I'm an outsider and frankly I don't get the weird hostility to being critical of the dems.

Like if the election is so crucial isn't now the time to hold them over the barrel to try change them? you can vote or not as you please and it's all secret anyway so shouldn't you threaten them with a loss unless they change policy? Even if secretly you do intend to vote for them should the threats fail as some sort of lesser of two evils?

I don't get it at all. But then your politics always seemed a bit nuts to me anyway. Very high feelings over the person who will export war and misery over the whole world while crushing the working class, or the person who will export war and misery over the whole world while crushing the working class and also being more explicitly racist.

Absolutely

I'm trans and she said she would "follow the law" when the law in my state says I can be discriminated on the basis of my transness, full stop.

Harm reduction is a lie comfortable people tell themselves.

I don't get how I can see people well into their 50's talking about voting for the "lesser evil." I always think of this Hunter S. Thompson quote:

That's the real issue this time," he said. "Beating Nixon. It's hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years."

The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but "regrettably necessary" holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

That's from Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail from 1972
50 years ago that was a tired argument. 50 years!

Personally I really like the whole: Republicans are the ‘Big Bad‘ that will destroy the country, end reproductive rights, start a war on LGBTQ+, end democracy, be the second coming of hitler etc…. And also we’re going to reach across the isle and have a republican in our government too. It’s like wtf? Are these guys bad? Or do you want to work with them? Which is it? I know that once we drop the keyfabe they’re all the same, perusing the same material and class interests, but their outward messaging is so incoherent. No wonder it doesn’t exactly resonate.

The part where it breaks down for me is that that they talk about all the hypothetical stuff the DNC will do but it is all just fantasy. It is always stuff the DNC has never done or given any indication they will do. When you ask them about it they always just switch to talking about the bad stuff the gop will do that the DNC will not stop at all.

Honestly I'm not sure I'm even really processing how Libs are behaving right now. Like I'm pretty sure I'm in some kind of denial after the Libs derailed the uprising in '20 and killed MeToo, Abolish the Police, minimum wage, and public healthcare, plus they ended all attempts to even slow Covid down, and now they're proudly, openly committing genocide in front of the whole world.

It's too much. It's Fascism with bottomless mimosas.

The idea that Trump would do something that would be worse than the Dems learning genocide is completely okay is weird to me.
Like if the Dems get in while committing a genocide, why would one think they'd ever get better? If the line isn't drawn at genocide then there is no line and the dems will know they don't even got to pretend anymore.

On top of that it's wild to me how many people don't wrap their head around the concept that voting legitimises the government. The US frequently uses "democracy" and amount of voters and so on to justify it's foreign (and domestic to a lesser extent) policy. US politicians talk about representing their constituents, they talk about their voters, they use these things to make themselves accepted as rulers. The less people that vote for them the better.

On top of all that it's weird to see libs at the same time comprehend long(er) term thinking - "vote for Kamala so we at least have four years to organize/hope for a better candidate" and at the same time be able to understand why someone might vote third party, despite that candidate not being able to win.
Or its not weird, its standard doublethink, but it's fucking frustrating.

The mental gymnastics are relatively simple, it’s:

1. It’s not genocide
2. If it is, it’s by accident
3. If it’s not, they deserved it
4. Trump is literally hitler I’m shaking and pissing this is the most important election of our lives

Most people don’t even reach step 1 because they’re American and completely subconsciously dismiss the idea that foreign people exist or matter at all.

Liberals get so scratched when you tell them that you're a marginalized person who wants them to fuck off.

They love to exploit the hell out of the underprivileged (unless said underprivileged people are Arab Americans) to make their case as to why you have to

Racial justice, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ equality are all just tools they use to act as if they're any less bourgeois, chauvinistic, and ultimately fascist in nature than Republicans.

It’s also very funny (not actually) because what is Harris going to do for LGBTQ people? Not that her or any Democrat’s symbolic rhetoric mean anything but have the words “transgender” even come out of her mouth this campaign?

But then they lesser evil by going "Well if we don't vote then Trump will do bad things to trans people here."

I saw that video this morning of her refusing to say anything in defense of us. They don't even have this bullshit any more!

I watched this tik tok that hit the top page of reddit where it was a lib making fun of leftists not voting for genocide and they jerked themselves off over making the point that “uh yeah honey, there will be a genocide whether trump or Kamala wins but Kamala will be better for your real financial situation”

Yeah they’re built different lmfao their brains are room temp potato soup

https://red.ngn.tf/r/TikTokCringe/s/SwaMOgN7wV

The thing I don't see people saying enough is that there will be elections after Trump, and a vote for third parties that allows Trump to win is much less damaging in the long term than a vote that enables the rightward slide of the Democrats.

"I voted blue, I am absolved of all guilt and can continue consuming corporate screen content for 16 hours a day."

Seriously, it turns out all it took to get regular people to support hitler was to just get a 2nd hitler.

It short circuits them

But then they lesser evil by going "Well if we don't vote then Trump will do bad things to trans people here."

I don't know if they understand how much it looks like they use our LGBTQ+ comrades as a human shield. "Either become complicit in our genocide of the browns, or we'll let our controlled opposition kill disadvantaged subjects-of-empire here". In a climate where the primary slander against you in the first place is that you are unintelligible from a Republican, when the secondary slander against you is that you're forming a uniparty with right-wingers, why would you phrase a threat like this that only makes it sound more like you peckerwood yankees are in bed together?

I fuckin hate Amerikans, I swear to god. Whatever happens to us, we deserve if Kamala gets in. Hell, even if she doesn't.

They're making the choice to sacrifice Palestinians for their own comfort. By refusing to go along with that, we force them to confront the fact that it is a choice, that they're willingly making themselves complicit in genocide for their own gain. That's why they hate us.

It breaks liberals brains to learn that there are people to their left when their entire political spectrum is hitler to bernie, so to maintain their sense of moral superiority which defines their relationship to their politics they have to bend and twist their brains to make actual leftists into worse people

I'm going mad, I really am. How can people be streamed genocide live on CNN and just say "well, I guess we're ok with genocide now!"

I have seen plenty of Americans (the more right-leaning ones, admittedly) who will say it’s a genocide but that if Gazans didn’t want to be genocided then they shouldn’t have attacked Israel on Oct 7.

Is the US public even human?!

No, not really. This is what 20+ years of dehumanization of Arab and Muslim people will do to your brain. But also, Americans really struggle with being able to accept reality outside of the geographical United States. They are so ill-informed and incurious about what happens around the world I genuinely do not trust any polls regarding things like the genocide in Gaza. When 90% of Americans don’t even know basic, objective facts about the situation what do their opinions actually mean?

This extreme ignorance does not, of course, prevent Americans from expressing their opinions about foreign matters and believing their own opinions to be inviolably correct.

Is the US public even human?!

Death to America

Idk, I'm not shocked by it at all. It's Western chauvinism, plain and simple. Plenty of women, POC, queer, and trans people are getting on board because they're still part of the imperial west. To recognize that American elections are political theater would require them to completely disregard everything they've been raised to believe. And Trump is very flagrant about undermining the traditional election pageantry, especially after January 6th. They are bought into the system and the system now requires blood sacrifice, so they'll stomach the bloodletting to appease angry gods in hopes for a blessing.