kingofthenothing ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) - 2024-07-10
It's depressing how many people simply don't vote at all.
The fuck.
I mean I get the feeling, on some level. It feels like you're voting on which switch they're going to beat you with.
I would like to argue that even with such a vote, participation is still pretty crucial.
|
ashtar. - 2024-07-10 counterpoint: voting is gay, nerd.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-10 >>>I mean I get the feeling, on some level. It feels like you're voting on which switch they're going to beat you with.
Thanks for the the pep talk, coach!
|
Quad9Damage - 2024-07-11 Well, we have reached a point where telling people who you voted for might get you beaten.
So get out and vote and don't tell people who you voted for.
|
Jeriko-1 ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) - 2024-07-10
See... Thing is...
One of these candidates is planning on putting people like me in a fucking camp for being LGBT. You could consider it 'selfish self interest' but I am going to be voting for the guy that doesn't put me in a death camp to be tortured to death. I'm funny like that.
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-10 Nobody is putting you in camps. Nobody is suggesting that you should be put in a camp. This is just some scenario that you invented in your head to justify how you plan to mobilize in support of the greatest crime against humanity to occur in your lifetime.
While you fantasize about bravely resisting fascists that consider you to be such a threat that they would spend time and resources eradicating you (which is laughable by itself) **the politicians that you plan to support** are actually eradicating a oppressed and marginalized population. That's something that is actually happening in reality. And you are enabling it with the only influence you have over it.
|
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-10 Yes and you should not vote for either of them. You should vote for Jill Stein, because the Green Party getting to 5% would genuinely be the biggest victory for left politics in America in 50 years. It would change the game completely, and force the Democrats to court votes to the left of Reagan.
|
ashtar. - 2024-07-10 Hey, listen buddy, if you don't endorse the genocide that means you want the genocide to get worse.
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-10 Yes you should vote for Biden because what Biden is doing is wrong but Trump would do it even wronger. We'll just ignore how Trump didn't start any new wars while he was president and we'll also ignore how every member of Democratic Party leadership identifies as a zionist in July of the year 2024, and everybody is just OK with that I guess.
|
teethsalad - 2024-07-10 thanks for another round of reactionary dipshit madlibs guys
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-10 A reactionary in this context would be a proud Biden voter. "We must return to the previous status quo" is literally what you are selling.
|
ashtar. - 2024-07-10 Remember when Trump bragged about committing sexual assault on tape and democrats were aghast that people could still vote for him? Like, even if you hated the other guy, how could you endorse that?
Israel has bombed four UN schools in the last four days; the weapons and funding were supplied by the US. I am genuinely amazed at how many people are able to justify supporting this. This kind of thinking isn't a bulwark against fascism; it is a very important way in which consent is manufactured for the worst crimes it is possible to commit.
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-10 Credible, respectable sources are putting the death toll at approaching 200k people.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-673 6(24)01169-3/fulltext
But yeah we definitely have to co-sign this because of the "lgbt death camps" that Trump is going to build. He's totally gonna do it this time guys! He's not just gonna do a tax cut and then play golf, and probably die in office! He's gonna totally build a ton of death camps for dudes that wear dresses because they are such a threat to him and Republican leadership! because they totally care about something other than having more money. This is something that adults tell each other.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 >>>l also ignore how every member of Democratic Party leadership identifies as a zionist in July of the year 2024,
*Citation needed.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 >>>But yeah we definitely have to co-sign this because of the "lgbt death camps" that Trump is going to build. He's totally gonna do it this time guys! He's not just gonna do a tax cut and then play golf, and probably die in office! He's gonna totally build a ton of death camps for dudes that wear dresses because they are such a threat to him and Republican leadership! because they totally care about something other than having more money. This is something that adults tell each other.
You see, all of this ambiguity starts to come into focus when you replace "death camp" with "work camp".
American corporations are bully on using prisoners for slave labir, so repubicans are going to be bully. on prisoners.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 Crackersmack's ignorance of Prioject 2025 is pretty clear. Project 2025 is very much built around Trump not having to do a lot of work read a lot of briefs, or attand a lot of meetings to increase his power. Luckily, Trump says he knows nothing about it.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 >>>Israel has bombed four UN schools in the last four days; the weapons and funding were supplied by the US. I am genuinely amazed at how many people are able to justify supporting this. This kind of thinking isn't a bulwark against fascism; it is a very important way in which consent is manufactured for the worst crimes it is possible to commit.
Every time you open your mouth, you sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Tell me that Trump would be better for the Palestinians. Convince me of that. Otherwise, you're just posing in fron to the mirror.. I have a 45 year old transmale son, I'm not going to sacrifice his identity if it's not going to actually mean some real benefit, and certainly not for five per cent for the fucking green party.
To be clear, I intend to actively oppose Israel after the election. It's not going to happen that the US is going to make a major change to it's alliances before an election. I just can't imagine it happening, and it hasn't happened.
>>> "We must return to the previous status quo" is literally what you are selling.
The previous status quo is this never ending discussion. A I'm not going to accept that things aren't going to get worse, because that would be RIDICULOUS! We have gone through so much that is ridiculous, and if you've been saying anything different through all that time, I do not recall it.
|
ashtar. - 2024-07-11 A. Appeals to "lesser evil" voting are consequentialist arguments. They appeal to the outcome of an action to justify it.
B. The consequence that justifies voting "lesser evil" is supposed to be changing the outcome of the election.
C. Your individual vote has a negligible chance to change the outcome of the election.
"A more optimistic estimate in the literature, which uses statistical estimate techniques based on past elections, claims that in a typical presidential election, American voters have widely varying chances of being decisive depending on which state they vote in. This model still predicts that a typical vote in a “safe” states, like California, has a vanishingly small chance of making a difference, but suggests that that a vote in very close states could have on the order of a 1 in 10 million chance of breaking a tie. (Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan 2007)" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting/
D. Therefore, because they appeal to consequences of voting and these consequences are negligible, "lesser evil" voting appeals are not convincing.
It's like a baseball game with one team of pedophiles vs one team of mass murderers. You might say "well, at least the pedos haven't killed anyone so you HAVE to root for team pedophile unless you want the mass murderers to win." But rooting for a team doesn't affect the outcome of the game. You don't have to root for either team; you definitely don't need to buy and wear the TEAM PEDO jersey.
It's just an ideological trick to get people to endorse genocide, etc. It's an essential part of how normal, decent members of the public can be made to support the worst crimes imaginable.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 Fuck you, asstard.
My entire life is coverend in Project 2025: food, shelter, education, healthcare. Forgive my arrogance, If I continue to go on living, I don't consider that to be evil at all.
I might sacrifice myself for a Greater good. So what greater good do you have to sell? Crackersmack is selling five per cent vote for for the green party, which is tempting, but I choose food and shelter. Maybe you can top that, but not with "things get worse for you AND the Palestinians"
|
ashtar. - 2024-07-11 ‘For many weeks, I considered these warnings about hygiene [‘After the latrine, before eating, wash your hands, do not forget’] as pure examples of the Teutonic sense of humour, in the style of the dialogue about the truss which we had heard on our entry into the Lager [camp]. But later I understood that their unknown authors, perhaps without realising it, were not far from some very important truths. In this place it is practically pointless to wash every day in the turbid water of the filthy washbasins for purposes of cleanliness and health; but it is most important as a symptom of remaining vitality, and necessary as an instrument of moral survival.
‘I must confess it: after only one week of prison, the instinct for cleanliness disappeared I me. I wander aimlessly around the washroom when I suddenly see Steinlauf, my friend ages almost fifty, with nude torso, scrub his neck and shoulders with little success (he has no soap) but great energy. Steinlauf sees me and greets me, and without preamble asks me severely why I do not wash. Why should I wash? Would I be better off than I am? Would I please someone more? Would I live a day, an hour longer? I would probably live a shorter time, because to wash is an effort, a waste of energy and warmth. Does not Steinlauf know that after half an hour with the coal sacks every difference between him and me will have disappeared? The more I think about it, the more washing one’s face in our condition seems a stupid feat, even frivolous: a mechanical habit, or worse, a dismal repetition of an extinct rite. We will all die, we are all about to die: if they give me ten minutes between the reveille and work, I want to dedicate them to something else, to draw into myself, to weigh up things, or merely to look at the sky and think that I am looking at it perhaps for the last time; or even to let myself live, to indulge myself in the luxury of an idle moment.
‘But Steinlauf interrupts me. He has finished washing and is now drying himself with his cloth jacket which he was holding before wrapped up between his knees [to prevent it from being stolen] and which he will soon put on. And without interrupting the operation he administered me a complete lesson.
‘It grieves me now that I have forgotten his plain, outspoken words, the words of ex-sergeant Steinlauf of the Austro-Hungarian army, Iron Cross of the ’14-’18 war. It grieves me because it means that I have to translate his uncertain Italian and is quiet manner of speaking of a good solider into my language of an incredulous man. But this was the sense, not forgotten either then or later: that precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding the form of civilisation. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last – the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.'
|
John Holmes Motherfucker ![](/images/smallstar.gif) - 2024-07-11 Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
|
Nominal - 2024-07-10
It's a lot less effort to vote than it is keep up a constant online dipshit act.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 >>>Credible, respectable sources
Nothing is credible or respectable when it's in Crackersmack's mouth.
|
ashtar. - 2024-07-11 I vote for Vermin Supreme, thus achieving both goals.
|
Binro the Heretic - 2024-07-10
So our choices are to either vote for some asshole who will definitely for sure make all the bad things even worse from day one or some other asshole who might slowly start making bad things worse after a few months.
Fuck this country.
Why does it feel like all this is the result of wishes made on a monkey's paw?
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11
>>So our choices are to either vote for some asshole who will definitely for sure make all the bad things even worse from day one or some other asshole who might slowly start making bad things worse after a few months.
No, it's not.
>>It's like a baseball game with one team of pedophiles vs one team of mass murderers.
It's very much not like that.
You think that being cynical is helping you see things clearer, but somehow it's not working.
|
Binro the Heretic - 2024-07-11 I see perfectly clearly and I'm not being cynical, I'm genuinely worried, okay?
Both parties have winnowed the voting pool down to people who view politics like a team sport.
The Democrats could turn this around by attracting the people who don't want to vote.
But they fucking won't.
They're just going to keep shifting to the right, trying to get a slight majority of that ever-rancid pool of voters.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 No no no no
The left ran Sanders, had considerable success with Sanders. They could have had clout in the Democratic Party, instead of going off screaming into the night to vote for Stein/Trump. I in ten Sanders Primary voters voted for Trump, according to exit polls.
You probably know one of these useful idiots. Im guessing they dont like to talk about it all that much.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11 I just don't believe that there isn't good out there to vote for. Like me maybe not getting prostate cancer because I could get my bladder scanned yesterday.
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-11 If Clinton had won in 2016 it would not have earned the Sanders voters any power or clout within the Democratic Party. You seem to have forgotten how smug the entire operation was, because they had it in the bag, and they didn't need us. Winning would have just reinforced that idea. Just like how Biden winning would be interpreted as a full endorsement of the genocide by the American people and proof that activists shouldn't be listened to.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-12 Yes, and I've said it before. It was Clinton's candidacy, and she is ultimately responsible for creating allies, and
I was horrified that Clinton didn't build an alliance with Sanders. after the primaries.
|
John Holmes Motherfucker - 2024-07-11
We just have to survive the .
If you know anything at all about Star Trek, you know that things get good, but first they get a lot worse. Welcome to the 21st century.
The Republicans who said no to Trump are heroes, and they deserve a chance to form a more honest incorrupt political party in the pursuit of their horrible ideals. Face it, Dan Quayle saved the nation when he took Mike Pence's call.
Trump can run against the historical record, but he can't OUTRUN the historical record
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-11 The Republicans that said no to Trump are in your party now John, and they have the same politics that they always did.
|
|
Quad9Damage ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) ![](/images/smallstar.gif) - 2024-07-12
Look, here's the thing. As much as it sucks, either candidate is going to let Israel do whatever it wants. Biden mumbles and stutters. If he wins, a bunch of hat wearing rednecks are going to commit another large scale act of violence because they think they are "doing the right thing."
If Project 2025 is enacted, it will eventually, in some way, affect you and your family personally. It will come for people you actually know and see every day, in your own smaller world, with factors you have actual control over. In fact, it's already happening in the public schools, public libraries, and the Supreme Court. The Religious Right of the 1980s is back, and it's feeling REALLY nostalgic and vengeful.
But. You know. Jews.
|
Crackersmack - 2024-07-12 Nothing in Project 2025 is any different than the Republican agenda that has existed for my entire life, and Trump has already disavowed it.
The race would be a lot closer if Biden/whoever is actually in charge did something, anything, even something symbolic, to restrict Israel.
But. You know. AIPAC money.
|
Register or login To Post a Comment |