That’s awfully presumptuous. His argument is to cater your suite of strategies to the citizenry you’re surrounded by, and their class consciousness. Strategies ill-suited to the material conditions you find yourself in do not help your cause. Insofar as the proletariat is invested in the system, you must use that system.

Yes, obviously, endeavor to enlighten them. But the people are slow learners, and just because your leftist friends are ready to derail the tram does not reflect the class consciousness of your countrymen. Even the Germans in question had a higher level of class consciousness than modern Americans. Lenin’s argument logically extends.

Of what? If you’re ideologically opposed to voting in bourgeois elections, read what one of those goo-goo-gaa-gaa Marxist books had to say on the subject

Pulling the lever would’ve never stopped the genocide, but derailing the train would have.

This point is totally useless without a way to derail the train. Not just a vague conceptual idea of what could theoretically derail the train, that’s useless. Without an actual mechanism to realistically do so, sufficient buy-in to implement that mechanism, and sufficient organization to actually follow through on that implementation, this is a totally useless argument. The necessary mechanism, buy-in, and organization does not currently exist. If you lack the ability to detail the train, it doesn’t matter how much better the world would be if the train was derailed. It’s pure fantasy, and it gets in the way of actual realistic praxis.

What?

now whose being deceitful? you completely skipped the 38 million figure.

Still you, because your refusal to participate does nothing to reduce that figure.

you say refusing to vote does nothing. but what has voting done? the system you’re defending has killed atleast 38 million people outside american borders while saving dramatically fewer inside. that’s not a trade-off. that’s a slaughter you’ve learned to call realism.

Refusing to vote didn’t save those 38 million, it just condemned others. Voting helped install people who at least rendered some degree of aid, which again is better than the literally nothing that refusing to vote accomplishes. The 38 million is only relevant to your choice if you can make a choice that saves them. You made your choice, they were not saved. It’s a purely emotional attack with no actual bearing on the choice.

i don’t have a plan, but marxists have a plan and it’s been around for almost 2 centuries now. it’s called refusing to legitimize the system

Around for 2 centuries with no actual material success. It’s time to stop pretending that this is a useful strategy. It’s time to stop pretending that it’s anything other than childish self-soothing.

building dual power, organizing outside the two-party death cult, and ultimately abolishing the conditions that make genocide a natural outcome

This is closer to an effective strategy, but it’s in no way incompatible with voting lesser evil in the meantime. The only ones who think it is are self-centered deontologists who forever let perfect be the mortal enemy of better. Do you think leftist voters don’t also organize? Don’t also try to build dual power? Don’t also try to abolish genocidal conditions? They’re just wise enough to use all the tools at their disposal to the degree that they can be used. Refusing to use a tool because it doesn’t solve every problem is asinine.

it’s fine to disagree with it, but don’t pretend the only choices are lever a or lever b.

When you’re standing at the lever, those are the only choices. That doesn’t mean you can’t take other actions, but those are your only actual choices in terms of lever pulling.

you’ve already decided that anything outside voting for the lesser evil isn’t a strategy. that’s not pragmatism; it’s learned helplessness with a moral license.

You’ve got it exactly backwards. That precisely describes refusing to vote because the system is rigged. You can’t fix every problem with voting, so abandon voting so you can feel morally superior.

refusal is the only leverage people have when the game is this rigged. you don’t delegitimize a system by playing along; you delegitimize it by withdrawing cooperation. that’s not childish; it’s literally how every actual movement for abolition in history started – by refusing to play.

No it isn’t. Again, “delegitimization” isn’t a real thing with any actual material effect, and you need to divest yourself of the illusion that it is. Withdrawing cooperation doesn’t dismantle the system, it just forfeits your ability to give input. The illegitimate system is going to keep chugging along without you.

so no, i don’t have a plan to stop the train tomorrow with a single vote. neither do you.

I never claimed to. I only claim to have some small input to mitigate damage. Solving the problem requires other actions, but voting is one action to make the problem easier to solve, and less damaging in the meantime.

the difference is i’m not pretending my lever-pulling is saving anyone while atleast 38 million lie dead at the feet of your “realism.” and at least leftists are actually building something instead of just managing the bleeding.

Except your non-lever-pulling is equally responsible for 38 million dead. I am a leftist, I am actually building something. I just haven’t internalized your helplessness to believe that managing the bleeding is incompatible with that. Managing the bleeding is what preserves something to save. You’re content letting the world go up in flames so you can have a revolution in the ashes. I’d like for there to be people left to save by the time the left gets its act together.

I think you’ve responded to the wrong person? I’m a lever-puller.

you’re proving my point here without realizing it.

No, I’m not. You’re just trying to reframe reality in a deliberately deceitful way.

both tracks were laid by the same people fostering the genocide. the lever is a prop. “pulling it” doesn’t stop the train; it just makes you feel like you did something.

Stopping the train wasn’t an option that any voter had the power to effect. Just because pulling the lever fails to solve one particular problem doesn’t mean it’s a useless prop. The choice was doom Gaza, or doom Gaza and also a bunch of other people. Not pulling it also doesn’t stop the train, but it also doesn’t mitigate the damage at all.

Pulling the lever does do something. Not a lot, certainly not enough, but something. Not pulling the lever is what actually does nothing, all it does is delude the deontologists into feeling like they took a stand.

that’s the cost of your “realism.”

No, it isn’t. Those are consequences outside my power to prevent. Refusing to vote does nothing to reduce that body count.

western teleologists have self groomed themselves into thinking pragmatism means picking between two options handed down by the ruling class. anything outside that frame gets called “virtue signaling” or “immature” because it threatens the real game: managing genocide, not ending it.

Deontologists have self-groomed themselves into thinking refusing to choose stops the outcome. It’s immature virtue signaling precisely because it neither manages nor ends genocide. Managing genocide is far better than literally doing nothing.

deontology isn’t about clean hands. it’s about refusal to legitimize a system where genocide is a natural outcome.

I see this word, “legitimize”, frequently used in this argument, which I think is the main problem. Refusing to participate does not “delegitimize” the system. It does not change the system in any way. “Legitimacy” is not a metric which has any effect at all. It is precisely about clean hands over an actual change in outcome.

also the person who refuse isn’t plugging their ears; they’re saying the whole track-switching game is rigged so they’re not going to cooperate

That is precisely plugging their ears. Yes, the game is rigged. No, it isn’t fair. But refusing to cooperate doesn’t suddenly unrig the game. It doesn’t save Palestinian children. It just makes you feel smugly superior for not cooperating, for not doing what you can to mitigate damage while you work on building an alternate track.

When you have a strategy to actually make a difference, I’m all ears. Until then, I stand by the obvious conclusion: refusing to participate is childish and self-centered. It’s not about building a better world, it’s about not feeling guilty in the current one. That’s not going to save anyone, it just deludes you into feeling better about yourself.

you need to not be complicit. that’s the intention and goal that you seem to be miss understanding.

I completely understand that intention and goal. But it’s literally just virtue signaling. Teleology is concerned with securing the most favorable outcome, deontology only cares about preserving individual moral superiority. The teleologists obviously recognize the ethical tragedy, they’re just more interested in trying to save as many people as they can than keeping their hands clean and pure.

Deontology is self-centered and immature. It’s feels over reals. Who cares how many people suffer and die, at least you personally didn’t participate.

so when people choose not to operate inside the american system’s confines – where genocide is a natural outcome – they aren’t being naive. they’re rejecting that system entirely

Except that rejection accomplishes nothing. It does nothing to stop, or even slow, ongoing genocide. It’s a the ethical equivalent of shutting your eyes and plugging your ears.

The situation isn’t even really comparable to the trolley problem, because Gaza was on both tracks. By not pulling the lever, Gaza was not spared. All inaction accomplished was the suffering of all the other people on the straight track.

That doesn’t mean that this strategy will ever work. It won’t happen instantly, but it also won’t even happen eventually.

Allow me to clarify the position. It’s like a child that learns their mother has cancer; even with expensive treatment, there’s no guarantee treatment will end her suffering or defeat the cancer. So the child decides to take the money for treatment and spend it instead on building a shrinking ship like in The Fantastic Voyage to go into their mother to attack the cancer directly.

Yes, a noble intention, but the strategy is a pure fantasy, and all it’s actually done is remove resources from a treatment that might actually accomplish something.

It’s a childish fantasy that directly harms people.

Again, a noble intention, but it did not actually accomplish that goal.

Probably because it does nothing to actually keep those who accept genocide out of office. Don’t get me wrong, the intentions are noble, it’s just impotent as a strategy. The genocide rages on, indifferent to noble intentions. But now lots of additional people are suffering too.

The opinion makes sense to deontologists, but to the teleologists of the world it rightfully seems insane.

Serious question, where are we supposed to buy things we need? But business is bad, small business is bad, what’s left?

Yes, three dimensionally. Pull it up, and make a fold from the sewn point of the fitted corner parallel to one folded edge, and then the other edge likewise parallel to the remaining side. Now that you have a nice rectangle, lay the bunched portion down as flat as you can, and continue folding. Ta-dah.

If you pull up the fitted part, you can establish parallel sides so you can form it into a rectangle that can be folded neatly

Do adults really not know how to find fitted sheets? You fold it basically like a regular sheet, but tuck the corners inside each other.

Wrong story, more like “Tekeli-li”

Charlie Kirk is absolutely still talked about by the right, and it absolutely has undertones of martyrdom.

It’s not about justice, it’s about breaking the spell. It’s about destroying the ridiculous, yet widespread, picture of him as a charismatic strongman. If he just dies, his devotees can hold onto that image, and carry the enthusiasm to the next one. If he withers away pathetically over years, the magic of the movement leaks away, and the cult may awkwardly wither with him.

But more importantly, the people behind him pulling the strings will be able to get away with much worse if obedient JD fills his seat. The saving grace of Trump’s incompetence is his tendency to screw up the plan given by his puppeteers. His buffoonery is currently the most effective factor in slowing Project 2025.

I pray he doesn’t. I pray he suffers a debilitating stroke, that he wastes away in a chair, refusing to step down or stop taking press conferences. I pray he suffers tremors, and delirium, slurred and broken speech, visibly decaying.

I want his followers to see him as the pathetic husk that he is. I want him to live decades in that chair, I want him to have endless trials in that chair. Death is the easy way out.

Sure, but it also can’t get big if people jump straight to lead prematurely, we’ll get picked off one by one. Lay low, organize, and then explore alternative overt actions besides voting and peaceful protest. That’s not the message OP is implying.

I have every intention to once there’s an “us” to join. I just don’t have respect for cowards who expect other people to do the dangerous work for them.

Give me an organized movement big enough to accomplish its goals and I’ll be there. Without a big organized movement, violence against the state is just impotent suicide.