Yeah… But also, Carlin was right saying this shit is all a stage. We’ve got groups of bullies picking on us, and I’d rather throw bricks than help them decide who to pick on next.
If “harm” and “less harm” are the only two options, then the only question is how quickly you die. There’s the argument that we have to do “harm reduction” in order to buy time to organize for something better, but we’ve been procrastinating for decades apparently. Since all of history informs us that humans act only when inaction is no longer tenable (and sometimes not even then), really the only material difference between “harm reduction” and accelerationism is, again, the timeline.
Well yeah but the one of the people who voted for ice cream downvoted a post about gaza one time so CLEARLY the entire bus sacrificing themselves just in case it might save gaza is the better option. Also there’s an atomic bomb factory in a heavily populated area at the bottom of the cliff so basically the same amount of people as the entire population of gaza are going to die if this happens but protecting Gaza is more important than protecting loved ones apparently.
Is voting for controlled opposition harm reduction?
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
Everyone’s upset about the vegan ice cream voters not voting for regular ice cream.
No one is upset at the regular ice cream people for being unwilling to vote for a vegan ice cream place because their choice is default in their mind.
Both sides are holding each other hostage. One has a moral reason and the other just doesn’t want to compromise.
And yet.
You’re on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
Remember, no matter how beautiful, morally righteous, or gratifying your strategy is, you should really look at the results
This is kind of a good analogy for ranked choice voting, to be honest.
The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
That’s QUITTER talk! I’m voting for Rocky Road.
I LOVE Rocky Road
So the cliff?
Brick on the pedal.
Really? Because Scandinavia has really nice ice cream. Europe too, with some problems.
You’re right - it’s more like one group voting to drive off a cliff and the other voting to just drive really close to the cliff in case we decide to go off on some other vote, but so long as the cliff doesn’t win now, we can focus on convincing people ice cream is the better option. We don’t, and instead wait 4 more years to complain about the lack of ice cream, but that’s a separate problem.
Still better than not voting to not go off the cliff.
The problem is people have voted for ice cream. They have read about people voting for ice cream for years before they were even born.
Lots of people want ice cream but we are at a point where people KNOW the cliff exists. They DO NOT know the ice cream shop exists because all the times they were PROMISED ice cream the bus just stopped at a sewage treatment plant.
The voters are not the problem. They have zero reason to trust the bus driver. Because the bus driver refuses to throw the cliff voters off the bus. Bad optics.
The voters are not the problem. They have zero reason to trust the bus driver. Because the bus driver refuses to throw the cliff voters off the bus.
The voters chose the bus driver.
No they don’t.
Voters are told to pick which driver they want and both drivers don’t listen to directions and can’t read a map.
So some voters don’t care who’s driving the bus or where it’s going.
Because they have no reason to care.
They tolerate the shitty ride and shitty passengers while looking out the window. Waiting for the ride to end. But it never does.
Yes, they do. The voters get a chance to decide who those two drivers are, and 85% of them stay home. Then they got to choose between the driver that wants to drive off the cliff, and the driver who swears they’ll go get ice cream. And then 40% of the voters stay home.
Now the driver’s taking us off the cliff, and you’re whining that the driver that got the most votes is doing exactly what they said they would.
They have every reason to care, but they don’t anyway. You can’t abdicate your power and then complain no one listens to you. We had a chance to have better choices, but no one but retirees reliably show up to primaries.
Jeez more of this b b both sides same stuff.
If you think literally saying “they’re definitely different, but the difference is smaller than ideal” means “they’re the same” then things will never be fixed.
Dude you changed this it from “we want ice cream” to “we want to drive next to the cliff so we can drive off it later”. That’s not smaller than ideal, you literally changed it both sides the same, just later.
No, I changed it to “one side killing us, the other not, but still leaving it on the table” Which is a huge difference, but still a troubling scenario. Not driving off a cliff is orders of magnitude better than driving off a cliff, but still significantly worse than ice cream.
Dude one side wanted to get ice cream and you changed it to “nah, not that. I’m gonna change it to what the other side wants, just later. Change it to the complete opposite”. You completely changed it. Changed everything. Smh. That you either don’t want to see that or can’t see that… I’m out.
Again, I didn’t change it to “later” I changed it to “if the cliff drivers win the next vote, it’ll be a short drive.” Do you really think that’s inaccurate? Look at how Trump drove the country into the ground in his first 4 years, and how easy it was to just keep doing it even after we had 4 years of democratic leadership that was meant to get things back on track. I don’t call that “ice cream,” I call that “sitting by the cliff waiting for the cliff drivers to be in power again.” We need leadership that will drive away from the cliff even if it upsets the people and politicians that want to drive off it.
More like two options: one runs the bus off the cliff while the other sets it on fire. Sure, we’ll live longer in the fire scenario. Maybe we can even put it out!
But I’m still looking for the fucking exit.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we’ve already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They’re wrong, but they believe it, and people’s beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren’t on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
What everyone forgets is that the actual voting already happened. The bus company, Cliff driving Committee, voted before the bus embarked. They voted for the bus driver to drive off the cliff to cut spending to maintenance and health insurance to the driver and bus. There only so much the riders can say at that point
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don’t know how to do politics on purpose so they don’t lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There’s a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
I blame both. The Democratic Party and everybody who did not vote for them. My heart is big, there is enough room to hate everyone!
That’s the spirit!
Do you think Republican politics have the slightest responsibilities or none at all? I think all this thread, and the analogy itself plays into polarization, which is not a good way to actually put the much needed bridges… Everyone can do a lot. There are plenty of tasks and battles. Voting is one, very relevant every X many years. Focus on the everyday too. And on every neighbor. All needs should be covered. Do your best. Allow yourself to rest. We can do this.
Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don’t even try to make good ice cream, they don’t even try to get customers or do a good job. It’s still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn’t blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.
Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let’s blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.
Let’s put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn’t straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming “I’m never voting against gay rights!” Cool, so when the other guy wins and it’s way worse, at least you feel good.
I keep voting for ice cream and I get told “we can’t get ice cream because we have to vote to not go off a cliff again”
Yeah, I think not going off a cliff is pretty important though.
Right, but eventually the cliff guys win and we go off the cliff anyway, and even if they never win we don’t ever get ice cream.
The solution seems we kick them out of the car.
But that’s not how voting for a direction works. I think this analogy is just starting to fall apart after this much discussion, we’ve taken it too far haha.
Listen, I’m all for taking out the trash and not just taking small wins to survive, but I just don’t see the path. I might be missing it, there’s plenty I don’t know, but survival at least would have let us survive a little longer.
I don’t see the path out of just surviving either.
Except maybe jumping out of the car.
Tuck and roll, brother
You get ice cream, just not as much as you want because some people refuse to vote.
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No?
What’s the relevance of this inane statement, again?
The Democrats aren’t the ice cream party. They are the “drive off the cliff slowly party” and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn’t want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only “harm reduction” in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The Democrats aren’t the ice cream party. They are the “drive off the cliff slowly party” and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn’t want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only “harm reduction” in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The point of the term ‘harm reduction’ is that it is acknowledging that participation in bourgeois democracy is buying time rather than fundamentally reforming the system, I can’t believe how many fucking times and in how many fucking ways I have to explain this to a community that is purportedly leftist.
So what do you do with that time? Hillary was buying time, Biden was buying time, Biden/Harris was buying time…
Instead what happened in these times was things to get worse, the “buying time” party bragging about its exploits in mass deportations, wall building and bombing abroad and ferociously fighting anyone that wanted to bring improvements. Even now we see the exact same thing with Mamdani. The DNC has “learned” absolutely nothing, because everything is going according to plan. Mamdani is threatening the plan. Tump is not.
When people decided to prevent ICE gestapo abducting people in their communities in California, Democratic mayors had the police crack down on them.
Your strategy is all messed up and it didn’t lead you anywhere. With another four years of far right DNC politics as “harm reduction” you would have only fostered liberal complacency and ignorance and on top of it created the economic conditions for the next iteration of Fascism to hit back even harder. There is no fighting with the US political establishment. There is only fighting against it, if you ever want to see the US become a reasonably okay country.
This guy gets it, if the opposition party cares more about maintaining their legal bribes than punishing those doing the bribing and accepting the bribes then they bear an equal responsibility to the destination that those in the car are driven to.
Well said. I tried to make this point elsewhere in the thread and got showered with downvoted, so it’s nice to see there’s still some sanity left in the world.
It sounds like the problem is you don’t have enough allies in the fight against either, and your strategy is to bank on getting more allies in a fight against fascists than you would against democrats.
Good luck with that, sincerely; but I think it sounds like a bit of a gamble. Fascists are quite good at terrorising moderates into compliance and killing or imprisoning their opponents.
Fucking fantastic that Thalmann is making a comeback.
The amazing thing is that there is no Thalmann. Our Hindenburg is so disliked that nobody has to split the vote for him to lose.
I laugh but I cry. But yes.
My point was more about the attitude of “Let fascism come, it will lead to Better Things™” though.
FPTP is the real winner here. It’s why we have Trump. Why can’t we vote for proportional representatives or ranked choice?
Also
I only voted to drive off of a cliff as a joke. I wanted to trigger those sweet tooth ice cream eaters. I didn’t want to die.
Someone told me about people, who regretted eating ice cream. What if you are allergic to milk, amd die from eating ice cream? What if ice cream is a recent creation by <Jewish enough sounding name> to make children and adults addicted to ice cream, to the rest of their lives? Driving off from a cliff is therefore preferable to ice cream, and someone told me only ice cream eaters will die in a fire.
