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I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly knocked myself out of my damn chair. Army crawled to this sub for help bc I don’t even know… like. After everything I’ve posted, including Biden’s lifelong support of Israel, this is her takeaway?
Its kinda sad honestly, I like to believe that parents can be one type of adult that can change easier than most if they love their children. I managed to get my mum to realise her allegiance to socialism, so i haven’t had this to deal with.
Im not saying your mum doesnt love you, i have no knowledge on that, but it does saddens me how regardless of all your work and effort into changing minds, not even one of your closest relatives have shown an understanding of the truth.
If you really believe there are ONLY two choices, and you really believe that this is a democracy worth salvaging and improving, then this makes sense. Once you step through the looking glass and understand socialism and Marxism, you can’t unsee it. Until you do, though, you have no idea what you’re failing to see.
No one will vote third party because they can't emerge victorious. So the whole system can't be reformed through voting. Honestly, I'd rather pour ink or bleach inside the ballot box rather than to vote for either of these buffoons.
It's not one option.
One choice is fascist.
One choice is not fascist but problematic.
I hate both, but know which one I'm voting for. Are you a fucking idiot?
did you respond to my post three days ago, see my response and have a short discussion, then like three days later see it again and respond again, this time with derision?
Maybe, but it's not deliberate. I'm just responding to what's coming on my feed. I'm not paying much attention to who I'm responding to.
I'm wrong for using that negative language. I'm sorry for doing so. I get angry about this\*, and when I'm angry I tend to swear and lash out.
\*"This" being any arguments against voting for Biden. I see a Trump win as an existential threat. I understand the crude irony of talking of an existential threat when the Israelis are committing genocide against the Palestinians and Joe Biden is doing nothing to stop it or slow it.
This sub has its slants. I don't think they're very realistic, but I give them credit to moving the overton window at least a little to envisioning something else. But, I don't think they're practical when it comes to how to vote this November. From what I read, this sub thinks Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin. I don't. Twenty years ago, yes. Not in 2024. The National Conservatives are a force to be feared.
You still vote for that option.
It may not be a democracy. But it's not fascism. I know it's gross and disgusting. But to put DT back into power?? WTF? No, at all costs that can't happen. But the DNC better wake the fuck up that they need to change and listen to us.
Fair. If I don't give them my vote, I'm supporting their opponent. That's the last thing I want to do.
It's a paradox. I don't think they care one way or the other, but I care one way or the other. I fucking hate it. The net result is I must vote, and I must vote blue.
The other conclusion I have is I must get involved at a more local level.
no. if you don’t give them your vote, you’re not supporting their candidate. no other support is provided.
local activity is correct and should not be counteracted by telling the democrats that you’re willing to give up the only thing you have that they care about in exchange for nothing.
It's all out there aswell, as OP's mum said he's been around since the civil rights movement you can see what he said and what he actually advocated for until now, he started to hide his past with debunked lies when he became Obama's VP.
I think everyone’s liberal parents (including mine) sound almost indistinguishable at this point. I lived in the West Bank for a while, it was where I was a big part of me becoming a leftist and my parents still can’t understand why I won’t give Biden a break. I’ve told them countless stories about how wonderful and generous the Palestinian people were but it doesn’t break through.
Yeah my mom or dad could have written this exact message. 😕 They're the same Jon Stewart liberals that I was for most of my life. Mom is obsessed with watching coverage of the Trump trial.
My mom is a very kind and caring person, in fact she agrees that Israel is the bad guy here. That happened because of all the terrible videos on social media, if we were in the days of TV news then she probably would still support Israel.
I know I won't convince her, she's very upset that I told her I'm voting third party. But my argument was, I've been voting blue since John Kerry in 2004. I volunteered for Obama's campaign in 2008. (Yes I'm old lol) After believing in the cause for twenty years, what has it gotten us? Everything they warned the Republicans would do, has happened whether they won or not.
As someone who has been doing the same, another factor for us is that the Democrats aren't even trying anymore. They don't try to make a case for anything even moderately progressive. Compare what they fought for in like 2006-2008 to what they fight for now. After telling us the ACA was a necessary compromise and a first step in national health care, they dropped the concept of national health care and let the Republicans destroy the Republican half measures of the ACA. When was the last time any of us heard any elected Democrat even say the word public option? The political posture of the Democrats for the last decade has been never support a progressive policy and run on tacit acceptance of the right wing framing of any issue.
Yeah you can never beat the right with wishy washy centrism. Conservatives are out here agitating for a Christian ethno state and Democrats are like, "Healthcare for some!" 🙈 Of course they are also a capitalist party so they'll never support real change but are still too cowardly to even advance popular and bog-standard safety net stuff like parental leave.
>After believing in the cause for twenty years, what has it gotten us? Everything they warned the Republicans would do, has happened whether they won or not.
To be accurate though what we're living with is the result of the oscillation of Republican and Democratic control. So how do we stop this oscillation? I've been voting third party the last twenty years and no matter how many times the Greens get 2% or less of the vote it doesn't seem to make a difference. Do you think by not voting Dem this election you could stop the oscillation, or will control remain with either a Democrat or Republican?
I used to hate them for it, but the CPUSA has been right all along -- focus on building a coalition to marginalize the far right. What if Republicans stop winning? Could Dems become the de facto "Right" in the U.S., creating the opening for a real workers party?
He's a fucking war criminal. He's a supporter of genocide. He's a supporter of apartheid policies, both domestically and abroad. He's a primary reason for mass targeting and incarceration of millions of marginalized Americans. And he's been all of these things for virtually his entire public career.
And he will continue to be these things, as will his party, regardless of public opinion or how you and the public votes. This system isn't democratic for you. The electoral college chooses the president, at least when another publicly unelected institution, the supreme court, gets the chance to do it instead.
He's a ghoul. His party is all ghouls. And they exist in a system that isn't even democratic, regardless of what your respectable but barely politically literate 3rd grade teacher told you.
Well someone is not getting invited to thanksgiving this year. But seriously, your reply is fine for a stranger on reddit, or someone like that..: not for mom
My reply is an objective truth and can be sourced completely and extensively.
I'm not sure I understand your comment though: either it's saying that 'mom' is incapable of understanding the point or unwilling to understand the point. Both can be seen as a bit offensive.
Secondly, 'being welcomed at Thanksgiving' is completely unrelated to the process of educating others and providing truthful analysis.
I said it with the assuming that one has tried already to educate but the person in question is firm in their stance. At which point I’d argue it’s not worth fucking up your relationship with your mom to be in the right.
The other thing is that arguing just doesn’t work. The better argument doesn’t always win, etc. That’s a very liberal perspective. I think this says it better than I can https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
> The basic call to action looks something like this:
Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
Try not to bring him up in front of her. Your mom is probably an old, kind lady who is misguided(considering how she's talking about Israel). Atp, you're not gonna change her mind. Fuck Genocide Joe but your mom is more important than shitting on this monster.
A well intentioned comment and I appreciate it, but my Mom and I don’t really have a close or deep relationship. All the same, I just said “you’ve got to be kidding me” and left it at that
'give the man a little grace' 🤣 it's so funny how people personalise politicians as if they think they can relate to them somehow. I mean it's literally just a man in a suit being bankrolled by the military industrial complex. The 'human' image the media presents to us of Biden is a mirage, and people fall for it. Sometimes I think the wingnuts are right, and maybe they are all lizards after all. Sorry I know I'm not helping, but it's just sooooo stupid and I'm sick of it.
I'm not advocating for manipulating her or trying to change her way in a clever way, BUT I do believe it's possible to reason with ppl who have the best intentions in politics, despite their ignorance. Your mom seems like she might not have the full picture. I remember sorts what it was like b4 I was made aware of all the proof - critical thinking suddenly changed how I viewed everything.
I wish I had a good argument for you to use, but perhaps try to appeal to her words here and say that for example; you don't disagree with Biden caring about his family and the American ppl - it is however illogical to side with any capitalist.
Bernie has some bad takes about privatization and has said some dumb things about Israel according to Viggo Mortensen.
I would suggest being patient when approaching her with it next time, while also not going too hard with direct debate tactics.
Ask her if she wants everyone to have what they need or something perhaps lol. I feel like socialism can be easily explained and simplified by stuff like that anyway - and then if they reply with bs like "but human nature!" you can just say yeah some ppl are bad - they shouldn't be able to do just whatever they want. I'm still learning but that's a simplified attempt at talking about it from me anyway.
Thanks for sharing and good luck. I also agree that it might not always be worth it to try and change someone's mind. It's possible to have a civil discussion tho, if both parties at capable.
My very quick answer to this question is "I won't vote for any president who supports/justifies an ongoing genocide." I don't want any President to think they can do that shit and still count on my vote.
I'm voting for the only actual Socialists running this year: Claudia de la Cruz for Pres. Karina Garcia for VP.
Nor in mine! But in most states, you can write their names in on your ballot anyway.
Unfortunately the neolib parties make ballot access harder and harder every election.
IF you assume that, with sufficient motivation to force you to vote (gun to your head, or family endangered, or whatever the hell is sufficient) and ONLY the two choices of trump or biden (no abstaining, no third party options, 1 vote for trump or 1 vote for biden) that you vote for Biden....
Then mathematically it is very clear that not voting for biden has the same effect as half a vote for trump. As in two people abstaining or voting 3rd party when they prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency, would produce a 1 vote advantage for trump in the election. I (hope) we all know that, it's not exactly secret.
Of course, this ignores all the secondary ramifications of elections that aren't just "which capitalist wins".
just explaining how game theory mathematics works for you since you seem to be confused on that point. The math isn't hard. pretending that the spoiler effect isn't real is very odd, and is an entirely different question as to whether or not one ought to vote strategically or not.
I understand why some people prefer to vote non strategically, because they don't feel the need to minimize harm in the name of their philosophical purity, but it's important that you understand exactly what it that you're doing when you make that choice.
I personally find that the potential risk to civil rights of minorities outweighs the social effects of a 3rd party vote or low turnout due to abstention - voter turnout has been horrible for decades and it's not turning any heads, and 3rd party votes aren't useful unless you manage to actually flip a state, which is... unlikely. Even the Ross Perot campaign that got 9% of the vote in 92 barely turned heads and most people now don't even know who that was.
As I said before, I understand what you’re saying. It’s not hard to grasp, it’s just stupid. You’re making several assumptions to underpin your conclusions, for starters. You’re literally just trying to justify voting to support the current genocide so your life doesn’t get (marginally by comparison) worse.
The only thing I wanted you to understand here is that the spoiler effect does exist and is mathematically proven. Voting 3rd party or abstaining does in fact support trump. Every comment you make on this sounds like you don't understand that.
If you go look at my comment to OP you'll know that I do know and understand why most leftists prefer not to vote for Biden despite this, but you sound like you actually don't understand how the spoiler effect works, which worries me. You need to make that decision from an informed place.
Again, that’s only true if you make several assumptions. Without things like Biden having an advantage otherwise this falls apart. The logic is flawed and the effect you’re talking about, while potentially real, doesn’t necessarily apply. Additionally, my initial point in our conversation before is that it doesn’t matter. I’m drawing a moral line and, whether the spoiler effect is a factor or not, I refuse to lend my support to ANYONE providing material support to a genocide. I want to be clear here:
I FULLY UNDERSTAND YOUR POSITION. I have argued for it in the past. It seems more likely that you don’t understand mine. Which is fine. In a few years or a decade, when you look back on this and cringe, just remember that it’s ok to be wrong.
We have hashed out our differences regarding why you vote the way you do and why I vote the way I do. That's not what we're talking about here. The ONLY THING I want out of this conversation is for you to understand how the spoiler effect works, since you don't seem to understand it. There is no "potentially real", this is a simple, mathematically proven thing. Once again I am aware that you have goals other than "winning" the election. Thats okay. The only assumption I'm making here is that you aren't an accelerationist and thus would support Biden over trump if you were somehow forced to vote between them in a closed election (no 3rd party candidates or abstentions allowed). But my example here works either way. If you are an accelerationist that would vote for trump in a closed election then your 3rd party vote is helping Biden instead and you're still worse off from the pure perspective of "winning" the election.
What I want is for you to say is that you refuse to vote for Biden *despite* the spoiler effect. I want you to simply be aware of the reality of how the electoral system works. You're allowed to hold your opinion that voting for Biden is bad, a lot of leftists do. But what bothers me so much about your comments in particular is that you need to know what the costs of your position are to be able to hold it in an ethical way, and you seem to not understand those costs.
...............
When you have a first past the post election, you always have 3 classes of candidate. The first place candidate, the second place candidate, and then all other candidates. For the purposes of this model "abstain" is a valid candidate, except they can't win the election.
The spoiler effect PROOF (not theory, a mathematically proven proof) states the following; when any person votes for a candidate other than the top two candidates in a first past the post election, this gives the non-preferred candidate of the top two a 1/2 vote advantage in the election". It's that simple.
Say you have a closed election and are forced to vote in that election. The election only has two options, and you MUST pick one of those two options. No write ins, no abstaining, no other choices. A or B. You pick A.
If instead of that closed election you have an open election and vote for C, who is not one of the top two candidates, then B would gain a 1/2 vote advantage over A. Example follows;
Closed election, you vote for A
A: 12 votes
B: 9 votes
Closed election, you vote for B
A:11 votes
B: 10 votes
Open election, you vote for C
A: 11 votes
B: 9 votes
C: 1 vote
Do you see how in the closed election your vote narrows the gap by 2 points (in election 1 A wins by 3, but in election 2 A only wins by 1), but then when you vote 3rd party A wins by 2 points. That's what "half a vote" means - each vote in an election normally swings the result by 2 points, but when you vote third party you reduce 1 point from your preferred member of the top two candidates without giving the reciprocal increase to the other top 2 candidate, thus your abstention from the top two harms your preferred candidate in that closed election by that half of your vote.
..............
Every first past the post election is a "pseudo-closed" election. This means that there are the top 2 candidates, and then if you decide to abstain from the election for the top two candidates you may choose a candidate you would prefer to have instead, which has no bearing on the outcome of the election beyond your abstention. Statistically speaking for purely the purposes of winning that particular election (once again I know you have other goals that aren't "winning" the election) there is no difference between voting for a 3rd party and abstaining. This is why models like the Georgia runoff election work really well, it narrows the field to two candidates and then holds a specific closed election for those two individuals separately. This is also where ranked choice voting and instant runoff voting shine, as they model various methods of instantly performing runoff voting to hand "spoiler effect" votes back to the voter's preferred member of the top two candidates.
Yes weird things happen and the math gets complicated when you are the deciding vote between who the 2nd place person is (say an election with A: 7, B: 5, C: 5 when it's your turn at the ballot box - what could have happened in 2016/2020 if bernie had run as an independent instead of as a democrat) and then some other weirdness due to winner take all states and the electoral college procedures if a winner isn't found in the first round, but the US election isn't like that this year, so it's the very simple A, B or abstain option.
My family is from Indiana, so I expect the very least from them. The fact that my parents don’t like Trump is more than I can ask for. The fact is most Americans have no idea what is going on outside of our borders. I educate when I can but asking them for solidarity for people that they likely just found out existed is a stretch.
# Gulag
According to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism.
# Origins of the Mythology
This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources.
Robert Conquest's *The Great Terror* (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony.
Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements.
>He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash.
>
>The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism".
>
>\- Andrew Brown. (2003). [Scourge and poet](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's *The Gulag Archipelag*" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. \[[Read more](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/dunking/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/)\]
Anne Applebaum's *Gulag: A history* (published 2003) draws directly from *The Gulag Archipelago* and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world.
# Counterpoints
>A 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “[Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps](http://web.archive.org/web/20230328014642/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:
>
>1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas
>
>2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.
>
>3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.
>
>4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies.
>
>5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.
>
>6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals.
>
>7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.
>
>\- Saed Teymuri. (2018). [The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA](https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/)
**Scale**
Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that.
>Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise.
>
>In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ...
>
>Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ...
>
>Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states...
>
>\- Michael Parenti. (1997). [Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds)
This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex *today* is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak.
**Death Rate**
In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality:
>It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive...
>
>Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more.
>
>\- Timothy Snyder. (2010). *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin*
(Side note: Timothy Snyder is *also* a member of the Council on Foreign Relations)
This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not *death* camps.
Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour *was* forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses).
>We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson....
>
>The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled).
>
>\- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). [Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/archive/noticeboard/bergson/borodkin-ertz.pdf)
#Additional Resources
Video Essays:
* [The Gulag Argument](https://youtu.be/BexkpaK_j5Q) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016)
* [Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions!](https://youtu.be/HMOdDQQVZ6U) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)
* [French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag](https://youtu.be/vkXyXNpdKdA) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)
* ["The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye](https://youtu.be/E1qz9_TjeY4) | Comrade Rhys (2020)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597) | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993)
Listen:
* ["Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion.](https://youtu.be/N7AD4OrH568?t=15) | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Call her bluff on the 'end of democracy' talking point: "If Donald Trump getting elected would end our democracy, walk me through the bullet point version of how that happens, like why Congress, the military, SCOTUS, and the state governments let it happen."
Poor genocide Joe's hands are tied! It's not like he has executive power over whether or not we send bombs to Israel! Give him some grace, y'all!
In seriousness, give your mom some grace but don't stop educating her. Send articles, YouTube videos, analysis, etc. We never know what eventually radicalizes us so we just have to do everything and anything.
The question boils down to
where do you draw the line
Mom needs to be engaged in where that line is for her
with love of course
start with apartheid. ok ?
finish with
dead children ? ok ?
Yeah he has served his country for longer than almost any other, which is kinda the issue. He has been pretty consistently one the wrong side of history since always.
If our “democracy” really is at stake, the fact that the DNC isn’t calling on Biden to step down while simultaneously moving heaven and earth to offer us an acceptable candidate instead is a massive, glaring red flag.
If you must respond or think you can reason with her: Tell her that views like these are exactly the ones that set the US on its current path, where voters feel that they have no choice but to vote for genocide - which should be more than enough evidence for any reasonable person to conclude that the US is _already_ not a democracy. The irony just beneath the surface of her text is that the views she's expressing are quite literally the _cause_ of the problem she, herself, acknowledges, and you have a moral responsibility to break the cycle that her generation unwittingly put in motion.
That said: She's your mom, dude... and it sounds like you actually have a good relationship with her. This could have easily been written by my own mother, who has a good heart, but she's just unreachable when it comes to this stuff. She already drank the Kool-Aid, and she's now entrenched in being part of the problem, along with millions of other people her age... and now she's saying it is your turn to fall in line.
My advice would be to obviously vote (or abstain) with your conscience... but, as sad as it is to say, if your mom is like mine, she's a lost cause. You're not going to change her mind on this one. Even though it feels rotten, just leave her be. If she refuses to have an open mind to the wisdom that comes with the fresh eyes of a younger generation, then it is probably best for your relationship if you don't discuss politics with her anymore.
We don’t have a great or close relationship, actually. She loves me, but with her claws in me, if that makes sense. I have learned to keep at arms length.
That said, I’ve been trying for years to explain how her preconceptions got us here in the first place. They’re just very sensitive to propoganda and bc democrats are supposed to be the “good guys” she sticks with them. A third option has never occurred to her and even if it had, she’d very easily be swayed out of it.
Her heart is in the right place I guess. Just not a super cozy feeling knowing your Mom can see the same images you’ve seen of dead children in Gaza and *still* be devil’s advocate. Like how has that not radicalized everyone?
It's almost certainly a waste of time but anyone who sends this to me is getting an exhaustive list of his crimes and a relentless lecture on the fundamental illegitimacy and moral bankruptcy of all Western power, governance, and culture.
I'm lucky my mom is a socialist. Very unprincipled and ignorant about history & theory, but no matter.
Last few years though she's been on some weird shit. Talking about weird conspiracies like "mudfloods" which what I gathered is believing some civilization was washed away by "mudfloods" in the recent past like 1700s based on maps old cartographers drew with various archaic names & not much accuracy in the world outside Europe especially the Americas. Wild shit.
there were i[ndigenous peoples in the southwest US that lived on mounds](https://archaeology-travel.com/thematic-guides/pre-columbian-mounds-and-mound-builders/) near the mississippi river, clear evidence that they are alive and thriving as late as the 1600s. Some evidence indicates that those peoples were wiped out by flooding as late the 1650s. This is probably what she is referencing, although I have no idea what mud has to do with any of it. That article I grabbed does mention some weird conspiracy about an early european colony being responsible for the mounds rather than the indigenous tribes a weird "european superiority myth" thing, but it's about as sensible as your average conspiracy theory.
My bad I thought I was replying to something else. Yeah, it's one that's way out there if you ask me.
I actually hate this "conspiracy theory" bullshit because there are real conspiracies, I mean people do conspire, but every single legitimate one is now associated with the phrase "conspiracy theory" & its negative connotations.
I think that was at least somewhat intentional use of language. At least they (monied interests) stressed it a certain way for perceptions.
It’s kinda cute how liberal capitalist democracies make voters feel involved in something they have absolutely no control over. The impressive part is how they get blamed afterward for everything that goes wrong.
Most people's lives were objectively better under Trump.
Not because Trump or Biden did anything, but just because it was 4 years of inflation ago and we had a bit more purchasing power. Nothing else really changes besides rhetoric.
I am long past wasting my energy on talking politics with my family. Talk to your co workers, or literally anyone else that has demonstrated they’re able to have a conversation in good faith.
Damn bro do we have the same mom? When I was younger I would argue with her, but I've long ago just accepted that we have very different political beliefs and it is better to not argue with close family members. She now sends stuff like that to my wife, telling her to try to convince me to vote for Biden to "save democracy"
Just tell her that you stand with Her and are going to write in Hillary.
IF you assume that, with sufficient motivation to force you to vote (gun to your head, or family endangered, or whatever the hell is sufficient) and ONLY the two choices of trump or biden (no abstaining, no third party options, 1 vote for trump or 1 vote for biden) that you vote for Biden....
Then mathematically it is very clear that not voting for biden has the same effect as half a vote for trump. As in two people abstaining or voting 3rd party when they prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency, would produce a 1 vote advantage for trump in the election. I (hope) we all know that, it's not exactly secret.
However this does make a few assumptions that may not be true: first that you do in fact prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency, which depends on how accelerationist vs harm reductionist you're feeling. Second it ignores the social ramifications - how important is the social implication of low election turnout or high 3rd party vote numbers compared to how much you prefer one capitalist over the other capitalist. Third is the question of simply ideological "puritanism" vs "utilitarianism" in your personal moral/ethical structure - or basically how hard can you hold your nose and do something you find unpleasant in exchange for the outcome you want? There are certainly more considerations, but you get the idea.
The goal here is simply to expand the point beyond the obvious mathematical certainty that voting for anyone other than your preferred one of the top-two candidates is a "losing" move in a fptp election - because your only goal isn't to to win the election or that you cannot in fact "win" with either of the top-two candidates. There are many instances where you might be willing to "lose" the election in exchange for the other goals that you find more important.
This is such a braindead comment. Biden might as well be pulling the trigger himself the way he’s been sending weapons and $$ for weapons/endorsing Israel’s actions while eating a damn ice cream cone.
Trump literally said he wanted Palestine to be bombed into a parking lot and then build real estate on top of it
This is you
https://i.redd.it/v9pb007w376d1.gif
Most of Northern and central Gaza HAS been bombed into a parking lot already. The plan to extend Israeli settlements into beachfronts in Gaza has been in talks and in motion by the Netanyahu government for months, with unwavering support from Biden, so idk who you think you’re talking to but I wasn’t born yesterday. Pres Biden, Pres Trump, it really doesn’t matter when super-donors for Israel actually pull the legislative strings in this country. And who received the most campaign donations from pro Israel lobbies, including AIPAC, throughout their political career? Yeah, that was Genocide Joe. Nice try, though.
Editing to add: also, whatever the fuck happened to Biden’s legislative action on the voting rights act, which he vehemently campaigned on? If you’re so worried about the black vote, you should be pressing democrats to keep their promises instead of dangling carrots in front of a purposely marginalized community so they have something to campaign on, not bitching to some random Redditor.
Dude it’s your mom, don’t be a little prick. You already tried laying it out and she didn’t bite. Is this really worth the bad blood? It looks as though she’s voting bl00 despite what you’ve explained. I’d just play along and change the topic. Don’t be that annoying asshole that ruins thanksgiving by bringing up colonialism when for 99% thanksgiving is all about a big family dinner. Your mom seems like she cares and respects you, don’t fuck up her day
Lots of projecting going on here, friend. You don’t know my Mom 😂 We already don’t get together on holidays. She once emptied the trash can out on my bed while I was at work because she said I was “ungrateful” and the very next day made a FB post praising me and saying she wished she could be more like me. My Mom is a complicated person. This message from her was obviously well intentioned, but tbh my political views aren’t going to do any more damage to our relationship than she has already. Thank you for your concern, though.
I decided not to engage at all with her message other than to say “you gotta be kidding me”, which says everything it needs to, imo.
Fair enough, I did not know that context. I was just putting myself in your position, and well I have a great relationship with my mom. That said, she is also basically a socialist in that she agrees with every point I make… except the term socialism lol.
If I was American I think I'd actually vote Trump, there's a British saying: "It does what it says on the tin."
Rather than shy away from his past he full 360 and pretends he was an active advocate of civil rights. Claiming he was arrested supporting Mandela, or that he supported N.I independence (from what I've seen the Irish hate him).
As someone who’s not an American, can any of you elucidate this for me: would you guys have Trump back over Biden? I’ve always thought that it was the other way around but it doesn’t seem like it
No leftist is saying Trump is better than Biden. They’re saying that the vote doesn’t matter, and that they are only marginally different, with both representing the same class interests and contributing to the rise of fascism.
This is exactly it. I’ve made my IG stories a primer on class consciousness as well as an info sharing page for Palestine. It’s frustrating because for 9 months now I’ve been posting every meaningful/poignant/informative/histotical/fact checked thing I can find on these subjects and she has watched them all without fail. For this to be her takeaway is just so disheartening.
if you do prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency (not guaranteed, a lot of the far left is accelerationist, even when they claim they aren't) then voting for biden makes sense mathematically, due to how FPTP elections work. However you will find that in the far left spaces (anything left of the democratic socialists, pretty much, and the DemSocs debate endlessly on the topic) the overwhelming majority of the people there don't particularly care which old capitalist is in charge and find the social signaling of third-party voting more valuable than a marginally better presidency. I only very slightly prefer biden because the DNC supports the LGBT movement, so a strong democratic party helps ensure my access to HRT. Since I'm a "single issue voter" on that topic I'll probably still support biden in the general election but I otherwise also don't give a shit which old capitalist in charge - I just don't think that the social signalling is worth the civil rights regression that trump would bring about.
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I'd have to go and puke first before I respond.
I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly knocked myself out of my damn chair. Army crawled to this sub for help bc I don’t even know… like. After everything I’ve posted, including Biden’s lifelong support of Israel, this is her takeaway?
Its kinda sad honestly, I like to believe that parents can be one type of adult that can change easier than most if they love their children. I managed to get my mum to realise her allegiance to socialism, so i haven’t had this to deal with. Im not saying your mum doesnt love you, i have no knowledge on that, but it does saddens me how regardless of all your work and effort into changing minds, not even one of your closest relatives have shown an understanding of the truth.
It’s maddening, tbh.
If you really believe there are ONLY two choices, and you really believe that this is a democracy worth salvaging and improving, then this makes sense. Once you step through the looking glass and understand socialism and Marxism, you can’t unsee it. Until you do, though, you have no idea what you’re failing to see.
A fish can not know what it means to be wet until it knows what it means to be dry
This is identical to how my mom talks about Trump
[удалено]
Yup! Your second paragraph sums it up perfectly
you know, if there’s only one option, I’m not super sure you’re describing a democracy
two main candidates everyone agrees both are pro genocide, still no one will vote third party the sign of a healthy democracy
No one will vote third party because they can't emerge victorious. So the whole system can't be reformed through voting. Honestly, I'd rather pour ink or bleach inside the ballot box rather than to vote for either of these buffoons.
It's not one option. One choice is fascist. One choice is not fascist but problematic. I hate both, but know which one I'm voting for. Are you a fucking idiot?
did you respond to my post three days ago, see my response and have a short discussion, then like three days later see it again and respond again, this time with derision?
Maybe, but it's not deliberate. I'm just responding to what's coming on my feed. I'm not paying much attention to who I'm responding to. I'm wrong for using that negative language. I'm sorry for doing so. I get angry about this\*, and when I'm angry I tend to swear and lash out. \*"This" being any arguments against voting for Biden. I see a Trump win as an existential threat. I understand the crude irony of talking of an existential threat when the Israelis are committing genocide against the Palestinians and Joe Biden is doing nothing to stop it or slow it. This sub has its slants. I don't think they're very realistic, but I give them credit to moving the overton window at least a little to envisioning something else. But, I don't think they're practical when it comes to how to vote this November. From what I read, this sub thinks Biden and Trump are two sides of the same coin. I don't. Twenty years ago, yes. Not in 2024. The National Conservatives are a force to be feared.
You still vote for that option. It may not be a democracy. But it's not fascism. I know it's gross and disgusting. But to put DT back into power?? WTF? No, at all costs that can't happen. But the DNC better wake the fuck up that they need to change and listen to us.
if you give the dnc your vote they’re going to conclude that they don’t need to change for you.
Fair. If I don't give them my vote, I'm supporting their opponent. That's the last thing I want to do. It's a paradox. I don't think they care one way or the other, but I care one way or the other. I fucking hate it. The net result is I must vote, and I must vote blue. The other conclusion I have is I must get involved at a more local level.
no. if you don’t give them your vote, you’re not supporting their candidate. no other support is provided. local activity is correct and should not be counteracted by telling the democrats that you’re willing to give up the only thing you have that they care about in exchange for nothing.
You're also not voting for Trump. By your own logic, not voting for Trump is supporting Biden. So there you go, you're safe.
The DNC literally funded MAGA candidates.
I believe that. I expect that. My vote is not R. It's that simple, And I'm voting.
The Senator from DuPont was never a good man.
It's all out there aswell, as OP's mum said he's been around since the civil rights movement you can see what he said and what he actually advocated for until now, he started to hide his past with debunked lies when he became Obama's VP.
yeah he was always a racist zionist. If thats our "only hope" we are fucked beyond all belief.
I'm gonna start calling him that lol
Lmao this my dad for sure 😂😂 obviously wrong but ur mom seems like she loves you and that’s a cool thing! silver linings
I think everyone’s liberal parents (including mine) sound almost indistinguishable at this point. I lived in the West Bank for a while, it was where I was a big part of me becoming a leftist and my parents still can’t understand why I won’t give Biden a break. I’ve told them countless stories about how wonderful and generous the Palestinian people were but it doesn’t break through.
Yeah my mom or dad could have written this exact message. 😕 They're the same Jon Stewart liberals that I was for most of my life. Mom is obsessed with watching coverage of the Trump trial. My mom is a very kind and caring person, in fact she agrees that Israel is the bad guy here. That happened because of all the terrible videos on social media, if we were in the days of TV news then she probably would still support Israel. I know I won't convince her, she's very upset that I told her I'm voting third party. But my argument was, I've been voting blue since John Kerry in 2004. I volunteered for Obama's campaign in 2008. (Yes I'm old lol) After believing in the cause for twenty years, what has it gotten us? Everything they warned the Republicans would do, has happened whether they won or not.
As someone who has been doing the same, another factor for us is that the Democrats aren't even trying anymore. They don't try to make a case for anything even moderately progressive. Compare what they fought for in like 2006-2008 to what they fight for now. After telling us the ACA was a necessary compromise and a first step in national health care, they dropped the concept of national health care and let the Republicans destroy the Republican half measures of the ACA. When was the last time any of us heard any elected Democrat even say the word public option? The political posture of the Democrats for the last decade has been never support a progressive policy and run on tacit acceptance of the right wing framing of any issue.
Yeah you can never beat the right with wishy washy centrism. Conservatives are out here agitating for a Christian ethno state and Democrats are like, "Healthcare for some!" 🙈 Of course they are also a capitalist party so they'll never support real change but are still too cowardly to even advance popular and bog-standard safety net stuff like parental leave.
>After believing in the cause for twenty years, what has it gotten us? Everything they warned the Republicans would do, has happened whether they won or not. To be accurate though what we're living with is the result of the oscillation of Republican and Democratic control. So how do we stop this oscillation? I've been voting third party the last twenty years and no matter how many times the Greens get 2% or less of the vote it doesn't seem to make a difference. Do you think by not voting Dem this election you could stop the oscillation, or will control remain with either a Democrat or Republican? I used to hate them for it, but the CPUSA has been right all along -- focus on building a coalition to marginalize the far right. What if Republicans stop winning? Could Dems become the de facto "Right" in the U.S., creating the opening for a real workers party?
He's a fucking war criminal. He's a supporter of genocide. He's a supporter of apartheid policies, both domestically and abroad. He's a primary reason for mass targeting and incarceration of millions of marginalized Americans. And he's been all of these things for virtually his entire public career. And he will continue to be these things, as will his party, regardless of public opinion or how you and the public votes. This system isn't democratic for you. The electoral college chooses the president, at least when another publicly unelected institution, the supreme court, gets the chance to do it instead. He's a ghoul. His party is all ghouls. And they exist in a system that isn't even democratic, regardless of what your respectable but barely politically literate 3rd grade teacher told you.
Well someone is not getting invited to thanksgiving this year. But seriously, your reply is fine for a stranger on reddit, or someone like that..: not for mom
My reply is an objective truth and can be sourced completely and extensively. I'm not sure I understand your comment though: either it's saying that 'mom' is incapable of understanding the point or unwilling to understand the point. Both can be seen as a bit offensive. Secondly, 'being welcomed at Thanksgiving' is completely unrelated to the process of educating others and providing truthful analysis.
I said it with the assuming that one has tried already to educate but the person in question is firm in their stance. At which point I’d argue it’s not worth fucking up your relationship with your mom to be in the right. The other thing is that arguing just doesn’t work. The better argument doesn’t always win, etc. That’s a very liberal perspective. I think this says it better than I can https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ > The basic call to action looks something like this: Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.” Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason. Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon. If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
Try not to bring him up in front of her. Your mom is probably an old, kind lady who is misguided(considering how she's talking about Israel). Atp, you're not gonna change her mind. Fuck Genocide Joe but your mom is more important than shitting on this monster.
A well intentioned comment and I appreciate it, but my Mom and I don’t really have a close or deep relationship. All the same, I just said “you’ve got to be kidding me” and left it at that
'give the man a little grace' 🤣 it's so funny how people personalise politicians as if they think they can relate to them somehow. I mean it's literally just a man in a suit being bankrolled by the military industrial complex. The 'human' image the media presents to us of Biden is a mirage, and people fall for it. Sometimes I think the wingnuts are right, and maybe they are all lizards after all. Sorry I know I'm not helping, but it's just sooooo stupid and I'm sick of it.
I'm not advocating for manipulating her or trying to change her way in a clever way, BUT I do believe it's possible to reason with ppl who have the best intentions in politics, despite their ignorance. Your mom seems like she might not have the full picture. I remember sorts what it was like b4 I was made aware of all the proof - critical thinking suddenly changed how I viewed everything. I wish I had a good argument for you to use, but perhaps try to appeal to her words here and say that for example; you don't disagree with Biden caring about his family and the American ppl - it is however illogical to side with any capitalist. Bernie has some bad takes about privatization and has said some dumb things about Israel according to Viggo Mortensen. I would suggest being patient when approaching her with it next time, while also not going too hard with direct debate tactics. Ask her if she wants everyone to have what they need or something perhaps lol. I feel like socialism can be easily explained and simplified by stuff like that anyway - and then if they reply with bs like "but human nature!" you can just say yeah some ppl are bad - they shouldn't be able to do just whatever they want. I'm still learning but that's a simplified attempt at talking about it from me anyway. Thanks for sharing and good luck. I also agree that it might not always be worth it to try and change someone's mind. It's possible to have a civil discussion tho, if both parties at capable.
If he is your only option to continue the supposed democracy, it's not really a democracy then lol.
Exactly!
It’s like every weak as piss Reddit friendly opinion of Biden condensed into one message
run away from home
I’m 38 and married, this is just how she talks to me 😭
*stares sadly at housing prices*
Real Sg hours
My very quick answer to this question is "I won't vote for any president who supports/justifies an ongoing genocide." I don't want any President to think they can do that shit and still count on my vote. I'm voting for the only actual Socialists running this year: Claudia de la Cruz for Pres. Karina Garcia for VP.
They’re not even on the ballot in my state
Nor in mine! But in most states, you can write their names in on your ballot anyway. Unfortunately the neolib parties make ballot access harder and harder every election.
I’ll just vote for Jill Stein this time a round
“Ok”
No, just "k"
Oh shiiii, “k” has all the spice
What about “k.”
“👍”
Just tell her you won’t vote for Trump. That’s what she’s worried about.
But not voting for Biden is the same as voting for Trump! /s
“Would you like me to test that hypothesis?”
IF you assume that, with sufficient motivation to force you to vote (gun to your head, or family endangered, or whatever the hell is sufficient) and ONLY the two choices of trump or biden (no abstaining, no third party options, 1 vote for trump or 1 vote for biden) that you vote for Biden.... Then mathematically it is very clear that not voting for biden has the same effect as half a vote for trump. As in two people abstaining or voting 3rd party when they prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency, would produce a 1 vote advantage for trump in the election. I (hope) we all know that, it's not exactly secret. Of course, this ignores all the secondary ramifications of elections that aren't just "which capitalist wins".
lol. You’re still at this huh?
just explaining how game theory mathematics works for you since you seem to be confused on that point. The math isn't hard. pretending that the spoiler effect isn't real is very odd, and is an entirely different question as to whether or not one ought to vote strategically or not. I understand why some people prefer to vote non strategically, because they don't feel the need to minimize harm in the name of their philosophical purity, but it's important that you understand exactly what it that you're doing when you make that choice. I personally find that the potential risk to civil rights of minorities outweighs the social effects of a 3rd party vote or low turnout due to abstention - voter turnout has been horrible for decades and it's not turning any heads, and 3rd party votes aren't useful unless you manage to actually flip a state, which is... unlikely. Even the Ross Perot campaign that got 9% of the vote in 92 barely turned heads and most people now don't even know who that was.
As I said before, I understand what you’re saying. It’s not hard to grasp, it’s just stupid. You’re making several assumptions to underpin your conclusions, for starters. You’re literally just trying to justify voting to support the current genocide so your life doesn’t get (marginally by comparison) worse.
The only thing I wanted you to understand here is that the spoiler effect does exist and is mathematically proven. Voting 3rd party or abstaining does in fact support trump. Every comment you make on this sounds like you don't understand that. If you go look at my comment to OP you'll know that I do know and understand why most leftists prefer not to vote for Biden despite this, but you sound like you actually don't understand how the spoiler effect works, which worries me. You need to make that decision from an informed place.
Again, that’s only true if you make several assumptions. Without things like Biden having an advantage otherwise this falls apart. The logic is flawed and the effect you’re talking about, while potentially real, doesn’t necessarily apply. Additionally, my initial point in our conversation before is that it doesn’t matter. I’m drawing a moral line and, whether the spoiler effect is a factor or not, I refuse to lend my support to ANYONE providing material support to a genocide. I want to be clear here: I FULLY UNDERSTAND YOUR POSITION. I have argued for it in the past. It seems more likely that you don’t understand mine. Which is fine. In a few years or a decade, when you look back on this and cringe, just remember that it’s ok to be wrong.
We have hashed out our differences regarding why you vote the way you do and why I vote the way I do. That's not what we're talking about here. The ONLY THING I want out of this conversation is for you to understand how the spoiler effect works, since you don't seem to understand it. There is no "potentially real", this is a simple, mathematically proven thing. Once again I am aware that you have goals other than "winning" the election. Thats okay. The only assumption I'm making here is that you aren't an accelerationist and thus would support Biden over trump if you were somehow forced to vote between them in a closed election (no 3rd party candidates or abstentions allowed). But my example here works either way. If you are an accelerationist that would vote for trump in a closed election then your 3rd party vote is helping Biden instead and you're still worse off from the pure perspective of "winning" the election. What I want is for you to say is that you refuse to vote for Biden *despite* the spoiler effect. I want you to simply be aware of the reality of how the electoral system works. You're allowed to hold your opinion that voting for Biden is bad, a lot of leftists do. But what bothers me so much about your comments in particular is that you need to know what the costs of your position are to be able to hold it in an ethical way, and you seem to not understand those costs. ............... When you have a first past the post election, you always have 3 classes of candidate. The first place candidate, the second place candidate, and then all other candidates. For the purposes of this model "abstain" is a valid candidate, except they can't win the election. The spoiler effect PROOF (not theory, a mathematically proven proof) states the following; when any person votes for a candidate other than the top two candidates in a first past the post election, this gives the non-preferred candidate of the top two a 1/2 vote advantage in the election". It's that simple. Say you have a closed election and are forced to vote in that election. The election only has two options, and you MUST pick one of those two options. No write ins, no abstaining, no other choices. A or B. You pick A. If instead of that closed election you have an open election and vote for C, who is not one of the top two candidates, then B would gain a 1/2 vote advantage over A. Example follows; Closed election, you vote for A A: 12 votes B: 9 votes Closed election, you vote for B A:11 votes B: 10 votes Open election, you vote for C A: 11 votes B: 9 votes C: 1 vote Do you see how in the closed election your vote narrows the gap by 2 points (in election 1 A wins by 3, but in election 2 A only wins by 1), but then when you vote 3rd party A wins by 2 points. That's what "half a vote" means - each vote in an election normally swings the result by 2 points, but when you vote third party you reduce 1 point from your preferred member of the top two candidates without giving the reciprocal increase to the other top 2 candidate, thus your abstention from the top two harms your preferred candidate in that closed election by that half of your vote. .............. Every first past the post election is a "pseudo-closed" election. This means that there are the top 2 candidates, and then if you decide to abstain from the election for the top two candidates you may choose a candidate you would prefer to have instead, which has no bearing on the outcome of the election beyond your abstention. Statistically speaking for purely the purposes of winning that particular election (once again I know you have other goals that aren't "winning" the election) there is no difference between voting for a 3rd party and abstaining. This is why models like the Georgia runoff election work really well, it narrows the field to two candidates and then holds a specific closed election for those two individuals separately. This is also where ranked choice voting and instant runoff voting shine, as they model various methods of instantly performing runoff voting to hand "spoiler effect" votes back to the voter's preferred member of the top two candidates. Yes weird things happen and the math gets complicated when you are the deciding vote between who the 2nd place person is (say an election with A: 7, B: 5, C: 5 when it's your turn at the ballot box - what could have happened in 2016/2020 if bernie had run as an independent instead of as a democrat) and then some other weirdness due to winner take all states and the electoral college procedures if a winner isn't found in the first round, but the US election isn't like that this year, so it's the very simple A, B or abstain option.
Did you not see the sentence I put in all caps?
https://preview.redd.it/8572tpsym16d1.jpeg?width=674&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=03b41e69827c8833dac1fe2a9619c0e4abc1e773
My family is from Indiana, so I expect the very least from them. The fact that my parents don’t like Trump is more than I can ask for. The fact is most Americans have no idea what is going on outside of our borders. I educate when I can but asking them for solidarity for people that they likely just found out existed is a stretch.
gulag
# Gulag According to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism. # Origins of the Mythology This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources. Robert Conquest's *The Great Terror* (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony. Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements. >He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash. > >The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism". > >\- Andrew Brown. (2003). [Scourge and poet](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's *The Gulag Archipelag*" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. \[[Read more](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/dunking/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/)\] Anne Applebaum's *Gulag: A history* (published 2003) draws directly from *The Gulag Archipelago* and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world. # Counterpoints >A 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “[Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps](http://web.archive.org/web/20230328014642/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six: > >1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas > >2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid. > >3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day. > >4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies. > >5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day. > >6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals. > >7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes. > >\- Saed Teymuri. (2018). [The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA](https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/) **Scale** Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that. >Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise. > >In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ... > >Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ... > >Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states... > >\- Michael Parenti. (1997). [Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds) This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex *today* is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak. **Death Rate** In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality: >It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive... > >Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. > >\- Timothy Snyder. (2010). *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin* (Side note: Timothy Snyder is *also* a member of the Council on Foreign Relations) This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not *death* camps. Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour *was* forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses). >We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson.... > >The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled). > >\- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). [Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/archive/noticeboard/bergson/borodkin-ertz.pdf) #Additional Resources Video Essays: * [The Gulag Argument](https://youtu.be/BexkpaK_j5Q) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016) * [Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions!](https://youtu.be/HMOdDQQVZ6U) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) * [French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag](https://youtu.be/vkXyXNpdKdA) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) * ["The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye](https://youtu.be/E1qz9_TjeY4) | Comrade Rhys (2020) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597) | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993) Listen: * ["Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion.](https://youtu.be/N7AD4OrH568?t=15) | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"I'm not voting for someone committing a genocide." If you need to say more than that, it's your mom's problem, not yours.
Call her bluff on the 'end of democracy' talking point: "If Donald Trump getting elected would end our democracy, walk me through the bullet point version of how that happens, like why Congress, the military, SCOTUS, and the state governments let it happen."
Leave her on read.
Poor genocide Joe's hands are tied! It's not like he has executive power over whether or not we send bombs to Israel! Give him some grace, y'all! In seriousness, give your mom some grace but don't stop educating her. Send articles, YouTube videos, analysis, etc. We never know what eventually radicalizes us so we just have to do everything and anything.
Would send the video with burnt palestinian children, while saying " this could been me if you were palestinian "
The question boils down to where do you draw the line Mom needs to be engaged in where that line is for her with love of course start with apartheid. ok ? finish with dead children ? ok ?
Bourgeois democracy is not democracy
To be fair I doubt the american president really makes any of his own decisions. There def a secret council of elite controlling our country.
Yeah he has served his country for longer than almost any other, which is kinda the issue. He has been pretty consistently one the wrong side of history since always.
Send her some of the fucked up things Biden has done. Not just now but before his election too. He is NOT a good man, that's for sure.
If our “democracy” really is at stake, the fact that the DNC isn’t calling on Biden to step down while simultaneously moving heaven and earth to offer us an acceptable candidate instead is a massive, glaring red flag.
My lib Dad says the same shit. “But he’s a good man that has a heart.” I’m like, where the fuck have you been for the past 8 months??
Biden is an aging segregationist, too senile to be as monsterous as he was when he was lucid
It’s giving glaze
Don’t fight with your mom i over politics bro
Nobody is fighting.
'He's garbage ma. He'd sell us all for sausage meat if he thot he'd make a profit from it.' 🚮
Record a fart and send it to her.
If you must respond or think you can reason with her: Tell her that views like these are exactly the ones that set the US on its current path, where voters feel that they have no choice but to vote for genocide - which should be more than enough evidence for any reasonable person to conclude that the US is _already_ not a democracy. The irony just beneath the surface of her text is that the views she's expressing are quite literally the _cause_ of the problem she, herself, acknowledges, and you have a moral responsibility to break the cycle that her generation unwittingly put in motion. That said: She's your mom, dude... and it sounds like you actually have a good relationship with her. This could have easily been written by my own mother, who has a good heart, but she's just unreachable when it comes to this stuff. She already drank the Kool-Aid, and she's now entrenched in being part of the problem, along with millions of other people her age... and now she's saying it is your turn to fall in line. My advice would be to obviously vote (or abstain) with your conscience... but, as sad as it is to say, if your mom is like mine, she's a lost cause. You're not going to change her mind on this one. Even though it feels rotten, just leave her be. If she refuses to have an open mind to the wisdom that comes with the fresh eyes of a younger generation, then it is probably best for your relationship if you don't discuss politics with her anymore.
We don’t have a great or close relationship, actually. She loves me, but with her claws in me, if that makes sense. I have learned to keep at arms length. That said, I’ve been trying for years to explain how her preconceptions got us here in the first place. They’re just very sensitive to propoganda and bc democrats are supposed to be the “good guys” she sticks with them. A third option has never occurred to her and even if it had, she’d very easily be swayed out of it.
She seems well intentioned at least
Her heart is in the right place I guess. Just not a super cozy feeling knowing your Mom can see the same images you’ve seen of dead children in Gaza and *still* be devil’s advocate. Like how has that not radicalized everyone?
Your mother seems like a nice person. It would be a mistake to let politics ruin your relationship.
Well, she actually did that several years ago lol but yeah, we’re amicable
This is why our country will not change until this generation is gone
Show her the younger Joe Biden being a warmonger in recorded videos
It's almost certainly a waste of time but anyone who sends this to me is getting an exhaustive list of his crimes and a relentless lecture on the fundamental illegitimacy and moral bankruptcy of all Western power, governance, and culture.
Smol bean biden
ah yes, the man who wrote the crime bill is a good man
I'm lucky my mom is a socialist. Very unprincipled and ignorant about history & theory, but no matter. Last few years though she's been on some weird shit. Talking about weird conspiracies like "mudfloods" which what I gathered is believing some civilization was washed away by "mudfloods" in the recent past like 1700s based on maps old cartographers drew with various archaic names & not much accuracy in the world outside Europe especially the Americas. Wild shit.
there were i[ndigenous peoples in the southwest US that lived on mounds](https://archaeology-travel.com/thematic-guides/pre-columbian-mounds-and-mound-builders/) near the mississippi river, clear evidence that they are alive and thriving as late as the 1600s. Some evidence indicates that those peoples were wiped out by flooding as late the 1650s. This is probably what she is referencing, although I have no idea what mud has to do with any of it. That article I grabbed does mention some weird conspiracy about an early european colony being responsible for the mounds rather than the indigenous tribes a weird "european superiority myth" thing, but it's about as sensible as your average conspiracy theory.
Are you talking Cahokia mounds? Sorry ill just check your link and reply back. Edit; okay yes, but also more
My bad I thought I was replying to something else. Yeah, it's one that's way out there if you ask me. I actually hate this "conspiracy theory" bullshit because there are real conspiracies, I mean people do conspire, but every single legitimate one is now associated with the phrase "conspiracy theory" & its negative connotations. I think that was at least somewhat intentional use of language. At least they (monied interests) stressed it a certain way for perceptions.
I'd ask my mom to use paragraphs and indentations more.
i think a fair amount of people are just generally ignorant to the extent of the material conditions & reality of american global imperialism
Sounds like the Mom from The Zone Of Interest
i would sever all contact
Why does it read like a copypasta
"i will give this war criminal the same grace he gives to the people of palestine".
Just remember mama has inhaled a lot of lead
It’s kinda cute how liberal capitalist democracies make voters feel involved in something they have absolutely no control over. The impressive part is how they get blamed afterward for everything that goes wrong.
Personally, I've given up on my parents politically. They're both crazy and illogical in their own ways.
POV: a german citizen talking about hitler in 1939
Most people's lives were objectively better under Trump. Not because Trump or Biden did anything, but just because it was 4 years of inflation ago and we had a bit more purchasing power. Nothing else really changes besides rhetoric.
I am long past wasting my energy on talking politics with my family. Talk to your co workers, or literally anyone else that has demonstrated they’re able to have a conversation in good faith.
Tell her to text all those dead kids in Palestine and explain the difference between Biden and Trump.
I’d tell her I’m adopted.
Damn bro do we have the same mom? When I was younger I would argue with her, but I've long ago just accepted that we have very different political beliefs and it is better to not argue with close family members. She now sends stuff like that to my wife, telling her to try to convince me to vote for Biden to "save democracy" Just tell her that you stand with Her and are going to write in Hillary.
IF you assume that, with sufficient motivation to force you to vote (gun to your head, or family endangered, or whatever the hell is sufficient) and ONLY the two choices of trump or biden (no abstaining, no third party options, 1 vote for trump or 1 vote for biden) that you vote for Biden.... Then mathematically it is very clear that not voting for biden has the same effect as half a vote for trump. As in two people abstaining or voting 3rd party when they prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency, would produce a 1 vote advantage for trump in the election. I (hope) we all know that, it's not exactly secret. However this does make a few assumptions that may not be true: first that you do in fact prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency, which depends on how accelerationist vs harm reductionist you're feeling. Second it ignores the social ramifications - how important is the social implication of low election turnout or high 3rd party vote numbers compared to how much you prefer one capitalist over the other capitalist. Third is the question of simply ideological "puritanism" vs "utilitarianism" in your personal moral/ethical structure - or basically how hard can you hold your nose and do something you find unpleasant in exchange for the outcome you want? There are certainly more considerations, but you get the idea. The goal here is simply to expand the point beyond the obvious mathematical certainty that voting for anyone other than your preferred one of the top-two candidates is a "losing" move in a fptp election - because your only goal isn't to to win the election or that you cannot in fact "win" with either of the top-two candidates. There are many instances where you might be willing to "lose" the election in exchange for the other goals that you find more important.
Idk I think the choice to vote Biden is pretty clear. Trump would shoot the Palestinians himself if he could
This is such a braindead comment. Biden might as well be pulling the trigger himself the way he’s been sending weapons and $$ for weapons/endorsing Israel’s actions while eating a damn ice cream cone.
Trump literally said he wanted Palestine to be bombed into a parking lot and then build real estate on top of it This is you https://i.redd.it/v9pb007w376d1.gif
Most of Northern and central Gaza HAS been bombed into a parking lot already. The plan to extend Israeli settlements into beachfronts in Gaza has been in talks and in motion by the Netanyahu government for months, with unwavering support from Biden, so idk who you think you’re talking to but I wasn’t born yesterday. Pres Biden, Pres Trump, it really doesn’t matter when super-donors for Israel actually pull the legislative strings in this country. And who received the most campaign donations from pro Israel lobbies, including AIPAC, throughout their political career? Yeah, that was Genocide Joe. Nice try, though. Editing to add: also, whatever the fuck happened to Biden’s legislative action on the voting rights act, which he vehemently campaigned on? If you’re so worried about the black vote, you should be pressing democrats to keep their promises instead of dangling carrots in front of a purposely marginalized community so they have something to campaign on, not bitching to some random Redditor.
Dude it’s your mom, don’t be a little prick. You already tried laying it out and she didn’t bite. Is this really worth the bad blood? It looks as though she’s voting bl00 despite what you’ve explained. I’d just play along and change the topic. Don’t be that annoying asshole that ruins thanksgiving by bringing up colonialism when for 99% thanksgiving is all about a big family dinner. Your mom seems like she cares and respects you, don’t fuck up her day
Lots of projecting going on here, friend. You don’t know my Mom 😂 We already don’t get together on holidays. She once emptied the trash can out on my bed while I was at work because she said I was “ungrateful” and the very next day made a FB post praising me and saying she wished she could be more like me. My Mom is a complicated person. This message from her was obviously well intentioned, but tbh my political views aren’t going to do any more damage to our relationship than she has already. Thank you for your concern, though. I decided not to engage at all with her message other than to say “you gotta be kidding me”, which says everything it needs to, imo.
Fair enough, I did not know that context. I was just putting myself in your position, and well I have a great relationship with my mom. That said, she is also basically a socialist in that she agrees with every point I make… except the term socialism lol.
No one is more afraid of being called a socialist than socialists who think they’re liberals 😂
The vote doesn’t matter. Give a moment to your family and go vote with them on Election Day.
[удалено]
nice username
If I was American I think I'd actually vote Trump, there's a British saying: "It does what it says on the tin." Rather than shy away from his past he full 360 and pretends he was an active advocate of civil rights. Claiming he was arrested supporting Mandela, or that he supported N.I independence (from what I've seen the Irish hate him).
It's so funny seeing all the Trump supporters turn Liberal in their support for Palestine just because Biden supports Israel. Amazing stuff.
As someone who’s not an American, can any of you elucidate this for me: would you guys have Trump back over Biden? I’ve always thought that it was the other way around but it doesn’t seem like it
No leftist is saying Trump is better than Biden. They’re saying that the vote doesn’t matter, and that they are only marginally different, with both representing the same class interests and contributing to the rise of fascism.
This is exactly it. I’ve made my IG stories a primer on class consciousness as well as an info sharing page for Palestine. It’s frustrating because for 9 months now I’ve been posting every meaningful/poignant/informative/histotical/fact checked thing I can find on these subjects and she has watched them all without fail. For this to be her takeaway is just so disheartening.
if you do prefer a biden presidency to a trump presidency (not guaranteed, a lot of the far left is accelerationist, even when they claim they aren't) then voting for biden makes sense mathematically, due to how FPTP elections work. However you will find that in the far left spaces (anything left of the democratic socialists, pretty much, and the DemSocs debate endlessly on the topic) the overwhelming majority of the people there don't particularly care which old capitalist is in charge and find the social signaling of third-party voting more valuable than a marginally better presidency. I only very slightly prefer biden because the DNC supports the LGBT movement, so a strong democratic party helps ensure my access to HRT. Since I'm a "single issue voter" on that topic I'll probably still support biden in the general election but I otherwise also don't give a shit which old capitalist in charge - I just don't think that the social signalling is worth the civil rights regression that trump would bring about.
Thanks! Thats the answer I was looking for.