Tone deaf is pleading to people to vote for those directly responsible for genocide even though their families are being killed because you want to remain relatively comfy in your own country, reaping the benefits of the colonialism you desperately wished was pushed back into the shadows so you can go about your life unaware of the harm you cause.

For a 3rd party to win, another party has to die. (See Republicans taking over the Whigs for their silence on slave states).

So, if you can get on board with that premise, which modern party of the republicans or democrats do you believe closer to destruction due to their voters abandoning them?

Republican voters seem generally happy with the people they vote for unless some specific policy starts affecting them in a way that Fox News can’t sufficiently spin.

Democratic voters seem to be voting against republicans more than for someone they really believe in.

Now, I’m not into incrementalism or reformism, but if you are, it might make sense to try to put as much electoral pressure on democrats as possible to either try to make them massively shift OR to prove to millions of democratic voters that the party would rather lose than capitulate, causing a mass loss of trust in the party, causing change (presumably).

I’m not sure I’d assume 3rd party voters are all aligned on what they want or expect out of voting 3rd party. Maybe some of them think they could win, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who thinks that.

Do you honestly believe politicians don’t know what we want if we don’t vote? Sure, they can gauge how much they can truly get away with, but we have the internet and polling and email and phone calls and protests and petitions and every manner of just as ineffective tools as voting that tells people in power what regular people think, which is generally ignored for the wishes of the mega donors.

Like I said earlier, I voted, but hyper fixating on it only distracts from the knowledge that there’s far better things to do than talk about voting other than the single day every couple of years where you go to the polls.

Focusing on voting over direct action where one has a <1% impact on things over the far more impactful thing kind of implies you think it is the most important thing. My apologies if that wasn’t your meaning. It just comes across like “of course we have global warming when Jerry down the road didn’t recycle that one time”, ignoring the blatant destruction of our planet by oligarchs. Yes, Harris would’ve likely been better for me as well, but I’m done thinking that sacrificing others for my own comfort is justifiable because of my gender identity.

Voting is a tool the capitalists have provided to you because they know that either option will give them a win. I vote because local positions are important, but federal positions have been pre-approved by our abusers. If the ruling class has convinced you that voting is the most important action you can take to stop fascism, you’ve fallen for the exact propaganda they wanted you to believe. You don’t stop a house fire through politics- you throw water on the immediate problem. Direct action is responsible for nearly all of our civil rights gains we have made in this country.

As a nonbinary person myself, you’d think trans people wouldn’t throw the entire global south under the bus to keep themselves (and by proxy, this system) safe and secure, but rather stand against the system that causes all this death. It’s no surprise that reaping the benefits of exported fascism will eventually bring that fascism home.

otherwise you justify all kinds of “just following orders” arguments.

I’m not sure I’d equate having your hand forced with following orders blindly. It’s nearly impossible to change individuals’ behaviors unless it’s due to systemic forces (minus the few who just want to be correct as long as it is visible). But if you’re more focused on individuals and their “responsibility” even though they had no input on the creation of this system, I’d only assume that you’re fine with this system and would rather shout at the brick wall of “individual responsibility”, then get frustrated when people end up hating vegetarians and vegans. I’m like 90% vegetarian nowadays because I can’t really afford meat anyways as well as it giving me headaches and foul moods, but I don’t think you’re being realistic in what you’re asking. Would the world be better with no factory farming? Absolutely yes. But we’re in this situation not because of people’s choices. We’re in this situation because the choice has been made for a lot of us. Some people are a single paycheck away from homelessness, so they likely don’t have the resources to learn how to cook, then ruin a bunch of food in the learning process, only to overspend, and be threatened with getting kicked out all for your own comfort. Go fight the people making this the reality we’re living in.

There’s something to be said about the ease of access and personal energy needed to deal with changing a diet that has been inherited by birth where the alternative is possibly much more expensive. I don’t blame individuals who eat cheap meat out of necessity just as I don’t blame people for not recycling since the responsibility of the exploitation and destruction of our planet lies entirely with the people who run the machine, not those who are forced under threat of violence to exist inside it.

I just know we’ll find that damned Insulindian Phasmid soon