this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Voting is one of many tools at our disposal - and right now we need all the tools we can get.
So, don't shit on voting - do vote!
Do the other things too, but don't skip the vote.
People not voting is why we're in the situation we are in right now
Vote in the preliminaries, where you can select which bag of shit you'll get to vote for officially. You may even end up with a decent choice on election day off your area is dope like NYC or Seattle.
Even if you're stuck in the cousin-fuckingly-deep south like me, where your vote will almost certainly be washed out by a horde of Nazis: still do it. Especially in smaller elections - school boards, city level stuff, whatever you can get in on. Those are the ones where you can really start to turn the tide. All it takes is for the usual rednecks to start feeling apathetic, and a handful of us bleeding-heart-commie-socialist-hippie-libruls to step up, and BAM, we've got a progressive oasis elected in our desert of red. Which still isn't much, but it's a foothold.
But it does require us to do the bare-assed minimum amount of effort in support of change, which is to vote.
You're right that voting is a tool; you're wrong about whose tool it is and what it's used for.
It can be used for either liberation or oppression. Ceding it to the oppressors does not help you. Promoting apathy among those who would otherwise support liberation helps the oppressors.
What is your goal here?
You are fundamentally confused such that you think there's any agency in voting in the first place. The only real impact it has is to completely short circuit and subsume all political activity away from any outside organizing that is, historically, literally the only thing that has ever worked to accomplish anything.
My goal is this is a forum. Someone says something wrong and then you say the correct thing under them. That's what you do on forums.
You are spreading misinformation and promoting apathy among those who would otherwise support liberation. You are an ally to our oppressors.
No, we’re calling for the overthrow of our oppressors. We’re calling for seizing the means of production. We’re calling for real and permanent liberation from the bourgeoisie.
There it is. If you're not a liberal you're personally getting checks written by Putin or whomever's the villain of the month.
You're projecting.
You literally voted to escalate a genocide because the system you're playing apologist for presented you no other choice. What misinformation am I spreading? You're the one acting as an enemy of liberation. You literally voted for a genocide. You are literally an ally to our oppressors.
It's honestly fucking frightening how you're capable of that kind of doublethink.
And you're not just an ally of our oppressors in that sense. You want to waste YEARS of time PER ELECTION of people who would otherwise be doing tangible good in their communities working outside of the genocidal system you cap for.
You voted not just for genocide, but to crank the genocide up to the max. "No genocide" wasn't an option, because our system is shit, so why not at least try for damage control instead of taking the absolute most evil path you could?
Which of those actions are mutually exclusive to voting?
Nice try FBI
Last election the choice was between Palestinian genocide and Palestinian genocide. You are smoking crack if you think the oligarchy is ever going to provide you with a meaningful choice to loosen their hold on you through the civic ritual of voting.
You people really are hell bent on reducing the word "genocide" to meaninglessness
This line is smoking gun proof that everyone in this thread trying to engage with you is talking exclusively over your head.
I take it that means you disagree. Well congratulations, your orange man won. Was it worth it?
He’s not our man. Previously:
The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
So you knowingly voted to throw Palestinians under the extermination bus, is that it? And you consider yourself to be on the right side of history? And you never considered that perhaps your slavish ideological devotion to following the rules of a fascist political system was slow-boiling you into a fascist?
You're talking about the ten years of ethnic cleansing the Ukranian nazi government was doing to ethnic Russians within its borders, right? You wouldn't possibly consider yourself to be against genocide while supporting these guys, right? Because nobody could possibly be that deluded, right? Tell me you're not that programmed.
The bus was already headed for the Palestinians, and we were well past the point of being able to stop it. I voted to make a last ditch effort to turn the wheel toward the part of the crowd with the fewest people. YOU voted to step on the gas.
When did I say to follow the rules? I said use all the tools we've got - whether those tools are legal or not, idgaf. Voting happens to be legal, so yay I guess, but that's not why you should do it.
Why would any of that change my opinion of being against killing the people of Ukraine? Russia's obviously doing some horrible shit, but I'd be against a genocide on them too. Same with Israel or any other nation that's decided to play the villain - none of that shit justifies attacking their civilians. ...is this really a controversial take?
You are doing the thing right now. The other choice is "none of those things," actually, and you don't get that by voting harder because as you've just demonstrated you were not given the choice. Is any genocide acceptable to you? The line is never "less genocide," it is "no genocide."
All that does is allow the other voters to make the decision on your behalf - but it's still a dichotomy. We need a fuckton of systemic change before it'll be anything else. You can opt out or vote for a spoiler, but until we see that change it's going to red or blue every time. So why not use your vote for damage control while pushing for real change with your other tools?
What's acceptable to me vs not doesn't determine our options. The only line was between 'more genocide' and 'less genocide'. I wish 'no genocide' was an option, but that's not the reality we live in. Given those options, I'll choose 'less genocide' every time. The majority of our voters disagree, and with the help of propaganda like yours, they succeeded - YOU succeeded - in choosing 'more genocide'. Congrats. Was it worth it?
Liberals can have a little genocide, as a treat.
There was a choice. Primaries. Americans rejected every option of no genocide, so the final round had genocide A or genocide B. Same way that they rejected Bernie Sanders a few times.