On one hand, you have people who are mostly comfortable with letting Palestinians die. On the other, people who openly talk about nuking them.
You have a group of people who may be willing to throw minorities under the bus. And you have another group that is waiting for the opportunity to do so and make it law.
Both choices are terrible, I agree, but there is one that is a clear better over the other. It sucks, but you have to accept that it's the way it is for now and you are not going to pull some third party out of your ass. That is going to have to wait for now. You have to make a decision between the lesser of two evils.
I'm counting on you, Americans. As a trans woman from a European country which political climate is heavily influenced by yours, I can quite confidently say that my rights are in your hands.
Quite frankly, I can't think of a more terrifying thought, but it is what it is.
Don't fuck this up. Please.
Not voting because bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe, even after the goddamned 2016-21 dark ages, is the leftist version of anti-vaxx anti-mask. Too many people seem to be equally lazy plus self-centered equals stupid, in all directions.
Whether it's about putting a piece of cloth on your face or voting, they're special; above it all; they know what the truth is, and we're the dumb ones for not seeing it, we're the dumb ones for doing something, for choosing a path of effort/inconvenience/civic duty instead of inaction. And we are the mindless herd to them.
EDIT: Then you tell them that republican and russian troll farms are flooding their discussions, concern trolling about genocide while russia itself is invading Ukraine with genocidal intentions, with the explicit intent to get them to not vote because they are manipulable in bad faith, and do they seem to care?
I'm not American, but I am fascinated by the cognitive dissonance it takes for these People who claim to be progressive to chart a path that clearly puts Trump in office while claiming they're fighting for the very people that Trump has already banned from being in America.
Trump would be bad for America and for the world, but a part of me wants to see y'all elect him again, just out of curiosity. The stupidity knows no bounds.
Yeah but the world will know about their adorable little "protest vote" and how Biden just didn't "do it" for them.
That will be our nation's epitaph.
Really feels like Israel is trying to do the old Russian misinformation game even on Lemmy these days to try and suppress blue votes on a single wedge issue because they know it’s the only way to get Trump elected and get more guns and bombs than they’re already getting, and they wouldn’t get pushback at all for Rafah or any warnings of any sort, just a blank check for wanton genocide.
Like I don’t like what’s happening in Palestine, but I don’t want to make it worse by pretending a non vote would somehow help them. Helping them would be ensuring that the party least likely to enable Israel the most is elected. That’s Joe Biden. Some people have ridiculous nicknames for him but my god wait until they make this look like restraint if Trump gets elected. Palestine would cease to exist almost immediately and Israel will de facto annex it, like Russia is trying to do in Ukraine.
So really you can vote to minimize the pain and suffering of Palestinians or you can not vote to minimize the pain and suffering of Palestinians. Personally I’m gonna vote to minimize the pain and suffering of Palestinians, and also support the environment (again not to the degree I desire), and support abortion access, and trans rights, and taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and, the list goes on, but yeah, I’m gonna vote for Joe Biden.
I just love the white self proclaimed leftists who insist that they're the only ones in all of America who truly take the threat of fascism as seriously as needed and yet their advocated course ot action is to let the fascists get everything they want but blame it on the people actually trying to stop them for not catering enough to white self proclaimed leftist interests.
They'll still be singing the tune of how one day the DNC establishment will totally learn their lesson this time if we protest vote at the election the Christnats are holding as a sham, singing it all the way as they get frog marched to the gas chambers ahead of everyone they let the fascists kill first.
Not to sound like a Twitter wokescold or whatever, but Shaun does this all the time. A cishet white guy from England who won't be affected in any way by the outcome of the U.S. election, yet constantly tweets and retweets about how the Democrats and Republicans are totally equally bad and voting makes no difference.
But when we look at what Republicans are doing and saying like...
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Trump saying he'll be a "dictator for one day"
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His lawyers arguing that a president killing an opponent should be considered an official act protected by law
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The potential Republican vice-candidate bragging about shooting a puppy and other farm animals
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Reports that DeSantis enjoyed torturing people at Guantanamo
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Multiple Republican politicians and pundits calling for the eradication of trans people
I think this take doesn't hold up. It's no coincidence that many of the people with this mentality are also the ones who'll be minimally affected by a Republican presidency, if at all.
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Yeah... Pretty much this, only worse.
Disclaimer: I'm Australian so I only have a relatively small stake in this, and I'm pretty solidly in the do vote camp.
All that said, I find myself really empathizing with the frustrations I've seen expressed by those who won't vote. Again I don't agree with not voting, I just see there is humanity behind it. It makes me weep that you need to fight about this in the first place, we have preferential voting so it's not an issue at all here, you can vote independent and still prevent the right from taking office.
I hope you all make it through this safely and that you have no regrets in the end. Please look after each other, solidarity is our strength.
Hey but the protest voter is morally clean while anyone else sUpPoRtS gEnOcIdE
Shit meme bro!
I've had this conversation with my SO. Technically speaking the best move for me as a white male would be to support Trump. Instead I vote for Democrats hoping for positive changes for all people. For most of my life I've thought I was "far left" for American standards, but since I've joined portions of Lemmy and Reddit you'd think I was a fucking Republican.
Certain portions of the left would rather spit in their own eye for unrealistic principles, even if it means that a worse alternative is the result.
We don't get to vote for a target, just a direction in which to ever so slightly turn. When far off course, every choice will continue to lead in the wrong direction, but over time those small corrections will add up. Hopefully.
Well, meme, not just not voting, but actively using their energy to attack their allies and help fascism spread.
To my disappointment, all I see from the self-appointed "real left" are people stubbornly trying to get US members to stop voting for the Democratic Party. And dunking on liberals ten times before they say one bad thing about reactionaries.
There could be so much good tankies could do, but instead, they aid the fascists. They treat the ongoing genocide as a just a convenient issue to drive a wedge between progressives. When China was committing genocide on the Uyghurs, tankie spaces on Reddit were talking it down and passing around Chinese propaganda memes. The ongoing genocide by Russia in Ukraine seems fine, too, if not even largely met with approval.
I hope some of those pulled into this web and led astray will yet wake up and use their energies for something positive. For example, there are already states that have adopted ranked choice voting, which will let everyone vote, even for a fringe party, without risking a fascist takeover. It will show, black on white, how many progressives there are that would want politicians to move left. If it was to kick off, it is almost guaranteed to topple the current status quo.
I'm all for the protest and the outrage over a genocide, it is all warranted. Biden is proving to be just as blood thirst as most of the politicians that fill D. C.. Come November I will still vote for him. The reason I will vote is due to Trump's in a different category of POS status.
Voting is very important but we focus too much on the presidential and we never look at local and state. We need to reevaluate what we are trying to accomplish. I believe the president position has ran it's course and needs to be done away. I believe we need a complete redesign of our federal and even state systems. Popular votes, rank choice, and possible EU redesign with states breaking up might be options.
Nothing should be off the table due to traditions and "what would the founding fathers think" arguments. 200 years ago we believed spirits caused mental health issues and cocaine helped soothe babies. Not smart by today's standards.
Yes, let's keep punching left as Democrats lose even the moderates they exclusively cater to now.
Instead, Mr. Biden’s losses are concentrated among moderate and conservative Democratic-leaning voters, who nonetheless think that the system needs major changes or to be torn down altogether. Mr. Trump wins just 2 percent of Mr. Biden’s “very liberal” 2020 voters who think the system at least needs major changes, compared with 16 percent of those who are moderate or conservative. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html
Remember folks: there are no ramifications of policy in a functioning democracy.
Just vote once every four years for Party.
/s
We support Biden because he is willing to be swayed by changing public opinion. Trump just doubles down on things people don't support when confronted. That Trump voters see the left disagreeing with Biden and think "Oh, that means they won't support him" just shows that they believe politicians views are fixed and unchanging.
Ugh, there is no room for subtlety in the modern meme. Sorry everyone, if you have a message to tell it has to have a punch line. That's the rules.
Imran Khan looking at this meme from jail after he was couped under Biden's term and not Trump's
Well, at least I don't need to worry about neither of those. There is nobody worse than Putin.
Surely punching left will convince leftists that siding with backstabbing liberals will work this time!
I'm likely voting for Biden, for what it's worth, but wouldn't your goals be better served by trying to work with leftists and unalienate them from the electoral process, rather than opting for the shame route? The entire reason why Biden is losing leftist votes is because liberals have been punching left, rather than trying to build a coalition, thus alienating leftist voices.
At this point, it warms my doomer heart to see liberals freaking out at the idea of the consequences of their own choices coming back to bite them. You’ve all been full throated in your support of the boot of American Empire stomping down on the neck of minorities and the global South, but the slightest idea that it might be your neck under the boot and you all fall to pieces. You love to see it, folks. Trumps first election should have been a wake up call that continuing to support Western neoliberal domination would only lead to Trumpian fascism (which is ultimately the same thing, just without the pretentious displays of ‘decorum’), but instead you all doubled down on it. I fail to see how a second Trump term is not exactly what you deserve.
Vote or don't but organize internationally
I'm not from the US, and no, I'm not feeling safer with liberal or not. Imperialism is pretty much the same. I don't know what is worse, but I'm sure that in both cases, it would worthless if you have not a strong anti-imperialist and organized movement inside an international organization.
For example, my organization is in the ICL, like the IWW.
But bIdEn dOeS nOtHiNg?!
If all the leftists had voted for Jill Stein in 2016, we could have avoided Trump’s presidency altogether. I’m sure I’ll be heavily downvoted for this opinion. Just remember, Americans had other options.
You have no choice but to vote for the genocide enabler. It is the only way to save "democracy." The type of democracy where you have to support the abhorrent to keep out the truly monstrous and if you say you won't, a bunch of self important liberals will pretend it's all your fault and not the parade of geriatric ghouls the party has been nominating
Sick of all these posts throwing guilt on those people sick of an ongoing genocide. What y'all don't realise is at this point where humanity seems.past saving to them, maybe those "people just want to watch the world burn". And they are therefore OK with seeing someone as despicable as Trump win. Just saying that shaming won't get you anywhere in that instance
Actually Trump was great at delaying the rise of the alt-right in other countries even though tons of money from the likes of the Koch brothers was being thrown at it.
During his presidency Trump really changed the perception of America from "A great nation" to "A large backwards nation", at least here in Europe, which in turn means that people are far less likely to want to emulate it. You will notice, for example, that all those crazy American alt-right fads like the anti-mask and anti-vax manias didn't manage to cross the Atlantic all that well (though some countries in Latin America, such as Brasil which at the time also had a far-right president, did copy some).
Don't get me wrong, Europe is also suffering the consequences of the American Economic Policies that it copied pre-Trump (from Reaganism all the way to how the 2008 Crash was handled) and hence the fall in quality of life and fall in median worker incomes has made the ground fertile for simple ideologies blaming everything on "outsiders", hence the rise of the alt-right, but even it is not at all following the molds of the Trumpist version of it (the closest to it are the Tories in the UK and even they aren't going anti-LGBTA or obcessing about wokishness even though they too have the relentless propaganda of Murdoch's media empire).
Biden's pro-Zionist Genocide posture is just doing the same, only that is mainly amongst the young and more well educated.
I see that liberals have already given up trying to actually win this election, and have already jumped to blaming all their woes on the left. Happens every time, just usually not this quickly.
"if you don't vote for the genocide guys then you'll get the genocide guys! (Also they've worked to make it super easy to strip leftist orgs of nonprofit status, works in lockstep to move the goalposts if a third party comes close to inclusion requirements, went to court to legally ensure they can run whoever the fuck they want, among plenty of other things - but our narrative depends exclusively on misinformation. We HAVE to call them single issue voters and claim that anybody not voting for Biden is advocating for not voting. Our real enemies aren't Republicans, its leftists, and the time has come to say the quiet part out loud.)"
Yet, people are always saying we only have 2 choices and don't talking about "wasting my vote". If enough people voted 3rd party, it would no longer be a "3rd party".
"If you don't vote for genocide, your actually voting for trump 🤓 "
I'm still voting 3rd party and the blue state I live in will still give genocide Joe my vote so don't worry OP. We'll continue to provide weapons to the country that just has whistle blowers leak evidence on concentration camps. Good to know that concentration camps aren't a deal breaker for you. 😮💨
To be honest, I already wasn't voting for Biden because of his record of mass incarceration, support for the Iraq War, and ghoulish complicity in every major problem the country is facing today. The fact that he's fully and unwaveringly supporting Israel's genocide is entirely on brand and just makes the decision even easier than before. Four years ago, those concerns were the ones liberals were saying you had to hold your nose and look past, now they're not even on the radar anymore and it's moved on to significantly worse things. It's a perfect example of how the democrats move discourse to the right.
The US political system is truly vile in how it effectively brainwashes people into supporting genocide. Even in this thread you can see people defending Israel and saying it's "necessary" for the US to support them, not even sticking to their lesser evilist line but just openly saying it's a good thing for Biden to support them. Once people choose a camp they just end up knee-jerk defending their decision and adopting positions of their candidate to simplify their cognitive dissonance. In some ways, it's worse than a straight up autocracy because of how it manipulates people while still not allowing people any meaningful voice.
Of course the lapdogs of the empire are more than happy to not only adjust their own beliefs into whatever the elites want, but to then browbeat anyone trying to stand against it. Because to them, the positions of our rulers are completely immutable while the moral convictions of voters are up for debate.
What liberals like OP will never understand is that no matter how real the threat of violence towards me is, it will never be enough to convince me to endorse genocide. At least I can go to my grave with a clean conscience, and that's not worth much but it's worth a hell of a lot more than anything Biden would do for me.
Genocide Joe can't wait to hand this mess over to Trump... and his loyal shill brigade have already decided the left should be the scapegoats. No McCarthyism required!
I guess "Russian hackers" are just too passe this time around.
I am disappointing with Lemmy's population. I would expect all these "Biden is bad in one thing but good in the rest" mentality so advocating to vote for him regardless.
First, the "thing" is not minor thing... is a crucial matter where the life of millions of people are completely dispossessed of protection and justice.
Second; There are third candidates... Of course, they don't have a chance and it will be, apparently, a waste of a vote... but only for this November elections! But, if a third candidate, with a genuine distinct message, gets 10-15% of the vote, future candidate will see an incentive to be independent in the future too... Gosh, even both Dem and Rep will be more cautions next time around.
The worse we can do, is to vote the same thing over and over, let alone no voting at all. There is nothing more the duo party loves the most! Encourage those alternative voices, the founding will come alone if hope is there... maybe not in 2024 but for midterms and 2028.
Also, I miss some conservative voices in here (and I am not one!)... I bet there are some non-mainstream ones that could greatly benefit Lemmy's ecosystem too.
The 6 Palestinians I know (from protests in the US), 2 in Gaza and 1 in the West Bank they all tell me they could care less Biden vs Trump, But if has to be one... with Trump there is more chances of change in the region, even at the cost of more lives. Besides, it will be far easier to regional countries and the European ones to distance from a link between Trump's US and Israel.
As a non-American who will never set foot in the US, & as a neutral on the World order, I wish Trump wins, news has been boring, we need some entertainment & it's fun to see the bully being scared, & of course nobody loves bullies. The whole of the world is waiting for you to fuck up, so don't disappoint
But on a serious note, all of you citizens of US need to stop bullshiting yourselves & vote for a third independent party, if your are not going to do it, nobody will, the two parties are the same, you all know that, you think they will change it for the good of the country?? They are living their best lives, they would watch their so called "beloved country" burn in blazing fire than change for the people, the past 70 yrs shows as this
