There’s a large number of people out there that think “everything sucks right now and there’s a democrat president, so to make things different I should vote republican”
…
Fund schools. Keep the department of Education in existence and quadruple its funding.
Hell yeah!
I never had kids, never wanted kids. Have always pushed for education. As a stoner, was crazy excited about talk of legalization and taxes going to schools when the idea was first floated around by us. Happily. Hell yes.
You should be against genocide and not vote for genociders.
I agree, but I don’t have that choice right now. The issue of genocide isn’t on the two-party ballot. The issue of public education is. Fewer educated people means fewer people who can even identify genocide when it happens.
“But what good is identifying genocide if you’re not gonna stop it”
HOW THE FUCK CAN I STOP IT?!?!?!?
The thing that I think really makes it obvious that your thinking here is completely defective is that you don’t even bring up the question “are you in a swing state?” I’m in a deep-blue state, why the fuck, even by your broken logic, should I vote for Kamala? She’ll win my whole state anyway, so all I’m doing is helping to legitimize her if I vote for her, not do a single thing to keep Orange Man out.
I agree, but I don’t have that choice right now. The issue of genocide isn’t on the two-party ballot
It’s on there at least twice and you have every choice to not put a checkmark there or tell others to do so.
The issue of public education is. Fewer educated people means fewer people who can even identify genocide when it happens.
Lesser evil genociders is not a good argument, though this premise is also false. Dems cut education budgets as well. Blue states with blue districts in blue cities still underfunded and are at the forefront of charter school “experiments”.
You cannot absolve support for genocide. You get no excuses. You should feel bad for even trying to make them.
HOW THE FUCK CAN I STOP IT?!?!?!?
The first step is to stop supporting it. The next step is to become educated in how the system works. The next step, which you can do simultaneously, is to join and participate in organizations with these same lines: no support for the genocidal capitalist parties, solidarity with Palestine.
You talked about education. You need some yourself but the primary work is in organizing, which includes teaching others. Instead of trying to justify supporting genociders you should be working against them. Stop pretending you have no agency and there is nothing to do.
And since enough dumbasses are actually putting forward enough effort to show there is a frighteningly high backing for a candidate that will prevent any presidential voting in the future, I’m gonna have to break my record and vote for one of the major 2 parties for this election.
One of these 2 WILL WIN THE US ELECTION. There is no pretending that, this close to polling date, that there is any other outcome.
We need to start locally and push harder for reforms from there up. Only one of the 2 party systems will allow this in our future at the moment. This is just the sad and horrible truth we face at the moment.
If we really think the system has failed us and will not let us break free of the 2 party bullshit, well, then we need to be better educated and better organized. We have internet and advanced messaging technology. Our past is riddled with those who made amazing changes and voiced mass public opinion with way less.
Knowledge is power. Protect and enhance the education to really power change.
If you want people to work from the bottom up to achieve the necessary changes to prevent this country from being genocidal you will rapidly discover that neither the Democratic nor Republican parties can be that vehicle. They are our enemies and work against us, only dithering with cynical PR and pandering to avoid losing without actually needing to deliver on any demands. Unprincipled attempts to enter and change the Democrats on their terms leads to alienation or cooption, e.g. “the squad” supporting Israel or getting destroyes by capital.
Rather than support a genocoder, please do the actual change work. At least then you can see it fail and then do actually useful things against the genocidal empire.
Uh, duh? So start replacing them at the base levels and change our foundation? I didn’t say to keep voting for them locally?
Do what work? What’s the plan?? Are you running for local government where you are?
ALL CAREER POLITICIANS ARE “GENOCIDERS” from what I have seen so far in my life on this planet. This is why normally I will not vote for a major 2 party candidate. I want to be able to vote again in the future, so I’m willing to do my best to try and make that happen.
What are you actually saying and doing? No where have i found a coherent cohesive plan for us citizens to unite and change this major issue. What’s our truly viable recourse here?
Please explain like I am 5.
Uh, duh? So start replacing them at the base levels and change our foundation? I didn’t say to keep voting for them locally?
Right that’s not going to work. But if you are wed to a failing electoralist strategy that will fail it is better to commit to it so that you can observe that failure sooner.
Do what work?
The work of building socialist organizations.
What’s the plan??
To build the size and quality of socialist organizations until they reach a large enough size to make demands that require real responses. Escalation. And to then depose the capitalist system via the means available to us. And before that, to survive the violence coming for us as conditions degrade and we are not yet big enough.
Are you running for local government where you are?
Why would I?
ALL CAREER POLITICIANS ARE “GENOCIDERS” from what I have seen so far in my life on this planet.
That’s right.
This is why normally I will not vote for a major 2 party candidate. I want to be able to vote again in the future, so I’m willing to do my best to try and make that happen.
What’s the point of your vote if you use it to support genocide? When politicians aren’t really answerable to their voters in the first place? When you have always voted third party, i.e. made your vote into a statement? Instead, just actually be against genocide. Tell others to not support genocide. Do actually helpful political work.
What are you actually saying and doing?
Building socialist and anti-imperialist organizations that are in solidarity with Palestinians. Educating the public. Running BDS campaigns. Materially contributing directly to Gazans.
No where have i found a coherent cohesive plan for us citizens to unite and change this major issue.
The vast majority of people are not organized and are not politically educated. They can’t demand anything because they don’t know what to demand nor do they have discipline to shed the propaganda handed to them by the two major parties. This “left” won’t even withold their votes! Why would anyone ever take them seriously? You must build leverage and make credible threats to have political power.
This starts with the basics of organizing and of political education.
What’s our truly viable recourse here?
The most viable course to stop genocide in Palestine will come from overseas by people actually fighting Israel or undermining its sponsor’s (America’s) ability to isolate and weaken resistance actors. Multipolarity and a decline of the US itself that this would necessarily entail due to the economic system it has maintained. We can help this by helping those doing resistance work and by educating each other. We can minimize the harms of a declining empire by building against militarism locally. Don’t support weapons manufacturers, picket them and make life more expensive for them. Kick their unions out of labor orgs. Fight against the racism and xenophobia that liberals will be embracing evet more in order to justify their warhawk policies.
With organization, you will see escalations and overreactions that build organizations. The Biden admin wanted to ban TikTok because they did not hide the genocidal violence. We should be able to build from these kinds of reactions, all it will take is repeated attempts until it snowballs. Build, act, receive reaction, build from the reaction, act, etc etc.
Please explain like I am 5.
I can’t sorry but please don’t hesitate to ask questions.
There’s a large number of people out there that think “even though democrats had a disastrous four years, they will magically fund schools and give everyone a pony when they’re back in power.”
ultimately, the federal Depart- ment of Education should be eliminated.
Direct Quote from Project 2025
Thanks to schools, I can read and understand that when someone says “we want to eliminate public education” they mean “we want to eliminate public education.”
This alone is enough reason to vote democrat. Eliminating public education means fewer people will be educated enough to know when they’re lied to. I know the democrats are a bunch of shiteating liars but they have enough of a chance to win and they’re not trying to defund school and those two reasons are literally enough to vote for them.
As long as people in US treat voting as the sole way to participate politically thing will continue on the exact same trajectory they are on now.
You don’t vote for perfection, you vote the party in you can negotiate with
You can’t negotiate with Democrats. This is the great lie of Electoralism.
Time to sieze the trolley and build new tracks.
You can fight the trolley itself instead of justifying supporting genocide.
PS this is the real world not a meme. Political power is not a trolley problem, it is a matter of organization and education. You disempower yourself and others by pretending you can only backseat cheerlead a genocide. Instead of supporting this, go and join an organization that is actually opposing it and start doing work.
In the US, every student is eventually presented with lessons on the Holocaust and asked to think about what they would do. Right now, to be honest, your answer would have to be, “support it using poorly thought out propaganda”.
Absolutely. But you should also flip that switch real quick before getting to work fighting it. Just in case.
No, you shouldn’t, because this is the real world and not a trolley problem. Providing electoral support to genociders helps to entrench them and these discussions have the wrong framing when it comes to how political power works. I already mentioned this. Did you read my comment?
Yes you absolutely should. If you can effortlessly vote for the lesser evil in a way that doesn’t take anything away from the other fight, just do it real quick. Any argument to the contrary is accelerationism.
If you are an accelerationist, then get bent, you’re wrong.
Backseat cheerleading genociders, and telling other people to do so, is not helping. It makes you complicit and spreads a false and anemic idea of how political power works. You should be fighting them, not doing mental gymnastics for how you can still justify supporting genociders.
There is nothing strategic in what you are describing, it is actually self-defeating and this is why you are told this logic from on high.
As I originally said, join an org and fo actual work against genociders. Be part of the solution, not part of the genocide-excusing problem.
Very long way of saying you’re looking forward to trump being in power again and forever taking away your right to vote.
Very short way of saying you will never lift a finger other than to vote even if Trump takes away your right to vote.
My comment already contradicts your response, even with its inventions. Please try to address what I say rather than making things up.
You said to Organize and admit a genocide is occurring, while not letting yourself be convinced that voting is the only course of action.
I’m saying that’s awesome but what do we do when trump gets elected because no one wants to vote now?
You said to Organize and admit a genocide is occurring, while not letting yourself be convinced that voting is the only course of action.
Of course voting is not the only course of action. Voting is incredibly little. What, you check a box? Maybe wait a few hours at most to get into a pilling station? Dear God.
This is an incredibly limited amount of political action, particularly given the way in which box checking translates into any political action (electoral college, media monopolies, biased education, wage slavery limiting political education, campaigns built on donations from capital).
I’m saying that’s awesome but what do we do when trump gets elected because no one wants to vote now?
You actually do political work. You become educated and join an organization that does more than act as a sheepdog that turns alienatuon into genocide votes.
And in the end Trump wins the vote and you lose your oppurtunity to do any real politcal work! Congrats.
Trump was already president once and my political work was actually easier because liberals were outraged and could not understand the complicoty of their representatives. Their representatives merely reflect the cynical apathy of their position that is shielded when they are in power.
If Trump were an existential threat would you just be sitting around posting bad logic? You know he is just an incremental partial detriment in some ways and some vague miasma in other ways. Biden is, for example, a much more coherent genocidal Zionist, as is Harris.
Rather than quibble about how to appease one’s inner Eichmann, why not fight against it?
Fun fact: The United States actually has more than 2 parties
The More You Know
Oh, please tell me which third party candidate not only has a real shot at this election but is also not just a far-right grifter in disguise.
Pretty much all but the libertarian party. Turns out if enough people vote for a candidate they get elected. Weird huh?
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: politics
