this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Democracy is when a leader is allowed to facilitate genocide and then threaten his voterbase by saying his opponent is worse and will do the same thing.
Harm reduction candidate is the Blue MAGA.
But... It's demonstrably true that red MAGA will be worse soo... Got an actual alternative before November? No? Ok.
Neither candidate will fundamentally change anything. The US has always been an unsustainable broken oligarchy based on robbing others.
This is just the consequences of such a system, a slow painful decline.
Unless you have a particular arrangement of reproductive organs. Or if you love someone who does.
Or if you have particular melanin expressing genes.
Or if you don't subscribe to a certain deity.
Or if you think your fellow workers should organize to oppose certain practices of your employer.
Or if you have certain medical concerns.
Or if you have certain precarious housing arrangements.
Biden never passed a federal abortion law and let Roe V Wade get overturned with little to no worthwhile response.
The Biden admin consistently refuses to tackle problems with a focus on racial justice. Private prisons, migrant camps, oil pipelines on indigenous land all have flourished under Biden.
Butcher Biden is supporting a genocide on Palestinians for the crime of not being the right type of Jewish. Genocide Joe also does nothing to squash the extremist evangelicial movement, many of whom are in congress or state positions.
US labor laws have always been heavily biased against the workers. Again it was Biden admin who broke the strike of railworkers recently and milquetoast concessions. It was only the hard work of independent unions that workers managed to get concessions.
Socialism was made an evil ideology by congress. There is no universal public healthcare program nor price regulation of pharamseuticals. Narcotraficking remains a constant threat to people's lives.
Biden has done virtually nothing for unhoused people and has instead pushed for bigger police budgets which are a greater threat to exacerbating homelessness than ending it.
Nice little poem which proves my point completely.
Unlike in functioning and prosperous nations like China with their superior socialist economic model and marxist foundations, the USA will continue to decline and terrorize its citizens as well as other nations abroad.
There was no democracy at any point in US history.
Not arguing against that, just pointing out that like it or not, for now that's the one choice that we have, so concede loss today to fight tomorrow versus surrendering in which tomorrow will never come
I have two alternatives. Cornel West and Jill Stein. I can't believe I can actually vote for Cornel fucking West this year. At least, if he gets on enough state ballots.
Voting third party is splitting the vote. Give me ranked choice voting and I'll never make a Neo-lib one of my top choices. But, until then, it's functionally a binary choice. And right-wingers toe the line, and their line is literal fascism. Easy choice. Shitty, but easy.
No, their platforms are vastly different. You could argue that Jill Stein and Cornel West are splitting each other's votes, because they are very similar, but they are both worlds apart from Genocide Joe and Orange Hitler.
The mathematics of First Past the Post elections drastically disincentivizes third parties, to the point of irrelevance. The winner will be one of the top two choices, so the only rational strategy (primarily in swing states, because of the fuckery that is the Electoral College) is voting against the worse of those two option.
Which is to say: when looking at third party options, would those voters be more likely to vote for the worst of the two main options, or the second worst of the two main options? Those are the only two candidates from which splitting votes is pragmatically relevant.
The evidence suggests to me that Orange Hitler is worse than Genocide Joe, since Orange Hitler would likely enable at least the same amount, if not more, Palestinian genocide; while also actively engaging in Ukrainian genocide; while also enabling Project 2025, which fundamentally threatens the thin veneer of democracy the US does have. I am not an accelerationist, I do not think that the probability of revolution it offers is high enough to counteract the probability of descending into fascism.
If you live in a deep red/blue state, then sure, vote third party so they get more visibility and funding, and encourage others in your state to do the same. But otherwise, vote for the second worst of the two main options, and don't encourage those in swing states to vote third party.
The alternative to harm reduction is... harm increase? Democrats being terrible and Republicans being substantially worse are not mutually exclusive facts. The election is FPTP, lesser evil is always the only rational choice.
Absolutely do everything in your power to facilitate tasteful alternatives between elections, but on election day anything other than voting for the lesser evil is tacit approval of the greater evil. Yeah, it's a shitty hostage situation, but the alternative is "Fuck the hostages".