Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat.
Be that as it may, I’ll still use my vote strategically to ensure that the slide toward fascism is as slow as possible, personally. I am not an accelerationist. I feel that I can more effectively perform direct actions, agitate, and educate others in service of leftist ideology during that time. Ideals without sound strategy are little more than masturbatory.
You don’t have to have be a democrat to vote against fascists.
I’m not a democrat, but I plan to use my vote strategically, since fascists have a propensity toward murdering their ideological opponents. You can call the DNC fascist all you want, many do, but I’m less inclined to believe that they’ll try to murder leftists vs the US right wing.
Your ideological purity will not save you from a fascist’s bullet.
I think he still is!
Oh wait, I just realized that you probably mean the “Environmental Protection Agency.”
Here I was thinking you meant the “Eager for Punani Association.”
Never mind, this just isn’t worth my time.
I was trying to be funny and use some hyperbole. I guess I failed, as I so often do. Sometimes exaggerations can help to illustrate a point, and I admit I’ve gotten so used to seeing people on here talk about how voting for dems in 2024 is foolish if you’re a leftist that I just automatically lumped you in with them. I apologize for that.
I don’t consider myself a particularly virtuous person, if we go by the dictionary definition. I didn’t intend to claim that my actions made me virtuous. The subjective nature of morality would make that rather pointless, anyhow. My discussion of virtue signaling in this case was more about acknowledging that on some level most people engage in performative acts meant to ingratiate themselves to their preferred social group.
I’ve got nothing to prove here, and I think I’ve made my point as much as I can before we both just start repeating ourselves; That strategy extends beyond the voting booth. I’m going to continue to do what I can in public digital spaces to keep people excited to vote and prevent a second Trump presidency, even if that means I have to tone down my online critique of democrats for a few months. I will continue to critique them in spaces where I can be sure that said critique doesn’t chill voter turnout, though.
I’ve had a good time discussing this stuff with you, thank you for the interesting conversation, and sorry if I came off as a jerk! I’m going to try to get off of social media for the night, but I’ll probably be on again tomorrow or later in the week if you want to continue to discuss/debate how online discourse can shape elections!
I hope you get a chance to see BR sometime soon, too! Always a pleasure to find another fan online!
We’ll have to agree to disagree. In this instance I think anti-dem chatter on lemmy is more likely to chill youth turnout than it is to push the Democratic party leftward. I would prefer you didn’t assume me to be a liberal, if that was meant to be an insinuation. We leftists do an awful lot of fighting and virtue signaling within our in-group and I am now and have been guilty of it myself… plenty.
For what it’s worth, my vote in US “democracy” is and always has been a function of strategy. My life, on the other hand, is and has been dedicated to radicalizing myself and as many people as possible through dialectic, praxis, and building / maintaining / participating in alternative living systems within the US. You can dig into my post history if you’re curious. I don’t want to virtue signal at you.
Fantastic song! I really enjoyed Age Of Unreason as a whole.
Unfortunately, they’ve cancelled all dates for this current tour, citing “unforeseen family circumstances.” I’m really hoping that this isn’t something band-ending. I’ve been afraid of them calling it quits for years now, and I want to see them live again. I’ve taken every opportunity (when I had the financial ability). That’s only been 2004 and 2016 (with Against Me!, great show), plus seeing Greg do his solo thing in 2017 when he toured for the release of Millport.
No one. I just thought it was a fun story. If you’d like I can add a part where the left-hand-raiser fearmongers to the abstainers about how awful it is to be kicked in the genitals, though.
Ranting about the awfulness of the democratic party during a contentious election cycle, on a post about third party options, and with so much on the line for marginalized folx… It just seems like a poor strategy to me. The work is in the streets, not in virtue signaling your leftist moral superiority on Lemmy. For now I’m choosing to feign unity and enthusiasm until such time as I can drop the facade and continue with whatever praxis I can muster.
What do I know, though. I definitely don’t have The Answer.
“Okay kids, today we’re going to take a vote! Raise your left hand if you want everyone to be kicked in the genitals. Raise your right hand if you’d like everyone to be irreversibly sterilized! You can also choose to abstain from voting by not raising either hand.”
Two out of the five kids present raise their right hand. One out of the five kids present raises their left hand. Two of the kids abstain.
As the children are being taken to the sterilization room the kid who raised their left hand turns to the two kids who abstained and asks “Why didn’t you vote!? Now we’re all going to be sterilized!”
One of the two replies, “Well neither of us wanted to be kicked in the genitals!”
We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf
Sorry for my delay in response. I try to limit the amount of time I spend on social media as it can be harmful to my mental health.
As for good game theory resources, it’s going to somewhat depend on your existing math literacy. I’m going to paste a list (below) that I’d found on reddit when I was first exploring game theory about 10 years ago. I haven’t read all of the suggestions.
The following are three foundational works in the development of game theory:
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Oskar Morgenstern and John Von Neumann (THE seminal text)
A Theory of Justice, John Rawls (an early political application of game theory)
Convention, David Lewis (a philosophy-heavy investigation of rationality and sociality)
These are four widely-respected contemporary surveys of the subject, listed in descending order of complexity:
Game Theory and the Social Contract, Ken Binmore (anything by Ken Binmore is worthwhile).
Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction, Colin Camerer (perhaps the definitive work on behavior economics)
Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely (introductory)
Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction, Morton Davis (introductory)
I also recommend checking out MIT’s OpenCourseWare game theory polisci course. I found it quite interesting.
Will do. This honestly means the world because I don’t have a lot of players in my court.
I do mean it. I’m not always fast to reply, but I’m around if you ever want to have a chat about anything! The grad student path seems like a worthwhile pursuit and I wish you all the best with it! As for the social aspect, I can relate, certainly. I was pretty unsure that things would work out when I set out to try alternative living systems in my early 20s. Being around like-minded people ended up being extremely valuable for my social skills, in the end.
Maybe when you’re done with your coursework you can investigate the opportunities available. I lived for a while in a co-op house in upstate New York that would have been perfect for a young professional. Private rooms with common spaces and a nightly shared meal. Communal chores to be done, but income was not shared. Members had to have their own incomes.
I didn’t ask for your answer, I asked for your opinion. I already knew that you didn’t have the answer. Nether do I.
I was young, idealistic, autistic, and naive myself, once, long ago. Still autistic, but less young, idealistic, and naive these days. I tripped over my ideals and ethics for a long time before figuring out how to survive in this capitalist hellscape. I’m still not very good at it, and my path needn’t be yours. I won’t shove it down your throat.
I wasn’t sharing that song with the intent to be adversarial. I shared it because Bad Religion has been a very helpful band for me throughout my young-adulthood, and their lyrics continue to help me to this day. No offense intended. My opinion of what this song meant, for example, when I was young, was vastly different to the meaning I take from it now.
I’m very familiar with anarchist theory and the praxis thereof. I read all of the links you provided and I don’t wholly disagree with the bulk of it. Please don’t get me wrong.
BUT. Refusing to vote against fascists because of ideological distaste is indeed moral superiority, whether you want to admit that or not. People can die.
I have no love for Democrats, and I don’t in any way identify as one. I do, however, have a great love for game theory, and game theory tells me that there’s only one correct decision to make where voting in the USA in 2024 is concerned. I will continue to take direct action to further my own personal beliefs and ideologies, but I won’t let that stand in the way of doing things that I find morally distasteful (such as voting for a Democrat) to keep fascists out of power.
I hope this doesn’t come across as condescending. I don’t mean it that way but people often tell me I’m being condescending. I wish you all the best in life. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you in any way, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you want a conversational partner or a sympathetic ear. I’m always open to discussing the world with intelligent people.
If you’re interested in communal living or alternative lifestyles (at it pertains to anarchist communities), I’m happy to help there, as well. I think I still have some friends that know folx at Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle. Admittedly, I don’t know if they’re looking for any new members right now, but I’d be happy to put a word in for you.
When fascists take power it’s not unheard of for them to line up commies and anarchists against a wall and shoot them. I’m all for ideological utopianism, I’ve lived on intentional communities in the country and anarchist collectives in the city, but preserving your moral superiority is little comfort when you and your family are staring down the barrel of a fascist’s gun.
Voting in the general election does nothing to brake the train. Not near zero, zero.
I fear that you’re mistaking your own pessimism for absolute truth, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
Voting is orthogonal to what needs to be done.
What, in your view, needs to be done?
Agreed. This is not a wealth tax, this is the rich realizing that they’ve squeezed nearly all they can out of the lower classes. They must now pivot to squeezing the middle class harder to continue building their dragonesque hoard.
Not quite as simple as checkboxes, but the ability is there to some degree!