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vote, please (files.catbox.moe)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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timemachineyeah

drives me up a wall living in a very very red district, like "no democrat is ever going to win any local election, let alone a real leftist" district, like "our school board members ran on who was the most anti-mask" red, like "I pass white supremacist signs on the way to buy weed" red

and being in the local leftist community and the guy who runs the anarchist book club and the lady who helps keep the warming shelters open and the people who marched on city hall when a local business was getting death threats for having a drag show are all members of a discord and we get on this discord and have frank discussions about how best to vote

the people who do the protests and the mutual aid and all the real work

going "okay, they're both fascists, but this one lacks ambition and seems happy to just glide in the position" or "they both suck, but this one can be reasoned with if you frame it patriotically enough" like we don't even have a democrat to vote for. we know what a vote is. we know what we hope accomplish with it. we know what it can do, and we know what it can't.

and going from those discussions to here where people think that your vote is some kind of fucking??? enabling maneuver??? as if someone isn't going to end up in that seat regardless of what you do???

we didn't build this system, we just live in it. we're just trying to survive. a vote isn't a statement of your values, it's not an endorsement, it's not a marriage contract, it's a strategic play you make to keep alive.

the biggest mistake I see leftists making is overestimating their own popularity. "well but everyone would be leftist if they just-" no, stop, 1) you can't possibly know that 2) everyone will not just

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Here in Huntsville, AL, a Democrat recently won a representative position by a wide margin.

It's possible to turn a red city blue or keep a blue city in a red state. It just takes all people to show up to vote.

And here's the rub: Democrats far out number Republicans, so the more people that vote, the higher the percentage that Democrats can win by.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Glad the city known for its phycists finally got a blue vote in!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

It doesn't just take that in situations where deep red is the only real color. Perhaps in smaller elections, I don't know. What I do perceive is how divided we are as a Nation and as communities. I'm hoping we come together in agreement despite various valid arguments being made.

I'm just also expecting us to continue slap fighting as the Right gains a stronger hold due to our own inability to take cohesive action. This tends to be an unpopular opinion. Yet I've noticed the same trend for the last twelve years. So I try and talk about it whenever I can.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is good. I like this actual explanation way more than the shitty bus metaphor.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago

yay! that’s the cool thing about rhetoric is different styles represent the same ideas effectively to different audiences

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (13 children)

people need to remember that part of the reason the country keeps moving to the right is because there are large swaths of the population that like it that way. it's not just the elite feeding the right propaganda to the people - it's the people looking for more and more conservative candidates as they watch their 'christian nation' become secular and their white cis male dominated culture become more open.

we need to stop believing that most people are by nature good. there are plenty of little fascist dictators in every small town community that want to see people suffer.

the truth is that we need a great culling of the rotten apples in every aspect of society.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (5 children)

it’s the people looking for more and more conservative candidates as they watch their ‘christian nation’ become secular and their white cis male dominated culture become more open.

Spot on.

plenty of little fascist dictators

While I'm not a Marxist, he had a brilliant term for these people: "Petty Bourgeoisie" They think they're in line with the upper-crust, but are just Proles that are kidding themselves.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Huh, when I initially read "petty bourgeois" I thought you'd got the term wrong, but when I looked it up to check its a common anglicisation of "petite bourgeois".

I find the latter more intuitive, as it's "little bourgeois", but both are right.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Exactly this. No, people aren't voting for racists because they're upset with taxes or unemployment. They're voting for racists because they're racist.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

it's both, but understand that both mindsets are synonymous with narcissistic behavior. both lead to suffering.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Frederick Douglas wasn't allowed to vote.

He worked hard for candidates who couldn't promise to abolish slavery, because Douglas knew that a tiny step forward was vastly better than doing nothing.

A lesser known hero was Dashiell Hammett. You might have heard of his books, 'The Thin Man' or 'The Maltese Falcon.' There have been dozens of movies based on his book, 'Red Harvest.' In 1941 he was richer and more famous than Stephen King is today.

Hammett supported Left causes with his money and his actions. When WW2 broke out he was a triple 4-F. Too old; a veteran of WW1; and he'd been gassed and had a medical discharge. Hammett knew all about America's Jim Crow laws, and the imprisonment of the Japanese Americans, and everything else. He volunteered, and fought hard, to get into the Army, because he hated Nazis that much.

Mention those guys when someone tells you that they can't vote for the Dems in 2024.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (11 children)

What?? Frederick Douglas had a famously contentious relationship with Lincoln. He wrote scathing indictments about him in his paper "Douglass' Monthly" and traveled the country agitating for Lincoln to abolish slavery. He even endorsed the dump-lincoln movement during the re-election campaign over his reconstruction plan. It was exactly his raving against Lincoln during his re-election that brought them together, because Lincoln needed Douglas's support to win. It's fucking wild to see someone name drop Douglas in defense of an incumbent candidate facing scrutiny.

He didn't 'work hard for candidates who couldn't promise to abolish slavery', he worked hard to agitate them into action. This kind of revisionist history is fucking infuriating, especially when it's used to undercut voices trying to push for progress.

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