TheOubliette

Im sure as someone who does it everyday you do think that

I don't do it every day. But I do it often enough to be reliable and have good capacity.

But it's not just me nor has it ever been. People from all nations have done this. People in far worse conditions. It is necessary and, historically, feasible so long as you can break false consciousness.

This is the largest point I'm trying to make the time and effort it will take cannot be completed before the election. I mean you even agreed

To begin building the necessary project you have to reject the political election myopia that our masters impose on us. Politics does not restart every 2-4 years. Only long-term engagement and the development and wielding of leverage will ever liberate us.

Do you think every American agrees and will just jump on board?

No, but why do they need to? Our task requires work and time. You keep acting like this makes it impossible. I suggest that this is a learned helplessness, of internalizing the false idea that there is no alternative. In fact, there has always been an alternative and others have blazed trails.

No defending it I hate it but stop acting like it can change before the election, it is not enough time which is my point, not a defense.

It is already a defense in that it is a form of apologetics for the genocidal status quo. It defends and entrenches the idea that your job, politically, is to decide who to cheerlead with a vote. It normalizes accepting and tolerating the genocide of Gaza, as even that us not enough for you to take sufficient pause. You are lost in propaganda, but you can free yourself through education.

Couple hours after work, 10 mins before work, and while shitting. Drive times alone wouldn't be meet with this time.

A common dedicated organizing commitment is 1-2 meetings per week (often online) and around one action per month. Though there are often opportunities to do what works around anyone's schedule.

Don't know what I took credit for but sure

There is a tendency in bourgeois electoralism to dramatically exaggerate the impact of a given activity. Usually, but not always, voting. The purpose is to make the target audience feel like what they were told to do matters, was worthwhile, and to keep them doing it. This is what I am referring to by credit - of an exaggerated assignment of value to the activity I was responding to.

Do you even live in America?

Why would that matter? My question to you does matter: if you don't live in a swing state your presidential vote is as worthless as it gets.

What would your point be if I were or were not American? Please don't be xenophobic.

My contributions to this thread have upheld a single liberal value and that's voting

Au contraire.

Lesser evil arguments against GOP:

"It's just that one party also wants to use those structures to surveil women's bodies, ban books, delegitimize science, push religion, and extract capital from natural resources and workers without restriction."

Both sidesing genocide with a bonus suggestion that you have no idea how to oppise it (even while you left punch people actually fighting against it):

"We have a choice between one person publicly calling for a ceasefire and another who says Israel needs to finish the job.

I'm not sure what you want us to do here."

You then kept asking what else you're supposed to do and I answered you in good faith. You don't seem to like the answer, though. You clung to the rhetoric of bourgeous electoralism and ignored most of what I said while trying to tell me I was agitating incorrectly.

You declaring that you're going to vote for a pro-genocide candidate with more lesser evil genocide (listen to yourself) logic:

"edit: Like idk who's out here praising Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic party for their soft-as-shit stance on Israel, but I still gonna vote for her [...]"

Here's you pretending you can lecture others about what American leftists respond to, trying to push back against those calling out support for genocide:

"No offense dude, but I think you are pretty ignorant about American leftists."

You've been a busy little beaver for reaction.

which I don't even think has that much value when you look at the opinions of the majority of Americans on core domestic and international issues vs the actual policies that are implemented by those they vote in

If it doesn't have much value why are you arguing with me and why are you telegraphing who you will vote for (genocide supporter)? Why do you act as if nothing else is posdible? This is just the typical liberal position that treats myopic lesser evil voting as the beginning and end of politics.

Not once have I defended Democrats complicity in the genocide

When people call it out you push back and declare your unconditional support for Kamala.

[rambling lesser evil claims]

Yes those are some if the claims that actually defend Democrats and try to make people feel okay with support for genocide.

at least I can do that and try things outside the political system.

If you're doing something against empire you're doing something political. And earlier you were acting like nothing else was possible, jncredulously asking what else you're supposed to do aside from pretend to hand wring and then be the same pro-genocide lever pull as any imperialist. Make up your mind.

Whereas not voting is not only symbolically useless, as they'll just see me as another person on the couch, at least voting has a small amount of practicality.

I cannot tell you how much I don't care about your vote. Why are you still talking about it?

And regarding methods of converting liberals to leftists, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

You will learn that I am right when you actually try to build a left organization IRL and need to both recruit and maintain political lines against liberal tendencies.

Again, I'll refer to the meaning associated with the terms socialism, communism, and anarchism in the US -- they are demonized to the point where people simply dismiss you if you mention them, and then you've lost your opportunity.

This is completely at odds with the experience of anyone doing IRL agitation and recruitment. Younger people in particular are open to socialist positions if you aren't trying to trick them into it or triangulate in the genocide they oppose. Your strategy is very old and always fails. It's called opportunism.

Edit: Also, I appreciate your genuine response, but at the same time the gatekeeping of "well, what have you organized?" is pretty lame. The truth is, nothing. I've organized nothing.

Yes, that was obvious. This is why you have wrong ideas of how to agitate. You've never had to do it and see what works and what doesn't.

You asked what else to do aside from voting and I tried to nudge you towards organizing and self-education. You should go join an org.

But I still believe that unjustified hierarchy is harmful and that at the end of the day what a state is is the ability to use force to uphold that hierarchy.

Of course unjust hierarchy is harmful. Otherwise it wouldn't be unjust. But the question, inevitably, is how we will concretely do necessary work to defeat our enemies, and to identify who those enemies are and prioritize. To do that you need to be politically educated and you need to be organizing IRL so that you can see what fails and why it fails.

Its just gonna entrench them even more because it's so outside their realm of political understanding.

I disagree. You can't soft-pedal someone fully embedded in the propaganda sphere. There are multitudinous ways for them to be recaptured and they will not be inoculated against it if you pretend their positions are valid.

Also your contributions in this thread only reinforce liberalism and the pro-genocide position. Why should I trust your advice?

I mean, I'm anarchosyndicalist.

So far, you appear to be a liberal. In what way are you furthering anarchosyndicalism here? Are you in an org? Do you believe that anarchosyndicalism is served by feeding into bourgeois electoral falsehoods? Your predecessors were burning down bosses' houses.

I'm aware of how fucked up the voting system is and how little power I have as an individual, and it pisses me off to be scolded at like that.

These are inconsistent positions. If you already agreed and understood you would not be getting "scolded" at all. Though I would say I'm just politely correcting you despite your liberal actions.

Ive read People's History, and the manifesto, and Kropotkin (not to mention, a fair amount of chomsky and a lot of David Graeber).

So about 2 months into a yearlong leftist onboarding reading group. I'm glad you are reading, but this still makes you very new to these topics.

Imagine how moderate liberals feel when you slam them with a wall of text? They are not fucking initiated yet.

They will respond in different ways. There is not just one way to push people into taking their first steps. Several strategies and roles should be employed.

My "wall of text" is something like four paragraphs in approachable language.

What does your defense of their pro-genocide electoral stance accomplish?

Like I said to the OP, you gotta meet people where they are.

That is incorrect. You need to know where people are and then dislodge them. There is no meeting. You must pull and agitate.

You're right that the left is disorganized, and that most Democrats aren't really leftist but socially progressive capitalists

Most Democrats are incoherent liberals that pick up their positions via exposure to various media outlets. I would not describe them as socially progressive, overall. Some of the most racist people I've met have been Democrats.

but if you're gonna convert them you need to ease them into it, not immediately shock them with walls of text and accusations of supporting a genocide.

Ease them into it how? Your approach so far is not agitational whatsoever. Your rhetoric can only help them retreat to their former positions.

There is an actual genocide happening right now with Dem support. They are, in actuality, supporting a genocide by providing unconditionsl support. This is exactly the kind of topic where you must agitate, as you can motivate those who care about the genocide to seek out a better position. You will lose all of those people if you don't agitate, or worse, help them resettle into the mainstream pro-genocide position.

Because they'll just recoil into their somewhat cozy capitalist shell.

Some will, some won't. This is always how agitation goes. Have you ever built an org IRL? Opportunism is always self-defeating.

Nah it's easy just rewire the whole government in your free time, that's what I don't understand about these people. They have all these great ideas about organizing and starting this and changing that. The suggestions they give are just not realistic in our society currently, but they act like you're the problem for voting.

As an organizer in my free time it's hardly unrealistic to suggest other people do the same. These are also well-demonstrated strategies, whereas individualistic lesser evil voting is not. You just disempower yourself.

And as you can see, this false logic also leads liberals to begin defending the lesser evils. Right now, they are defending genocide. My hope is that a few of them may break free of their propaganda and become true allies of people around the world and their own neighborhoods.

Y'all understand that your little suggestion of starting a whole ass movement with the only resource of "unified voters" in one of the most diverse countries in the world will take a ton of time right ?

God forbid political power take work and time. Better to be ineffectual and rhetorically entrench the sociopathic status quo, eh?

Do you think this can be organized 1 before the election, 2 before the election with enough time to actually change things in it

No. It requires shedding the political myopia that ensures your complacency. But you should begin building it now, and it is okay for its birth to be fitful. Begin having conversations now to see who would be interested. Join a left org that may be interested in this. Stop defending genocide.

3 by people working full time jobs and probably living paycheck to paycheck

Yes. This is how it has been for hundreds of years. People with less time and means did far more than this. You just have to actually believe that politics is important.

How much time do you spend on social media, for example? Why not spend that time organizing meetings?

4 while being fought back against the entire time by media oligarchy?

Our enemies include that but are even larger and more powerful.

No it isn't realistic

Far more has been done before. You gave been taught complacency. And to defend the status quo.

What is realistic is trying to save the country from a centralization of powers into the executive branch (project '25) that will almost surely lead into fascism, which will then in turn fuck the rest of the world even worse.

You aren't saving anything. Your strategy makes you a complacent individual that simply allows the same system chugging along into depravity, like open support for genocide. You aren't even organized. How on earty could you ever take credit for anything? Pure fairy tales.

Do you even live in a swing state?

Privacy is a shield. It is useful to protect against a threat. It doesn't have to perfectly protect against the threat. But the important thing is to have a threat model and construct your privacy concerns around it.

Ask yourself what you believe will be a threat to you and then criticize those beliefs. Use this self-critical process to decide on your first idea of a threat model.

Piped should build out better error messages so that users know this is a problem with Piped getting the video from YouTube.

Copy + paste small business tyrant investment. Like a ghost kitchen. They all just copy each other because it returns a consistent profit.

There is probably some kind if grotesque item in the menu as a "draw", too. The Tower of Cheese. The Bacon Bun. The [town name] challenge, a dish made of 34 kinds of flesh. Get in here, techbros! Get your grub.

The PSL ticket

The answer is that it doesn't really matter. You are placing too much emphasis on your personal voting decision. This is a line handed down to you by ruling class interests. Voting could only ever matter as a block with clear interests and discipline. And even then it will be highly limited, you cannot vote out the root driver of dispossession and marginskization, the economic system itself. They will destroy every bourgeois electoral structure you try to use, and probably you, before you even get close.

So acquire the knowledge and political tools that can change the economic system.

Is there anything more hateful than genocide and supporting it?

And the reps will ignore you because what are you going to do, not vote for them? You already telegraphed that you will vote for them anyways.

In the party database, you show up as: Last Name, First Name, likely voter, donor yes/no. Literally, this is how much they think about you.

PS I thought genocide was an unconscionable, intolerable crime that required your specific action to ensure it "never again" happens. Now it's just "bad", like high housing costs? Do you see how your own soul is distorted by this naive partisanship?

The point of red lines is to not cross them. If you consider supporting a genocide a red line, which is certainly what I was taught, that means the system has moved beyond the pale and you must now take a different approach to politics than the horse race lesser evil logic that you were taught by the ruling class.

Namely, start working on other ways to build political power. The other ways are actually stronger. The ruling class, logically, teaches you to only see politics through a lens that disempowers you. It gives you playdough when you need a knife.