#the leftists aren't any better to be frank

[weepingpussywillowtree]

petty rant about the state of discourse around USA politics under the cut. I'm pretty sure this is a hot take so I'm prepared to delete later

this is very niche and petty but USA online leftists who think voting is bad and that if you can't find the most morally pure candidate that aligns with all of your values you shouldn't vote, or that voting is a waste of time and we should all just mutual aid and revolution more instead just seem incredibly short-sighted and terminally online to boot.

what mutual aid and revolution, I ask you??? Is it here in the room with us??? hate to break it to y'all, but the people who are actually out there volunteering or doing charity drives or whatever are mostly conservative christian grandmas and *gasp* the dreaded libs, at least from my experience in the northeastern USA. vermont, where my extended family lives, flooded this summer and guess who was out there wearing PPE and helping people recover their stuff, clean up, and distribute supplies?? my TERF ass mother and a bunch of other older white ladies. I'm sure there were other groups doing it too, but you know who wasn't out there?? my terminally online leftist cousin, who also lived in vermont but would rather post angry stuff that makes them look clever and cool all day than doing something boring like hand out essentials to people who had their homes destroyed by climate change.

also, an actual revolution would most likely just kill a lot of people and make the material conditions in this country worse, at least in the short term. y'all just sit inside and tweet and post discourse and be mad online and then get mad at other people for spending a few hours voting to try and at least stave off full blown authoritarian fascism in this country for another few years. you don't know that they aren't also organized in other ways. you are getting mad about something that takes less than one day every two years.

not to mention, the vast majority of your country is not nearly as left wing as you are. a third of americans are Christian nationalists or Christian nationalist sympathizers and that's about as right wing as it gets. you are living in an online bubble.

Idk what kind of history education y'all got, but the USA has been a warmongering genocidal shitstain for pretty much its entire history. not that what's currently happening isn't incredibly awful, inhumane, and disgusting. It absolutely is and we should try to do everything we can to help, including donating, boosting, protesting, and harassing the hell out of your representatives.. But this is far from the first time the USA has participated in and funded horrific acts of cruelty. and no, I am not saying "vote blue no matter who". especially when it comes to local elections, do a bit of fucking research and voting could actually affect your life for the better.

it's just frustrating when I feel like people can't have any nuance about this. voting is harm reduction, not moral posturing. even when I vote for obscure local candidates or for a third party candidate I usually disagree with them on at least one major issue. this is a problem that comes up with representative governments (and also the diversity of human opinion, to be quite frank. I promise you agree with your progressive friends on fewer issues than you think), but that's what we've got so maybe it'd be more productive for everyone if you stopped throwing a hissy fit about it.

#shouting into the void