That tracks with the context. Thanks!

We don’t know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky

That sounds familiar, like a quote from some movie or game. What’s it from?

to give you some context, in the US there is no popular vote for presidency.

I’m aware, and I’m also a vocal opponent of the FPTP system that produces the spoiler effect in the first place, without which the whole question would be moot. But as you said, there is little incentive for either of the big parties to change the system that keeps them in power. Frankly, if there is to be any hope for democratic change, I think that thing has to be the fdreamto go.

my vote for president in the general has essentially zero impact. the democrats win by such a large margin that voting no confidence or for communists running 3rd party is more ‘useful’ under the reform-electoral framework than voting for the democrats. getting a party that challenges capital to a non-negligible percentage is what communists should do if the option is available.

if anything it’s the ‘blue no matter who’ browbeating which is serving to suppress left-wing dissent in the party. there are a lot of states in the country where that’s the wrong position. if democrats had anti-capitalist 3rd party challengers in safe blue states, they might actually have to be something other than diet republicans.

Yeah, that’s what I meant (unless I forgot to add it) with voting third party in places where it doesn’t matter. Even in places where democrats lose by a large margin, third party would be a reasonable choice for sending that signal. Imagine their faces if they came in third in a red state… Ah, one can dream.

i vote for whatever progressive challengers there are in the primaries, however this year there has been a widespread pattern of democrats winning their primaries and then abandoning trans people. every day there’s a new campaign ad from democrats across the country talking about ‘protecting girls sports’.

Okay, this is definitely an issue of perspective on my part. I didn’t see as much of that, but you’ll obviously be far more sensitive to that issue. Yeah, no debate, that’s fucked up.

they were arrested.

Something something bastards…

the reason ‘libs’ are so broadly hated is because they serve capital and protect institutions over people.

The difficulty I have with this is that I occadionally see people decried as libs that don’t seem to share that sentiment. This might not be you specifically, but there is a vocal part of the fediverse that seems bent on putting people in boxes to beat on. I’ve also been called liberal before because I disagreed with someone on some point. I might have well been wrong then, as I have been here too on some points, and I know I’m not entitled to any correction, but instead of any nuanced treatment, my entire worldview was reduced to that interpretation of my statement.

In short, my concern is that the label “libs” has been (mis-)used so broadly that I’m not convinced your statement holds for everyone who has been subjected to that designation.

To be clear, I’m not saying that it doesn’t apply to actual liberals. I’m right with you on hating people that think a CEO making several hundred times as much as the person cleaning their pissoir is justified, respond to any mention of police violence with the same anecdote about a cocktail being thrown at cops that one time or tilt at the “leftist lunatics” for being disruptive with their protests. Those are all personal examples I’ve picked fights over.

I’m saying there’s a demography of political “orphans” that want things to get better, don’t know any other system than the one they’ve grown up in and default to liberalism out of ignorance and uncertainty. In my opinion, they don’t deserve the same hatred, and I feel we should be more precise in that regard.

That said, I absolutely understand that you’ve got enough troubles and, after worrying about healthcare, livelihood and the right to exist, don’t have the nerve or patience to spare to also worry about the distinction between those who hurt you and those who watch it happen and do nothing. I mistook that for arrogance, but I agree that you don’t owe anyone that charity.

I’m very glad you went to this length to talk to me and show me perspectives I genuinely didn’t know. You’ve given me things to think about, to talk to other people about, to check my own preconceptions.

I hope things get better for you.

Maybe there’s a regional difference then? I’m passing on the synthesis of lectures I’ve been given by other transgender communists and people of color, but I don’t know where they’re based. In any case, there clearly are dems that do defend trans rights; I’m sorry that the rest are failing you.

that pressure dissipated when the left got absorbed into electoralism.

Yeah, the idea that elections alone can fix anything is bullshit and I’ll admit I took long to understand that lesson. It only really sank in after 2021, I think.

Change needs to be cemented with popular support to stick, but the pressure to change things in the first place will need to come from outside.

do you really think the same people that built these structures up will dismantle them?

No. That’s why their traditionalist leadership is so incensed at the “insurgency” of progressive candidates gaining visibility and influence in primaries: they don’t want those structures challenged, but the fact that people are electing reformers at all is a threat to their democratic legitimacy for preserving the structures. Their efforts might fail, but for now, they’re a problem to the leadership.

By contrast, the Republicans have made an explicit point of suppressing all dissent. There are no (visible) challengers, because no freedom of expression is allowed in the first place. Whatever charge of building and maintaining such structures we may bring against the Democrats, the Republicans have made things much worse. Any semi-progressive measures the Obama administration might have undertaken were rolled back, while any restrictive ones were accelerated.

The notion that both sides are equal just smudges over a lot of these distinctions. Obama wasn’t great, but this is significantly worse.

i do vote, just not for genocidal centrist parties

The idea to vote left in primaries, but vote anti-right in general elections where actual leftist chances are slim for all the reasons you’ve brought up. When one option is objectively worse in some aspects and better in none, standing on the moral high ground does nothing for the people in the valley being overrun. All they hear from the right is the propaganda “They want to take away all your shit” and all they see from us is hostility and condescension.

Don’t get me wrong, voting left is better than not voting at all, and if it’s a deeply one-sided election, it may even be more prudent. But the message “I won’t vote for the people that’ll hurt you less” sounds a lot like “I won’t protect you”. I don’t think that’s your intention, but from the conversations I’ve head, that’s the impression many get.

That’s really the core of my argument: many liberal voters don’t really want this, but don’t (yet) see the restrictions of the system and how it preserves this shit. We don’t yet have the leverage to topple the system, and with each step the fascists get to take, it’ll become harder to build that leverage.

Hence, I believe that we should adapt our messaging (not our ideals, just the way we present them) to be less hostile to the closest thing we get in terms of like-minded people. It’s not a problem of ideology, but of PR. We’re not gonna radicalise voters that perceive us as arrogant pricks, just feed into the “left and right are both bad” centrist narrative of complacency.

If we can emphasise that we (mostly) want the same goals - life, liberty, happiness - it will be easier to talk about the reasons that’s impossible right now and the measures we suggest to make it possible.

(As an aside, that’s the problem at the heart of leftist infighting: we tend to forget that we ultimately want the same thing and get hung up on fights about how to achieve it until we accuse each other of being the enemy.)

from where im standing the priviliged one is you

Point taken. Your talking points sounded a lot like the ones I’ve heard others complain about; chalking that up to privilege instead of a different perspective is my mistake. Diminishing your struggles wasn’t my intention.

it justifies supporting any system that’s marginally less repressive than the worst possible alternative

I suppose that depends on your definition of “supporting”. Whether the system persists doesn’t depend on my vote, if there is no realistic option to abolish it by voting, nor does not voting seem to have much of an effect. But for some people, that margin makes a world of a difference, sometimes even between life and death. Whether trans people get to piss in peace (and generally exist) or whether the ICE gets to ramp up its operations does depend on votes.

That doesn’t mean I support the system, just that I acknowledge its nuances and that I’m not throwing marginalised people under the bus just because it doesn’t fix the root cause.

what policy influence did the left actually extract from liberals in exchange for votes?

Dunno, all the labour protections and antitrust measures the fascists are rolling back? They wouldn’t need to gut them if they didn’t work anyway; they could just keep up pretenses and work on other things.
The civil rights that, by your own description, the liberals only supported to once they realised it was more popular? Again, they’re not great, but you’ll have to admit that they’re loads better than the alternative we’re seeing now.

my approach is building organizations in my community to feed people abandoned by liberal capitalism. that’s what i see as actively undermining the system.

Agreed. Building structures that show how things could be done better challenges the value of performative social measures. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also vote; these things aren’t exclusive.

i don’t care about the election sideshow and all the rationalizations people come up with to get people to vote for their preferred hitler.

The simple fact is that liberals have also enacted a lot of progressive measures over the last two centuries, whether due to their own ideals or due to leftist pressure. It’s not enough, but for many people, it’s a significant improvement anyway. To call that “their preferred hitler” is an incredibly reductive and arrogant take that reeks of privilege. It’s easy to call the election a “sideshow” if your life isn’t impacted, but that overlooks the people whose lives are.

Those people are the common ground I’m talking about. Dismissing them and anyone who cares about them as “libs” doesn’t make you a better leftist, it just makes you a worse ally.

Okay, we’re definitely working with different definitions then. I don’t see much of a point arguing about the history of the term and associated policies.

Today’s liberals are certainly better than conservatives or fascists when it comes to human rights and shit, and that’s the people we’re working with right now. We can labour over the sins of their ancestors, or we can attempt to influence their policies to our benefit until we’re in a position where we no longer need their cooperation.

a system that presents the best environment for working toward its own replacement is a contradiction in terms.

Counterpoint: wouldn’t a system that doesn’t even permit these conversations be a worse environment? If there are worse environments, doesn’t that make the others better by comparison? Isn’t the “least bad” equivalent to “the best”?

Alternatively, what would you posit as the best conditions for working towards toppling the system?

Maybe we’re working with different understanding of liberals then, but to my mind, ideals like equality before the law and freedom of association certainly put them closer to us than conservatives or fascists. Social liberal policies like worker protections, universal healthcare and social security measures shouldn’t be needed, but they are at least attempts to counteract the worst tendencies of unbridled capitalism.

Out of the dominant political movements, liberalism presents the best environment to work towards replacing the system. At least they won’t lock us up in labour camps for being black, being gay or being a little too critical of the regime. As allies go, I think we could do far worse, so I’d rather save my vitriol for the shared enemy until we’re in a position to fix this shit.

wild, cause this describes pretty much every lib that i run into on here.

I never understood why “libs” are so broadly hated within the leftist spheres. Pro-capitalist stances in some strains of liberalism, sure, but at least in terms of human rights, equality, rule of law and such, it feels like we should have more common ground with them than this animosity implies.