Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MrRoboto75]

Take the red pill neo

arg its full of disinfectant

[Reelya]

Things going to shit, first order of business is to find someone else to blame.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trump-Could-Use-Nuclear-Option-To-Make-Saudi-Arabia-Pay-For-Oil-War.html

The oil business is collapsing in the USA, must be the fault of those sneaky foreigners, in this case, the guys who have been fuelling the American economy with affordable oil for decades.

A little *too* affordable, apparently. *narrows eyes*

[SalmonGod]

Because it's not a voting strategy? Politics isn't voting. Personally, I don't see accelerationism as even a proactive strategy either, so much as preparedness to take maximum advantage of moments when capitalism stumbles, as it will.

Fine, replace voting with other actions. If you help people, things remain tolerable so that's right out. Everyone not working hard enough to fix things deserves whatever they get until they do better. This is just bootstraps for politics.

Helping your allies organise and survive is way better at increasing your societal clout than spitting on them and blaming them for not overthrowing the status quo. Also, because they don't have to watch you tighten any thumbscrews, they don't hate and resent you. Explaining to people why things are bad and how to fix them accomplishes the same realization that things are bad and need to be fixed without crushing the soul out of  your activism.

To be clear, as I've repeated many times, I don't advocate voting for Trump, and I don't advocate for actively making things worse.  I agree with organizing and helping people however you can.  Do what you can do as an individual or with your local organizations to make things better.  That is far more meaningful in this political environment than any vote.

But I just don't stand for delusion regarding the nature of the D vs R routine or lesser evilism.  I don't intend to shame anyone for feeling like they have to vote for Biden.  I understand the immense pressure of the situation, and the propaganda machine on top of it.  I just want to make sure people actually understand who they're voting for and the ultimate nature of the game.  I want to smash the lens of aesthetics so that real actions and consequences can be seen clearly.  Spite, punishment, or some grand strategy to make the world worse so it can be made better afterwards have nothing to do with it.  I just want things to be seen for what they obviously are.  And I actually do appreciate that Trump is so easily seen by so many for what he really is.  It's goddamn refreshing, for everything else that's goddamn horrible.  Like yeah, Trump has blood on his hands.  Nothing wrong with stating that.  But when it's used as an argument to suggest that someone else who technically has far more blood on their hands is better... I'm going to have some words.  Let's not fuck around.  Let's really understand this thing and not delude ourselves.

And for me, personally, putting this into practice makes me unable to vote for Biden (unless there is some real meat behind that HR1 bill).

Representative democracy is broken because people don't vote for candidates who represent them.  Period.  If you never vote for a candidate who represents you, then you will never be represented.  This is tautological.  The very basic idea of representative democracy is that you vote people into office who represent your interests so that you don't get screwed.  If you vote for people who don't represent your interests, then you are actively sabotaging that system, whether you believe it's for immediately good reasons or not. 

There will always be a narrative to every single election that the other guy is so bad and the stakes are so high that the time just isn't right to actually vote the way voting is supposed to work.  Every time.  Forever.  I've heard it every election my whole adult life, and it goes farther back than any of us.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The system is so broken today because our parents and grandparents and great grandparents broke representative democracy by playing this game.  And the next generation will face an even more broken system, because we're just continuing on doing the same thing as our predecessors.  Every single time we vote this way, we actively contribute to the entire system being less representative of our interests, and unsurprisingly every next election as a result gives us worse candidates.

And I understand all the arguments.  I know how it looks pragmatic in the now.  But it's deal-with-the-devil logic.  Bargain to avert a crisis now.  Pay even more dearly later.

[Iduno]

To be clear, as I've repeated many times, I don't advocate voting for Trump, and I don't advocate for actively making things worse.  I agree with organizing and helping people however you can.  Do what you can do as an individual or with your local organizations to make things better.  That is far more meaningful in this political environment than any vote.

I think there are only 2 types of people still arguing for Biden: people who want to push the country towards revolution by making things as bad as possible, and people who are afraid that Trump will only be around for 4 more years, so they're trying to find replacements.

Nobody actually believes the lesser of two evils BS they're lying about. There are plenty of third parties who are actually good they could back if that was their goal. Nobody could be that unaware of history at this point.

[hector13]

The best we can hope for is he chooses a reasonable VP and he dies in office.

[Kagus]

The best we can hope for is he chooses a reasonable VP and he dies in office.

Or is otherwise finally declared incompetent so the reasonable VP takes over.

...but that still hinges upon him picking a reasonable VP, and I don't have much hope of that if we're being honest

[Frumple]

The best we can hope for is he chooses a reasonable VP and he dies in office.

I mean, no, the best we can hope for is the dems manage to take the Senate, and biden or whatever replaces him is willing to rubber stamp whatever manage to get past congress. Matters a lot less what your POTUS is if they can't sign anything meaningful.

[Iduno]

The best we can hope for is he chooses a reasonable VP and he dies in office.

I mean, no, the best we can hope for is the dems manage to take the Senate, and biden or whatever replaces him is willing to rubber stamp whatever manage to get past congress. Matters a lot less what your POTUS is if they can't sign anything meaningful.

Nah, the Democrats in Congress are currently the ones sabotaging us, so we'd need them all replaced as well. We at least need to get rid of Pelosi and her cronies, plus McConnell.

[SalmonGod]

New York removes Bernie Sanders from their primary ballot.

I'm guessing most have heard by now about New York cancelling their primary.  And it really is a bad idea to have in-person voting processes right now.

But if I'm reading this right, Cuomo issued an executive order guaranteeing everyone mail-in ballots.  The Democrats in New York undermined this by removing Bernie from the ballot completely.  They've attempted to market this to the people as no big deal because it was pointless at this point, anyway.  But it blocks Bernie from gathering more delegates that translate into party influence at the convention.

Although New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has issued an executive order allowing every voter in the state to cast an absentee ballot and is sending voters an absentee ballot application, Spano also cited concerns about how holding an additional election would undermine public health. New York is due to hold its congressional and state legislative primary elections on June 23 anyway, but the cancelation of the presidential primary means that some 20 counties in the state won’t have to administer any contest at all.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that we should minimize the number of people on the ballot, minimize the election for the protection of everybody, but give the opportunity to vote in the actual elections for candidates and not have anyone on the ballot just for the purpose of issues at a convention,” Spano said.

Sanders’ removal from the ballot in delegate-rich New York undermines his effort to accumulate convention delegates. If he collects enough delegates to win one-quarter of the seats on the Democratic convention’s three influential committees ― those addressing rules and bylaws, the party platform and convention credentials ― for his allies, they can submit a minority report to the convention floor. These Sanders partisans might try to ensure a more progressive party platform or make permanent a rule change in effect during the 2020 primary that disempowered the party insiders and elected officials known as “superdelegates.”

[nenjin]

If he already dropped out and endorsed Biden, the point is moot no?

[Reelya]

Yeah might be likely that the fact that he officially dropped out of the race three weeks ago is the reason he's not on the ballot, rather than promoting a conspiracy theory.

You guys seem to be a bit frayed here, you're not making a lot of sense on this issue. When everyone else dropped out and was taken off subsequent ballots did you raise the same ruckus or cry foul play? Bernie Derangement Syndrome.

It makes sense not to hold the primary now that Bernie officially dropped out of the race. He wouldn't have been a selectable choice on the ballot either way.

[SalmonGod]

Everyone's so quick on the draw with that conspiracy theory label these days.

He suspended his campaign but pledged to keep his name on the ballot for remaining state's primaries in order to gather delegates, because while he is no longer hoping to win the presidency, those delegates do still translate into power at the convention.  This is what was explained to me by Bernie's own mouth when I watched his campaign suspension announcement live, and the reason I included that 2nd quote from the article.

[misko27]

We live in a world with people burning 5G towers, the tendency towards conspiracy is almost as infectious as the virus.

[bloop_bleep]

People like to throw around "conspiracy theory" whenever they're close to being exposed, or have already been.

Note: I don't mean Reelya in particular.

[nenjin]

Everyone's so quick on the draw with that conspiracy theory label these days.

He suspended his campaign but pledged to keep his name on the ballot for remaining state's primaries in order to gather delegates, because while he is no longer hoping to win the presidency, those delegates do still translate into power at the convention.  This is what was explained to me by Bernie's own mouth when I watched his campaign suspension announcement live, and the reason I included that 2nd quote from the article.

I mean, it seems like a lame duck way to do things and democrats are picking up on that and just taking him off the ballot. Dirty pool perhaps but it's not like he has an active campaign and he's being sidelined. What does it even mean to suspend your campaign, endorse your opponent, but hang on with the slim chance you get enough delegates to be viable?