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transcriptroopers · 1 year ago

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This person's reply contributes nothing new or of value to the conversation and in fact repeatedly strawmans OP, but it's precisely because of these points that I'm choosing to respond to this banal novel of a reblog. They're very common points so hopefully someone else here will be able to use it as a learning exercise.

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I see the propaganda's already ramping up for the next US election cycle. Under all the outrage here is what amounts to an argument of "only vote for the perfect candidate" which is just one step shy of the conclusion you're left to make on your own: why bother voting? It's clearly pointless.

This is the biggest strawman of the post, right off of the gate. OP says in the original post: "instead of wasting time scolding progressives (AGAIN) when we point out extremely valid criticisms of Genocide Joe, put that fucking energy toward canvassing for a new Dem/progressive candidate." The fact that you read any criticism of the DNC's favored candidate as an urge not to vote at all or an assertion that "voting is pointless" is all on you. That's the conclusion YOU made. Reading comp 101.

Furthermore, you respond to this post by scolding progressives for pointing out valid criticisms of a genocide-enabling colonizer, (what OP explicitly said not to do) but by calling it PROPAGANDA! As a disabled veteran I'm aghast at the idea that it should be considered propaganda to ask voters to weigh their options before picking a president. Unfuckingbelievable.

I appreciate why some people are single-issue voters, but frankly that's a luxury most of us actual americans can't afford. Especially when you're arguing we should die on any hill that plays directly into Republican hands.

That's how we'll get Trump again, just like we did in 2016.

I will address your misconception regarding "luxury" in a later reply but Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. Trump won via the electoral college. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Right, the guy already spouting clear and obvious neo-nazi rhetoric; the guy (and his cronies) who've effectively promised there won't be another election after them, who see warfare on anyone and everyone as in the cards. Any ground anyone gained in the past four years will all be destroyed under the new permanent Republican authoritarian theocracy.

the implication that Biden ISN'T "already" spouting clear and obvious neo-nazi rhetoric is minimization at best. Every election liberals say "if the Republicans win this time they'll install an authoritarian theocracy!!" more on this later.

In comparison, Biden has really never has been a noisy politician.

Losing my FUCKING mind. Biden was so war-hawkish in the 80's that even fucking Reagan told him to calm down. You are ignoring 50 years of this man's political history.

If I were to rate his weaknesses, the worst has got to be that he's achieved incredible cross-partisan victories in the US' polarized environment, but he's never thrown a parade about any of it. (Unlike the opposition, who do it even when they lost, even when it was actually a Dem-driven win.)

You... You can't name any other of Biden's weaknesses, huh? Notaone, huh?

I think it's not that you can't, (since his political career is very public) but I think because you know that acknowledging his past would mean potentially losing him voters, and at the end of the day that's your only goal. Not truth or a fair democracy. You are literally incapable of thinking about politics except in an us vs them mentality. You cannot even discuss politics without talking talking about incoherent "wins" and "the opposition" like this is a sportsball tournament. This is why you are not able to actually talk to leftists about politics so you have to talk down to them.

In four years, Biden's achieved important legislation for marginalized people, women, queer communities, and working-class folk.

-holding you by your shoulders- listen to me. Whatever little smoke and mirrors political illusions are going on right now that are somehow convincing you of otherwise, women, queer communities, and working class folks are not being helped by this government. They never have and never will be. Justice for the marginalized cannot come at the hands of an imperialist state, a settler-colonial entity that only exists to prop itself up even if it has to sacrifice its citizens. Occasionally throwing us marginalized folks a bone by graciously allowing to suffer less is a trick to keep us loyal. Our shitty tyrant boss keeps throwing us a pizza party and we keep buying it. "Stop caring about these other issues because we might get ours first." No. I won't.

Being a person of numerous marginalized identities, the fact that my life may (and that's a big may) be marginally improved as long as I keep a genocidal party in power is not acceptable to me under any conditions. If you are okay that others die so that you get yours, if you view that as harm reduction or progress, you are part of the problem.

Maybe you're only in one category, or several, or none, but that doesn't make those wins any less important for the many, many Americans he helped. And the complaint that since you weren't helped for one specific issue, that you'll freely disregard all the other people who were helped? That strikes me as having the flavor of a selfish Republican-style whine. For all that, fine, I concede this much: Biden will never be perfect -- just like every single goddamn president before him.

Because you can only see things in terms of Republicans versus Democrats, you may be unaware of what leftists see you as. We see you as complicit in settler-colonial culture. What you call "a selfish Republican-style whine," I see as standing up the implicit white supremacy in American culture. Aside from enabling a genocide, Biden's policies actively harm BIPOC. He has deported more people than Trump. He is okaying oil pipelines. He is allowing anti-Islamophobic legislature to pass. Any microscopic gains we have are dwarfed by his material policy, which is to uphold a white settler-colonial state. So, from my perspective, you are completely disregarding the many people who are not and will not be helped as long as you yourself benefit. It is only harm reduction to the privileged.

Voting isn't a marriage, it's a bus ride. Smart money says choose the bus that can get us closest to where we want to go. Getting halfway there is still always better than a bus that will carry us all straight into a living totalitarian hell.

We already live in a totalitarian hell, to say otherwise is to minimize our reality. To say "but it'll be worse under Trump!" minimizes reality. I think it's pretty apathetic to say "well we've only got two options and none of them are what we want" and to just accept that rather than do literally anything that might improve your situation, and then to fight and ridicule anyone who might suggest otherwise.

On top of all that, Biden is one guy. Like, literally ONE GUY. No president will ever be your messiah. Meanwhile, each american citizen has a mayor and local representatives, state-based representatives and senators, and Federal representatives and senators. And that's not counting the various cabinet members and advisors, at local, state, and Federal levels.

See, here, this is pretty much what the fascist does to the enemy. To the fascist, the enemy is simultaneously all powerful (a threat that must be eliminated) and completely ineffective (because our own guy is the best!!).

If Trump became president, hoo boy!! President is so important, it's such a big important role, we can't let him have it! Theoracy authoritarian incoming!!

But if Biden is president, well... :(:( president is One Guy, cannot Do It All, not fair to blame only him, he doesn't actually have much power actually...

This is why we call you guys fascist-lite.

The President of the United States is ~just one guy~ who could end the Palestinian Genocide with a single phone call, or at least put a ceasefire to it. We know this because he did exactly that in 2021. We see what you're doing when you pump a Republican president as apocalyptic but a Democrat president as helpless.

But perhaps OP missed the protests going on across the US (and the world). Or the many articles and opinion pieces and editorials pushing the US govt to make Israel end this genocide, and to broker a peace that isn't just another open-air prison. This isn't our first rodeo either, as a country. We marched and protested to get women the vote, to end segregation, to make abortion legal, to fund AIDs treatment, to enact marriage equality. On and on. This is the work we do, as members of a democracy.

This is classic ~shining city on a hill~ rhetoric and I'm not even going to bother.

Granted, such protests have to be on a massive scale to influence the president -- but the real influence will always be through our direct representatives, at local, state, and Federal levels. They answer to us, directly, as their constituents. They're the ones who repeat our voices until we're deafening, and to keep going until the President takes this bus in the direction we want.

Which is why OP is asking people to at least consider other options before doubling down on Biden. Reading comp 101.

I find it telling that you expect political parties to do the job of enforcing our various representatives and senators into providing some outcome. That says a lot about your actual position on being part of a democracy -- because what you said is pretty much the opposite. The ones who keep our representatives and senators doing their jobs to represent us is, and always has been, us. If you think democracy means you can just sign off and leave everything to others to handle, you're either a fool or a propagandist.

You don't understand what you've actually said here, because it's a very good point, but not the one you think you made.

You are right. The ones who keep the politicians doing their jobs is us. Which is why you, who continue spouting "voting blue no matter who," who has sworn to never withhold your vote no matter what line is crossed, have abandoned your power for change, and exchanged it for personal gain. You are currently, at this moment, enabling a genocide in not just one, but half a dozen countries around the world because you would rather fight for marginal gains in your immediate circle. "The ones who keep our representatives and senators doing their jobs to represent us is, and always has been, us." Yes. That is why so many people are so angry. You are representing apathy and selfishness and willingness to tolerate genocide as long as you and yours are taken care of. You and people like you who keep voting on the spineless liberal mindset that keeps this country chained because you don't believe in anything better.

(You're certainly parroting the arguments we heard from bots and propagandists in '16 and '20. The names may have changed, but functionally, you're still playing the same game.)

I'm so tired to see a "Bot Propaganda!1!!!" post in 2023. You dumbass. You fucking numpty.

The rest of us will stay in reality and make the best choice we can, and that's to choose our best bet for who'll keep this bus moving in the right direction. But that comes with the caveat that one person alone can't get that bus very far. Judging by age, wit, or looks are just a propagandist's smokescreen.

The "best choice you can" is not to lie down and die serving a political party that doesn't care about you and doesn't represent your interests. Your reality is that you live in a forgone conclusion of helplessness? That those who would be your comrades - if you only listened to us rather than demean us - are just "bots" specifically built to discredit you? And I'm supposed to be inspired by your lack of creativity, passion, or motivation? You are like an abused dog who has only ever had to crawl so as not to get hit. Try to fucking run.

Election after election, our most productive leaders have always been those with the clout, experience, and connections to get the bus a little closer to our goals. And even with all that, a president is just one guy. One person can't do it all, and definitely can't do it alone.

And this is it. This is where we inherently disagree on politics as they exist. The idea that you think any of our presidents have been "productive." I do not think that it is "purity culture" to be opposed to the imperialist. You have immense privilege to think of any presidential action in the last 200 years as "productive" just because of some minor concessions that benefit you. We are still killing and displacing Natives to this day, as we have for hundreds of years. We are still mass incarcerating Black people and have yet to even entertain the possibility of reparations for slavery. To this day we are teaching in schools that slavery wasn't so bad. Many Black Americans are themselves descendants of slave-owning presidents. We are still torturing and deporting Hispanic people and we're seeing a wave of islamophobia that has not been this bad since 2001. Under your Blue.

I genuinely do not think even one American president has been "productive" in the sense of globally benefiting humanity. None of your previous shining hill examples represented a president that did anything to improve those situations; it was all riots, all people. Fuck presidents; we got us gay marriage. We got women the right to vote. Which by the way honestly even saying it that way is ahistorical and told from a white lens. Wealthy white women earned the right to vote in 1920. Black women had to wait another five decades and do the work themselves because spineless liberals like you who only follow the party line allowed it to remain that way, because at least we were getting concessions in other regards!! But maybe it's kind of Republican for them to complain that they didn't get the right to vote since white women did, after all :/ :/ the bus is getting there u kno :/

But I just. I don't know what you're talking about. "Get the bus closer to our goals" you speak in nothing but half-baked analogies and ideological bullshit but this sounds like you actually think the US collectively has a goal and we're moving toward it. We've moved toward nothing but climate disaster, oligarchy, imperialism, and wholescale genocide denial. This bus is not going anywhere I want to go and you are not going to convince me that I want to go there by promising that all of the bad stuff that's already happening will only happen to the other guys (lie) as long as I vote for Your Guy.

For our democracy to work, it has always taken all of us doing our part to keep things going in the right direction. We speak up at town halls, write letters, make phone calls, or join protests, or all of the above. We're all on this bus together. Democracy has never been a spectator sport.

You are currently the worst kind of spectator - one who can't even read the whole post before shaming people for expressing discontent with their oppression. But every four years you press the blue button and see what happens, then four years later you press the blue button and see what happens. You're an active participant in genocide abroad and at home. I do not care about your boring analogies, your Marvel-esque soliloquys and clapbacks, and I don't care about guaranteeing myself fleeting comforts at home if it means abandoning everyone else in the world.

I know this is a big ask on the Reading Comprehension Website but I am begging people to move on from 2016 cheetoh man bad politics. I don't want to crawl and beg for scraps that might come for me and me alone if only I follow the master's whim. We want to live. We want to live.

i can't fucking believe it's literally a year out of the election, in the middle of a genocide that the whole world is watching, and I'm seeing democrats already scolding people (some of whom literally have family being killed in occupied Palestine) to vote for Biden.

are you fucking kidding me?

not only is he backing a genocide, perpetuating lies to justify this genocide, and directing domestic resources to repress people here objecting to said genocide (which should be enough already), he was also already unpopular before now, has barely done anything to counter the rising tide of Christian fascism you're all worried about, not to mention that he's old as shit and can barely get a sentence out

just from a purely logical, facts-based perspective, anyone trying to push Biden as a viable candidate right now not only doesn't care about the lives of Palestinians, but also actively wants marginalized people here to lose liberties. as far as I'm concerned, advocating for Biden is advocating for a second Trump term, because that man absolutely cannot win in the general election.

instead of wasting time scolding progressives (AGAIN) when we point out extremely valid criticisms of Genocide Joe, put that fucking energy toward canvassing for a new Dem/progressive candidate. we're a year out from the election. if you actually care about the lives of the marginalized not just internationally, but domestically as well, you have to put some fucking effort in instead of relying on the consistently-failing strategy of yelling at voters instead of demanding representatives do their fucking jobs and represent us.

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