I’m one of the unreasonable socialists that controls who gets elected president in every cycle. As you have probably noticed by now, I have decided not to allow Kamala to win the presidency. The reasons are mainly these:

  • I hate Dick Cheney. I think I hate him more than any other person on the planet. In times of depression, I have literally thought to myself that if I just stay alive for long enough, Dick Cheney will eventually die, and I will get to live on a planet that doesn’t have Dick Cheney on it. You liberals used to hate him too. You used to compare him to Darth Vader, apparently a character from movie series for children. But you seem to have forgotten and now you like him. I still find it extremely off-putting to associate with Dick Cheney, and I am still eagerly waiting for him to die.
  • I support Hezbollah. Contrary to what you probably think, Hezbollah is considered a legitimate sociopolitical organization by the vast majority of this planet’s population. The US and its closest allies have labeled it a terrorist organization. Here is the former president of Lebanon, a Christian and secular man who served in Lebanon’s official legitimate military (states are allow to have them 🤷🏻‍♂️), memorializing his friend Nasrallah on twitter. Hezbollah formed in response to Israel illegally occupying portions of southern Lebanon from the early 1980s to 2000. Ronald Reagan called it a holocaust against the Lebanese people. Israel continues to use white phosphorus, a war crime, on Southern Lebanon civilians. Hezbollah and Nasrallah fought against ISIS in Syria. Assassinating people like Nasrallah and blowing up people’s pagers is literally terrorism.
  • This explosive pager thing is probably more fucked up than you are thinking about. Are you sure you don’t have any electronics in your pocket right now that include components from Israel? Are you sure Netanyahu couldn’t blow you up right now? Or even just blow up from a software glitch? Do you want to live in that world? Every nation has a responsibility to its citizens to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel now.
  • I support Hamas. You are siding with the people running the concentration camps. You are siding with ethnic cleansers. Palestinians are literally living within designated fenced-in areas. They do not control who or what is allowed to move through the fence. Israel keeps them economically isolated. They are drinking toxic water and starving, and due to low life expectancy, the average Gazan is an unemployed teenager. When Palestinians resist this violently, they get bombed. When Palestinians resist this peacefully, they get shot. This happened in 2019 when they organized a peaceful protest and IDF shot at them, and you never knew or cared. Now they are getting bombed and polling shows that you know and you care and you want it to stop, but you still think a party that is committed to supplying the bombs should be running the world. So I don’t know how you expect Palestinians to behave.
  • In the last month, Trump, the Muslim ban guy, has been able to credibly position himself as a less Islamophobic candidate, but I guess you weren’t paying attention to that. Here is a NYT article that mentions that undecided voters were considering Trump because of the situation in Gaza (archive.is). I’m pretty skeptical that Trump is going to improve the situation but it is so bleak under the Biden administration that I wouldn’t be surprised if he did or at least didn’t make it worse.
  • I guess I need to say at this point that I am not antisemitic. I oppose Israel because it is a fascist apartheid state that is ethnically cleansing the region. Nothing more or less than that. I think it is antisemitic to believe all Jews support the actions of Israel. Israel and the US have become diplomatically isolated on this in the last year and I fear the future may be grim for the Israeli people if they stop receiving so much of the military support they use to commit this genocide, and they risk open war with Lebanon and Iran every day.
  • Argue about where to assign blame all you want, the working class is justifiable very stressed, including me, a guy that enjoys sifting through economic data, when they see the cost of food rising and they’re not getting raises to go with it. There were years of negative real wage growth. There were years of extremely high profit growth for the concentrated monopolies that dominate our economy. Everyone hates this, left right and center. The last president to raise the minimum wage was George W Bush. What the fuck? A democrat that doesn’t talk about raising the minimum wage by a lot and raising taxes on the rich is a guaranteed loser, especially in light of the last few years. Kamala’s platform included a very popular proposal to stop price gouging during economic crises. Why did she never talk about this?
  • The democratic party’s response to the deepening climate catastrophe continues to be beyond inadequate. The summers are now just continual forest fires and smoke from the forest fires is becoming a health problem for asthmatics. And the Biden administration is effectively continuing Trump’s trade war against China (we lost it by the way) by trying to block affordable Chinese EVs and solar panels.

It usually takes you 5 to 10 years to figure out that I’m right about everything but hopefully you can quickstart the process with this guide. I look forward to seeing you at the protests about this stuff when Trump continues doing what Biden was doing and what Kamala promised she was going to continue doing.

(Any other big things I should add?)

  • gwilikersEnglish
    23·
    2 days ago

    In the last month, Trump, the Muslim ban guy, has been able to credibly position himself as a less Islamophobic candidate, but I guess you weren’t paying attention to that. Here is a NYT article that mentions that undecided voters were considering Trump because of the situation in Gaza (archive.is). I’m pretty skeptical that Trump is going to improve the situation but it is so bleak under the Biden administration that I wouldn’t be surprised if he did or at least didn’t make it worse.

    This is literally the only argument you’ve provided for how Trump could be better. And it’s not convincing.

    Other thant that, wouldn’t it make sense to vote based on platforms? Trans rights was a hot button issue and they could have gotten better protections under Harris. The new home owner bill could have helped middle-income people actually be able to get a home. Trump’s VP mentioned gutting ACA. Those are 3 reasons I voted for Harris.

    I haven’t seen any convincing arguments that Trump will diverge US foreign policy from the support of Palestinian genocide. Nothing you have said gives any indication that this would be the case. So I don’t see how not voting for Harris helps the issues you are concerned with.

    As such, I have to ask, what’s your goal here? Accelerationism?

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      72·
      2 days ago

      Nobody said Trump would be better, just that it’s unconscionable to vote for a party defending and enabling genocide. The goal is simply to not reward genocide with votes. The whole “lesser evil” shtick doesn’t work anymore, people see through it.

      • gwilikersEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        Right, but is there a longer term goal? Like, I understand not voting for genocide and I respect the immediate goal of non-engagement in that sense. But are you hoping that non-engagement will force the Dems to alter their stance on issues like Israel in the long term?

        • LisaTrevor [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          20 hours ago

          what’s the point of this line of questioning? it literally doesn’t matter, elections aren’t being decided by a group of stubborn leftists refusing to vote until they get the perfect candidate that lines up with everything they believe. it’s decided by random people in the midwest who live by their paycheck and either get angry enough about not being able to afford anything that they vote against whoever’s currently in office, feel apathetic enough that they just stay home because it doesn’t seem to make a huge material difference to them who ends up making the decisions, or think things are getting better enough to keep things the way they are.

          the long term goal of complaining about the Democrats and explaining why we aren’t voting for them is mostly rhetorical. liberals are adamant that their strategy is basically perfect except for all the stupid idiots who just aren’t smart enough to know what’s good for them, and we’re saying you’re basically wrong about everything, fundamentally. You don’t understand why enough normal people don’t vote for you despite being technically better than psychotic fascists, and you don’t understand why leftists who do know better won’t just follow along with lame useless bullshit that only makes things worse in the long run. I don’t think it’s gonna lead to some big shift in strategy, but if you’re dumb enough to come here and ask why we aren’t voting for your perfect pragmatic candidate who physically can’t be at fault for losing no matter what they do, we’re gonna tell you why they suck, why their policies suck, and why they aren’t winning people over. their centrist bullshit doesn’t do enough to meaningfully help people when it’s successfully implemented, is extremely easy to beat outright or undermine through attrition, and is destined to be unpopular or useless enough to get reversed without much of a reason to fight. We have libraries of books worth of arguments for why it’s not worth pre-compromising on positions before they’ve even had the chance to lose, you can probably very easily find an answer to whatever question you have, and it probably boils down to “we want actually good things instead of things that are bad,” so the point of telling dumbshits like you why we aren’t voting is basically just to let you know that we aren’t convinced. you have not sold us on why you’re right. if you care about that, you should change. if you don’t care, why are you even asking? good luck without us. hope you come to your senses when you lose.

          And now that you have lost, once again, the answer is simply that your stupid fucking strategy of running boring snobs whose only appeal is being able to limit how bad things get slightly better than their opposition cannot win over the people who are suffering, and who aren’t reading these arguments anyway. if a government gained power that was actually able to make their material conditions noticeably better, and didn’t habitually roll over to the slightest pushback by a group of snarling demons that they know will use every dirty trick possible to sabotage their progress and planned accordingly, they would remain popular past a four year term. this isn’t about rhetoric. this isn’t about campaign strategy. this is about actually being fucking useful. these liberals are fucking useless. everybody sees it. they will continue to lose until they fix that.

    • adultswim_antifa [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      32·
      1 day ago

      If I won’t get what I want on a set of issues I care a lot about and consider the highest priority at the moment under Kamala or Trump, why would I vote for either of them?

      The only thing I honestly give Trump a point for is having the good instincts to make fun of Kamala for campaigning with Liz Cheney and touting the Dick Cheney endorsement.