65 points

It sounds like it’s young people (under 25) who don’t understand exactly how bad it will be if trump wins.

I’ve survived a lot of shit presidents. Trump is the first one who actually scares me.

Hopefully they will do the right thing when it comes time to actually vote.

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43 points

Even Dick “I did 911” Cheney is against him. He’s an actual evil person who thinks Trump is too evil

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41 points

Too evil for Dick Cheney is a very special form of evil indeed.

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10 points

I think ‘too evil’ is an oversimplification. DC is lawful evil, DT is chaotic evil. It’s the chaos DC doesn’t like, not the evil.

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5 points

Well put!

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16 points

In a way, this is all you need to know right here.

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4 points

W was actually worse than trump’s first term.

But that’s only because W had far more competent people, it’s like how Germany was severely handicapped in the war by Hitler always getting in the damn way.

This time I suspect he’d have better minions.

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1 point

The time to actually vote is now. I voted a week ago.

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-6 points

Are these Schrodinger’s young people who simultaneously don’t vote, but also single-handedly tip the entire election?

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17 points

If every young person voted, the Republican party would collapse until it took a hard left turn. This is not a paradox.

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-15 points

If wishes were fishes we’d all be in the sea?

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1 point

Germany’s first time voters helped the far-right (Nazi) party AfD getting a lot of votes in the EU elections recently. AfD’s TikTok game (with Russia’s support) is very strong. Go figure.

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1 point

It must be them ruskies! And the brainless, easily brainwashed young people’s fault! Seriously some of you need stop being tools and get a grip

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17 points
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I feel bad for Americans and kids in general. More fascist radicalization pipelines pop up every single day. The money and effort spent must rival most countries GDPs. Just the media organizations alone…

Some days it can feel like standing at the foot of a mountain watching the entire mountain side crashing down.

Then I realize it’s just people. People we can step up to. And slap in the damn face.

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36 points

I cringe every time I see this come up.

Because it isn’t what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.

Of course a 3rd party vote isn’t a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.

What it actually is is a discarded opportunity to vote against Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.

Everyone knows that’s what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.

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27 points

It’s the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it’s broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you’ve shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.

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2 points

Excellent analogy. If anyone still plays dumb after reading this, they probably are

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2 points
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I like your analogy. Let me expand.

This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.

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6 points

The whole post is an example of a propaganda technique where you keep repeating one thing over and over until it becomes a default thing where people don’t even question the logic.

The ones capable of refuting it feel tired because of the sheer number of posts while the vulnerable ones get affected.

Today both sides “feel” that the use of this propaganda is fair game cuz the other side is already doing it.

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0 points
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0 points
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0 points

I really like your take on this. So how is the switch going to get fixed, when the only time anyone pays attention to the fact that it’s broken, is when lives are on the line?

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-14 points

Why do neoliberals bring up the trolley problem as if it is some settled debate among scholars that there is one clear possible answer?

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25 points

I’m not a neoliberal, I’m a socialist. I’m just not an idiot who will give a fascist free rein just because his opponent has the same shitty foreign policy as every politician in the whole fucking country has. There is a difference between the status-quo level of bad and catastrophic.

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2 points
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Edit: I think my point was too subtle. What I meant was that it seems like lefties will bicker and infight rather than focusing on the bigger enemy first, until that enemy manages to seize power and it’s too late. We’ll be “united” in that we’ll be executed together.


Sometimes, I wonder if a Trump victory would be the only way to get the various leftist factions to stop arguing and stand together, side by side, united in the fact that fascists don’t care what flavour of ideological opposition they’re executing.

Who gives a shit about whether the Trolley Problem is settled - it’s about your answer: Which option do you endorse?

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1 point
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The trolley problem isn’t “settled debate” for the same reasons that Kamala vs Trump isn’t “settled debate”.

The point of the trolley problem and why it’s analogous is that it’s coming up fast and you must choose to either pull that lever or not. Whichever choice you make, that’s the moral character you’ve chosen to exhibit.

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8 points

They loved Bernie and praised him to the skies.

Then he endorsed Biden and Harris.

Now he’s a ‘sheepdog’ that rounds up people to be slaughtered.

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1 point
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That’s a new one, what are you referring to by him being a sheepdog?

Edit: Funny people on here and reddit just downvote people instead of replying when they post incorrect information and get asked about it

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3 points

I saw “sheepdog” for the first time yesterday. As I stated in my first comment, I take it to mean that he’s rounding up sheep to be slaughtered.

To me, expecting any candidate to be perfect is silly.

I like NYC Mayor Ed Koch’s line. “If you agree with me 51% of the time, vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, see a psychiatrist.”

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2 points

If nobody votes 3rd party then we’ll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.

It’s like bicycle infrastructure. Nobody wants to ride bikes on a highway, but you won’t see bike riders until there’s a trail somewhere for them to ride on. You can say it never matters and that there aren’t any cyclists out there, but you’re wrong. I think there’s a lot of Americans looking for another party right now.

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3 points

Under FPTP, we’ll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.

The 2-party system is a direct, mathematical result of FPTP + time.

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-28 points

The Dems are running on Trump’s 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it’s time people started realizing that.

The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.

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13 points

^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.

They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won’t affect them or their loved ones. It’s despicable.

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-5 points
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6 points

Cringe

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5 points

This went so far past just being wrong that it might just end up creating an entirely new paradigm of stupidity.

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-5 points

Not everyone lives in a swing state where votes actually matter.

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11 points
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Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers

Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.

The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.

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1 point
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1 point

“You have to vote for a candidate that refuses to represent you so that people who don’t care about the will of the people will think that you support that candidate.” is a new one.

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-5 points

What a bold and bizarre claim to think there is any winning margin that would repel suspicions.

If Harris wants liberal votes, why is she courting Republicans?

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4 points

Thank goodness not enough people in “safe” states think that way.

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-10 points

They use the same logic of people in swing states??

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4 points

I must have missed that footnote in their rhetoric.

Come on, guy.

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3 points

I’m not your guy, buddy!

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-3 points
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Check my history. Vote third party if you don’t live in a swing state is literally what I have been saying.

Ex https://lemmy.ml/post/21262971, https://lemmy.ml/comment/14519387

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-9 points

By definition, most people do not live in swing states.

Disclaimers and footnotes are irrelevant.

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3 points

I think we have the best chance to break the third party at the local level.

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-5 points

No one is buying the bullshit you have for sale.

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-1 points

You sure seem to have every excuse in the book, don’t you?

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19 points

The concept that voting for a third-party candidate is somehow “helping” one of the major party candidates is based on the assumption that the third-party candidate’s voters would have otherwise voted for one of the major party candidates.

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11 points

I mean, voting third party in America is functionally not voting. I’ll absolutely shit on people for not voting.

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-1 points

It’s worse than not voting. Because of the Spoiler Effect, voting 3rd party actually helps your least favorite major candidate.

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4 points

In vacuum I agree. In the US electoral system voting for a third party is almost the same not voting at all, so it really doesn’t matter if you vote for third party or you vote for nobody. My issue is that in the context of America voting third party makes no sense, especially this election. By voting third party you don’t care who gets elected and it makes no sense to me because who goes “I don’t really care if fascists come into power and start oppressing women and foreigners”. Who the fuck is indifferent to fascism? Apparently third party voters.

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1 point
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3 points

I appreciate the effort but I’m not American. I simply follow American politics because sadly American politics impacts the rest of the world.

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4 points

No, it’s based on the assumption that they can otherwise vote for one of the major party candidates, which is true.

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3 points
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Yeah it seems some people don’t pay attention to the rest of the world when it comes to trivial issues like politics, law, education and healthcare. In Australia we have two major parties, Labor and Liberal. Then the Greens who sway a lot of decisions one way. And the Nationals who go another way. Then a few more representing across the spectrum ideas. They’re all still absolute dickheads but some are better than others and I think, looking outward, that it’s working better than a two party solution.

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4 points

It should be noted that whenever examples are brought up of third-party viability, the voting system referenced is almost certainly not FPTP.

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-3 points
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Nope, not how it works. You don’t need all of them to vote for one of the major parties. It’s often only a fraction. Florida 2000 final tally was less than 600 votes difference between Bush and Gore. Less than 1% of Nader’s own 97k votes would have needed to flip, and we’d be talking about a very different country right now.

This also applies to a few other states in 2000 that had close votes. Florida wasn’t the only story there, and no, neither was the Supreme Court.

Binary thinking strikes again.

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125 points

I’m not even convinced it’s even real leftists posting this stuff. It often seems like astroturfing. Not only would fake leftists possibly sway undecided voters, but they also tarnish any positivity the left deserves. Win-win for the right.

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33 points

I’d like to think you’re right.

But I have heard borderline stuff like this in real life from people whom I know are solid progressives. (Admittedly, these are folks on my soccer team who are almost 2 decades younger than me. I can’t imagine what ending their teens during a pandemic was like so I kind of expect their politics to be wildly different.)

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23 points

“Borderline” is entirely different. Voting for Harris while being salty about it is a perfectly reasonable thing real progressives should do, and it’s exactly the opposite of what these astroturf third-party propagandists are calling for even if the (alleged) sentiment is adjacent. That “border” is a knife edge and the difference between a genuine progressive and a[n effectively] pro-Trump useful idiot comes down to which side of it they fall off.

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12 points

That’s absolutely true and very well put. Doing the right thing and being happy about it are two very different beasts.

Thank you!

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3 points

This shows how absolutely broken the American voting/party system is though.

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0 points

Konnichiwa.

I understand you are very concerned about people voting 3rd party. Considering our broken First Past The Post voting system, I get it.

Did you know that alternative voting systems could alleviate all your worries about people who wish to vote outside the two party system? People could be free to vote how they wish, safe in the knowledge that their vote would still count against the Republicans.

How we vote us controlled at the state level, which means we can pass this much needed reform without federal intervention. Actually, some states have already passed legislation doing away with First-past-the-post voting, and even more are in the process of passing it! Exciting times no?

So, in conclusion, I hope you stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.

If achieved, you wouldn’t have to worry about 3rd parties anymore and your fellow citizens would be involved and contributing to the poltical process.

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Astroturfing exists to poison the minds of on lookers. If useful idiots didn’t adopt the warped logic they wouldn’t astroturf.

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8 points

It blows my mind that people are dumb enough for it to work but in an era of razor tight electoral margins, even a few idiots can matter.

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10 points

I’m a real leftist who is not voting this US election

...

I’m not an American citizen.

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-1 points
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5 points

Hang around them long enough. They will slip. They inevitably use right wing colloquialisms.

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3 points

Dealt with someone ostensibly from the UK advocating for not voting and after being pressed repeatedly finally worked their way down to “I’m not voting because I can’t”.

Actual foreign election interference, and the UK has some notable Russian ties. Wouldn’t be surprised if that rube has ties to Russia or is actually on a ruble payroll

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4 points

Ha, I know exactly who you’re referring to!

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1 point

I was shocked to find out I have a friend I thought was intelligent suggest I withhold my vote for Kamala. Fuck you, dude.

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