• trompete [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    I did not have a first communion because my parents decided Catholic rituals are stupid, which means I missed out on quite a lot of cash gifts from relatives I should have gotten. I’m still bitter about it. Where’s my fucking money grandma!?

    So I’m not skipping my first vote, no matter how stupid liberal rituals are.

    • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Ya I bought an NES with my first communion money. You missed out.

      However the adult therapy bills ran me well into the many thousands of dollars.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      If it’s just ritual then isn’t it categorically a tacit endorsement and normalization of genocide

      If the beginning of any statement implies or begins with “Yes Joe Biden committed genocide…BUT” then doesn’t that explicitly define genocide as conditional and open to negotiation?

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        isn’t it categorically a tacit endorsement and normalization of genocide

        You are presenting this as an either/or choice, and completely ignoring the alternative if we don’t support Biden. And abstention is a vote for Trump. So let me remind you of a few things about Trump that you are overlooking:

        –While in office, Trump’s policy on Israel and Palestine was to do whatever Netanyahu asked. The joke of a “peace deal” brokered by Kushner was a naked attempt to impose an Israeli diktat on the Palestinians. So any assumption that Trump would restrain Israel in any way, even as much as Biden’s weak attempts, is laughable.

        –Trump committed an act of war, aligned with Israeli strategic goals, when he assassinated Iranial General Soleimani, who was a member of the faction within the Iranian government most favorable to negotiation with the West. Fortunately, the Iranians didn’t take the bait.

        –Trump enthusiastically supported the Saudi genocidal war against the Yemenis, and vastly increased weapons sales to that murdering psychopath MBS, who was also responsible for starting the aggression against Yemen.

        –Trump surrendered in Afghanistan and cravenly abandoned the Afghans who had supported the West’s campaign against the Taliban, leading to massacres within the country and a refugee crisis. He released all Taliban prisoners, destroying what little bargaining power the US still had, and cynically set the date of final withdrawal to occur after Biden got into office, then screeched about how it was all Biden’s fault that there was shit in the shit sandwich that Trump had made.

        –During the Covid epidemic, Trump deliberately withheld needed supplies and vaccines to some states, with intent to cause a higher death toll in states that hadn’t supported him in the 2016 election. The withholding of equipment was also straight-up extortion. Between the incompetence of the response, the malice of the attempted bio-warfare against American people, and the corruption, it has been estimated that half a million American deaths from Covid can be attributed to Trump. How’s that for genocide?

        –The border family separation policy as Trump implemented it was another act of genocide according to international law.

        And now let’s look at what your golden boy will do next.

        –He will sell out the Ukrainians just as shamelessly as he sold out the Afghans. That will lead to a bloodbath in Ukraine and a refugee crisis in Europe on a scale unseen since WW2. There is even a chance that Trump will take Russia’s side in its imperialist aggression, and in subsequent attacks on other smaller countries that got the Russian boot off their necks when the Warsaw Pact and USSR collapsed. He has made excuses for Putin during the campaign, and his servility to the Russians has been one of the few consistent patterns in his otherwise erratic life.

        So here’s a scorecard:

        Palestine: Neither good, Trump worse. Everything else: Trump far worse.

        And, as I said, a low turnout favors Trump. So the imperfect but far less morally odious choice is to vote for Biden. There’s a slim chance Biden will eventually take even-handed action on Israel/Palestine. There is no chance that Trump will ever take any position based on morality or human decency, since those concepts are unknown to him.

  • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    The only people who care about vote are the people for whom the outcome actually means nothing.

    No LIB who spends their time vote shaming or talks about “we won’t get the vote anymore” he’ll be a dictator" etc., would be effected in the least - even if their fantasies happened.

    The people who things will get worse for know that it will get worse either way- at exactly the same speed. There is no harm reduction. The policy of this government is harm against humanity. Only people who are comfortable and insulated from that harm through money and privilege are out 9f touch enough to think vote matters

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    39 minutes ago

    Why didn’t you cross post it? I mean - if it was a real question and not just something for just to laugh about.

    -–

    Earlier today I asked this at Bluesky

    Serious question - why can’t Biden simply say “This is an official act and Kamala is the presidential nominee.” Trump could (will?) murder people with his official act power. So why doesn’t Biden use just a teeny-weeny bit?

    Crickets.

    I’m kind of a crazy person at that site because I’m often just talking to myself. Libs ignore me or block me. I’m going to make yet-another-alt so I can post in r/politics and at least get replies as they have their downvoting party.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      why can’t Biden simply say “This is an official act and Kamala is the presidential nominee.”

      Because it’s up to the political parties who the nominees are, not the government. So it’s not an official act. Biden could withdraw as a candidate anytime he likes until he’s nominated. After that, he could withdraw as nominee anytime he wants. But he has only influence as to who his replacement would be, not absolute say.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        So it’s not an official act.

        Trump as president could make a citizen stateless and/or imprison them and/or torture them and/or murder them. If you don’t believe that or are unwilling to accept it - google it. I’ll wait. There’s no hurry here.

        An “official act” is whatever the president says it is if the court agrees. To stop the 6-3 GOP SCOTUS veto Biden can restructure the court now so whatever he does is an official act. Don’t try to convince me a future Trump can strip citizenship, jail, torture, and murder a huge number of people no problem but smol bean President Biden is powerless right now to deal with a minor bullshit procedural problem.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    But my checks and balances! They are important so that either does not do a hecking populism like healthcare and stopping a genocide. This way only bipartisan issues get the nod like outlawing trans people or arming Nazis.

    • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      If the alternative is so terrible, and the Supreme Court just ruled the President has total legal immunity in office, why hasn’t Biden done the obvious thing to protect the country against this horrific threat? soviet-hmm

      • queermunist she/her
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        4 months ago

        I am going to be asking libs this every day until the election. Also, why doesn’t he solve Trump’s Justices while he’s at it?

      • robinnn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        Umm, wow, okay, you want us to become a TOTALITARIAN REGIME like China? Maybe take a second and think, tankie. America only uses violence to interfere in the democratic procedures of independent non-Western countries ANTI FREEDOM AUTHORITARIAN ROGUE STATES.

        If you think that America overthrowing the elected Sukarno by infiltrating the Indonesian military and guiding the slaughter of ~one million innocent people in Indonesia and propping up a dictator who would go on to commit a genocide in East Timor simply because Indonesia was developing independently and the government worked with the PKI, or the US working with Pinochet (whose government would go on to massacre left-wing dissidents and workers) to perpetrate the brutal coup in Chile because the elected Allende promised to pursue socialist policy in Chile and had worked on land reform/nationalization, or the US backing a coup in Guatemala (because the government had begun to block imperialist exploitation of their resources and labor) to depose the democratically elected Árbenz and inserting a military dictatorship that perpetrated a genocide against indigenous Guatemalans, if you think this is half as bad as the American government killing a single person who is not currently in power to prevent a fascist Nazi government from being formed, then say hello to Putin for me, because you’re nothing but a Russian bot who will clock out of your shift at some silly Moscow time. WE BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY!

    • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      Oh, I know who it is; I just don’t give a rat’s ass anymore. It doesn’t matter which old white man gets in, the genocide of sovereign Palestinians will continue, the concentration camps on the southern border will remain open, the wall will continue being built, Abbott won’t be stopped from putting saw blades in the rivers, the prison slavery complex won’t be abolished(and honestly, all of you deserve to be shot on that point alone because you all benefit from the fruits of prison slavery, and you all tacitly support it by voting in democrats who own stock in for-profit prisons), the 1033 program won’t be ended, the Cop Cities won’t be cancelled, none of it fuckin matters.

      Death to the settler empire. All I ask for is the opportunity to laugh in a couple anglo settler faces before the lynch mob gets me, too. I genuinely hate you bloodthirsty ghoul motherfuckers.

    • queermunist she/her
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      4 months ago

      It’s actually a complicated question for people (like me!) who hate America. Biden might be the accelerationist candidate at this point!

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 months ago

      That doesn’t make any sense. If Hitler is the opposition, and your guy is the only person running against Hitler, my question would remain the same. Because if you’re not going to do anything, then you’re basically just making me sit around for 4 years until Hitler comes back into power.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      How is this still something being asked??

      It’s being asked because the current incumbent is a party to genocide and the “other option” currently isn’t

    • HelluvaBottomCarter [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      The US has never been a democracy. And I don’t mean that in the “constitutional republic” way. I mean it literally, there has been no time when everyone could participate in the organization of society let alone share the same status as the ruling class.

      Democracy isn’t ending because of Trump. It ended because a group of wealthy people in a closed room decided it was bad for business.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 months ago

      So let me get this straight: you’re gonna keep holding this competition for power, and the results will either be democracy or the end of democracy, instead of just imprisoning the guy who’s threatening to end democracy? I don’t get it. It seems very inefficient and only something a poor leader would allow.

      If my team preserves democracy and the other team does not, and I currently hold power, why would I allow the other team even the remotest possibility of gaining power? And why are you assuming that Biden WILL win? What happens if he doesn’t? Why hasn’t he provided any contingency plans for if he loses? He hasn’t installed anyone in important positions or pass laws that will protect democracy in case he loses. It seems to me that if Biden loses, he will simply retreat to a beach house and leave us to fend for ourselves.

    • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      what democracy? all I see is an ownership class dictatorship with a red, angry, sadistic face and sometimes a blue, sad, excuse-making face

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      the other choice is the end of democracy

      What ‘democracy’?
      You never actually had any sort of representation of working-class people’s interests in your government, so clearly you aren’t talking about any genuine democracy. And there is no indication that the practice of representative ‘democracy’ is going away under the 99% Biden option, so clearly you aren’t talking about that, either.

      Also, if you do have a democracy, as you claim, then you should be put on Nuremberg trials for your complicity in many, many atrocities that you keep committing in a supposedly-democratic manner.

      and a piece of human shit in office

      Literally every single USian president, ever, including Biden. Hell, you venerate worse beings than Trump, like chattel slavers like Washington, for example.

      Also, your plan seems to basically be ‘never have the Dem party, which literally funds and backs Republican candidates in elections (including Trump in 2016, by the way), lose a presidential election to the Rep party’. Every literate person understands that that is not workable, even if you were correct about the supposed ‘end of democracy’.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      If a so-called “democracy” is committing and normalizing genocide, then what good is that “democracy”?

      If tacitly endorsing genocide is an acceptable condition for the preservation of representative republicanism then what groups are eligible for this sacrificial role/duty?

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Damn if Trump will end democracy, then the Dems should probably do something about him. Kind of wild how we can live in an alleged democracy and then it just ends with Trump completely unprovoked and unprecedented with no build up, seems like a good system. Even weirder that the alleged democracy didn’t end the last time Trump was.in power, despite everyone claiming it would.

    • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Help me understand this.

      The Biden Administration, full of well-connected political elites, people with decades of experience and insider knowledge — people who attend intelligence briefings, plan wars, and sign off on covert operations, people who pursued Julian Assange to the ends of the earth, law be damned — are going to do nothing to prevent a coup that installs a one-party dictatorship in the United States? They really believe it will happen, and yet they are doing nothing, despite having the power to easily stop it?

      Or, are they scaring a vote out of you, rather than buying your vote with policies that their rich donors might not want?

      Is this democracy or a good cop bad cop routine?

        • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          Do you know why they didn’t stop Hitler? Do you know why they handed him power even though he lost the election? Because most of the industrial class was behind Hitler as a way to crush the enormous upswell of socialist agitation in Germany at the time. Capitalism was in crisis. The establishment wanted Hitler. He was a thug to beat back the left. The votes of the people didn’t matter, only money mattered.

          In America, the left is weak, and capitalism is all-powerful. They don’t need Hitler yet. Trump had four years to be Hitler and they didn’t let him. They were in charge, not him.

          The second they want Hitler, we’ll have Hitler, no matter how we vote. That is what Germany teaches us.

          Why would it be otherwise? The rich write our policies. The rich declare our wars. The rich crush our rights. The rich exploit and sicken us and they make sure the law lets them do it. You can’t vote them out. If the rich want to let Israel obliterate Palestine because Israel helps them control the oil-rich Middle East? That is what will happen. That is not on the ballot. If the rich want private healthcare? That is what will happen. You can’t vote on that. You can’t vote on any of this. You don’t have enough money.

            • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              4 months ago

              It doesn’t matter how you vote, but there are other things you can do. Organize your workplace and community. Most of our rights were gained through strikes and other direct action. We didn’t vote in the 8 hour work week.

                • iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  4 months ago

                  I’m saying it’s not that important who runs the government, because the rich, the MIC, and the oil industry are in charge regardless. The only way positive change happens is if a bunch of us band together and physically force it to happen. They already have the elections gamed out, we’ve been voting for the lesser evil since Nixon, since before Nixon, and look where that has brought us.

                • TC_209 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  4 months ago

                  It’s not a quiz. You brought up Hitler and his rise to power but I don’t think you actually understand how Hitler and the Nazi party gained its power. My “point” is not some grand final statement or “gotcha” moment – my “point” is the whole conversation. If you’re not willing to have a dialogue, then just delete your posts in this thread and I will disengage.