#voting discourse

[meowkusunoki]

i feel like a lot of people are seeing yuno's moral dilemma as being "can you forgive her for what she did?" when to me that's not what it is at all. yes, the miscarriage being an accident makes her completely innocent, but that's the point. the moral dilemma is "this innocent woman is asking you not to forgive her. will you respect her wishes, or impose your will on her for her own good?" which links to milgram's greater theme of there being no good outcomes because it is an inherently abusive system.

also, yuno has been completely robbed of autonomy in all of this. the pregnancy was an accident, the miscarriage was an accident. and now, we're robbing her of her autonomy yet again by forgiving her despite her explicitly asking us not to do so.

(this isn't me saying we shouldn't forgive yuno. we 100% should. lesser evil and all that.)

[maxknightley]

I wish I could vote for President twice

Once for the Green Party and once for a write-in candidate

[graham-folger]

I have a question for American users, because "is voting important" discourse keeps popping up:

*NOT INCLUDING TRAVEL TIME,*

Please reblog this, I want a good sample.

[phantasm-masquerade]

[ID: An edited meme from the movie I, Robot. Will Smith's character says "American liberals have no plan to keep Trump style fascists out of power aside from 'just hope we never lose another election ever again'." The robot character replies "And your plan is?" Will Smith's character has a dismayed expression.]

"If Biden wins you're giving carte blanche to the Democrats to do whatever they want in regards to foreign policy"

okay and Trump has specific enumerated plans that will very specifically make foreign policy in specifically Palestine (but also everywhere fucking else) WAY worse

"well then if both of your options in the system lead to genocide then we need to get out of the system"

and xou have a practical, feasible plan that smashes the power of the fascists and replaces our system with something at least better? i'm all ears then! oh xou don't have a plan? then what's the point in acting like we aren't gonna be living under either Trump again or Biden again

if we were going to overthrow the system in time to stop trump/biden from taking power after this election that would have had to have been planned at least 5 years ago, probably more

revolutions require logistical planning, recruitment, networks of mutual aid that can survive government attacks, an stockpiles of all sorts of resources for an inevitable insurgent conflict

we. do not. have that.

have xou been taking advantage of america's lax gun laws to stockpile massive amounts of guns and ammunition to storm the government? have xou made farmer collectives that can provide food to a revolutionary core even despite blockades from government forces? (both of these things are very much possible, by the way)

and even if xou view it from a "how quickly can we get this shitty system toppled" maybe don't let the plan for millions of fascists paramilitaries and secret police to be implemented (project 2025)? maybe it would be very obviously harder to get rid of the government after that?

i would be overjoyed if it were possible for us to leave this shitty, shitty late state capitalist hellscape before 1/20/25, but it doesn't seem like anyone who says that's the only moral option has a way to make that happen?

in summary,

[ID: A tweet from Basil @ LinkOfSunshine on Twitter, reading "People on twitter will really be like 'you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart' and then not firebomb a Walmart"]

[sonofapunk]

I am not a supporter of electoral government, but I think there is merit to the fear that trump is going to get way more votes now. unfortunately, I have made the decision that I am going to have to vote in November, against my own distaste for it, and for any anarchists like me who have been on the fence about it, I encourage you not necessarily to vote if you really don't want to, but to at least consider it for this election only. I know, voting only keeps oppressors in power, on both sides of the 2-party system, but think of this way: zoe baker once said that if an anarchist HAS to vote, we should vote in who we want to overthrow. It will be much easier to fight against the current system of government we have in place if we have an already weakened liberal in office, than a fascist republican who will have immunity to the law. I don't want to vote; I'm sure we've all seen the quote about how, if voting did anything, it would be made illegal, but if the fascist has a streamlined method to power, we are going to have a much more difficult time in working to free the people. Further, while we do our work to change the system, many more people will suffer or be killed in the meantime under trump than they will under biden (not that it won't happen under biden. he is still a terrible person. I just think it'll be significantly worse under trump). The point is, I understand choosing not to vote. It is a way for the government to give us the illusion of choice and freedom. It does require us to be subject to a system we did not choose, nor support. But a fascist has just been handed the most perfect opportunity to sway centrists and win over swing states. his demographic is the highest percentage of voters in the country. Continue doing everything else that helps to fight the system, because we will never change it from the inside. But we can make it easier to break down from the outside, and that means barring trump from office. Seeing as how his security detail is likely to be beefed up after this, voting is going to be, disappointingly, very probably the method by which we'll have to do that. (For legal reasons: I am not encouraging violence).

Stay strong, friends, and please consider what I've said here. Feel free to leave your opinions in reblogs or replies, though, because I'm interested to hear other perspectives. I may or may not respond due to spoons. Love y'all Ⓐ

[ulysses-but-somehow-more-transer]

yall afraid to vote 3rd party im voting 7th party. i dont care

[hoping-for-novelty]

this is an uncharitable interpretation of their behaviour, but I think that most of the people on here who say that we shouldn't vote and that we should start a revolution instead are actually just put off by the moral compromise that comes with real-world politics, and that they would immediately turn on the leaders of the revolution once they learn their opinion on trans rights or postcolonialism or whatever other controversial thing they care about

[the-world-annealing]

Thesis: Voting is super important and we should all participate in the democratic process. This will solve many problems, perhaps even all! :) Antithesis: Voting is useless, we should instead use our energy to create an insurrectionist maoist organization that can serve as an effective fifth column when china invades undertakes defensive conquest against the imperial core in ten to fifteen years. Synthesis: I'm gonna canvas for RFK because I think he'd be really bad at putting down a rebellion.

[runedscope]

Not sure how not voting does anything other than just make you feel better about ideological purity? Like in what way does it benefit you or anyone? Democrats aint gonna learn shit and they loved being in opposition under trump cause they can say all the stuff they want without having any ability to enact it and then fundraise off it. Voting is like the least effective way of enacting political change and y'all don't even want to do that.

[spawnartisticdirections]

There's a really random post going around, that quotes a Twitter account saying (paraphrased) if you're doing something bad enough – their example is drink driving – then negative commentary designed to deride and change that habit in you or the onlooker isn't shaming or scolding. And, yes it is. That's still definitionally both of those things. The action is to scold, and it's intended to create shame. I don't really care about the rest of the point. It's wild seeing someone take a screencap out of all context from Twitter to make their point clear, when the quoted bit is just easily nonsense.

[meowkusunoki]

see even back when i joined the fandom (around the time cat dropped) i was a little apprehensive about fuuta's t2 forgiven because like. how would he interpret good things finally starting to happen to him right after he started practicing amane's religion?

of course an unforgiven verdict would also have made things worse because we'd be psychologically torturing an already very unstable man. so really it's a lose-lose. but i do think that his indoctrination makes a lot more sense when you take into account our/es' role in it.

[thornsent]

buddy my hands are not on the rudder and neither are yours. we are in the lower areas of the ship, which is already taking water btw, and we are SCREAMING up at the people topside to help us and also not steer us into the rocks. We can all scream, and we can scream really loudly and in unison, but ultimately where the ship goes and whether or not it capsizes depends on the crew above us. if they think dashing us upon the rocks is in our best interests they can and will do it. Some of them might listen to us, they might take it into account that we're down here and we might drown because of their actions, but ultimately our fate is up to them.

in america the captain never goes down with the ship because his term does not last long enough.

[frostfires-blog]

Me watching the Solo Leveling and Frieren fandoms argue about which one of the two is going to win "Anime of the Year" when I want The Apothecary Diaries to win:

[phantasm-masquerade]

+ Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want you to vote either because he wants Trump. So does Hamas. Vote if you can. Help other people vote if you can't.

Anti-voting rhetoric will be the death of the left. Literally.

Not a single fucking Republican voted to protect roe. It was fucking overturned in the first place bc trump got three Supreme Court appointments.

Every fucking thing wrong in this country is almost certainly the result of Republicans being in power. In 2020, Texas cut half of the polling places in black neighborhoods, and doubled them in white ones, regardless of population. It was Republicans bitching about mail in voting, and constantly, constantly fearmonger about voter fraud. Literally, their platform is about making civil rights harder to practice.

Would you like to know why? It’s because Republican politicians know better than anyone that higher voter participation means higher republican loss.

But what do I see from the online left, champions of the oppressed?

“Voting doesn’t do anything, the parties are the same, the system is rigged, etc, etc”

Don’t sit here and tell me you give a fuck about marginalized people if you aren’t ready to march your ass to the voting booth and vote out the party actively stripping their rights away.

Protest, donate, community build, unionize, and vote, vote, vote.

By the time direct action is the only option, it will be too fucking late.

[meowkusunoki]

btw if you voted muu guilty while knowing about harukas threat you CANNOT argue that amane should have been guilty for the sake of damage control