So…voting in an electoral system isn’t showing tacit or passive approval, or at least tolerance, of that system? I guess it’s just a natural thing, like breathing air, something never to be questioned or challenged, perfectly normal and natural to be forced to choose between the slow death or the fast death of millions.

You accused me of ignoring your question earlier, but haven’t actually responded to any of mine. It’s Germany 1937, and you’re telling me that Göring isn’t perfect, but he’s the best Nazi we’ve got, instead of just opposing the entire system for its inhumanity. Voting will not save your loved ones. Complacency is how things have gotten to this point, and voting is just showing how complacent you really are, as far as the bourgeoisie are concerned.

Sorry for being so insulting, I don’t blame you for getting mad, this is clearly a very personal thing for you and I was quite tactless in talking to you. I think it’s best if we stop this conversation here, it will just be going in circles after this. Feel free to get the last clever word in, as I’m not planning to respond beyond this, so when I don’t respond, imagine that I’m just so “owned” by your clever defense of bourgeoisie electoralism that I’m going to move to the states and get US citizenship just so I can vote for Biden in this next election. I hope things work out well for you and your partner.

I appreciate this. I wanted to add this to my wall of text but it was getting too long already. I don’t think this is an overall productive area of discussion right now though, I was too hostile, the lib is getting very heated, naturally as this is a very personal issue for them(Not blaming them at all, I’d probably be pissed too if I was in their shoes), so I think a bit of a cooling off period might be a good idea, give them a chance to touch grass and hopefully realise we are on the same side as them, and ultimately want the same things as them (safety for marginalised groups) but Biden will not be giving that to them.

Fine yes, whatever, you “win” I guess then, congrats. Electoralism is saved, let’s all vote for the party that pledges to kill trans people slowly and painfully instead of the other party that wants to do it quicker, because nothing sends the establishment a clear message about how unacceptable their behaviour is quite like bending down and kissing the ring and letting them know that no matter how much we grumble and complain about them not representing us, we’ll still gladly show up and announce to them that no matter much they want to kill us all, we’ll still participate in their rituals and give them as much validity and legality as they want.

I can’t believe I’m speaking to an anarchist who is pro-capitalist electoralism and lesser-evilism. I hope your partner gets out safe, but unlike yourself, apparently, I also want to see the millions of other trans people in the US safe. All of them have loved ones, and not all of them will make it out by voting for the “kill 50% of them” guy instead of the “100% of them” guy.

I’m not even American, and one of your comments made it seem like you aren’t either, so your defence of this horrific system is mind boggling. Would you have voted for Göring over Hitler because he promised a more “moderate” holocaust? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re doing here.

Participating in their elections gives them legitimacy, the people refusing to participate shows that they need to change their ways if they want the support of the people. What good is protesting their actions 364 days of the year if on election day you just line up like a good little peon and behave yourself? That’s the most important time to refuse to recognise their legitimacy, to make it clear their actions will not be tolerated by the people. The system in the US is as fucked up as it is right now partially because for the past 50 years people have been insisting on voting for the “lesser evil” instead of demanding a good politician, or demanding an entire systemic change. This isn’t idealism, voting for the same horrible leaders who pledge to commit different levels of atrocities and hoping that if we just vote extra hard this time they’ll change their ways despite 0 incentive to do so is.

So we should always vote for 99% Hitler to avoid 100% Hitler? So in a circumstance where one party kills minorities slowly and the other kills them quickly, we should always vote for the party that promises “slow death” instead of supporting groups that are anti-murdering minorities?

You seem to be under the impression that the only options are to vote for the guys who will murder as much as possible and the guys who will murder more slowly, but neither of those choices are acceptable, we should support people who do not support such a thing, if the bloated, corrupt American 2-party system isn’t representative of the people, then why bother participating in it, why not actively oppose it? Your partner has a much better chance of surviving if people actively fight against this entire idea that any trans people need to be killed at all, even if it doesn’t involve ticking a box on a piece of paper every 4 years. I’ve personally gotten trans people out of life or death situations in the past. There’s a fuckton more a person can do to help people than just jerking themselves off over how they voted for the guy who only pledged to kill 50% of trans people instead of 100%. It isn’t “damage control.” It’s participating in an unjust and inhumane system instead of working to dismantle it.

Would it have been better to support “good slave owners” over “bad slave owners?” Or would it have been better to oppose the entire institution of slavery, even if people are insisting that if you don’t support the good slave owners then you’re letting the bad slave owners win?

Maybe, but it seems unlikely they would essentially dissolve NATO to do that. If they’re looking to pick a fight, they’ll want to find as many meat shields as they can first.

I think sometimes Lemmy randomly puts a lemmygrad meme on the front page, and these guys just all have complete facial blindness and are illiterate enough that they don’t notice the 6 heads of Marxism, or the Lenin picture, or the !memes@lemmygrad.ml and get confused.

Personally I’m with whomever doesn’t support the murder of trans people at all, since it’s great some of them have a partner trying to help them escape, but most don’t. If neither political party supports basic human rights, I don’t think either of them should get any kind of support, even this kind of “lesser evilism” and both should be reviled.

I’ve heard those some people be shocked at how openly racist and obviously wrong random 19th century intellectuals were. These people who will say how horrible all the pro-slavery arguments and white man’s burden stuff was back then will then turn around and give cleaned up versions of the exact same arguments.

Yeah, weird, it’s almost like these claims about this conflict “going back millennia” are complete bullshit or something.

The companies have a vested interest in keeping the hype going as long as possible, so that more and more real artists are forced to quit their career (or their lives) so that people are forced to use the AI art, because there aren’t enough human artists around to actually do the necessary work. That way they can control 100% of the art market, instead of just selling another art tool to artists only.

The west only deals in show trials, they don’t give their enemies a fair trial, and their enemies are the bad guys therefore they do everything worse than the west, so this is like a mega-ultra show trial!

AI would be an amazing tool for me to streamline parts of my job and make it easier. Unfortunately it is seen under the capitalism system as a means of eliminating my job altogether, and is being sold as a replacement for artists, instead of a tool for them to use.

See my fruitless argument with one below for an example of exactly that!

I was really hoping they’d actually try to think about that one, but nope. The capitalists aren’t to be trusted, except when they talk about socialist countries, then they just care about making sure everybody knows the Truth about how evil bad they are.

Yeah, I don’t think they will come away from this with anything other than “redfash tankies hate the truth! I owned them so hard!” But I think this will be another straw on the camel’s back, not the one that breaks it, but will add to the load of doubts their have about their worldview.

This one seems a little less dumb than most. I think they’re close to connecting the dots. They seem to realise that something is deeply wrong with their worldview and it is making them very angry so they’re lashing out at what they perceive to be the cause (“Tankies” ruining socialism). I don’t think I was too clear with them, certainly not patient enough, but I do hope they listen anyway.

And will twist themselves into knots insisting that it is really you who hold their position, not them.

Ok, let me try one last time. Every single “tankie” here was in the same position you are now. Every one of us believed everything we were told about the horrors of the USSR and China and Cuba, any and all socialist states. We aren’t being “brainwashed” by another country on the other side of the planet, we have tried to understand these places better, of our own accord. And what we’ve found is that while these places are not perfect, they are grossly misrepresented in the west. The capitalists want you to hate socialism and socialist states, they don’t care if you call yourself a socialist or not while you do so. Your anti-communism, sorry, anti-tankieism is indistinguishable from any western liberal who says “socialism works in theory but in practice it just leads to evil dictators.” How are you actually different from them if you believe everything they do about socialism? How are you actually a socialist if actual socialists disagree with you and liberals agree with you instead?

Please, if you consider yourself a socialist, read theory, seek to learn, to understand, rather than just trying to dismiss people because their position frustrates you. The ruling class in the west wants us to fight amongst ourselves and what you’re doing right now is exactly what they want from people. People who wear socialism like a T-shirt. People who don’t learn about it, don’t try to understand it, don’t try to actually create a socialist state because it is seen as “authoritarian.” I know it makes you mad when we call you a liberal. It should, and I’m sorry for that, but your are behaving exactly like one right now. I don’t think you’re a bad person, I just think you’re being corralled into a capitalist friendly version of socialism, which is impotent and ineffectual. “Leftcoms” if you’d rather not be called a liberal, have been criticised for their inability to accomplish anything for over a century. Is that really how you want your “communism” to be? Just a bunch of empty impotent, impractical ideas and denunciations of those who did something, who improved things, flawed as they may be, because they weren’t perfect? Do you really want to sit around your whole life with your thumb up your ass waiting for “perfect” socialism to arrive?

Please, read theory, Lenin especially. Your ideas are not new ones, they are very old hat, even cliche at this point, one of the oldest means of stifling communism was to corral it into “safe” versions which denounced all attempts at socialist experiments. I’d recommend this work in particular, but if you’re a lib, it won’t interest you, I know how much libs hate learning new things: https://www.marxist.com/classics-marxism-two-book/left-wing-communism-an-infantile-disorder.htm

You might “believe” in it, but what actions have you done to accomplish it? How do you intend to go about it? Peacefully, I’m assuming? Because to use violence is authoritarian redfash tankie, yes?

So I want you to ask your landlord nicely and peacefully, to give up their property, entirely without violence, see how that goes, just convince them it’s wrong, that’ll work, right? They just don’t know that it’s a bad thing! We “tankies” don’t like violence, but we recognize it as an unfortunate necessity to help the struggling and the downtrodden.

Or is this not about that? Is this about evil authoritarians like Stalin and Mao? I’m assuming you’re a yank, or at least live in the west. You’ve grown up in a capitalist education system. Where did you learn that these people are bad? Which group of people ensures that every student in the west learns that these people are bad? Don’t you think the capitalists would have a vested interest in trying to convince people that any alternative to capitalism is even worse than it? Could it be that the things you’ve heard about “communist dictators” are just lies?

Don’t know why I’m wasting my time to be honest. I hope you’ll think on this, but I know you won’t. Smug ignorance is far more comfortable than challenging your pre-concieved notions.

They’re not calling communists and anarchists liberals, they’re calling liberals liberals. Fascism doesn’t mean “people I don’t agree with” words actually mean things. You’d know this, if you weren’t a liberal, even if you don’t think you are one. Conservatives are liberals too, as liberalism is the dominant political idea in the west.