Voting is Not Harm Reduction An Indigenous Perspective February 2020 – When proclamations are made that “voting is harm reduction,” it’s never clear how less harm is actually calculated. Do we compare how many millions of undocumented Indigenous Peoples have been deported? […]
Yeah. Tell that to the millions of kids affected by Trump’s policies. Cancelling USAId programs as well as food and health benefits never would have happened if he hadn’t won the presidency. Voting would have absolutely reduced that harm
That’s just an objective fact.
USAID is a tool of imperialism. The US creates the circumstances that require aid.
USAID serves dual functions. Are you seriously claiming that the US created ebola or malaria, just so that they could help treat it? Please tell me you aren’t that divorced from reality?
USAID serves one function, imperialism. They may not create those diseases but they allow them to go untreated.
Removed by mod
first, you can’t prove a counterfactual.
second, do you know how I know you didn’t read the article?
I read the article. I disagree with the premise that it doesn’t matter. In a very literal sense…it does.
That’s what “harm reduction” means. Not that one choice is “good” and the other is “bad”. Only that one choice is going to lead to “more” harm than the other.
Does it suck? Yes. Does doing nothing, help? No. It makes things worse.
harm reduction has a specific meaning, and voting is not harm reduction.
You’re right. It does have a specific meaning…and this is it.
Right now, the US is staring the consequences of their voting choices, straight in the face. This is literally the most obvious time in recent history, where this principle is so clearly defined.
do you know how I know you didn’t read the piece?
Refusing to hold politicians accountable has higher consequences than voting. What we see right now is decades of no consequences, which has given politicians the message they can do whatever they want and shift as far to the right as they want because you’ll keep coming back to support them. 50 years of liberal ‘lesser evil’ has grown into a huge unmanageable evil.
Ok. And how do you “hold politicians accountable” without voting? Who is going to hold them accountable, if you don’t elect people to the positions that have that authority?
And how do you think things have crept to the right, this whole time? It’s a slow, incremental process of electing slightly more right-leaning candidates, every time. The only way to fix that is to vote to the left, every time. It takes just as long to pull it left, as it did to pull it right…but the process works the same way in both directions.
Doing nothing, just hands that selection process to other people. And then, you get whatever you’re given. Which is where we are now.
It’s actually very simple. Politician does something bad, refuse to vote for their reelection. We are where we are right now because liberals refused to ever hold their own politicians accountable. Obama deported and bombed more countries, if any other presidents prior to him. He prosecuted more whistle blowers than any other president’s combined before him. He bailed out Wall Street and left us hanging. And the liberal solution, hey, let’s re elect this guy. Their only concern is making sure the blue fascist gets a job so they could be the ones pulling the trigger.
How does that make anything better? Let’s say they’re a Democrat, and their opponent in the next election is a Republican. Explain how withholding your vote does anything, except get an even more right-wing candidate elected? Your strategy is literally creating the problem you are complaining about.
If you want to shift things back to the left, you need to have more left-wing candidates to vote for. That means getting more people to vote in the primaries, where you’ll potentially have a larger selection to choose from. Pick the farthest left one out of all of them, and volunteer for their campaign. Get involved. Get more people out to the polls than ever before, and primary the fuck out of the more conservative incumbent.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
you, too, are facing the consequences of voting.