The person on the left is carrying bags, the one in orange is a delivery driver and a couple of people are wearing backpacks. Aside from car brained, Damaris is also blind.
The main thing I draw issue with is the fact many states are not swing states. If I live in Alabama, what are the odds that biden wins that state?
Tell me, if I live in alabama, will my vote for biden influence the election at all? Or will it come down to voters in michigan or florida or some other swing state.
I do understand the meme, but I also understand that swing states decide the election. Your impact of your vote is determined by your location.
I mean, that’s one way to read the argument, but it isn’t the one I was making. It seems like you are misrepresenting me intentionally.
As you should probably know, votes for the president are not done by people in their states. They are done by electors in the electoral college.
These electors, as per tradition, vote for the victor in their state’s election on the president.
If I live in a deep red state like Alabama, the majority is already voting for Trump. If I want to change that, I won’t be doing that by voting or shitposting on lemmy, I’d have to tireless campaign for a president I don’t like.
You brought up florida in a previous comment, specifically the election with bush. I’m sure you know that florida is a swing state, and therefore is going to be down to the wire on some elections, right?
Alabama is just an example. I don’t live in Alabama, but my state has barely swapped colors in the past, and certainly wont any time soon. Same with New York, or Montana, or Mississippi, or Texas, or many others.
So, to rephrase what I said in the 2nd paragraph more focused language, will my vote matter if I live in a deep red/blue state? Or will the election come down to swing states?
Edit: i’ve reread what you said and jesus fucking bad faith argument batman. You literally ignored half of what I said to smugly say not everyone lives in the one example state I used
It's not that people's votes possibly don't matter because of their zip code. It's that peoples votes don't matter because of their zip code. There's a lot of bullshit going on with voter suppression, shittily written constitutions, and how representatives are calculated, but the electoral college itself is what decides the election, not the popular vote. And with the electoral college, your location is determinate of how much your vote matters in the election.
The thing is, that does refute the thesis.
If the thesis is "You withheld the one vote that would have prevented fascism", was true, we would either be using a popular vote system for president, which we literally don't, or the person would have to be in a singular swing state that decides the election. This means that the thesis is only true for those who live in swing states, due to the presence of the electoral college.
I googled the current swing states, and I got Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico. The current population of the US is somewhere above 330 million, and the population of the swing states listed is, according to my napkin math, 55 million. I'm assuming the population of voters proportionally is roughly equivalent state to state.
That being said, this means there's roughly 1/6th of Americans whose votes would be representative of this meme.
To call the experience of 5/6ths of Americans tangential is a little silly.
I never said anything about not voting. I'll be up front that I'm not electoralist (I'm an anarchist) but I also don't care about whether or not people vote or not (I'm an anarchist) because I'd rather be focusing on creating systems that will protect people from fascism (because I'm an anarchist). Fuck, I even vote in my town elections and elections for state representatives because there are genuine fascists running where I live, and in that case it's popular vote. Diversity of tactics and all. But if you think that voting is sufficient to stop fascism though, I have a history book and a bridge to sell ya. And that's why instead of advocating for non-voting, I advocate for activism, direct action, and just fucking fighting fascism where you see it.
The thing is, you are misconstruing what I'm saying. If calling out the fact that someone is saying that voting alone will prevent fascism using a shitty inaccurate meme is convincing people to not vote, then it is impossible to discuss the fact that the electoral college is antidemocratic. If calling out flaws in the system that makes voting unequal is voter suppression, then I don't know how anyone can address the problems in the system.
It's like you think I'm some lemmy.ml tankie or something, a strawman whose views you despise. Instead of engaging with what I said, you swapped over to insults and name calling.
I’ve been replacing eggs with applesauce when making muffins for the past 15 years, and I love it. My friend is allergic to eggs, so he is able to eat them too!
I work in Cybersecurity, and although I loathe windows, I love the enterprise tier solutions microsoft has. Azure AD is great for management, it has useful federation features, and having centralized logins is useful during incidents.
Their DLP suite is phenomenal too. O365 logs integrate their platforms together in a convenient way.
But windows 11? Windows server? Practically anything else they touch (fuck azure cloud) is Disgusting. I’d rather throw my hard drive out the window and use a ancient drive with temple os than use windows 11
Their platform is only good from the perspective of an administrator.
But it really does manage the pile of horseshit that they make. And it all runs off that pile of shit too, you need windows server to set up ADDS, for example.
Its like a pretty tower with a basement full of shit. If you can ignore the shit or avoid it it’s not that bad
I wish they’d do that for me. I’m a pasty white guy who is a spice fiend. I fucking love spicy food, and I have some sauces I regularly use that have Scorpion Peppers, Carolina Reapers, and Ghost Peppers.
Thai food is great, but when I go to thai restaraunts, they see me order the spicy option, I swear to god they give me a quarter of the spice that they’d give someone who doesn’t boil in sunlight.
Collective will is just the myth that is used to legitimize the state
The state is also so much more than the will of the governed. To say that it is all there is to it would consider governments like those governed by the divine right of kings fo be stateless. Stalin’s Russia, or Kim Jong Un’s DPRK would then be stateless.
TLDR: comparison is the thief of actually having a good political discussion.
I’m getting kinda sick of this “both sides” discourse.
On one hand, you’ve got a slightly reductionist view that crushes discussion (“Biden and trump are the same, they support the capitalist class”). It also fails to frame the discussion in a way that is actually productive, since saying the jump is a bit big for most people to make, and if you are trying to point out similarities from candidates that are different in some ways you only make it easy to point out whatever differences exist. Rather than discussing the similarities, you are now talking about their differences. Congratulations, you’ve now ruined a potentially useful conversation. Your reductionist view has done nothing to further discussions and now some people hate you.
On the other hand, you often run into whataboutisms. I’ve compared trump and biden in ways that make them similar, and instead of saying “Huh, both of those people have the same fascistic border policy, maybe we should talk about it” it turns into “But think of the children that biden isn’t separating from their families!” Biden’s enthusiastic support of a state carrying out a blatant genocide and trump’s support of the same state is terrifying, but the “Well trump would let them do it faster” is exhausting. No shit the fascist in all categories is gonna support increasing the speed of the genocide. That isn’t the point of that discussion, and it’s obvious to everyone that it is the case. And this constant comparison with trump never lets Biden stand on his own.
Look, i’m gonna be frank and say I hate Biden, if you haven’t already noticed from my writing. i’ve hated him before October 7th, so don’t worry, I’m not only angry about his genocidal enthusiasm. I’m an anarchist and I’m not electoralist, so finding a candidate I like is a minor impossibility. I’m also queer and have queer folk that I love deeply so I’m not making any decisions about hating the one not anti-queer candidate we’ve got lightly.
If you are talking to someone about american politics and they don’t understand that Trump is fascist, and supports more fascist positions than biden, they are either a trump supporter, a troll, or someone that isn’t worth discussing that stuff with.
Or you are thinking they are saying both sides are the same and you aren’t understanding what they are saying. I’m not accusing you specifically of this, but I’ve had many infuriating conversations with people when they are drawing what I said to “hur dur you are saying they are literally the same” when I’m not as a way to thought terminatingly end the discussion or derail it.
Instead of saying what about the “dumb people” just don’t feed the trolls. Leveling the conversation to be troll proof is a losing game
You were seeing people say that trump wouldn’t speed up the genocide? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone make that claim in good faith, except possibly in relation to what trump was saying about the war needing to end because of optics, but that’s a whole different can of worms regarding why he is saying it and stuff.
Or were you seeing people say “Why does that matter when the problem should be about the presence of genocide, rather than the rate of it”
You were seeing people say that trump wouldn't speed up the genocide?
None of these are saying trump won't speed up the genocide.
The first one is probably the worst take, not gonna lie. While I love the first and third sentence, since it points out a campist tendency people tend to have, the rest of the take is genuinely bad. Accelerationism is a terrible ideology. The second one is dubious, and the rest are hard to judge without context.
I think you should read the last one again.
Whether it’s the guy who wants them to kill every Palestinian, or the guy who is gonna sit there and let them kill every Palestinian while wringing his hands and reaffirming the unconditional support for Israel, the Palestinians are still dead and murdered. The fact that you’re arguing that one side is better is absolutely fucking absurd.
This isn't a both sides take. Sure, it is comparing both sides, but the thing that makes it difference is they are arguing about the absurdity of the lesser evil argument whether or not it should even be considered valid.
I think that there's an important takeaway in that. At what point is arguing about who has the better pro-genocide policies a waste of time? Instead of working towards change, it is just enforcing apathy and powerlessness.
Also, that last one is a better phrasing of what I said earlier: "Why does that matter when the problem should be about the presence of genocide, rather than the rate of it”
If you are seeing that as problematic, I'm genuinely concerned.
Well, if you think there’s a lot at stake then I think the best course of action would to start getting things done. If you want to stop protest votes, then why are you yelling at the people who are protesting? They aren’t protesting tiny things, they are protesting the funding of a fucking genocide. Why are you not saying something like “Well, wouldn’t this whole issue have been avoided if Biden started putting pressure on Israel a month or two ago?”
Failing to do shit about gaza and then being like “Hey, I’m less evil over here” is playing chicken with a hand grenade while hoping you don’t notice that they can just as easily put the pin back in.
I think the best way to see this is like this:
the student protestors: “Stop the genocide now”
the anti-protest voters: “Hey, if we do nothing for 6 months and alienate you, its your fault that our inaction caused you to not vote”
You are placing the blame on the wrong people, and just throwing distractions and diversions from problems that could be fixed now to make biden likely to win.
This is funny when it comes to minority groups in a larger one.
I remember telling someone passionate about his org that I’ve seen some homophobia/queerphobia and shit in the org, and he was like “Homophobia here??? We don’t tolerate that, it can’t be happening. I haven’t seen it”
Well, it’s not like they are calling you a f****t or some shit, you aint queer
Great, I wasn’t sure whether I’d see fascists “counter protesting,” a fascist plowing a car through the crowd, or police brutality/repression, and now I gotta add foreign terror to my threat modeling?
Fuck man, these were supposed to be my normal protesting experiences
Like, jesus fucking christ, you are making it legal to fucking plow down protestors, ignoring their right to live, much less their first amendment rights to protest.
I fucking hate desantis and I wish him a very unpleasant rest of his life. I might not believe in heaven or hell, but I hope he never gets the pleasure of seeing his god face to face.
I find this statement funny cuz it also implies that the reason why freedom fighters are not terrorists is because they won, and likewise the only reason why terrorists are deemed such is because they lost.
As police cracked down on anti-war protests on college campuses across the US in recent weeks, among those arrested were a pair of silver-haired 65-year-old professors armed only with their cell phones....
Calling people foreign agents is also just shit brained. Rather than arguing a point, it just says “hey, u are (maybe) not American, we can ignore you”. Or just saying “Hey, ignore this guy, because I said he’s not American.” Plus, it holds less water when america has constantly interfered in so many other countries. Imagine saying a palestinian shouldn’t have a say in american politics when america has stances on Palestinian politics.
Lmao, the other day I had to whitelist some domains used for phishing training emails in the anti-phishing software we use just so they wouldn’t get nuked, then I had to whitelist them in another anti-phishing software so they wouldn’t have - huge red header injected on the top of the email body warning the user it was phishing.
The freedom promised by the constitution rang hollow on every enslaved person, every native, and every woman and every other marginalized group when it was written, and it still rings rather hollow now.
Is it the fact that many people consider it the strongest motivation for not voting for biden?
Is it the fact that people are putting in a lot of time and effort to change the position of one of the candidates before the election?
Is it the fact that people protesting against this around election time makes you unhappy the reason you think it isn’t an election issue.
Shut the fuck up. Stop talking and stop spreading this braindead take that is begging to remain at the pro-genocide status quo. You don’t get to decide whether or not it is an election issue for everyone.
I’ve seen and been at protests against my congressmen, mayors, state houses, and governors. People have been doing these types of protests since October. Just because the current wave of protests is campus occupations.
Also, if you think this is solely a congressional issue, you fundamentally do not understand what the president can do in a situation like this.
Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air....
The apparatus of the state often includes corporations, such as Lockheed Martin, or the IMF/World Bank, or Elbit Systems, or Blackwater, or the Pinkertons.
The state also enshrines the rights of corporations and maintains the capitalistic and/or colonialistic relationships corporations have with people, and protects them from everyone else.
In return, the govt gets a small amount of taxes, and a surprisingly high degree of legitimacy if the line goes up.
I struggle to think of a more authoritarian structure than the hierarchic state.
Stateless areas, such as Rojava and the Zapatistas are a good example of a “government” that doesn’t crush student protests, but they really don’t have them in the first place, since their bottom up structure makes it such that the students can directly use political power to prevent shit like supporting genocidal ethnic states.
Violence erupted at the University of California, Los Angeles after pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian campus encampment. Bubbling tensions on the campus boiled over following the alleged breach of a "buffer zone" between the rival groups.
I think this is a good example of how vigilantes often work to support the state's goals when it can't legally/easily complete their goals.
For every fascistic government still bound by laws, there will be fascists willing to ignore them to support it. See this. See the KKK carrying out lynchings on people who are barely escaping the grasp of the state. See the settlers illegally settling on Palestinian land to carry out the state's goals of ethnic cleansing.
Hate is a strong motivator but it uses up too much fuel and burns itself out. To see it only as hate is a bit reductionist. You can only use hate to motivate yourself for so long.
Fear, envy, and uncertainty/fear of the future are much more longstanding motivators used to continue fascist creep.
Regardless, fascists align themselves with the state. The police often can’t get away with crushing protesters without suffering bad PR, and risking strengthening popular support when images of police brutality evoke memories of past brutalities.
Fascist vigilantes don’t care about PR, and they might get the support of the police (or they get the police’s non-support of their enemies) or even the government
If we travel back in time a little bit you will find obvious examples, such as the police working directly with the klan (specifically the 2nd klan) and instances of sherrifs deputizing people to allow them to carry out extreme violence against bipoc
Cycling isn't legitimate transportation...apparently ( sh.itjust.works )
The person on the left is carrying bags, the one in orange is a delivery driver and a couple of people are wearing backpacks. Aside from car brained, Damaris is also blind.
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RULE ( i.imgur.com )
fixed it ( lemmy.cafe )
i don’t even know if this is good or if i stand by it 100% but it’s a helluva lot better (less tone deaf) than the other one ☺️
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Dozens of professors among those arrested in campus protests | CNN ( edition.cnn.com )
As police cracked down on anti-war protests on college campuses across the US in recent weeks, among those arrested were a pair of silver-haired 65-year-old professors armed only with their cell phones....
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Police and private security throng every entrance but one. Steel barriers line the streets. Students pack up belongings in their cars and leave for home - classes are cancelled, and exam plans are up in the air....
'Horrific' violence at UCLA after counter-protesters attack pro-Palestinian camp ( www.bbc.com )
Violence erupted at the University of California, Los Angeles after pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian campus encampment. Bubbling tensions on the campus boiled over following the alleged breach of a "buffer zone" between the rival groups.
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