i think its pretty bold of the political realists on here who talk about harm reduction and strategic voting and so on to continuously claim "these people who hate kamala aren't GIVING you an alternative! they're not telling you what to do with x and x and x" while they also don't give US an alternative for what happens when kamala wins, continues to facilitate genocide, follows through on her campaign promises of increased surveillance, a more lethal military, and a deadlier border, and so on and so forth
admitting powerlessness outside the voting booth means you concede you have no power over kamala and you've conceded all your negotiating power in the voting booth. we've had exactly one year of seeing that the democrats will not be moved by popular protest, will adopt restrictions on free speech so authoritarian it has prompted a warning from the UN human rights office of the high commissioner (to absolutely zero reaction from either the party or its base) and will embrace dick cheney, brett mcgurk and all the architects of worst war crimes of the bush administration
you guys can talk about realism all you like, but i also think you're vastly underestimating that fascism doesn't just come from conservatives waving a red hat, it can come from neoliberals—i am speaking to you as someone with experience in this exact phenomenon who lives in your future.
there are people who care about this and there are people who don't, but i don't respect the people who pretend to care about it and then lie to you. they're lying when they tell you organizing will be easier under kamala, or that they will 'continue to fight the good fight' once she's elected, because if they were going to do that they would be doing it now, when it's most urgent, and they clearly aren't. they're campaigning for her, as she continues to endorse policies and wars so abhorrent even reagan would cringe. the only people really trying to do both are the democrats of the uncommitted campaign and its ilk, who are being continuously humiliated by this administration even as they desperately beg for any concession they can grasp. it is a questionable approach.
the difference between me and the people telling you to vote blue no matter who isn't that i necessarily care about you voting or not voting, it's that i think the people who tell you to vote are not telling you the truth about what you're voting for. they're telling you you might get some nominal policy protections for queer rights, but they won't question if this is a sufficient payoff for relinquishing the rights and lives of millions of people across the world. under trump you would be relinquishing your own rights, certainly, but i think it is insidious to be voting for 95% of trump's policies and then balk at the remaining 5% because they affect you personally, and have the audacity to claim losing your health insurance is equal to being vaporized by a bunker buster bomb in your own home (especially when MANY of you lost your health insurance under biden already).
i think it's insidious that the people telling you to vote are not telling you that your vote for some nominal policy improvements in your life is at the cost of co-signing some of the worst crimes in modern history. this is the reality of voting for kamala, this is the reality of conceding your power to her. this isn't something to be taken lightly and it's not something that can be brushed aside as strategy.
this is also in the difference between voting for someone and endorsing or campaigning for them, a dichotomy we saw with chappell roan last week, who struggled to articulate this basic principle while other celebrities warmly pinkwashed and purplewashed kamala's despicable platform. if you're voting for kamala in self-preservation, as the lesser evil, as the trolley problem agony as so many of you are claiming to, then you wouldn't exactly be shouting that choice from the rooftops. you would be angry that you're being forced to vote for genocide.
'well, what do i do?' you're going to ask. you can do whatever you feel is right. vote for kamala, don't vote for kamala, vote down the ballot, get militant about your local politics, do whatever you think is right. but when it comes to the presidential election a year ago i felt like pressuring her was the right strategy, and unlike the uncommitted movement i don't believe in bluffing. the pressure didn't work, she fucked her constituents over to continue killing children in the middle east, and she shouldn't win. this is my personal opinion, i have my justifications for it based on my own life experiences. you don't have to agree.
the question is, what do you do when you vote for her and nothing changes? what are you going to do about the genocide? what are you going to do about the regional war in the middle east? what are you going to do about people dying at your border? what solutions do the voting realists have for you now? they have nothing. just vote some more. when it's millions of your own people (when it's your entire country) on the chopping block, you'll start to see how this strategy is fucking useless.
the accelerationists (people who believe trump winning will usher in broader support for antifascist movements, empower the left and force people to confront the structural realities in place that allow fascism to breed) had a weak argument in october 2023.
but now the biden admin and the democrats themselves are the accelerationists. they're the ones ushering in extreme instability and calling that 'the birth of a new middle east' (the same rhetoric that made bush so unpopular obama could run on being the opposite of bush). and unlike the US, for us this isn't happening in slow motion with policies and protests and the erosion of civil rights, it's happening with bombs and mass displacement. MILLIONS of people are already displaced in the middle east as a direct result of biden's policies. we're already living american accelerationism. escalate to de-escalate. so when you call this 'the lesser evil,' you understand why we all think you're stupid motherfuckers voting for evil people and expecting that to lead to a better outcome despite all evidence to the contrary.
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