Look, I really appreciate the sentiment, but it’s time to acknowledge that those non-voters are not “misinformed future allies” any more than the MAGAs are. They are either accelerationists or fundamentally broken logically, and which form their indecision takes makes no difference -they are enemies of progress all the same, and to the extent there is ANY hope for the future, it relies on building a path AROUND them, not WITH them.
Yeah, it’s the height of cluelessness that Democrats act like anyone who isn’t a Trump supporter somehow owes their vote to the Democratic Party. If the only thing your party has to offer is Not Being Republicans then why should anyone owe them anything.
If the only thing your party has to offer is Not Being Republicans then why should anyone owe them anything.
Your moral purity in refusing to give the Dems an ‘unowed’ victory will be written on the tombstones of millions of people that the fascists are murdering. Thank you for your service in teaching those damn dirty Dems a lesson o7
You do realize this is exactly the kind of melodramatic over-the-top garbage that puts people off wanting to engage with politics in the first place, yeah?
I mean, I’m over it. Do what you feel like. It’s clear whatever the future is, this argument we’re having now? Has no part in it. Vote or don’t vote for whoever you want. Feel or don’t feel guilt. I don’t particularly care about the details of how you see it. The time when it might have mattered either way? Is over. Sure, maybe pre-election it was like trying to convince you not to kill the hostage - but the hostage is dead now. Not arguing that battle anymore. It’s irrelevant. You do whatever it is you like, but I’m never, ever, ever going to see the action in any other way, and at this point there’s absolutely ZERO point in discussing otherwise. It’s all academic. The trolley problem stops being a moral quandry when everyone is dead already. If you feel good? Great! You get my unironic and genuine thumbs up. Live your best life, my friend.
I’m not entirely following the thread here because it feels like I’m simultaneously being told that it’s already Game Over but also that only the Democrats can save us.
They’ve shown very clearly the last five years that they have neither the ability nor the interest to do that. If anyone’s going to save the country, it’s not going to be them.
I mean, that’s what OP is saying, but I’m saying it’s too late. The Democrats COULD have prevented what’s happening now, if for no other reason than they wouldn’t have had the balls to attempt it, but that boat has not only sailed, it’s been canonballed, torpedoed, sunk, and converted into a coral reef. There’s absolutely no sense whatsoever in talking to non-voters about it anymore. It’s done. There’s no convincing to be done. If every one of the non-voters said today, “Hey, we’ll vote for the Democrats next time”? Doesn’t matter. We’re still EXACTLY as screwed. So no, I don’t care why someone didn’t vote and I’m not wasting my breath trying to convince them they were wrong. Nobody should. If there is any path forward, it isn’t at the ballot box and it won’t involve people who are happy to sit on the fence. Non-voters are completely irrelevant now. They had power in November and now they don’t. If they want to help in whatever asymmetric BS we’re going to have to pull to just save a modicum of civilization over the next decade, they can choose to do that or not. But their political power as a group, and with it, the value of talking to them? That evaporated half a year ago.
You do realize this is exactly the kind of melodramatic over-the-top garbage that puts people off wanting to engage with politics in the first place, yeah?
Sorry, I understand my death and the deaths of millions of other people are too ‘melodramatic’ for the tastes of middle-class suburbanites for whom politics is a species of sport.
Yeah keep ranting and accusing people of mass murder for not voting for your guy, that’ll win us over
If only the Dem circus was more entertaining, then you could’ve been convinced to vote against the slaughter of disadvantaged groups by literal fascists. But it wasn’t entertaining enough, so the lives of marginalized groups was a price you were willing to pay to give the Dems a ‘thumbs-down’.
At least some of them need to be peeled off, however, considering the raw numbers. If there are no gains at all in votes for the anti-fascist candidate, that just means the fascists would continue winning, indefinitely.
… assuming, of course, elections matter going forward.
There’s a third, less pleasant option that you’re avoiding. I understand why - I don’t relish it. But the ballot box has failed. Even if it hasn’t COMPLETELY yet, we are not even 5 months into this term, and look where we are. Harping on getting non-voters to vote is the 2025 equivalent of the reactionary generals running cavalry charges across no-man’s land in WW1. It is fighting the last war. But that war is lost.
Not avoiding. The cartridge box may end up as necessary. But regardless of whether fascism ends like Franco (by luck), like Pinochet (by ballot), like Portugal (by mass resistance), or like Italy (by the bullet), the ballot is both a useful addition (insofar as it can reduce the legitimacy of the government) and a necessary tool for the postwar society. I don’t want to endure a fascist government now because people were too stupid to vote, so I can say that I definitely don’t want to get rid of these fascist fucks only for it to happen the same way again.
If we let the principle of “Not voting against fascism is okay if you feel really strongly about teaching the shitlibs a lesson!” endure, we will be seeing it make additional visits, along with the fascist ghouls it benefits.
Also, I noted in the title that I was speaking to an international audience, and not just… here, in the US.
Oh, I’m not saying it’s okay. I would never say it’s okay. I AM saying that they’re a stubborn distraction, and engaging with them is a waste of time. It took us a good long time for people to finally realize that the MAGAs and Republicans were unreachable, and by then, how many millions of collective man-hours were wasted? The stakes in 2024 could NOT have been clearer, and these non-voters STILL rejected the logic. We don’t have the time or energy to waste now pursuing THEM either. Now is the time to engage in asymmetric warfare of various kinds, including not only protests, but ensuring continued access to “subversive” information despite the tightening noose of control by setting up reliable hosting for it outside of the US government’s control, and otherwise generally trying to preserve what we can in the face of what’s going to become an ever worsening environment. We simply don’t have the time to waste on these people.
Look, I really appreciate the sentiment, but it’s time to acknowledge that those non-voters are not “misinformed future allies” any more than the MAGAs are. They are either accelerationists or fundamentally broken logically, and which form their indecision takes makes no difference -they are enemies of progress all the same, and to the extent there is ANY hope for the future, it relies on building a path AROUND them, not WITH them.
Yeah, it’s the height of cluelessness that Democrats act like anyone who isn’t a Trump supporter somehow owes their vote to the Democratic Party. If the only thing your party has to offer is Not Being Republicans then why should anyone owe them anything.
Your moral purity in refusing to give the Dems an ‘unowed’ victory will be written on the tombstones of millions of people that the fascists are murdering. Thank you for your service in teaching those damn dirty Dems a lesson o7
You do realize this is exactly the kind of melodramatic over-the-top garbage that puts people off wanting to engage with politics in the first place, yeah?
“How dare you be such a jerk? Guess I have no choice but to make innocent people suffer over it. That’ll show you!”
Incredible, it’s like a constant stream of disingenuous mischaracterisation. You’re proving my point far more than you’re dispelling it.
I mean, I’m over it. Do what you feel like. It’s clear whatever the future is, this argument we’re having now? Has no part in it. Vote or don’t vote for whoever you want. Feel or don’t feel guilt. I don’t particularly care about the details of how you see it. The time when it might have mattered either way? Is over. Sure, maybe pre-election it was like trying to convince you not to kill the hostage - but the hostage is dead now. Not arguing that battle anymore. It’s irrelevant. You do whatever it is you like, but I’m never, ever, ever going to see the action in any other way, and at this point there’s absolutely ZERO point in discussing otherwise. It’s all academic. The trolley problem stops being a moral quandry when everyone is dead already. If you feel good? Great! You get my unironic and genuine thumbs up. Live your best life, my friend.
I’m not entirely following the thread here because it feels like I’m simultaneously being told that it’s already Game Over but also that only the Democrats can save us.
They’ve shown very clearly the last five years that they have neither the ability nor the interest to do that. If anyone’s going to save the country, it’s not going to be them.
I mean, that’s what OP is saying, but I’m saying it’s too late. The Democrats COULD have prevented what’s happening now, if for no other reason than they wouldn’t have had the balls to attempt it, but that boat has not only sailed, it’s been canonballed, torpedoed, sunk, and converted into a coral reef. There’s absolutely no sense whatsoever in talking to non-voters about it anymore. It’s done. There’s no convincing to be done. If every one of the non-voters said today, “Hey, we’ll vote for the Democrats next time”? Doesn’t matter. We’re still EXACTLY as screwed. So no, I don’t care why someone didn’t vote and I’m not wasting my breath trying to convince them they were wrong. Nobody should. If there is any path forward, it isn’t at the ballot box and it won’t involve people who are happy to sit on the fence. Non-voters are completely irrelevant now. They had power in November and now they don’t. If they want to help in whatever asymmetric BS we’re going to have to pull to just save a modicum of civilization over the next decade, they can choose to do that or not. But their political power as a group, and with it, the value of talking to them? That evaporated half a year ago.
Sorry, I understand my death and the deaths of millions of other people are too ‘melodramatic’ for the tastes of middle-class suburbanites for whom politics is a species of sport.
Yeah keep ranting and accusing people of mass murder for not voting for your guy, that’ll win us over
If only the Dem circus was more entertaining, then you could’ve been convinced to vote against the slaughter of disadvantaged groups by literal fascists. But it wasn’t entertaining enough, so the lives of marginalized groups was a price you were willing to pay to give the Dems a ‘thumbs-down’.
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At least some of them need to be peeled off, however, considering the raw numbers. If there are no gains at all in votes for the anti-fascist candidate, that just means the fascists would continue winning, indefinitely.
… assuming, of course, elections matter going forward.
There’s a third, less pleasant option that you’re avoiding. I understand why - I don’t relish it. But the ballot box has failed. Even if it hasn’t COMPLETELY yet, we are not even 5 months into this term, and look where we are. Harping on getting non-voters to vote is the 2025 equivalent of the reactionary generals running cavalry charges across no-man’s land in WW1. It is fighting the last war. But that war is lost.
Not avoiding. The cartridge box may end up as necessary. But regardless of whether fascism ends like Franco (by luck), like Pinochet (by ballot), like Portugal (by mass resistance), or like Italy (by the bullet), the ballot is both a useful addition (insofar as it can reduce the legitimacy of the government) and a necessary tool for the postwar society. I don’t want to endure a fascist government now because people were too stupid to vote, so I can say that I definitely don’t want to get rid of these fascist fucks only for it to happen the same way again.
If we let the principle of “Not voting against fascism is okay if you feel really strongly about teaching the shitlibs a lesson!” endure, we will be seeing it make additional visits, along with the fascist ghouls it benefits.
Also, I noted in the title that I was speaking to an international audience, and not just… here, in the US.
Oh, I’m not saying it’s okay. I would never say it’s okay. I AM saying that they’re a stubborn distraction, and engaging with them is a waste of time. It took us a good long time for people to finally realize that the MAGAs and Republicans were unreachable, and by then, how many millions of collective man-hours were wasted? The stakes in 2024 could NOT have been clearer, and these non-voters STILL rejected the logic. We don’t have the time or energy to waste now pursuing THEM either. Now is the time to engage in asymmetric warfare of various kinds, including not only protests, but ensuring continued access to “subversive” information despite the tightening noose of control by setting up reliable hosting for it outside of the US government’s control, and otherwise generally trying to preserve what we can in the face of what’s going to become an ever worsening environment. We simply don’t have the time to waste on these people.