Not disagreeing with your points here, and I definitely appreciate your work on this thread.
Just adding that from my perspective:
No, voting for Biden is not a solution to anything, other than ridding ourselves of the current administration, and especially not the answer to our society’s systemic racism. In a better world Joe would have disappeared into the sunset long ago.
That said, I just can’t come to any other conclusion except that every option – other than sucking it up and voting for him – is a worse choice.
I’ll freely admit that my perspective is hugely informed by privilege and circumstances, and I have no argument with like-minded people who reach a different conclusion.
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The best reply I have to that is to repeat something I posted a year ago, when the situation was not quite as desperate as it is now:
The left criticism of the Democratic party is not, and never has been, the claim that both parties are exactly the same.
But it is entirely possible for two things to be (a) not identical, and (b) both catastrophically bad.
America has two parties, both of which are corrupt, murderous, plutocratic and racist. One of them is subtle and devious, the other is blatant and crude.
Neither of them are forces for good in the world. One party offers a slightly slower and more polished catastrophe than the other, but neither party offers a path that is consistent with justice or long-term survival.
There are harm minimisation arguments in favour of voting for the slower evil, although those arguments are not themselves unassailable. There are also arguments in favour of continuing attempts at reform/subversion within the existing party structures. But those arguments do not imply that it is a wise course to deny the reality of the situation.
Most of the left has not yet abandoned electoralism entirely. But very many people are justifiably on the verge of doing so, and half of the country was already there long before Trump arrived.
Fortunately, electoralism is not the only means of pursuing political change.
—
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I see that the protesters in Minneapolis are now carrying around traffic cones which is bad news for anybody trying to use tear gas containers
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This is one of those examples of why elections are both indispensably important and grossly insufficient.
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Professor Lockjaw isn’t going to be happy about this
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This is how Twitter is choosing to depict the trending content related to the week’s protests.
Something something can’t editorialize something something open carrier mumble mumble.
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Protests planned in Seattle tomorrow. We don’t have a really good record of this going well. Thread.
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Wally
May 30, 2020, 2:48am
57
It’s on the White House’s front steps right now, 10:47pm EST, as it should be. Good.
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docosc
May 30, 2020, 3:11am
60
So can we now say that press are clearly targeted by cops, not just by-kill? It certainly appears they do not want their actions to be documented.
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It seems to me that we need to be using drones to live stream footage of the uprisings.
Not inexpensive, but far less costly than risking life and limb.
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They’ve been routinely attacking the alternative press (Unicorn Riot, Rebelutionary Z, etc) for years. Now they’re expanding to the corporate press.
OTOH, even that isn’t entirely new. Remember this?
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docosc
May 30, 2020, 3:28am
63
And the targeting of minority (and therefore assumingly less well defended) journalists is not coincidental.
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