#maybe im just an idealist ultimately but i think nothing will change unless americans at least first discard this helpless mindset

[mithliya]

Anon providing context with state ballots again. Frankly, I do not consider voting to be a “moral” thing so much as I consider it to be a pragmatic thing. Biden is absolutely horrific on Palestine and I wrote in “uncommitted” during the primary as a protest myself because of it. However, I am someone who both believes that the tiny degrees of less bad do definitely matter and based on Trump’s comments (including comments he made where he advocated for nuking Gaza) I am confident that he would be significantly worse if you can imagine it. Biden is also markedly better on labor, social policies, and the environment and as a working class millennial lesbian who will have to live on this planet for several more decades that is very significant to me. However, I think the most important thing I can say regarding this election is that I can not in good conscience drop out of the political system entirely because one of those guys is going to be in office come January unless the revolution comes before then and… honestly all of the people who are big talk about that are huge larpers so I absolutely have my doubts here. May as well be the marginally less bad one who doesn’t have explicit dictatorial aspirations.

hmm yeah i just dont know if i think theyre any different. theres some areas where i do think there may be a difference like perhaps if trump came back into power then he might outlaw gay marriage for example but i havent seen evidence of biden being better with social policies or on labour or women's rights or most things rly and i find trump's talk and biden's actions irt israel/palestine to be equally disturbing & therefore i find it hard to argue one would be significantly worse in that regard. ill repeat again bc i dont want this to be misconstrued that ultimately i am powerless to who americans vote for and what they choose to do about their country's corrupt system but i do find the american mindset around it to be disturbing especially how every election theres this pressuring of people to choose between two awful choices bc otherwise theyre ~throwing away their vote~ or ~helping [presumed worse choice] win~ and thus discouraging anything that does not further enable this system. like when people were writing in the "uncommitted" thing during the primaries there were already people arguing that u have to choose biden there bc otherwise ur giving ur vote to trump. and after seeing this cycle repeat over and over again for as long as ive been old enough to understand US politics at least to a decent enough degree (which isnt that long), it just feels exhausting as an onlooker seeing the only people who actually CAN do sth about their govt throw their hands up and say they cant do anything.