If you want to fight, you have to be prepared to lose.
It was no accident that Rosa Parks chose that particular seat on that particular day. Everyone that came before her had lost that same battle. Black folks (and the white folks who supported them) were thrown in jail for violating segregationist laws. But with each battle, knowledge and support was gained.
There’s a line in the recent Fallout series that really sticks out to me. A “do good” congresswoman is trying to get an audience with the president. She is roughly shoved aside by security. Our hero helps her up and she says, “Fighting the good fight is mostly a series of humiliations”. I think about that a lot. It’s exactly like that, because fighting the good fight mostly happens when you are alone and outnumbered. Otherwise, you’re just in an echo chamber.
Jack@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
If people want to follow Douglas’ example of supporting the lesser evil, they can - as about a third do. But I’m mostly not writing for them, because they don’t care enough that their actions are actively helping and giving legitimacy to genocide, a climate cascade causing a mass extinction event, a psychotic economic system, a food system torturing 2-6 trillion animals to death a year and enslaving 2-4 trillion animals in torturous conditions a year, unsustainable pollution, biosphere degradation… They don’t care enough that by voting for the lesser evil, they’re actively culpable of the system getting more evil after every election.
Instead, for the plurality that don’t vote at all, I’m pointing out there are other options: like voting for ethical people instead, and starting the long fight towards an ethical civilization. It may be a long defeat, but for those who won’t cross the ethical lines listed above, doing the right thing (even if you lose) is better than actively supporting those who are making the system more evil. The difference between +9+9 and +7+6 is real, but for some the ethical lines they won’t cross is between +7+6 and -5-3.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Douglas worked for the best possible candidate, not the perfect one. According to you “They don’t care enough that by voting for the lesser evil, they’re actively culpable of the system getting more evil after every election.”
By your way of thinking, Douglas was happy to let slavery go on and you are more moral than him because you aim for perfection.
I was actually lucky enough to have met and been taught by old school Communists; folks who actually went to fight Franco in Spain and got blacklisted in the 1950s. One thing they always talked about was the 1968 election. The real Lefties were pushing for Humphrey, because they knew how bad Nixon was. The young folks then thought that Humphrey wasn’t as good as McCarthy and stayed home of did protest votes.
Your ‘ethics’ remind me of the folks who will let the mother die, rather than let her get an abortion.
Jack@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I’m not convinced that voting for genocide and mass extinction is OK, and I’ve looked at arguments in favor of them like the lesser-evil. I may be too stupid to understand the arguments in favor of them, but I don’t think I’m being a perfectionist because I actually disagree with many things in Green and socialist platforms - but they’re not things that cross the line for me.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I may be too stupid to understand the arguments in favor of them,
You are. It’s that simple.
Frederick Douglas worked for Lincoln knowing that Lincoln wasn’t planning on ending slavery. Douglas figured it was better to win with Lincoln and be at the table than to lose and have no say whatever.
Unless you can prove you are smarter or more moral than Douglas, you should follow his lead.