If you seriously think those two options are identical then…go try it and report back on how it feels lol

The anal tears you’ll get without lube are what we’re all suffering right now because of people not voting.

If you think every election has just been the same “since Obama”, then I’m afraid you’ve got a narrow view of history. Shit choices in this deeply fucked up country have been part of the electoral system from the start. People have always lamented that neither party gives them a good choice

Not participating hasn’t worked to make things better, though. In fact, those in power try to get people not to participate as much as possible. Politicians go after reliable voting blocks, not people who wilt when faced with a morally complex choice. When the Left doesn’t show up, they go to the right: because xenophobic assholes sure as hell vote.

And yes: this is all why I agree that electoral politics is terrible. We need direct action, parallel power structures, etc. We need better voting systems and representation, and there are problems so systemic that we need to go beyond reform.

TLDR: Voting isn’t going to save us, but not voting may doom us.

This is not solely a news community.

Right? No childish nicknames, no rage-fueled late night social media posting, no off kilter diatribes during an unrelated speech. He’s just, transparently cool with a child trafficker. It is so mind numbingly damning I’m split between being horrified and fascinated by how his supporters refuse to connect any dots.

I especially like that it’s a recurring bit

There’s plenty of people beyond saving, that’s for sure: but I think people aren’t so immutable. I think people are being made more monstrous by the capitalist system we live in, and the people at the top who exemplify avarice as a path to success. I’m not going to be buddies with ex maga unless they’re really going the extra mile to make up for the damage they’ve done, but I hope at least some can be decent humans.

Yeah, and it also feels “forever ago” when you’re that age. Literally half their lives. So I could understand them thinking it’s “old news”, but when you’re an old and crusty 40 year old, you know that a 60 someone saying heinous shit means that person is deeply twisted.

Fascinating, isn’t it? Does he think the Democrats just “hate all things fossil” so much that there’s some kind of integer overflow and it flips negative, and oil businesses do just fine entirely by accident?

It’s truly astounding how well right wing propaganda gets folks to believe things that are so completely at odds with his own lived experience. None of us are immune to propaganda, I know, but that whole statement is just…fascinating

Oh that’s her, I was just trying to be insulting haha

Oh I’m totally agreed! It’s all capitalist, jingoist garbage, same as it ever was.

Yeah, I was just on a flight and saw a dude across the aisle that was mainlining all the worst people on twitter. Space laser lady, the racist cat, the nazi automaker…this dude was just liking everything and replying frantically. He was flipping through everything and replying so quickly that I felt pity as much a loathing. It was absolutely pathetic. Dude’s brain is melted.

That was the NFL being political though, this is them being patriotic…is what my troglodyte relatives will say.

To add to this, there’s a great section in Man Without a Country by Vonnegut where he talks about his approach to humor, and he mentions the time he was in Dresden during WW2 as a prisoner of war, while it was being bombed.

True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.

While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.

A bigger part of the section here: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/bookworm/kurt-vonnegut-1/excerpt-from-a-man-without-a-country

No, my entire point is that they are the ones that showed up: hence why we have a more authoritarian president than perhaps ever before. Between the 2020 election and the 2024 election, the raw numbers of votes dropped for the Democrats, not the Republicans. This whole discussion has been about bleeding support from (some) of the Left.

And yes, this is because Harris and the rest of the DNC shit the bed. That they went too hard toward the right is certainly a factor: and again, to be clear,I’m not saying it’s a good idea to move right. What I’m trying to get across is that abstaining is often indistinguishable from wanting a more right-leaning candidate, because then that’s the candidate that wins.

If it was up to me, see my volcano comment. If we want revolutionary change in the USA, I know which party I’d rather fight in the streets against.

I’m sorry that you’ve misunderstood my point so deeply. Let me more explicit. The Cheneys should have been thrown into a volcano. Harris did a shit job. We all need to organize to get milquetoast liberals/moderates and fascists alike out of office.

Unfortunately, over decades they’ve learned who are reliable voting blocks. Not participating communicates that one sees both options as functionally the same. So if anything, it encourages then to move to the right, which is a reliable voting block.

I’m not at all gleeful about voting for them, and desperately want other options. I’m doing what I can to build parallel structures, engage in mutual aid, and in my day job I’m fighting climate change as an environmental research scientist. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, and the tracks of the trolley don’t change overnight.

Well yeah, that’s exactly the idea. Choose the best of bad options, and try to improve things so that the next time there’s better options.

Not choosing either usually leads to the worse option, which makes it harder to improve things.

There are no easy options.

Oni was so much fun: I would love to see how it feels now, but my nostalgia for it is off the charts. Martial art combos, plus sci fi guns: there’s just nothing else like it out there, which is a bummer.

Yeah, given that it’s around a hundred bucks (at best) a month for a pickup, and I can rent a pickup from a big box store for 20 bucks…the math works out to do that as often as weekly and still save money, considering registration/tag/maintenance. That’s considering that my wife and I have one car, and one motorcycle: the differential in going from a car to a truck isn’t as egregious as motorcycle or no second car, of course.

Also, it’s always fun to get a huge haul of materials with my motorcycle gear on, seeing folks clearly wonder if I’ve thought through my decisions.

Yeah we’re in agreement, and apologies that my reply was a little meandering! It’s hard to reply without sounding contrarian sometimes.

Thanks for a good reply, and I hope you enjoy the weekend!