this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Can you point out where the comic suggests that you shouldn't bother voting? Because I must have missed that part.
Are you stupid
Is there more than two parties in the US?
Functionally not, but voting third party is at least better than not voting
Alright, so you can vote for someone other than the orphan crushers. Weird how you pretended like that wasn't a possibility.
It has proven to be less effective at stopping the orphan crushing machine than voting for democrats. It is possible that in the long run it could be more effective, though that has not yet been proven.
Doing something that hasnt been done has not been proven to do anything because it hasnt been done. Voting democrat has only accelerated the orphan-killer, so I struggle to see how legitimising the people who want to kill orphans could in any way be a more effective way to stop them than doing the bare minimum of not legitimising them.
I don't believe terms like "legitimising" have any practical purpose when used in this context. People vote democrat because they think it's the most effective way to minimise harm, not because they want to signal allegiance or agreement with any one particular policy.
Okay? In that case I declare I dont really believe it matters whether you vote for a democrat or a republican since they're the same. There we go, I win, thats that discussion.
I dont really care what you believe, especially when the observable reality is one that differs from what you'd like it to be. It matters to politicians whether or not people vote for them and they use it to determine how much appeasement to capital they can get away with. Politicians do not walk around and ask voters whether they got the vote in spite of a policy or not. They win and, correctly, assume that the course they've kept is one they can continue on.
On top of that they use the amount of votes they receive as legitimising their rule. They quote it in speeches, they use it in their retrospectives, it is the foundation on which they rest their claim of experience when they train new generations and when they try to push legislation through. Voting for a politician signals you support them and their policy, thats what a vote is.
If you actually believe democrats and republicans are the same then yes, you "win". Voting third party would be the correct choice.
The existence of the phrase "strategic voting" proves a vote is not a blind show of support. A vote in a FPTP system reveals only that you think that candidate is 1. better than the alternatives and 2. meaningfully more likely to win if you vote for them. Adhering to the politicians' lie that a vote means full support isn't logically consistent with how people make choices in the voting booth. Even in ranked choice voting a vote doesn't signal full support, although it would only signal #1 and not #2, which is a meaningful improvement.
Why do you types insist on pretending that you're more obtuse than a caveman? Do you pretend not to understand arguments because you know you cannot make it in a straightforward discussion ?
If you put faith in the electoral system, yes. Glas we agree.
As did your statement that voted despite certain policies. As I've detailed, that doesn't matter. The existence of the catholic church isnt proof of god.
So you admit politicians claim legitimacy from votes. Neat. What isn't logical is then continuing to support them, when that is what they do.
Again, the rest of your spiel is pointless. What matters is the practical reality of what a vote is and does, which you've admitted yourself is a sign that you support that politician. You can say whatever you want to make yourself feel good about voting for genociding police-state fascists, the police state fascists only care that you vote for them, not why.
If your argument is that from the politicians' perspective they believe, or claim to believe, that people support them based on the amount of votes they receive while ignoring the context of what the other choices in that vote are, and use those votes as proof they should continue holding their current policies, then yes, that's probably true. My reaction to this would be to say the proper place to give a politician "legitimacy" by voting for or against their policies while avoiding the negative consequences of a protest vote getting someone like Trump elected is in the primaries, not the general.
Neat! Or whatever, I couldnt really give a fuck what you believe or your reaction is or whatever. I dont live in the fantasy-land you construct in order to avoid engaging with basic concepts, I live in the world where you dont vote "for or against policies" you vote for a party or a politician and that group or person uses the vote as a point of support for their policies. I think im going to end my interaction with this discussion here, because there's nothing to gain from it at this point, its pretty clear you just want to play make-pretend.
I'm honestly confused why you would engage in discussion at all if you don't believe you could learn anything from anyone else. If you think your opponents are all delusional, you might as well just go try arguing with a rock. The irony of you believing you understand the reality of the situation does not escape me.
if you want to minimize harm, then having an incompetent leader like Trump steer the imperial ship and sinking it. Rather than a competent one. As the imperial ship harms way, way more people than every person living in Amerika.
Oh so you're a Political Compass user too huh... that explains things.
To try and help someone like you understand; Amerika, the country you live in, has and is still involved in mass slaughter, genocide, collective punishment, destruction of societies and displacement of millions of people. Your country has killed MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people through various ways in the past 100 years.
Your country is built on the backs of slaves and supported by pillars of bones of those that lived there long before white men touched the shore.
The world is bigger than Amerika, it should be gone so that the indigenous people can get their land back and ending world suffering for once.
I don't actually use the political compass lmao, it's called a meme. What, do you think OP believes there's a physical hydraulic press crushing the orphans and not a metaphorical one?
Anyways I'm aware of America's history. Why would you assume I am not?
Guess OP crushes orphans
Has it? Did the orphan crushing machine even slow down a little bit when democrats were in power? Because I'm pretty sure that it didn't.
Democrats tend to produce meaningfully different results within the US. I would say this is true even outside of it. At least they weren't blowing up random ships outside Argentina and were able to make and keep deals and treaties with other countries.
What meaningfully different results? Biden fast tracked money for the border wall. Stole from the working class to give handouts to his rich friends. Increased ICE, Police, Pentagon, and war funding. Deported immigrants, and sent them to torture prisons.
The Democrats were blowing up kids in syria. They were supporting genocide. They did more deportations than Trump's first term. Lets look at the treaties and deals that they made: Dictators, Slave-Owners, Racists, Genocidists.
Wow, what "meaningfully different results".
Different doesn't mean Biden was good, just that he was so much better than the alternative. Did his administration blow up ships in international waters with no approval? Deport citizens arrested by ICE to third-world countries with no trial and refuse to bring them back? Dismantle USAID, killing multiple thousands of people? Remove protections from federal land and allow nature to be destroyed? Arrest citizens for using privacy features on their phones? Violate the first-amendment rights of national television broadcasters? Abduct and threaten to deport rival political candidates? Pardon traitors and create the corporate pardon? Get ICE to arrest judges? Ban themselves from IRS audits? Let goons run around with full illegal access to every government database? Delete the data on who owns which company that's used to protect against fraud? Withhold federal aid from states based on their political affiliation? Pay AI companies to reject insurance claims? Talk in Nazi chatrooms and throw Nazi salutes onstage? Deny healthcare to women based on their marital status? Remove protections from LGBT people? Try to remove birthright citizenship and state their plans to mass incarcerate and possibly deport people who became citizens that way? Repeatedly ignore court decisions? Dismantle federal agencies based only on their political affiliation? Appoint the worst cabinet in US history? Threaten to jail the people investigating January 6th? Try to remove judges who ruled against them? Cut the suicide hotline for LGBT people? Beat and jail people protesting ICE raids? Try to run for a third term and sieze federal control of elections? Make moves to conquer Greenland? Lie, cheat, scam, rape, steal, corrupt, and otherwise destroy anything they get their hands on? Remove government watchdogs? Cancel federal funding for health research based on bullshit keywords? Destroy trust in public health? Destroy longstanding peace agreements? Legally erase trans people and steal their federal IDs? I could go on.
"so much better" is where we disagree. The dude was a monster.
Not that I know of. But he sure did that to innocent people on land.
Yes
Nope, but he forced people back to dangerous offices, killing thousands. He backed a genocide, killing multiple thousands. Bombed the hell out of who-knows-how many people. I don't really care what tool someone used to kill others, I care that they killed others.
Yes
Yes
No, but he sat back and did nothing when that happened, and had the full power to help them.
Yes
Yes
I could go on, but it's clear that you are ignoring my point: We were talking about "meaningfully different results". Just because Biden didn't do the exact same things as Trump doens't mean that Biden gave us "meaningfully different results".
I just don't understand how you can be informed about politics and not understand the enormous gulf between the two primary options. Even for the examples I gave where you can say yes, technically the Biden admin did this too, the difference in scale is staggering.
DOGE had complete unsupervised access to every government agency without proper security clearance or logging, for example. Trump was literally found in a court of law to have raped someone. Several people who had participated in an ICE protest but left before it became violent were sentenced to 30 to 70 years in prison.
Being informed about politics leads one to understand that there is no such gulf.
Like, you literally thought that ICE appeared less than two years ago, that Biden didn't take part in any invasions, that Biden didn't openly abuse power to shield his family from the laws he himself pushed through decades ago, and so on.
It's not. The difference is just decorum and lack thereof.
Sorry, I'm not interested in conversing with someone who can't read what I've already said.
...or someone who doesn't have any idea what's happening outside.
What you said was that ICE wasn't a thing under Biden and Obama.
When you were listing differences between Trump and the preceeding blue fascists, the things that you listed were also features under said blue administrations.
The fact is that the only thing that is significantly different in this case is decorum, the lack of which you abhor more than literal genocides.
LITERALLY no on all three counts. I pointed to specific instances of their policy differences and did not make any of the statements you just claimed I did. You are sitting in the cave arguing against shadows on the wall.
Again, there is no point conversing if you are not capable of responding to reality.
So, you weren't the one who said this?
Again, if your prior list, where you say that Buden (and Obama) didn't use ICE and didn't bomb other countries (technically, you were only concerned with ships for some reason) and the like, was not what you meant, you are free to actually mention things that you think are substantial differences between Trump and the preceding genocidaires in chief.
I don't think deporting citizens like that is one of the things you can truthfully say the Biden admin did. I mean, the poster said Biden did it too, but they provided no proof and neither did you. Meanwhile the Trump admin was ordered multiple times to prevent the deportation of citizens earlier this year. That's why I included it in my list; it's an example of a specific thing that the Trump admin has done worse.
(Proof of the Trump admin doing this: The deportation of Rasha Alawieh, despite a valid visa and court orders denying the legality of the deportation. If the Biden admin did anything similar to this this, feel free to mention an example.)
My note about things the Biden admin did too was to cover list items like "corruption" where there is a difference in scale but not in whether it happened at all. For the record, I don't think any of the concrete policy things in my list that the poster said Biden did are actually true, I just didn't feel like arguing against someone delusional. Feel free to provide proof if that's not accurate.
It is what I meant, it is a list of concrete differences between the Trump and Biden admins (ask me for a source on any one of those items, I have them!), and me refusing to respond to some dumbass going "nuh uh!!" doesn't mean I suddenly don't believe the things I said and 100% agree with said dumbass.
Also, specifically:
In the list I wrote which you LITERALLY WERE QUOTING AND COULD SEE SAID QUOTE FROM WHILE WRITING THIS INCORRECT STATEMENT, I specifically didn't mention things like "used ICE" or "arrested people protesting ice" because both admins did it. I mentioned specifically the things which the Trump admin has done above and beyond the horrible things both parties usually do. Same goes for the ships, the US is always bombing other countries, we aren't usually blowing up random ships and threatening to take over Greenland.
Currently don't have time to address the entire reply (will do that later), but I do want to address one claim that you made:
Biden's term, and each of Obama's terms saw greater numbers of deportations that Trump's first term.
At the very least, articles like these that provide such statistics are easily searchable:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/trump-biden-immigrants-deportations.html
So, it is rather silly that you keep insisting that Trump is somehow different/worse in this regard.
And I don't understand how you can see them do the above listed things, and claim that there is an "enormous gulf between the two primary options". Yes, there are minor differences, but to say there is an "enormous gulf", serously downplays how evil and monsterous Biden was.
Liberals refusing to see how evil and monsterous their politicians are, is one of the reasons that other monsters like Trump keep getting elected.
I mean, is there anything he did significantly worse than the Trump admin you would like to share with me?
Not really, no. Like I said, they were very similar.
I seriously cannot understand how people believe this. Do you participate in US news discussion?
Well, if you ignore the bad things that someone does, then I can see how this can be confusing. I participate in US news discussions all the time, that's how I know that Biden is a terrible person, who did terrible things.
If you want to be less confused, I'd recommend that you do the same.
I do
I'm not sure you do. You just referenced a document where you didn't know half of what was going on under Biden.
Clearly they do more than you do, given they're were aware of Biden's crimes that you weren't. Also, you can't understand how people believe that because you can't imagine thinking of Palestinians as human
This is such a wild thing to say immediately after demonstrating that you were completely uninformed about Biden's crimes
Are you? Can you at least try to be a little articulate? Or is that beyond your obviously limited capabilities?