The Protest Vote Paradox™
As we’ve all read time after time in the months leading up to the election, the Protest Vote™ simply states states that:
“We refuse to vote against a Tyrant-Felon in order to send a clear and concise message that we will not stand for [roll D20 for random popular single issue], and alongside our refusal to vote against the Tyrant-Felon, is a collective hope that the aforementioned clear and concise message- if ignored, is received under unmitigated duress!”
-Cut to Tyrant-Felon’s win, and the aftermath:
Wether observed or not, the behavior of the Protest Voter will attempt to achieve the following:
• Obnoxiously tell everyone “We told you all what would happen!”
• Claim there is “No way protest voting could cause trump to win.”As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true in the same reality without breaking important time-space things that we would probably prefer not be broken- we are left with only a few logical conclusions:
- Protest voters have no idea what they’re talking about.
- Protest voters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
- Protest voters have somehow learned to defy reality and become exempt from the concept of paradoxes, thus creating an entirely new study of theoretical science, known as Bulletproof Symbiotic Hypocrisy Theory, or BLsHt.
Something, something, something Ted Talk.
Reminder that the West Bank is the one that’s not even ruled by Hamas and hasn’t attacked Israel. If Israel tried to do this under Harris, no doubt weapons would’ve been cut off and the US might have even favored sanctions.
Good thing they got rid of Genocide Joe to pave the way Death dealing Donny
Coworker: “I hate trump, he should never be president!” Me: “So you’re voting Harris?” Coworker: “I don’t know if we’re ready for a WoMaN president”
Asking for a friend, where is the nearest cliff? He would like to go jump off of it.
Maybe the political party should have conformed to the pressure of the people who vote in its party. Just saying.
Dems would rather lose than appeal to what americans actually want.
Also funny to imagine protest voters being powerful enough to sway the election but not powerful enough for Dems to listen to
Dems would rather lose than appeal to what americans actually want.
Lol. If we changed our foreign policies to win elections every 4 years we’d have exactly ZERO allies.
Israel is America’s most important ally in the middle east. We ain’t giving that up for a single election.
Edit: Ruffled some stupid feathers. Proud of your protest vote?
Why is Israel America’s most important ally in the region?
Is it because they’re a colonial outpost?
A racist apartheid country is not who I want to be a close ally of my country.
It might be because they are a rogue nuclear state…
ally
America doesn’t have allies, we have vassal states and economically enforced consrcripts lol.
Why do you think all these 3rd world countries want BRICS to actually fly? They’re tired of being held hostage with USD.
I mean they straight up declared themselves police of the world in the 90s after the USSR fell. And we all know the police definitely aren’t just some systemically corrupt protectors of the wealthy.
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Who? People go on about how if we just told Israel to drop dead, voters would turn out in the millions, but what actual numbers are there to back it up? The majority of people willing to left the world burn as protest are young and statistically, they don’t vote, the issues be damned.
The simple reality is that this “Silent majority” of far leftists Internet pundits want the Democratic Party to appeal to does not exist. Biden didn’t try to appeal to these people, because they were never really going to turn out.
There is no reality in which America jeopardizes its relationship with its most important ally in the middle east.
Simply not an option.
So now we get to watch Dipshit Donny give Netanyahu free reign to turn Palestine to dust.
But if you’re implying that Dems should have lied like Republicans lie and told their constituents that they’d stop supporting Israel in order to get re-elected, then yeah, they absolutely should have done that to prevent what we’re about to experience.
If we don’t give the nation of Israel full control of the region, then we can’t fulfill the prophecy to bring end times!
If only they’d put this much effort into getting one person to change her mind on the issue, instead of trying to get 10 million people to change their morals.
It appears especially ghoulish now after it came out that even her campaign’s polling showed that it was a losing position.
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Morals are morals, but they shouldn’t be completely uncompromising
In this case we had the status quo on one side and on the other, someone who was itching to throw the dial to 11 across the board.
At this point, any blood spilled as on their hands just as much as the DNC.
Some moral stances cannot be crossed. Like supporting genocide is a line the globe has generally agreed should not be crossed.
What status quo was there when Dems allow the rollback of everything even when they’re in power without even the suggestion of a fight? Unless you mean the status quo of everything continually getting worse under either party’s admin.
the status quo of everything continually getting worse under either party’s admin.
I always vomit a little in my mouth when I see comments like this.
Completely unaware of things like Dems providing cheap healthcare to vulnerable people (Obamacare) and lowering the cost of prescription medicine, and banning medical debt from showing up on credit reports, etc etc etc.
Only someone completely unaware of everything going on around them would state that the status quo for Dems is everything getting worse. Paying attention to the smallest degree destroys the lazy take that both parties are the same.
Healthcare has gotten so cheap, Luigi Mangione made a cake for a health insurance CEO.
FAFO! Big time. Bunch of idiots. They do not understand that Israel has the USA by the balls and this has been going on since the USS Liberty.
Oh look at that, exactly what literally every sane person predicted would happen is happening.
Yep all those idiot protest voters getting exactly what trump said he would do.
Do you think this wouldn’t happen if Kamala was president? Because I seem to recall an entire genocide they could have halted a year ago but chose not to.
Are you seriously arguing that slow genocide is better than quick genocide?
I’m arguing that you can have protests and at least an effect with Kamala and the dems in power…good luck with repubs and trump. They are don’t give two fucks about anyone.
I know neolibs like to blame everyone and everything but themselves but even if 100% of the protest voters voted for Harris, she still would have lost.
If every protest voter and third party voter was for Harris, she would have still lost in the landslide.
Turns out having horrid policies, saying “I’m not going to change from the person in office no one currently likes, except emulate Trump more”, doesn’t work. Who knew you had to be popular in a national popularity contest?
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Yes after a year+ of genocide, it’s continuing unabated. People would have to be ins4Ne to believe anything else was gonna happen.
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The fact the other side is even worst doesn’t make your side less bad…
I would be curious to see the numbers but I don’t think the pro Palestine protest voters cost the Democrats the election. It definitely didn’t help, but the Dems shat the bed in way more ways than just the Palestine situation.
If they did, then all the neolibs were wrong that voters don’t care about Palestine…
Which logically means the party needs to move to the left at least enough so that genocide isn’t acceptable.
Instead, they act like fucking trump supporters and brag that a genocide is still happening.
There’s zero logic or empathy with them, which is why some people call them “blue maga”.
They’re the ones that didn’t stop watching CNN even after the new buyers blatantly and publicly said their goal was to become the fox news if he left.
You are aware that people can hold two beliefs at once, right?
- Democrats are not doing enough and were actively allowing a genocide under their watch.
- Inside our current system, the most powerful act a citizen can perform is voting.
So, not voting and encouraging others not to vote because “blue MAGA” is actively helping the people who are currently enacting genocide+.
See, this is where communication always breaks down…
If a progressive is politically active right now it’s safe to assume that they held their nose and voted D.
Which I’ve done just like I’ve always done.
But we tried to warn people trump was going to win if Dems kept moving right…
Dems kept moving right, and we were right. Then when we try to talk about how to win next time and how to gain back all the votes moving right cost us…
We get people trying to say we’re the problem because we want to fucking win.
So, not voting and encouraging others not to vote because “blue MAGA” is actively helping the people who are currently enacting genocide+.
I got a big post history, plenty of opportunities for you to find a single comment where I’ve ever advocated for not voting for the least evil candidate in the general.
But if you got a little faith you can take my word it’s not in here.
Inside our current system, the most powerful act a citizen can perform is voting.
That “inside” is doing increasingly heavy lifting these days. Seems to me that increasingly the only successful change comes from working outside the system.
How do you define that? Because all I’m hearing is you want to be the unibomber.
Yes, it is possible to be extremely ignorant of the effectiveness of various political actions.
Whether you are for or against voting, claiming it’s the most powerful act a citizen can perform is completely absurd. I don’t know a single informed person of any ideology who thinks this.
Phrasing matters. There is a reason I put “Inside the system”.
What is the reason?
Maybe I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. The way I understand it, it’s very misleading or incorrect. There are plenty of actions people can take that are far more impactful than voting. I guess whether those various actions are categorized as inside or outside of the system might be up for debate in some cases. But I’m not sure why you would even be imposing that restriction in the first place.
The reason I said, “inside the system” is that we need to use the avenues provided to us to try to fight back along side other means, such as protests. We need to unify now more than ever, so lumping everyone who uses the system to affect change into “blue MAGA” is only harming progress.
I agree completely with the need to unify. I just want people to stop thinking politics begins and ends with voting. Even if you don’t want to do anything disruptive there are still things you can do like canvassing or letter-writing or becoming local party delegate and influencing parties from the inside. I largely agree with leftists that the system will never be completely transformed from the inside but it’s better than doing nothing.
However I also think we’re getting to the point where more disruptive civil resistance actions will be necessary.
Pretty much. They didn’t offer anything their constituents wanted except for escape from DJT.
Unfortunately “We aren’t Donald Trump” wasn’t a winning strategy two of the three times they tried it.
I wonder what two terrible choices we are gonna have in 2028. Watch it be like fuckin Nancy Pelosi with an exoskeleton holding her up vs Dan Crenshaw who will have replaced his eye patch with a gun by then.
And, remember, it almost didn’t even work the second time. Biden was the only candidate running for the nomination poised to lose to Trump and he was forced on us, seemingly as punishment for us demanding healthcare. They were willing to throw 2020 and would have lost had the unpredictable and extraordinary circumstances of Covid-19 not occurred, along with Trump’s absolutely bungled response. Covid-19 was the sole event that propelled Biden to the white house. And then he was exactly as ineffective and terrible as all leftists predicted and we got Trump back because of it.
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I think both Trump and Biden handled COVID fucking terribly.
Really most nations handled it really fucking badly. I can forgive initial mistakes like not knowing how potent it was or how infectious it was, but once they knew the masks were pointless why the hell did they continue to push that crap everywhere.
It’s absolutely a disgrace how the Dems handled it after an entire year of Trump trying to pretend it just didn’t exist or was just a cold and using that in their campaign. Then when it became convenient for them they began to pretend it was over.
Politicians continuing to be fuckin useless yet again.
Well, whoever it is, it’ll be them running against Trump, because he’s already hinted at running for a third term, and he doesn’t give a shit if things he does are illegal. And again, whoever it is the Dems pick, they’ll be such shitheads that they’ll lose the election against Trump again, for the third time. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever they learn their lesson in the next four years, because democrats are mentally incapable of even considering they could ever do anything wrong.
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compulsive liar 24/7
specifically clarified afterwards
I was saying that the left says he’s a liar 24/7 but for whatever reason chose to believe him completely when he made that comment. But then they just go right back to calling him a liar when he made clarifications afterwards.
It’s not that complex if you have a handful of functioning brain cells my guy.
I thought it was strange why you were defending Trump, till you started in about “tHe LeFt”. Now it makes perfect sense.
“two”
I’m not really sure what you were trying to get at with that comment. Are you implying that it wasn’t two times that Donald Trump won?
Oh sorry. “Two” parties.
I question even that: Did they really? Where did the party articulate a cohesive plan (or hell, even just an enthusiastic promise) to counter the rise of oligarchy?
They promised an escape from him stylistically, but the majority of citizens who aren’t political junkies weren’t sick of it, because they weren’t exposed to it, because they don’t pay much attention to political news. What did they promise that the non-informed voter would notice in they’re day-to-day life?
They promised that their oligarchs would be nicer to us. Which, to be fair, is probably true.
You’d think that would’ve been enough…
ok
Pro-Palestine protest votes didn’t cost the Dems the election, but that a single group was not the deciding factor in a contest does not absolve them of responsibility. IE single-issue pro-Israel voters probably were not the reason for Trump’s victory, but they still deserve a portion of the blame in voting for Trump.
And many of these selfsame pro-Palestine protest vote types are continuing their dumbass games even as Trump greenlights fascism both at home and abroad - like everyone fucking told them he would.
And many of these selfsame pro-Palestine protest vote types are continuing their dumbass games even as Trump greenlights fascism both at home and abroad - like everyone fucking told them he would.
The dimbass games are posts like this instead of arguing for civil disruption and actions beyond elections. The protesters entire point was the election won’t stop the genocide either way and further action is needed. Trying to bait them into an argument about an election that’s already fucking over serves nothing. Unless you don’t care about the issue in the first place and just want to be divisive about it.
What actions do you suggest?
Any direct action and organizing, frankly. From mutual aid and disruptive protests to boycott, sabotage, and strike(which would take years to organize).
The protesters entire point was the election won’t stop the genocide either way and further action is needed.
And in the interest of furthering that point, they did everything they could to ensure a Democratic defeat. After all, if Palestinians are genocided by Israel, it’s only fair that American minorities get genocided by Republicans, right?
Trying to bait them into an argument about an election that’s already fucking over serves nothing.
I’m not trying to bait them into any sort of argument. They’re long past help. They’re out here on Lemmy already praising Trump as the ‘lesser evil’ and insisting, even now, that there’s no difference between Trump and Harris in terms of policy. Any argument with them is fucking pointless.
But I’m sorry that you don’t like that I’m not giving them asspats for their ‘principled’ stand against American minorities over an issue that, even according to your summary of their motivations, they realized would not be changed by their attacks on the non-fascist candidate in the election.
After all, if Palestinians are genocided by Israel, it’s only fair that American minorities get genocided by Republicans, right?
Solidarity for me, but not for thee. It doesn’t work out well.
Yes, this is why the smartest choice for LGBT folk in 1939 Poland would have been to welcome the Nazis, what with Poland being, at the time, far from LGBT-friendly. Because if there’s not solidarity for everyone, there should be solidarity for no one.
/s, for all of those out there patting each other on the back over ensuring the fascist won the 2024 American presidential election.
Or maybe when voting makes it impossible to achieve justice you should move towards other forms of resistance, like my original point was. Part of that resistance is nonparticipation. It’s an expected outcome. I voted for Harris but you don’t see me clutching my pearls over the idea that maybe this system just needs to go.
Or maybe when voting makes it impossible to achieve justice
Oh, of course, when you can’t achieve justice by voting, the correct decision is to ensure that voting results in the worst possible resolution. If you can’t have justice, you must have as much injustice as possible. The only moral choice, of course. Basic accelerationism. Every good revolutionary knows this.
you should move towards other forms of resistance, like my original point was.
Like fucking what? The easy answer of “We’re going to rise up and firebomb the rich any day now :‘’')” has been parroted by leftist wannabe suburban kids since the 70s; fuck’s sake, I’ve heard the line myself for the past 20 fucking years. And what has happened? Where are these masses ready to rise up, since they find voting no longer radical enough for their tastes?
They aren’t exchanging voting for more effective forms of change. They’re just abandoning voting, and replacing it with jack fucking shit. They continue to sit on their fucking asses, like always. They don’t organize en masse, they don’t take up lone wolf violence. They do nothing, except play at purity games to jerk themselves off over how pure they are for abandoning as many minorities and oppressed groups as they can to literal fucking fascists. And you know who suffers for it?
All of us.
Fuck’s sake.
Part of that resistance is nonparticipation. It’s an expected outcome.
Are you fucking kidding me? “Resistance is nonparticipation”?
What a fucking joke. Am I suppose to thank these twats for nonparticipating us into camps? Should I thank them for nonparticipating Ukraine into a potential genocide? What did nonparticipation gain us ‘revolutionary’ elements? Are we better poised to strike against the system now? No? We’re actually worse off? Fucking fantastic.
I voted for Harris but you don’t see me clutching my pearls over the idea that maybe this system just needs to go.
“This system needs to go” does not need the addendum “Therefore, I’m going to make the system as terrible as possible”.
single-issue pro-Israel voters probably were not the reason for Trump’s victory, but they still deserve a portion of the blame in voting for Trump.
Except they didnt vote for trump and it’s disgusting to pretend otherwise
Except they didnt vote for trump and it’s disgusting to pretend otherwise
But they helped him become president. Do you understand that you can help someone become president even if you don’t vote for them? Is that a concept that you can grasp?
But they helped him become president
Millions of people in solid blue states didn’t vote, you think they helped Trump win?
Blanket statements like “if they didn’t vote they voted for trump” are fucking stupid when you look at literally any detailed data
Pro-Israel voters absolutely voted for Trump.
So we’re discussing a tiny portion of people now to avoid being called out for the authoritarian vote bullshit now, eh?
So we’re discussing a tiny portion of people now to avoid being called out for the authoritarian vote bullshit now, eh?
What is that supposed to even mean?
Well at least you admit to awful reading capabilities
Bruh, I explicitly made the point of “Being a small part of the problem does not absolve people of being part of the problem”, and your response is
So we’re discussing a tiny portion of people now to avoid being called out for the authoritarian vote bullshit now, eh?
Between the fact that we were discussing a ‘tiny portion of people’ from the very start and that ‘authoritarian vote bullshit’ is a vague phrase that makes no solid assertions except “vote bad >:(” for some reason, you’ve said nothing of substance unless there’s some means of clarifying. I offered you a chance to clarify. You declined.
Don’t really know how much more help you want here. I’m not here to spoonfeed you, guy.
Well said. I really wish people understood that blame can be shared because they really don’t seem to understand that and haven’t since November.
They understand. They just don’t want the blame and want to shift the responsibility for their irresponsible actions to anyone but themselves.
Haha it’s people with flawed logic like you who deserve all the blame.
People who think like you should have to pass aptitude tests before they vote since they literally lined up behind an undemocratically appointed presidential candidate who had no concrete policy position except vibez and no fundamental changes from Biden.
People who couldn’t see an obvious and humiliating loss coming for Harris and the democrats since Biden was the candidate are the only people responsible for this disaster.
The democrats could have given you options. They didn’t because they don’t care about you. They paraded around a half-dead 80 year old man as competent and made excuses for his ineptitude while telling everyone who said he wasn’t fit that they were the ones who were actually crazy. Then they do a last minute bait and switch because he is literally falling apart before the world’s eyes. They lied to you over and over and you are still carrying water for them. Does the history of the situation not matter now that Trump is president?
That’s exactly why people are being called bluemaga.
Yes, of course, how could I not see that “no fundamental changes from Biden” was a horror worth electing a literal fascist. Thank you for informing me that worsening every issue facing us was the preferable choice in order to teach those darn Dems a lesson. Many of us filthy poors and minorities will suffer and die, but that’s a sacrifice you and your’s are willing to make, right?
Why are you hung up on the idea of teaching democrats a lesson? Democrats are not owed votes. They have to earn them. They did not earn them this time for a multitude of reasons, but you want to blame everyone else except them and their weak policies, weak campaigns, weak candidates, and shattered moral compass.
You can prefer the slow unnoticeable slip into fascism the democrats were offering instead of the highway to hell version republicans are unrolling, but please just be honest about it.
Biden did nothing to improve American’s every day lives. The cost of living keeps going up and all the democrats do is say, “hey, the parliamentarian that you have never heard of says we can’t do $15 minimum wage, but we can give ourselves raises and send billions to Ukraine for a proxy war and even more billions to Israel for a genocide. oh things are getting too expensive out there? slow down on the avocado toast. get a job as a coder. see our lives are fine, why are you all complaining.”
We were going to end up in the same place whether democrats or republicans won. It’s just more pleasing to you draped in blue instead of red. I thought maybe TDS democrats would finally start fighting for Palestine once Trump came into office, but they instead turned their derangement on the people who don’t want American to fund and safeguard a genocide. Crazy times we are witnessing.
Why are you hung up on the idea of teaching democrats a lesson? Democrats are not owed votes. They have to earn them.
“Your genocide is an acceptable price to teach those damn Dems a lesson!”
Yeah, I wonder why I’m hung up on that. Fucking fascist.
We were going to end up in the same place whether democrats or republicans won.
Privileged bothsides bullshit. Fuck’s sake.
I thought maybe TDS democrats
Mask-off, I see.
You see nothing because you live in an echo chanber. You can’t see both sides are playing you because you don’t want to believe it. You need a bad guy and a good guy to come save you.
Newsflash: Democrats aren’t saving anything except their own asses.
Biden’s genocide was acceptable to you. Harris’s contiuation of the genocide would have been acceptable to you because it would mean Trump is not in office.
You accept Trump’s genocide as well as long as you think you have some moral high ground over people who did not vote for Holocaust Harris. Uou tell yourself, “Yeah, it’s somebody else’s fault. Not mine for voting for the WORST CANDIDATE IN US PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY. It has to be the people who wanted this to end before it even began. How are my coconut vibez?”
The masks are indeed coming off of bluemaga democrats. That is for certain. These people just as blinded in their rage towards Donald Trump as maga rages against marxists.
The moral highground you believe you occupy is flooded with the souls of Gaza that Biden and Harris allowed to be exterminated and somehow you are blaming Trump for it. It’s an amazing braintrick you perform there.
My advice is next time don’t throw your vote away.
Because the effect is the same. Sorry, again, you might finally experience what others have been.
If you think this shit is gonna be worse internally than externally; you’re gonna have a bad time.
But hey, you know best right? Nobody told you what would happen before, right? They weren’t all proven correct, right?
Id say anyone with half a brain, paid attention and was an informed voter knew exactly this is what we were in for - but it’s clear most Americans are not informed because of the huge number of people who didn’t participate (for whatever reasons)
Highly engaged voters voted overwhelmingly for Kamala. Not because they liked her, but because they knew the alternative was dog shit. This is not an ideal situation.
It wouldn’t have been a landslide, but it certainly assured the worst case scenario, MAGA sweeping all 3.
Who knows how it would have gone down otherwise, maybe the Democrats regained the house, maybe held onto the Senate. Maybe Trump would have lost, but Republicunts held onto Congress.
Who knows, but any of those would have been 10000x better than letting Drump get a hold of all 3.
Now everyone is screwed in some way.
MAGA sweeping all 3.
A lot of the House Senate races are likely due to the “victory fund” nonsense Hillary started and was then passed down to Biden and Kamala
The way it gets away donation limits is using the max from state parties. The last time we got to see the books was after 2016, and states got like 1% of what was donated “for them” to the DNC and Clinton campaigns
There’s no sign anything has changed, and the neoliberals running the party have no requirements to disclose them
So I just assume if they’re hiding the books, they’re hiding grifts at this point.
What do you mean don’t blame the brown people for White America’s problems/identity crisis?
Fuckin what?
If you think white people have problems because of brown people, you’re a stupid fuck. White people collect all the money that makes white people poor.
“It’s pretty cool that MAGA Elon has so much money and my life sucks.”
Agreed 💯
Finally I can stop wondering how the protest voters handle aiding and completing a genocide while claiming to have any sense of morality at all.
They ignore it because they never cared, that’s IT! NOTHING ELSE. ITS ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSES FAULT BECAUSE OF THEIR NARCISSISM.
Trump claiming credit for ceasefire and then destroying the region was always Bibi’s plan. The propalestine protestors were against the administration for refusing to acknowledge that the israeli’s were not negotiating in good faith. Had they played hard ball things might have been different.
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