I’m still confused because…theyve made five Ice Age movies?

But you’re just not willing to understand what it was like for other people. Because, I completely understand your position. These things are both true. But…that’s exactly my point. The “correct” solution isn’t binary. The system may give you only binary choices, but the truth isn’t simply your vote for one or the other.

This is exactly what’s fucked up about it. For some, it was a vanity thing. “Well, I didn’t vote for it!” That type of thing. It’s not about the people, but about their own outward appearance of who they are based on their “correct” politics.

But seeing as how that is also true, it is also true that everything that’s already been happening, Palestinians slaughtered, starved, tortured, raped, just completely dehumanized. This has all been happening under a dem admin.

And what neither of us has touched on: The US is a massive, powerful machine running on money. I don’t think, even if we got the strongest pro-Palestinian voice available in office, that they would be able to slow this machine down. Which is the sad truth. We don’t get to vote for the true levers of power.

We should be uniting over that tragic, infuriating fact. Not fighting over “you’re responsible for this!” This type of shit is exactly how the democrat is the best choice we can make. And it makes very little material difference in the horrors we have to see and endure.

Can’t we agree on that?

Think of voting like signing your name to a candidate/party and what they’ve done/signaled they will do.

A lot of people can’t stomach a candidate who has been courting the neocons and softening their previous mildly progressive stances she took the last time dems had a primary and the progressives were showing up in numbers. Everyone got in line and the debates were all about M4A, erasing federally held student debt, raising the minimum wage, etc. Sanders single handedly dragged the party to the center (technically more “left” than they were) in 2016/2020 and the dems responded by po’mouthing like they cared about those issues, but then circled the wagons and kicked those voters to the curb.

The party has shown over and over again that they don’t give a shit about working class people, those of us that want real change. They want to maintain the status quo. Which is progressively more hostile capitalism.

Signing your name to that constant move rightward is unthinkable for some. And understandably so.

And that’s before we even discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza funded and armed by the US. While this administrations representatives in the UN and in any official capacity constantly run defense for the genocide. For literal war criminals.

Plenty of people could not fathom putting their name on that tragedy.

We all get that trump is much worse. But everyone else needs to understand how sickening that shitty choice was for anyone with a conscience about what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on with their neighbors. Signing on for more of the same was completely unthinkable for some. That has to be understandable if we are ever going to change things.

We’ve been on the road we’re being forced down now as long as I’ve been alive. And the road just keeps going forward. The dems’ proposal is “maintain the course.” The republicans’ was “mash the gas.”

Some people couldn’t stomach going any further down this road. That’s not making a choice to mash the gas. Because the world is not binary.

So the choice may have been one or the other, and you see it as “you basically voted for trump” because people couldn’t bring themselves vote for Kamala. To sign their name to a genocide. You’re boiling everything down to the two party mentality, which is exactly what has let us continue down this same fucking road. None of us want to continue this way. Telling us all to hold our noses to vote for Kamala while the entire party gave everyone left of them the finger…is not on us.

You’re not wrong, we all hate the fascist party. But you have to understand that a lot of people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for someone who was going to keep the regular ol’ genocide going while courting fuckin neocons. They looked to their left, said “fuck those people,” and tried to court republicans. And you’re blaming the people to the left who’ve been repeatedly told to go fuck themselves?

Hah please do!

Think of voting this way:

Signing your name to a candidate/psrty and what they’ve done/signaled they will do.

A lot of people can’t stomach a candidate who has been courting the neocons and softening their previous mildly progressive stances from the last time dems had a primary and the progressives were showing up in numbers. Everyone got in line and the debates were about M4A, erasing federally held student debt, raising the minimum wage, etc. Sanders single handedly dragged the party to the center (technically more “left” than they were) in 2016/2020 and the dems responded by po’mouthing like they cared about those issues, but then circled the wagons and kicked those voters to the curb.

The party has shown over and over again that they don’t give a shit about working class people, those of us that want real change. They want to maintain the status quo. Which is progressively more hostile capitalism.

Signing your name to that constant move rightward is unthinkable for some. And understandably so.

And that’s before we even discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza funded and armed by the US. While this administrations representatives in the UN and in any official capacity constantly run defense for the genocide.

Plenty of people could not fathom putting their name on that tragedy.

None of this means that republicans aren’t fuckin neofascist shits. But…how many times have the voters left of the dems been told to eat shit and vote blue because the other guy is worse? WHILE CONSTANTLY COURTING THE RIGHTWING VOTERS WHO MAY HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN SICK OF IT?! Kamala literally said she would be different from Biden by having a Republican in her cabinet. WHAT.

With everything going on, this party said, “yeah, fuck all that. Let’s see if we can grab anyone to the right of us.”

I got sidetracked, but this is the thing. It’s not binary, because geopolitics isn’t binary. The worlds issues aren’t binary. But a binary choice is all we’re given to make.

Just…what. And neither of those two choices was actually going to solve the problems. One was maintaining the problems while one was the problems plus more problems. That’s not an attractive choice.

We all get that trump is much worse. But everyone else needs to understand how sickening that shitty choice was for anyone with a conscience about what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on with their neighbors. Signing on for more of the same was completely unthinkable for some. That has to be understandable if we are ever going to change things.

We’ve been on the road we’re being forced down now as long as I’ve been around. And the road just keeps going forward. The dems’ proposal is “maintain the course.” The republicans’ was “mash the gas.”

Some people couldn’t stomach going any further down this road. That’s not making a choice to mash the gas. Because the world is not binary.

But you and everyone else posing similar questions is saying “how could you vote for mashing the gas by not wanting to continue down this road?? :(“

Yeah, the people I know and spoke to all just said “I didn’t even vote, I couldn’t stomach it.” And the people who didn’t vote because they were put off by the choices don’t really get reliably surveyed—if anything we might find out a small sample size’s opinions months down the road, but more leftist circles are so disillusioned from being asked to plug their ears, hold their nose and vote for neoliberalism with a heavy splash of neocon garnish thrown in that they don’t engage. We can’t keep ignoring that segment of people. Some of them went to vote third party, but when you’re talking about a 4% difference, a lot desperately needs to be said of anyone left of Bernie madoff being written off as “extreme left.”

I mean, this is true, but in most states you have the option to vote early, vote by mail. We can’t ignore the middle part of your statement: capitalism is getting more and more hostile and no one is offering us a solution. Just giving us differently colored badges to pin to our lapel while telling us the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Give us someone who is actually speaking to us and our needs and we’d have turnout like they wouldn’t believe. But both parties actively suppress anyone trying to do so. Which has been on display my entire life, but has definitely come into much sharper focus in the past 12 years.

You can’t honestly think this is true. People didn’t switch—at least not any significant percentage. I think it was a 1% swing. People stayed home.

The democrats don’t own the votes of people. They swung for the neocons. Leaving the people who’d been arrested for sitting in their schools for not liking a fuckin genocide to sacrifice their values. Again. It’s always on those of us that want better to sacrifice our values to keep the wolves from the door. While the Democratic Party opens the back door for them when they hold the keys anyway.

They are doing the same thing over and over, shutting out even a middle of the road progressive like sanders. And then they expect to hold onto voters who want real change? They can’t promise more and more of the same and then expect people to get excited. This is 100% on them.

Because, like I said, it suddenly became “the most important issue” and she was courting the “centrist swing voter” that doesn’t exist anymore. And we all saw, republicans voted almost exactly the same way they did in 2020, but a bunch of dems stayed home. She sold out anyone left of Bush Jr. and then surprise pikachu’d when no one fuckin voted for her.

I was just pointing out that you said they did Bernie dirty in 2016 and then said in 2020 Biden knew he could beat Bernie on name rec alone. I was just clarifying what I think was the bigger betrayal.

I mean, people…this comment is true. Yes, “every vote counts” in that the more people that show up, the higher the vote count is. But one vote will not sway the election. It will irreversibly harm the climate though. If every single person had this attitude, the story wouldn’t be news, but if this were everyone’s attitude, it would make a difference. I don’t remember the philosopher that theorized the whole “act in a way that you would want made into law for everyone to act in that same way” thing—but what’s worse, everyone expending tonnes of co2 as law or one vote going uncounted?

Everyone says they did Bernie dirty in 2016, but no one ever brings up how in 2020, the establishment dems all dropped out of the race in exchange for cabinet positions to rally around the elder statesman Biden—when Bernie was winning the primaries.

That, in my opinion, is far dirtier and a much bigger “fuck you” to leftists/progressives/humanists than 2016.

Why? Because the right was harping on it. So the news covers it. And then “people are talking about it.” And in 2024, that means everyone has to have an opinion it. The right has perfected the weaponization of communication. Fascists are good at that, historically.

Are you sure? I can’t think of someone else more self deluded

Maybe the saddest part about all of this is due to the structure of American politics and the vitriol right wing voters have for people they deem “others,” there are, sadly, perceived “winners.”

They’re making a third one?

Yeah, the crip walk and then the “blood” sign with their hands. Both.

Are you all too young to remember this already being a thing middle class white kids were already doing a couple decades ago?

Pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online stabbed him.

One out, one in rule