Political Memes

Voting is not a medium for self-expression, or at least not a good one. It's a tool to affect outcomes. People get angry about voting for harm reduction, but choosing to not even do that much just makes everything worse.

I am in favor of strategic voting but regardless of your opinion on this topic we need to be clear eyed that this election will not solve the US’s many very serious problems, regardless of its outcome.

That can only be achieved by on the ground organizing. So I hope that all of the people who spend so much energy arguing about this topic are out there building local political coalitions that can force our representatives to do what is needed. That’s the only way real change will happen.

I want to add; while it is true political issues are complex, and the solutions are even more so, the actual rhetoric and political strategies are simple to deconstruct and understand.

Focusing in on this portion of the "info-meme."

1. Over simplified "single issue"

Abortion is the obvious example. The rights strategy is to paint every who one isn't staunchly against abortion as, "murderers." This emotionally charged argument allows zealotry to infest all discussion around the topic and gives every member of the GOP a platform. If you can't decide your stance on abortion isn't it easier to just error on the side of caution and say there is truth to the anti-choice peoples argument? The problem here is you never actually formed an opinion and in siding with the right you've rubber stamped all their horrible policy agendas that fly directly in the face of being "pro-life."

2. "The economy" misdirection

Arguments about the economy is another example of you giving up agency because you are being emotionally manipulated. Financial burden is something most, if not all Americans, people, struggle with. So when a politician invokes "the economy" it brings up emotions people are very sensitive about. Except, all this discussion about the economy, doesn't actually address the economic struggles the ordinary person goes through. Instead what happens is you link these bad emotions or good emotions to some period in time when you were told the economy was good or the economy was bad but never actually evaluate what about the economy was affecting your daily life.

3. "Keep us safe" revisionist history

This is straight fear mongering. Never have I felt particularly safe with a republican or democrat in charge. Corporations don't worry about it either because no matter what the police exist solely to protect property and the value associated with that property. So when a politicain wants to say anything about your physical well being it should always be taken as a threat, like some mafioso, extorting you for your tax dollars.

4. Dismantling of worker protections

As of late, worker protections are the sacrificial lamb to the omnipotent "ecomnomy." Guarnteed, no sitting politician puts more effort into their daily labor then that of the lowest earners while being rewarded orders more in income and benefits. When a CEO can make more money then could ever be spent through conventional means in a thousand thousand life times you know the restrictions placed on businesses are not what's effecting their profit margins and workers take home pay.

4. Defending social programs

One of the easiest ways to retain power is to split the electorate into factions and pit them against each other. With a military budget that exceeds all other nations military budgets combined you can assume social programs are not what's failing you. Greed is having the power of the American economy and coveting it as your own. The money we put into society is there to make society better. Your neighbors struggles are as real as your own and for you to pass judgement on them must mean you are willing to undergo undue suffering for the sake of holding someone else down.

5. Tax breaks and bailouts for the rich

To big to fail, is an incomplete sentence. To big to fail for you to win re-election, maybe? To big to fail to prevent human suffering, possibly? It begs the question, who would really suffer? Say instead of bailing out the bank you took that money and bailed out the people who would lose their income due to bank going under? If these monolithe are always "too big to fail" there would be no way of knowing. We, as a country, took on a global pandemic. The government handed out money left and right. Is the human suffering we experienced then more impactful then any of the human suffering we've experienced over the last 30 years? I'd guess, not.

6. Shrink the middle class, cap salaries

We are heading down a road. It's a well beaten path. It exists all over in different parts of the world. Caste systems, apartheid, authoritians, dictators, monarchys, etc. all are still there. Why, would any good person, who has experienced the watered down taste of real American freedom, ask for something more laced with actual shit?

Edit: The US presidential election is not based on popular vote so if you live outside of the ~5-6 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and vote for a candidate that fits your beliefs even if it’s 3rd party (shoutout PSL), there’s no argument not to. Continuing to vote for the lesser evil when it’s not needed just means they can take your vote for granted.

Make sure to pay attention to local/state elections too, those who often affect your life even more. As always voting is only a small part in how we affect change, find local organizations and agitate for change that way.

The problem you have there is called a feedback loop. A vicious spiral. The whole thing moves right with each election.

In before the green party shill drops in to wax philosophical about how superior his conscience is voting for people who sit enjoying dinner with murders, war criminals, and a traitor.

This infographic is way too credulous about the centrists' claims. It's a "big tent," but you're not in it, only the owner class gets a say. It just happens that some of the owner class is smart enough to realize they can't fuck over the working class too much without it coming back to bite them.

It's what I've been saying for a while now: If you want to be happy with who you vote for, lower your expectations of what you're gonna get. It will be ugly sausage making and they will make stupid decisions that you will hate, things won't improve nearly as quickly as you want, and this is the best we can do as a species because coordinating the actions of tens or hundreds of millions of people is going to suck.

As someone not from the USA: I guess I agree that, for the upcoming presidential election at least, voting centrist is the only viable option. But the generalized "vote centrist because it could he worse" is infuriating and makes me want to punch whomever made this. Just because they're not actively anti-working class doesn't mean they're in any real way champions of the working class. They're in the pocket of industrialists just like the right, and thus will never meaningfully challenge the status quo.

Calling Harris/Walz “centrist” is selling them short. Centrism would have been the fantasy ticket proposed in the press where they tapped a moderate Republican like Romney to run alongside Harris on a “let’s go back to 2016” ticket, attempting to capture the less fashy conservatives, placate big business and let the left know in no uncertain terms that their ideas are not an option, only a status quo that’s not an inch left of centre or the abyss of fascism. They did not do that, and while nobody (at least, nobody unafflicted by FoxNews brainworms) will mistake them for Bolsheviks, they’re decidedly centre-left, with pro-worker policies, albeit in the language of “regular folks” rather than theorists. The Democratic congress itself ranges from the uncompromising left (AOC and Bernie) to the centre-right (Manchin/Sinema and their ilk), though its centre of gravity is left of the notional centreline of US politics.

I wonder if people realize posts like this only push away potential converts?

Even if Centrists were as good as this post makes them out to be (which sadly they're not), smugly asserting that everyone else is worse than you is a terrible method of persuasion.

Though I suppose the point is to feel morally and intellectually superior to people who would vote differently. Rather than to actually try to woo the most voters.

Edit: Fwiw, I believe the best option we have currently is to vote for the Democrats. I simply don't see an alternative option that is as likely to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse again. Though damage mitigation is not my favorite strategy to employ, in this case I believe it is the "strongest" play available.

fellas, is it ok to ask for accountability from a politician and point out issues with them while still voting for them? I really hate this rhetoric of "life is messy and no one's perfect." true, but no one expects a perfect candidate, they want a candidate who actually listens to the people. rhetoric like this just shields politicians from actual, constructive criticism.

I often wonder who these are for. It makes no attempt to engage in an honest way with criticisms and hesitations that non-Democrat voters have so it doesn't have any ability to persuade them. It also infantalizes the view points of both the republican opposition and anyone outside the two party system so it's not helpful for self-critique for "centrists". So as far as I can tell it's just red meat aimed at Democrat supports to keep them all hopped up and believing that they are "the party of responsible governance" (in comparison to the Republicans) and therefore all criticism is invalid and everyone else is childish. Like, if this is supposed to be something else you really need a new way of engaging, because this "there is no alternative" shit is what turned me away from Democrats back in the Obama years.

The theory that Republicans are the Corporate Party and Democrats are not relies upon you ignoring where Democrats get the lion's share of their fundraising and PAC money from.

I don't feel centrist is the right word here. Or at least centrist has been co-opted by a group of right wingers wanting to platform fascists.

I'd go with big tent, labor coalition, or I dunno.

If one side wants Fascism, and the other side wants Democracy, what kind of moron calls themselves a Centrist? What middle ground are you fucking standing on?

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Since my votes for the presidential race are insulated from the vote count via electors in both the primary and national elections, I choose not to cast a vote for any loudmouth figurehead. Instead, I concentrate my energy on elections that affect my daily life; i.e. local and State races, including Senate and House of Representative races.

Take your "throwing away your vote" and stuff it in the nearest biological ballot box.

Loving the parade of the usual suspects in here to tell us that politics ARE about simple issues, ARE easy to fix, and anyway bothsides.

Politics are about simple issues. Do we want to solve homelessness? Give people homes. Do we want to solve poverty? Give people money. Should we or shouldn't we support an ongoing genocide? Geez, I'm not a fucking brain genius, someone find an ethics professor.

The only complicated thing is getting people to understand this and act on it.

this is not accurate

centrists trying to build a big tent for everyone are the pro rich and corporations that are voting against our interests

the "big tent" is just there to fool people with bread and circuses and it has nothing of sustenance that will sustain the people

the throwing your vote away and getting to pretend you hold some high ground (you don't) is propaganda spread by both parties to keep the power structure intact and to help control the masses by tamping their expectations of leaders

yes life is compromise and nobody gets exactly what they want, but everyone does not get a say in how we work to find a fair balance

some people are hidden away in concrete zoos without adequate ac/heat usually in unsanitary conditions or they just have their votes taken away all together or some other way of quashing votes

centrists are the right wing with sheep's clothing on designed to give the illusion of choice

the right wing billionaire class always wins and have succeeded at confusing most of the US public into a false dilemma and gets everything they want

voting Democrat or Republican means we give away the opportunity of a third party and the ability to listen to outside voices that may contain a forest of solutions that were unseeable due to the two trees

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma