I saw that. I’m very glad we got one of our own in Congress, but it’s likely too little, too late.

I don’t think I’ll be able to go anywhere, realistically, anyway. I’m going to hold down the fort in my blue state and hope they shield me from the worst.

thank you. I really appreciate that.

There are plenty of cis gay folks. “Straight” just doesn’t work if you’re trying to describe non-trans people.

Had my name change hearing a couple days ago, I’m now legally Audrey! Going to the office for the first time in girl mode and I’m terrified. I’m honestly kinda concerned that the timing of this might prevent me from voting. I live in Seattle, though, so it won’t affect the Presidential election

Even in that case, there really isn’t much reason to vote for a third party. Especially if they’re one that only pops up on presidential elections while making zero effort to build an overall movement. There are some that probably are genuine, but I suspect most people willing to stand in a third-party presidential candidacy are likely either grifting or intentionally trying to act as a spoiler. Honestly, unless one of the major parties collapses or we actually somehow move past the first-past-the-post voting systems, third parties in general are just a waste of time and effort that could be used on something more effective. I honestly think that if you’re in a state where your vote in the presidential election doesn’t matter, writing in the name of someone like Bernie Sanders or leaving it blank would be a better use of a vote than a third party.

yeah, I’m done here. Zero effort is being put in to justify most of your positions, which makes sense because you can’t. There’s some hilariously bad faith arguments here that’s I’m not even going to address because honestly, this post has been superseded by others and we’re only ones reading it at this point.

please stop wasting people’s time with obviously false arguments like “trump and harris are the same”. not only is it wrong, it’s painfully simplistic and reductive. no nuance, just black and white thinking so that you never have to think critically. like, you just drop that nonsense so that you don’t have to do the hard work of arguing why we should risk a trump presidency.

I know that I haven’t been very charitable to you, but you led off this discussion by basically calling me “privileged” and saying I’m pretty much a trumper, and then you drop dumb argument after dumb argument(and I have noticed that you threw my “parroting” and “idealism” criticisms back at me… you’re not very original, which tracks for someone who isn’t thinking for themselves). It’s pretty telling that your most effective arguments are those nitpicking something I’ve said.

your position is dangerous. that is why i have indulged you this long. trump CANNOT be allowed in, and we must do whatever we must to prevent that. trump will send my trans ass to a camp. harris WILL NOT. this is life and death and i need you to stop making stupid arguments that you obviously haven’t thought through

I watched some of the video, and holy shit was it awkward. You could tell that everyone else was completely confused as to why Trump was doing this. They played some music to fill time after a couple people fainted, and then Trump just abruptly decided that he was going to “dance” to his playlist instead of continuing with the Q&A. Kristi Noem actually rolled with it initially before trying to interrupt, but Trump insisted on playing more music and weakly swaying from side to side some more. I didn’t think Trump could really surprise me anymore… but what the hell was that!? He isn’t exactly beating the “weird” allegations, that’s for sure.

The U.S. voter base does not realistically have a choice regarding Gaza in this election. None. Zero. Nada. Do not even try going on about third parties or withholding votes. I know from your comment history that you’re trying to dampen harm reduction votes, so I’m not trying to convince you. But when it comes to casting a vote in the 2024 election, failing to cast a strategic vote against Donald Trump when so many people will suffer if he comes back is a completely indefensible position. It’s probably safe to say that everyone on Earth, save perhaps Russia, will be worse off if that monster comes back. I voted uncommitted in the primaries. I’m fucking massively pissed off about the genocide the U.S. government is aiding and abetting. But there isn’t shit I can really do about it save protest. This is a first-past-the-post voting system. It punishes and discourages third party voting. If you oppose Trump, and vote Stein, then you threw away a perfectly good vote that could have been used to block Trump. That’s the thing about this system, and why it sucks so bad: you’re forced to cast a vote against the viable candidate that you dislike more by casting one for the other viable candidate. It doesn’t mean you particularly like or support the candidate you voted for, but the system actively punishes doing anything else. U.S. voters aren’t exactly the cream of the crop, but even they get this, and with the massive upswing in polarization lately, even fewer people would vote for a third party. Voting third party in the U.S. is completely useless. In a general election, votes are not endorsements. People can and do swallow their pride and do what needs to be done. And what needs to be done is to prevent a second Donald Trump presidency and Project 2025 from becoming reality. That’s it. Fascism’s coming and only a fool(based on the emotions involved, I will give American Muslims a pass, though it is very much not in their best interest to have Trump Part II) would screw around here because they’re so desperate to feel superior to others because they “took the high road”.

continued from the last comment

I would be curious to know what the “effective difference” between, historically, Trump and Biden is because the functional difference has been negligible. I’m also old enough to recall the Obama vs Romney and old enough to recall they were also marketed as polar opposites. The only major difference between then and now is the faces and increased normalization.

This is such a ridiculously bad argument that I’m absolutely stunned that someone would actually think this would work. You’re wrong on this, full stop. I am begging you to step out of your bubble and compare and contrast Harris’s proposed policy agenda and Trump’s Agenda 47/Project 2025 and tell me that they’re the same. Like, this take is so atrociously foolish that it must have been formed by uncritically parroting the Russian propaganda promoting apathy and despair that is infesting leftist corners of the internet. Like, if you can’t agree that Republicans have gotten massively worse over the last few years somehow, if you somehow view even Trump and Romney as the same, then your view is so skewed that it becomes functionally useless.

Have you not been paying attention to the attempts at organizing under the current Biden administration?

Yeah, the reaction to the student protests about Gaza definitely disturbs me. There are few things at play here, first off, it’s easy for unscrupulous Israel supporters to dupe people into believing that criticism of the Israeli government is inherently antisemitic. Add in some right wing provocateurs exploiting the situation by attacking the heads of these universities, and you get what’s happened so far. Also, Israel itself has a weird amount of influence throughout the government to the point where it’s actually illegal for U.S. companies to boycott them(I work in the logistics industry, and we have to do training every year to recognize signs of a boycott of Israel. If we find some, we literally cannot legally do business with them.) Israel is actually particularly difficult to protest against. I don’t think that leftist organizing will face quite that amount of pushback. Even if it does, repression under Biden is going to be much easier to deal with than repression under Trump(the man sent goons in unmarked vans to harass, detain, and intimidate BLM protesters in Portland. He’ll do much worse next time, when the guardrails have been removed).

As well as nationalistic propaganda which I am desperately trying to help you see past. The actual workings of the us government are significantly different than what was taught in your AP high school history class and I need you to have more intellectual curiosity and less parroting.

This is basically what I’ve been trying to argue to you(though the propaganda source in your case would be different).

Yes, the only difference is that Trump will actively encourage vigilantism while being largely ineffective whereas Harris will do the ‘I promise we are doing everything in our power to prevent these gross mischarges of justice!!! But we need to build more prisons in order to effectively combat attacks against our democracy.’ song and dance. See the “kids in cages”, Roe v Wade, war on the homeless, Iran escalation etc. comparing Trump Vs. Biden.

What a lousy, bad faith argument. I don’t pretend that things are going well, but for you to suggest that trans people are in danger from Harris is insane. I have replied to you not out of any conviction that I’ll change your mind, but to convince everyone else that you aren’t particularly worth listening to. You have proved that point. Like I said, the fact that you can’t discern the painfully obvious difference between the mediocre status quo Harris and the absolutely fascist Donald Trump means that we’re in an impasse here.

To be clear your dividing line between “fascism” and not is “dictatorship”? You have no problem calling the USSR and PRC dictatorships (assuming due to the functionally 1 party systems).

No. It was a shortcut I took to shortcircuit your argument that Biden is fascist. Not all dictators are fascists, but all fascists are dictators.

A 2 party system where one gets to dictate what the other can/cannot do is a dictatorship is it not? Or else what do you mean by the Democrats can’t do anything because the “system is kinda rigged against them”? My argument is actually that “corporatism” is the 1 party dictatorship in the US which I believe is a stronger argument but also requires a deeper dive…

The U.S. government is set up in a way that makes it extremely resistant to change, both good and bad. This means that the Democrats, who at least make a token effort towards progress, face an uphill battle. Republicans, on the other hand, just want to stymie progress and roll back everything they can, and it’s always a lot easier to tear things down than build things up. Couple this with compromises made in the 1700s for small states and the electoral college, which hasn’t been abolished despite it making absolutely zero sense in this modern age, and yeah, of course it’s hard for Democrats to do much. With how polarized things have gotten over the past few decades, the ancient Constitution that we have that we’ve basically ducttaped over a few times is unable to cope. Our system is inherently dysfunctional, with many of the advances in progress that we’ve made lately have been due to Supreme Court decisions, and, well, the Republicans seized control of it and are now using it to roll back those advances. In fact, now that they’re obviously in the bag for Trump, they’re making nonsensical and unconstitutional decisions that will hand Trump a lot of power that will make things a lot worse for all of us.

If Trump gets in, it’s game over. What little power we do have will be gone. If we can deny Trump the Presidency, there are some things we can do. The Republican Party has become fully reactionary, which means they’ll be fighting the system to make changes for the worse. We can then use the system against them by electing enough Democrats to play defense against their horrifying Project 2025 agenda. When you’re operating in a system that makes it so hard to change, the absolute last thing you should do is let things get worse, because that just makes our predicament even more dire. Now, the Supreme Court is a massive problem, and they absolutely are going to make the country worse because they’re on the bench for life, and there’s no realistic way to remove any of them, because the Republicans will protect their own no matter how criminal and corrupt they are. But the answer is not to let the Republicans back in power, and give the older Republican justices an excuse to retire so that they’re replaced by younger judges that damns us into having a reactionary court for generations. I know that “keeping Republicans from nominating more Supreme Court justices until a couple of the conservative justices pass away” is not exactly an inspiring strategy. There are deep systemic problems involved here that will require us to stay disciplined and vote strategically to deny the reactionaries as much regression as possible. But that requires actually holding your nose and voting Democrat. We are fundamentally not in a position where we can be picky.

The corporatism problem is the U.S. is, admittedly, a much harder nut to crack. The biggest issue is, of course, the voting populace is vehemently pro-capitalist, and things will not fundamentally change until this changes. Corporatist politicians get voted into office because that’s what people will actually vote for. The Citizens United decision by the right-wing Supreme Court basically lets billionaires bribe politicians even more brazenly than before. Again, there really isn’t much we can do here until it gets struck down. If we can get a movement going to deny politicians that accept corporate donations votes in the primaries, maybe we can start to make some inroads.

The word choice of “fascist” is deliberate so that you take the current state of things seriously because your belief that others disagree with you because they ‘just don’t understand how government works’ is a very unserious one.

Okay, first off, you’re completely failing in your endeavor. This only makes you look hyperbolic when you call Biden a fascist, and it makes people disregard your point. There are so, so, so many ways you can criticize and condemn the government from a leftist perspective. The hyperbole is completely unnecessary, and it makes people more likely to write you off as a kook. If you’re actually trying to change someone’s mind, you need to do so in a way that doesn’t make people simply dismiss you.

It is not “very unserious” to point out that your lack of understanding undermines virtually all of your arguments. You advocate for a massive tactical blunder because you simply do not get it. It sounds like you have read up on leftist theory(which is great! everybody should!), but your weak grasp on how the American government works means that you aren’t able to propose realistic and practical strategies to actually achieve your goals. I’m not under the delusion that I have everything all figured out, but I do know that we need to do something actionable, and not throw our hands up and go “we’ve tried everything and we’re all out of ideas”. Your idealism clouds your mind to the point where you’re actively working against what you’re professing to believe, by offering useless strategies like “don’t vote” and “vote third party”. For a left-leaning person, voting this way only stands to benefit the reactionaries. Just because we don’t have much power doesn’t mean we have no power, and we’re in deep enough shit that if we’re not doing everything we can to at least slow and thwart the reactionaries, we don’t have a chance of building a better world.

You can’t just fire off a wild assertion like that without some sources to back it up. And, no, I am not searching through her acceptance speech to try to figure out what you’re talking about, the burden of proof is on you.

Of course, I don’t expect much out of you based on your comment history. You throw around the term fascism like candy. The U.S. is a shitty, corporatist empire that that doesn’t give a shit about it’s own citizens, but a fascist dictatorship it is not. “Fascist” is not a synonym for “conservative and imperialist that only really cares about preserving the status quo”. That could definitely be part of it, but we’re not under a dictatorship. Words have meanings, and with every misuse of the word it diminishes its impact. Honestly, it makes it hard for me to take you seriously when you do that in a serious conversation.

Now, why am I harping so much on the fascist thing? Because you calling the Biden administration fascist really does make it seem like you see zero effective distinction between Harris and Trump, which is outright crazy to me. Like, Donald Trump is not just “Kamala Harris but ruder”. He’s gunning for actual fascism, and then there’s people like you who hem and haw, parroting things like “electoralism doesn’t matter” without thinking critically about the situation. I actually do agree somewhat with that statement when it’s a situation like Obama vs. Romney, where there was not much real difference between the candidates. Obviously we need to do more than just vote to get out of this situation. But to not even bother casting a strategic vote against Trump? You shouldn’t be lecturing people on politics if you aren’t willing to swallow your pride and do that. This will have knock on effects through the world, because you know that Trump’s going to be pushing fascism once’s he’s fully taken over. No democracy on Earth will be safe from the tide of fascism.

I know, casting a vote for “status quo” absolutely fucking sucks. I get that. And it is “status quo” and not whatever thing you had cooked up in your mind from Kamala’s speech. But we can’t just snap our fingers and have a socialist utopia. Things don’t work like that. You know as well as I do that we’re not going to have a revolution here. Not in a country where just saying word “socialist” is met by revulsion by a voting populace that, quite frankly, does not understand what it actually is. We’re fighting against a century of antisocialist propaganda, and that’s going to take a long time to undo, if we ever actually do. Face it, we need to buy time. We’ll still be able to organize under Harris, and that won’t be the case with a Trump regime.

I do, however, feel that I wasted my time replying to you when you advocate voting third party in a system that actively discourages and punishes it. It shows a complete lack of understanding of our political system. And yet you call me the privileged one for doing the calculus and making the pragmatic choice? I don’t have a choice. Not in THIS ELECTION. If you’re incapable of discerning the difference between Trump and Harris, if you think that voting third party accomplishes anything at all, if you actually think Harris will purge trans people, then we aren’t really operating with the same understanding of reality and can’t have much of a discussion.

In addition to what alyaza said, the Democrats don’t even hold the House of Representatives right now, and the judicial branch is fully under the control of the Republicans. So, no, they have partial leadership on the federal level. Biden is not a king, he can’t will this stuff into existence.

We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, I get that. But that’s absolute loser talk. I can’t understand why someone would just roll over and give up when one candidate is promising a fascist dictatorship. Kamala Harris is a lousy candidate. Kamala Harris will not solve all our problems. But to reject a disappointing candidate and let an evil monster like Donald Trump run roughshod over all of us? It’s insane. That’s completely insane. It’s such an unjustifiable position that it’s mindboggling. Seriously, what is wrong with you? Then, to go around bleating about how we should vote third party or not vote. If you’re truly the leftist you’re purporting to be, then you’re hurting more than you’re helping. We’ll never get anywhere under a Republican dictatorship. The status quo sucks, but we can still change hearts and minds. Trump will just purge us.

There are two main reasons why the Democrats fail to do much to materially improve the quality of out lives.

First off, the system is kinda rigged against them. The Senate is a prime example of this. There are more red states than blue states, and as such, it’s hell trying to get a majority in that chamber to get judges in and the like. So people like Manchin, who hail from ruby red states and are the absolute best you can get out of them, hold the party hostage. The House really needs to be uncapped as well. When land has more representation than people, you’re going to have a bad time. The Democrats have won nearly every popular election in the past 30 years, and yet due to our stupid electoral college system, the Reps got Bush and Trump in. Then they managed to nominate five Supreme Court justices between them, and as we’re seeing right now, they’re now trying to bring the country back to the 1800s. Furthermore, Republicans chose to start fighting dirty(by effectively handing a disputed election to Bush, and McConnell screwing Obama out of a Supreme Court pick by saying it’s too close to the election, then ramming through Trump’s pick even closer to the next election). Democrats still stuck to the ideal of decorum for far too long and it’s really bit them in the ass.

The second reason is that voters in the U.S. tend to vote against their best interest due to propaganda and poor civics education. It cannot be understated just how much damage the Cold War did to this country. The authoritarian and totalitarian nature of the USSR and PRC made it easy to demonize them, and by conflating communism and socialism with these dictatorships, it poisoned the chalice for left wing politics. Given that the U.S. was the one main participant in WWII to not be terribly affected about it, it allowed the country to become an economic superpower. People were doing pretty well(if they were white men, anyway), and so they really started to embrace capitalism. A nasty recession in the 1970s led to Carter’s ouster in favor of Reagan, and Reagan completely dismantled the New Deal, which is the primary cause of our problems now. Of course, voters didn’t realize that their way of life was being gutted, they saw the stock market exploding, and so comparatively left wing Democrats like Mondale and Dukakis absolutely got their clock cleaned. The Democrats had to move to the “center” with Clinton. There was no choice; the voters had turned way to the right and the collapse of the USSR wasn’t helping. Clinton did win, however, this is the point where the Republicans started going for the throat. Rush Limbaugh was screeching poison on the AM airwaves, Fox News launched with the singular goal of being a propaganda channel for the right, and Newt Gingrich kicked off this era of Republican politicians going for victory at all costs. So, basically, while Democrats are more popular than Republicans in general, that doesn’t mean progressive politics are popular. Even among Democratic voters, more people would support Biden than Bernie. It pains me to say that, but it’s true.

So, basically, the way this country is set up, Republicans have more power than they otherwise should, given their lack of popularity. This allows them to stonewall progress(and even roll it back, as the SCOTUS has done). People genuinely think here that liberalism is a left wing ideology, so a milquetoast conservative Democrat like Biden is the furthest left many here will vote for. Actual leftism here is dead. Add in Citizens United and all the misinformation from Russia and China trying to get a Trump victory, and now we’re in a position where Harris might lose to Donald Fucking Trump. It’s a fucking outrage, to be honest. The absolute last fucking thing we need is for the Republicans to take power again. The country has been primed for fascism, and the Republicans have been putting the pieces in place for permanent minority rule. They must be stopped, even if that means voting for a party that doesn’t inspire much confidence.

The book has actually been out for a few years… this article was written in 2021. I’m not really sure why it was posted now.

sure, yeah, maybe you’ll end up about the same if trump gets in. However, as someone who would be made to massively suffer under a second Trump term, I’m sick and tired of seeing people not treat this election with the gravity that it merits. If you’re anything other than a cis white Christian male, Trump Part II is going to be a nightmare(and, to be fair though those cis white Christian males may not be aware of this, but they aren’t exactly going to have the best time of it either, especially if they’re not rich).

Yes, I agree, the Democratic party sucks and does little to actually help us. But, THERE ARE TWO, AND ONLY TWO OPTIONS UNDER OUR CURRENT SYSTEM. A Green Party vote accomplishes nothing, for they’re never going to be in enough numbers that anyone actually notices. Most people stuck voting in this stupid first-past-the-post system understand that a protest vote in a general election only serves to benefit the party further from your actual beliefs. Therefore, third parties are an utter and complete waste of time, and those voting for them were taken for fools. Not voting simply sends the message that you can be safely ignored. The time for protest votes and voting your conscience is the primaries.

Part of being an adult is having to make difficult and unsavory choices. I don’t like Harris much. I don’t like how the country is completely captured by corporate interests. However, Trump is so completely unacceptable in so many ways that not making the crappy choice to strategically vote against him is both monumentally stupid and, quite frankly, a slap in the face to every minority and every woman who stands to go through hell if that monster comes back. That’s the hand that we have been dealt. If too many people fuck around when fascism comes knocking, I’ll be one of the first to find out, though everyone will, eventually.

Yeah, I had to dig to find an actual article about this. I’m not about to start sharing tweets.

This is why I never really understand when people go “Just use Linux!!”. It isn’t a feasible option for everyone. For me, I work full time and I don’t have the energy to constantly fix things if they break. When I switched to Linux, I took great pains to ensure that my computer use case is one that could work in Linux, built a computer with parts known to be fine in Linux(including an AMD graphics card) and run Debian Stable on because I wanted something that wouldn’t be constantly updating. I’m in a comfy situation now, but I did a lot of planning beforehand that you can’t really expect people to do. Like, it’s great if we get more people using Linux, but that’s not a trivial ask.

Yeah, as soon as I saw the word “satellite”, I knew it was a nothingburger. If a submarine is on the surface, it isn’t trying to hide. If it’s submerged, it’s impossible for a satellite to detect it. You’d need sonar to pick it up.