this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
708 points (96.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43948 readers
559 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You, a smart guy: you should vote for Biden because lesser evil
Me, a complete idiot: no, you should not
You, a very smart guy: NUH UH I NEVER SAID YOU SHOULD, I DON'T HAVE TO DEFEND THE PERSON I SAID YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR
I didn't say Biden. I never said Biden. I never brought up his name. I at no point defended the actions of his administration or his party.
All I said is that the other guy is worse, which means you vote to try to have it not be the worse one. That's explicitly not a defense of any party. It's an attack on them both. I'd repeat my initial phrase, but apparently even though everyone seems to think it means I'm defending someone, trying to drive it home has gotten me labeled a congenital idiot.
And you've been misrepresenting me and jumping up and down on me ever since.
And nobody has presented me with a better option. They just keep calling me names, saying I'm repeating myself, and saying "they're all the same" and "Biden bad!"
So please, for the next election, give me an action I can take that has some sort or hope of getting us all out of this collective shit show.
This is at best, an outright lie. You want people to vote for the "lesser evil", that is an endorsement of Biden and any other Democrat.
No, this is also a lie. You are a liar.
The better option is organize, instead of voting for the party you endorse but curiously refuse to defend. * or challenge
Organize, outside of the party that apparently you refuse to defend but think we should all vote for and get snotty and sneer about being questioned.
It's very eye opening that "lesser evil" proponents are so cagey about the candidates they're explicitly telling us to vote for. Genuinely curious what irrational mental space you're in that you think you can browbeat people to vote for democrats but allow yourself to get offended when people say democrats suck ass and shouldn't be voted for. Pick a side, you fucking weenie.
I want to be very clear: I used to be a reliable blue voter, for maybe fifteen years. That is behind me. Voting for shitbags who will never care about the poorest people in America is wasted effort, I will not bother myself to drive fifteen minutes to the rural voting station to endorse assholes whose only responsibility is to their big money capitalist donors.
Have you seen Sophie's Choice? If not, this won't make much sense, but When Sophie chose Eva over Jan, was she endorsing Jan's death?
Because I don't think she was, but by the reasoning you're using on me here, you would have to think Sophie endorsed Jan's murder. As far as I can follow your logic, Sophie was not only in favor of Jan's death, she supported it fully, and could find no fault in it.
We were going to have Trump or we were going to have Biden. No third choice I made - or anyone else at the time made - could do anything to change that. So, even though I didn't like the creepy, handsy, corporatist faux-progressive ancient douche, and didn't care all that much for his former boss, or his party, I chose him. Because the other guy had shown himself to be worse. All the same bullshit, plus rabble-rousing hate speech, direct attacks on my LGBTQIA friends, and more. He was empirically worse.
If you can, somehow, read that as an endorsement, then I'm relatively certain we're not speaking the same language, and this has all been a huge waste of our time.
And fuck off with calling me a liar. I haven't. If my language skills have failed me, and I haven't managed to get my meaning across, fine. If I'm wrong, fine. But I didn't set out to deceive anyone, nor have I intentionally or knowingly made a false statement.
Edit: grammar
Sophies choice is a binary. Voting isn't. You have to make a case for the vote you want people to make. This is extremely simple shit.
Also, you are a liar.
Sorry. In what way have I knowingly told a falsehood? I'm lost, because I may be kind of an idiot, but I was present for this whole conversation, and I'm pretty sure I at no point tried to deceive you or anyone else.
Seriously? I already directly addressed this in a reply to you.
You are trying to play a game where you admonish people to vote for Biden but get to dodge the argument about whether he's worth voting for. You endorse Biden but will not tackle his inadequacies because they're inconvenient, so you act snide about it instead of addressing them. This is lying, but it's understandable - his actions and the actions he has failed to follow through on are indefensible.
Anyway, I'm 40 and have voted most of my life until recently. I didn't vote in the 2020 election and I won't be voting in any other elections because I'm done voting for Democrats pretending to give a shit about anyone other than themselves.
It isn't an endorsement. How is calling something "evil" an endorsement? If I said "I hate beer cheese and pimento cheese, but if I have to eat one, I'll take beer cheese" an endorsement of beer cheese? As far as I can see, I just said I hated them both.
No, I'm not, and the fact that you think I am completely baffles me. All I said was *the other guy is worse." That's the position I took. That does not require providing evidence of Biden's virtues, because that position has nothing to do with his virtues.
How am I explaining this wrong? How am I fucking up my point this badly? Am I writing in English?
Again, no. Calling someone slightly less horrible than former president Cheeto isn't an endorsement in the same way coming out of a movie theater and saying "well, at least it wasn't Bloodfeast 2" isn't a positive review.
Because my statement has nothing whatsoever to do with his inadequacies. I'm not being snide, I'm just fucking confused as to why you think I like the guy.
Rattle off all the shit you want about how horrible he his. I DO NOT CARE. HE'S NOT AS BAD AS THE OTHER GUY.
That's not me being snide or sarcastic. That's me shouting the same fucking thing I've been saying for days now. I'm not endorsing him, I'm anti-endorsing Trump. I didn't vote for Biden, I voted against Trump.
Congrats. I've shifted from "confused and exasperated" to "fucking pissed off." If that was your goal this whole time, well trolled.
It is not. It is, at worst, being disingenuous. I'm not splitting hairs here. Lying is making false statements with the intent to deceive. Even if I was avoiding your question instead of trying my goddamndest to answer it, it would still not be lying.
Fuck, it wouldn't even be dishonest, just shitty rhetorical practice and an asshole move.
Jesus fucking Christ fine! If that's what your conscience demands, then fucking do that! Just get off my dick, and learn what the words "liar" and "endorse" mean.
Fuck's sake.
Because you don't have to choose either. I'm not reading further, you're just too silly and this is too fucking simple to let some chud drag me into it. You're wrong, sucks, go vote for the lesser fascist and imagine you're fighting the power or whatever. Buh byeeee
Okay. Don't read any further. Go ahead and walk away. It's not like you were paying attention to anything I said anyway.
You're wrong. I'm not lying. I'm not even being disingenuous. But, hey, fuck you decided I was, and u guess that's fucking it.
Jesus. No matter what side of the argument, it's assholes like you ruining the world for the rest of us. Have a nice life.
Eta: sorry, I meant to say have a nice life, you fucking coward.