• Tinidril@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Did voting for Biden stop Trump this last election?

      Um, yes? It didn’t stop Trump from breathing, but it stopped him from being president this term. Even if it somehow eliminated Trump, there is always the next Trump. There is no point where we can stop fighting to preserve past victories, even as we fight for new ones.

      How many times are we supposed to vote Democrat against our own interests

      None. Voting Democrat is always in your interests. (At least until something major changes) Voting corrupt Democrats out in primaries is even moreso. It would be nice if we lived in a system that can support more than two parties, but we don’t.

      Will it always be “neoliberalism or fascism” every election

      That’s why we fight to take over the Democratic party. Every obstacle to defeating Democrats in primaries has a corresponding obstacle to winning a general with a third party candidate. Winning as a third party is both more difficult, and more risky.

      You want a shortcut, but there isn’t one.

    • whereisk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This “they’ll win anyway” is some miserly nihilistic take - we’ve won against the Nazis before we’ll win again.

      “how many times are as supposed to vote to prevent the fascists from gaining power?”

      Until you can no longer physically vote.

      You are part of a society that still allows you to politically organise around your beliefs, so get involved in your local politics and help bring your vision of a better future to more people - change doesn’t happen by itself.

      Join a union. Get out there and make it happen.

        • whereisk@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I didn’t project beyond what conclusions your comment lead me to.

          Please do not put words in my mouth

          See, if I were to quote you directly I would have done it like this.

          Instead I used quotes without the indent, to paraphrase you in a way that I thought both accurately condensed and focused what you wrote in a way that highlighted what it came across to me as a ridiculous question.

          Given the threaded discussion structure where anyone can go back and see exactly what a person has written, the idea that I am somehow able to misrepresent you is a rather odd take.

          Perhaps “defeatist”?

          No.

          Sounded more like existential nihilism to me.

          Paraphrasing me as saying “they’ll win anyway” in regards to fascists (nazis or otherwise) strips what I said of important context.

          You literally wrote

          until fascism wins anyway

          But I did strip the context of neoliberalism because I answered it a sentence later by urging you to get involved to make the world you want.

          There’s nothing “lucky” about voting, anymore there’s lucky in cleaning. You either clean or you’ll live in filth. You either defend your rights or you have them eroded and taken away.

          The Republicans were not always fascists and the Democrats were not always so neoliberal which means things can change if enough people get involved to change them.

          Unions, local elections, political activism etc all matter.

          You don’t expect perfection, you get involved and you vote in the public transport analogy.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      Yes. Exactly that. Our federal elections have been corrupt since the 1800s. The Republican effort to curtail the Democratic party and erect an autocratic state started in the 1960s (though there were earlier efforts in the 1920s and 1930s).

      I get that it sucks that the US is not at all what we were promised it would be, but letting the Republican party destroy the Democratic party is only going to make things way, way worse for the majority of Americans. And civil war and its aftermath is going to take decades (if not over a century) to resolve.

      The French Revolution started in 1789. The Third Republic was founded in 1870, between which the guillotines had to be rolled out several times, and Napoleon had to go to war with the rest of Europe. When the two-state system falls in the US, you can expect chaos and bloodshed for the rest of your life, including kids prostituting themselves on the streets for food (what was seen in post-Soviet eastern bloc states after the USSR fell in the early 1990s). It’s going to be grisly for anyone who doesn’t flee abroad, and for some who do.

      As per Bertrand Russell, war doesn’t decide who is right, only who is left. And this includes civil war.

        • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          I have no interest in motivating revolutionary efforts that will lead to disaster.

          The truth of the matter, is we’re flying blind when it comes to moving the progress of a society forward: The promise of politicial power is overwhelmingly tempting, like the One Ring. And like the Ring it also lies. Most revolutions that aren’t suppressed are followed by a run of short-lived oppressive dictatorships.

          Meet the new boss: Same as the old boss.

          Let’s not do that. The thing is, we dont know how. Our theorists like Marx, Smith and Kropotkin each had only a piece of the elephant, and we don’t have enough historical data to show how to prevent those with power from consolidating it into rule by the owning class yet again. Democracies are often formed when everyone in the nation is related to the casualty of a recent war and they’re just tired.

          I’ve had fantasies about putting together an ironclad batch of constitutional clauses and guaranteed rights (a thing Napoleon did to rally the people to his imperial claim). But it’s difficult to gather a cabal of legal experts, or even create a webclient by which to crowdsource it. I can’t even promise that would work.

          I can’t say I know what the solutions are, but those seeking rallying speeches typically get themselves slaughtered in a doomed revolutionary effort. Suicides and rampage killings continue to rise.

          Putting your energy into a mutual aid effort in your neighborhood will make real but local differences. But it takes multiple exponents of such an effort to bring about revolution. Civil war is quicker, easier, more seductive.