The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
That’s QUITTER talk! I’m voting for Rocky Road.
So the cliff?
Brick on the pedal.
I LOVE Rocky Road
This one’s much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don’t you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
There’s a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
I had people unironically tell me that Kamala Harris was no better than Hitler, and that she & Trump were the same but just did the exact same harm in “different areas,” which is why it looked like they were any different policy-wise. 💀
They did. They were dumb enough to fall for it and now we have concentration camps.
Yeah the genocide angle is just “both sides” with sprinkles. It’s a really effective misdirection.
Since both support Genocide I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s nazis vs non-nazis. It’s more like genocide over there vs genocide maybe here and there. That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen. A lot of people are speculating that things will happen that didn’t last time Trump was in charge. It definitely could happen, but I don’t think it’s as likely as people are making out. Trump would have to convince all of the keys to power to abandon democracy, and that hasn’t happened yet. He is already getting push back for certain things, not to mention braking up with Elon.
Anyway I sure am glad I don’t live in the USA. Although honestly my own country is having its own issues. The supposedly left wing party seem to have decided they have the same level of support for trans people that the right wing one does, or at least their leader is willing to follow the conservatives on that issue. I almost regret voting for him now.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
Wtf? They already have. They’ve ballooned ICE’s budget to more than that of the marines. They want to deport 65 million latinos. That’s all the Latinos. They’ve already gone full authoritarian dictatorship while you were watching
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
It has happened, is continuing to happen, and will get worse. ICE now has a large budget than most militaries and Trump is exploring ways to “deport” American citizens (probably to concentration camps). They’re exploring ways to essentially make migrant farm workers slaves. The supreme Court just made it harder for judges to pause executive orders. The US (of which I’m a citizen) is fucked.
The delusion that democrats don’t also put many people in cages is a huge part of how we got here.
Time to stop thinking this will end in 4 years with an election. American democracy died on January 20th.
You’re on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
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Who let Tim Pool in here
A world with half as many people in it would be so nice. Thanos had the right idea.
Every time I see people complaining about 3rd party voters all I can picture is the “Am I so out of touch?” meme. Like, y’all already shot yourselves in the face 3 times in a row and it surprisingly didn’t fail 1/3 times, but you’ll blame literally anyone but yourselves. Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money, and we would not be anywhere near where we are now. People vote for trump because they don’t want another fucking “nothing will fundamentally change” politician. The country is already shit. It needs to change. But dems are happy with it how it is. They don’t care about immigrants, or poor people, or social security, or women’s rights, or whatever. They just hold onto those as carrots on a stick. They just want to keep making millions, and would rather trump win so they don’t have to actually embrace populist policy. That’s why people don’t vote. The choice isn’t ice cream or drive off a cliff. Its do we drive into a wall and die now, or drive off a cliff so it takes slightly longer to die, the drive off a cliff people shot the 2 people who asked if they could vote for ice cream and that’s why the others didn’t vote.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Their absolutely pathetic response to Mamdani’s victory in the primary was so flagrant, I’m not even sure how to react to the Democratic party going forward. Not only did they try to stack the deck in Cuomo’s favor, but then they threw a fucking tantrum when Cuomo still lost despite their efforts. They just don’t seem credible to me anymore.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Golly gee, if only there were some way that parties decided what candidates they were going to run, and what policies that candidate supported.
Unfortunately, as we all know, such decisions are made by The Secret Cabal and us lowly voters have no part in it.
Signed, someone who had a fever dream in 2016 and 2020 and remembered voting in something called a ‘primary’ for some ‘Bernie Sanders’ guy.
Sure dude, keep pretending the DNC doesn’t run anything and that they have zero influence or agenda and it’s all the perfect will of the people. You’re right, the people with billions of dollars in charge of the party are really just chill dudes who listen to what people really want.
Sorry for not thinking that every public poll was rigged by The Shadow Elite and that Bernie actually won the primaries by millions of votes which were shredded without a single hint of evidence left behind by the Puppetmasters of the DNC.
Maybe people are voting for what they want, and the issue is a lack of education…?
No, no, it must be the Shadow Cabal sabotaging all the polls. I’m SURE of it!
Pug. Long time fan here but I’m curious if you’ve read “Shattered” yet? It is a well researched book about the inner machinations of the Hillary campaign and goes into depth as to what / how things went horribly wrong. I used to think like you, but the reality is it’s a bit of column A and a bit of column B.
Tl;dr: even if Bernie had polled well among mainstream voters, it would have taken mountains to move the whale that is Hillary. She had ties to every corner of the DNC. It’s not totally that she had to rig the primary, but it was a fools errand to run against someone as powerful and well connected as her.
I mean, my argument isn’t that Hillary didn’t have deep ties to the DNC, or that the DNC didn’t want a coronation in 2016, but that the bias of the DNC and the influence of Hillary’s campaign on the primary beyond that of a normal candidate was not significant enough to create the massive amount we lost by. If we’d lost by 1-2%, or even as high as 4-5%, maybe there’d be a stronger argument, but at 12%, without evidence of serious malfeasance beyond favoritism, it’s pretty clear that… Bernie was just not the more popular candidate. While frustrating, the core problem was not Hillary being well-connected - it’s the US still being an immensely right-wing country.
That Bernie polled even lower in 2020 against Biden, losing many of the areas he carried in 2016, also shows that a non-neglible proportion of the votes Bernie did get were from anti-Hillary votes, rather than pro-socialist sentiment.
Fair point. I do agree that the mainstream electorate skews skews further right than terminally ill online leftists. I just think running a robot over a populist against another populist was a severe miscalculation by the DNC, regardless of how well he polled. Hillary had the charisma of a wooden board and a lot of baggage. Polls are useful to getting a pulse of the people at a moment in time. Many polls showed Bernie outperforming Hillary against Trump. The context matters. But I hear you.
Yeah, the DNC is just a long string of unforced errors. I just don’t want people to think that there’s an easy solution that’s been denied them, because… there isn’t.
This is why I voted for Kamala, as it would’ve reduced harm for a little while…Long enough to figure out an effective counter. Right now, I am using my voice as best as possible to reduce further harm (with the Big Bad Bill coming into effect soon) I dread losing my insurance and wasting away because untreated it’s a guarantee. Given that I live in a mostly Red State, I could be one of the 17 million affected, or spared because I work part-time… If there are elections in the future, I will be voting with harm reduction in mind every time. Unless America becomes a doomed Fascist Nation which devours itself from within.
Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.
In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we’ve already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They’re wrong, but they believe it, and people’s beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren’t on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
But if we vote for the non-vegan ice cream place, we’re telling the leadership that we’re okay with non-vegan options and no progress will ever be made!
/s for the illiterate
Except the two choices are never “ice cream and driving off a cliff.” The options are “drive off a cliff at the speed limit” and “drive off a cliff full speed.” If you demand the choice to not vote for a cliff diving, then it’s your fault we’re driving off a cliff.
Disagree. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re driving off the cliff, everyone in the bus dies. The choices were more like “drive the bus into a building” and “drive the bus into a building and and explode.” The time to demand a “don’t crash” option was long before November 5th last year. As of November 5th, your choices were “explode” or “don’t explode”
The idea that both parties are equally bad misses the part where one of them explodes.
It doesn’t matter how fast you’re driving off the cliff, everyone in the bus dies.
Yes that’s the point. Both choices lead to the same place the only difference is how fast we get there.
If you think that what Trump is doing is the same thing as what would have happened if Harris won, then you’re delusional. I literally can’t communicate with you. You’re incapable of thinking past the two words “genocide bad.” You can’t even get as far as “more genocide worse.” It’s three words, it’s too much for you
I get the feeling I’m about to get a reply proving that last sentence right
Genocide is not my issue. My issue is everyone I can vote for is taking this country in the same direction. The only difference is how nice they are about it.
Right now, since we’ve been forced into the mean path, is the best time to switch out the less bad path to the good one.
What everyone forgets is that the actual voting already happened. The bus company, Cliff driving Committee, voted before the bus embarked. They voted for the bus driver to drive off the cliff to cut spending to maintenance and health insurance to the driver and bus. There only so much the riders can say at that point
The only option the riders have to not drive off the cliff is to take control of the bus.
Precisely
“I voted for the cliff because I know the ice cream place is down below it and I wanted to get there faster.” - Have to assume this person exists, but I’m not sure who they would be in the analogy. 🤔
Edit: Oh, I just had to scroll down a few more comments to find them.
Amazing how consistently they show up on here.
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I think like seven people on the bus would fight to swerve towards the cliff if they were told China is on the edge of it.
One one hand harm reduction is nice, but on the other I have seen exactly nothing from Western politics these past few years to convince me that any harm is being reduced. The principle of harm reduction requires serious, productive action (so not canvassing and voter drives, for the love of God stop doing voter drives) to be taken during the period when the harm is reduced to push democracy off its collision course with fascism. When progressives don’t take that serious action—or worse, actively shut down said action—they’re simply kicking the can down the road, turning harm “reduction” from a credible strategy to a farce. I don’t disagree with the principle, but where’s the action necessary for any of this to make sense? Because as far as I can see, harm reduction in America was the farce version.
One one hand harm reduction is nice, but on the other I have seen exactly nothing from Western politics these past few years to convince me that any harm is being reduced.
For fuck’s sake, have you not looked around to see what’s happened these past six fucking months?
The principle of harm reduction requires serious, productive action (so not canvassing and voter drives, for the love of God stop doing voter drives)
“Stop performing one of the core functions of harm reduction that attempts to reduce harm!”
…
to be taken during the period when the harm is reduced to push democracy off its collision course with fascism.
Pointed out below. But I guess it’s not fast enough for your tastes, so let’s do nothing and usher in the fascists to power instead. After all, politics are like a magical pendulum, where one side winning means the other side must get an equivalent win eventually!
When progressives don’t take that serious action—or worse, actively shut down said action—
When the fuck are progressives shutting down serious action?
they’re simply kicking the can down the road, turning harm “reduction” from a credible strategy to a farce.
You’re absolutely right. In the wise words of a political party canvassing for seemingly everything a good fucking third of the ‘left’ commenters here have come to adore, we’re all going to die someday. So why not as soon as possible?
Critical support for harm acceleration! Fuck those minorities anyway.
I don’t disagree with the principle, but where’s the action necessary for any of this to make sense? Because as far as I can see, harm reduction in America was the farce version.
“We’ve managed to make ‘socialism’ into an acceptable word in politics and almost got a democratic socialist into a major party’s nomination twice in the past ten years, in a country which has been immensely hostile to any socialist ideas for at least 70 years, and in an intensified period of anti-government right-wing insanity since 1980.”
“Clearly you haven’t been making any progress, shitlib! Time to abandon all levers of power to the fascists.”
For fuck’s sake, have you not looked around to see what’s happened these past six fucking months?
I have, and I know that without the serious action I was talking about it was a question of whether Alligator Alcatraz would’ve been opened in 2025 or 2029, with maybe a small chance of 2033. There was nothing unique about 2025 that made it the ideal timing for a fascist takeover.
“Stop performing one of the core functions of harm reduction that attempts to reduce harm!”
Well as long as all or most of your energy is going to harm reduction you’ll only ever end up with fascism.
Pointed out below. But I guess it’s not fast enough for your tastes, so let’s do nothing and usher in the fascists to power instead. After all, politics are like a magical pendulum, where one side winning means the other side must get an equivalent win eventually!
Oh I’m under no illusion that fascists winning would (or, well, will given that they’ve pretty much already won) bring about a socialist revolution or any of that stuff.
When the fuck are progressives shutting down serious action?
Remember Uncommited? Palestine protests? Calls for Biden to step down? I have seen all three get called Russian psy-ops by supposedly left-leaning people on Lemmy. You probably know better than me whether that’s a representative sample of American politics, but holy hell for a time you couldn’t say anything bad about Biden without getting showered with downvotes around here. This sort of cannibalism was one of the many forms of complicity that allowed the march to fascism to proceed unimpeded.
You’re absolutely right. In the wise words of a political party canvassing for seemingly everything a good fucking third of the ‘left’ commenters here have come to adore, we’re all going to die someday. So why not as soon as possible?
I mean, in this case we’re more talking about whether it’s worth it to pay through the nose for life support when you already know what you have is terminal.
“We’ve managed to make ‘socialism’ into an acceptable word in politics and almost got a democratic socialist into a major party’s nomination twice in the past ten years, in a country which has been immensely hostile to any socialist ideas for at least 70 years, and in an intensified period of anti-government right-wing insanity since 1980.”
That would be nice-ish progress in saner times, and a few decades of it and you might’ve had a shot at sane government (if the establishment didn’t manage to tank the whole affair, anyway), but like what makes you think you ever had that kind of time? The clock was already ticking with Bush, really got going with Obama and Trump 1 pretty much sealed the deal. When I say fascism was inevitable I don’t mean it was coming within decades; I mean America was going to be fascist by 2033. Much more direct action was needed to prevent fascism within that timeframe. So with that in mind,
But I guess it’s not fast enough for your tastes
No, it’s not fast enough for the reality on the ground.
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What? No. Accelerationism would be “we should vote for fascists/not vote at all,” which is not at all what I’m saying here. My point is that the left’s strategy needs to radically change if it wants to have a hope of stopping fascism. To repeat, I want fascism to be stopped here; my argument is that the way the left has been attempting to do so is woefully inadequate.
My point is that the left’s strategy needs to radically change if it wants to have a hope of stopping fascism.
Cool, so, the thinking is to buy yourself enough time to convince the left to radically change?
No? “We haven’t changed enough yet for my tastes, so this is all pointless”?
To repeat, I want fascism to be stopped here; my argument is that the way the left has been attempting to do so is woefully inadequate.
And that you see no point in buying more time, don’t forget, calling it a ‘farce’ at first, and then, after conceding that there was significant progress, dismissing it as ‘not fast enough’ to be worth considering.
There’s a good fucking chance that I’m a dead man walking. The projections for additional deaths caused directly by this administration are in the millions. Quite literally every fucking left-wing cause in this country has been set back immensely by this fascist victory, and fascists internationally significantly strengthened. And yet there are people here, people like you, who aren’t stupid but seem quite content to bang a very stupid drum, insisting that preventing this would not have been all that big an issue - because we’re all going to
diebecome fascist in the end anyway, so what does it matter if it’s four years from now or today?I fucking take my meds every day not because I think I’ll gain immortality if I keep doing it, I do it because it staves off death one more day at time. Despite the fact that it doesn’t cure the underlying problem of chronic illness/mortality.
So yeah, I’m a little fucking pissed whenever this comes up.
I agree people should have voted kamala to prevent what’s happening now…
But for progression now, nothing about shaming the voters disenfranchised by the Democrats is worthwhile.
The Democrats were never entitled to any votes, they shouldn’t have been so conceited as to tank their own popularity with conceit in the interest of capital.
The ones who voted for trump are to blame in the immediate for sure, what’s happening right now in the US is tragic. But to be so myopic as to pretend that’s all that matters is foolish.
The Democrats were never entitled to any votes,
Here we go again. Not voting for the Dems was fine, because Dems aren’t ‘entitled’ to anyone’s vote. So glad people chose to punish the Dems at the expensive of the lives of millions of actual human beings. But surely, the Dems will learn not to act entitled after THIS defeat. I mean, it didn’t work the last fifty fucking times, but THIS time, they’ll learn their lesson, and all those people murdered by the fascist ghouls that abstainers let into power will at least have their deaths be for a worthy cause!
Yes, the Dems’ll learn any day now… if only we let a few million more minorities get murdered, they’ll surely learn…
The people who want to get ice cream are also helping a psychopath murder innocent civilians so it’s a bit of a toss up
Oh, good thing the people who want to go over the cliff aren’t helping a psychopath murder innocent civilians.
… they actually want to increase the assistance to that psychopath so they can murder more innocent civilians?
Huh.
So you admit that framing the choice as “choose between getting ice cream and dying” is incredibly misleading. The choice is really “choose between 500,000 innocent people being murdered or 2,000,000 innocent people being murdered”
The conclusion isn’t as obvious when you ask that question is it? I know you’re gonna say you still pick the 500,000 innocents dying anyday. But then don’t lie about what the choice was to make yourself feel better.
So you admit that framing the choice as “choose between getting ice cream and dying” is incredibly misleading.
Considering that “Palestinians being murdered” was not on the ballot either way? No, not really. Our choice was between “Fascism” and “Democrats making marginal improvements”, and you ghouls chose to campaign for fascism to win. Congratulations.
The conclusion isn’t as obvious when you ask that question is it?
No, the conclusion is just as obvious if you aren’t a fascist who thinks that more minorities dying is a good thing. But I understand that the lives of the marginalized don’t matter in comparison to your need to feel smug and morally ‘pure’. Enjoy the blood on your hands.
The results of your campaign came in a while ago now. It’s bold to stick with a losing strategy but I gotta admire the moxy
“You lost the election, therefore, you are wrong.”
How unsurprising that you simp for the fascists after working so hard to see their victory through.
I’m not saying you’re wrong because you lost, I’m saying that if you want to win you should learn from your failures
I’m sorry, what failures do you think I’m arguing for repeating? Appointing another ghoul like Harris?
The moral precept that murdering more minorities to feel good about yourself is actually evil as fuck doesn’t change because a third of this fucking country finds it an uninteresting idea, and another third finds it offensive. It’s just not what we should be running a fucking campaign with - not that the Dems campaigned on that point either.
Which side do you think is more realistic to change later on? The people who want ice cream, at the very least, want to live.
The politicians that are on the “ice cream” side only talk about “ice cream” when it helps them win elections, they spend every other moment arming psychopaths at the behest of their wealthy
donorsowners
Is voting for controlled opposition harm reduction?
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
Luckily, as voting in Republicans has historically shown us, voting in the Republican will lead us to radicalize and become socialists. /s
If the core issue is that we’re not putting in the work after engaging in harm reduction, harm acceleration is not likely to fix that problem.
I don’t agree with it, it’s just how populations vote.
Is voting for continuing to drive on the road harm reduction? It’d keep the bus from getting ice cream until people vote to drive off the cliff out of boredom.
Well it’s an analogy so let’s get more precise.
You don’t vote for a destination, you vote for a bus driver. Your two and only two choices are both telling you they’ll take you to the ice cream parlor while claiming the other driver will drive you off a cliff. Meanwhile, you see the bus passing multiple opportunities to stop at several different ice cream shops, doughnut shops, etc.
Then you find out that the company running the bus gets paid for every mile driven. And that every bus driver you’ve seen has been skimming the bus fare money.
Your shouts of protest against the bus chartering company are drowned out by all the other passengers trying to decide which of the two drivers would take the bus to the ice cream parlor vs the cliff.
This analogy is wearing really thin.
The candidates were not promising the same thing.
Trump is rolling out the policies he campaigned on. Tariffs, being mean to poor people, and owning the libs.
He did not promise ice cream.
In the analogy, your comment is part of the cacophony that doesn’t allow for change to take place.
“you are three days away from the best economy of your life”. That’s the ice cream.
Maybe you were too busy hearing the other driver talk about the cliff. Until we realize that those “other” voters are just as duped as we are, nothing will change.
If you’re a real person, and not a bot, you need to get used to the idea that your ✨ favorite ✨ political party doesn’t give a fuck about you or making your life better. Neither does the other party. You cannot ‘vote out’ a corrupt system of two colluding political parties.
You sure as shit can’t vote for anything anymore. Well done.
This is why the Democratic Party sucks so bad. The never offered people something to vote for. They didn’t even offer something harmless - they only ever offered to drive off a cliff more slowly. When in power, they never did anything against the DHS, the MIC, ICE, the Patriot Act. They didn’t even talk about fighting landlords, the bosses, the rich. The Dems even refused police reform, instead increasing budgets. The only thing the party elites ever fought fiercely is Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus.
The Democratic Party is just as much to blame for Trump as the GOP. Stop blaming progressives for this miserable one party state - start holding your politicians accountable.
Stop blaming the broken system on your passive complicity with the violation of human rights for minorities.
You’d let it all fall down even if it meant tens of thousands of POC and queer lives being destroyed in the process.
Your accelerationism hurts us long before it ever hurts you, which is kind of one of the points of OP’s meme tbh.
There’s a lot of assumptions in your angry reply - and you should be angry. Just not at principled progressives, among them a lot of POC and queer folks, who did not vote for a party that never really did anything for them. You should try to overcome your naivete and accept the obvious - that this current development was inevitable with a Democratic party that is only different from Republicans in the sense that they keep up an act of civility that only ever applies to conservatives. Just look how vile the party establishment attacks Mamdani but had no problems compromising with, and clapping for Trump.
Stop attacking leftists and start forming coalitions (but this time NOT with blue conservatives), because the time when you had the luxury to do so has passed.
Everyone’s upset about the vegan ice cream voters not voting for regular ice cream.
No one is upset at the regular ice cream people for being unwilling to vote for a vegan ice cream place because their choice is default in their mind.
Both sides are holding each other hostage. One has a moral reason and the other just doesn’t want to compromise.
And yet.
I’m kinda upset about the cliff-driver voters too tbf
