I've been shushing people who say there won't be free #elections in the #USA anymore

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@benroyce @em_and_future_cats I mostly disagree. By any definition, the Democrats are conservative, they maintain the status quo, only doing the minimum to show that they're better than Republicans, and they *definitely* are, don't get me wrong. Now, it's entirely reasonable to argue that conservative and right-wing don't mean the same thing, but they usually do. The closest the US has to a left wing, the Green party, is a joke, something to make the Democrats' centric stance more reasonable.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@StarkRG @em_and_future_cats

Again you're absolutely right. I'm just asserting that the functional perspective is more important than the structural perspective. We both want the USA to be more left. I'm concerning myself with how to do that while meanwhile this 10,000 foot view of the status quo you're providing while accurate doesn't provide any analytical value of how to do that.

We start where we are and iterate left. That where we start sucks is true but noting that it sucks doesn't help

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@benroyce @em_and_future_cats I think I see what you're getting at. I think, though, that letting Democrats be called "left" lets them off the hook to be better. It makes it seem like someone having an opinion between the Democrats and Republicans is a reasonable position when, really, that just makes them a less extreme extremist. Democrats should be seen as the compromise, the centric position (even though they're more like slightly right-wing).

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@StarkRG @em_and_future_cats

Because of the FPTP voting system 3rd party only divides the left and hands MAGA the win. So we are stuck with the need to take over, gut and cannibalize the democratic party and make it an apparatus of the left. And we can that. The centrists are weak and the anger is strong

[dlundh@mastodon.nu]

@Asbestos @benroyce also, even if true, why NOT vote for a lesser evil? 🤷

[rupert@mastodon.nz]

@benroyce @Asbestos as if there's something wrong with wanting less evil.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@rupert @Asbestos

Nevermind that a lesser evil is all you will ever get, in any timeline, in any country, in any election

Now and forever

If a literal demigod descended from the heavens with angels singing and ran in an election, typical politics would paint them as evil one way or another in contrived fashion, people would nod along in the usual lazy cynicism, and thus they would just be the lesser evil

Toxic idealists and mindless cynics are fucking stupid losers

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@dlundh @Asbestos

Because if a candidate is not perfect I can't taint my perfect soul. And before I vote I have to feel like my vote is a statement of eternal love. Only then will I vote

Oh if I don't vote I help fascism win?

Well my holy sense of self-regard and my perfectionist ego masturbation is far more important than my entitled lazy inaction resulting in goons murdering people in the streets, don't you know

🤮🤮🤮

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@benroyce @dlundh @Asbestos

Don't hold back Ben, tell us what you really think. 😉

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@mastodonmigration @dlundh @Asbestos

I've got 50k such comments under my belt

I've got 200k more to go

Until my anger at nonvoting assholes who helped get us MAGA in power is quenched

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@benroyce @em_and_future_cats Oh, absolutely, I'm definitely not suggesting voting for third party candidates, at least not at a federal level. There is *some* benefit, sometimes, to voting for a third party at a state level, and there's usually benefit to third party votes at a county and city level. As long as the system is plurality, Democrats will continue to get my endorsement, but I'll be damned if I let them off the hook for being centrists.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@StarkRG @em_and_future_cats

might i suggest a perspective shift

I mean i don't differ with anything you say but i think it's important

"The democrats" is not some entity we should consider or even characterize. Simply because that mental framework is not useful and even counterproductive

"The democrats" are just an empty shell we fill with our will (or don't, if we don't vote)

That everything we dislike about the democrats is a direct consequence of the assholes out there who didn't vote

[lukefromdc@kolektiva.social]

@benroyce @rupert @Asbestos This is why you prepare to fight no matter who wins the election. In the election itself you are attempting to choose the weakest of several opponents.

In 2016, nobody thought Trump could actually win. Problem was, Trump and Hillery Clinton were BOTH candidates considered "unelectable" by conventional wisdom. If two unelectable candidates face each other in a US style general electio, both of them become electable folks!

Right up to Nov 8 2016, we were all preparing to fight Hillery Clinton and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. We all hoped to hell Trump was stopped, but we knew we'd still have a tough fight ahead no matter what. That TPP may have benefited Trump: both candidates claimed to oppose it (a big win for the anti-WTO movement), but many white working class US voters expected Hillery to go back on her word. Obama had been a big booster of this treaty, chock full of the usual GMO, drug patent, and even US cigarette export provisions promoted by USTR.

The other big fight was Standing Rock, we had already sunk the Keystone XL. Heroes stood their ground at Standing Rock and slowed the project to a crawl as the world looked on. We had it beat, it was to be another KXL.

Then we got the worst possible surprise: Trump "won" the election! Instantly Standing Rock become almost impossible to win. The TPP was gone, but a vicious campaign of racism and hate was coming. On top of all else, Trump packed the Supreme Court, putting in cronies like "Frat Boy" Kavanagh and "Handmaid" Amy Coney Barrett. "Witchburner" Samuel Alito was already there thanks to GW Bush.

A year and a half after Trump left office post J6, Trump's SCOTUS picks threw out Roe V Wade. The resulting abortion laws were quickly castrated by the abortion pill networks, but this decision also unleashed a wave of anti-LGBTQ hate that is still going on today.

I think a lot of us in 2016 were looking downfield at the end zone without first having the football caught and securely tucked away prior to taking off running.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@LukefromDC @rupert @Asbestos

you always fight

and the fight has many avenues

voting is just one of the avenues

and morons who ignore it are failing simple strategy and tactics, and losing the fight

[apostateenglishman@mastodon.world]

@mastodonmigration @dlundh @Asbestos @benroyce I realise your fiery rants about voting abstention aren't meant to be amusing, but they do often make me smile in a "batten down the hatches, folks, Ben's off on one again!" kinda way. 🤭

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@benroyce @mastodonmigration @dlundh @Asbestos I want a device to summon Ben irl so that whenever I'm having an conversation with someone and it comes up that they don't vote I can sic him on them and watch the ensuing carnage like a bloodsport

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@ApostateEnglishman @mastodonmigration @dlundh @Asbestos

every tragedy is a comedy and every comedy is a tragedy, it's just a matter of perspective

it's why we can laugh so hard we cry and why we can cry so hard we laugh

and thus that people are laughing at this shitshow of a country is perfectly appropriate

us living in it though better feel the tragedy enough to show the fuck up and vote

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@renardboy @mastodonmigration @dlundh @Asbestos

i'm an old man, you'd just watch me get beat up

but if i can hide behind a door i can give them a proper tongue lashing

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@benroyce The Democrats are an organisation with a small (9 members) committee that determines the policies and direction of the party and a second, slightly larger (65 members) committee that runs things day-to-day. When was the last time you voted in a Democratic National Committee election? Or an Executive Committee one? They set the rules for how primaries and caucuses are run, they run the fundraisers. Average, everyday Americans get effectively zero say in the makeup of those committees.

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@StarkRG

if enough showed the fuck up, all of that would be working for us

that the democratic party does not, and serves spineless centrists, is a direct consequence of not enough showing up to vote

what i'm saying is that this organizational inertia argument is real, as you say, but it's essentially nothing but a reflection of our will. *if* we show the fuck up

bad candidates do not lead to low voter turn out

well, they do, but more accurately:

low voter turn out leads to bad candidates