rule
rule
FAQ
Q: why not organize and stop treating the bus as a legitimate entity? why aren’t you working to stop the bus?
A: do both. cut the fuel line. break windows. put oatmeal in the gas tank. but maybe your efforts don’t succeed this election cycle. and if so don’t fucking throw away your vote if it can help your neighbors fucking survive. “harm reduction” is not a political strategy for action. it is a last minute, end of the line decision to save lives, after all other resources have been exhausted.
My favorite morons ITT:
”Both options are cliffs!”
Yeah because the guy promising to end democracy and bring about Christian nationalism is exactly the same as the moderate we have now. I hope you’re getting paid to be that stupid.
”I won’t vote to support genocide!”
At the end of the day someone becomes president, and spoiler alert the other option is still worse. It’s cute you think your principles are more important than the safety and security of at-risk groups domestically (and frankly abroad as well). Short-sighted and idiotic.
”We might not even get ice cream!”
Okay well organize and protest that after we’ve avoided the cliff.
”Haha Americans are stupid for the entrenched political system that they find themselves in”
Hope you enjoy your five minutes of smugness, because a Christian nationalist USA doesn’t benefit anyone in the world in the long run.
This analogy is so absurd. Like if you have a vote on driving off a cliff, the answer is not to treat the vote as legitimate. The answer is to attempt to stop the bus by any means necessary. Pry open the engine panel and chuck a wrench in the gears, cut the fuel line, break the shifter lever, anything, just get off the fucking bus. Neither driver should be trusted.
EDIT: I am sick of hearing "WHY WON'T YOU VOTE THO"
First of all, I already said this:
The only reason to vote for the less-immediate cliff driver is to give you more time to stop the bus.
That's the other problem with this post: the non-voter is a strawman. Most people with real critiques of the bus vote too because they understand this. Voting barely matters for the most part but you may as well do it. Most people yelling about "don't vote it's pointless" are like 15 years old doing baby's first radical politics.
I just don't understand why every time we criticise the bus we have to deal with loads of people yelling about why we don't take the voting more seriously, as if who we vote for is the bigger issue than the fact that we're stuck on a careening death machine with a bunch of people calmly debating how fast we should all die.
If I have to read one more both sides are terrible "take" that encourages voter apathy I'm going to lose my mind. Vote, people I don't care who you vote for but you have to vote because apathy is how we get fascism.
Do something rather than just throwing a piss fit and encouraging others to do nothing.
This is a long established problem with FPTP voting (FPTP = First Past The Post: One voter = one vote). You don't really get to vote for your choice candidate, rather you vote against the worst of the two popular candidates by voting for the other guy.
Now there are plenty of election reform solutions, but in the US, both parties are weakened by the people having more choice, so neither party is willing to back amendments to the Constitution of the United States that would install a more public serving voting system.
This also means, according to CIA analysts who have studied nations on the brink and how they can avoid civil war, the US is very likely to see a civil war in its near future (next decade). But then we're also likely to see elections neutered anyway, so that the Republican party controls all elected positions (and appointed ones after that). And then local genocides can get underway.
So yes, if you're voting to make a point (other than you want the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 to play out or want to delay it for a while) the point won't be heard. In fact, the Republicans and their foreign national propaganda machine supporters are probably very glad you're willing to withhold blue votes to make a point. It won't make that point, but they're glad for you for trying.
Liberalism is driving off a cliff and killing everyone because a third of people voted to do it.
There are 9 people on the bus. Five people vote to get shit burgers even though no one wants that, just because they think it will save them from the 3 people who vote to drive off the cliff. One person obstains. Two of the three people hijack the bus and drive off the cliff. Four of the five people blame the person who obstained as they drive off the cliff.
Fascists don't care if they win or lose. Voting can't save you once you've reached this point. You don't have slightly high blood pressure that you can treat by eating right. You have cancer. You fight the cancer with everything you have or you die.
And not-voting doesn't mean the bus stays put.
It's going somewhere.
A dilemma doesn't go away just because you don't like the options.
I'm pretty sure they left the Electoral College out of this hypothetical scenario. Because the reality is, no matter how the general population votes, the Electoral College makes the ultimate decision. So the electoral College mightve decided to go for ice cream even though most people wanted to go off a cliff or didn't care at all.
And even more realistic, the only two options would have been 1) going off a cliff or 2) exploding into flames. because those are fair analogies for the options we have for US president these days.
And that's why so many people don't want to vote. I don't want to go off a cliff or burst into flames. No. I don't want either of those things.
Nah, it’s the difference between a grassy cliff, and a muddy one. Doesn’t matter, still a fucking cliff.
To extrapolate your metaphor, I will vote, but for a third option: a dirt road. Yea I’ll be in the minority, but we are all good as dead anyway since everyone else including my state reps believe one cliff or the other is the path to Valhalla.
What kills me are the people whose preferred form of government is not currently the most popular form of government somehow think that after a revolution that their preferred form of government will win out. They're delusional. In most cases the government gets worse, much worse, before it gets better.
I'm surprised an instance like this is okay with people showing up and arguing why letting a transphobic fascist take power is actually not as bad as it sounds.
I will not be voting for anyone who supports a genocide. That will not change. Now there are two ways to change the outcome.
- If you are a genocide supporter who wants to be elected, you could stop supporting genocide, and be vocal about it.
- If you are someone who wants me to vote for your candidate, you could demand that they stop supporting genocide. Or demand that whatever party you like stops nominating people who support genocide.
I will not budge. Will you?
People need to lower their expectations about what voting is. It's like paying your taxes. It's not fun, you probably won't get what you want, and you have to do it every year. Also, individual votes don't really matter, especially if your candidate loses. And there's a ton of things in the way of getting things done so it's going to take a long time.
This is a good metaphor on voting. You are not the driver, you are a passenger. Your choices cannot change the route.
I love all the any means necessary people, like just vote for 5 seconds and get the damned ice cream. You don’t need to sabotage the bus, just act civilly inside the bus
I'm a fan of harm reduction. There might still be harm, but it's more limited than it was previously.
It's not the whole solution and always needs further actions at the end of the day, but it's movement in the right direction.
Far better than just coasting along waiting for things to get worse.
Problem. Harm reduction voting requires at least one good faith candidate.
Right now we have choice between the scenic route to go off the cliff and the express route. Electoral boycotts are effective once they reach critical mass. Telling everyone they need to vote harm reduction without a good faith candidate is just suppressing the natural tendency of a democracy to flush a bad set of leaders.
We could also use a general strike but they'll just order us back to work and call it a union victory.
counterpoint, its not either or. this is a false dichotomy the democrats created and maintain as a rhetorical device to silence dissent. i will never vote for joe biden. ill vote for.., a couple of democrats down ballot. and that is the extent of my interaction with the legitimate systems of democracy in the US. if you dont live in a swing state, the presidential race is, effectively, not real for you. this is a basic tenant of "american electoral politics" , or as I like to call it, a tenant of US Authoritarianism
Except they are on a train and the tracks only lead off the cliff
Millions of people on the bus. Some vote to drive to place A. Some want to drive to place B. Neither is the cliff. But both A voters and B voters are using the bus-cliff false analogy to manipulate people to vote for their option.
In reality the chance that your vote would even affect the result is nearly zero.
The most convincing argument I've heard for voting third party instead of for Genocide Joe is that liberals were more politically engaged and had more of an activist mentality under Trump.
Also, I've given consideration to the idea that "vote blue no matter who" types would likely vote for a more leftist Democrat than the ones currently being offered. In a long term strategy, if leftists refuse to vote for Democratic candidates who are too far right, then the Democrats would have to either try to appeal to the Trump demographic (which they do unfortunately do), or appeal to the leftist demographic until they get the leftist votes back.
Why do we always assume the ones who don't vote aren't going to vote to run us off the cliff?
My frustration with the get out and vote push is that there is always this weird assumption that the ones who aren't voting are some how going to magically push things into the "right" direction. What if we are all better off if they don't vote?
I am not against voting, but the metaphor is really wrong and it doesn't communicate how voting changes almost nothing.
The problem is that Hilary supported Trump in pied piper strategy to have an easier person to run against. This means that you are doing exactly what they want you to do and they are protecting Trump because they need him to be the other candidate so you are forced to support ice cream made of genocide.
Democrats are terrorists now, that hold the entire country hostage and demand murder of civilians in Gaza for their financial gain. We don't have democracy either way, we will have genocide, wars and poverty either way. There really isn't that big of a difference, because they support each other so they can win against us, the people. They are the same team, funded by same people, running on same campaigns, running the same narrative of lesser evil vs evil, while actually working together.
Their next move is for democrats to support same policies that republicans do now, and fund even more extreme republicans so that can be their candidate. The strategy clearly works. Whatever you are voting against this elections, you will be forced to vote for the next.
This argument (to me at least) assumes that the other 4 non-voters would have all voted for ice cream which, by just using basic logic, is false. If 3 out of 5 have already voted to drive off a cliff, one has to assume that at least 2 of the remaining 4 would also vote to drive off a cliff. Now this argument is back to square one... How do we find a solution which doesn't give 'driving off a cliff' as an option in the first place?
The problem is one of the three cliff votes is the driver.
Sounds like a post by a snowflake ice cream eater