I just had a chance to read this, and very well said. Reading through the other replies I probably didn’t make point clear enough and came off as a radical lib but oh well. Thanks for the detailed response, it was read in good faith

but Mark (I will not type that legal name. Gun to my head, I won’t)

This has to be one of the funniest comments I’ve read in a while lol

I struggle with this question a lot, and at the risk of being ostracized by fellow MLs, I don’t think voting is inherently a bad thing. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for Biden then there are third party candidates (with zero chance of winning) it may send a stronger message than staying home. Of course, I reserve the right to be wrong on that.

As someone who does a lot of political work in my community, some aligned with traditional politics and others not, there are many local elections that are absolutely worth voting in. My local school board had someone running who literally wanted to remove all books that included reference to American Slavery.

In good faith, I do ask my fellow comrades what the end goal is if Trump is elected though? Project 2025 has shown there is a sustained and well funded effort to turn the U.S. into a literal Christo-Fascist state. Trump has explicitly stated he wants to root out ‘Communists and Socialists’ with the use of Red State police and national guards. I haven’t made up my mind if I’ll vote for Biden yet, but I am incredibly scared that if Trump wins, I may not be around much to fight back against Trump if he is elected.

Just my two cents, and like I said, I reserve the right to be wrong. I just want to give a voice to fellow comrades who are being told not to vote but feel a deep sense of dread at that prospect.

I hear you, I’ve spent way too much of my life in online leftists spaces and it’s tiring and frustrating trying to decipher trolls. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with directing people to resources but I do think we should give some benefit of the doubt. And also be realistic how much value we get from only sitting behind screens reading theory.

To give you a real world example, I was heavily involved with the PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation in the U.S.) and we would often get refugee Bernie Bros after the 2016 election (I was even one of them). Many of them came with ideas of Socialism being plowing roads or universal healthcare or whatever the topic of the day was. Many of them would scoff at us when we told them about “”“real”“” Socialism, for lack of a better term, but many were open to the idea. I’ve had many great conversations in the real world with people from all over the political spectrum.

I think the most important lesson I learned is that online it may feel like you have a big impact when you really don’t but in the real world it may feel like you don’t have any impact all but you really do.

Hope that makes sense!

Just to be clear, it would be vetoed because the Republicans are the minority party right now (They only hold the house, not Senate or Presidency) and are proposing reducing funding from the IRS to pay for the Israel Aid package. The increased funding came from previous Biden passed legislation when Democrats had majority in all three places. Moreover, even if the house passes their bill it would instantly be shot down and returned to the house by the Democratic senate.

What is interesting is if the Republicans will take a hardline stance on no fundings for Ukraine. Institutionalists on the Republican side are very much in support of sending aid to Isreal, Ukraine, and Taiwan but they have progressively lost power to the openly Fascist wing known as the “Freedom Caucus.” The Freedom Caucus, for very different reasons than MLs, are highly against sending aid to Ukraine but do silently support sending it to Isreal and Taiwan.

This is a good reminder for all comrades who push baby leftists out of spaces because they ask basic questions or still hold some lib values. None of us were born with a copy of Capital in our hands (except Lemmygrad Mods). We need to be a fostering and open community for all who will listen. After all, is that not the entire point of collective politics?

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-general-svr-telegram-account-seeding-wild-putin-stories-2022-12?op=1

Even Business Insider claims ‘General SVR’ full of shit lmfao

She wants nothing more than to put us into WW3 for her imperialist ambitions