American Leftists who Vote for Joe Biden are Cowards
Do not negotiate with terrorists. Don’t give them an inch. Not now, not ever. Today the world’s most dangerous terror organization is named the United States Government, and you should be fighting it at every opportunity. If you are a real leftist you won’t find that framing surprising, but I will nonetheless briefly discuss some examples.
From 1964 to 1973, the US dropped 270,000,000 bombs on Laos. On average, this is just under one bomb every second. For nine years. Source.
Throughout the Obama administration, almost every person killed by drone strikes in the middle east was classified as a combatant on death, with absolutely no justification for this claim. Source. The US famously bombed a wedding in Afghanistan for no reason, killing almost 40 people. Source.
The american government does nothing for the world but hurt people. The photos above are of victims of a so-called ‘black site’ in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. If you think you’re safe at home because this only happens elsewhere, though, you might want to take a look around you. In Chicago, a similar black site at Homan Square was operated by the Chicago Police Department under the oversight of then-mayor Rahm Emanuel. Over seven thousand american citizens went into it during its existence and less than a percent ever saw a lawyer. Source.
One thing I deliberately did not say in these examples, and which you almost certainly filled in for yourself, was whether you deemed the Republicans or the Democrats responsible for each of these incidents. The fact is that this is a completely stupid thing to do. It is merely the United States that is responsible, not one party or the other. At least one of the examples I chose (from an exceptionally large pool over 300 years in the making) happened to be ‘due to’ each party in the conventional framing, but this really is not the way you need to think about it. There is a single terrorist organization here.
There’s also something to be said about non-murderous terror, which usually exists in the form of economic sanctions. The united states gets to enforce sanctions on behalf of the whole world because it can implicitly threaten every other nation with real violence if they don’t participate. That is the point of having a military several times larger than any other on the planet: you get to terrorize everyone else into playing by your rules.
Now, what was I saying before? Oh, right. If you vote for Joe Biden, you are negotiating with terrorists. Obviously. By voting for either party when you know what they are responsible for, you are saying, “okay, I will rubber-stamp a permission slip for you to continue terrorizing the planet. Just, please do it in a way that I won’t have to look at as much.” This becomes partially on you. In an extremely tiny way, sure, but it is on you nonetheless. You will need to live with voting for mass hysterectomies of immigrant women at the US-Mexico border, because as long as one party or the other is in power, that will obviously continue.
Let’s talk about the extremely tiny way that this is on you. There is an argument I hear from many people on the left that if you feel you need to vote for Joe, you should do what you have to. Those people also often argue that their own vote doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s just a drop in the bucket, and so if you vote for Joe then it won’t make a difference in the long run anyway. Nobody seems to notice that if this is true then you may as well not vote for Joe for the exact same reason. So, the question becomes, if either option is supposedly pointless, is there a way to do this in a way that benefits the left in America?
Yes. There actually is. It says something about Left unity in the US that people don’t even think about it from this angle: you are a voting bloc, you morons! Or at least, you could be. As a bloc you would end up more consolidated if you tried to run a no-vote campaign than if you all just did whatever you felt like. Then people in power might actually notice what you’re doing, and even if they still refuse to pander to you, at least they’ll finally see that you need to be reckoned with one way or another.
Not only that, but by consolidating yourselves as a voting bloc, you might be able to strengthen the unity you so desperately want to build. You guys did okay with Bernie, but now it’s time to do it again: nobody 2020. If they refuse to give you somebody, you vote for nobody. If you want to vote down-ballot, you have to do your research and only check off boxes with socialists in them. And this time, you don’t have to go to Iowa and walk all over the place in the cold; you only have to convince yourselves and each other. There are already a lot of you, and by making a unified decision in this election you will be showing the country that you’re ready for something new in 2022 and 2024. And I’m sorry, but that seems like your soonest chance, and you need to start getting ready for it now.
There is a general pattern here: when you do something on your own, ask if doing something else with all your friends might be a better, stronger decision. Take it case-by-case. And if you have clout online in a way that I don’t, you ought to be trying to tell people what to do, or you’re just wasting your platform. God knows that everyone with clout on the bad team is using it to tell people what to do, so you may as well try and keep up with the arms race.
Before you close this page, scroll back up and look at the pictures of the people you are considering voting for one more time. Do not negotiate with terrorists.
