I don’t like Biden either, but anyone with half a brain knows there are two choices in the 2020 election. If we had a sane voting system, voting third party might be worth it, but as it stands, no one but you knows your favorite candidate exists and unless you want to become their campaign manager that will still be true in November. Even if you did, and even if you convinced two thirds of the people who would otherwise have voted for Biden to vote for your chosen candidate instead, Trump would still win because half the country voted for him and your guy only got a third. If you vote third party you might as well stay home.

Not voting isn’t going to stop the genocide in Gaza. The US will continue to funnel them arms no matter which candidate wins this November. Trump practically campaigns on how much he hates the Jews and he’s publicly told Israel to “finish up their war”. He’ll also make life a living hell for anyone who isn’t a straight cisgender male back here at home.

A vote for a candidate is not an endorsement of them or their policies, it’s a statement that you like their policies more than the other guy’s, and “sticking it to liberals” and “refusing to support genocide” (that’s not what voting for Biden is doing, by the way – a vote for either candidate is a vote for genocide and a vote for neither is an endorsement of both) is not more important than keeping the furthest right politician America has ever seen out of office.

How incredibly privileged do you have to be to see an entire national election as what will happen in the Middle East and ignore Trump’s campaign promises to wipe transgender Americans off the map, and further, to not realize that the same thing will happen in the Middle East regardless of which candidate wins?

I hate Biden as much as every other leftist here. But I’ll still vote for him because Trump is worse. If there’s a single bone in your body that cares about the lives of your trans friends you will too.

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    4·
    8 months ago

    The point of examining the straightforward morals of not supporting genocide in opposition to the convoluted justifications people put forward as reasons to vote blue no matter who was not to say that the simplest reasoning is correct, but to shine some light on the assumptions, misunderstandings and vast overvaluation of an individuals voting impact that underpin that argument.

    You have to build a fucking mind palace to not just look at the two major parties, say “no thanks, I’m a human being with a soul and heart that feels” and walk away. That’s the point.

      • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
        4·
        8 months ago

        At no point have I suggested that people abstain, although it’s better not to vote than to perpetuate either of the two major parties.

              • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
                2·
                8 months ago

                Well, a person could very easily vote for a third party.

                There are lots of ways to influence politics that are much more effective than voting, especially at the local level and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

                Of course, if a person was in a situation where their election for a position was constrained to those two parties and there was no write in option than that person could leave that position blank or simply not vote at all.

                It’s real easy to get stuck in that trolley problem mindset, but the two parties whom the tracks represent tied the people to their respective tracks and set the car on its runaway course. You’re being asked to pick between the two of em as if you’re responsible for the situation they engineered.

                To borrow a phrase: just say no.