‘I would throw a pipe under the trolley,’ says yet another person who does not understand metaphor. It’s not a roleplaying game. It’s an illustration. Changing the map won’t change the territory.
There is no third option on any given November. One of two candidates is going to take office. You are effectively offered a binary choice between them. Wishing real hard and playing what-if does not change the 0.0% chances that several million people will suddenly agree with you, out of the clear blue sky.
Okay then your metaphor doesn’t work at all, because it implies an individual choice, which voting is not. So maybe you’ve built your entire ideology on taking a thinking exercise as serious political thought.
Pretending your argument maps perfectly onto a reductive analogy (that you absolutely didn’t understand) doesn’t make it reality.
If this were the trolley problem, dems and conservatives would be the exact same track, just one option goes quickly and other slowly. Actually changing the track involves choosing to organize and do the work of undermining the capitalist system itself, not the brand of puppet you’re gonna get. But liberals dislike this because it’s not as easy as literally flipping a lever.
If you’re still campaigning for corporate dems, you’re insisting on keeping the lever where it is, but the lesser evil would make it run slowly so maybe it’ll give others time to stop it, and that way it might not splash guts and blood on you, which is the important part after all.
Do you conceive of your entire political reality as waiting anxiously who to vote for in November? Do you not see any political action you can take outside of elections that are ultimately owned by the capitalist class?
Do you think that’s what’s implied, whenever someone tells you to stop letting outright fascists take power? ‘Pancakes are good.’ ‘Why do you hate waffles?’ Wrong.
If you have a plans for better elections - great! But when the election happens, and your plan didn’t work, you have to work with what’s real.
If you have plans totally unrelated to elections - great! They won’t conflict with voting for less evil, no matter how evil you think “less evil” is. More evil is worse, actually.
Again with the reductionist analogies lmao. Can liberals not defend their positions without pretending it’s a fundamentally different situation first?
whenever someone tells you to stop letting outright fascists take power
Read Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt
Read Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by A Sohn-Rethel
Then tell me that it is possible to keep fascism out of power through voting.
So what are you doing right now to fight fascism? If the answer doesn’t include being active in a socialist organization, the only people that historically have been effective at opposing fascism, then the answer is effectively “diddly-squat”, and you should get your ass in gear.
That’s not as easy as lecturing those who do the work for not doing what they wish they’d do instead
