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Anyone else tired of the “harm reduction” vote? I want people to shut up about it

I voted for the “harm reduction” vote in the 2016 Presidential election. Mar Roxas wasn’t great, but he was better than Duterte. Surprise, surprise, Duterte won. Hundreds of thousands died.

For the 2022 Presidential election, I voted for a principled vote for Leody de Guzman. Surprise, surprise, the Marcos dynasty returns to power.

Then people are treating Biden/Trump round 2 as top priority. Newsflash, if democracy was at stake in the election, then you don’t have democracy. I’ve been watching the Biden administration from afar. Biden, Trump, they’re the same. Same killer police. Same concentration camps at the border. Same prison industrial complex. Same trans genocide. Same abortion bans. No meaningful climate action. And now, a genocide in Gaza. Biden doesn’t care. Voting isn’t harm reduction.

Ranger ,

The thing about Biden that pisses me off the most is for the first time in a long time the US is party to a conflict where the US's supporting involvement isn't morally questionable & the fucking warmongers got cold feet. If the west gave the Ukrainians what they asked for from the beginning the war would probably be over by now.

ProdigalFrog , (edited )
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net avatar

This is a subject I've done a significant turn-around on in the past couple years after seeing how fascism took hold in the past, and doing a fairly deep dive on the differences in policies between the 'bad and less bad' parties, and the practical outcomes of those policies in people's lives and ability to organize.

Like you, I was completely disillusioned with the system, and thought of voting in said system to be a pointless exercise. However, sometimes it can make drastic differences that can impact millions of people's lives to various degrees. To be clear, I'm not advocating for putting extreme amounts of effort into campaigning, but the critical votes (For the US, the Local State Midterms and Presidential Elections) are absolutely worth putting a vote in. If your country's votes are not completely rigged such as it is in Russia, then I would advocate participating in the vote.

So why do I think that now?

First, let's address the idea of Trump and Biden being one and the same:

While I would never defend Biden to the point of saying he's a 'good' man (he's still a neoliberal at heart, and as you say, he supports genocide), he is allowing some positive things to pass that would not happen under a Trump presidency, and some of those things can be fairly significant.

  1. Trade Unions are having a resurgence, mostly due to the fact that Biden isn't actively trying to hinder their existence compared to previous presidents (Ronald Reagan decimated them, for example).
  2. The Inflation Reduction Act is actually a big a deal, and is something that Trump would not have passed. It's definitely not perfect, but it will give the renewable energy sector a pretty massive boost, which is desperately needed to get the ball rolling toward helping reduce climate change. It also will subsidize our transition to heatpumps and better insulated homes, to reduce energy consumption overall. Considering how little time we have left to make meaningful change in regard to climate, this is a massive win considering how captured the government is by Fossil Fuel lobbyists.
  3. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is another genuinely good bill that will help with climate change by putting $110 billion towards making the electrical grid ready for a transition to solar/wind energy.

Lastly, for all of Joe Biden's many, many faults, he is not a full on fascist dictator. And now comes my biggest reason for voting (not just in the US, but everywhere).

Fascist's rely on passivity to gain power.

I made a larger post about this topic here, but the short version is: When someone trying to get into office is openly fascistic, history has shown that they will do what they say when they get into power, and they will do everything possible to secure that power permanently, and expand it.

Trump is the first openly 'strongman' style fascist that has a very high chance of getting into office. He wasn't quite this fascistic in his first term, but now, especially after January 6th, there is a very real possibility of the US descending into a genuine jackboot dictatorship. And traditionally, fascist regimes help other fascist regimes around the world (And Trump has a hard-on for Putin, so Ukraine would be fucked if he wins).

Yes, Biden is committing genocide, the US is still is an imperialistic government, the prisons are still full of slaves, and he is ultimately a neoliberal that will not enact truly meaningful change on a wide scale. But even with how bad things are, they could absolutely get, way, WAY worse. We've already seen some pretty massive regressions in rights due to republicans, as other comments have mentioned.

I do understand your frustration though, especially as you're living in a country that is fucked over either way by US politics.

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

Bruh I don't care about US jobs and inflation. I care about US imperialism. That will never be on the ballot, neither in my country or in yours.

Second, your analysis on fascism is upside down. Fascists do not rely on passivity, no the exact opposite: fascism relies on proletarian mobilization mobilized for reaction. Fascism makes proletarians identify with their power. Donald Trump lost the popular vote; passivity wasn't the problem—he was broadly rejected! Liberals had their victory but the game was rigged. In my country, both Duterte and Marcos got people to identify with their power and proletarians mobilized under and for this image of power. Fascism formost relies not on mass passivity but mass activity. It relies on mass politics albeit one turned upside down.

ProdigalFrog ,
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net avatar

The Inflation Reduction Act doesn't really do anything to combat inflation, it's a poor name. I linked a video about it that goes into greater detail of what it practically entails. And with the Jobs act, I tried to highlight how significant of a role that legislation will have in getting the US off fossil fuels, which, like I get it, that seems inconsequential when your country and others like yours are being subjected to imperialism RIGHT NOW, but I emphasize it because climate change is something that affects us all, and to demonstrate that who wins this stupid election does have downstream effects that matter for everyone for a long time to come, climate wise.

We collectively do not have a lot of time to fuck around with getting off fossil fuels, so any big step in that direction is, IMO, critical. But that's just my 2 cents.

Donald Trump lost the popular vote; passivity wasn’t the problem—he was broadly rejected! Liberals had their victory but the game was rigged.

I mean... Yes, for the most part that is true with the electoral college, and @Five's post here about how the swing states are the only votes that matter is mostly true (though I still would argue it's good to vote even in the more 'secure' states just to be on the safe side).

However, I'm not sure that was the case with Hitler's rise, and as my linked post shows, he didn't win the popular vote, the less bad option could've been chosen had the Germans 'defensively' voted back then.

But, yeah, I'm not going to defend the US's electoral system, it is absolutely a joke, I agree, but the result is not set in stone, it's still absolutely worth fighting, because it's going to be very close.

In my country, both Duterte and Marcos got people to identify with their power and proletarians mobilized under and for this image of power.

That's certainly much harder to fight against if the majority are already down for it, especially when things were pretty dire. It sounds like it was very similar to Italy during the rise of Mussolini, where seemingly it was inevitable due to him having a significant majority vote.

I think my voting suggestions only work if the fascist party isn't already going to win the majority vote by a landslide (But even then, it's best to vote anyway, just in case polls were misleading).

Also, I was only bringing up US politics because I'm already familiar with the historical ramifications of 'less bad' voting here, which has shown a trajectory of when 'full bad' wins, things get way worse, which for me just highlights that a passive stance toward voting doesn't really bring any sort of tangible benefits, whereas defensively voting (at least historically in the US), has shown to be worth the effort to vote.

I don't know if that's the case for your country, or for others, but I would guess that it may apply there as well. You said yourself that when Durerte won, hundreds of thousands died. If you believe that those lives wouldn't have died if the less-bad guy had won, then your vote was worth making, even if it ultimately didn't work, because there wasn't a zero-sum chance that it wouldn't have worked.

I guess I advocate for voting for 'less bad' because game-theory and history has shown to a sufficient degree that the harm reduction is worthwhile.

keepthepace ,

Am tired of it. Will do it again. I have colleagues in Ukraine. I know what is at stake and that both sides may be bad, but they are certainly not the same.

See it that way: if you were in an armed rebellion against a fascist state, hiding from trench to forest dwelling, would you pass on an occasion to spend one hour of your time to reduce a bit the political power of the enemy?

Voting is not enough, but it has an effect. Voting should not be your only political action, but I don't think it should be dismissed.

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

What effect? Literally none of my actions have prevented fascists from coming into power. I did face-to-face conversations in why Duterte was bad. I campaigned against Marcos. Literally zero effect. The bad people win because the game is stacked in their favor.

keepthepace ,

You lowered their score. Not enough people did what you did. One person is unlikely to sway an election by themselves, it is a collaborative effort.

Saying that voting is useless because your candidate did not win is missing the whole point of elections.

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

No, voting is not useless because my candidate lost. Voting is useless because it separates people from mass politics and makes it appear as if the ballot is the power. Instead of people acting for themselves, they delegate their power to a ballot and to a candidate. That is not power, that is an image of power.

keepthepace ,

I am unconvinced that without voting people would feel more included in "mass politics"

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

That's because the mass politics you envision is precisely one predetermined by the liberal-“democratic” voting form, where people are precisely separated from their power. Voting can be part of a truly liberatory and emancipatory politics, but its current form is authoritarian. Even the concept of voting as harm reduction and voting for lesser evils already shows people have no power.

keepthepace ,

Yes, it is authoritarian and allows one to choose between two authoritarian alternatives that are not the same. Voting matters but can't be the only political action you have.

keepthepace ,

As someone with several Ukrainian colleagues and who understands what is at stake there, respectfully, fuck you.

Five Mod ,
@Five@slrpnk.net avatar

Listen to Frosty the Snowman folks. YT

ProdigalFrog ,
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net avatar

The unfortunate truth.

JacobCoffinWrites ,
@JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net avatar

Had trump lost in 2016 we wouldn't have gotten multiple new conservative Supreme Court justices. But we did and they immediately stripped women's rights back decades. We're already seeing tragic outcomes of that. And because they're lifetime appointments of relatively young zealots, now we get to see what else they can do in the next few critical decades.

Biden also wouldn't have shut down or defunded multiple regulatory agencies, or sold off federal land to corporations.

Like, I get that things could be a lot better in so many ways, that's why I'm here. But we don't have to go out of our way to make them even worse.

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

Bro I can't vote in your stupid election. No matter who would have won, Biden, Hillary, orange man, you Americans would plunder my country and fund internal wars anyway.

JacobCoffinWrites , (edited )
@JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net avatar

Yeah I read your post and understood you weren't from the US. But fair enough.

Then I guess just rest assured that trump did a bunch of bonus harm to Americans and the environment, in addition to our standard wars and coups.

There's absolutely always room to make things worse. I guess with where I am right now , mentally, I can't understand not wanting to reduce harm.

shortwavesurfer ,

Voting at least here in the United States for president is stupid because the electoral college will get the candidate they want anyway. Eventually, I would like to leave the United States and taking small steps to accomplish that goal.

LallyLuckFarm ,
@LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org avatar

because the electoral college will get the candidate they want anyway

That's not how that works, though. Each state tallies their populace's votes and in most of them the winner will be given that state's electors - one of the big scandals from '20 was the conspiracy to send fake electors to the vote certification instead of the ones representing the vote winner of the state.

MrMakabar ,
@MrMakabar@slrpnk.net avatar

So you voted twice and the harm reduction canidate you voted for was not elected. A lot of harm was done by the winning canidates, which were not the harm reduction once. I believe the problem in that case is that the harm reduction canidate was not elected.

Seriously voting takes less then an hour of your time. It is rather easy and if it actually works the consequences can be powerfull. Here in Germany you can really see the differences in new renewables construction depending on the party in power in a given area and time. In the UK there was a wondefull graph showing waiting times for the medical services under Labour(going down) and the Tories(going up).

As for the US there are referendums on a lot of issues, which are run at the same time as big elections to make things easier. Those can have big results. That is how California HSR referendum was done at the same time the first presidential election Obama won was held for example. That was a big win for climate and transport in California and certainly worth going to the elections for. At that point making some more crosses takes something like a minute and worse case they are both corporate dicks and at best the one you voted for actually does something good.

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

This reeks of privilege. Voting takes an hour? I wish! Some people line up the whole day and forego a day of wages. It’s easy? Sure is, but people vote for political dynasties all the time, and the political dynasties have an interest in making sure their voters have an easy time voting and their opponents a hard time. Referendums? There’s literally a referendum going around funded by dark money and unknown patrons to open up the economy to international "investors" (really, crooks).

MrMakabar ,
@MrMakabar@slrpnk.net avatar

It is absolutly a privilege to be able to easily vote and be able to make a difference with it, but that makes it all the worse to throw it away instead of using it for good.

punkisundead Mod ,

When there is an election, in most democracies not voting is allowed and should be viewed as one of the decisions that democracy allows. Its not the anarchist choice, but just one of the many democratic choices.

And I dont agree on "Trump&Biden are the same". I can see why there might be similar outcomes (maybe in some situations the same) from them being in power, but I thb another Trump presidency is super scary and unpredictable on a level that Biden will never be.

I think voting and discussions about voting take way to much space in relation to the impact voting has.

mambabasa OP Mod ,
@mambabasa@slrpnk.net avatar

When it comes to my country, yes, Trump and Biden are the same. The same unaccountable overlords who plunders our country in the name of Wall Street. It literally doesn’t matter to us who is in charge.

punkisundead Mod ,

That is probably true. I think for people living in the so called US it would not be the same tho

GrassrootBoundaries ,
@GrassrootBoundaries@slrpnk.net avatar

I'm shocked at how unpopular this is, in an anarchist community. Tho i'm not american, we've got elections here too and i'm certainly not voting either

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

Voting on your post might reduce the harm of this rhetoric though 🥂

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