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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 24th, 2023

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  • It doesn’t take enthusiasm to make an active move toward harm reduction if and when you see the opportunity, especially when the consequences are this serious. I would love to see ranked choice voting and a diverse and motivated number of parties to challenge the dichotomy we have now, but I live in the reality of the viable options in front of me in this moment.

    This isn’t about an acceptance or endorsement of the system we have now. Unfortunately for all of us, however, this is the system we currently live in. If my choices are between bad and catastrophic, I’m going with bad. Doubly so in cases like these. The choice is either the people who are suffering may or will continue to do so, versus these same people suffering even worse while making multiple new groups of people suffer, too.

    If Trump wins and things get as bad, or worse, than the scenarios that have been proposed on record, more people will continue to lose their homes, autonomy, and lives in the United States. Many people who are suffering from atrocities actively going on in places other than the Middle East will likely also be worse off under these policies.

    I hope those people who feel as if they own the moral high ground will remember they had an opportunity to stop it and chose to do nothing if we suddenly all find ourselves living in that world.



  • I appreciate and agree with most of your post, but I disagree that we are all so disconnected from each other’s feelings. Perhaps it’s a regional thing, but many of us have relatives, if not friends, who deeply disagree with our politics. We not only get exposed to the others’ views through social interactions, but we also absorb any political media they have on in the background on holidays and other get-togethers. Some of us also want to understand what the other end of the spectrum is exposed to and seek out some content from these sources for a variety of different reasons.

    I don’t understand the mindset and thinking of people in my life that are so far on the other side when it comes to these issues, but I don’t write them off or feel disgusted by them as people unless and until they start promoting hate speech in most cases.

    I’m also not experiencing any delusions about inevitable outcomes on election day. I’m preparing for either reality, but I’m more actively preparing myself for the opposite outcome of what I’m hoping for. Lemmy does a great job of reminding me how possible this is in comment sections every day.

    I’m doing what I can by helping and encouraging friends, coworkers, and my partner to vote. He even requested an absentee ballot after months of telling me he wasn’t going to vote. I didn’t push, and I don’t consume most news media when we’re together. He has just had a harder time ignoring the evidence of his eyes and ears lately.

    Nothing is decided. If we care at all about not feeling the gut punch that was November 9th of 2016, if not worse, then we should do what we can to prevent that from happening again.