He got me to read the Manifesto and would have hours’ long debates with our social-democratic roommate and now this. It’s really shaking me up a bit.
He is on the whole defeatist ‘nothing will fundamentally shake the imperial machine so might as well pick the wardog with better domestic policies’ tip. I want to get through to him but I am getting stuck.
For example:
i also refuse to not vote my conscience but i figured this time its not like doing this abstract process to pick if id prefer -100 points vs -200 points is gonna matter that much if i genuinely believe itll even be slightly better under kamala i might as well
This reminds me of when I read a post somewhere about someone who met up with the person who convinced them to go vegan at a cafe after not seeing them for years. The person who convinced them to go vegan ordered a latte with dairy in it and revealed that they’re an ex-vegan now. OP was so confused and disappointed.
I may be butchering some of the details, but it was something like that.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. It’s like old communists like Angela Davis stepping back from overt struggle and letting themselves become fangless ‘critics’ because they need to retire. Except in this friend’s case we are still young and he was never concretely politically active.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain.
I normally hate that quote because it was Nolan capeshit
in its origins of common usage, but then I think of what happened to Noam Chomsky. 
This kind of shit terrifies me to the core because what if I become like that
You’ll probably become a much calmer and happier person TBH
Username checks out
Calmer maybe, but happier? I have my doubts. Once you know, can you ever really forget?
perhaps, but you also lose your human soul.
Maybe before, but nowadays they seem as miserable as the rest of us
True, the fear and paranoia being spread by the media and corporations is getting to them
Liberals genuinely have lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction, and you can see a microcosm of it in the fascist Lemmy instances.
Conservatives tell them one thing, they can easily discard it in favor of facts and logic. So they abandon the working class.
The Party tells them one thing, leftists prove them wrong with the logic and facts they used to value so highly. So they abandon facts and logic.
The US State Dept tells them one thing, yet reality itself disproves it. So they abandon reality.
They clutch their ballots and throw their tantrums and hysterics about voting because that’s the one thing they have left that is real. They can fill in a little bubble and know they did the Good Thing and are on the Good Side and everyone else telling them mean things are the Bad Side.
they are and it’s worse because their internal contradictions / lack of true explanations make it intolerable for them without understanding why. i get how being a marxist can feel like a curse sometimes but i would never choose the alternative.
Like housepets on the fourth of July, I think someone here said once
Calm and happy person
American
Pick one
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How do you mean zen fascism?
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My step dad is like that. Got a survival of the fittest kind of mindset and is like yea americas doing fucked up shit but might as well sit back and enjoy it bc we’re lucky to be able to
it’d be tempting to have some respect for this stance if they didn’t whine and complain when the tables turn, but they always do
I guess it’s more honest than what democrats give us at the very least lol
this might be the Matt rant you were referring to
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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voting is not politics, reading is not politics, make fun of him. If your state loses by 1 vote, tell him he should have gone with a better argument (like 10k donation to rcs)
P.s. (in the realm of absurdist arguments) there is a higher chance that some hot palestinian lady or mma fighter will make trumpo bomb tel aviv, than that kamala will not listen to some bloodless mormon sicko. That’s ignoring euros wouldn’t go that far along with trumpo. Domestically she would do jack shit cause of the senate anyway
What are you trying to accomplish?
I just want him back j.j I am trying to counter-program him I guess. He already voted so it’s a moot point.
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Voting in American elections is just signaling your fealty to the regime.
Of course I’m still voting so whatever. I like filling bubbles okay.
Jonesing for a multiple choice test lol
No matter what answer you select you lose
Like most Americans, I live in a state where my vote won’t matter and I’m keeping my conscience clean. This one is just a bridge way too far for me. I think I would probably reconsider if Rashida Tlaib endorsed Kamala, but I don’t think she will or should.
The amount that would have to be different for her to do that is staggering. I’m shocked she can still stay in the party/be allowed to stay.
I hope I am shot in the head immediately if I ever debase myself like this. your friend is dead inside already
listen to your friend
“anarchist” instance btw
your children are next
He did, and his friend was acting dumb.
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fuck off back to
Did you get lost on the way to Reddit?
I think I’ll listen to the future commandHER in chief:
As Vice President, [Kamala] supported the bipartisan border security bill, the strongest reform in decades. The legislation would have deployed more detection technology to intercept fentanyl and other drugs and added 1,500 border security agents to protect our border [and resumed and expanded border wall construction]. After Donald Trump killed the border deal for his political gain, she and President Biden took action on their own — and now border crossings are at the lowest level in 4 years, their administration is seizing record amounts of fentanyl, and secured funding for the most significant increase in border agents in ten years. As President, she will bring back the bipartisan border security bill and sign it into law. (from her website)
: “Um hello I hate immigrants more than Trump and justify this with drug hysteria while refusing to look at the root causes, if you vote for me I WILL increase harm and I WILL make the lives of oppressed people worse, something Trump is too NARCISSISTIC to do for our country”
: “Um wow I’m going to vote for you to reduce harm and keep oppressed people safe”project 2025 will help billionaires take away our ability to unionize. it will help SCOTUS and lower courts pass anti-abortion and anti-trans laws, leading to countless deaths (children included) and suicide. it already has in some states. it will gut public education. it will extend mass surveillance. and so much more.
yes, their foreign policy is the typical establishment bullshit. but domestically, we need to secure our freedoms to protest and unionize at the ballot box if we want to continue to be able to protest in the streets.
Proj 2025 is going to be implemented by Trump?* Waow I should vote for the party that conspired to elevate him in the Republican Party so he or an equivalent could be the Republican nominee in 2016!!
*No, it isn’t.
And you haven’t addressed what Kamala is actually saying.
Biden literally crushed unions but go off king. The supreme court overturned roe v wade and nobody gives a shit. Kamala doesn’t give a shit about LGBTQ people, what an ally she is
it will gut public education. it will extend mass surveillance. and so much more.
Yeah, just like the dems. More money for cops, less money for schools, let’s go patriot act, let’s go surveillance state.
our freedoms to protest
Lmao they beat the shit out of college kids this year for protesti-
at the ballot box
Ah yeah of course that’s the only one that matters - the one that doesn’t do anything.
if we want to continue to be able to protest in the streets.
What a wonderful system where there’s two choices and if you pick the wrong one (alongside half the population) then the system is torn down, so you have to pick the other one. Let’s never stop and look back to 50 years ago when people were already pointing out the flaws in that argument
The only difference between the two is that Trump is rude on twitter and you care when he does the things they all do. Wish you’d pay as much attention when it’s a democrat instead of going back to brunch.
Also
Foreign policy
It’s not “bad” it’s a GENOCIDE YOU FUCKING GHOUL.
Shut the fuck up bluenazi
Just lie about who or if you voted dawg
He is on the whole defeatist ‘nothing will fundamentally shake the imperial machine so might as well pick the wardog with better domestic policies’ tip.
I’d throw that right back as the reason you aren’t voting lmao!
Why get worked up if nothing is fundamentally going to change?
Because, sniff, they ideologically do act as though things can change
it’s the domestic policies bit, the logic is that the left can’t do anything and if they try to ask for different foreign policies it’ll achieve nothing. so they are voting for a more comfortable position in the imperial core because they think it’s impossible to affect the comfort of those outside of it (defeatism when it comes to anti-imperialist policies)
logic can’t break people out of that brain prison because the defeatism is emotional, it’s an internalized helplessness created from decades of violent repression of the left
I wouldn’t try to “defeat” his defeatism, but show his defeatism can’t infect you. He wants to feel better about capitulating which is why he is trying to bring you into the fold. Whatever he chooses to do, that is on him. His argument isn’t going to convince you, and say as much.
Besides, if he is so convinced for
will bring better domestic policies he should go doorknocking, because 50% of the electorate does not vote. If he really thinks her domestic policies will work, he should have no problem convincing non-voters.And just for the sake of the bit...
:posting: :posting: :posting:
Banging the sign again…
:posting: :posting: :posting:
previously… previously… previously… previously… previously… previously… previously…
i agree with this, it is much harder to do questionable things in the name of hopelessness if people surrounding you simply aren’t hopeless
Radicalize them
I think the other people telling you to cut him off or calling him a fascist are going a little far. “Might as well” isn’t exactly a Kamala canvasser, lots of people get alienated in America. The obvious question to ask would be “is the difference big enough to bother voting,” and question why his politics have changed.
Ultimately he’s your friend and you know him better than anyone on a reddit spinoff forum, and its your call whether to convince him to vote differently or if this should affect your friendship.
Liberals don’t understand that nothing will be better under Harris
… … …
↘️ Please help Aya in Gaza ❤️ 🇵🇸Heh, that’s nothing. My mentor, one of the best Marxist theorists in the country I grew up in, is now a reactionary who spouts right wing conspiracy theories lol. He got me into Marxism some 25 years ago and was one of the most progressive activists back in the days. Also we’re not from a Western country.
I honestly think that failures after failures of left wing movements globally since the 1990s have broken the brains of many who used to be at the forefront of left wing activism. It also coincided with the period of neoliberalism being spread to the Global South in the form of overseas educated professionals returning and joining social democratic/democratic socialist parties en masse and brought Western liberal ideologies into traditional workers parties.
I sense that many here are probably quite new to the whole socialism/communism thing. It’s sometimes discouraging to think that in another 10-20 years, probably half of your comrades would be fighting you on the other side of the struggle.
im beginning to think there’s something sinister in the concept of practicality
Explain?
We must do what is practical, what is “practical” happens to be compromising with Nazis, that type of logic etc…
pragmatism for sure has a strong association with fascism.
?
I don’t think it’s practicality itself, because practicality dictates, to summarize by a lot, communism. No, I think they’re doing the same thing they do with “logic” and “reason”: kill them, and taxidermy them into little rhetorical totems they can wave around to give their mad pronunciations the illusion of weight. How many times have we all seen fascists say some ridiculous, out of pocket psychosexual shit and then just say the words Logic and Reason to try and justify it? Now Practicality has joined the pantheon of flayed concepts, not the real practicality of rational empathy and cooperation but the nihilistic, insectoid zero-sum Practicality™️ of genocide.
I sense that many here are probably quite new to the whole socialism/communism thing. It’s sometimes discouraging to think that in another 10-20 years, probably half of your comrades would be fighting you on the other side of the struggle.
This was true for every single revolution (the most tragic example being the Irish Revolution), but as they say: the struggle continues.
the Irish Revolution
assume you mean the easter rising?
i get sad about the civil war most days but i would say in terms of historical knock-on effects / timelines diverging the german revolution is the most tragic.
It’s sometimes discouraging to think that in another 10-20 years, probably half of your comrades would be fighting you on the other side of the struggle.
After watching the survivors of the failure of Amerika’s civil rights movement and who they align with, I’ve come to accept that this will be the case until the heat death of the universe. No one is immune to minstrel-ing out for the crackers.
