A lot of times it's even like, "don't talk about how bad the shit tastes! If you grimace you're gonna get the bigger shit! Your natural reaction to eating shit is something you need to deny and suppress!"
Accepting it's shit is step one, if you can't even openly vocalize or emotionally express your discontent, how is anyone supposed to begin to organize. How do you know who else doesn't like shit if everyone is just silently consenting to it.
As a queer person with friends whose literal well-being is in danger if Trump gets another term, but who are safe under Democrats, fuck you. Your privilege is how you can act this way. Refusing to vote for the "lesser of two evils" is a nice way to say you don't give a fuck about marginalized people.
Liberal take right now is, "I support Biden 100%, it's just a shame how the genocide his government is enabling and vocally supporting is hurting his poll numbers."
It's not like Trump wouldn't be doing the same thing sending weapons to a fascist government, I mean that's American foreign policy 101, but it takes a particularly sadistic American perspective to care more about how it makes them look in the polls than the horrors inflicted by the state.
Voting is the bare fucking minimum. You want more change you have to do more. Help candidates you like by volunteering your time, vote in primaries especially, and your local elections. A city council member might end up mayor, might end up senator, might end up presidential hopeful. Push for ranked choice voting, write your reps and tell them that is what you want.
Labor organizing can do more than getting specific people in to places within the US government, they'll be beholden to the same interests that keep the system running. It comes down to who can raise the most money at the end of the day, and PACs are funded by corporate interests. Any political actions done without class consciousness built in are basically useless.
Yes, voting is the bare minimum, vote, but as you say, if you want change, you have to do more.
So why on earth would you invest any more than the bare minimum in to a system that is designed to preserve the status quo?
I'm sorry, but if you're still pinning your hopes on change via electorate, you've not been paying attention.
Why donate time and money to a candidate fighting windmills by participating in a rigged game, when you can actually contribute towards feeding your neighbours? Or supporting your local workers who are striking? Or building communal services like libraries (for books, but also movies, tools, toys, pots and pans, anything!) and spaces for people to practice hobbies and connect?
Building strong communities that understand and practice solidarity and mutual aid is the only way to build a better society and create an alternative to the systems we've been forced to exist under by and so a handful of people can hoard all of the power and resources.
My god, the privilege you must have to be so fucking blasé about the wellbeing of others who will suffer under another Trump administration. If you were in danger under a Trump administration but not in danger under a Biden administration, you would not be talking this way. It's privilege that prevents you from seeing that.
It's a specially weird attempt at a cynical flex for the US today, given how demonstrably cause-and-effect the vote will keep abortion rights in specific places.
Also, I'm not in favor of stopping arms supplies to Ukraine and Biden's position in Israel is more moderate than recently suggested and leaning more moderate as political pressure mounts, so I'm not even aligned with the premise anyway.
It's almost like of US would stop military spending, no dictatorship would join them, and would continue to arm themselves.
It's very easy to criticize it when you never experienced an actual war and never lived in a country that was invaded, because other countries are afraid of attacking your country.
It's almost as if voting (very deliberately) doesn't actually impact what goes on behind the scenes (where capitalists control government), and that this happens no matter which of the 2 "teams" you vote for (or are we pretending that when dems use drones to bomb brown children it for "freedom"?)..
This is a pretty childish view. Both sides will do some things you dislike does not mean nothing changes.
You should read the playbook the heritage foundation is writing for 2024. It is goddamn terrifying.
Yes, both parties will have policies that we dislike. It's almost like the primaries, the mechanisms that control how a party acts, tend to be dominated by elders while our younger and more progressive members don't participate and instead complain that both parties are the same.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy. As long as the older generations outvote us, the outcomes will reflect their wishes.
I feel like the government is often a quest giver. The executive branch will let all of these companies run free so long as they do some project for the government on occasion. Like the NSA server deal with Microsoft. This is of course even more true with defense contractors, which get absurd contracts to "keep engineers trained" and the government tries to give the Mail Truck contract to Northrop-Grumman.
Lmfao at the libs in the comments pretending as if "team blue" doesn't exist to serve the exact same people, just hide it behind a very slightly thicker veil..