this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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When Trump was president Europe was distancing itself from the US and starting to co-operate economically more with China. The fact that Trump was hated was a good thing. Now all of that has been reversed and more. Europe is deeper than ever in the pocket of the US which is catastrophic for Europe and the world. Domestically Trump also provoked much more resistance whereas Democrat presidencies not only demobilize the masses, they lull them into actively supporting reactionary imperialist policies like the proxy war on Russia.
Trump was objectively a weaker president as he was hated by the establishment state apparatus, and a weak US in internal conflict with itself is a good thing for the world.
So, you're advocating accelerationism. The idea that a push towards fascism and reactionary politics will provoke revolution. A philosophy often inspired by Marx's dialectical materialism, which claims that communism is the inevitable result of capitalist crisis. The thing is, in Marx's time it was reasonable to assume that capitalism was incapable of ending human life on earth. Now we know twice over that it can, and once over that unabated it will. Accelerationism is fundamentally a philosophy of waiting for things to get better on their own. We don't have that luxury anymore. We're out of time to prevent climate collapse, and mitigating it has to start right now. Accelerationism only makes the deadline shorter, giving us less to work with. Who cares if capitalism eventually collapses under its own weight, if it brings all of us with it?
No, if i was doing that i would say to vote for Biden.
The only thing i'm saying is i personally couldn't bring myself to vote for Genocide Joe. Or for anyone associated with either of the two main warmongering imperialist parties in the US for that matter (and that includes Bernie who betrayed all those who bought his "democratic socialist" act, bent the knee to the establishment, and has revealed himself for the imperialist warmonger many of us already knew he was ever since he supported the bombing of Yugoslavia).
Yeah, too bad that the US under Biden committed the biggest act of ecological terrorism in history by blowing up the Nordstream pipeline, forcing Europe into a dependency on expensive US LNG shipped by highly polluting tankers across an entire ocean... Germany is burning more fossil fuel than ever, and at the behest of the neocon warmongers in the Washington NATO wants to massively ramp up military production and is foaming at the mouth to go to war with Russia, Iran and China essentially simultaneously. Do i need to remind you that militaries are among the worst polluters on the planet?
Doesn't look to me like Biden mitigated much of anything. In fact i struggle to see much of a difference in policy at all between Democrats and Republicans, only in how they are perceived and how much pushback they get.
I've seen no evidence that Biden intends to escalate the war on Ukraine beyond the local area, nor that he intends war with China. As you agreed, the international community has no better view of Trump than Biden, so I don't expect a Biden victory in the election to cause China to declare war. What I have seen is that Biden has begun responding to pressure to reduce the supply of arms to Israel.
As for Russian fuel, I have no reason to disbelieve you when you say Biden has increased the carbon cost of transporting fuel. However he has also increased the price of fuel, creating greater incentives for Europe to quickly adopt electric vehicles and public transit. America and Russia are both polluting capitalist empires. I am happy there is less reason to buy fuel from both of them. The situation in Germany isn't a result of the war, it's caused by the decommission of nuclear plants without a renewable replacement. That's a problem in its own right, but it's not Biden's fault. You're mixing up US election results with unrelated things.
Everything is related. US election results both do and don't affect a lot of things. Washington policy impacts much around the world that you would consider "unrelated", but at the same time that policy doesn't really depend on the result of elections as long as the same two parties keep winning because the same permanent security state and foreign policy establishment is still there regardless who is "elected". Because elections in the US (and in all "liberal democracies") are a theater for the masses more than anything else. The same capitalist class still pulls the strings. I just have a difficult time understanding why you would go to bat so hard for the racist and very likely senile figurehead currently sitting in the oval office considering under him objectively more people have died and the situation has gotten significantly worse around the world.
So vote for who you want, it won't make a difference in the outcome except that you are yet again validating the legitimacy of the bourgeoisie's little shell game they call elections, but don't insult our intelligence by trying to portray the genocider-in-chief as a "lesser evil". Many of us are also in vulnerable demographics, a lot of our comrades here are queer or belong to one or another marginalized group, we know the danger of living under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But that doesn't mean we have to fall for their electoral bait and switch over and over again. Fool me once...
Can you please explain by what causal mechanism low voter turnout on the left makes the US electoral system weaker? I'm confused because the Republicans have been scheming to reduce voter turnout on the left by making it harder for black and poor people to vote. Republicans want you to do exactly what you're doing. So please explain how doing exactly what the government wants makes the government weaker.
EDIT: 4 hours and you can't explain it, because it's not true. You're full of shit.
It's not really voter turnout on the left if you turn out to vote for the Democratic party which is an enemy of the left. That's voter turnout on the right. I am a socialist, why would i condone voting for enemies of socialism? I am an anti-imperialist, why would i condone voting for imperialists? I am anti-war and anti-racist, why would i condone voting for racist warmongers?
You keep missing the point and thinking that Democrats winning is somehow a beneficial or desirable outcome for leftists. It is not.
What the bourgeois government wants is for people to keep voting for either of the two fascist warmonger parties. It doesn't really matter which of them you vote for because the bourgeoisie wins either way. Just so long as the illusion of democracy is maintained. Just so long as the unrest and frustrations of the masses are channeled into activities which fit within the predefined framework of the system.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is how we got here. It's how we slide deeper and deeper into fascism.
The leveling of world wages, and making poor countries less poor, is not accelerationism.