Implying that a Harris/second Biden administration wouldn’t be a cataclysmic disaster

Implying that any outcome where AmeriKKKa continues to exist and destroy our world wouldn’t be a cataclysmic disaster

Yes, pragmatically speaking, voting for Biden does absolutely fucking nothing to alleviate any of the problems faced by the working class. It doesn’t affect the onward progression of capitalism, it doesn’t stop the racists from controlling the government, doesn’t stop the cops from murdering black people, doesn’t stop the erasure of LGBTQIA lives, doesn’t do anything.

The pragmatic options are to first stabilize your own situation, and then organize popular resistance and do direct actions if you have the bandwidth.

Meh, not that great an argument. We really shouldn’t be paying bills to people who allow this system to keep chugging.

Better argument would be that we have our own domestic military to be afraid of (i.e. AmeriKKKan police).

And even in the face of both these arguments, I think it’s 1000% justified to be upset at USians because they barely even have to try to manufacture our consent anymore.

But the moral prohibition on siding with any administration that endorses genocide will force a different flavor of the exact same logic that centrist liberalism has depended on for so long: hold your nose and align with the least worst thing. Only the least worst thing will no longer be the mild, ethics-agnostic emptiness of modern Western liberalism, nor will it be the multitude of barbaric authoritarians and their secret prisons. It will be communal solidarity, or else nothing, a walking away from all of this. Countless otherwise pragmatic people who would in any other circumstance choose liberalism by default will instead decide none of this is worth the damage to one’s soul. They will instead support no one, vote for no one, wash their hands of any ordering of the world that results in choices no better than this. And the obvious centrist refrain—But do you want the deranged right wing to win?—should, after even a moment of self-reflection, yield to a far more important question: How empty does your message have to be for a deranged right wing to even have a chance of winning? Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close.

— Omar El-Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, correction mine

Of course Biden bad! Biden could have ended the Gaza genocide with a single fucking phone call! Are you a genocide supporter?!?

AmeriKKKa is uniparty on foreign policy. This exact outcome would have happened under a Harris administration, except they would have kept up the kayfabe, so I would have had to spend hours debating with shitlibs like you that this war is in fact just about oil.

If you wanna play “shame Olympics”, liberals should be fucking ashamed for losing to the fucking fascists twice, giving the keys of the kingdom to the fascist twice, doing fucking nothing with their political power every time they had it, and barely even pretending to offer a political program worth fighting for.

Yeah and I value your opinion just as much as the work your vote has done for the Venezuelans and the other citizens of countries bombed by AmeriKKKa.

Fucking nothing.

Down for me too

Try https://annas-archive.li/

That works for me. I think they are hosted by the same people, so probably temporary 🤷

Too many to count:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

Okay I’ve cooled off. Let me be more patient with you.

Countless otherwise pragmatic people who would in any other circumstance choose liberalism by default will instead decide none of this is worth the damage to one’s soul. They will instead support no one, vote for no one, wash their hands of any ordering of the world that results in choices no better than this. And the obvious centrist refrain—But do you want the deranged right wing to win?—should, after even a moment of self-reflection, yield to a far more important question: How empty does your message have to be for a deranged right wing to even have a chance of winning? Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close.

— Omar El-Akkad

El-Akkad makes my point better than I can. If I remember correctly, this quote was written before the election, so the final clause should read: “and somehow managed to make it close.”

So it may come as a surprise to you, but I do not, in fact, support Donald Trump, nor am I actually proud of my supposed role in getting him elected. I was trolling you. I was tired of you shaming me for maintaining a principled stance against voting as if I had no principles, so I decided to show you what that would actually look like until you realize on your own that I’m not seriously that person. I guess you never caught on. Usually I /s these things out of consideration for my fellow neurodivergent comrades, but, I gotta be real with you, neurodivergent or otherwise, AmeriKKKan feelings are not even on my radar today.

You can’t shame me into voting for the next war criminal because this system is run by the capitalist class, for the capitalist class, orthogonal to the needs of the working class. The shame lies with the capitalists who make this happen. The capitalist class runs both parties, and they are uniparty on foreign policy, as I have demonstrated in the post you responded to. Voting changes nothing.

And fine, we can agree to disagree on all those points — but I’m not interested in doing shame Olympics. I don’t give a fuck because I know what makes liberals cheer, so I equally devalue liberal derision. I am plenty ashamed of my country and what every administration has done since white people landed on this fucking continent, as the rest of my post and comment history will show, but I’m not gonna respond the way you want me to respond to liberal shame politics when liberals are in bed with the capitalist class and their monsters — i.e., the Democrats are just as deserving of shame as the Republicans they helped put in power!

WELL WOULD’YA LOOK AT THAT

Tl;Dr: Hakeem Jeffries brazenly admits that he opposes the fact Trump didn’t seek Congressional authorization for the kidnapping of Maduro, without condemning the ACTUAL FUCKING KIDNAPPING!

Like come the fuck on, you think I was born yesterday? You think I don’t remember the recent history of this goddamn country? And may I remind you: which president GAVE THE KEYS TO THE CASTLE to the fucking fascist in chief? Which party did that TWICE?

He literally said it tho

Like it’s not even like prior admins where they came up with a pretext, he literally said it was about the oil

The argument from authority doesn’t make the point more or less valid.

Nah I just think he says it way better than I can.

And here we see a useful idiot in its natural habitat manufacturing consent for free 🤦

Well if Omar El-Akkad is an embarrassing child that shits his pants then I guess I’m one of those things too

The word “potentially” is doing a lot of lifting here 😆

But the moral prohibition on siding with any administration that endorses genocide will force a different flavor of the exact same logic that centrist liberalism has depended on for so long: hold your nose and align with the least worst thing. Only the least worst thing will no longer be the mild, ethics-agnostic emptiness of modern Western liberalism, nor will it be the multitude of barbaric authoritarians and their secret prisons. It will be communal solidarity, or else nothing, a walking away from all of this. Countless otherwise pragmatic people who would in any other circumstance choose liberalism by default will instead decide none of this is worth the damage to one’s soul. They will instead support no one, vote for no one, wash their hands of any ordering of the world that results in choices no better than this. And the obvious centrist refrain—But do you want the deranged right wing to win?—should, after even a moment of self-reflection, yield to a far more important question: How empty does your message have to be for a deranged right wing to even have a chance of winning? Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close.

• Omar El-Akkad, noted embarrassing child

It’s not yet a genocide in Venezuela, but the logic of “soul damage” absolutely applies.

I know, I’m so embarrassed. God help me 😭 🙏

Lots of people will this coming year when their healthcare goes up 700%

Implying that wouldn’t fucking happen under the Democrats, but liberals wouldn’t be yapping about it because it’s not their faction of capital that’s winning.

To be clear: I’m not a Trump supporter, but the person I was replying to was getting upsetti spaghetti at me for taking a principled stance against voting. Usually I would be a lot more patient and explain this to that individual but I just don’t care about stupid AmeriKKKan’s insecurities right now.