You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don’t you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?

The delusion that democrats don’t also put many people in cages is a huge part of how we got here.

You just have to love those analogies where the author always ends up being the hero of the story.

Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don’t even try to make good ice cream, they don’t even try to get customers or do a good job. It’s still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn’t blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.

Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let’s blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.

Let’s put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn’t straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming “I’m never voting against gay rights!” Cool, so when the other guy wins and it’s way worse, at least you feel good.

Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.

Did this get them elected? No?

What’s the relevance of this inane statement, again?

Who let Tim Pool in here

A world with half as many people in it would be so nice. Thanos had the right idea.

When your main issue isn’t on the ballot, it doesn’t matter in the election.

There’s a genocide on the bus too?

Libs will tell the craziest stories just to avoid reality.

Hey thanks for not helping. Wait, no. No thanks. You failed everyone and yourself, guaranteed extra double genocide and learned nothing.

The other four didn’t think this through because only one party had a subset of their coalition who opposed genocide, and also opposed 2 other genocides: the one Russia perpetrates against Ukraine, and climate change (leaving aside things like, you know, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights… And not as a case-in-point the internal genocide of poor people when 50,000 Americans will now die from being dropped from Medicaid thanks to a bill that only Republicans the cliff-divers would have passed).

I bet a lot of people living in Germany in the '30s said “I don’t do politics” too.

Thats a wildly ironic statement. The last election held in Germany before the fascist took over was the highest voter turnout in the weimar republics history, over 86%. Theres so many parrellels between the end of the Weimar republic and the US right now, and you are talking about the period of time and the place that maga modeled their 2024 strategy after. And I think you’re mistaken about the voters then as you are about voters now.

In the late 20s and early 30s the SDP (social democratic party-- the centrists in Germany) failed to address the rise of the conservatives and in some cases cooperated with them. They were the party who negotiated the treaty of versailles after vanquishing the left shortly before the treaty negotiations, which was disastrous for a lot of industries and created new classes of privilege, and an opening for the conservatives (NSDAP) to whine about money and make a stage show of austerity, just like GOP conservatives have been doing for years in the US. The actual financial burden of the treaty on Germany was manageable-- but unpopular, especially during a global depression when fear ran high.

The SDP dem centrists were seen as corrupt, weak, and indifferent to the struggles of their voters-- much as todays dems are. The SDP were fighting gentelmans games and writing sternly worded letters while the far right NSDAP systematically took power bit by bit. The SDP were fragmented and weak by internal division, and distracted by the center of the party fighting the left (the KDP)-- who were ostensibly allies but disliked each other. Do you see all the parrellels with 2024? I sure do.

Whats different than today is that the left back then were agitating for actual communism, whereas the US progressives today are more like republicans from the early 80s. Today’s Progressives are 99.99% capitalists-- barely leftists at all by European standards, and they are just flatly not communists. There’s less reason for US dems and the US left to come to blows, but they still do today, like an eternal clockwork. The German KDP were also generally unpopular, and tended to garner only single digit percentages in national votes. Much like today’s progressives, but they were needed for centrists to win elections, same as today.

The fascists appealed to a muscular uniparty nationalism after labeling the centrists as weak and corrupt, and the KDP as nuts, especially after just battling the Russians-- exactly like trump is doing. Its not that German people said they “didnt do politics”, its that the centrists lost the trust of the voters so enough of them sought the strength of a group that said they were sick of the centrists and leftists ineffective and perceived as corrupt bullshit. The KDP were also hated along with Hitlers NSDAP far right, who each had militia groups of WW1 veterans that took low level actions and intimidations against each other. Picketting, stinkbombs, fights, the occassional murder. I’ve left out the competing histories of antisemites and zionists, but theres a lot going on there too, although less important to the NSDAP’s rise than the economic and trust issues of the parties themselves with the voters. But I will say that the eventual holocaust of Jews and Poles didnt just arise out of nowhere, there was a lot that led to it, some of it related to trade boycotts of all things, and people seldom talk about what politcs and disputes actually led to the murderous hatreds of the holocaust. They prefer george bush-esque “they hate us for our freedoms” or “no one knows why Hitler hated Jews” type of reductive avoidance of any investigation of facts.

So-- same as then-- dont blame the voters. Blame the doddering centrists leadership of then and today. Theres a reason that 85 year old German president Hindenburg who ran as a centrist and then made a deal appointing Hitler chancellor is ridiculed throughout history, same as Biden looks like he will be. A very reduced and dementia ridden Hindenburg died in office one year after appointing Hitler chancellor and was often ridiculed and doubted by voters in all parties, in exactly the same way Biden was/is. After he died Hitler consolidated the presidency with the chancellory and there was then no one to realistically challenge him. You’d think people would learn that trusting 86 year presidents like idiot Paul von Hindenburg – Or Biden-- or trump to run a country doesn’t work out well for the voters.

In Germany the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the early 1930s prioritized legalistic resistance (e.g speeches, court challenges) over mass mobilization. They rejected general strikes against Hitler even after the Reichstag fire. Also there was No mass uprising when Hitler dismantled civil liberties, the people and the parties had no coordinated strike network.

Guess what happened. Guess whats happening now.

They also said “we didn’t know”, 2000 feet downwind of a human oven factory. “And if we did what could we have done?”. Those people are still alive and they’re not a small minority of even our country.

The only option the riders have to not drive off the cliff is to take control of the bus.

More people need to understand this, I think.

One video of a red voter had him expressing regret for his vote. In one expression he said “I guess I’m democrat now” with the same distaste as someone saying “guess I eat dogs now”.

I don’t think he’d have as much hesitation changing a vote in the future if he didn’t feel like doing so makes him into a monster he helped to paint.

You can throw bricks 363 days out of the year and reduce harm 2 days out of the year. If you live in a state with easy mail-in ballots allowed, you can throw bricks 364.8 days out of the year and reduce harm .2 days out of the year.