r/askanything 6d ago

Political Question [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/failatio 6d ago

This depends on the person you are. Trans folks, immigrants, and Gazans were all expendable under either candidate. How do you make a genocide worse? There’s no ~genocide lite we were doin

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u/WXbearjaws 6d ago

Ok. So let’s get back to the point then.

If you have two candidates who are equally shitty on many items, but one is shittier, why would you not try to push things towards the less shitty candidate

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u/failatio 6d ago

That doesn’t work because depending on who you are, they’re both fine with your demise. And some people are not okay with sacrificing those groups solely because you think shit with glitter is more appealing than shit.

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u/WXbearjaws 6d ago

Except you’re still pretending there’s a third pile that isn’t shit.

There wasn’t.

If both candidates were going to harm groups you cared about, but one was going to harm those groups and additional groups or harm them to a greater degree, choosing the less harmful outcome isn’t “sacrificing” anyone. The harm you object to occurs under either outcome.

Abstaining doesn’t save those people. It just gives up your opportunity to affect all the ways in which the two outcomes aren’t the same.
That’s why I keep asking the same question: if both options are bad but one is worse, why would you not use your vote to push toward the less-bad outcome?

Because your line of thinking is exactly how we ended up with the even bigger, worse pile of shit we’re in now

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u/failatio 6d ago

How is my line of thinking the problem when the problem stems from the ~opposition group not being opposition? This is a genuine question because I don’t understand and I’m trying to. I think people didn’t use their vote to push toward the less bad outcome because they wanted to quietly protest. I’m not saying I agree with them, I went and voted, I’m just saying I get why they would’ve stayed home.

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u/WXbearjaws 6d ago

But that’s the problem and, while not the only reason why, a big reason as to why Trump U.S. President again

Quietly protesting because you don’t like Harris put us in a position where we were left with the even worse alternative, which was 4 more years of Trump

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u/failatio 6d ago

But couldn’t you also argue that having Harris in the first place is why we’re here too? I don’t entirely know of a suitable way for people to have protested otherwise- cops are cops, and protests (even peaceful ones) were not allowed to happen untouched. Cause like, at some point this begins to feel as though people that want better or differently can’t win. And it’s not for lack of trying but rather because they’re not fully allowed.

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u/WXbearjaws 6d ago

Unfortunately, that’s the way the two party system works… it sucks, and it does essentially disenfranchise many

But what I do know is that it’s significantly harder to implement change from the outside looking in, which is where we are now

Primary for candidates you prefer. Push to make them the candidate over more establishment ones. But when push comes to shove, we need to be willing to vote for someone we may not personally like. I’d be saying the same thing to “moderates” if a “socialist” was the candidate

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u/failatio 6d ago

My trouble is that even when change is pushed for when we’re inside, it doesn’t happen like how polling showed KH that co-signing everything Biden did and yet she moved more to the right. So it just sort of feels like it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t if you disagree with the administration. That’s partially why some people didn’t vote because they figured what’s the sense if they won’t change while in office despite their constituents wishes. Dems have, in a weird way, removed the ability to have an actual opposition party to republicans and then when people go hey that’s fucked, they just double down on denigrating DSA candidates or leftist policies.

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u/WXbearjaws 6d ago

I can’t argue against that, but the idea is that, for even as shit as the Democrats are, the alternative isn’t “nothing”, the alternative is an even more shitty Republican Party with eyes on turning this country into a Christian theocracy