this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
67 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

13533 readers
949 users here now

Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.

No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer

Gossip posts go in c/gossip. Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from c/gossip

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

joe biden or donald trump? who would you pick? if you had to measure both men on a scale and determine which one is the lesser evil, who is it?

the answer is, dont engage with this kind of question. both men are unambiguously bad and we shouldnt argue further as to which one you should not vote for, neither one is deserving of a vote, not voting is always an option.

hypothetical questions like this that force you to choose between two bad options, they are actually bad discussions, like you should make a conscious effort to avoid these would you rather questions and try not to ask them.

comrades, especially our fediverse comrades, consider such kind of thoughts haram, do not be making false equivalencies. we do not believe in morality, we do not believe in good and evil, we are communists and our beliefs are derived from theory, nearly everything has a precedence.

all 48 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Libs be obsessed with the lesser of two evils when everyone knows weighted lesser evil+ is the much more meaningful statistic

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We need evil above replacement so we can finally see who is the Ohtani of US presidents

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Which is the greater evil, red cog or blue cog?

No, you can't answer "the whole machine"

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

no more half measures walter

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

we do not believe in morality

speak for yourself nerd

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

morality

sounds like lib shit to me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lord forgive me for I have libbed

racist jokes however are peak communism

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Antiracism is anticapitalism, you don't need moralism for that shit. Base and superstructure my dood

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Then why are there so many racist jokes in our /new queue lately

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

That we absolutely agree on.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

if you had to measure both men on a scale and determine which one is the lesser evil, who is it?

Someone's eating well that night god Ammit

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Actually Trump is much wetter and therefore better

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

only a sith deals in absolutes smuglord

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Equating Biden and Trump is a false equivalency. Both are bad. But one is magnitudes worse. It’s ok to compare and judge them. Biden is flawed. Trump is uniquely evil.

A dumpster fire is bad. An out of control wildfire is worse. There’s no reason not to recognize that one thing is worse than another, even if both are bad.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

History didn't start with the 2016 election. Biden has had a much worse impact on the country over his entire career than Trump's four years of fumbling. Biden is more evil just based on the '94 crime bill alone - millions of Americans' lives were ruined and are still ruined today by that bill and Biden isn't even apologetic about it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Joe was also one of the biggest pushers of the Iraq war. He got to choose every single witness in the senate hearing on Iraq and he chose 18 different pro-war witnesses! He was also talking about war in Iraq long before it became a mainstream thing.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Biden has already likely caused more harm by:

  • Ratcheting up tensions with Russia, likely precopitating the SMO.

  • Restoring some competence to the imperial machine. More military actions flying under tge radar, financial weapons being used more effectively to impoverish.

  • Creating horrible economic conditions for various African countries through blanket sanctions and intimidation.

  • Cutting COVID benefits and declaring the pandemic emergency over.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Biden caused more problems than Trump for the same reason matches cause more forest fires than flamethrowers: bigger dangers are taken more seriously

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Americans dont care about they continued undermining of the sovereignty of foreign countries, they care about if the boot on their face has a different aesthetic and said boot says the right slogans.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you think Trump is worse that's fine, it's a debatable point, and not a very important one either way.

But he's not a unique evil. He's not an abberation, he's the consequence of this system. This isn't a wildfire or a unique event, this is another day in the forest of late stage capitalism

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Technically wildfires are a consequence of late stage capitalism

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

michael-laugh got me there

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Trump isn't uniquely evil. There are plenty of gamergate losers and billionaire ghouls out there. And someone who fits both criteria now owns Twitter. Trump is a figurehead of American fascism, which is the end result of late stage capitalism. Biden is a figurehead of the neoliberalism that leads to people like Trump.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Agreed. While not voting is technically a choice, it's not a choice you should take if you want change. Let's put out the wildfire first, then we'll work on putting out the dumpster fire.

Unless people have a realistic third choice we can make. Ignoring the problem until it goes away isn't going to work though.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Let's put out the wildfire first, then we'll work on putting out the dumpster fire.

Is there some particular action the Biden admin is doing that you would categorize as "putting out the wildfire" ? From here it seems like the vast majority of Trump policies - policies decried and lambasted by Democrats - have somehow been upheld and continued. Almost like voting for Biden is diametrically opposed to putting out any wildfires.

edit: note that they chose to attack the idea of not voting rather than coming up with literally any positive action the Biden admin has done - because there aren't any

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You might not know this if you're not American, but America works on a first past the post system which isn't democratic. They call it democracy and they tell you that your can vote for your choice of president, but that's not true. You actually vote against a particular candidate. If you don't use your vote, then you didn't vote against anyone. But if you vote "for biden", then you're actually voting against Trump.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Congratulations the person you voted for to put out the wildfires just started stabbing holes in the fire hoses as soon as he was elected.

That fire can be roe, climate change, the rise of fascism, take your pick.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Please explain to me how not voting would have prevented your scenario.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

It doesn't prevent the scenario, just like voting didn't prevent the scenario. You need to stop thinking about politics as something confined to voting every two years, because that's how you get an ancient decrepit beast like Biden being the "lesser" evil. Politics is about actions and organizing.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

If everyone didn't vote that would delegitimize the bourgeois electoral system.

If one person doesn't vote... who cares?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is always the argument. Every four years this is the argument. It's always time to "deal with the current crisis by voting before we seriously discuss stopping the whole machine".

It's been decades and centuries of this argument, when is it actually the time to admit that fighting 'the current electoral crisis' isn't an important use of time, and that the only meaningful choice comes from promoting and enacting ideas outside of electoralism?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Holy shit, how many decades of that horse-faced pony show do you need before you realize that's not how this works? You know what happens if the Blue Sex Offender beats the Red Sex Offender this time? Do you think it's "putting out the dumpster fire"? No! There will be a new Unique Evil, a new "wildfire," and the moderates will say that we yet again must wait and bend to their will to have another feckless sex offender who is the correct brand and that will somehow make things better even as he makes permanent all of the already-disgusting but nominally-temporary measures from the Red Sex Offender who preceded him.

People have literally been making the argument you just made since the 1970s at least. They've been making it the entire time, and the time to go from "reducing" harm to "ending" harm or -- God forbid -- making actual progress never came because we still have morons saying the same thing a half century later!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would I rather defend myself with a knife or a gun?

Neither. Because both are weapons and I dont engage in false equivalencies.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Neither is going to defend you. Their mode of operation is to dispossess you and those around you, creating desperation so that you die of things like treatable diseases or pressures of employment vs. cost of living and that you blame yourself or another scapegoat for why it's happening. If you point the finger at them and get popular enough, they try to destroy you more directly.

They also mutually benefit from one another. Every 2-4 years they can villify each other despite having 90% agreement with one another, focusing on that 10% to provide the illusion of choice. Every time "change" is needed, you know you're just getting some slightly different capitalist monster in blue or red.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess I should've added a /s in there. I know both are capitalist and agree on 90% of things. The only difference is Biden will wear a pride flag for one month out of the year while Trump will call white supremacist "very good people".

I might vote but I know it does fuck all and there are more important things to focus on.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh lol yeah you got me. Thought it was seriouss.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My b. I thought OP was making a funny with:

We don't engage with false equivalencies

Immediately followed by

These two are the same thing

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I've not been alive a long long time, but I've lived long enough to know that every single election cycle is parroted as "the most important election of our time". Every vote you make is just the LAST step to squashing the unsaveably evil menace that is the other side who will destroy humanity forever. None of it's true. They're pretty much all members of the bourgeoisie, with the vested material interests that come with it.

If you think there's some vague benefit to one over the other, vote away, but wasting time discussing it and opposing each other over it is the real evil. It is a discussion that cannot have winners, just leftist infighting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When I heard that the Republican party was using voter registration as a ploy to keep black people from voting, I was outraged! If those ghouls can get away with that, then American democracy truly is a sham. So naturally, I expressed my frustration with the system by asking all my friends who believe in BLM not to vote.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But what's wrong with Joe Biden? Didn't he get 81 million votes? Isn't the economy booming?

Isn't he creating the leftist utopia we've all been yearning for all our lives?

If someone says Trump or Biden isn't the answer clearly Biden?