You are not taking primaries into account. That is the proper method to prevent the left candidate from shifting right in our current system.
The long-term effects of not voting at all, is exactly the same, just with fewer steps.
Wow that’s hilarious that this is exactly the result of voting third party and not participating in primaries.
So when the DNC ratfucked Bernie twice despite me voting for him and Clinton and Biden, what am I meant to take from it? Just shut up they know what’s best at losing to Trump?
Bernie himself never said he was ratfucked. Bernie himself immediately worked with the dem party to enact legislation that benefited their shared constituency.
What did you take from Bernie’s own actions? What are you saying in spite of Bernie’s collaboration with the very folks you paint as enemies?
Why do you pretend to know better than Bernie while talking shit on the very collaboration that passed Bernie’s priorities?
Your words, you are ratfucking more than Bernie or anything Bernie has had to deal with…
So I can’t complain and vote for them the same time? No criticism of the party failing to stop Trump?
If you voted for the democrats and participated in the primaries then why are you responding to something about not doing those things? This clearly isn’t directed at you.
Except the issue is that they were participating, and the ratchet effect happened anyway.
From my experiences working third-party and leftist campaigns over the years, this is a really common story. A lot of people have burned out on voting and activism because they have done it and seen it not accomplish anything in the U.S.
Democracy isn’t something one person on their own can influence.
But it is something that one can influence by reaching out to others and making sure others vote
If you care about something, least you can do is convince your friends and family on what’s the right side to vote for, and then making sure they actually vote as well.
All leftists need to do it, not just a few. We have more power together than apart, and the only way the democrats will change is from the inside.
democrats have been saying this for decades and here we are, watching the democrats cave over and over again.
Nah I fell for the “We’ll push Biden left!!” BS in 2020 and all that got us was more bombs sent to Israel while he pretended to be sad about doing so along with supporting union busting and the cops.
Voting has no power compared to direct action. Until the 2 parties are done away with a long with everything that they both stand for and represent, we should be taking better steps than walking in the streets with signs and checking boxes.
Is this not just an illustration of the concept of the Overton Window?
I think it’s basically talking about the ratchet effect. The comic shows the Overton window narrowing and moving right. The ratchet effect is about how democrats and republicans push the Overton window to the right. During GOP controlled governments, they move things to the right. Democrat controlled governments maintain the status quo. The effect is a rightward shifting Overton window.
Huh, I’d noticed the ratchet effect before in a few different subjects, but I hadn’t heard of it specifically. I think you hit the nail on the head, thanks for helping me learn something today.
Before finding that article, I thought it was mainly a political term. But the article doesn’t even mention it’s application to politics. That’s the only context I’ve heard it in.
To me, it seems like a possible manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy. I’ve personally seen it in IT security audits and policy rollouts. As you try to make a domain more secure via more aggressive group policy rules, more authoritarian approaches become more acceptable than when you started. Part of it is a sunk cost of “well, if we don’t take this more aggressive stance, all of our previous work could be undone.” mixed with a sentiment of “We are already blocking users from accessing x service, why not also block y service”. Blocking y service would have been unpopular before service x was blocked, but now there’s something more acceptable that you can point at as justification. This process just repeats further and further until you’re essentially blocking everything and selectively allowing services.
I’m sure I’ve noticed it elsewhere, but that’s one example that I have encountered quite a few times.
Saying that the lesser evil is less evil has nothing to do with liberalism or any other ideology, it’s a tautology, it simply must be true by definition but doesn’t actually add any new meaning. The trouble in the scenario presented isn’t a voter’s attempt to take the least bad option (since taking the other would just get you to the same place but faster), it’s having a system that creates only two viable options in the first place, such that “not evil” either isn’t even on the ballot or may as well not be.
We know the trouble. The solution seems to be the main point of contention.
Some people think that voting lesser evil buys us time to organize so we can take actions designed to establish a system conducive to more viable options.
Some people think that refusing to vote lesser evil will magically make things better somehow. Idk, the logic for this one is pretty pants-on-head.
the pants-on-head thinking is still believing that voting the lesser evil will buy time when decades of taking this course have proved that the time that is bought is always wasted.
still believing that voting the lesser evil will buy time when decades of taking this course
Do you not see the glaring irony of that statement? We wouldn’t have had those decades without the lesser evil, we’d have gotten to where we are now 20 years ago.
What exactly do you suggest? Greater evil? A wasted performative vote? A revolution made up of millions of people who don’t have the organization to vote strategically, but are nonetheless willing to sacrifice their lives in violent uprising?
What’s your plan?
Neither option will make things better.
Things will suck until we die and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I banish thee, doomer god. Self-defeatism is counterproductive. We can do something about it, it’s merely a question of will.
We won’t. We never do. Or if we do it makes more and worse problems.
People are awful and will never not be.
Yeah, just look at how literally everything has gotten progressively and inexorably worse since the Bronze Age, where median life expectancy was 18 years of age, 90% of the world was illiterate and owned at most one complete set of clothing, women would either give birth to seven kids not counting stillbirths and see only three survive long enough to learn how to walk and talk, or else just die in childbirth and not see anything ever again, polio, measles and tuberculosis killed millions despite all the goats and witches that were sacrificed to the gods to spare us, people owned slaves, and daughters were sold into marriage at 9 years old with 50-year-old men they never met!
Oh and there was no ice cream.
Yep, we’ve been going downhill nonstop. You’re absolutely right to be so pessimistic.
Yes but how much better was it before humans?
And I agree that we have created more and worse problems since we killed 95% of males after we developed agriculture.
Now we can kill the biosphere in multiple fun ways, and are the cause of at least one mass extinction so far.
Like I said, no ice cream.
Hey, it’s me! I made that comment! And I stand by it.
Not a lib though.
That other goober is so clearly terminally online that all those downvotes got to their head they desperately needed some validation and tried again. The only thing they won’t try is acting on their own words. They’ll get that pitchfork up ‘any minute now’…. ‘just wait for it’…
What’s the alternative for a voter? Vote for the worse of the two evils directly?
Vote in primaries and local elections so that the lesser of two evils actually consists of people deserving your vote on their own merit. I’m willing to bet 90% of the ones who voted Trump or Stein to “TeAcH dEmS a LeSsOn” did not do anything to shape the party beforehand.
People seem to care a lot about presidential general elections, but ignore primaries, locals, midterms, councils. Democracy means more than getting off your ass once every four years.
You should absolutely do this, but even if your primary choice doesn’t win lesser evil is still better.
We have the ability to pursue multiple angles of attack.
lesser evil just feels better and has no upside unless you’re close enough to the privileged class of people.
That’s exactly backwards. Anything but lesser evil is used as a self righteous virtue signal, and wasting a vote is extremely privileged.
Change comes from pressure from the streets. Vote for the lesser even and then protest against them.
the dnc leadership doesn’t care; that’s why they’ve been caving.
Make them care. They cared about the citizen rights movement and the suffragettes. The great new deal was a reaction to the unemployed movement
The only protest that works is one followed by threats of violence if their demands aren’t met. Nobody in government gives a flying fuck if their livelihoods aren’t threatened. MLK wouldn’t have been successful without Malcolm X.
Strikes, especially general strikes, and sabotage can also do the trick but I’m not against violence either
This is the way.
the lesser evil is captured opposition; have you not been paying attention?
I think your question is intended to silently include “what’s the alternative for a voter [in a given election]?” - if I’m wrong about that, my bad.
But the issue to me is not about choices in individual elections. The issue is that these vocally “lesser of two evils” voters do their thing, then smugly pat themselves on the back and self-righteously condemn the sad state of affairs, every time…
And then continue to take the idiot bait that anything left of present Democrats is scary bad socialism/communism, no further-left candidate can have a shot with real Americans, and wouldn’t our energy be better spent trying to find things we agree on and can get done together?
They don’t learn anything about how the rest of the world works politically, they don’t know dick about any candidates or ideas that don’t appear ready-made and polished on a television screen, and yet they think they’re the ones helping, and if only we all just did like them, this place would turn right around. They want to do nothing, to sound wise, and to feel morally superior all at the same time. This is the core of the vocally “lesser of two evils” voters.
I know because I used to be one of these insufferable people I’m describing.
The issue is that these vocally “lesser of two evils” voters do their thing, then smugly pat themselves on the back and self-righteously condemn the sad state of affairs, every time…
Why do you assume this? It’s probably true for the quiet “lesser of two evil” voters, but the vocal ones tend to be leftists who recognize the limitations of FPTP elections and are doing other leftist things, and are trying to get others to help make the environment marginally less hostile so they can do leftist things more effectively.
I know because I’m one of those actively leftist “lesser of two evil” voters.
Well, yeah, fair point lol, I definitely have an imagined “type” in mind here and jumped to the assumption that it’s all those who are vocally “lesser of two evils”.
Really I was less making an assumption and more just (inaccurately, as you pointed out) using that as shorthand for the set of voters who vote lesser of two evils, but then go on to do the kinds of shit that allows for the image above. Berate others for daring to demand more than two evils, or encourage trying to find common ground with the increasingly far right as a viable means of progress, and worse.
You’re right, it’s not everyone who talks about the importance of still voting when it’s two bad candidates, and I myself think it’s important to do that. I think it just feels like the folks who are always making the discussion about that idea are also usually the ones doing the other destructive (while condescendingly ~well-intentioned) stuff I was describing. Sounds like you feel the opposite, which I’m willing to chalk up to the nature of having different experiences, idk. Definitely not common enough to use as shorthand apparently, that’s on me.
Berate others for daring to demand more than two evils
I don’t think it’s for “daring to demand”, it’s more about the nature, mechanics, and outcome of the demand.
I’m all for developing better alternatives in the background while applying effective pressure on the lesser evil, to establish a foundation to make demands when the time is right and the social apparatus is prepared to enforce those demands.
I’m not at all about protest abstention or pushing longshot third parties. At least a part of the voices pushing for that reek of bad faith actors deliberately trying to cause fractures to give greater evil better odds. Not all of it, but even some of the rest is just parroting psy-op taking points.
I agree just voting isn’t enough, but I think most of the voices that care enough to keep people voting strategically in the face of these fractures care enough to be taking other actions too. The lazy, self-righteous ones don’t care enough to push any strategy at all.
OP wants to burn it all to a crisp and start over from scratch. Auferstanden aus Ruinen I suppose.
Wanting representatives who represent people isn’t burning down anything.
Fuck off with this capitalist bootlicker rhetoric
You sound like a domestic abuse victum that thinks if they behave then the abuser will go easy on them next time.
It’s a toxic way to approach politics, and is desigend to keep you fighting your neighbors instead of your leaders.
Wanting representatives who represent people isn’t burning down anything.
If only the meme said anything resembling that.
Voting for democrats who then capitulate to fascists leads to the overton window moving to the right.
Most Democrat voters don’t want that to happen.
That means they are not representing their voters.
I’m sorry you have a hard time engaging with reality. It must be really hard to make sense of the current landscape through the Neoliberal bootlicker lense
not voting for democrats makes it likelier for republicans to win, thus moving the overton window even farther right. Your frustration should be with people who think voting is the only action you can take, not with people who use voting as one of many actions that should be taken.
You need to internalize the fact that young and leftist votes did not meaningfully impact the election.
If you want to attack the people who voted for Biden but stayed home for Kamala, those were white boomer/millennial men/women and boomer/millennial hispanic men.
You need to internalize the fact that young and leftist votes did not meaningfully impact the election.
Because they don’t vote meaningfully, yeah. That’s the point. I dunno where this strawman defector angle comes from.
The much bigger issue is the people who aren’t voting at all, or casting a performative 3rd party vote in districts where it accomplishes nothing.
If only the meme said anything resembling that.
Yep. The more the republicans win, the more the democrats move to the right to chase where the votes are at.
I mean… not really? This presumes the right never wins.
Instead you should have one line somewhere in there where they don’t vote for the lesser evil well enough and the right side skyrockets five memes down the road, except the lesser evil next time is the same amount to the left of THAT mark now.
I mean, you’re living it, I’m not sure why I have to explain it.
This presumes the right never wins.
this presumes the right always wins. which is what happens when you have the illusion of choice and two parties that share ideology.
Cool.
So this presumes the rightmost party never wins.
Instead you should have one line somewhere in there where they don’t vote for the lesser evil well enough and the right side skyrockets five memes down the road, except the lesser evil next time is the same amount to the left of THAT mark now.
I mean, you’re living it, I’m not sure why I have to explain it.
Could have saved us both some time if you hadn’t decided the disingenuous out of context response was worth going around the loop.
I had a guy on this website tell me once it sometimes you have to vote for the lesser of two Nazis. That wasn’t hyperbole, that was the conversation. He thought I guess that Nazis have levels and sometimes you got to vote for one of them. Weird guy.
A .world user told me Liberals had to give the Fascists power. If they hadn’t it would have been the end of Democracy. Famously democratic fascists.
in honor of my good friend, @[email protected]. they passed away today.
I don’t know either of you but like, a subtweet is one thing but you making a meme post to ridicule someone and also tagging them on that post (and saying that they died as a joke??) - that feels like veering a little close to cyberbullying no? I love dunking on a centrist as much as the next girl but we don’t need to be genuinely unkind to eachother do we?
Ah crap I’m dead. Should have known. Arguing with you felt like purgatory after all.
They commented 53 minutes ago.
Edit: OIC shitposting.
@[email protected] was one of the people of all time issthtt
deleted by creator
It’s Achilles and the Nazi hare.
Sorry, there is no good faith argument in any of this. Wasted a minute of my life on this.
and you just wasted another minute reading this.
