I once saw someone say that if all concentration camps were of equal size and “effectiveness”, and Candidate A would build 10 camps while Candidate B would build 9, obviously you should vote for Candidate B.
This is a hypothetical so extremely simplified as to completely miss anyone’s point, and possibly be harmful, and yet still it is several levels above the vast majority of the General Election discourse on this forum.
One reason it misses the mark is that nothing is of equal scale or effectiveness. For example, the 9-camp administration could obviously be much more competent. The 9-camp administration could naturally encounter far less resistance from courts, legislatures, journalists, and even protestors.
If there was an ever-growing, organic, street-level resistance movement under the 10-camp administration, someone tasked solely with the goal of designing a way to fracture and dissolve that movement might very well say the best way to do so is have the 9-camp administration come into power so that the movement fights with itself over whether to go hard against the new administration or even fights over whether to challenge it at all.
Obviously it is possible for all this (and much more; there’s infinite other things to consider) to be weighed calmly and rationally and still come to the conclusion that the least amount of harm comes from electing the 9-camp administration. But I don’t think that’s what ANYONE is doing. They have started with the conclusion that feels comfortable, and they will get extremely angry when that conclusion is challenged. Not that anyone on this forum, or the internet in general, with fleetingly few exceptions, is doing anything close to a good job at laying out the counter arguments.
Still, whenever anyone uses the word “purity” I have to laugh to keep from crying. Nobody, not one flesh and blood human, nobody but the strawmen, is saying, “well there are some areas the candidate and I don’t agree.” They’re saying the candidate does active harm, and promises to do even more active harm! They’re saying the total amount of harm between the candidates is either similar or too impossible to prognosticate between.
It kills me that people have reduced this to, “well obviously the only possibility is that people are being vindictive about the primaries, and are willing to harm others to make a point.” Everyone I know that I’ve ever talked to about their decision(s) to abstain from voting or to write in a candidate is someone from a group or groups who are right at the very front of the line for receiving both direct and indirect violence from the state.
But of course all of this discussion is such a monumental waste of time as far as the election itself goes, given how close to zero your individual vote is to make an impact on whether we get Candidate A or Candidate B. The discussion is useful, however, if people are willing to listen (and to speak) with open minds and open hearts and realize exactly how the foundational depths of state depravity can make an extremely politically educated (and extremely oppressed) person choose not to participate in an illegitimate election. Like if we could just get to that point where some of you could say, “OK, I think I understand their position now.” Even if you follow that up with, “but I still think it’s best to vote for this candidate, and that’s what I’ll do,” it would be a monumental shift in your understanding of the state and its power structure and its history that I think would only do good things going forward.
I’m not sure how we get to that point. Contrary to a lot of people’s beliefs, this kind of forum debating isn’t the most conducive way to learn these things. It would have to look more like study groups, I think, where we start off not even arguing. Because right now we have a situation where someone says one paragraph they’ve formulated from 100 books read and 10 years of street-level organizing experience and talking to people who live on the streets, and 12 people come back instantly with very emotional stances on why that paragraph was all wrong.