Memes

Yes, but wisely by evolving beyond it, not by trying to fight a Goliath directly in their strongest areas. We're smart, we should be able to come up with real solutions.

Here's weird thought experiment

Think of our current government as scaffolding that we're all standing on 100 floors high, that is right on top of a slave/homeless/refugee camp/zoo (i.e. vulnerable populations). This scaffolding must be replaced because it's made out of rotting wood without sending us all crashing down on the camp and zoo killing billions of people and animals.

How do we do it?

The right wing position is to tear down the scaffolding by getting positions in site management and ordering replacing the rotting wood with broken plastic while kicking everyone they don't like, sometimes pushing them off the scaffolding. Of course, they don't care about any what the scaffolding is holding up or what's below, they just realized they can use this scaffold system to gain power and money.

The tankie position is to get your rotten wood hating friends together with their hammers and torches and start bashing. I guess they are either 1) seemingly unaware this will cause us all to fall, or 2) remember when it worked 100 years ago with the scaffolding was only 1 floor high and only a few people underneath and think it will be the same this time, or 3) are effectively right wingers on a different team in that they don't care about collateral damage as long as their team can rise from the ashes into power.

The liberal position is to put some polish on the wood and some rainbow and recycling stickers on some poles and send a few TV dinners below while we dump our trash down there and not admit that there are slaves down there making our stuff. The long-term problem of scaffold failure is talked about at various conferences and people donate millions to the "Replace the Rot" foundation.

I say the best way to go about it is to replace it part by part as it stands. Depend less and less on the bits of rotting wood and more on the strong sustainable replacements we build. Don't replace the very high bits that were built for ego by weak men, instead lift those underneath up onto the strong bits of the scaffold. Eventually we might realize that all that's left of the old rotting scaffold is that weak bit holding on at the end, might as well lop that off now that it's not critical to our survival anymore.

Now imagine we have an election between two site managers. Neither of them has any real plans to replace this scaffolding, in fact both have plans to expand it. Both candidates support the genocide in the neighboring scaffold.

Primary differences between candidates

Candidate #1 is going to criminalize talking about the scaffolding, ban encryption to ensure you don't talk about it, and start a new program to push more people off the scaffold.

Candidate #2 is going to do too little too late when it comes to truly solving the rotting scaffold problem or stopping people from falling off the scaffold.

Now ask yourself, under which candidate can I do more to solve the rotting scaffold problem directly? Under which candidate can I do my little part to solve the problem without falling or being pushed off the scaffold or being arrested? Under which candidate are fewer people going to be pushed off while me and my team go about fixing the scaffold ourselves because the leaders are unwilling or unable?

Voting is not about putting your support behind a candidate or identifying with them, it's a strategic decision taken to advance your goals.