The vast majority of Americans both already know how they feel about Trump and Biden and live in a solidly red or blue state. If you do want to focus on Biden, volunteer with phone banking or canvassing so that your efforts are directed to where they'll actually matter and be organized in line with their messaging. Personally, I'd say you're better off focusing on local races where you have more of an opportunity to come at it from a different angle and cut through people's fortified positions. And as another user said, focus on mobilization, it's easier to get someone who already agrees with you to register and make a plan than to convince someone to change their whole worldview.

There are also strategies outside of electoralism, such as protests and counter-protests. You can join an organization and form tactics and strategies to subvert the right's actions, and engage with direct action to build trust and community that could be important in the future. Form strategies while being realistic about your goals and capabilities and coordinate with others.

Americans are near universally convinced that third-parties are a dead end, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I've never understood it and I would've thought having two obviously non-viable candidates would challenge that assumption, but it doesn't seem like anything will. The classic Simpsons bit where both candidates get replaced by evil space aliens but still get elected because "what are you going to do, vote third party?" was not an exaggeration in the slightest. Americans just accept anything.

Again, I'm not endangering anyone. If you can't talk about this without making false claims an accusations, then we're done here.

Well, I disagree. Lesser-evilist ideology that calls for sacrificing the Palestinians today will call for sacrificing trans people tomorrow, and like you say, other LGBT people next. To accept it is to accept that I will be put on the chopping block and no one will care or do anything to stop it, and it's just a matter of time. Enforcing a red line is the only possible way to ensure long-term security. If you say it won't work, then I may die trying, but I'd rather do that than resign myself to death the other way and be complicit in my own demise. That's all there is to it. I understand the situation and I've made my decision and I'm not going to change it, unless they come to the table.

That's not a reasonable standard for what constitutes "assistance." If I see a bank robbery happening and do nothing to stop it, does that mean I assisted the robbery? Am I assisting every single thing happening in the world right now?

If you mean "not impeding" then say "not impeding." Calling that assistence is false and disingenuous.

It's possible that my strategy is a losing one. It's possible that every strategy is a losing one. This is the only possible route I see, regardless of how likely it is to succeed. Maybe we'll have more strength this time. Maybe we'll have more strength next time. All I know for sure is that "lesser evilism" doesn't work, and like I said, it cedes all my bargaining power. Maybe I don't have any bargaining power in the first place, in which case what I do is irrelevant.

Point is, I have something they want, and they have something I want, and until they sit down at the table, and respect that genocide is a red line, there will be no cooperation. End of story.

Lol moving right along from one false claim to the next.

the blood of trans people will be on your hands.

No, it will be on the hands of the people who voted for Trump, not mine.

For the record, I am trans. The only viable long term strategy for minority groups is to band together and draw a red line that the democrats cannot win without meeting, and that red line means opposing the Palestinian genocide. I believe there's a famous poem about what happens when the government starts picking people off and you do nothing, because you are not part of that group. We will be next. Your guilt tripping is meaningless to me, it will not get me to abandon my commitment to solidarity and to opposing genocide.

It’s not. It’s the natural, mathematical result of a FPTP voting system.

Incorrect. You are treating the options provided as set in stone, when they are not. Voting is a negotiation, and the party can change who it runs or how they act based on the actions of voters.

If I walk into a negotiation saying, "My only option is literally Hitler, I will vote for you no matter what," then I have sacrificed every modicum of bargaining power I might have otherwise wielded. The mathematics of the situation are irrelevant, it is a game of chicken and they will flinch before I do. It's their job to win us over, and if they can't do that, they will lose and it will be their fault.

Because even if some 3rd party magically gained prominence, either the DNC or GOP would die, and we would be right back to two parties, and your options again limited.

Except that a third party could enact voting reform to get us out of this situation permanently, something which is impossible otherwise.

Are you talking about the time communists ran the only candidate who wasn't either Hitler or the guy who appointed Hitler chancellor and the social democrats voted for the Hitler supporter to stop the communists, whose victory directly led to Hitler's rise to power?

Yeah I'd say there's some similarities between that and today.

Because Hitler invaded them. It's basically the same way Britain went from handing over Czeckoslavakia (who they were allied with) to fighting him. Nobody wanted to get involved in another World War, but Hitler forced everyone's hands.

British Prime Minister Chamberlain shaking hands with Hitler after selling out the Czechs.

This edgelord shit isn't funny.

Good to get confirmation that the whole Soulist grandstanding about "We're the only ones who actually care about trans rights" is complete bullshit. If you actually cared you wouldn't be using this as a bit. I'll be sure to remember this next time you try to pull that shit.

What are you, like 15 and testing boundaries and shit? Because that's how this comes across.

Won't stop me from trying. If a third party gains enough strength, they could at least leverage an endorsement in exchange for concessions, while at the same time challenging the belief that they're useless.

It's true that lesser-evilist ideology has a vice grip on most Americans, so it's an uphill battle. But it's an incorrect ideology, and one that's going to screw me over sooner or later, so I can't accept it. I'd rather play the longshot, unless and until the democrats are actually willing to come to the negotiating table.

And that’s how you get the spoiler effect, and another round of fascist SCOTUS appointments for the next few decades, a fascist president, project 2025, etc.

Unless enough people do it.

👍

No, because that's not true. The only thing that assists Trump getting into power is voting for Trump. Voting third party provides the exact same assistance to Trump as it does to Biden: 0.

But I'll tell you what - if not voting for someone counts as assisting them, then you can rest assured that Biden will have my assistance.

The trolley problem is a philosophy 101 thought experiment. It's not an absolute guideline for philosophy.

As a side note, even if it was, there are many people who disagree with pulling the lever, like the whole branch of Deontology, for example. It's bizarre that everyone on here assumes that everyone else on here has to be operating under the exact same moral framework, and if you disagree you're either an idiot or a Russian bot. The idea that anyone could ever draw a red line against a particular action just, you know, organically is treated as totally alien.

In real life, things are never as simple as in a philosophical thought experiment. There's incomplete information, there's multiple actors, there's long term factors affecting cause and effect. Let's look at some ways in which an individual's choice on who to vote for in an election differ from the trolley problem:

1. You don't have full control of the trolley. Instead, there are millions of other people who collectively decide which track the trolley will go down.

2. There are more than two tracks. Some of them might be unlikely to be chosen, but they still exist.

3. There are people who have engineered the situation to be the way it is, who have the ability to change it, and who can benefit depending on what choice you make.

4. The trolley problem will be repeated, over and over again, indefinitely. Depending on which track it goes down, it could influence the number of people on the tracks in the future.

5. There's uncertainty involved in everything. You don't know the exact number of people on each track, you don't know what all the other actors are going to do, you don't know how the people engineering the situation will behave, etc.

If you make the necessary changes to the hypothetical to make it actually reflect reality, it is so convoluted that it's no longer recognizable as a trolley problem and the choice becomes a lot less clear. There are plenty of Consequentialists who would agree with pulling the lever in the context of the hypothetical, because of all the constraints imposed in the hypothetical, but who would, in real life, say that you should consider every possible alternative and carefully consider the consequences before condemning one person to death to save five.

Don't derive your moral philosophy, or political philosophy, from random memes and thought experiments. Read.

Did you miss the meme? The ones where words are rearranged and spat back as lies? Take it up with OP.

If you single me out, while your friends do the exact same thing and you ignore it, it's not helping you come across as an impartial mediator.

Edit to your edit: Do you have an example of someone from Hexbear telling a trans person to kill themselves? OP didn't, that's why they made up the scenario whole cloth. Complete fabrication. Why aren't you calling this out?

You act like a complete prick around here.

Hmm, you sure I'm the one acting like a prick around here?

Lol this is a follow-up to another meme in this community. You’ve invented a narrative about something you don’t understand. Touch grass.

So sorry for your inability to discern context. I hope that gets better for you.

Literally look at the verbatim of the post you found your “context” on, you dunce.

Sounding a little bit like a prick if you ask me. And that's on top of the ones that got removed! Something something glass houses.

I told you from the start that was what it was about. Or at least, I tried to. You seem to have this tendency to assume you know where people are coming from and condescending to them rather than explaining, before you even hear what they're saying. You even did it again in this very thread!

So much of that drama could've been avoided if you'd shown basic decency and respect and talked to me like an actual human being. Then you would've seen what I was arguing ages ago. It's really a very poor style of communication.