That's what I don't understand about many U.S. lefts. I do understand that the Democrats ain't perfect and that they have some weird positions. But your elective system (which is kind of screwed from the start anyway) only has two possible outcomes, dems or reps. And the two of them are not equally bad, so why take away votes from the by far not that bad option, strengthening the really bad option?

[–] Catpurple@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Because the people with that holier than thou attitude believe that if they just convince enough people, their socialist/progressive third party that gets one vote every election will definitely overtake both Dems and Republicans in a total landslide, and will immediately stop the genocide in Palestine and the war in Ukraine once they're in. Or they're a tankie accelerationist and want trump to win because they think it will lead to a revolution and their perfect political utopia will be in place in mere weeks. They'd just rather die of old age, suffering in a corrupt and polluted fascist hell decades after all their friends were culled, than ever admit that they are wrong or ever accept they will never live to see their desired future.

Edit: I realize I sound super rude and aggressive in the last sentence, sorry. I say they'll never live to see it because something like eliminating capitalism is an extreme long term goal. It can't happen overnight, or in a single geneation. It's too deeply engrained in the entire operation of the world as it stands. It has to be pruned back until it can be removed. It's like that one phrase, something like men plant trees in whose shade they'll never sit, or something like that. I don't think I'll live to see it either, but I would love to. I'd definitely prefer a socialist society, capitalism has been the cause of all my life's traumas. But you just can't get the world to change that fast.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

their socialist/progressive third party that gets one vote every election will definitely overtake both Dems and Republicans

The idea isn't overtaking both parties in an election, it's showing the democrat administration that their votes are actually conditioned to doing the absolute bare minimum like, you know, not enabling actual genocide. By "voting blue no matter who" in the "most important elections in US history" (a pattern that starts to repeat itself too much, you can't call every election the most important one), and by voting exclusively on damage mitigation, is how you get the slide to the right of the democrats (and republicans) over the past 5 decades. By not showing that your support to democrats is conditional to, you know, progressive policy, you're giving them a license to enact whatever brutal murderous genocidal policy they desire, since they know it won't have an electoral consequence.

That's how you get the candidate for the democrats saying on a rally that israel has the right to defend itself (again, during the ongoing genocide of Gazans and soon Lebanese) and that the US should have the most LETHAL fighting force in the world. Not effective, not powerful, not even the besr funded. The MOST FUCKING LETHAL. And the crowd bursts into chants of "USA, USA, USA". I don't know how that looks to Americans, but as a European, saying that you want your military to be the most lethal, and the crowd chanting the name of the country, is something I would expect of, idk, Nazi Germany.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 8 points 2 months ago

Honestly I think that is just the extremely online left. Everyone I know IRL is like, yeah, the dems suck, fuck capitalism, but can you imagine how much worse it would be under Trump?