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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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This is the saddest state of affairs ever. When your campaign is “it could be worse” it’s an insult to the working classes intelligence.
1933 Germany would like to have a word with you.
Stop fascism.
Liberals historically enable fascism.
Bruh, Trump has been repeatedly talking about using the military to quiet political dissent.
The only reason you guys have trump in the first place is that liberals block every attempt from leftists to do anything about it.
But that's not the campaign. This is citizens telling other citizens that not casting a vote IS voting - for the obviously worse candidate.
Which you guys have been doing for decades and it has resulted in leftists NEVER getting anything they want.
Honest question...
How is it only and always a vote for the worst candidate, and not a vote for the better candidate? Like, couldn't Republicans also argue that by not voting, you're actually voting for Harris? From an objective standpoint, who would be correct?
It’s person by person. A trumper helps Harris if they stay home.
IF you have a preference between the two major candidates
AND you stay home or vote third party
THEN you have helped the major candidate you dislike
Because historically the Republicans have had better turnout in swing states. Anger and hyperbole are great motivators, regardless of topic. Democrat-leaning folks tend not to be as angry, scared, and swayed by cult-like leaders, so tend to be more complacent. It’s a matter of trying to even the behavioral playing field. Not to mention the gerrymandering fuckery that has made it even harder for democrats to be fairly represented in crucial geographic areas. Finally, consider where the underhanded tactics are coming from, and rather than sink to that level, an OVERWHELMING and unquestionable show of support is needed for those tactics not to be successful.
It entirely depends on who you would vote for if pushed to vote for the viable candidates. If you would vote for Harris but don't vote, it helps Trump because that's one less vote he needs to beat. If you would vote for Trump but don't vote, it helps Harris because that's one less vote she needs to beat. So it's true for every individual's worst candidate.
When campaigns/people use this message, they're usually pretty confident them and the person they're talking to agree on who is the worst.
Any vote not cast will strengthen the side which is likely to assert a win no matter how badly they lose.
If you’re siding with the more extremist candidate, then you’ve probably made up your mind to vote.
If you haven’t made up your mind yet, then you’re probably doubting about the more moderate candidate. The post is about setting aside those doubts and vote anyway.
The “it could be worse” is “US is having a president who’s fine with using military action against his political opponents”, aka dictatorship.
Not just military action. Vigilantism and pardons. I'm waiting for him to make it clear that if you're going to murder someone who opposes Trump, make sure to transport them across state lines, so that it's a federal crime that he can pardon you for.
No, I’d say it’s exactly what we deserve.
Imagine if we had to vote for a national ice cream flavor. It would probably end up being pretty unpalatable for most people, but it’s the only one we can get even a plurality of people to vote for.
It would be vanilla vs literal shit. Everyone would complain about how boring vanilla is. The news would talk about how the literal shit doesn't smell as bad as you'd think and complain that the vanilla ice cream isn't even nutritious.
Shit would win with 48% of the vote.
TAKE THE FUCKING VANILLA!
you guys keep equating kamala with "good" and "vanilla". Genocide's not vanilla flavored. Its shit flavored.
That's a factor of our first-past-the-post system. We end up having to strategically vote against the ice cream we don't want instead of for the ice cream we do want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
As someone who likes teaberry ice cream I don’t think anything other than anarchy will get me that flavor.
With anarchy you have to get yourself that flavor and make everyone else eat it too. It would still be easier to do in a democracy.
That is not anarchy.
It is based on your analogy. There wouldn't be a national ice cream flavor in a stateless society definitionally speaking.
Yes, but that doesn't mean everyone gets what I want. It means I find my tiny group of teaberry enjoyers and we make our own teaberry ice cream because that's what we like.
Democracy is everyone taking a vote and me and my comrades not getting teaberry ever because there's not enough of us to have any power.
No, there can only be one ice cream flavor considered to represent the group as whole in you analogy for it to even be internally consistent. Making other people eat wasn't the best phrasing, it's more making other people decide it's their favorite which is even harder.
Your group of teaberry enjoyers assumes that in the absence of the state your group could determine what everyone's preferred ice cream is, not which ice cream they could actually eat. Which ice cream could be consumed by individuals or groups was never the question at hand. Instead we are asking what is considered the larger group's preferred choice as whole which is still an open question in the absence of the state. And undoubtedly best determined by the majority of people in the absence of an ice cream that satisfies everyone.
You can already enjoy whatever ice cream you want currently. Deciding what everyone's favorite or preferred option is not a power suddenly invested in anyone in the absence of a state. In a sense no ice cream enjoyer is an island.
Not if I'm describing anarchy. Rather than organization coming from above, people are free to self-organize. Vanilla people can live with other vanilla people. Teaberry freaks like me can head to the hills and have teaberry.
The state is why I'm forced choose between freezer-burnt Dollar General vanilla-flavored refrigerated dairy byproduct and a literal frozen turd.
Again, this is accomplished with state based societies currently. Minorities are protected. The actions of groups and individuals are tolerated as long they adhere to the social contract of tolerance themselves.
The question is about what a society as a whole will decide to do when faced with a choice where it can only chose one or at least not all of the available options.
What your strategy proposes is effectively succession where a larger group breaks itself into smaller groups. Each group will then face this same problem. What to do in when they have to choose some, but not all available options.
Their original identity may prove insufficient to provide a clear answer or perhaps some of the group's identity will have changed over time. Either way this algorithm would have us divide the population for every decision where there is a disagreement until every individual was essentially isolated.
Your not getting the larger groups consensus which was supposed to be the appeal of this analogy with the proposed national ice cream flavor. Worst of all, there isn't going to be a lot of ice cream going around if no one works together.
Your analogy tries to have its ice cream and eat it too. It starts with the promise of group consensus, but then fails to deliver on that by establishing smaller groups that deny the possibility of any consensus. And those groups can't even produce the ice cream they think everyone should eat.
Again, this is specifically a consequence of a fptp system which mathematically arrives at a two-party system given enough time. A state based society with ranked choice or approval voting system would allow for a wider range of options. Each of the groups created by your strategy provides one option to whoever finds themselves in such a group. So not only does the strategy fail to deliver on more options it actually delivers fewer options.
Teaberry ain’t gonna ever win even in a ranked choice system. It’s just too unpopular.
I’m too tired and drunk to read the rest of it.
To summarize, you don't want ice cream anarchy, you want an ice cream dictator who agrees with you.
I want fucking teaberry ice cream. You’re the one insisting the only way to get it is to force everyone to eat it.
You want a consensus that agrees with you and your way of doing things which cannot be obtained through a stateless society. A stateless society lacks a consensus yet still has the benefits of state based society. A dictatorship is an imposed consensus which is the only way to get what you want.
You already have teaberry ice cream. You want a teaberry dictator.
Weird. My family arrived at a consensus on what to have for dinner without needing a state to mediate….
That's a large family you have there with over 340 million people.
Maybe countries shouldn’t be that fucking big then.
Which, as it happens, is one particular teaberry I want that will never be chosen.
That's the unfun answer of getting people to agree that's on the ballot this year. 538 shows that today, that teaberry is only one point down. Best to ignore the polls and Vote Blue!
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
It's adorable that you think Harris is the anarchist teaberry I'm looking for.
But don't worry, I already voted for the gallon tub of store-brand vanilla-flavored frozen dessert over the turdcicle
No, Harris is the neoliberal who will incrementally improve society who is currently one point ahead. Trump the teaberry who wants to genocide as many people as possible, satisfying the condition of fewer people laid out in your argument, is currently one point behind. In other words, not in never being chosen territory.
Maybe read what we wrote when you're not drunk and tired. You aren't looking for an anarchist teaberry, because what your describing isn't what an anarchist teaberry does. But it is what a teaberry dictator does.
Congrats and thank you.
Me wanting to fuck off to the mountains and not bother or be bothered is in no way like me wanting to force everybody else to do it.
You're all forcing me to participate in this society with no option to leave.
Now I'm definitely not reading it, because it's clear we're talking past each other.
Anarchy is not a smaller country in the mountains where everyone agrees with you. That's a dictatorship. And if it's just you, you're not getting very much ice cream if any.
You're the one wanting a national ice cream flavor. edit: typos
Lol dude wtf are you even talking about
Political science, social theory, and ice cream.
I understand the analogy but it it just seems like you have zero idea of what you’re talking about. Where did you read a version of political theory where anarchism is likened to forcing everybody to follow the same political ideology?
I am not arguing anarchy is comparable to forcing everybody to follow the same political ideology. I am arguing that it would be harder for the user to impose a consensus on everyone else if they lived in a stateless society.
The user claims they want a national ice cream flavor, but then asserts anarchy is the only way to get the national ice cream flavor they want. My point is that isn't want anarchy does. The analogy is comparing apples and oranges. Being able to eat what ice cream you want and being able to form a larger consensus around which ice cream is best is not the same thing. It's an attempt to shoe horn in what the user actually wants while claiming it's anarchy.
And what that user wants is an ice cream dictatorship where the teaberry dictator enforces a teaberry consensus. Currently, in a democracy, anyone can eat whatever ice cream they want. To achieve a consensus around which ice cream is the national favorite we would hold a vote. This user wants a smaller dictatorship in the mountains where there is an imposed teaberry consensus and is willing to claim this dictatorship is anarchy in order to get it.
The analogy is a false analogy and a bait-and-switch. The lure is a promise of whatever consensus anyone wants but then swaps it out for a collection of dictatorships erroneously masquerading as anarchy.
In a stateless society, there would not be any passive consensus like a national ice cream flavor because there is no state. Everyone would have their own favorite which might happen to overlap with someone else's or might not. Everyone could get their favorite ice cream and essentials as if they were in a state based society. There would be only active consensus where people could agree to work together to avoid existential crises like a large meteor or famine.
The version of democracy you’re describing is an idealized dream version and does not exist in reality is the problem here. What you’re describing is more like… small community democracies in the style of like Athenian democracy. Which is absolutely not what we have. I also don’t see what you’re describing in what the other guy is saying his view is.
It's not idealized, but what we have now with a federal presidential constitutional republic. There are all kinds of subcultures in the US. A person can take their pick of a religion or a culture or none at all. Everyone is free to believe and do what they want as long as they don't harm anyone else. We protect minority groups. We don't have a national language, thankfully, but we do have things like a national bird.
Our democracy isn't perfect, but that's due to systemic issues that we know how to solve, but need the political will to implement. We also need wealth redistribution in the form of taking away the source of wealth and the wealth of billionaires.
I recommend reading the debate in full and seeing the contradiction for yourself.
Self-sorting into ice cream homogeneous organizations isn't a stateless society. It's a collection of dictatorships. In a stateless society people of different ice creams would work together independently of a state to meet their basic needs, self-actualize, etc. The difference between our democracy now and a hypothetical stateless society is the absence of a state that facilities a market economy, laws, public education, research funding, defense, etc. Everything that the state does now would be handled by systems we have yet to devise. Those systems would match goods and services, from people wanting to do those things, to people who want and/or need those goods and services.
The user's argument boils down to that meme. "I can't wait for society to collapse so MY ideology can rise from the ashes." The user wants the collapse so they can get there teaberry dictatorship not a stateless society. They don't want to just eat their favorite flavor of ice cream. They want everyone around them to have to it eat to. That is not anarchy.
People who like a subculture can already self-organize into a community. Moving from a democracy to a stateless society wouldn't change that. What would change when moving from a democracy to a collection of dictatorships is the freedom to choose. The only way to re-sort in such a collection of dictatorships is for them to collapse further until everyone is self-isolating. At which point very little if any ice cream will be had by anyone.
Nah it's super easy. Moose tracks 100%
“Moose” polls poorly outside of Maine and Minnesota. “Tracks” alienates truckers who are a significant union.
Please try again.
It's a sad state of affairs when a politician that cares about her country isn't enough to get people to vote against a literal fascist who fantasizes about being a dictator.
God Americans are easily propagandized.
They've drank the Koolaid for a better dystopia. It's been forcefed to the nation.