• sudoer777
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    18 days ago

    I don’t own a car either but unless we improve public transit and city planning in the US there are situations where not using a car is simply impractical. My city is enormous and while my ebike works for shopping trips and getting to places <20mi away, I can just barely reach downtown and back with it before it dies. If it’s pouring rain, it’s not waterproof and it gets me soaked which is both uncomfortable and a health hazard. There are a lot of activities promoted by leftists in my area that I don’t go to because I would be spending 3 hours in transit to get there and back and I simply don’t have time for that (and Uber is too expensive). There are other places that take 3 hours one way to get to on public transit but 20 minutes by car. Where I live is not at all designed with sustainable transit in mind, and while I don’t own a car here I don’t blame people for wanting to use one. Not to mention I have almost been killed multiple times because the cycling infrastructure here is 45mph 6 line roads with no sidewalk or bike lane.

      • sudoer777
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        18 days ago

        Do you live in a city with sane transit? (Also I put more effort into avoiding cars than basically everyone I know where I live, nobody else I know uses a bike.)

          • sudoer777
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            18 days ago

            Do you pay taxes? You could choose to just go to jail instead. Do you use a device made with slave labor? You could choose to abstain from technology and not post on Lemmy. Do you work for a corporation? You could choose not to help them do shitty things and not get your basic needs met. If you said yes to any of these you are being hypocritical.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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              18 days ago

              Oh, drag doesn’t actually believe it’s as simple as that. Drag is just repeating what .ml users keep saying in regards to the election. It’s not hypocrisy when drag pays taxes, because drag has a nuanced worldview that admits we’re forced by society to make unpleasant choices. But the average .ml user, who thinks the world is a simple place where you can just choose not to support genocide, is a hypocrite as you point out.

              • sudoer777
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                18 days ago

                Firstly, I never told anybody to not vote for Kamala, what I have done is explain why people aren’t voting for her and why she’s a shitty candidate.

                Secondly, what I described above are different situations. These are products of flawed systems, the products themselves are not inherently bad and are necessary for survival which is why they exist and why people use them. But because the systems are flawed, there is all sorts of fucked up stuff going on behind them. The products themselves have no power to fix the system, and most individuals don’t either without a coordinated effort, unless they are exceptionally powerful.

                Kamala, on the other hand, would be one of those exceptionally powerful people that - by working with other politicians - can fix these systems, yet she chooses not to. And one of the reasons for that is because a large portion of her voter base doesn’t give a shit at all about the rights of anyone but themselves and their friends, shows no interest in improving them, and even dehumanizes people being oppressed by them, so she knows she can get away with keeping the oppressive systems in tact and the voter base will still support her.

                In order to fix oppression, we need to focus not on the products of the systems but on the systems themselves. And how we fix the systems is by someone who is willing to fix them gaining power. Kamala and the Biden administration have demonstrated that they have no interest in fixing the systems, that is why leftists are trying to raise awareness of these problems and are putting pressure on the Democrats and the voter base to change their stances on these problems.