Rolling Stone spoke with diehard Trump supporters who waited hours in the snow to watch the former president stump in New Hampshire
Fresh off a historic victory in the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald Trump traveled to New Hampshire and complained to his supporters that he had to leave the White House after losing the 2020 election.
Fans had lined up for hours outside in the snow for a chance to see the presumptive Republican nominee in person — excited over his Iowa win, appearing confident he will once again be president.
During his speech, Trump said it “was ridiculous that we had to leave, but we had to leave, we have to follow the laws of our land.” He quickly doubled down on his 2020 election lies: “They don’t investigate the people that cheated in the election. They investigate the people that understand they cheated and go after them. But they don’t investigate the people who cheated like hell. We have to have fair and free elections.”
Of course, Trump is being prosecuted for attempting to rig the 2020 election and overturn the results in key swing states — and as Rolling Stone has reported, he and his allies are working diligently to predetermine the results of the 2024 election and make sure they favor Trump.
Not voting and letting insane fascists take over is clearly the better choice when trying to reduce harm.
Voting isn’t a panacea, but saying it isn’t harm reduction makes you sound ignorant or like you’re arguing in bad faith.
i didn’t propose not voting
So what are you proposing? Go on, say it with your chest.
i propose voting for people who won’t participate in genocide.
That’s awesome to hear and a great principle to have! Tell me what steps you’ve taken to personally motivate the Democratic party to run primaries and which candidate you’re choosing to support in the primaries and how exactly you’re providing said support.
Or if you’re talking third party, that’s awesome too! Please tell me the steps you’re taking to legitimatize your chosen candidate, raise awareness of them, and prepare them and their supporters for opposition. I’m excited to hear the stories of both your hard fought battles, and more importantly since this is paramount to the viability of this as a strategy, the wins and achievements you’ve accomplished so far so as to cement your candidate as a legitimate option!
And then, if you’re really feeling up for sharing, I would love to hear at which point in the process after your chosen candidate has either lost their primary slot (if they do so, god forbid) or been proven statistically irrelevant as a third party (which I truly, truly, as somebody who has actually worked with local third party candidates in their campaigns, hope doesn’t happen) in the general election will you concede that your battle was hard-fought but ultimately lost in greater war effort that is change and make the reasonable harm reduction choice to vote for the objectively better of the two remaining viable candidates rather than standing on your own ideological purity selfishly at real world expense of greater harm befalling countless real world America citizens?
it’s not a strategy. it’s a vote.
this whole narrative of viability is a snow-job. a candidate is viable if they win, and no one wins until the election is over.
i don’t do that.
i said vote. i will spend like… 2 hours a year participating in electoralism at maximum. unless you count whining on the internet.
why should i try to legitimize any candidate?
i object to the classification of candidates as “third party”.
Your personal classification is entirely inconsequential.
et tu
that’s not whats happening
My friend, that is the good faith benefit of the doubt reading of what’s happening. If that’s not what’s happening, that is not in your favor.
it’s not selfish to cast a vote for the person i want to win. everyone does that.
voting isn’t harm reduction.
this false dichotomy doesn’t belong on this instance or in this community
i’m saying it because i know what harm reduction is, and it’s not voting.
Asserting your same point multiple times without expanding upon it doesn’t make your point any stronger, and definitely doesn’t help people think that the quoted portion of my statement doesnt apply to you.
Harm reduction includes many, many different actions, of which voting is but one of them. You’re welcome to explain how voting isn’t harm reduction, but I bet I’ll be able to tear down that argument fairly easily once you actually look at possible outcomes to who is in office. For example, it’s absolutely harm reduction to keep MAGAts and the GOP out of office for any LGBT+ people, given the war the right has been wagging on these communities.
Also, calling it a false dichotomy without explanation doesn’t make it so, no matter how many times you reply to a single comment.
no, it’s not.
that’s not what harm reduction is.
harm reduction recognizes that people are going to be effected by some social ill, and helps them to mitigate some of those problems, like giving clean needles to addicts. voting doesn’t directly help anyone.
Don’t be pedantic. We are talking about reducing the amount of harm that will be done. I don’t care if it fits your clinical definition of the term, I’m not speaking in phraseology, I’m speaking in plain language. Voting reduces harm being done.
objectively, it doesn’t. plenty of people voted in 2016. plenty of people voted in 2020. things are getting worse, not better.
it’s not pedantry to insist that you are misusing this term, and using it to guilt people into doing something which might be against their self-interest.