Someone said it's important say this publicly in the US: so I will. (And I think each of us should, online and to friends)
This November I will vote for Biden.
I would regard not voting for Biden, particularly in: PA, OH, MI, WI, IN, IL,VA, GA, FL, AZ, ME, NC, NH, etc. as a huge error. I'd be disappointed to find out anyone I knew didn't vote. It's one of a long list of things we need to do. We can't skip it.
And still? We deserve better choices, and in the future we shall have them.
Basically I feel a little silly even posting this, because to me it's obvious. It's like there is a big red button that says "Fascism" and I'm like "do I really need to say that I think pushing that button is a terrible idea?"
But just in case? Under no circumstances should we push the big red button.
Elect Biden again and proceed to make him miserable
Better than being too miserable to get anything done.
#AOC put it well: Your vote gives you an opportunity to pick which enemy you fight against for the next four years. And she said she'd much rather be fighting against Biden.
@crashglasshouses@futurebird I think it's more of a red gearshift lever, already in the "some fascism" position, and Americans should try to stop it from being moved to "full fascism"
it's really more like "already was in full gear, now the mask is slipping". Donald Trump didn't invent fascism. canada and usa have always been instruments of fascism. it wouldn't exist without.
@crashglasshouses@futurebird I'm pretty sure the crapublicans will do a harder and faster fascism than the Democrats.
How would you imagine the process and end state of the USA (as in, its current territory) moving away from authoritarian capitalism to a better system? Serious question, I want to improve my anarchism knowledge.
again, for some reason, i have to point out how Joe Biden is doing genocide RIGHT NOW and has been for SIX MONTHS. but 39,000 dead isn't enough of a hammer smashing some people in the face to help them realise.
those who are afraid of Donald Trump are only afraid that what happens every single day to Black and Indigenous people, will happen to white people.
i can't tell you what the end of all nation states would look like because i can't do that on my own, and we've never seen it happen yet. anarchy means we work together without hierarchy, we don't come up with solutions in search of problems. we will know what a better world looks like when we build it.
@crashglasshouses@futurebird oh, I'm pretty sure that Trump will smash the hammer on black, indigenous and queer people even harder than Biden is doing it right now. Project 2025 looks horrible.
this already happens right now. Hillary Clinton had thousands of Honduran refugees turned back to Honduras, then backed a fascist coup in Honduras that rolled back reproductive rights.
ICE still exists. Joe Biden didn't do a fucking thing about it.
you have this in your back yard because you live in a fascist nation state, built on the very machinations that led to modern fascist existing at all.
are you gonna say slavery could have been good if a Democrat did it?
no one. abolish elections. abolish presidents. abolish hierarchy.
i've said this dozens of times over the last several months, including in your own threads. no matter who you vote for, a fascist wins.
electoralism is not anti-racist, is not anti-fascist, is not anti-capitalist, is not direct action, is not rebellion, is not revolution, but it does preserve a white, fascist status quo.
if you like that, keep voting. if your guy aiding and abetting the mass murder of 39,000 Palestinians in six months doesn't phase you, there's your fucking problem. just say you don't care who commits genocide, you're fine with it if you can deflect accountability for your own actions and ignorance, and those of the ruling class to whom you gave consent to commit mass murder.
Man oh man how I wish I had the luxury of simply saying "no one" when asked who I'd rather win in elections. That would be... amazing. Because I don't really like any of these people and if I could I would be so happy to just not care.
I cannot afford to answer this way. The reasons are people I can name. So many people.
no, you're deflecting accountability. there is no "more evil". if you refuse to recognise fascism when you see it, when the mass murder of 39,000 Palestinians is an excuse to once again defer to the "worse" guy, you are part of the problem.
@crashglasshouses@futurebird Okay let's put this into simple terms. The Democrats will not ban trans people from existing. The Republicans have an explicit plan to do so once Trump has been elected. (See "Project 2025").
You've been talking to everyone in this thread as if we are unaware of Biden's foreign policy choices and not totally disgusted with them. Which is why no one is contradicting your criticisms of him.
This isn't a conversation about how wonderful he is.
It's a conversation about the impact of elections on our ability to organize.
A lot of work that was possible before Trump stopped when he was in office. It was a huge set back.
@futurebird A terrible idea? It depends on whether you dig genocide I guess, if you do then by all means vote for a senile old fart who aids and abets the mass murder of babies
@futurebird A terrible idea? It depends on whether you dig genocide I guess, if you do then by all means vote for a senile old fart who aids and abets the mass murder of babies.
Biden has actually achieved the impossible, he has made Trump electable again
Many people don't believe that pushing that button will make any difference to their future. They believe that they will be safe from Trump's depredations.
Other people don't look ahead. They don't understand, for instance, that, while Roe ended under Biden, it was lost because of Trump.
It's going to be a hard-fought election. Trump will not concede. We must do what we can to stay in the better future.
@futurebird yeah. This whole disastrous fascist arc, going back two, perhaps three, decades has been one long lesson in how politically unaware people vote and how propaganda works.
@futurebird
Except here's two buttons, and both effect a different flavor of fascism.
Sometimes it has to get worse before it can get better. Your vote is not among the options you have to make it better.
@tob@futurebird
That is how it works most of the time.
When the Germans were ruled by the Nazis? When the Italians were ruled by the Fascists? When the French were ruled by Luis XIV? When the Cubans were ruled by Batista? Every time the fascists take power, it has to get worse before enough pushback builds up, internally or externally, to finally get rid of them.
Now it's the US's term to get rid of their oligarchs, and boy you are in for a lot of getting worse before it can get better.
@tob@futurebird
It's a realistic take on world history. And logical one.
Only orthodox reformists believe otherwise, and they cannot explain why it ever gets worse.
@futurebird@tob
It can always get even worse. And tbf, you had it pretty good since about WW2 for quite while, at the expense of many others of course.
@futurebird@tob
And it did get worse in the south before it got better, didn't it?
Not only did they have slavery, but they were also being killed and the economy collapsed when they starting losing the war.
So, again, classic situation of it had to get worse before it could get better.
@futurebird
No, the thesis is that in certain situations there's no way to a better future that does not come with a temporary worsening of the overall situation.
You are ruled by oligarchs that have subverted the democratic process, it's futile to look towards that exact process to try and make it better. To get rid of them, you can't use the legal framework that they have set up precisely to prevent you from doing that.
Revolution doesn't come as cheap and comfortable as voting, sorry. @tob
Just because history went one way doesn't mean that’s the only way it could have gone. There are many countries with the standard of living of modern Germany that didn’t first doing the holocaust. Many through, yes, voting.
It’s such an arrogant position honestly to say basically you’ve gotta break some eggs to make a leftist omelette.
@tob
I guess here we have two prime examples of people who are still too comfortable to face the facts.
You are being owned by the oligarchs.
They own your government, they own your banks, they own your judicial system and they own your military. No amount of voting is going to change it, but of course you can pretend otherwise and arrange yourself with the new fascism for a while, as long as you are white and well educated, i guess. That's what most germans did, too. @Jackiemauro@futurebird
No one is saying voting alone will change those things. It won't. But what is true? Not voting can create circumstances that make changing those things through other means impossible.
@futurebird
But changing those things through "other means" is already impossible.
Look at how the supposedly less fascist option reacts to having its genocidal foreign policy challenged by some students with banners: The full might of armored and armed pigs combined with a propaganda onslaught that would have made Göbbels jealous.
So, again, how does voting or not voting make a difference in circumstances that allow changing those things through other means? @tob@Jackiemauro
@futurebird
That depends on what you mean by "other means". The question here was: How does voting or not voting influence chances to achieve change for a better?
At this point there seems no legal way for me to change the things that would need to be changed before it can get better, and there is not enough of a critical and aware mass that a revolution would actually make productive sense. @tob@Jackiemauro
I mean, they are citing Nazi Germany as a success story for her theory of historical progress. Which would mean the upside to Trump would be extermination camps, and all of us who are killed are just the price that needs to be paid for her "progress".
A wonderful demonstration of the counter-argument to your point, though horrifyingly honest.
When people treat other humans that way, they don't just bounce back from it. The ideologies that support such actions don't just die and vanish. I don't think there is any advantage to "things getting worse" it only delays progress. If we could erase those events we would know a better world than we do today.
What is true is that we have to try to come back anyway. But there is no silver lining to it.
@futurebird
The advantage to things getting worse is that they can get better afterwards.
Again: in certain situations, and it does not necessarily get better. But sometimes it has to get worse before it can get better, idk why that isn't just plain obvious: voting will not change a system that has rigged not only the voting process, but also controls the options that can be voted. @alter_kaker@imstilljeremy@tob
Friend, there were no push-backs in Germany....
And as far as Louis XIV goes, you might have heard about the restoration. Or you might be the one who considers the revolution the low point ...
"Now it's the US's term to get rid of their oligarchs" => Haha. I'll be back from my cryo chamber in 10 years. We'll see how that went.
@glitzersachen
There were actually a lot of pushbacks in germany, before the fascists managed to kill most of the resistance. But i made sure to talk of internal or external pushbacks, the nazis followed a political ideology that made sure that they eventually succumbed to external 'pushback' in the form of allied troops, most notably in the form of Georgy Zhukov and the Soviet red army.1/2
Them among others, sure. But before 33 there was a lot more in german society that fought fascists, even social democrats ;)
But after the nazis had seized power, there was still a lot of underground left opposition.
@glitzersachen
The Theory is that it had to get worse before it got better after the Nazis took power. There was no possible way of incremental small steps towards something better. And worse it got, Germany had to be steamrolled from both sides and bombed for years before it could get better.
Wether it was a LOT or just a little bit of internal pushback is beside the point and open to definition anyway. The point stands: It had to get worse before it could get better. @tob@futurebird
So, when it was worst, it could get better, right? But before it could get better, even then, it had to get worse (according to your theory). Since, regardless were you stand, it has to get worse before it can get better. So when it was worst (at time t1), we know it got better later (at time t2). But since it had to get worse before that, at time t1 it was not worst, because it had to get even worse than at t1.
@glitzersachen
You are misrepresenting my "theory".
I am not saying it ALWAYS has to get worse to get better, that would indeed be paradoxical.
So please, spare me the cheap straw men and engage with my actual argument: In certain situations it has to get worse before it can get better.
In fact that is so obvious i am astounded that it is even debated. @tob@futurebird
(b) A theory that cannot identify the actual certain situation (provide a recipe to distinguish those situation from those where it doesn't apply) is worthless, because it cannot be falsified (see Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery).
You sentence "sometimes it has to get worse ..." is just a meaningless phrase of small-talk. It does not help to understand anything.
(b) I am taking offense at the "has" which implies a mechanism of necessity.
@glitzersachen
You do not need to teach the basics of theory of science to me, thanks. I have given lectures on it myself.
It wasn't me who tried to claim it was anything more than a phrase to highlight the fact that there is not always a way of incremental change towards the better without first accepting serious adverse effects.
And yes: there is a necessity. When you got cancer, you have to do chemo and it will make you worse at first. Or i guess you can just give up.
" When you got cancer, you have to do chemo and it will make you worse at first. "
Depends on your definition of worse. You life expectation gets better from day one. The amount of days you're going to barf gets less from day one.
So day zero: No life expectation. Day 1: Good life expectation, (N-1) barfing days, Day 2: Good life expectation, (N-2) barfing days.
@glitzersachen
That's not how chemo works.
So, let me get that straight - you are saying that there are no situations that can not be bettered by small incremental steps towards something better, without the overall situation ever having to get worse first? @tob@futurebird
@glitzersachen
Response here because they blocked me to prevent me from calling out their bullshit:
Except i never called it a theory, and i even put the "thesis" in (slightly ironic) quotation marks.
But yea, i also have better things to do and in fact i do feel certain 'vibrations' in your responses too.
If you believe there are no situations that require things to get worse before they can get better, go ahead and believe so, i don't care. @tob@futurebird
@glitzersachen
Of course we both know it was never about that, you don't actually doubt that there are situations that require it to get worse before it can get better, you just don't want to admit that the US is run by a one party-two right wings oligarchy and voting won't change things for the better, and you're consciously or unconsciously using all the tricks of the eristic playbook of pseudologics and populism to evade that conclusion. @tob@futurebird
@futurebird sigh
I am not saying its great that it sometimes has to get worse before it gets better. I am just saying that it's a fact. If i could change it, i would. But since i am not omnipotent i have to accept certain things in life, and one of them is that there are situations where the first step towards something better is in a direction that is worse at first. If no one ever took that step, we'd still be stuck in feudalism.
@incoherentmumblings From outside the U.S., its politics is a scary and sad spectacle. I’m glad I’m not voting in your elections.
This statement does not make much sense though. The word “worse” itself implies the alternative is non-worse.
And: Naive technological development has given some future US govt an insane surveillance and propaganda apparatus. A fascist government fully taking advantage of that will make effective opposition impossible. No “worse to get better” anymore.
@hallvors@futurebird
Except i did not say "it has to get worse" to say "Trump has to win".
I said it will get worse, no matter who wins the election, before it gets better.
It might even be different people who it gets worse for.
I am aware of the technical possibilities, but you fool yourself if you think that your vote will prevent them from being used.
@incoherentmumblings voting alone is insufficient. Voting, informing, organising, fighting to shape the values that contribute to shaping politics and Overton windows has worked and will work. Vote for the persons who can win and be more easily influenced by such organising. Why is this even hard?
@hallvors@futurebird
Leave the voting out of that list and you will be just as effective, if not more so because you don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having lent your support to one of the fascists that send their pigs against you to violate you and throw you in jail as soon as you start to do things that actually have potential to annoy them.
@futurebird@hallvors Who says i do care? If you're out in the street at this point, learning every day that the cops can get away with any violation of your supposed rights already, then you are one of those that will arrange themselves when the current protofascism drops it's mask. In fact, it IS already dropping its mask, and you pretend not to see it.
@futurebird@jeff Biden has wallowed in some of the worst approval ratings without a care in the world. He, like Trump, screens out those who challenge them at events. His administration gleefully sent aid to Israel, blocked UN votes, and defended months of genocide without blinking. He’s a career politician - as people dead from Covid or at the southern border can attest due to Biden’s actions or lack thereof.
Is there anyone down-ballot who you are going to vote for that you would like to promote? (I think we can all gain from encouraging those future better choices!)
@futurebird
This November, I will vote for Joseph R Biden & Kamala Harris, of course!
I will vote for Kirsten Gillibrand for Senator, and I will vote for Pat Ryan for Congressman. 💙✊🏼🌊☮️
That said, proportional representation doesn't always produce great outcomes. Last Dutch elections were disastrous. Our extreme right is so far mired in coalition negotiation politics, which is better than straight up power, though Weimar shows us, it is not any guarantee.
@futurebird
I feel like people complaining about stuff President Biden has done or not done don't understand the limits on presidential authority.
Don't like the fact that Biden has not forgiven all student loans? Maybe you should have helped elect Gore because we lost the Supreme Court with Bush. Bush also pushed through changes to the bankruptcy laws, so you can't discharge student loans now, no matter how bad your financial situation is.
@futurebird What are your thoughts on campaigning for preferenial voting? As an outsider looking in, a lot of the issues people have with voting dem could be solved by it, and it seems vaguely plausible to implement under a dem government (but unlikely under republicans). Yet it is rarely mentioned when people yell about why they're not voting democrat.
@futurebird I live in Tennessee and because of the electoral college it doesn't matter who i vote for. I am not voting for Biden unless he makes some very serious changes soon. To me genocide is the most evil and horrendous crime that can be committed in this world and I will not support someone who is using my tax dollars to fund it. If I lived in a swing state I don't know what I'd do. We deserve so much better.
@futurebird Agreed. Sadly, the only option in a broken electoral system is to vote for the least worst option. (Same here in the UK, with our first-past-the-post and "you only get to vote for your local representative. The latter also allows for tactical voting here.)
They'll see it as a reward or, worse, a declare a "mandate" to do whatever they like, but it's this or gifting the win to the far worse option.
Protest votes, spoiled ballots or not voting is bonkers in such a broken system.
@futurebird
Absolutely! There is zero excuse to not vote for Biden. If you don't, it means you are a selfish privileged asshole or very very ignorant as to what the stakes are. It's not #DonTheCon, it's the evil billionaire like Koch and Thiel pulling his strings.
It might not end totally, we might make it out, but it will be ugly and consume the energy and resources of people who are already overextended and who have the least to get back out.
It's not certain doom it's but why would anyone want to make this any harder than it already is ... that is beyond me. It's like someone spitting in your face.
even in safer states, it can be crucial to vote because of the Congressional races
the '22 mid-term elections typically would have been a shoo in for the Republicans, but as it happens they just barely pulled out their thin majority in the House, & only then by winning races in places like NY 19th that includes at least 4 college towns I can think of off the top of my head: Ithaca (Cornell) & SUNY campuses in Binghamton, Cortland, Oneonta