#voting only works if enough people do it

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

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[scottguy]

Trump was helped to do this damage by people who thought that not voting for Hillary Clinton was some kind of morally superior choice in 2016.

When they didn't choose the "lesser of two evils" we got the GREATER of two evils, Trump.

How did that help anything?

Women who can't get abortions today should be mad at "protest voters" too.

Did "boycotting" voting HELP anyone? How?

But it did HURT all Americans.

Protest voters in 2016 helped move America to the very brink of fascism.

Fantastically, many people are considering making the SAME mistake this November!

Only this time, we will lose democracy for certain. (We came very close to that on January 6th.) Ending democracy is exactly what Republicans are *promising* and *planning* to do.

There won't BE another legitimate election won by liberals ever again if voters allow Republicans to win in November.

Not voting is surrendering to evil. It makes you COMPLICIT in the triumph of evil.

Trump would gladly order the carpet bombing of Gaza. Is letting Trump win going to help Palestinians?

Because THAT is what you will get if you don't fight Republican fascism. The Palestinians will be annihilated and American loses democracy forever along with getting death camps for immigrants, war, support for Russian finishing Ukraine and then conquering Europe and the end of every consumer protection you take for granted daily.

Not voting as some kind of mindless protest won't fix a damn thing but it WILL, for certain, make life in America and on Earth a living hell.

Helping destory the world by ALLOWING a Republican win will NOT 'teach Joe Biden a lesson.'

It will END PERMANENTLY any plans liberals and progressives have for improving America.

[phantomsies]

literacy, empathy and nuance are dead fucking arts and there really is no coming back from it.

[ozonecologne]

.

[fusionsprunt]

Hunter what the FUCK-

.

[itwoodbeprefect]

happy 1 year anniversary to the election results that were so fucked they had me trying to take my mind off of things by watching what seemed like a toxic chinese queerbait show only to find something far more thoughtful and genuinely queer and interesting than expected and end up watching a bunch more unrelated things that are talked about in vaguely the same realms of the internet and then watch bad buddy twice in a row and fall into an endless bingewatch of thai media (some of which is mediocre, some of which is bad, much of which is simply pretty good, and some of which is genuinely incredible) and go, well, it would be a waste of all this language input i'm accidentally giving myself right now if i didn't at least learn a few words. thus accidentally locking myself into watching even more thai media because now i gain serotonin from hearing a sentence i know i could write

[dredshirtroberts]

huh... the way my parents showed me the world worked was really kind of fucked up, it's no fucking wonder i have an anxiety disorder frankly.

[solipseismic]

"the dems are pro-genocide" "harris is just as supportive of genocide as biden" and what. do you think. the republicans think. of american imperialism and genocide? please. do let me know.

[fingertipsmp3]

Would it be stupid of me to request time off on the day after the Eurovision final

[hyunin]

y'all should be so glad i haven't been around much so u aren't subjected to the political rants the people who follow my private twitter are

[snekdood]

i think until theres some sort of moderation on social media sites to prevent dog piling, this shits always gonna turn super toxic

[scientia-rex]

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

[tunneldweller]

#I need everyone who wants to push independent really think about this #Yes Biden sucks #Yes he doesn't fulfill many of his promises #But #One man will load the deck with right wing judges who want me (and probably you too) dead and/or with no rights #There's a chain reaction to who is presidency #And we can't let some alt right fascist freak like. Continue to put judges in place that just mow down rights and are fully corrupt?? #Yes the two party system sucks #Yes it needs change #But we gotta prevent an inevitable disaster before we can actually fix shit

[eowyntheavenger]

Americans, these are things we are NOT saying in 2024:

"Voting blue won't solve anything." Yes it will: if enough of us do it, it will solve a problem called Trump's second term in the White House. We unfortunately live in a two-party system. If you refuse to vote, you're effectively voting for Trump. I shouldn't need to explain this to people, yet here we are.

"It doesn't matter who's president. Both candidates are the same anyway." No, they are REALLY not. Biden was never my first choice, and his shipments of arms to Israel are despicable, but don't try to tell me even for a second that a second Trump term would be the same for the world as a second Biden term.

"But voting blue won't fix [fundamental underlying problem in America]." Voting for Democrats cannot fix every issue, this is true. But by saying this and ONLY this you are discouraging people from voting by making them feel hopeless. Voting is one of many tools in our arsenal, not the only tool, but an important one, and it does matter.

"You shouldn't vote blue, you should do [other thing] instead." See above: you can vote and protest and organize at the same time. It's not either/or. You can do it all. Stop discouraging voters from exercising their rights under the guise of leftism.

"Voting is just legitimizing government power. It makes you part of the system." Literally just shut up. Women and people of color didn't fight for their voting rights to have you say things like this. If you live in America and you can legally vote, then you should fucking vote, and vote blue. There is no neutral option.

"Voting blue just makes you complicit in [this bad policy]." Inaction, and allowing Trump to have a second term, is worse for the entire world than any Democrat policy. Yes, even that one. Voting is not about finding a perfect unproblematic candidate. It is about choosing the lesser of two evils.

"Voting doesn't work because—" STOP IT. STOP DISCOURAGING PEOPLE FROM VOTING.

You know who wants you NOT to vote? Trump supporters, that's who. You should be suspicious of ANYONE who is suggesting that your vote doesn't matter, or that both candidates are the same, or that Biden's policy on XYZ means you shouldn't vote for him. Trump supporters aren't trying to get your vote by saying, "Vote for Trump!" They're trying to get your vote by DISCOURAGING YOU FROM VOTING AT ALL.

I don't like Biden either, but Trump is unequivocally worse. Voting doesn't fix everything, but it is the minimum fucking requirement of living in a democracy. Voting for president has real, tangible, immediate impacts on people's lives, and choosing not to vote is not the rebellion you think it is, it is just relinquishing your voice. So fucking vote. THIS IS A GROUP PROJECT AND DAMN IT WE ARE NOT FAILING BECAUSE OF YOU.

[ketchuppee]

During the 2008 recession, my aunt lost her job. Her, her partner, and my three cousins moved across the country to stay with us while they got back on their feet. My house turned from a family of four to a family of nine overnight, complete with three dogs and five cats between us.

It took a few years for them to get a place of their own, but after a few rentals and apartments, they now own a split level ranch in a town nearby. I’ve lost track of how many coworkers and friends have stayed with them when they were in a tight spot. A mother and son getting out of an abusive relationship, a divorcee trying to stay local for his kids while they work out a custody agreement, you name it. My aunt and uncle knew first hand what that kindness meant, and always find space for someone who needed it, the way my parents had for them.

That same aunt and uncle visited me in [redacted] city last year. They are prolific drinkers, so we spent most of the day bar hopping. As we wandered the city, any time we passed a homeless person, my uncle would pull out a fresh cigarette and ask them if they had a light. Regardless of if they had a lighter on hand or not, he offered them a few bucks in exchange, which he explained to me after was because he felt it would be easier for them to accept in exchange for a service, no matter how small.

I work for a company that produces a lot of fabric waste. Every few weeks, I bring two big black trash bags full of discarded material over to a woman who works down the hall. She distributes them to local churches, quilting clubs, and teachers who can use them for crafts. She’s currently in the process of working with our building to set up a recycling program for the smaller pieces of fabric that are harder to find use for.

One of my best friends gives monthly donations to four or five local organizations. She’s fortunate enough to have a tech job that gives her a good salary, and she knows that a recurring donation is more valuable to a non-profit because they can rely on that money month after month, and can plan ways to stretch that dollar for maximum impact. One of those organizations is a native plant trust, and once she’s out of her apartment complex and in a home with a yard, she has plans to convert it into a haven of local flora.

My partner works for a company that is working to help regulate crypto and hold the current bad actors in the space accountable for their actions. We unfortunately live in a time where technology develops far too fast for bureaucracy to keep up with, but just because people use a technology for ill gain doesn’t mean the technology itself is bad. The blockchain is something that she finds fascinating and powerful, and she is using her degree and her expertise to turn it into a tool for good.

I knew someone who always had a bag of treats in their purse, on the odd chance they came across a stray cat or dog, they had something to offer them.

I follow artists who post about every local election they know of, because they know their platform gives them more reach than the average person, and that they can leverage that platform to encourage people to vote in elections that get less attention, but in many ways have more impact on the direction our country is going to go.

All of this to say, there’s more than one way to do good in the world. Social media leads us to believe that the loudest, the most vocal, the most prolific poster is the most virtuous, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. (And if virtue for virtues sake is your end goal, you’ve already lost, but that’s a different post). Community is built of people leveraging their privileges to help those without them. We need people doing all of those things and more, because no individual can or should do all of it. You would be stretched too thin, your efforts valiant, but less effective in your ambition.

None of this is to encourage inaction. Identify your unique strengths, skills, and privileges, and put them to use. Determine what causes are important to you, and commit to doing what you can to help them. Collective action is how change is made, but don’t forget that we need diversity in actions taken.

[rainbowgod666]

Back here in italy mickey canonically works for the police and

[ERROR: ENGLISH TRANSLATION FOR "BRUTO GAMBADILEGNO" NOT FOUND]

Is basically a constant criminal but eh. A few times he was interrogated and the INSTANT he gets to see the evidence hes like "HEY WAIT A MOMENT. Thats not me! I was (at home/doing a different crime altoghether/still behind bars) that night!" and when that happens the rat goes "oh fUCK this is gonna take an extra 30 pages or something" and uuuuuuuhm yeah