2020 was… truly unique. It was so hard to stay away from doom scrolling, and I (and many others) were pretty disillusioned by the sad fact that so much of our country legitimately supported the Orange Man. I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night of the election because I genuinely considered it to be a make or break decision for America.
My point is that looking back on it, in the end the only real difference I made was at the ballet box. This year I’m going for the Head-in-the-Sand approach. I’m done with the political memes. Done with the Twitter screenshots. It just riles me up and this year I’m gonna do my best to fight that.
It is what pragmatists believe. Some pragmatists are liberals, other pragmatists have other ideals. The coincidence of pragmatic results is not indicative of a coincidence of pre-pragmatic ideals. Your framework is too simplistic to be interesting or useful.
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Some people believe that stringent adherence to idealism is paramount, despite the material suffering of others implementation of that ideal causes. Other people have empathy, and are willing to analyze the actual consequences of political action independent of idealism, prioritizing actions which do tangible good over performative platitudes. Pragmatists fall in to the second camp, you certainly appear to fall into the first. The first are boring and impotent everywhere but their own minds.
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And if you would rather support the dissolution of the democratic process despite the material suffering it will certainly cause, you just value your ideals over all other concerns. People who value ideals over all other considerations have innately Ineffective outlooks. They are useful tools that allow fascists to accumulate power.
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Sure, but your alternative is blatant support of genocide. It’s well and fine to say who ought to be in charge, but mathematically it’s one of two people. I agree that the options suck, but I will use the powers that I have in their proper places. Vote for the lesser evil, and advocate against evil entirely elsewhere. You act like liberal is worse than fascist.
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Agree to disagree. I’m not content to let the bodies pile up to revolution levels, those lives are more than just metrics to spur on dissidence. People are still voting for Trump, obviously that strategy doesn’t even work even if it weren’t ghoulish. The logistics of keeping the evil hush-hush results in fewer bodies than out and out ethnic cleaning. I’m on the side of fewer bodies.