The comments are even worse. The fact this rhetoric made it even there genuinely makes me feels terrible. Are even other transfems this liberal or is this fed work?
The comments are even worse. The fact this rhetoric made it even there genuinely makes me feels terrible. Are even other transfems this liberal or is this fed work?
A Democrat gives a gun to a Republican and the Republican points it at your trans comrade’s head. The Democrat tells you that if you don’t vote for him - a genocidal, warmongering racist indistinguishable from the Republican but for the fact that they won’t be the one pulling the trigger - the Republican will shoot your comrade. Do you give in to their blackmail? Do you allow your comrade to be used as a hostage to intimidate you into voting for the Democrat thereby signaling your approval of all of the imperialist warmongering and genocide that they are engaged in abroad as we speak?
This is not an either-or situation, no matter how much they push the psy-op to make you believe that it is. You always have a choice to not allow yourself to be blackmailed like that, to not vote for evil at all instead of merely choosing the “lesser evil”. You can help your trans comrades in a myriad other ways, protesting alongside them, showing the bourgeois state that regardless of the outcome of their joke elections people will come together and not allow individuals from marginalized groups to be victimized, joining orgs in your local area that fight for trans rights, organizing mutual aid and learning/teaching self-defense to protect vulnerable people in your community.
You don’t have to sell out queer people in the global south (who are also victims of imperialism just the same as non-queer people in the global south are) to protect queer people in the imperial core. You can reject the entire Kabuki theatre of Republicans vs Democrats, you don’t have to buy into their false dichotomy, you don’t have to continue voting for one monster to keep another one out. You can choose to be a principled anti-imperialist and socialist. You can choose real working class politics, and if you still really want to vote you can vote third party to show your disapproval for both of the bourgeois imperialist parties and their genocidal, warmongering policies.
the analogy would be more accurate if the Democrat promised to stop the Republican, wins the election, and then lets the friend get shot anyway
Yes? If my friend is going to die otherwise of course I am going to do as they say. Calling bluff and metaphorically trying to save my friend afterwards is just taking a stupid risk.
And you’re not selling out anyone by doing that. Other than keeping your conscious clearer, voting for none of them is functionally the same as voting for both. If both parties are the same, nothing you do will change what’s happening in South America, and especially not what has already happened in there.
This is not a directing the trolley to the more people track to save your friend on its way situation. This is denying someone having a heart attack in the trolley any help because that would give it legitimacy.
I’m not familiar with communist lifestyle in US, but I’d imagine participating in capitalist system for the sake of survival would be considered fair game. Why not the same for the political system?
And that’s how terrorists win.
Do you not understand that by giving in to their blackmail you are incentivizing them to continue to pull the same trick over and over again, every election cycle? Once they know it works they will do it again and again, and each time taking more and more away from workers and you will still vote for it every time because all they have to do is put up someone even worse on the other side.
Do you not understand that they are both two sides of the same coin? That both parties advance the same bourgeois ruling class interests? That a vote for one is effectively equivalent to a vote for the other?
Democrats need Republicans as a boogie man because their own policies just keep getting worse and worse, and the only way to get people to still vote for them even as Democrats continue to allow their material conditions to deteriorate further is to make sure the other side gets more and more comically evil. The only result of this is a race to the bottom. Voting for the “lesser evil” is what enables fascism.
For the historically inclined i will add that Germany went through a similar “race to the bottom” process in the 1920s on their path to Hitler, which is captured vividly by Berthold Brecht’s lyrics in Ernst Busch’s “Lied vom Klassenfeind”:
You can look up a translation online if you don’t speak German (i’d recommend an annotated version because the names mentioned are obscure if you’re not familiar with the politics of 1920s Germany), but the jist of it is that when you are always voting for the “lesser evil” the next choice you will have to make just gets worse and worse.
Wtf? This is ridiculous. What kind of a person sacrifices their friend just to make a point? If both parties advance the same interests and it is certain that one of them will win how are you okay with risking your friends life just so you can maintain moral superiority??
What kind of person gives their approval to genocide?
A genocider.
The genocide has already happened and will continue happen regardless of what you do. Nobody cares about your ‘approval’ of it other than you and other communists who think the same. I hate to use that phrase but this just screams virtue signalling to me. Instead of doing the thing that might help you do the thing that feels good
Why do you make voting decisions based on things you can’t affect by voting and when it comes to things you can affect by voting its only ‘direct action’?
Edit: just to clarify, I meant disapproval as in not casting or casting an invalid ballot that’ll get lost among millions of others. Not something that’ll actually get your voice heard