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.
You must log in or register to comment.
The Good Cop / Bad Cop routine works so well on a lot of people. They are both cops working to put you in jail (uphold capitalist status quo), they just have different strategies to achieve that outcome, and the game theory logic works in the cops favor.
You have to realize you are a prisoner before you can understand the actual dilemma. If no prisoner cops out, this is true solidarity.
This is a good way of putting it. I like that you specified what this dynamic serves.
This is also super helpful on a personal level to understand why people keep reading memes like this (and the ratchet) as saying the good cop and bad cops are the same. Yes, one of their goals is the same (upholding capitalism/imperialism) but they have different side quests they want to do along the way.
However, if you see the world as only being cops, either from agreeing that capitalism or imperialism is something that should be protected (Group A) or not being aware that this is an intentional dynamic meant to serve the common goal (Group B) then I can understand why the conclusion is that these memes are saying there is no difference.
I know the message I want to share in this meme isn’t going to reach group A. While I hope they change their mind, I am not trying to be the one who does it. People who support capitalism/imperialism have values that harm me and my community and I don’t want to waste my time on that.
My goal with this meme is to reach group B and hope they can use this framing to decide what is best for them and their community so that we can get to the “fuck the police” stage.
“Actually we lost because we weren’t 40% evil.”
The only people this helps are fascists.
Voting is one activity and we all want to just vote our problems away in one day. But that’s wishful thinking and frankly, childish.
Work all year to improve the choices at the voting booth and make the best choice you can once you’re there. Rinse and repeat.
Slow and steady wins the race or whatever Aesop said.
How can people fix a problem if they are discouraged from talking about it (ETA: or are told they are helping fascists by talking about it).
I’d believe you were sincere if I saw the same kind of posts when elections weren’t right around the corner.
Anyway the answer is that you can talk about it responsibly, but you have to look at the end result or consequences for each of the choices available to help determine the way forward. You can’t frame it as whether the party meets a particular threshold of goodness before it’s worthy of your vote. While there is a lot of low hanging fruit, not everyone will agree about everything and people are naturally resistant to change. It takes sustained effort.
It’s the responsibility of everyone in a democracy to participate so that parties are more representative of their constituents. Only a tiny piece of that participation involves voting.
Both sides are fascist. Biden and Kamala enabled isreal’s genocide. If ending a genocide isn’t a priority for you then I don’t care what is.
This slow and steady strategy you’re describing got us here. The only thing it helps is fascists. Deluding yourself into thinking otherwise is quite frankly, childish.
No, what got us here is thinking one day of effort (voting) will get the job done.
Work all year to improve the choices at the voting booth and make the best choice you can once you’re there. Rinse and repeat.
The meme isn’t intended to be specifically about elections.
You only provided one example of effort in a misleading way.
Both sides are so obviously not the same that there is a concerted effort before every election to make people think that they are.
There is something about the US collective unconsciousness that reads “one side uses the other side to make themselves look better” as “they are the same” and I don’t know if I will ever understand.
I made this meme to highlight the difference between the “more evil” and “less evil” groups and how that difference is the mechanism that prevents things from getting better. Seeing them the same doesn’t explain why the situation doesn’t improve. To be extremely specific, the difference is that one of the two groups uses the other as a threat to get the public to accept a situation they do not want as the best option.
I don’t think it’s exclusive to the US or two party systems, but that’s off topic for this reply. I think what I want to say will be easier to follow if I specify R and D instead of % evil.
The Ds say “accept this imperfect approach or you actually support the Rs, which makes you the bad guy”. The Rs also use the idea of the Ds being in power as a threat to their base, but it’s more “you need to vote for us or these guys will do all these bad things you don’t want!” It’s not the same at all, which is what I am trying to say.
Maybe you (or others) can help me understand how this could be presented to be about the general relationship between the public (the guy with hat) and the Ds. What makes this appear to be about a general election between R and D and not about the efforts to make the D less evil? Maybe there is an implication I’m missing with the format that I’m not aware of. How could this meme be made more general?
Thanks. I am so tired of this moral purity bullshit. It’s just people trying to excuse themselves for letting trump happen.
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.
it’s easier to fight a 20% evil guy than a 100% evil guy.
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.
Choosing the lesser of two evils still leaves you with evil. It’s like arguing whether you’d rather be punched by a boxer or kicked by a horse.
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. For the greater evil
I can’t understand this bullshit logic, why the “greater evil” the default? The lesser evil is so incapable that if everyone doesn’t help the little fucker they lose? What?
The whole ideology of the right is to step in line and support the hierarchy. They are reliable party line voters. When turnout is low, they win more often.
If there is more people supporting the right you’re already cooked no? Even if the other win you don’t have the majority.
There are more consistent voters supporting the right. When voter turnout is high, the right loses.
The problem is the horse is still kicking, and the boxer said they were only going to punch you once…
Meanwhile, when it comes down to deciding between 20% and 100% evil: “they’re both just as bad! Don’t even bother deciding between the two!”
“What do you mean you don’t like eating shit? My shit has got sprinkles and syrup on it. It’s not as bad as that guys shit. His is runny but doesn’t have sprinkles. Don’t you like sprinkles?!”
No?
“Dude, your let’s been completely severed. I think we need to cauterize it or something.”
“What? You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Its that or we rub some dirt in it and you ‘walk it off like a man’ or something”
“Well if we do the second one, I’ll either bleed out anyway or die of infection. But burning my leg is going to cause a whole bunch of damage, and I still might get an infection. So, neither. I’m not picking either. It’s fix my leg or nothing for me.”
haha, 20% would be an unimaginably massive improvement over the Democrat party.
Yeah, but even then it’s the same evil. Just the liberal wing as opposed to the conservative/fascist wing.
It’s easier to stomach typing out than examples 😬
