femboi [they/them, she/her]

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Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: July 25th, 2020
  • femboi [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.net•The friend who radicalized me is now begging me to vote for HarrisEnglish
    10·
    21 days ago

    The issue I have with this argument is that i feel like it is confusing voting for someone with endorsing them publicly. An argument I’ve heard from socialists online that has really resonated with me is that yes, voting for president in a liberal democray is a way that you can influence politics but it is literally the least powerful and least effective way to do so. Therefore if we, as people who call ourselves socialists and who want to change society for the better, if we spend a large percentage of our time online arguing with people about voting, we are being tricked into believing in this lie that voting between two bourgeoisie candidates is meaningful. The clearest way this manifests is in so-called socialists who demand that other socialists vote for Democrats. These people are obviously betraying their values and have become party hacks for the libs.

    But another way that I think this manifests, and that ties back to this thread, is when we go out of our way to spend time and effort demanding that people write in a third party candidate or abstain instead of voting tactically. Initially this was really counterintuitive for me because I hate Kamala and the Democrats so much for enabling genocide that I couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone I cared about actually voting for them. But upon reflection, what I was really disgusted by was the idea of someone endorsing or supporting them. Because that is what makes a material difference. If someone is spending time and energy getting people to vote for Kamala, or any other liberal war criminal, then they are knowingly or not working to preserve the current system of oppression. But if all someone does is bubble in her name instead of trumps, they are not materially supporting genocide. While I personally don’t buy into the idea of voting as harm-reduction on a presidential level, if someone else wants to I’m not going to argue with them about it. What matters so much more to me is what we do with the rest of our time. If we can make material differences in our communities during the other 364 days of the year, that makes 10,000x the difference than a harm-reduction vote. (Again this only applies to the vote itself, if someone is going around advocating for others to vote blue then that’s a different story)

    For context on where I’m coming from, I voted for De La Cruz but I don’t live in a swing state so my vote is purely symbolic anyway.

    Anyway for OP don’t lie to your friend, that’s kinda shitty. I’d say if he wants to vote kamala as a token 0.1% harm reduction then by all means, but maybe point out that all of this energy he is spending convicing others to vote blue could be better spent doing literally anything else.