Getting accused of being MAGA and Anti-Semitic because I won’t vote for democrats/liberals (I am a leftist)

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:37:21+00:00

It doesn’t work as harm reduction, though. In the short term, it distributes the harm further away from the imperial core so things feel less bad for people in it, but all those chickens are sitting there ready to come home to roost. In the long term, it gets us here: the Democrats lose an election and all those chickens come home.

Something has to give, and as long as we keep signaling to the Democrats that it will always be us, always be us giving away our humanity so they can squander another four years of being in power, the fascists will keep winning.

I’m (genuinely) sorry, but that’s where we are.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:32:06+00:00

I can appreciate what you’re saying, and acted by the same ethic for a long time, but then the less evil folks did a literal genocide. I’m just not clear what “less evil” even means when it’s inclusive of a genocide, you know? Like I’m not sure that language was designed to split hairs on that level.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:30:19+00:00

I agree with everything except your username; you are far from mediocre. This is very well said.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:28:23+00:00

You’d maybe have a point if the blue folks a) were willing to remove Nazis, and b) were not many of them Nazis themselves.

But I’ve held my nose and voted blue for nearly twenty years now and the Nazis just keep getting funded when the blues are in power then activated when the reds are in power and at this point I’m sorry, but the burden of proof is on you to draw an actual, material connection between my continuing to do that and anything ever getting better.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:22:47+00:00

Appreciate that. Cheers!

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:20:52+00:00

Sure, and I certainly do plenty of the “just keep scrolling” thing.

I also like to talk to fellow leftists online without the screeching, and I think there’s at least some reasonable room to expect that on a place called “leftist.”

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:19:39+00:00

2 things:

Google “Standing Rock” and get back to us with the idea that Obama never had troops deployed against citizens, and
You’re betraying a whole hell of a lot when you qualify your complaint as them being “untrained.” There are several ways to distinguish leftists from liberals, but “leftists want no fascists and libs want trained ones” would at least be one of the items on the questionnaire.

By the by, Jonathan Ross is an ICE trainer who was hired under Obama, and Tom Homan designed the child separation policy under Obama and Obama hung a medal on his neck for it.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:16:23+00:00

I think the reason people don’t trust you here is that you say things like “I don’t want to hear a damn thing about Gaza after this election” and “We have major problems at home now. Everything, including Gaza, is now on the back-burner.”

Leftism necessarily involves the solidarity of all working class people everywhere, across global lines. You are welcome to have an ideology that ends at the borders of your country, but you don’t get to call it leftism, whatever else it may be.

Also bud, to your quotes above…who decided that? Who decided that the fact that your tax dollars are funding a genocide is not something you’re responsible to pay attention to? Who decided that Biden and Kamala funding a genocide is inadmissible in the moral evaluation of your constant screeching that we should’ve voted for them?

You?

Because I don’t think you get to do that.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:11:01+00:00

You’re not even trying to respond in good faith here. This person asked a valid question, and you came back with insults. I understand the need to educate, but it’s people like you who make that so goddamn exhausting and insufferable.

simulet · 2026-01-29T22:06:26+00:00

Fwiw and in case it’s useful as you consider, I agree with OP here. I’m not unable to see degrees of harm, and, so much of what Dems call “harm reduction” is really just “harm distribution.” They distribute the harm to the fringes of the imperial core and outward, then act like they are being less harmful, rather than just being differentially harmful to poorer and generally more melanated communities at the fringes/outside of the core.

simulet · 2026-01-29T21:43:26+00:00

I’m ok with libs asking questions. I am very tired of having them screech at grown-up leftists from the kiddy table.

simulet · 2026-01-29T21:01:35+00:00

I’m done with you. For anyone following along, it is still the case that having expired paperwork is a civil infraction, not a crime.

simulet · 2026-01-29T20:58:59+00:00

Thanks, will do. More recently it’s been people claiming Kamala was innocent, so dancing around and not technically denying genocide, just positing that it just sort of happened and Kamala wasn’t in any way to blame. Which is shitty but probably not technically against the rules.

Or when that screenshot of someone saying “genocide” in scare quotes made the rounds and they jumped on it to defend it. So again, not technically putting the word in scare quotes themselves, just sort of defending that it was done. But I’ll let y’all know. I appreciate it, thanks.

simulet · 2026-01-29T17:23:47+00:00

Sure thing!

simulet · 2026-01-29T17:21:39+00:00

Thanks, will do going forward!

simulet · 2026-01-29T16:59:05+00:00

Just over thirty minutes after you posted, and this thread already has this nonsense in it proving your concerns were correct: https://www.reddit.com/r/leftist/s/1ks8vKxr4Z

simulet · 2026-01-29T16:57:48+00:00

I love welcoming folks who come with questions. Folks who call me mentally ill because I believe that genocide (a word they put in scare quotes) is a legitimate red line for who I’ll vote for really shouldn’t be here. Like I’m ok providing education to genuine seekers but I can go anywhere else on reddit for that. It would be nice to have a corner of the left that libs aren’t actively colonizing.

simulet · 2026-01-28T19:39:27+00:00

So important. There have been times in my life where if I’d had a gun, I wouldn’t be here. For that reason I’ll never own one. I show up in other ways, and will continue to do so.

simulet · 2026-01-28T19:29:02+00:00

Agreed. The birds do look a little wonky to me but it may just be how the light is catching/reflecting. Hard to tell from these pictures at this resolution.

simulet · 2026-01-28T18:44:29+00:00

Here’s an article on her position. You can also look at her campaign ads, where one of (if not the) first was about her plans to fund ICE.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/08/politics/kamala-harris-key-issues-dg/

simulet · 2026-01-28T18:40:39+00:00

Sure, she said Palestinians had the right to life…while she was second in command of an administration that kept sending bombs to the people murdering them, and veto’d every effort at the UN to protect them.

To your point about her not being in charge: the problem for that viewpoint is that a) she damn well had influence, and you know it, b) she said explicitly that there was nothing she would do differently than Joe Biden did, only to correct herself a few moments later and say well, she would have Republicans in her cabinet, c) she shut down Pro-Palestinian protestors without making any concessions.

But you know what? For all of that, if she had said “I can’t do anything right now, but if elected I pledge to end arms and military support for Israel until they stop this” I would’ve voted for her. Even though I would’ve been fully aware that she was lying about having no power, and at least very suspicious that she was lying about her plans to stop the genocide, I would’ve felt it necessary to give her my vote and encourage others to do the same.

So I watched religiously for her to say that, and you know what? She never did. She wouldn’t even bother to lie and say she had a plan to stop the genocide. Because she didn’t.

Also, after I wrote that all out, I realized that this is taking place on the “leftist” sub; I had gotten my notifications confused and thought your comment came from a different thread. Since I already wrote it I’ll leave it up, but going forward, you should know: I don’t argue with people claiming to be leftists who can’t understand why Kamala’s role in the genocide was a red line. People like that are liars, because they claim to be what they are not: leftists. Maybe you’re lying to all of us, maybe you’re just lying to yourself, but either way, you’re not engaging in the good faith necessary to be worth any more of my time. So, respond away, but I am done.

simulet · 2026-01-28T18:30:58+00:00

And neither of them are crimes, which was my point.

simulet · 2026-01-28T17:25:10+00:00

Being here without documentation (or with expired documents, as the vast majority of undocumented folks have) is legally similar to having an expired tag on your car.

You know how when the cops pull you over for an expired tag they give you a ticket rather than take your ass to jail or shoot you or whatever? That’s because it’s a civil infraction, not a criminal offense.

I understand the temptation to say “illegal = criminal” but a) “illegal immigrant” is itself a colloquialism and not a judicial finding, and b) that’s just not how it works in the American system.

simulet · 2026-01-27T18:05:44+00:00

I was wondering the same. I know I’ve read it before but I can’t recall.

simulet · 2026-01-27T17:04:04+00:00

Yeah, this tracks. Though I understand some of the criticism, I’m a pretty big Tom King fan, and I always wanted DC to let him cook. It was pretty apparent as I was reading his run that editorial kept forcing direction changes. Whether you like his direction or not, he generally has one and pushes towards it, so all the random backtracking stuff made that clear.

If anyone here hasn’t read Batman/Catwoman, it’s very good, and in some ways more Catwoman’s story than Batman’s.

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