This meme I think is the perfect encapsulation of the liberal mentality. The election is treated as a moral choice in a context free and timeless vacuum. There is no understanding of the laws of motion of history, or the logic that drives the American government, neither of which can be affected by an election.

There is the belief that you can delay fascism by voting for the liberal party, without understanding that it is the failures of the liberal party in the first place that breeds fascism.

Reading the comments on the original post, the closest thing to a long-term strategy I saw was to make progressive (by liberal standards) ideas more popular and to vote more tactically in the next elections. Even when I was a liberal, I knew this was a dogshit strategy because it is vulnerable to the Republican strategy of fucking with the legal system and acquiring power regardless of how people vote.

I cannot understand how liberals, after being being told constantly by their own media sources that republicans have made a science out of undermining American elections, believe that the counter to Republicans is … more effort on elections.

  • @OrnluWolfjarl
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    3 months ago

    The original Athenian democracy might have been shit in practice, where out of a city of half a million people, only about 10% could vote, but at least they had systems in place to keep a check on who was in power.

    Like ostracism, where people got together every year and wrote any name on the ballot, and anyone who got over 50% of votes was exiled for 10 years and became ineligible for office during that period.

    Or if politicians in office didn’t hold their promises, they could be dragged to court by other politicians.

    Voting every 4 years over which rich fuck gets to rule, in a fake popularity contest where candidates are chosen by other rich fucks, and whoever spends the most money wins, is not a democratic election. It’s oligarchic at best.

    Real democracy means you get to hold accountable whoever is in power. The only political system to ever achieve this was socialism.

  • queermunist she/her
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    263 months ago

    What’s really telling about liberal ideology is that they can’t even imagine directly doing anything to the trolley or the rail, even though that would save everyone.

    • @cfgaussian
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      143 months ago

      Yuuup. If the trolley represents capitalism and liberals want to let it murder one worker and conservatives three, why the fuck would we vote for either of them instead of derailing the trolley itself so no one has to die in the future? But no, screams the liberal, we need the trolley, the trolley brings me iphones.

  • @cfgaussian
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    3 months ago

    At this point it’s not even clear to me which track really represents which party.

    And how do i know that there aren’t even more people tied to the tracks off picture that we can’t see?

    Also, here’s an alternative: take your hand off the switch and go and untie those people!

    Or how about another alternative: grab a big piece of wood, throw it on the tracks and derail the entire train.

    No…sorry, i can’t even pretend to take this analogy seriously. What an infantile way of discussing politics…

    • @deathtoreddit
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      3 months ago

      At this point, if we knew the train was coming, it would be good to wreck its rails… if not have an RPG just incase

      • @cfgaussian
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        143 months ago

        So many options to choose from and yet liberals are trapped in their little mental box where the choice is always a simple binary.

  • @LarkinDePark
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    143 months ago

    Of course these people proclaim to know in advance which track will lead to the least harm. These same people would have supported Joe Biden in the last election, a man who has destroyed the west and enacted genocide. He will probably go down in history as the worst American president. The one who lost the empire.

    Now they have the cheek to state their opinion again and insist that they have the moral high ground.

    “But Trump would have done the same thing!!”. Okay, and your point is that we should participate in this charade?

    • @cfgaussian
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      3 months ago

      “But Trump would have done the same thing!!”

      What’s funny is that these are the same people who will yell at you in a panic that “Trump wants to destroy NATO!”…

      Me i’m pretty convinced that he actually would do nothing more than try to milk some more money out of the US’s NATO vassals, but by their own “harm reduction” argument if they are convinced that Trump would pull the US out of NATO that is actually a reason to vote Trump. Yes he would still be a Zionist running dog, but at least he would have crippled one arm of US imperialism.

      Mind you i don’t actually believe that this argument is correct (in reality Trump is a cynical opportunist who says “populist” things but ends up being just another imperialist, albeit a cheap and stupid one; and even if he was sincere there are massive systemic barriers in the US state apparatus built up to prevent a “rogue president” from undermining the imperialist project), but it is the logical conclusion of the world view that these liberals profess.

      In the end the conclusion remains the same: liberalism enables and breeds fascism.

  • @ExotiqueMatter
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    83 months ago

    It’s funny how instead of talking explicitly about the way the American state works and looking at the effects of Trump’s vs Biden’s policies based on their previous terms their all “argument” is repeating that Trump will definitely be worst with no actual explanations and making barely relevant metaphors like the trolley problem while ignoring that it’s an oversimplified thought experiment that isn’t universal relevant.

  • The Free Penguin
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    13 months ago

    Conservatism: Letting the trolley run over 10 people

    Liberalism: Letting the trolley run over 9 people

    Socialism: Enabling the derailer before the junction