say that voting isn't sufficient for achieving such social change, even if that's unexciting in this thread because I haven't really seen anyone say otherwise and it wouldn't lead to much debate. But oh boy is that a historical example of voting being necessary for social change.
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Oct 30, 2023 01:19
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Misunderstood posted:Representatives aren't "bound" to constituent sentiment and there is actually a pretty robust track record of politicians getting walloped in elections if they piss off the electorate, so I can't really understand acting like there's no accountability for misrepresenting yourself. (I also think a lot of people consider trying to do something and failing to be equivalent to not actually intending to do it, which I think is not sensible for a lot of reasons, but whatever. There are also a lot of districts where you don't want Representatives to be bound to constituent sentiment... 😬) OK but in the context of the ongoing conversation, we're acknowledging that if the Democrats lose then the Republicans win, right? And in the specific case we're talking about Joe Biden and how there can't be any accountability for his actions because that would mean Trump or whichever other psychopath would win. I'm not saying people are wrong to think that, but that's the conundrum we're dealing with and it very clearly shields the president from accountability to the voters. quote:Voting does not change things on its own and it's weird how many times people have to keep saying that when nobody has said that it does. But what would have happened if everybody let conservatives win all the elections in the 1960s, and put fierce opponents of LBJ's policies in office? Would the protests have worked even better, or would those protests have been brutally put down? In the political system that is currently dominant in most of the world, voting is not sufficient, but it hard to imagine how it is not a prerequisite for major change. The post I was responding to at least seemed to imply that mass protest isn't necessary because electoralism will get the same results faster given the same number of people. Maybe that's not an accurate interpretation, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's at least one person saying that voting can change things on its own. I see your point about voting being necessary for change but I don't think I agree. It's kind of hard to peer into the alternate timeline where Nixon was president in 1964 (or perhaps if Kennedy hadn't been killed). It's also pretty hard to compare events from over 60 years ago to today. I imagine things would have gone a little differently if we had Fox news and twitter in the 60s.
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Oct 30, 2023 01:25
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FlamingLiberal posted:Israel gets its bombs from us. I don't know if Biden can threaten to stop supplying weapons to Israel without the consent of Congress, but if he can, that's what he should do. I know it's never happening though. Israel doesn't just get its bombs from the US. Its domestic defense industry is quite large, and Israel actually exports more military equipment than it imports, even when you include the ones the US government is subsidizing. It's one of the top 10 exporters of military equipment in the world, in fact; a lot of big arms dealers are based there, and many of their weapons systems are domestically designed and domestically built. It also gets weaponry and military support from other countries as well (particularly Germany), but even if they were completely cut off from all foreign arms, they'd still be able to keep their war machine running for quite a while. It'd just cost more. The US should still stop supporting Israeli aggression and occupation, for moral reasons, but Israel would still be able to invade Gaza even without US military support.
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Oct 30, 2023 02:16
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I feel like there's a big "chicken-or-egg" issue in the way people talk about voting where people say things like "X candidate hasn't earned my vote". Voting is not like purchasing a service, where you can just save up your money and choose to spend it later - your vote goes from being worth 1 to worth 0 when you fail to cast it. If you haven't voted for 10 years your opinion becomes valueless to politicians, because you are not a "likely voter", they don't include you in their analysis of what gets them to 51%, and you have set your money on fire for no return. It's even one step more out there when people say it about an entire party. Casting your vote for a Democrat or registering as a Democrat to vote in the primary is not like signing a contract for a phone plan, you aren't signing on to the entire agenda and committing yourself to their policies. It's more like paying union dues so you can make decisions about what contract you all will collectively sign - that's basically how primaries are supposed to work. Yeah, it really sucks when the union agrees to a contract that doesn't include parental leave or enough sick days or wage increases tied to inflation. However, quitting the union isn't going to give you any more control over your working conditions - it just makes you fragmented and powerless. You will never improve the union from outside of the union, so when you say the union doesn't represent you - no poo poo! It's not even that voting is some kind of moral imperative or whatever, but withholding your vote just makes politicians ignore you since no one can tell on a statistical level if you are principled, unmotivated, uninformed, or lazy. If you want the data nerds to treat you as a voting bloc, you need to vote constantly so they have enough data points to track you, and then you might be able to rise to the level of importance of the New York Yeshiva or African-American South Carolina voter. Being a bloc that is identifiable and RELIABLE is really important if you want politicians to say things and make policies that appeal to you, because they need to know that if they say "universal health care" you will DEFINITELY vote, and in enough numbers to negate the people who have staked out the opposite position. If, instead, your vote is contingent on 3 or 4 different issues at the same time, the politicians will weight you at 1/3 or 1/4 the weight of the people with straightforward conditions, because they have to piss off 3x or 4x the number of people to get you to show up. If your conditions have never been met, then they won't even try, because they have no data to tell them what to do. Edit: Obviously we all prefer politicians that believe in our causes because they came to that decision on their own for reasons intrinsic to them, but even the best politicians probably don't feel strongly about every issue, and they are going to try to maximize votes/match their constituency on anything they don't feel strongly about. Additionally, since there are only a handful of candidates out of a potentially huge pool of eligible people, people are going to make decisions about entering and staying in races based on whether they think they have a shot - there's a lot more than just voting that goes into that, but having a plausible path to victory is a big part of that, and when a bloc has anemic turnout on a consistent basis that path narrows On a semi-related note, someone on a previous page was pointing out that AIPAC didn't donate that much in a recent cycle - that's a total red herring. The power of AIPAC and any similar org isn't the money THEY donate, it's the money they DIRECT through their signaling. I have no idea who the specific power players are in that regard, but there is no way in hell that pissing off AIPAC wouldn't lead to knock-on effects from individual donors and PACs ditching the same people - Emily's List is another well-known org in a similar vein, and they donated around $5m in total for 2022. The block is more than just the org that you most strongly associated with it BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 03:37
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One reason people check out of electoral politics is that no politicians represent their positions. A related reason is that some people become frustrated and alienated by seeing politicians promise to deliver things they want without making any moves to deliver those things. It’s not a tactical decision.
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Oct 30, 2023 04:53
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BougieBitch posted:I feel like there's a big "chicken-or-egg" issue in the way people talk about voting where people say things like "X candidate hasn't earned my vote". Voting is not like purchasing a service, where you can just save up your money and choose to spend it later - your vote goes from being worth 1 to worth 0 when you fail to cast it. If you haven't voted for 10 years your opinion becomes valueless to politicians, because you are not a "likely voter", they don't include you in their analysis of what gets them to 51%, and you have set your money on fire for no return. And once again, if you always vote for one side, and never withhold your vote, that sends the message that your vote is "free", and your issues/positions can also be ignored.
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Oct 30, 2023 05:00
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Tnega posted:And once again, if you always vote for one side, and never withhold your vote, that sends the message that your vote is "free", and your issues/positions can also be ignored. No, because this elides why someone would always vote for one side over another. You are detaching the reasoning behind such a vote from its context. No one else is.
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Oct 30, 2023 05:39
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Trump already was president and none of this doomerism happened while he was in charge. We made it through a pandemic with him pushing vaccines on the public. It’s funny how much genocide y’all are willing to tolerate because of the boogey man. We have a geriatric president who is the sole reason why student loans are a thing and a VP who made a career out of putting people behind bars for pot in California, but at least it wasn’t the guy who didn’t do anything really out of line during his four years, arguably less destructive compared the the neocons that have preceded him this century. Voting for anyone other than a single issue candidate whose focus is voting reform is supporting genocide. Has been this way for two decades now. Anyone who says their ‘vote doesn’t matter’ is playing very poor cognitive games to avoid this reality. With that kind of attitude your vote won’t matter. Once a spoiler has a possibility, people will jump onboard in a hurry. That’s how humans work. Just can’t let the spoiler be anything other than voting reform though. Because the way voting works (FPTP) is fundamentally flawed. Until that changes, regulatory capture and aristocratic capture can’t be resolved peacefully. Any voting reform from liberals the last handful of years has been co-opted by Democrats as attempts to undermine the electoral college. A sad state of affairs, that has no chance of success nor solves any of the real flaws with the system. Just like any attempts by republicans was given the microphone handed to the biggest idiot treatment to spook away rationale voters from any tea party insurgency. And the media played that wonderfully. Up until Trump took advantage of the system by playing the idiot unapologetically. And now the Republican Party is a fractioned mess. This is success. They just have to accidentally fix some of the underlying causes and then the real candidates of the people can have a chance again. The court system, etc. will make sure the other doomerism won’t actually happen. Funny again how anyone tries to justify a blue vote as any sort of voter reform - it’s only the freedom caucus who has used any political capital whatsoever to get term limits put in. Democrats haven’t touched voter reform in decades beyond feigned ways they can get dead people to vote or letting them ignore flyover country. Pelosi and Schumer never allowed it. As soon as a party gets a majority all of their good ideas suddenly die in committee. They are the problem and voting blue no matter who never allowed for it to be fixed. Same thing with the liberal judges- Ginsburg ruined any chance of maintaining the hold they had on the courts because she refused to give up power. Absolutely a prime example of democratic leadership the last couple of decades - all a bunch of frauds. Have a Zionist president championing an active genocide and y’all are going to vote for it anyway. That cognitive dissonance must HURT
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Oct 30, 2023 05:53
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:at least it wasn’t the guy who didn’t do anything really out of line during his four years, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack
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Oct 30, 2023 06:31
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:Trump already was president and none of this doomerism happened while he was in charge. We made it through a pandemic with him pushing vaccines on the public. It’s funny how much genocide y’all are willing to tolerate because of the boogey man. We have a geriatric president who is the sole reason why student loans are a thing and a VP who made a career out of putting people behind bars for pot in California, but at least it wasn’t the guy who didn’t do anything really out of line during his four years, arguably less destructive compared the the neocons that have preceded him this century. What the gently caress universe do you live in? Because Trump managed to do significant damage in his 4 years in office culminating with inciting a literal attack on congress in an attempt to overturn an election and stay in power. I'm not sure some you actually grasp just how close we are to the electoralism debate becoming as theoretical as national ranked choice elections. It's not conspiracy theory they've got plans in public https://www.project2025.org/ The Right has been working towards this for the better part of century and they're making their move now while still can. Oh and on this Trump wasn't able accomplish anything, have you paid any attention to what the Supreme Court got up to recently? I'm sure every woman in any of the red states that lost access to reproductive rights might take loving exception to that suggestion. Seriously what loving universe are you living in?
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Oct 30, 2023 06:34
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mannerup fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Nov 5, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 06:50
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:We made it through a pandemic with him pushing vaccines on the public. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ite-house-video
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Oct 30, 2023 06:51
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:We made it through a pandemic with him pushing vaccines on the public. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/trump-says-he-still-thinks-hydroxychloroquine-works-in-treating-early-stage-coronavirus.html https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-oleandrin-covid-treatment-toxic-plant/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/09/23/americans-who-relied-most-on-trump-for-covid-19-news-among-least-likely-to-be-vaccinated/
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Oct 30, 2023 07:36
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Tnega posted:And once again, if you always vote for one side, and never withhold your vote, that sends the message that your vote is "free", and your issues/positions can also be ignored. At the point where you are looking at a general election in a competitive state, your only remaining real options are: - Hold your nose and vote Democratic because it is the least bad option - Don't vote and leave it up to random chance, but in practice favor Republicans because there are very few corresponding people on the far right who won't vote for a Republican because they're not crazy enough - I guess voting Republican is technically an option. Don't do that. That's just a fundamental fact of a two party system. The time to try to shift policy positions is local elections and primaries. Mainstream Democratic candidates will absolutely start triangulating left if they are hemorrhaging primary votes leftward, and local elections both matter locally, and shift candidates in future elections. Good national candidates don't appear from nowhere with no lower experience
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Oct 30, 2023 08:05
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Misunderstood posted:We would be popular and beloved for the 18 months until the next election, when our extremely morally flawed populace brutally punished the administration responsible for spending money on Americans' most hated expenditure, foreign aid. People hate foreign aid when it's less than 1% of the budget; imagine if we were spending a quarter of our defense budget on it - a psychotic strongman promising to use that military capacity for conquest would be elected almost immediately. It's sad, and I loving hate it, but that really is how it is, and my not voting would have absolutely no effect towards changing it. Which is why it goes back to changing minds - activism, yes, but also the creation of art, and interactions and thought exchange between individual people. Oh I am well aware, everything you say here is true; when I was referring to America though, it was less as if there was a sudden massive change in political leaders's thinking and more if the populace itself made the decision to take the country in a different direction entirely.
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Oct 30, 2023 10:00
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Skex posted:What the gently caress universe do you live in? Because Trump managed to do significant damage in his 4 years in office culminating with inciting a literal attack on congress in an attempt to overturn an election and stay in power. From my accelerationist viewpoint, we got close to finally undressing the illusion that we have a functional government that isn’t just a facade for an oligarchy. Roe is something the Democrats could’ve done something about for a decade, instead they used it as a tool to play games. Just like everything else. It’s more proof the Democrats don’t care about progress. That is 100% Ruth’s legacy, not Trumps.
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Oct 30, 2023 10:27
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mannerup posted:instituting a travel ban on muslims from entering the country, carrying out the most federal executions of any president in the last century and enacting a policy of separating migrant families at the border are "not anything really out of line" according to you, just to give a few examples How come Biden never overturned this policy anyways? The National Immigrant Justice Center indicates this practice is still ongoing: quote:Families suffered separations well before the prior administration and continue to suffer from separations resulting from deterrence programs championed by the Biden administration. Today, these policies play out across the border and in the interior, pulling families apart and destroying communities: https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/biden-administration-routinely-separates-immigrant-families
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Oct 30, 2023 12:28
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Travel ban? Yeah, that has always been a thing, all that changed was the messaging about it. Border wall? You know Joe got money to keep building it? Tearing apart families? Well that surely is a way to describe trying to do something about human trafficking where an estimated over 30% of kids crossing are being trafficked. Funny how it’s only America where it’s racist to say that illegal immigration in excess of what the federal government estimates the country can handle without undermining stability of the lower classes and government systems. If someone dare says open the borders up as much as we handle but not any further gets turned into an angry racist. No wonder they don’t have issues siding with real racists, they can’t even question the dogma without being accused of one anyway. Democrats have had power and have thrown money at… making more bombs for Ukraine. Oops. Jan 6th? Where all those crazy white folk took guns to the capital and started holding government officials hostage? Oh wait, they had plenty of guns and miserable people and they managed to not use them at all?? Just a bunch of selfies after the cops opened up the doors for them. BLM should take note what not to do, maybe they should’ve started fires and raided all the nearby stores. This is a complete, media curated, cognitive dissonance whataboutism for supporting active genocide and neocon policies of the last few decades. None of these ‘vote blue anyway’ ideas have any path towards resolving any issue other than ‘hopes and dreams’. Bernie bros had things right- all the way up until 1) they thought their support was a support for leftism. It wasn’t. It was support for grassroots takeover of a captured fed that doesn’t represent its people 2) he caved in to fight the orange man. Not understanding the orange man was actually helping their cause by tearing down entrenched neocon capture of the entire fed. Too bad his wife just couldn’t not be compromised so he’d fold so easy Anyone voting red or blue at the federal level is straight up supporting genocide. Exceptions only exist for those voting in known, proven cogs in the machine. And to be clear on that last point, the Rand Pauls of the world have had many opportunities to cog up the machine and haven’t, they don’t count. Trump at least is going to force something to change sooner than later. Ain’t nobody going to go boots on the ground for some war Trump starts, he doesn’t have that power, stop fearing him like he does. Biden might actually get troops back into the Middle East with all his incompetence and zionest zeal. You want to help a trans person? Do so at a personal level. A local level. Want to help an immigrant, you can do so at a local level. Don’t bring this into the fed, it’s not the fed’s place the fix these things. Supporting holding the country hostage to neocons so you can feel better fighting the boogeyman is peak selfishness. The fed isn’t there so you can force people who live on the other side of the country to live like you do. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Mid-Life Crisis fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 13:08
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Voting for a democrat and voting for a republican president are basically the same thing, in fact, it’s probably better if a republican wins actually because… Accelerationist logic is amazing
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Oct 30, 2023 13:34
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