Until Lemmy declares independence and starts holding elections, it's not politically relevant. The stuff that matters happens, you know, in real life.

My thought process was not what you say it is.

My mental model of the election dynamic is more complicated than the one you presented, so bear with me.

My thought process was:

How did we even come to the point that Trump had a shot at winning? And I remember back when we said the same thing about Bush, and about Reagan before that. And then I had a horrible thought:

What if, just like how Reagan presided over the country becoming unbelievably worse, and then Bush presided over that continuing to happen... What if Trump is only the worst thing so far? What if we all vote for an establishment dem out of fear, just as last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that.... And even if they win (as they do every so often) they don't really do what anyone wants, and America keeps becoming more and more horrible to live in, and people keep getting more desperate, education keeps getting worse, and suddenly - someone even worse than Trump is now a viable candidate?

After all, America has generally gotten nothing but worse since the 1980s. There have been some serious social wins, but they're incredibly overshadowed by economic losses. Sure gay people can get married now, but they (ans everyone else) are also far closer to being effectively enslaved than they were 40 years ago...

So with all that in mind I thought, "if only those people in the past, before the consequences were too dire, had stuck to their guns through those hard times and forced the party to really represent them next time" and I realized that, to them, at their time, it must have felt as dire as it felt now to me.

So I made a sacrifice to my own current well-being, because I was trying to lay the groundwork for a greater well-being for everyone in the future. My decision had nothing to do with punishing others, nothing to do with not giving a fuck, and its sad to me that that's the only explanation you can think of.

I want to say something like: "You lose the right to say you're against fascism, because you refused to make a short term sacrifice for future generations, you refused to look at even contemporary history, you refused... Etc"

But I won't say that, because you were trying to do the right thing too, and you just didn't see the situation the same way as me. But you wanted the same thing. And even though from my perspective, you enabled fascism, I would never dare say you're not against it just because I disagree with your methods. Try to do me the same courtesy.

the worst president in history

You know that and I know that. But dozens of millions of voting Americans are propaganda victims and do NOT know that.

The leaders we need, are ones who can reach out to at least some of those people and show them a path back to civil society.

the only people who voted for trump are the people who voted for Trump. any other vote was a vote against Trump