ETA: I said most of this in the comments but to save people the scrolling I’ll say it here too.
This can be about elections but it isn’t exclusive to elections. If it wasn’t true between elections, I don’t think the situation would exist during elections.
The meme is specifically about the difference between the group that isn’t pretending to be good (100% evil) and the group that uses the other group as a threat to avoid pressure to become less evil themselves.
It does not offer a solution. It does not tell people what they should or could do. I think the problem is very broad and requires a diversity of tactics specific to local conditions, not a snappy easy fix that fits well in a meme. It does involve being able to discuss the parts of the machine that keeps the machine churning tho.
Everyone worth arguing with already understands that we’re not going to get to 0% evil through voting. Evil people don’t become good just because people want them to, and the same goes for the evil organization that puts forward all of these evil candidates.
In a working system voting can help stave off evil, but it can’t remove it once the system is broken and evil has taken hold. All we can do through voting now is pick our enemy, and it’s easier to fight a 20% evil guy than a 100% evil guy.
Sure, you can make the argument that we’ll never fight either, and it’s not a bad guess, but if we don’t then we just have no avenue for success, so I’d rather be ready for a revolution I have no faith in than just give up.
I wish this were true, but it isn’t.
If anything we lost ground on progressive representatives in 2022 and 2024. In 2026 some progressives are winning primaries again like they did in the 2018 cycle (and to a lesser extent in the 2020 cycle).
Biden didn’t pass or really even fight for the PRO act, he said he would veto medicare for all, he let Joe Manchin slice Build Back Better to barely a shadow of what it was supposed to be – which was already a cut from what we need which is the Green New Deal.
Outside of electoralism, we continued to lose ground in terms of unionization rates in the Biden years. Membership in DSA and other socailist/left-wing civil organizations were going down. On the ground organizing is going better under Trump than under Biden.
When evil hides its face somewhat the liberals go back to brunch and the evil is able to grow more slowly in the shadows, until the liberals are put in the position where they have to suppprt genocide because that’s now the lesser evil.
I get this isn’t anything anyone wants to hear. But tell me why any of it is wrong.
What I wanted to communicate with this meme is that the 20% evil group uses the 100% evil group as a threat to allow them to do the 20% evil.
It’s a message about the mechanics not a suggestion about what should be done or what could be achieved.
The idea is to make the best choice you can at the voting booth and then work throughout the year to improve your choices. This is what conservatives have done for as long as I can remember.
It’s slow at first and everybody wants everything right away but patience pays dividends.
Or go the accelerationist route and wait on the 100% evil guy radicalizing a lot more people to bring about the revolution.