I’ve read State and Revolution. It’s on my bookshelf. Lenin’s point is exactly that electoral candidates aren’t coming and I said as much. We agree there.

The global consequences point is fair. US foreign policy lands on people who don’t vote in Maine. The US is the enemy of the world driven through systemic capitalist deregulation and consolidation. Gaza happened with full Democratic backing. It’s a documented failure that I share your anger about. The harm reduction argument has real limits when the harm being reduced doesn’t include the people bearing the worst of it.

The Indigenous Action piece I’ve also read previously. The settler colonial framework raises structural critiques that standard electoral calculus doesn’t engage and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Again, however, I live in this system. I’m incredibly frustrated, I’m watching my family have issues with healthcare and housing while my tax dollars get used to destabilize and bomb other countries. That’s crystal fucking clear. But I’m not a billionaire, I don’t have the capital to wage war against the controlling powers. I’m a single person who’s attempting to build community and educate as many as possible. I can’t fight a revolution on my own as much as media wants us to believe.

But here’s where I get off the train. “A violent revolution that begins with you” is not a strategy. It’s an endpoint dressed as one. Lenin also wrote extensively about material conditions, organizational capacity, and the specific historical conjuncture required for revolutionary success. The conditions that produced 1917 aren’t the conditions of 2026 America. An atomized, exhausted, heavily surveiled population with no mass revolutionary organization, no dual power structures, and a state with the most sophisticated repressive apparatus in human history. Telling someone to begin the violent revolution is not serious theory. It’s the left equivalent of “just vote harder.”

On PSL, I’m genuinely open to that conversation. If the argument is build third party infrastructure, run candidates at local level, develop parallel institutions, grow organizational capacity over a longer timeline, that’s a real strategic position worth engaging. I’ve been pushing for exactly that kind of local organizing. I’ve been involved with several groups like WFP and DSA. It’s just not what you said. Again, while we door knock, create pamphlets, etc, we do not have the capital to fight the overwhelming capital that chooses to silence us, that quells dissidence, that chooses to run articles about jerking off in a portapotty instead of insider trading scandals and holding the other candidates accountable.

What it sounds like you’re arguing is a generalized argument against all Democrats, regardless of policy or position. And I get it, I’m angry at them too. I’m just angry at the establishment. And this is something that is currently under discussion by many of us. Given the distaste of the party by its base, is it better to take over the democratic party by running those on the left, using the democratic name recognition for voters? Or is it better to abandon the party altogether. In my opinion, given what I’ve lived through for decades, absorbing the party is the better method given our first-past-the-post system. 3rd parties are incredibly weak, and until we get things like RCV and seats filled with popular representation (or a full on revolution) we have to play the game. This is a yes, and situation. We vote for those on the left AND build towards a revolution. Attempting to have the candidate with the furthest left policy disqualified flies in the face of that and our current lived reality. I despise democrats, maybe even more than some here. The establishment dems, the neoliberals, are fascist supporters at best. So, at this exact moment, what’s our choice? Because, unfortunately, a general strike still doesn’t have the critical mass it needs yet, let alone a violent coup.

What you said was stop voting, read theory, and start a revolution. The first person that advice kills won’t be a billionaire, it’ll be my friends, my family, possibly even myself, who all lose the capital we’ve tied our survival to. And the revolution would die right there and then with us.