Shh, don’t distract him when he’s starting to get the point. No matter how nuts he might be, if this plants the idea that the orange one supports healthcare for all in the minds of his followers, it might move some in the right direction.
The problem is, it’s not really the dems who lost, it’s everyone who isn’t a fascist. The party as a whole isn’t really affected by this (and that’s a huge problem), and most of the candidates who lost their elections are part of the party and will just carry on. The way that changes is through pushing for, and supporting, candidates at all levels who support a better agenda, not at the ballot box.
The whole system sucks; be mad about it, push to change it, but I don’t think that those who voted third party, or chose not to vote think this, overall, is better than the results of Harris being in the White House, and they, combined, could have changed this outcome.
Ultimately this election is done, the situation is what it is, and, with a bit of luck, there’ll be elections next year and in '28 where some of this can start to be undone. I wish I was more confident in that.
As I said, unfortunately, that was going to happen whichever one got into the White House. You could not affect that outcome with your vote. You could affect a lot of other outcomes though. The question (and it’s a genuine question, although I think you and I probably have different answers to it) is whether, given that you couldn’t change the genocide, you should vote based on those other issues, or whether you should abstain by not voting, or voting third party.
The genocide was going to happen whichever of those two was in the White House, although Harris maybe seemed a little less likely to give them carte-blanche to go as extreme as they have. From that perspective it was a hobson’s choice, but many other things would have been different.
Do you support having the U.S. millitary being sent in to U.S. cities as a show of force? Do you support denying women access to vital healthcare? Do you support reducing or elliminating vaccination programmes? I’m guessing not, so then your have to ask yourself whether it is better to support the candidate who would not do those things, despite their position on Israel, or to abstain so you can say you didn’t support genocide, despite the fact doing so would do nothing to change that outcome, and increased the chance of the other undesireable outcomes?
As I said before, this should not have been the choice put in front of voters, but it was, and each member of the electorate had to make a choice, support a bad candidate or increase the chance of a worse one winning. Be mad about that. Fight to change it. Support candidates who oppose it, from the most local level, up to the highest level. It looks like there are some better candidates trying to push through now, the democrat party will probably fight to keep them down, so everyobe who wants better needs to push for the new candidates. Support those candidates any way you feel is right, but once it comes down to the ballot, make your chouce based on their whole position, not just one strand that is the same as the other guy’s.
You intended to take a principaled stand, and I would commend you on that, but unfortunately it functionally meant that you chose not to support the candidate that would have done less awful stuff. It’s a miserable choice to be faced with, but it is what was in front of the electorate. Be mad about that, work to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but when the decision comes, the responsible option is surely to look at harm reduction.
Yes, lots of people didn’t vote for a whole variety of reasons. Those who voted for third party candidates with no chance of winning effectively also didn’t vote. With a better system that wouldn’t be the case. Agajn, be mad about that, work to change it, and support candidates that want to change it, but when the vote comes take in to account whether they can win and what you can do to reduce reduce harm if they can’t.
How many people decided not to vote? As I mentioned, it wasn’t just third party voters, but also those that chose not to vote. Also, to be clear, voters should not have been put in that position in the first place. However, they were put in that position, and given that there were only two possible outcomes to the presidential election, there really was only one sane choice to make. Unfortunately many chose a different one.
So, they refused to support genocide (a position, to be clear, that I agree with) by taking an action (voting third party) or inaction (not voting) that would clearly, and obviously, give a candidate who supported genocide a higher probability of not just winning, but being supported by others with the same opinion?
Voters were put in an invidious position and there were no good options, but there was one option that was clearly worse in every way, and they either directly or indirectly chose to support him.
Git itself is that for the DVCS part, it’s easy to host and is decentralized. I haven’t used it myself, but hubzilla seems to support wikis and forums in a distributed way. If you needed to, you could manage issues in forums, although it feels like there should be somethings.
It’s not about riding it out, dealing with it is a separate discussion. The point is that they are (quite successfully) manufacturing consent for that fascism. The easiest way for them to do that is to twist an actual event to show that only they can stop this sort of terrible thing happening, and their opponents must be crushed.
As I said, shooting some “celebrity”, while cathartic, will not achieve anything positive (because kirk wasn’t essential to any processes), but will make it easier to manufacture consent for suppressing those opposed to the regieme.
To be clear, even if trump shot kirk in front of everyone, they’d claim it was a leftist, but it would be less convincing to many than if it actually turns out to be soneone even slightly left leaning.
In summary, this event will only have negative consequences for those who aren’t fascists, and given that, you’d hope it wasn’t an anti-fascist who did it.
When we don’t even know who the killer is or their motivations
You’re right, we don’t, and obviously the right have created a narative saying it’s a leftwinger. The point is not to provide them a ready made narative. Killing kirk will do little to nothing to improve matters, much like killing that CEO has done little to nothing. What it does do it make it seem more “reasonable” for there to be crackdowns, after all there are “crazed lefties” on the loose killing innocent people. (Yes, it was hard typing that, which doesn’t change the fact it’s effective propaganda, even if it was a fase flag)
The only people the “pretext” works on already support fascism.
Fascists will obviouslt support it, but many ow information people, or even just people who are worried about how they’ll manage can be easily swayed to accept harsher measures with stories like this. After all, they’re not assasinating people, and assassinating people is bad, so if “the left” are doing it, they must be bad, and maybe they should be dealt with like that. As I said, it’s propaganda, and making it easier for them by playing into it is probably a mistake.
It’s up to us to stand up to fascism, not avoid angering the abuser.
Go ahead and anger the abuser all you want, all you can, and stick in an extra kick for me. It’s not about them though, it’s about “hearts and minds”, cliched phrase though that is. Individual assasinatons, unless they’re of key personnel, whose elimination can actually stop something happening, will achieve little positive, and create a convincing story that it’s just evil lefties killing people they can’t beat any other way.
It’s not exactly about giving him a pretext, but providing a pretext for his actions in the eyes of others. There will be many people who are alarmed or horrified at him sending the military into US cities, but who will find it much easier to accept him sending the military to put down the “lunatic lefties” who go around shooting public figures.
Acts like this erode support and give the opponents cover to further supress disent.
Instructions may have been unclear, but you got the gist of it.