Aren't you?

That's what they said back in '96 when I voted for Ralph Nader. Now we're on the precipice of American democracy falling to fascism, if not now, then very likely in 2028. That doesn't look to me anything like slowly getting better.

Some things have definitely improved in that time, e.g. the recognition of same-sex marriage, or the nascent resurgence of labor unions. Those things have been the result of slow, tough, hard work by the grassroots.

In that same time, though, the Democrats have been slowly helping to put the mechanisms of a fascist state in place, like the PATRIOT ACT, FISA, neutering the 4th Amendment, bolstering the Espionage Act, and setting up collaborative efforts between state police, Federal agencies, and the corporate sector to crush protest movements.

That said, the world is indeed shades of grey, and I voted for Biden in 2020 to stay fascism, if only for a little bit. It's better to vote for the right-wing candidate versus the fascist candidate. I want to vote for him again, but there are some lines that must never be crossed, and I can't in good conscience vote for a President enabling genocide. (The fact that both candidates do is madness.)

Maybe my calculus would be different if there were a reasonable chance that Democrats would do the things that are within their power to do to check the rise of fascism, but I have no confidence of that, as the track record shows otherwise.

Edit: Auto-correct damage.

Hey! So I know you are getting people being snarky and whatnot, but I have a legitimate question.
Could you address the question regarding how the Democrats are at least the party that are at least making slow progress, as opposed to not voting against the party that will turn the country into a Christian theocracy if given the chance?
Like I understand that you don't like either candidate - neither do we - but realistically, we know the winner will be either a Republican or a Democrat. Why not support the one that at least won't regress the country 500 years?
- Because incrementalism is how we got to this situation in the first place.
  
  Damn, you're way more succinct than I am.
- I've covered a lot of it in other replies, so to keep it brief by analogy: It's like a survivor from a foundered ship clinging to a bit of flotsam (assuming there's no chance of timely rescue) rather than swimming for land in the distance. The flotsam keeps him safe from drowning for the moment, but thirst or hypothermia will do him in within days at the outside. His only chance to survive long-term is to abandon it and set to swimming.
  The Democrats in this analogy are the flotsam, if it wasn't obvious. Bill Clinton got into office in 1992, after 12 years of Republican Presidents, and quickly made it clear that he represented the status quo, clinging-to-flotsam choice, rather than making things better. I believed that the long-term health of democracy required making the hard choice to swim for it. I wasn't smart enough to predict the exact shape of the future back then, but here we are, on the edge of slipping below the waves. That's the opposite outcome of making things better.
  The Democrats don't even understand the threat of right-wing populism, so they can't counter it. (It's not even clear that they would, if they did.) The way to save our democracy, therefore, is to fight for something better.
  
  What is the plan to fight for something better? Like... I'm really not trying to be snarky, I swear, but voting for any party that is not R or D on election Day is never going to result in someone other than someone from one of those two parties being president. That just won't happen. So unless there is an alternative path for change, I don't see the point of voting for someone other than a democrat to at least mitigate the damage
  
  There can be better. That's the real kick in the teeth. Voting for President doesn't have to be the biggest thing any of us do. I want to get Biden reelected because it gives us time. Time to carry that momentum into more significant, broader changes. Time to do better and do more and stop sitting on our collective hands for all the remaining days on the calendar.
  
  Well, should everybody who lives in Alabama vote Republican, because there's zero chance of anybody but a Republican winning? Do those people have a plan besides throwing their votes away? Or is voting about choosing the candidate that would represent your views, regardless of the odds of winning?
  
  That would be great advice if we weren't standing at the literal precipice of fascism. Fascism is a storm (pardon the unintentional pun towards QAnon) threatening to overtake us. If ever there was a time to suck it up and choose the "flotsam" to survive to fight another day, it's now.
  The Republicans, aka the Fascists, have a large and cohesive voting bloc, driven by propaganda and fear, that will vote for them just because they're not Democrats, regardless of the fact that they are known criminals, grifters, and will vote for things that hurt them. This is not the time to divide into ideological factions and hope we make it.
  
  It seemed to me back in the 1990's that Republicans want to drive the car straight at the precipice at full speed, and Bill Clinton was content to simply lay off the accelerator and coast toward it. I'm not such a canny political analyst that I could predict the exact shape of the future back then, but here we are, at the precipice.

Biden is slowly worse, Trump is quickly worse. Liberalism is not about moving leftward, it's about continuing Capitalist hedgemony.

Slowly worse is still better than quickly worse, as that means there's more time to find a better solution.
- You won't. This is a 100 year lesson, when will you learn it?
  
  Sorry, I don't get the reference. 😅
  
  Given Lemmy I assume 1917
  
  Let me make it more clear then. 👏There 👏is 👏no👏solution 👏through 👏voting! Only improvements have happened through unions, protests and riots.
  
  Hey, I generally agree! It's impossible to revolutionize a system while sticking to the rules of that system. We can and should fight wherever possible to improve things for our fellow man, no matter what we're "supposed" to do as defined by the people that stand the most to gain from our apathy.
  But that fight includes voting for the lesser harm. Voting for Biden to stop Trump from being president is an entirely valid strategy -- and for the people who stand the most to lose, like racial and gender minorities, we cannot ignore harm reduction.
  We can't let perfect be the enemy of good.
  
  Biden was voted in and you had a failed coup. Did you people go and the streets and demand justice? no. You just got worsening conditions and another genocide. Voting didn't do anything. It didn't prevent anything. The decent into fascism is inevitable if people just keep voting because they think voting does something. This delusion needs to be ripped out so that people do anything else.
  
  It's late at night where I am, so I'm not going to take the time right now to refute you in detail. But if you honestly think we got a worse result than we would have with Trump, you're either delusional or lying.
  The fact that you're hammering so hard on the idea that voting is useless makes me think it's the latter. Trolling is a art, and you're doing it badly.
  
  It's a bot
  
  You still got a worse result, you still descend further into fascism. No solution "was found" due to these "delaying tactics" ergo it was useless.
  
  Voting does do something for fascists. Trump got into office, and now we have an insane Supreme Court that is systematically undoing 100 years of progress.
  That is because Trump was elected by people voting.
  
  If it wasn't Trump it would be someone else. Who the figurehead is doesn't matter. Long term, simple expecting voting to improve your society has proven to be an abject failure.

Lol things have not gotten slowly better through voting ever or have you somehow missed the last 100 years?

End of segregation. Interracial marriage legalized. Voting rights for native americans. LGBT rights...
Nope, no progress there.
- I seem to remember those things happening because of protest and struggle.
  
  Elected officials only care about protests when they start losing votes.
- Did those happen because people voted, or was it because of large-scale protests and pressure?
  
  Both. You can't get what you want by only doing one or the other. If you don't vote, you can't pressure sane politicians that don't get elected, and the insane fascists are just going to ignore you. And we all know that voting alone isn't the solution
  People need to stop acting like voting is the end all/be all, or that not voting/withholding your vote sends a message rather than let's psychos who want to destroy democracy have their way.
  
  We have the largest protests since the Iraq War, and your "sane" politicians are telling us to fuck off.
  
  They like to pretend like successful protests are a people's moment, but protests don't go anywhere without in-power support. MLK was establishment as fuck. The National Guard provided a replacement when his PA system failed at the million man march. You gotta make your opinions known by voicing them publicly and supporting candidates that are sympathetic to your cause. Even better, become part of the establishment yourself and be the helpful politician you wish you could vote for.
  
  MLK was not establishment as fuck, most of his protests were illegal, and he regarded the "white moderate" who agree with his goals, but think things must be done slowly and within the system as just as great if not greater obstacle than the klansman.
  
  It seems to have been buried to the sands of time, but I once read an excellent article explaining why modern protest movements have a terrible track record compared to the ones from before the 1980s (or so). The book "If We Burn" by Vincent Bevins has a similar theme.
  The long and short of it is that modern protests are too easy to organize, and don't represent any real power. You can start a Facebook event and get loads of people to show up and stand in the street, but that's pretty much it. In order to organize a protest in the 1960s, you had to have an established organization and power structure. You had to have regular meetings and a bureaucracy in order to get a large number of people to show up and protest. That same bureaucracy could also be used for other things, like supporting or opposing particular political candidates, and the oppositional and sympathetic establishment knew that.
  A modern protest is toothless. It has no weight behind it. If you want to have enough power to take on the establishment that you oppose, you have to become equally structured and monied in order to fight them. That's what it means to become a part of the establishment. You might not join the established teams, but you're going to become so well organized and bureaucratic that angsty teams would immediately write you off as boring and just another part of the system if they ever had to participate in one of your long term planning sessions.
  On an individual level my suggestion is to join the system and change it from within, because one person doesn't make for a very powerful organization. Plus, it's rare for any random person to have the chops or resources to build up a political organization for themselves. On the collective level, you gotta start holding committee meetings.
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