Is voting for controlled opposition harm reduction?
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
Everyone’s upset about the vegan ice cream voters not voting for regular ice cream.
No one is upset at the regular ice cream people for being unwilling to vote for a vegan ice cream place because their choice is default in their mind.
Both sides are holding each other hostage. One has a moral reason and the other just doesn’t want to compromise.
And yet.
Yeah… But also, Carlin was right saying this shit is all a stage. We’ve got groups of bullies picking on us, and I’d rather throw bricks than help them decide who to pick on next.
If “harm” and “less harm” are the only two options, then the only question is how quickly you die. There’s the argument that we have to do “harm reduction” in order to buy time to organize for something better, but we’ve been procrastinating for decades apparently. Since all of history informs us that humans act only when inaction is no longer tenable (and sometimes not even then), really the only material difference between “harm reduction” and accelerationism is, again, the timeline.
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
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!
That’s the spirit!
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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™” though.
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.
The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
That’s QUITTER talk! I’m voting for Rocky Road.
I LOVE Rocky Road
So the cliff?
Brick on the pedal.
You’re right - it’s more like one group voting to drive off a cliff and the other voting to just drive really close to the cliff in case we decide to go off on some other vote, but so long as the cliff doesn’t win now, we can focus on convincing people ice cream is the better option. We don’t, and instead wait 4 more years to complain about the lack of ice cream, but that’s a separate problem.
Still better than not voting to not go off the cliff.
The problem is people have voted for ice cream. They have read about people voting for ice cream for years before they were even born.
Lots of people want ice cream but we are at a point where people KNOW the cliff exists. They DO NOT know the ice cream shop exists because all the times they were PROMISED ice cream the bus just stopped at a sewage treatment plant.
The voters are not the problem. They have zero reason to trust the bus driver. Because the bus driver refuses to throw the cliff voters off the bus. Bad optics.
The voters are not the problem. They have zero reason to trust the bus driver. Because the bus driver refuses to throw the cliff voters off the bus.
The voters chose the bus driver.
No they don’t.
Voters are told to pick which driver they want and both drivers don’t listen to directions and can’t read a map.
So some voters don’t care who’s driving the bus or where it’s going.
Because they have no reason to care.
They tolerate the shitty ride and shitty passengers while looking out the window. Waiting for the ride to end. But it never does.
Yes, they do. The voters get a chance to decide who those two drivers are, and 85% of them stay home. Then they got to choose between the driver that wants to drive off the cliff, and the driver who swears they’ll go get ice cream. And then 40% of the voters stay home.
Now the driver’s taking us off the cliff, and you’re whining that the driver that got the most votes is doing exactly what they said they would.
They have every reason to care, but they don’t anyway. You can’t abdicate your power and then complain no one listens to you. We had a chance to have better choices, but no one but retirees reliably show up to primaries.
Jeez more of this b b both sides same stuff.
If you think literally saying “they’re definitely different, but the difference is smaller than ideal” means “they’re the same” then things will never be fixed.
Dude you changed this it from “we want ice cream” to “we want to drive next to the cliff so we can drive off it later”. That’s not smaller than ideal, you literally changed it both sides the same, just later.
No, I changed it to “one side killing us, the other not, but still leaving it on the table” Which is a huge difference, but still a troubling scenario. Not driving off a cliff is orders of magnitude better than driving off a cliff, but still significantly worse than ice cream.
Dude one side wanted to get ice cream and you changed it to “nah, not that. I’m gonna change it to what the other side wants, just later. Change it to the complete opposite”. You completely changed it. Changed everything. Smh. That you either don’t want to see that or can’t see that… I’m out.
Again, I didn’t change it to “later” I changed it to “if the cliff drivers win the next vote, it’ll be a short drive.” Do you really think that’s inaccurate? Look at how Trump drove the country into the ground in his first 4 years, and how easy it was to just keep doing it even after we had 4 years of democratic leadership that was meant to get things back on track. I don’t call that “ice cream,” I call that “sitting by the cliff waiting for the cliff drivers to be in power again.” We need leadership that will drive away from the cliff even if it upsets the people and politicians that want to drive off it.
Really? Because Scandinavia has really nice ice cream. Europe too, with some problems.
You’re on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we’ve already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They’re wrong, but they believe it, and people’s beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren’t on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
Remember, no matter how beautiful, morally righteous, or gratifying your strategy is, you should really look at the results
The other four didn’t vote because there wasn’t a party against genocide.
Electoral puritanism like this is a big part of why we now have concentration camps in America.
Thanks for that.
The camps already existed with Biden, Trump is just putting more money into them
Yeah the downvotes you’re getting really illustrate the three monkeys approach of centrists. Outright denial not only of opinions, but objective facts. Trump immigration policy is just Biden’s turned up a notch, but with a lot of performative cruelty thrown in. Biden’s immigration policy is just Trump’s turned down a notch, with less performative cruelty. Trump vice signals, Biden virtue signaled. But their actual policies on immigration are very very similar.
Trump immigration policy is just Biden’s turned up a notch, but with a lot of performative cruelty thrown in
So what you’re saying is it’s not just Biden’s turned up a notch, he’s doing it differently and much, much worse. The idea that, because both of them are immigration policies that include deportation, they must be the same thing is infantile
One of them is in favor of deporting all of the Latinos, but really it’s the same policy lmao
Biden ran concentration camps. I’m sorry to have to inform you of this.
I’m aware of this. Trump’s are worse.
Your moral compass is broken.
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JFC deporting people if their asylum claim fails isn’t the same as what trump is doing. That you’re trying to equate them is mind bogglingly bad. Anything to confuse the issue and say b b both sides same, huh. I recognize your name so I’m not going to reply further.
Bullshit.
Found Blue MAGA.
Funny how Democrats never used to have to complain about Purity Tests back when they were doing things like attempting to pass universal healthcare. In fact I’d literally never even heard the phrase (in that context) before last year and suddenly it’s everywhere.
The puritanism is that both parties are fascist.
Both parties are equally bad, that’s why we’re letting 65 million Latinos get deported instead of not letting 65 million Latinos get deported. Less genocide is actually just as bad as more genocide
You are pretending Biden/Harris were promising less genocide, which is wishful thinking on your part. Biden/Harris let them do what they wanted to whatever degree they wanted, and pretended to fight back.
You are pretending Biden/Harris were promising less genocide, which is wishful thinking on your part.
Nope. I feel like we’re looking at this from two different perspectives. Comparing 2025 to 2024, there was always going to be more genocide. Comparing the two potential 2025s (the one in which Trump wins and the one in which Harris wins), one of them has more genocide than the other, and one of them has less genocide than the other.
Maybe if I put it this way it’ll make more sense: a smaller increase in deaths is preferable to a larger increase in deaths. Of course, a reduction in deaths would be preferable to both, but that option wasn’t available.
Where you and I will probably never agree is that you think Harris/Biden would have meant less genocide.
Biden did a bunch of lying about that, but you give him the benefit of the doubt and I cant. And Harris had a prominent bloodthirsty zionist as a husband (recent marriage) and a bloodthirsty zionist campaign manager. Thinking she’d break left after her actions and words to the contrary was never realistic. Emhoff explicitely said he’d spend his time in office fighting antisemitism, which he equates with any criticism at all of Israel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/doug-emhoff-kamala-harris.html
When both Trump and Biden give the zionists full support and free reign, theres no real distinction to be had around more or less genocide. It just doesnt exist. Harris and Biden were there to soak up campaign donations and ignore their base.
you think Harris/Biden would have meant less genocide.
…than trump. Less genocide than Trump. Who is presently committing a genocide against the Latino population in the US.
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Single issue voter is still committed to being uncommitted.
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An issue easily adressed but stubbornly dismissed for no reason
Only simple according to the internet narratives.
The options are: a) convince Hamas to release the hostages b) convince Israel to abandon their people c) wait for the IDF to find where Hamas is hiding and free the hostages (or more likely in most cases, find the bodies of those abducted) while urging restraint.
Option a) is difficult because Hamas is a group of psychopaths. There have been some hostages released in exchange for ceasefires and release of Hamas fighters from prison, but then that just means more people the IDF will fight when Hamas stops releasing hostages. If this were a conflict out in an empty field then whatever, but since the battlefield is a densely populated urban environment, this means civilian casualties.
Option b) just isn’t going to happen.
So option c) is the only one left while there’s constant talks to negotiate a ceasefire. Current status on that: Israel has agreed to a ceasefire if Hamas releases the hostages and Hamas has said they “look favourably on a ceasefire” but they always say that.
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And those four are functionally equivalent to people who didn’t vote because they’re okay with either option
Genocide is much more like driving off a cliff than having ice cream or not voting.
It’s kind of sad that I even have to say this.
I mean if we want a better analogy, Harris represented the “crash the bus into a building” party, and Trump represented the “crash the bus into a building and explode” party. 3 people are voting for building, 4 people are voting for building and explode, and 4 people are saying “I don’t care whether we explode.”
One of those 4 thinks they’re making some kind of statement by saying “I don’t want to crash at all, so I won’t be voting.” He is indistinguishable from the 3 that just don’t care
Maybe stop with the dumb fucking analogies and talk about the real situation for a change. It’s not too complex to talk about (and if it is to you, holy fuck, maybe shut up and do some reading first?) and you’re fooling nobody with your deflections.
I have no problem talking about the real situation. One of the parties is in favor of less genocide, one of the parties is in favor of more genocide, and non voters don’t care whether we get less or more genocide.
Of course it would be better for everyone we could have elected a third party, but the choice was between Harris (sells weapons to Israel) and Trump (sells more weapons to Israel and also starts a genocide here in America), and non voters didn’t care which side won. In the absence of the option you want, you have to make the best available choice.
Less genocide, but not the stopping of genocide? Man, do I not feel sorry for gringos when they act like this is a moral choice.
How would you know, anyway? They refused to acknowledge there was a genocide in the first place while they sent a record amount of money and weapons. Oh wow, such harm reduction.
No genocide > less genocide > more genocide. No genocide was not on the ballot; the choices were less and more. Reread the last sentence of the comment you replied to. I guess you’re right though, the Democrats could have started a genocide against the American Latino population. I guess there’s no way to know which option was less harmful
Analogies are useful, not just for understanding a difficult subject, but for seeing a familiar subject in a new perspective. When your audience is eschewing logic due to compartmentalized thinking, analogies can help break them free.
Hey thanks for not helping. Wait, no. No thanks. You failed everyone and yourself, guaranteed extra double genocide and learned nothing.
There’s a genocide on the bus too?
Libs will tell the craziest stories just to avoid reality.
The other four didn’t think this through because only one party had a subset of their coalition who opposed genocide, and also opposed 2 other genocides: the one Russia perpetrates against Ukraine, and climate change (leaving aside things like, you know, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights… And not as a case-in-point the internal genocide of poor people when 50,000 Americans will now die from being dropped from Medicaid thanks to a bill that only
Republicansthe cliff-divers would have passed).When your main issue isn’t on the ballot, it doesn’t matter in the election.
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This one’s much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don’t you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
There’s a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
I had people unironically tell me that Kamala Harris was no better than Hitler, and that she & Trump were the same but just did the exact same harm in “different areas,” which is why it looked like they were any different policy-wise. 💀
Yeah the genocide angle is just “both sides” with sprinkles. It’s a really effective misdirection.
Since both support Genocide I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s nazis vs non-nazis. It’s more like genocide over there vs genocide maybe here and there. That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen. A lot of people are speculating that things will happen that didn’t last time Trump was in charge. It definitely could happen, but I don’t think it’s as likely as people are making out. Trump would have to convince all of the keys to power to abandon democracy, and that hasn’t happened yet. He is already getting push back for certain things, not to mention braking up with Elon.
Anyway I sure am glad I don’t live in the USA. Although honestly my own country is having its own issues. The supposedly left wing party seem to have decided they have the same level of support for trans people that the right wing one does, or at least their leader is willing to follow the conservatives on that issue. I almost regret voting for him now.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
It has happened, is continuing to happen, and will get worse. ICE now has a large budget than most militaries and Trump is exploring ways to “deport” American citizens (probably to concentration camps). They’re exploring ways to essentially make migrant farm workers slaves. The supreme Court just made it harder for judges to pause executive orders. The US (of which I’m a citizen) is fucked.
I also have extensive thoughts about a political system and electorate of which I know very little about.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
Wtf? They already have. They’ve ballooned ICE’s budget to more than that of the marines. They want to deport 65 million latinos. That’s all the Latinos. They’ve already gone full authoritarian dictatorship while you were watching
They did. They were dumb enough to fall for it and now we have concentration camps.
Pretty accurate portrayal.
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The delusion that democrats don’t also put many people in cages is a huge part of how we got here.
Meanwhile both parties massacre people in other countries by the tens of thousands, sometimes by the millions.
If caring about that is bullshit to you, i find it rich that you expect anyone to care about the life of you or the people you care about.
Time to stop thinking this will end in 4 years with an election. American democracy died on January 20th.
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By not voting you promoted to accelerate genocide. You’ve made it worse with your stupidity.
Another day of pretending that voters gaza concerns wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to adress. But no not even a speaking spot at the democratic conversation. But please growel more, surely you are bound to be treated with the respect in the future.
More like two options: one runs the bus off the cliff while the other sets it on fire. Sure, we’ll live longer in the fire scenario. Maybe we can even put it out!
But I’m still looking for the fucking exit.
This is kind of a good analogy for ranked choice voting, to be honest.
The “drive off the cliff” party vs the “drive off the cliff, but ever so slightly slower and also we’ll wave some rainbow flags I guess” party. I know who I’m voting for!
