Anonymous #2 13h

Well to be fair I don’t think I phrased it that way. I said ‘is it immoral to act this way with respect to voting’. I made no claims that our voting system was fair or gives significant power to the people because it agree it isn’t and doesn’t. My point was that we have a tiny chance to reduce suffering as voters and there’s a moral choice to be made by giving that up

1

Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 13h

Too bad we don't have a functioning democracy. When policy tracks what donors want more than what voters want, that's a plutocracy.

3

Anonymous #2 13h

Which is inevitable in capitalism.

1

Anonymous justinian 13h

I mean myself and most people here are unabashed in despising the direction and leadership of the Democratic Party, I just can’t help but come to the conclusion that a refusal to vote for harm reduction is immoral. Millions of people out there had the chance to prevent trump taking office but chose to throw away a 3rd party vote instead. Given how harmful trump is I think that is worth getting on someone’s ass about

1

Anonymous #6 13h

I’m not saying anyone owes Kamala anything, she was just a path to a less cruel America and I think the difference is worth thinking about and acting on

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 13h

You can do both, but policing how people vote keeps us fighting each other instead of facing the harm we cause every day, and the fighting only adds to it. I don't think voting works. But even if you do, the answer is to vote and stop the infighting. The bigger problem is the binary built into our institutions. Pouring this much energy into a two-party fight props it up when we should be dissolving it. That same orthodoxy is what started the fighting.

1

Anonymous #6 13h

which is why we need to stop being so goddamn anal-retentive about a voting system that never fucking worked to begin with and start being anal retentive about all of the different places in our society where we are fucking each other over.

3

Anonymous #6 13h

No one is suppressing any campaigns. Democrats decided to unite themselves under hatred for Trump instead of a proper leader. No wonder Democrat candidates suck. Trump has not restricted your free speech in any way. You are free to say what you wish. This is all your own doing.

-1

Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 13h

Plutocracy doesn't need suppression. Nobody has to silence you when campaigns run on donor money and policy follows whoever writes the checks. Sure, you can say whatever you want. It just doesn't move anything without money behind it. And since it's hardest to build wealth when you don't start with it, that influence stays locked in the same hands.

5

Anonymous #2 13h

Money isn’t enough to win elections. Trump won his first election having spent less money than his primary competitors and Clinton. You need to be a good leader to win an election in the USA.

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Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 13h

You’re a stupid fuck get out of here. Trump nor Clinton were good leaders. And again you are brain dead

6

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 13h

That's an unfair judgment on non-voters. Many face real barriers: ID laws, roll purges, closed polling places, no time off work. And in a plutocracy, the vote was never where the power was. This is orthodoxy (right belief) over orthopraxy (right action). We judge each other for picking the correct box on a ballot instead of for how we actually treat people day to day. That's how we got here.

1

Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 13h

Spending less doesn't mean money and power weren't involved. He was a billionaire celebrity who got an estimated $2B+ in free media before the primaries were even over. Winning doesn't prove you're a good leader. It proves you had the attention, the money, and the access, and most people never get any of those.

1

Anonymous #2 11h

And you get free media by being charming. That’s just part of being a good leader.

0

Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 11h

Charm isn't leadership, and that coverage wasn't about charm. It was ratings. CBS's own CEO said in 2016 that Trump might be bad for America but was great for CBS. Outrage sells, networks profit, and a billionaire with a famous name gets the airtime. That's privilege and money, not leadership.

1

Anonymous #2 11h

I think there’s two somewhat separate things going on here. There is the sort of nebulous idea of restructuring the entire system, ridding ourselves of a binary dynamic, facing the harm we cause every day…etc. which is entirely valid and should be pursued, but nobody can say when or how such changes will be achieved. Then there’s the very concrete idea of voting in our current system, in that specific election. It’s not really true to say that voting “doesn’t work”. The system doesn’t work well

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 11h

- it isn’t fair or representative…etc, but votes do have some sort of effect at some level. My point is that I can’t point to any harm in voting (I don’t really buy the claim that it’s prohibitively harmful to participate and prop up the system) and therefore it can only do nothing or potentially do something good to vote. When the stakes are this high and so many people are now suffering so greatly because trump was elected, I think it’s immoral to not even try to go vote

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 11h

And as a caveat I’m not gonna shit on people who genuinely couldn’t get off work or live in a state that would never go blue anyway. But for people who could vote and lived in a state where that matters I think it’s immoral to give up the chance to possibly reduce suffering for so many people

1

Anonymous #2 11h

Bro🤦‍♂️ You get privilege by being a good leader.

0

Anonymous #2 11h

I mean you should judge smart people who vote for horrific people like trump, if they knew enough to know who he was and voted for him anyway they were directly voting to harm others. That’s treating people poorly. Sorta mentioned above that I’m not trying to slam people who really couldn’t get to the polls, I’m more speaking to people who thought they were achieving something by abstaining or voting third party. People who could’ve gone and voted but decided not to

0

Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 11h

That’s backwards.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 11h

I disagree that it can only do nothing or something good. Voting becomes harmful when it turns into a moral alibi, a way to feel you've done your part while the suffering we cause every day goes unexamined. Calling non-voters immoral, when some of them may be doing far more than voting, gets it backwards. It's a mentality problem, not a technicality.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 11h

You just said it yourself: a vote only "matters" if you live in the right state. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million and still lost. A system where most people's votes don't count isn't one to build a moral test around. Making voting the measure of someone's morality gives that system more legitimacy than it's earned.

1

Anonymous #2 10h

Those last two sentences are bars. You just can’t put it any better than that

2

Anonymous #2 10h

I think you should do both but the harm of voting is really only theoretical. ‘Some people may think voting is enough and not do much else’ isn’t really solid ground to stand on when it’s compared to the real harms of not voting and someone like trump getting into office. We can and should encourage people to do both

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

I mean you can sort of measure the harms of nonvoting in the number of lives destroyed by trump that otherwise wouldn’t be destroyed. You can’t really get any good handle on the harms caused by voting

0

Anonymous #2 10h

What does “giving legitimacy” matter when real lives are being destroyed because of how things have shaken out? Myself and most other voters know the system is rigged, but if people participate in states where it matters then real suffering can be avoided. You don’t have to believe it’s a fair system to use it for harm reduction. I think people who pass up even a small chance to reduce real harm for millions of people are somewhat immoral

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

Can’t we do our larger work of restructuring under a president who isn’t putting people in camps?

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

I'm not saying a president can't make things worse. I'm saying no president is going to fix this, so the restructuring can't wait for a better one. It happens now, in how we organize and treat each other. Shaming non-voters doesn't change a single vote. It just deepens the division that got us here.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

The harm of a single vote is hard to measure. The harm of calling non-voters immoral isn't. It alienates the exact people you'd need to persuade, and it hasn't moved anyone. If the goal is reducing suffering, that approach is working against you.

1

Anonymous #2 10h

People weigh the morality of decisions all the time and change their view based on arguments, that’s all this is. I’m not saying non voters are monsters who should be ostracized from society but I’d argue they made a morally bad decision just like trump supporters did. Obviously no candidate is going to fix this but we are all very aware that trump has created vastly more suffering than Kamala would’ve. Absence of good does not negate a decision between bad and really bad.

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

Because it’s fine and well to say the revolution happens now, it should’ve happened yesterday, but how much does our ‘treating each other nicely’ matter to families sitting in ice camps? How are we better off for some leftists sitting at home while rightists got trump elected?

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Anonymous #2 10h

Sorta addressed this in my other comment but I’ll respond here too. People are mature and can handle a moral call to action. People have largely stopped wearing fur for others calling them immoral. These types of appeals do have their uses

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

Because again, we can’t rally point to anything gained for all those leftists sitting at home. The Democratic Party hasn’t moved any further left and suffering has only increased

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

Nobody can prove a counterfactual, but that isn't really my point. "Bad vs really bad" is a menu written by the people who benefit from it, and accepting it as the only choice is how the whole range keeps sliding right. Treating each other well isn't niceness, it's strategy. People change their minds through trust, not shame. Calling non-voters immoral hasn't moved any of them. That's the groundwork we need before anything gets dismantled.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

“The Democratic Party hasn't moved left and suffering keeps growing” is literally my point. Why is it still the yardstick for what leftists gained? Mutual aid, unions, tenant organizing, ICE rapid response networks: that's where the left builds real power, and none of it depends on a party that takes our votes for granted. Vote if you want. Just don't make it the moral test.

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0

When did I say that that isn’t true? Do you mind reading my entire point?

1

My point exactly. We wouldn’t need to organize ice watches if we had simply put a less bad person in office. Nothing about voting in a less monstrous leader impedes your ability to work towards the type of things you’re talking about

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Anonymous last_republican_on_yikyak 10h

You’re a stupid fuck. Genuinely brain dead. I’d classify your dumbass account as satire if all republicans weren’t just as morons as you. Literally go back to high school you fucking twerp

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

That is objectively not true. Your obsession with voting is impeding critical thought right now as we speak.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

You are such a colonizer bootlicker.

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The “importance of voting” is a myth to keep you distracted from actual change. It’s a fucking pressure valve and you keep falling for it.

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we have a very difficult problem in front of us and making it seem like it’s easier than it is is how we keep falling back into it.

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Anonymous #2 10h

“Written by the people who benefit from it”? You know how many people are dead right now who would still be alive if Kamala had won instead? There are real stakes here. Nothing is keeping you from treating people nicely and also voting for harm reduction. I’m not saying they’re wholly immoral people, I’m saying the decision to not vote, like the decision to buy a fur coat, is immoral.

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no, it literally does not. whether a policy has 100% or 0% support. It will always have a 30% chance of being passed.

0

The electoral college was designed to preserve slavery. That should tell you all you need to know about the validity of our voting constructs.

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Anonymous #2 9h

Jesus dude wtf? How tf are you getting colonizer bootlicker from me saying people should vote in addition to other action? I’ve laid out pretty clearly the costs of not voting and the benefits are still intangible, I’m just trying to be pragmatic about an important issue. Also what’s blatantly wrong?

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

Voting decides who holds office, I'm not denying that. My point is what happens after. Gilens and Page (2014) found average citizens' preferences had little independent effect on US policy once elite and organized interests were accounted for. So vote if you want. But if that's where our energy stops, the outcome stays with the people who already have the power. That's why the organizing matters more.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

The “importance of voting” myth is distracting you from the illusion of choice the importance of your own free will and critical thinking.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

If voting decides who holds office and we agree that trump is far worse for everyone than Kamala then how is voting unimportant? Do you disagree that trump is significantly worse for everyone than Kamala?

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

nothing about what you are doing is pragmatic you are ignoring all of my points because you refuse to let go of the conditioning that you’ve been put through. The benefits of voting are not tangible. I’m sorry that it sounds so awful and is so disheartening but unfortunately you have been fed a lie. wake the fuck up.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

I don’t agree that Trump is far worse for everyone than Kamala. That’s a bullshit premise and it’s the entire root of your whole argument. No wonder you keep pushing it. Kamala is a fucking genocide. Our circumstances would be very similar. You would just be more comfortable letting bad shit happen because at least you’ve got your president. And that’s exactly the trap that I’m against.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

Dude you haven’t yet provided a single real benefit to not voting + other action as opposed to voting + other action. All your points are about how that puts people in a certain headspace or legitimizes the system and things like that. That’s all wishy washy, what is solid are the number of families deported under trump, the number of fishermen killed. There are concrete trade offs between two bad candidates and you said yourself that voting chooses which one we get

0

Anonymous #2 9h

Ah ok so that’s it right there, you think the difference between Kamala and trump is negligible. How do you justify that claim?

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I’m honestly just gobsmacked to get this far into a conversation where I’m being accused of failing to be pragmatic when 2 thinks there are no important differences between trumps government and a Kamala government.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

Headspace isn't wishy washy, it's how power works. Gramsci called it hegemony: systems last because people accept their options as the only ones. Ngũgĩ called it colonizing the mind, Fanon showed how the colonized internalize the colonizer's terms. A colonial state's ballot offers two managers of the same project and calls that choice. Deportations and wars happen under both because the frame stays. Breaking the frame is the concrete work.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

I never said there are no differences. I said comparing them is the trap. Once the question is "which is less bad," both become the ceiling of what's possible, and the bar drops every cycle. You spend your energy defending the lesser harm instead of refusing harm. They both suck. Ranking them against each other is the frame the system hands us so we never ask for more. That's not pragmatism, it's managed expectations.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

Yikyak’ll do that to ya. Sometimes you just gotta say your username and move on. If polls are correct, folks in the real world are agreeing w/you more and more

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Anonymous #7 9h

That’s called an appeal to popularity fallacy.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

You said they’d be very similar. How do you justify that to families getting deported or fathers getting shot by ice? Or to people watching their national parks get drilled on? Or to gay folks watching their history get erased? Or to the millions of people who have died due to PEPFAR cuts? Or any of the other thousands of things we could talk about? How is that unimportant?

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

It’s honestly pretty privileged to act like the difference is negligible when so many people have had lives destroyed due to this decision we made as a country

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

I DON’T JUSTIFY IT. that’s why I’m against the entire colonial state, unlike you.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

How do you justify all of the harm this country causes in order to exist in in the first place??

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

The difference is negligible because they’re both colonizers and this is a colonial state. wake the fuck up

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

what’s privileged is living inside of your colonizer bubble and refusing to allow yourself to feel uncomfortable

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

just because Trump caused lots of harm does not make the Democratic Party angels that mint is exactly how you write off the immense harm that they also create

1

Anonymous #2 9h

*myth

1

Anonymous #2 9h

Apparently we gain something by letting those things happen though, in exchange for some vague sense of moral righteousness and signaling to the powers that be. And please stop putting words in my mouth, nothing about protecting people where we can within a flawed state makes me a supporter of colonialism. It’s pretty detached to sit here calling people colonialists while real families suffer under trump because of how people voted

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

Diverting your energy away from broken systems is not by any means the same thing as passivity. Don’t be a dick.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you don’t know anything about suffering the way you’re talking from your fucking high horse. If you cared about suffering, you would condemn this entire country instead of support supporting its government.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

why don’t you address this comment?

1

Anonymous #2 9h

If you’ve read anything I’ve written here you should know I do not support or agree with the Democratic Party. I vote for them because I’d rather reduce harm than feel warm and fuzzy for refusing to give Kamala my vote. That’s learning to be uncomfortable

0

Anonymous #2 9h

Because it contradicts what you said down below. This says that there are no meaningful differences between the “projects” and I think we both have now agreed that isn’t true

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

then why are you so gung ho about voting for them when we have established that voting doesn’t even fucking work?

1

Anonymous #2 9h

And who says I don’t condemn it? Why can’t I condemn it while protecting vulnerable people by voting for harm reduction?

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

remember how I said harm reduction isn’t a bad thing? Well, yeah, the rest of my point as that treating harm reduction as an end-all be-all is exactly how we end up with the bar in hell and that is what our culture around voting looks like because we keep giving into this bullshit, lesser of two evils framing

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

Half of my coworkers are facing deportation because the trump admin is wreaking havoc on their visa status. Hopefully you can also name the real victims of this decision that you talk to daily

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

then why are you so resistant to my point about pressure valves?

1

Anonymous #2 9h

It is. You don’t vote, you diverted your energy. Great, what now? Trump won and the world is worse for it. You don’t think that’s synonymous with passivity? I don’t see any good that came from that energy diversion, suffering was the only result

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

voting is more than just going to the ballot box and submitting a piece of paper. There’s a culture surrounding it and the culture is the problem.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you were attributing the suffering incorrectly. That is your entire problem. You wanna think that the suffering is easier to solve than it actually is.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

this behavior around voting that I am so vehemently against is what is responsible for Trump being an office right now

1

Anonymous #2 9h

Because you can call voting anything you like, it doesn’t really change the math on the ground. Votes choose candidates and candidates dictate levels of suffering. It doesn’t matter much that it’s a pressure valve, refusing to use it as a tool does nothing

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

It matters for the greater project of changing the system but nothing about that mission shows any reason why not voting is beneficial

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

no, it literally does not because I have already told you that even though there are differences, they are minute. An evil colonizer versus a less evil colonizer is not a meaningful distinction to me.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

and that’s a bullshit excuse to avoid my actual point

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

voting does not choose candidates, money is what chooses candidates. We do not live in a democracy we live in a plutocracy.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

The more you keep mistaking our plutocracy for a democracy, the longer we will be stuck in it

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you don’t even understand the math on the ground

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

and when did I say I didn’t vote? I voted. My point is that treating voting like it’s a moral metric is harmful and it’s exactly what let us into our current situation

1

Anonymous #2 9h

I don’t need to and won’t, our country is unjustifiable. That being said it’s here, we’re here, and things are happening beyond our control, I can’t end or recreate the country. What I can do is cast a vote that has a chance of reducing suffering for people so that’s what I think moral people should do

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

The real victims are those victims, and the real cause of harm is the one that you refuse to name: your complacency in this broken system.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

“Beyond our control” is a myth to keep you paralyzed. doomerism is a form of conservatism. Voting almost nothing to reduce suffering and I have already established this with you multiple times and you refuse to accept that truth and that is the problem here.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

I’m sorry but that’s an inversion of reality. What you call “complacency” (taking action to cast a ballot) is the one thing that could’ve concretely prevented this harm in the first place. A failure to leverage the few levers we have (no voting) is the cause of this increased level of suffering over what we could’ve had

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

we collectively have the power to end and re-create the country, but we can’t do that if you keep putting your energy and thinking into the old paradigm

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

It’s not an inversion of reality it’s an inversion of our social structures. This is not simply reality. This is a social construction that was chosen, and that means it can be un chosen.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

And I just disagree. I will comment on people who litter because I think it’s immoral, I want them to stop littering. I will also comment on people’s failure to prevent trump taking office because I want people like trump to not get elected again. You don’t have to make moral appeals to people if you think doing so is harmful but I just disagree

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

we have more levers than you think we have. And this is exactly my point voting makes you think that it is the only lever that we have and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

it is a pressure valve to keep your dissent funneling back into the institution

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Anonymous #2 9h

I’m a voter that knows we have other levers, so are most people in this comment section and most leftists. People are capable of understanding nuance and voting

0

Anonymous #2 9h

Ok well you go unchoose then and let me know what you accomplish, I’m going to keep using all the tools at my disposal

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you disagree with decolonial theory? you’re not beating the colonizer allegations. Trump cannot legally be elected again. And the fact that a third term is on the table should tell you that we are no longer playing by the rules of this game. It is time to break out of our past norms. This is much bigger and more complex than littering.

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

and I will comment on people who vehemently support the colonial state because I think it’s immoral

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you’re giving the general public a lot of benefit of the doubt. Most people are not nuanced, they’re impulsive. Just like you.

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

oh my God why do you keep missing my fucking point we have to collectively un choose it that is why I’m arguing with you right now because I want you to be on my team and to also un choose it

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you are by no means using all of the tools that your disposal. The greatest tool we have available to us right now is indigenous wisdom, and apparently you’re allergic to it

1

Anonymous #2 9h

Dude read the comment, I said people like trump

1

The constitution was built around slavery. Why are you justifying the constitution? The constitution is the fucking problem.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

Ok dude, call me a colonizer if it makes you happy. I’m much more interested in actual harm reduction than moral grandstanding and name calling

0

A third term is very much something that the right is talking about and you have to be stupid not to notice it

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

people like Trump? you mean patriarchal capitalist colonizers?

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Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

if you’re so interested in harm reduction, why do you keep defending harm?

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

I don’t mean, colonizer as an insult by the way, I mean it in the most accurate sense

1

have you even read the 13th amendment? We did not prohibit slavery. We made a loophole for it that burst the industrial prison complex.

1

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Anonymous #2 9h

I haven’t man. I appreciate the time as far as it goes but I don’t see this going anywhere and I have homework to do. Have a good night tho

0

Anonymous #2 9h

*birthed

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

Get that hw done! Reduce harm to your grades 😂

3

there’s this really awful part of that document called the exception clause that says that there shall be no slavery except as a punishment for a crime and this then led to the creation of black codes and vagrancy laws and made it illegal for someone to be black and unemployed. We did not buy any means and slavery at all, and that is the biggest lie that our constitution tells.

1

Anonymous #2 9h

Ok man, if it makes you happy 😅

0

no diva our constitution, explicitly enabled slavery as a punishment for crime, which then incentivized new criminal law

1

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

you literally have, though with the way that you are defending our voting system. Our voting system is a mechanism of harm. stop defending it.

1

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0

oh, you’re done here because it’s too uncomfortable to confront the truth that our entire fucking country is corrupted?

0

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 9h

supporting the colonial state is the exact opposite of reducing harm

1

If there’s one thing to take away from this conversation, it’s that slavery was never abolished.

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0

it really hasn’t improved that much though. That’s an excuse.

1

our country does not deserve to exist

1

there are people who still believe that manifest destiny was actually a good thing. That is not improvement, that’s stagnation.

0

Anonymous #2 9h

Well like it or not it does, and I wouldn’t mind it continuing to exist. Sleep also exists, and i’ll need to get it

1

Anonymous #7 8h

thank you for saying the quiet part out loud… decolonizing the state doesn’t mean the land suddenly turns into a vacuum of space smh it means the land goes back to the people living on it.

1

Anonymous #7 8h

do you seriously want the government to own your land? Who in the right mind would want that?

1