this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Y'all think the trolley problem is a silly cartoon, huh.
The adults in the room like you rely on complicated concepts, like philosophical problems that they interpret shallowly and put in meme format
Meanwhile us goofballs actually see a horizon beyond alternating which boot will stomp on us for the rest of eternity.
If you could actually fucking do that, I would welcome it with open arms.
In the meantime: this is the hole we are in. Act accordingly.
And this is why Americans are still in their hole.
americans are not aware that they're in a hole until the boot steps on their neck one too many times.
the meantime seems permanent right now because of takes like this.
it's easy to understand to understand where you're coming from because i use believe in the same thing; but age and experienced has prodded me learn that we're in this hole because a HUGE majority people don't bother to read.
my own experience tells me that you're at least vaguely aware that history repeats itself and the people of the past wrote down what worked and what didn't work at the cost of their lives in their own efforts at making things better; just like what you and beshear are probably trying to do. (if you've done the homework, you would already know that it's not going to work like it hasn't worked over the last 150+ years).
things are not going to get better until we start educating ourselves on why we're in this hole and "acting accordingly" only keeps us down like crabs in a bucket.
The meantime seems permanent because "more evil" keeps winning, when decent people stay home. No individual's attitude toward a system is responsible for that system. Someone will win every election. Someone will take office. Letting the greater evil win over the lesser evil is always a fucking terrible decision, no matter how much of an asshole the lesser evil is.
Examine your own condescending 'I was like you once' memory palace, and ask how often people have gone 'we're gonna withhold our vote, and then they'll all do what we say!' Has that ever worked? Has that worked, even once, in all of human history? Because my experience is chock-full of high-minded nobodies rejecting flawed opposition to absolute monsters. It didn't give us better opposition. It gave us unchallenged monsters.
Voting doesn't magically stop you from doing anything else. It is not somehow holding back whatever high-minded solution I'm sure you're busy with. None of us are stopping you, by pointing out: everyone who voted for this asshole kept an even bigger asshole out of power.
Simply scoffing that it shouldn't work that way is insufficient to change that it does.
i'm aware that it comes across as condescension, but i can assure you that it's no more, nor less condescending than your own comment:
i shared my "i was like you once" memory because i can see that your views comes from the same propagandized ignorance that my mine did and i thought it might help; i used to say the same things you just did.
i've since learned that the poor voter turn out is a symptom our voting system; not a principled stance to withhold votes. harris lost because disaffected democrats have lost faith in the system; not because leftist withheld suppor. even if ALL of the leftists in this country had voted for harris, she still would have lost; there aren't enough leftists in this country to make up for the number of liberals that she lost during the election because of the democrats shift towards conservatism. (they will continue to lose as they keep going right wards).
people stop voting once they realize that democrats aren't going to shit to help after the boot has stomped on their necks one too many times and don't know what to do about it; so they just stay home on election day (that's why the marginalized don't vote as much as everyone else) and this punch-left-mentality helps ensure that they will never know what to do about it.
that greater evil you were referring to will keep wining so long as we don't bother to learn from the people who came before us.
No matter how justified you think that rhetorical device is - it does not fucking work. It's always insulting. And as an effortless all-purpose grasp to delegitimize whoever you say it to, it's been used to push total bullshit, more often than it's been right. Find something else to say.
Pointing out dilemmas are real is not the same thing.
The people who came before me proudly said they'd skip this election, 'and then everyone will oh no it went wrong somehow.' I don't recall specifying that these people were leftists. Thank you for underlining how a wide variety of people made this stupid decision. Do you think all of them doing it makes it less stupid?
no more stupid than racking up election failures due to willfully ignoring the reasons for those failures and expecting things to change despite doing the same thing over and over again.
like abolition and suffrage it's going to take generations for things in this country to get better so long as opinions like yours are popular and; also just like back then; it will be despite the liberals.
What, "don't elect fascists?" "Less evil is better, actually?" "For the love of god, at least vote?"
Y'all are having a conversation that's two-thirds making up what you pretend I must think. I'm glad it's going well for you. I'm not sure my participation was necessary.
everyone who disagrees with you is wrong; therefore they must drop their silly principals and fall in line because things are getting worse.
leftists are highly engaged and vote, we're the 3rd party people; that's why the vote counts are always just as reliable as the republicans.
democrats are the ones tanked democrats when they didn't show up to vote, so they're your people; why not ask them?
this is not snark: i'm serious about this; digging into this is the reason why i'm not longer a democrat (i also know that i can't sway you w stats, so this is the only way).
i experience the same thing when i make unpopular comments in the diet reddit instances like .world.
social media tribalism is a FASCINATING phenomenon. in the future there will be two lemmy's, one with its original instances as it is now and another one with the diet reddit instances (assuming that they can figure out how to get more non-leftist content & community that can compete w bluesky, reddit, or twitter).
Lemmy was overflowing with leftists telling people not to vote, even when the alternative is naked fascism.
Asking people to please for the love of god stop saying that is not some 'just because you disagreeeee' situation.
And that absolves you, when you unironically write shit like "everyone who disagrees with you is wrong; therefore they must drop their silly principals?"
I am pulling the chute on this thread. Good day.
The Democrats were also offering naked fascism
Yeah sure buddy, Biden also wants to round up ten million people, citizenship be damned. He's such a power-crazed dictator that he dropped out five months ago.
Never let reality get in the way of parroting "both sides!"
Biden has been spending his final months in power building migrant detention camps to hand off to Trump. The biggest policy of his administration has been an actual all out genocide.
Decent people stay at home because they recognize they're only choosing which person they want to sign the bills that corporations write. Insisting they're at fault for not voting and staying inactive the next 4 years is the shit that got you here, maybe blame yourself for not organizing and putting down those who do as part of the problem.
So your solution to getting out of the hole is to pretend like the hole is inescapable until someone else does the work? Isn't that kind of cowardly?
You're having a fascinating conversation that doesn't seem to involve what I actually write.
You said:
AKA "I'm acting like this reality is inescapable"
And also:
AKA "I'd love it if someone were to do the work for me"
Right, because "in the meantime" means for-ev-errrr. Acknowledging that shit sucks means I want it to suck eternally.
And pointing out that your grand vision hasn't happened yet means it's my fault.
When do you plan on actually contributing to an alternative?
Seriously, what concrete things need to happen before you're like "a better world is worth taking risks for"?
Okay, so are you not able to or not willing to answer the question of "what has to happen for you to start giving a shit?"