Anyways, I think that the sentiment that "a vote has to be earned" is antidemocratic and attempts to replace democracy with brand exercises and a "free market", because it rejects the notion that political participation might come with social responsibilities to other people in the society.
Fundamentally, I think I am obligated to participate in politics to at a minimum, the degree of voting and paying attention to the world because that's how political decisions are made in a democracy, and so I am obligated to everyone else to add to this process of political decision-making.
It's a weighty responsibility. Perhaps even more so for elections with any foreign policy consequences - I'm voting for the sake of people in other countries who can't but would be affected by my vote, too.
I think insisting on voting for a candidate who rejects your values just because another candidate rejects them more is also antidemocratic. If you're corralled into a choice between two hostile options, it should be your right to say "neither".
The solution is better choices but there's no route.
Oh absolutely true, I don't disagree with this at all. My contention is that voting for one of the two pre selected candidates is one of the weakest things you can do.
Your contention is cartoonish. It's not a binary choice of "vote" or "mobilize". If you think that it is, rather than that being a defense mechanism for you to avoid thinking about why you're arguing for what you argue, please think again.
Who said it was a binary choice between voting vs mobilizing? I don't think I said that anywhere. Are you sure you're not arguing with something you think I said but that I didn't say?
Then why say "voting for one of the two [...] candidates is one of the weaker things you can do"? If it wasn't to say that these things are mutually exclusive, why say it?
It's absolutely your right, but you own the consequences when your failure to act causes immense and irreparable harm to people. At least have the courage of your own convictions to state that that was the outcome you desired .
You don't get to choose the behavior without also choosing the consequence, those two come as a package. If your choice to not act causes Trump to win and that results in a national abortion ban, you own that outcome. If it results in people being dragged form their homes and deported, you own it.
If it results in assassinations of activists and politicians - remember, he's already done that, its already happened - then you own that. You chose it. You said "I prefer this negative outcome over that negative outcome". Be honest about your convictions, at the very least.
If it results in you or someone you dearly love being arrested or disappeared or just killed outright, well, you own that too. Cold comfort I guess, but you can tell yourself that at least you didn't vote for the other guy.
I have a huge problem with your first sentence, because my ACTIONS in 2020, mainly working myself to the bone to get Biden elected, resulted in immense and irreparable harm to an entire ethnic group. So, what do I do now? I am genuinely asking.
The election of Joe Biden did not determine whether the war in Gaza would start or whether it would achieve genocidal violence and destruction, because those decisions were made by people outside the United States.
I'd argue that your actions might have failed to stop this genocide, but it stopped other genocides from happening, both in Ukraine, and domestically. I'm angry, we should be angry, but I'm looking for the way to work towards ending it, and with the Dem base turning against genocide, a path shows.
Did Biden assassinate Rabin in 1996? Did I miss it? You are wildly overstating not only Biden's but, weirdly, your personal influence on the last 100 years of conflict in the Middle East leading up to the current war. I'm not sure what I can tell you, since your assertion here is totally irrational.
What is not irrational is that there are specific ME outcomes that both Biden and Trump have advocated for, one is a two state solution and the other is extermination of Palestinians. Jared Kushner was recently discussing beachfront hotels in the Gaza Strip. You might think Biden's theory is folly/
I was the national GOTV digital volunteer team leader in 2020 to get Biden elected, a man who has repeatedly funded Israel over the heads of Congress, but somehow NOT voting for him in 2024 is me choosing an active path of irreparable harm to other people? Your assertion is completely paradoxical.
You personally do not control what Netanhayu, Ben Gvir, Smotritch, et al. do., nor presumably what Hamas does. Neither does Biden. The outcome you chose was Biden over Trump. The outcome of Hamas' attack was Netanhayu and his gang of Kahanists' choice. The US response to that can be one of many /
EVERY candidate will always reject some or other of your values. The purity test will always fail. This is why left groups inevitably end up in schisms. Pragmatism isn't a capitulation, it's *literally the only way anything ever gets achieved* in groups of more than two people.
Also - and yes yes, "we live in a society" - but every decision you do or don't make is a compromise with or tacit support for SOMEONE. If you feel that voting endorses a system you dislike, then not-voting by default endorses the not-voting system as it exists now. And who benefits most from THAT?
Wrong.
If a politician says, "I'm going to do a, b, c, and not do x, y, z" and breaks either part of that, or worse, both, and doesn't offer a valid reason to understand or otherwise point to, then it should be understood that they're no longer fit to deserve the confidence of their constituency.
It's very funny that Americans think they live in a democracy.
You live in the worst dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, where you perform a ritual of degradation every four years.
Wow, that's some novel thinking there 99! Who knew that elected representatives should be responsive to their electorate and to society at large. Quick, run and tell that group hanging around Philadelphia; Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton...
See? You never had any intention of conversation at all, just crowing about your victory while fantasizing about being a director of the East India Company or whatever.
