• 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    6 months ago

    Right now the choice is Biden or Trump for the next term. It sucks, but that is what it is.

    This thinking has locked us in a rightward spiral for the last half century.

    That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

    The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. “How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but ‘regrettably necessary’ holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?”

    I trust you know the definition of insanity.

    • notabot@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      6 months ago

      To be clear, I agree with the sentiment of your post, but that doesn’t change what is in front of us. Yes, it’s lamentable, yes it shouldn’t need to be like this, and yes, it didn’t need to be like this, but it is. As I’ve asked several of your fellow posters, given the reality in front of us, what would you personally suggest people do, and what do you anticipate the results being, both electorally and socially?

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        13·
        6 months ago

        Democrats need to lose this election. There has to be an electoral consequence for openly supporting an active genocide. No, this doesn’t mean supporting Trump – his genocidal rhetoric should get the lowest amount of support possible.

        I’m probably going to vote for some non-genocidal presidential candidate with no chance at winning, then vote for Democratic congresspeople. If enough people do this the message will be “the votes are here, but not if you’re going to do all the things you say we should be terrified of Trump doing anyway.” Democrats holding at least one house of Congress will also (minimally) impede Republicans and prevent idiot lib pundits from writing “maybe everybody just wants fascism?” articles.

        Hopefully this will open space for a significantly more left candidate in 2028, the way Hillary eating shit in 2016 opened space for Bernie to be the plurality favorite in 2020. Between that and libs finally taking the bad stuff Biden is doing seriously once Trump is in office, maybe we’ll shift a few things in a slightly better direction.

        And that’s just the electoral piece. Beyond that, working on genuine harm reduction projects, trying to unionize your workplace, joining political organizations left of the Democratic Party, and trying to persuade people that Democrats are a dead end are all good things to do.

        This isn’t a complete plan for getting to bare minimum improvements on issues like climate change, healthcare, imperialism, etc. (and note how that standard is never applied to Democrats), but my thinking is it can open up avenues to those improvements that aren’t currently available.

        • notabot@lemm.eeEnglish
          12·
          6 months ago

          I’m probably going to vote for some non-genocidal presidential candidate with no chance at winning, then vote for Democratic congresspeople.

          That’s possibly a reasonable approach, although I think the Dems would need a solid majority in both houses for a trump presidency to be even moderately safe. I do like it as a way to open up space in future, but as I said, it relies on the Dems controlling both houses or the republicans will end up just getting around them in some dubious manner. I haven’t been able to find a prediction or polls for the congress though, so I don’t really know how that’s looking like it’ll stack up.

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            5·
            6 months ago

            A Biden presidency isn’t moderately safe. Internationally, we’re supporting a genocide and a dozen other horrible things. Domestically, there has been no notable federal action on women’s right and LGBT rights, less than nothing is being done to address our increasingly (under Biden) overfunded and overmilitarized police, Biden put down an imminent strike, we’re going backwards on the environment, and a dozen other horrible things. Jesus Christ, Dems are talking about violating international law and denying asylum requests at the southern border, in addition to doing nothing about nutjobs like Greg Abbot trying to close the border unilaterally.

            You have to let go of the idea that “oh we can’t risk Republicans getting power,” because Dems are doing so much of what Republicans said they’d do just a few years ago. Democrats are a speed bump at best; the ride is unsafe whether that speed bump is there or not.

            • notabot@lemm.eeEnglish
              12·
              6 months ago

              I was more referring to the amount of damage an unchecked trump presidency could do. Biden is bad, but trumps been pretty clear he wants to be worse. As I said, I think your approach of not Biden for president and Dems for congress might be reasonable providing there are enough anti-trump numbers in both houses to prevent the worst that trump tries to do.