I’m with you on what the meme is trying to say, but the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track and running over everyone.
Because that’s where the third track leads.
Yep, not voting is unironically pretty much the same as voting for the party you least want in charge.
Because you’re making it that much more likely.
Don’t throw away a right that your ancestors fought for, as it may result in future generations no longer having that right.
Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
[…]
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”
They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
Similarly, MLK saw “the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice” as the biggest impediment to civil rights.
The bottom line is that being secure enough in your position in society to think you don’t have to engage in politics, or that you can afford to vote your principles instead of tactically, is itself a form of privilege. Those sorts of privileged people think themselves neutral or uninvolved or maybe (in the case of professed leftists refusing to vote Dem as a protest) on their own third side, but the reality is that they are the right-wing authoritarians’ greatest ally every single time.
Lol imagine thinking “moderate white” doesn’t perfectly describe the majority of people walking into the 2020 primaries and voting for Joe Biden.
You’re not wrong about the primary, but you are wrong to conflate the primary with the general election when it’s the latter that we’re talking about here.
Lol so I’m “radical” in the primaries when I don’t vote for Biden but I’m “moderate” in the general when I don’t vote for Biden?
That’s not how labels work sir.
The POTUS, from the party most opposed to civil rights act, is who signed it into law, very much so a white moderate more devoted to order. So, I’m gonna take a stance and say MLK was wrong about that one if that was his take before he died.
That’s not how it went, though. It’s, in fact, the opposite of how it went. Hitler had relatively little popular support, but full support of the industrial elite. It’s blaming the people for the crimes of the elite. “They abdicated their franchise” no, fuckface, half of them voted communist. “We ignored Hitler” no, fuckface, you put him in power because you thought he’d be malleable.
I’m not surprised Heinlein bought it, though. And I’m not surprised people here are buying it.
It’s funny that both democrats and third party voters will look at your comment and think you’re on their side.
Well, I didn’t intend on voting for Trump but, fine, you’ve convinced me.
Hey, as long as you vote. Everyone should vote.
Yes, you of course weren’t already going to do that. 🙄
Well, mathematically it’s only half as bad.
-1 lesser evil +1 greater evil
Vs.
-1 lesser evil +0 greater evil
Your math is wrong. You wouldn’t be cancelling out the greater evil with the vote for the lesser evil, so its actually twice as bad (or 4x what you were thinking).
0 lesser evil +1 greater evil
Exactly.
There is unfortunately no option to wind up with a non-evil result, your only options are greater evil result or lesser evil result.
By voting 3rd party you didn’t reduce the chance of greater evil result, AND you didn’t increase the chance of lesser evil result.
Like so?
Also, let’s have 'im on the track too.
“Oh, no, I’m not in any of those groups on the track, so I can safely not vote and have a clear conscience as it crushes everyone!”
Then they came for me…
What a sad misunderstanding of a quote literally describing state enforced genocide. I mean, this is how it starts. Both sides would kill Palestinians. Can’t do anything about it I guess. Oh well, best not put my foot down and take a principled stand here.
Who’s next?
You think that Republicans wouldn’t support genocide against anyone they consider to be their enemy?
I think that accepting that some groups, like Palestinians, will just be oppressed no matter what is what leads to things like the Holocaust. Saying you can’t afford to take a stand on your principles today and draw a line in the sand, but maybe you will tomorrow leads to the situation Martin Niemoller found himself in. It may be too late already, and making a stand won’t make a difference, but it’s never too early.
And what happens when a significant chunk of the electorate does that? I bet all those poor Palestinians will really feel good about Israel being given the green light to bomb them harder because a bunch of people protested and got a dementia riddled fascist elected.
These posts are just virtue signalling, because there’s never any forethought of what happens after the election to the people being discussed. You can speak from a place of privilege and moralize about the choice you’re making, but you’re pushing the same tactics that the republicans and alt-right push: don’t vote democrat.
I don’t like that I have to vote for Biden, but I actually want to minimize the harm being done to people, not just talk about it on the internet. Crazy concept.
These don’t-vote-for-Biden weirdos don’t understand that it’s wrong to use the idea of a minority to push your political interests in a way that hurts that minority.
If a significant portion of the electorate did that, Biden would be on the phone this minute applying all possible pressure to stop what is happening. Instead they are playing chicken with your vote. Children died today and every day for the past 8 months because a political party is betting that you’ll vote for them anyways.
Again, the original issue I raised is that it’s cruel to quote a man lamenting the fact that he and others like him didn’t do enough soon enough to stop the Holocaust. That same behavior is happening right now. But it’s fine. We just have to accept it. A few losses for the greater good. I’d bet you don’t have any Palestinian friends, but if you do, please let them know I’m the one who’s privileged and see what they say.
“All men were created equal”
IS SLAVE STATE
always jave been coming for us.
Doesn’t matter where the track leads if the trolley can’t get to it. It could lead to rainbows and sunshine, but that isn’t where the trolley is headed because there is no possibility that someone other than Trump or Biden is elected president. A few cry babies voting third party won’t get some third person elected. A vote for the third track is a vote for a track that will not be ridden.
It could be a little model trolley track going in a loop with no trolley on it.
As someone who for the first time did not vote in 2016. I started voting in the Bush era. I fully agree, no action leads to fascism apparently. Don’t do what I did because I was pissed that Bernie was cheated out of the nomination. Vote or Trump will be back in office.
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Oh, maybe. I assumed it was two different people, but yeah, that makes sense.
It makes sense because you can see that the track exists and is better, but there’s no way to actually get the train onto it
the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track
Okay, but the guy at the controls needs to be the swing vote on the SCOTUS.
I’m guessing the joke is that third party voters ignore the trolley about to go down one of two paths, instead deciding to stand next to a short piece of track connected to nothing with no trolley on it, so they can pretend the imminent disaster happening on the other track isn’t real
And there’s also a contingent of people on the trolley who are trying to get it to slow down, working their asses off to improve long term actual outcomes in the real world, whether related or not to the little lever, and the guy standing next to the empty disconnected track is claiming to be one of them and saying you must be against them and how dare you, you person-running-over-enabling monster, if you say anything against his strategy.
The problem is that we have two choices, and we will never not have two choices unless we do something about it. I can both say that Joe Biden sucks and we should do better and also vote for him because the other option is worse. This discourse that makes it seem like any criticism of Biden is pro trump is how we will end up in a slightly less terrible place. Cool. Really looking forward to that.
Also like what the fuck…I guess we have to kill Palestinians no matter what.
There is a third fucking option and it’s not doing a genocide.
There is a third fucking option and it’s not doing a genocide.
That’s only an option if you have a viable strategy for accomplishing it.
Which, of course, they don’t. It’s a vanity vote. They want to pretend they have actually done something without actually having to do anything of consequence.
It’s an expression of privilege.
If we’re interpreting their “third option” as a voting strategy and not convincing Biden to step in and stop the genocide, we can at least implement Approval Voting so that they can vote for all the “no genocide” candidates without having to worry that doing so could somehow backfire. Then, if they want or need to, they can cast a strategic vote to differentiate between different magnitudes of genocide.
we can at least implement Approval Voting
No, you can’t. You do not have the power to implement Approval Voting, and nobody who does have the power wants to do it. So it’s not gonna happen, at least not in the short term. Right now, anybody who wins has to win in an environment of First Past the Post. Nobody capable of doing that currently supports Approval Voting, so right now it is effectively not on the ballot.
This is what I mean about “hav[ing] a viable strategy.” Magically wishing Approval Voting into existence ain’t it.
Well the strategy is to work your way up from the local level because:
-
It’s easier for people to make change at the local level, Fargo and St. Louis have already done it.
-
Politicians tend to work their way up the ladder, and will be more open to using the system at higher levels if they already proved they can win under that system.
You have to remember that any real social change takes years, even decades of organized to realize. We didn’t go from Jim Crowe to the civil rights act in a fortnight, it took big organizations applying decades of pressure in multiple different ways.
If you want to be a part of the solution, join an organization dedicated to improving things. It doesn’t have to be the one I linked, but Election Science is the one working on approval voting. Local elections are such that one highly motivated person can build and run the organization to flip their local election laws, it could be you, but it won’t happen overnight.
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Yes, we need to change the way we vote before voting for POTUS can really move away from a binary choice.
Great. That is a state issue, so pay attention to your state government, vote for state representatives that support better voting methods, and contact your state representatives to push for reform.
That doesn’t change this trolley problem.
As someone else pointed out, those in power are unlikely to change the voting system to reduce their own power. However, you really start at the local level with referendums, and work your way up. First, it’s easier to force change at the local level and second, politicians working their way up will be less hostile to changing to approval if they’ve already shown they can win under that system.
Step one: Stop rewarding genocide with votes. 🤷
I agree, now how do we go about making everyone else see it too?
Apparently we can’t in 2024. They didn’t hear us in 2016. They won’t hear us now in 2024. Maybe two Democrat juggernauts losing the presidential election to Trump of all people will convince them.
They’ll just blame the leftists they cant stop attacking then use it as an excuse to move further right yet again.
The problem is that we have two choices
The problem is that we don’t. If you’re not in a “swing” state, all the votes in the world for Joe Biden are meaningless. Win California by another million votes. Win it by another 10M. Have every single eligible voter in California turn up and vote for Joe Biden. He still loses the EC when the SCOTUS tells Arizona to stop counting ballots the minute Trump is in the lead.
Also like what the fuck…I guess we have to kill Palestinians no matter what.
We have to keep sending money to Israel because its the means by which we control the Suez Canal.
Except… the Houthis have control over the back end of the canal so long as they’re able to scare off shipping in the Gulf of Adan. So now we’re endorsing a genocide just for shits and giggles.
It’s almost like two organizations have totally monopolized US politics. It’s a billion dollar industry, and they’d both rather alternate losing to each other and keep their seat at the table than let anyone else play the game.
Its an enormously lucrative game, so who can blame them?
you blame us for going along with it and blame those who shame anyone who points out that we don’t have to go along with it.
Because of a shitty situation set up by countless past people and events completely out of your control you have to make a choice here. And in my mind, it’s not even a difficult choice. Yes, either option will support Israel, that’s a given, but there is no third option so it might as well not even be a factor in choosing a candidate.
If you want more parties and to remove first past the post then you need to elect the party who supports those stances. That is one of your two options. Real fucking simple.
No. I do not vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates. Real fucking simple.
You will elect a much worse one by not supporting a much better one.
That’s their goal.
**
You’ll have to be more specific about what blowing up the train maps to in real life before I can tell you whether or not doing so would also kill a shit ton of people.
But to keep it in metaphor, there are also innocent people riding the train and blowing it up would kill them, too.
People like op.dont care and are bad faith trolls
You say that as if you’re not a liberal pretending to be a leftist.
Call us whatever you like. We don’t vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates.
Cool, have fun with apathy, I hope it magically results in a revolution.
I hope your strike blocking, genocide supporting candidate magically results in more workers rights and less genocide.
You say that as though you’re the arbiter of what’s “left” and what’s not.
**
Propaganda of the deed is a powerful message
Yeah, if you made a habit of doing that we’d end to with more deaths and a lower quality of life overall.
**
Most of them, sure. But killing them with any kind of regularity would have a number of knock-on effects that would severely decrease many people’s quality of life.
If your friend has a brain tumor, you don’t point a gun to their head and shoot it out. You find brain surgeons and have them remove it under controlled conditions. Supposing you can’t find a brain surgeon, it would still be better to learn brain surgery yourself and do a careful and thorough job than it would be to just shoot your friend in the head and hope for the best.
It’s close enough to the tracks that it would hurt the hostages, and the wreckage would probably have enough momentum to hit them anyway.
This is a good analogy actually. Blowing up the train would feel good, but that isn’t going to stop the momentum, and it’s unfortunately virtually impossible to outright stop it’s momentum at this point. All that blowing up the train would accomplish is sending fiery wreckage towards the middle track.
This is why accelerationism is stupid.
You first.
The plan fails, the top track gets removed due to terrorist activities, and even more things are on the remaining track.
(If you ask me: Jan 6 should have had even more consequences for republicans, but they like to bend the rules to their own benefits)
That would just stop time itself
This is why I, as an autistic person, think internally using a sort of infinite mechanical analog diagram sheet thing.
Physical analogies are beautiful for how quickly they can convey a concept. Those disconnected tracks are a great representation of the third party voting situation we face, the “throwaway vote” problem.
Roe v Wade sends their regards.
the decision that Blue did absolutely nothing to protect even though they knew full well Red would kill it any chance they got?
“Terrible things that Republicans do is actually Democrats’ fault” is a fun level of victim blaming
Is it the “only Democrats have agency” thing? Democrats are responsible for their choices but Republicans, they’re just like a fire that burns man it doesn’t know what it’s doing.
- the victims are the American people, not whichever politician you’re waving your team flag for
- the aggressors are the politicians too busy pocketing their corporate bribes to pay attention to their constituents
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“polls into the 21st century showed that a plurality and a majority opposed overruling Roe” (Wikipedia)
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Is the guy with the bowtie supposed to be the people on here calling everone “lib” or the people on here calling everone “tankie”?
I could say the same thing of the self proclaimed progressives saying the dems should have done something in the total 4 years since then they’ve had trifecta control, not even including the filibuster.
You knew the redcaps would kill it first chance they got, why did you let them get the chance by not voting against them?
What was so much more important to you than women’s health that not even the open and active threat to it was enough to motivate you to the herculean task of standing in a line and pushing some buttons?
You asswipes are always on about how you’re the only ones who take fascism seriously in this country, and then whenever you’re given the chance to show it by doing the basic minimum to keep them out of power you balk and make demands like it’s suddenly a distant nightmare instead of the life threatening reality of the people you karen at to get the party’s manager for you.
Big Bridal Shower at the Gay Bar Energy.
This
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance, instead of making us speculate on it.
So deep.
Funny thing is, that’s what’s called a controlled derailment. It’s the engineering answer to the situatuon, if the situation were real and not a contrived philosophical dilemma.
The Biden approach
This guy gets it
Well, in context of philosophy being taught in class you would then change the prompt to a harder question. You would also debate whether the person who makes the decision is in fact responsible and how that dynamic changes when the prompt changes.
So maybe you have to choose between 2 men only half as happy or handsome or one fully formed magical man with magic hands.
Magical hands always
What if the train magically transforms regular men into new men? What if they were opposed to the transformation before it happened?
Conversely, what about if it magically creates men causing potential overpopulation? What if the men it created morally oppose the tram, but more than half the local population feel like it is necessary to run no matter what?
You can pretty much run this thought experiment forever, so far we’ve been going for 57 years.
Yes
I enjoy the self insert character of Zach in panel 4.
WEINNERSMITHHHHHHH
If that third track were an option the trolley problem would never have existed. If there really is a third track in the real-life situation, then the trolley problem is not a good analogy of that problem.
Sadly, in this election there is no third track and we are forced into choosing the lesser of two evils.
If you want a third track, push for ranked choice voting!
It’s interesting how much the vote DOES resemble a trolley problem. Generally, the only real point in favor of not pulling the lever is “You’re killing someone, it’s immoral to get involved. Life shouldn’t be in your hands.”
Which is still setting aside all the conscious choice by other human beings that IS happening come election season. Probably the biggest way it diverges is that a trolley is moving under its own “natural” momentum. In reality, it’s as though some Nazis are pulling the trolley along the track to the 5 people.
Simplistic philosophy for simplistic minds.
It’s not a trolley problem, and even if it were the consequences of greenlighting democratic support for genocide are not fully represented appropriately in this image.
It is a trolley problem for leftwing voters.
We all know what happens if the Republicans get in - they do what they want, and what they want is fervent, unquestioning support of Israel, and to continue trampling on the rights of millions of minorities.
That’s where the Trolley goes if the leftwing can’t agree on what it wants to do.
While I agree that you’re right in stating that the long-term consequences of allowing democrats to get away with this aren’t properly laid out, what’s the alternative exactly?
You could argue to vote an independent, but if everybody disagrees on which independent to vote for, then you fragment the leftwing and the Republicans get a free lunch.
You could argue to refuse to vote to teach the democrat party a lesson, which sounds nice, but every lost vote against the Republicans only helps bring them closer to victory.
If you’ve got another idea, then by all means go ahead, but those are the two I hear over and over again.
Except communicating to Democratic leadership that this is acceptable moves us to the right, not to the left. I think it’s time we all admit at least that we’re past pretending Democrats are going to reform themselves without any meaningful pressure, no?
How far to the right do we let the DNC use fear to push us before being “left” only in relation to the extreme right doesn’t cut it? If genocide is not where you draw the line what the fuck will be?
Voting or not voting by itself will not move democrats to the left. That can only be achieved by organizing. In the meantime, keeping republicans out of power is worthwhile.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
Both realistic outcomes of the election involve the US government continuing to support this genocide in one way or another - that’s why OP’s meme is drawn out like it is, because people arguing your exact viewpoint seem to think there’s some magical third track everybody else has missed that sidetracks this issue entirely.
Everybody loses this election no matter what happens, but I guarantee you the loss will be worse with the Republicans in the driving seat.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying in principle, but how do you propose to draw that line now?
There will never be a perfect time to draw the line, because the DNC will always play chicken with its own base as long as that continues to get them elected, they will always be putting us in that position of choosing between their fascist lite pick and the gop’s fascist. The only weapon we have that they care about is our ability to deny them power. They don’t care about protests, they don’t care about articles and letters, debate or polls or anything, as we see none of that changes their behaviour. They care about money and access to power.
So, the solution is to starve them until they realize the party simply can’t sustain itself on non-existent maga swing voters. It can’t leech enough “moderate” conservatives to survive. They need to be brought to the understanding that their route to power is not to be Alt Republican, it’s to be progressive and anti-fascist.
People can say the DNC won’t care and it will never work that way, but we’ve seen a real example from history that starving parties works. When Republican support was waning in the 1950s and 60s, the Republicans went out hunting for a new demographic to sustain them. That’s what the Southern Strategy was. Granted they were going in the opposite direction, but the Democrats can be put in the same position and since the GOP already occupies all the white racist territory, Dems have very few other places to hide from Millenials and GenZ.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that’s the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
One, that is a very long way of saying the idea you’re bringing to the table is don’t vote - and I’ve already said what I think about that.
And yes, I understand this would likely mean some really shitty years, but that’s the cost to make Democrats understand they need their base.
Two, that’s a bit of an understatement considering just one highlight of Trump’s last presidency was rigging the SCOTUS towards being openly corrupt and against the people for literally decades to come.
You clearly didn’t read it then, we’re done here.
And in the meantime those groups need to keep voting and keep fighting to get progressives in every position they can. They just need to be disciplined about not backing corporate candidates, they need to be unelectable.
Yeah, I did see that section, but given that a “corporate” candidate is already the democrat nominee, that also amounts to not voting in this election - or voting for independents, which I have also made my opinion known on - so there was no point in talking about that.
It’s funny you say the philosophy is simple when strategic voting requires multiple layers of analysis and voting for bubblegum ice cream just amounts to what feels good. You can’t bring yourself to accept the reality of the situation, so you pretend like the problem is easy to solve if you just ignore it. That’s truly simple minded. Pathetic projection on your part.
It’s not strategic if the outcome of either option in the binary you present is fascism. You’re not “saving” anyone on either of the tracks in the narrow political world you paint.
You’re reducing things to a single issue and have the gall to say my political world is narrow. You’re unreal.
Literally. How do people like this exist
Image fully representing the consequences of any voters in the US deciding to “greenlight genocide”:
this one is actually really funny, i like this one.
Good shit.
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So, why do some blue states want to continueusing FPTP voting? Why continue using a voting system favored by Republicans? In states controlled by Democrats, there’s no Republican opposition hindering electoral reform efforts.
FPTP favors whichever party is currently in power in a two party system. Solid blue states don’t want to switch because it makes their hold on power less secure. Same reason as Republicans in red states.
You’re factually correct, and I support your long term goal, but it’s not something we can achieve by November.
I swear I hear this regardless of how close we are to the next presidential election. Can we maybe focus on some of the other races on the ballot? I would love if we could get a Congress that was actually able to make good things happen, instead of trying very hard to do nothing so bad things don’t happen.
Congress might also have been able to get more done if there was a filibuster-proof majority for more than several months in the last several decades.
I do vote for the most progressive person available in the primaries tho.
The fact that we even need a filibuster proof majority to get anything done is yet another glaring example of how fucked we are.
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Yeah, the focus on winning the presidency ignores the down ballot, small market and “off-cycle” races, and, to get to fillibuster-proof majorities, those races are the ones that need to be won. Berating progressives in urban areas to vote for moderate liberal candidates for president is not exactly harm reduction.
Sorry, media is now handled at the national level so covering local and state races outside of ones that get clicks isn’t profitable
Electoral systems is a pretty nerdy topic (despite how important it is for who gets power), so it is not an issue the typical voter cares for. Therefore there is not enough political capital for such large reforms to be taken on by politicians.
