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The Protest Vote Paradox™
As we’ve all read time after time in the months leading up to the election, the Protest Vote™ simply states states that:
“We refuse to vote against a Tyrant-Felon in order to send a clear and concise message that we will not stand for [roll D20 for random popular single issue], and alongside our refusal to vote against the Tyrant-Felon, is a collective hope that the aforementioned clear and concise message- if ignored, is received under unmitigated duress!”
-Cut to Tyrant-Felon’s win, and the aftermath:
Wether observed or not, the behavior of the Protest Voter will attempt to achieve the following:
• Obnoxiously tell everyone “We told you all what would happen!”
• Claim there is “No way protest voting could cause trump to win.”As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true in the same reality without breaking important time-space things that we would probably prefer not be broken- we are left with only a few logical conclusions:
- Protest voters have no idea what they’re talking about.
- Protest voters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
- Protest voters have somehow learned to defy reality and become exempt from the concept of paradoxes, thus creating an entirely new study of theoretical science, known as Bulletproof Symbiotic Hypocrisy Theory, or BLsHt.
Something, something, something Ted Talk.
You forgot that they will also claim that it is the fault of the opposition to fascism party that they didn't "convince them to vote for them" even though they had already made up their mind ages before the election even started that they would never vote for the opposition to fascism party because they don't actually care about [popular single issue] or stopping fascists. They just want to feel like special little snowflakes who are part of the "revolution" and want to see the whole system destroyed and the violence that goes along with it because they're simply bored.
See the other reply for a perfect example.
What opposition? The Democrats helped pass the Laken Riley Act. Schumer is calling for bipartisanship. Biden told Trump, "Welcome Home." The only people who didn't go to the inauguration and clap like seals are AOC and Bernie Sanders, and one of them isn't even a Democrat. They're not opposition. They're collaboration.
lol. Bernie Sanders (the non-democrat) went to the inauguration hun.
Did he clap like a seal for fascists, hun?
Are you claiming he was the only one not clapping?
Pelosi, of all people, didn't even attend. So I don't know why you're trying to intentionally spread lies that Democrats are rolling out the red carpet when it's leftists who put Trump into office in the first place. In addition to handing Congress to Republicans. Not to mention are to blame for the first Trump presidency allowing him to stack the Supreme Court as well for decades effectively putting an end to abortion rights for women. Leftists should be deeply ashamed at this point. I don't know how y'all live with yourself. Oh that's right, horse-blinders and blame shifting.
No hun, I'm saying that the left are the only ones offering resistance to the fascists taking over America. You see hun, while AOC openly calls Trump a rapist and has been warning about Republican fascism for months, Pelosi claimed we needed a, "strong Republican party," and torpedoed AOC's bid for the oversight committee (in favor of an obscure geriatric who is literally dying of throat cancer). While Bernie has been warning about a rising oligarchy for years, hun, Schumer is calling for bipartisanship and allowing his members to vote for a racist immigration bill.
Also, hun, is very telling that you've sidestepped all of the substantive examplse I gave of the Democrats have enabled the flourishing fascist regime and only focused on the superficial aspects of opposing fascism. It's almost like liberals (like you, hun) can't imagine any kind of resistance other than a performative one. Isn't that funny, hun?
Lol. Your idea of resistance, hunty, is letting the fascists take power. I'd choose rational liberals over your fantasies of revolution any day hunty. Get bent, hunty.
Hun, I voted for Harris, hun. The thing is, hun, I blame the people in power, hun, for running a bad campaign, hun. It was their fucking job to win, hun, and they did a shitty job, hun. So you can piss and moan at everyone else, hun, or you can turn your anger on the powerful people that let this happen, hun.
And by the way, hun, I notice you're still not addressing the fact that Laken Riley wouldn't have passed if the so called, "fascist opposition party," hadn't let 12 of their Senators roll over and vote for it, hun. So maybe, hun, you should pull your head of of the sand and demand more from your party, hun, since you seem to think they're opposing fascism, hun.
Oh, and hun? if you think using, "hun," is, "hunty," maybe you should have said it, hun. Don't ya think, hun?
If you vote for quick genocide or slow genocide you are still voting for genocide
If you vote for the lesser evil, you are still voting for evil. I am sorry that your morals are so bankrupt that you're willing to let your own country murder hundreds of thousands of people in cold blood and not care.
Lets not rewrite history and pretend that Biden/Harris were good for Palestinians. They vetoed every single ceasefire that came up, and were the only country to do so.
They lost this election themselves by not listening to their base. The fault started and remains and ends with the establishment democratic party
If the options are evil and lesser evil, you are morally obligated to choose lesser evil. There is no neutral stance. If you didn't vote for the democrats, you strengthened the republicans. Don't call people morally bankrupt when you don't know what you're talking about. The US will regress into autocracy and people like you are partially responsible.
The thing that concerns me, is where does it stop? This is something I've been thinking about all through the election cycle, and even now. I understand the idea of voting for lesser evil. And that's exactly what I did. But when you vote for the lesser evil, you are showing your support of that evil. You are sending a message that it's an acceptable level of evil. That it's tolerable as long as the alternative is something worse. And it allows the Democrats to keep shifting further right little by little.
We already saw that with Harris campaigning on having "the most lethal military", and talking about how she's going to continue building Trump's wall. (Something Biden did, but at least wasn't campaigning on, and acting like it's a selling point). Maybe the next democratic candidate will be even more anti immigrant, but still pro lgbtqia+. So we have to vote for them over the Republican candidate. Then the next dem candidate is only pro lgb, but anti trans. Democrats were already talking about how Harris's support of trans people lost her the election. When she never even openly campaigned on any trans issues as far as I saw.
And we can elect the lesser of two evils and then protest and send a message about the issues that we don't support them on. But at the end of the day, what incentive do they have to change? What are you going to do about it? Not vote for them and get the greater evil?
Obviously voting 3rd party just splits the left leaning candidates votes and allows the right to win. But unconditional support of the democratic party seems like it just allows them to take a leisurely stroll towards the right every election. I don't have an actual answer. But the idea of continuously voting for the lesser evil as the lesser evil becomes incrementally more evil doesn't really sit well with me.
If you want them to change, run for office and become the DNC. Actually turn out and get other leftists to turn out and vote. Coalesce with democrats and prioritize defeating Republicans over screaming about how bad the DNC is so you can work internally to get your agendas passed. As it is, the energy I get from leftists is a temper tantrum throwing child who is mad their parents won't buy them crisps at the store. Screaming and yelling doesn't make mummy and daddy more likely to buy you the thing you want. It makes them want to leave you kicking and screaming on the ground while they continue their shopping.
If you want things to change you have to become the adult and enact the change yourself. The DNC is not your parent or some singular entity that you need to convince to give into your demands with your tantrums. It's a political body filled with people, mostly old people who aren't impressed with your tantrums because young people aren't engaging in politics.
You have to work your way up and replace those old people and that means running and winning local elections.
Stop being lazy and hoping someone will do it for you.
You are never morally obligated to support one evil over another. The only moral choice is stopping both evils.
And yet you didn't fucking stop anything. The only way for you to improve anything was to vote for the lesser evil. Even in a more functional democracy with proportional voting, there is always only the lesser evil. The perfect choice doesn't exist in societies as large as ours are.
Stopping the evil was never an option given, on the ballot.
The US doesn't have proportional voting, or a functioning democracy. Hasn't in a very long time, if ever.
You're not listening to me. In politics, there's rarely "stopping the evil". It's not an all or nothing situation.
You act like there is no difference in outcome whether democrats or republicans win elections. You must either be very privileged or very ignorant.
Frankly, it's political theater.
Has the economic conditions of the working class improve under Biden?
No.
Would it have improved under Harris?
No.
Even if it would have, is your personal situation improving a tiny amount worth 30k dead Palestinians?
Harris and Biden are conservatives. No the conditions didn't improve. But they sure as hell will deteriorate under Trump. Poor people, LGBT folk, women will all suffer greatly. And none of it has anything at all to do with the suffering in Palestine.
All od those groups were already suffering under Biden...
Things were already deteriorating for them.
Don't believe me? Ask them.
If my child was sick and could end up developing several different diseases, where only one just a few were preventable- I wouldn’t just do nothing and let them die because the other diseases couldn’t be cured.
When someone is sick, you do whatever it takes to reduce the damage. You don’t refuse to act because you’re not getting a prognosis of perfect health.
Ok, let's say your kid is about to be murdered.
Do you choose the murderer who smiles and you and says nice things, or the murderer who is a shitbag?
No matter what, your kid is getting murdered.
See… it’s bad comparison arguments like this that you all feed each other that has caused the overwhelming lack of understanding of what is going on to begin with.
You’ve reduced the entire thing down to only two threats and made them both equal. This is because you only see ONE issue as the source of the problem, whereas- everyone else understands that there is- was in this case…. FAR more at stake than your simplified version of events.
I gave you a realistic example that illustrated how your choice can reduce the damage and allow them to live to fight another day-
You gave an unrealistic example that let to the justification of your point. Until you learn to change your perspective and face the ugly truth that perfect is unobtainable, and compromise is a necessary tool in making informed decisions where the lives of others are effected by your decision to either act, or do nothing.
Because now, a LOT more than just Palestinians are going to be hurt.
The two threats are equal: genocide will happen, regardless of who got elected.
Either party could have chosen to stand against genocide, but neither did.
And so in protest, you threw all women, the LGBTQ+, immigrants, minorities and essentially every constitutional protection we have under the bus because justice wasn’t provided to people in a country you couldn’t have pointed to on a map a year and a half ago.
Take a bow and be proud of your work.
Dunno if you noticed, but a lot if that was happening under Biden already...
Additionally, I know full well where Palestine is... I was in the Middle East for a period, after all. The same period that showed me what happens when we stop caring about genocide.
Lmao. If you're looking for someone to blame look in the mirror honey.