neatchee

It’s relatively easy to go after each of 20 independent 1 million person protests one at a time. It’s comparatively difficult to deal with 20 million people in the capitol

You’re not wrong, but I think you might overestimate the number of states where anything like this could actually happen. It would be spun as a “leftist rebellion” and they’d send in the militia fuckers with glee IMO

If we don’t cause discomfort for the federal representatives, I’m afraid they will just call it a local problem much as they’ve done with the No Kings protests up to this point

Even people inside the US have a poor concept of just how big it is.

Like, only India, Russia, and to a lesser degree China compare to the US in terms of livable land area. After that is Brazil at less than half.

I honestly don’t think it’s a coincidence that the four countries with the largest liveable area have a serious authoritarian leadership problem right now.

Are you in my house? Because that photo looks like you could be in my house. Nothing in that picture would be inaccurate for a picture taken in my house.

I think the spirit of the question is “what if it was a trickster genie and you didn’t get what you thought and were unhappy?” Like, rather than the question as phrased, I imagine the intent was “what if the 1% chance was permanent gender dysphoria regardless of any practical steps taken to alleviate it?”

Came here to make an Obottoma Surgery joke. Glad it was already made

Maximum travel time to the Capitol for each country by the lesser of car or train:

Albania 4.5 – 5.5 hours (by car)

Serbia 4 – 4.5 hours (by car)

Spain ~3.5 – 4.5 hours (via AVE high-speed rail)

France ~4.5 – 6.5 hours (via TGV high-speed rail)

United States 43 – 46 hours (by car, excludes Alaska and Hawaii)

/me guzzles martini glass of olives

That’s not very Derek of you.

I looked up the average age of mothers at the time of their first child birth in 1863 because I really badly wanted to make a joke about a “score” being 20 for that reason.

Sadly the average age was 22-26 so my day is ruined.

And I’m trying to tell you that most of us understand it already, and are still frustrated with the people trying to convince everyone not to vote as some kind of valid form of protest.

Your approach antagonizes your allies. Accelerationists who want people not to vote are not your allies and they’re not mine. They are overwhelmingly people in positions of privilege who can afford to watch everything burn down because they aren’t the ones who will be hurt by it. That’s not “people like you and me”. That’s selfish people with an axe to grind

And my entire point is that you came into a thread about people who say “don’t vote”, tried to tell everyone “voting isn’t enough”, and justifiably got told “hey, stfu, nobody is saying voting alone is enough, but you still have to fucking vote”.

Like, I understand everything you’re saying and I don’t even disagree but you picked the wrong time and place to get annoyed with people who were venting their frustrations over a specific type of person that says “don’t vote, it’s ethically unjustifiable”.

I’m just as frustrated as you and that is where your emotions are misplaced.

The point of this post was “people who don’t vote because they object to all candidates are silly and short-sighted”. It sounds like you agree with that. Nobody said “only vote” just the same as you didn’t say “only do local”. That was kind of my point, in a roundabout way.

We need to vote local. We need to work with our communities to find and elevate good candidates. That involves exactly the kinds of grass-roots activities your describe but that doesn’t justify not voting.

To quote Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing, “Decisions are made by people who show up.” If you don’t show up to the table where the decisions are happening, no matter what else you do, you’re giving your choice to someone else, because he decisions still get made, except now it is by people you had literally, voluntarily no say in choosing.

I will never support the idea of “we shouldn’t vote for the better candidate because they’re not good enough”. We’re not going to overthrow the government next month. So we should exert whatever influence we can wherever and whenever we can.

Except a third party is still voting? I only clown on third party voters when they:

a) split the vote of a single party instead of pulling from both parties and new voters (because it only helps the remaining party cement their dominance in the next election through gerrymandering etc)

b) have clown policies that appeal only to emotion, with no path to implementation (I’m looking at you, Jill Stein and Ross Perot)

Show me a legitimate third party candidate with good policy proposals and a plan to gain votes without guaranteeing the worst candidate wins and I’ll vote for 'em, campaign for 'em, and more.

Third party isn’t burning the bus down or letting it drive off the cliff. Third party (when done well) is a third bus driver choice. I’m all for that.

I would argue you’re the one buying your head in the sand, as you offer “community recycling” sized solutions to an “industrial pollution” sized problem. You play into the hands of the very authorities you claim to oppose.

Good luck with that!

No thanks. You’ve just admitted your position that you expect, and welcome, bloodshed as a necessary part of progress.

I have no interest in engaging with an anarchist who won’t even consider peaceful progress as an option to pursue.

Nor am I interested in further subsidizing the wealthy by digging even deeper into my paper thin emotional and financial reserves to support the welfare of my community any more than I already am through taxes, charity, and personal outreach to people in need. I am already completely tapped out. And any further subsidy is a tacit admission that the wealthy will never pay their share.

So yeah, hard pass on whatever arguments you want to make.

Have a great day/night!

EDIT: No disrespect, btw. You are welcome to your opinion. I just consider the discussion a waste of time because our fundamental goals are too dramatically different.

Bullshit. Quote me then. Quote me where I say anything close to “I like these candidates. They are my preferred choice out of all proposed options past and present”.

You can’t. Because it’s factually inaccurate. You can’t find that shit for most of us. Because that’s not how we feel. We’re all holding our noses, just like you.

If you can prove otherwise, I encourage you to do so.

That was a whole lot of words without actually providing a single recommended course of action. I continue to hear a lot of general have waving and dissatisfaction from people who say we need a new system, but fail to describe that system in any meaningful detail, or how we will transition to that system without significant bloodshed.

This country has changed a lot over the past 250 years and most of it happened through protest and voting at various levels of government.

You know what the crazy thing is? We have a means to overthrow Congress. We just don’t have the state and local leaders to do it. A second Continental Congress is what we need if we want a massive system overhaul. And for that you need state and local governments in sufficient numbers to act without the approval of the Federal Congress.

Voting fucking matters. The likes of MLK are a once in a century deal. Everything else happens through protest and voting at a variety of levels.

The problem is that people hear “go vote” and all they think about is federal level general elections.

And yet so many people don’t vote. And even more people don’t vote in primaries.

Like, I genuinely believe that if everyone just voted on the primaries (incl. for local govt) we’d be fine. That’s where the problem really lies IMO. We get shit candidates because nobody shows up to vote for the good candidates in the primaries.