Stefan Molyneux has a new obsession. Can you guess what it is?

So… politics.

The typical US voter is 40-70, white, middle class. The LGB portion of that group got same-sex marriage, which is all most of them really wanted. (Not so for most of the younger and poorer parts of the LBGTQIA+ spectrum.) These people had a good life pre-Trump, and even if they still have a good life, Trump made some of them worry for their future. Sanders and Warren weren’t going to make their lives noticeably better, at least in the near-term. They might not want to “risk” new approaches to governing and economy when things were fine for them in the past. So, aside from those who cling to Trump because they want a “strong” authoritarian figure, or because above all else they want the privilege to abuse and/or control those they deem inferior… Biden is the one who gets them back to their “normal”. (Generalities, of course, not intending to imply that all of them are like that.)

Their “normal” is not sustainable long term. Their “normal” ranges from “not so great” to “pretty terrible” for quite a lot of people who aren’t them. (In the case of some of the more conservative ones, the latter’s even a nice bonus.) If they bother to consider them at all, then those other people can survive, they’ve had a lifetime of dealing with insecurity and hardship, what’s “important” is helping those who aren’t used to it. Those other people can get a few benefits tossed to them later, when life is good again and there aren’t any “bigger” problems to deal with.

This is incredibly frustrating, of course, because they’re just going to be sowing seeds of future crises. The windows for genuine improvement for those who need it the most will always be short, always be seen as a “luxury” that can rarely be afforded. Not unless something big changes, but there’s no clear path to that. Working from the top down doesn’t work very well, because the disenfranchised have very little political voice. Working from the bottom up doesn’t work very well, because it takes many years of effort to make even a little progress and those at the top can sometimes erase it all with a stroke of the pen. Working from the middle out – yeah, good luck convincing the typical voting cohort to stop the cycle of wrecking themselves and fixing it and wrecking things again to actually make a long-term difference.

This is why the worst candidate out of all the reasonable prospects (and I include Harris, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar as “reasonable prospects” – there was always a chance things could have changed to favor them, even if the odds were never good) is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party. At the end of the day, this is the world we have to work with, even if it’s not always visible because it’s not the world most of us socialize in. It’s probably not going away any time soon. As I said, frustrating, but I’m not giving up, and I hope others don’t either.

Yes, Biden might be a rapist. So what? He’s still the lesser of two evils.

Refusing to vote for Biden tells me you are privileged enough to survive four more years of the Mango Mussolini, and that you don’t give a fuck about those who aren’t.

Vote blue no matter who.

@Naglfar

I know a lot of educated women who seem happy, and a number of them also have children.

Yeah, but I bet he’s going to say he was right as long as there are any educated women who are unhappy and/or childess, he was right. Considering that most people are unhappy at some point in their lives, those aren’t bad odds for him.

We are talking about a person who says “communists” when he means “people I don’t like” and expects us to not notice, after all.

@Masse_mysteria

We are talking about a person who says “communists” when he means “people I don’t like” and expects us to not notice, after all.

He may mean it more generally to refer to his enemies, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s also using “communist” as a buzzword for Jews. There’s a long history of bigots linking communism and mythical Jewish conspiracies, so it seems quite likely he’s using it to mean “Jews” in particular.

I’ve long noticed that “communist” has as little meaning as “poopy head” to most people who use it. But Molyneus is an extreme case.

@Masse_mysteria

So it’s more like “I don’t like Jews, and (I assume) people in general don’t like communists – now to make everyone not like Jews, just call them communists!”?

Well, that’s been the script for far-right groups for decades, so it seems that that’s what he’s doing. Not terribly original, but fascists were never known for originality.

@rahu

It’s not about disliking him. it’s the punch in the gut that I as a rape survivor have to vote a rapist into office just because he’s slightly less evil then the other rapist that is in and is running again to be in office. It makes me and a lot of other rape survivors want to peal off our skins because at least one of those rapist might not take away a rape victims right to terminate their rapist demon spawn if they want too.

Don’t talk down to people about this. it’s already painful.

@Dalillama
@AnyoneElseConsideringNotVoting
Look I am not really in a position to judge people’s irrational behavior. I wish I had done more for Bernie but my psychology got in the way. After repeatedly being forced to choose between the “douche or turd sandwich” again and again people feel a massive sense exhaustion and disgust, however while the feelings get more intense year after year the truth of the “lesser of two evils” situation remains constant. The lesser of two evils is exactly that. Trump is worse than Biden. Even in terms of the USA’s slide into corporate autocracy Trump is worse than Biden or any of the neoliberal, corporate-owned, established career politicians. Everything you hate about Joe Biden, it is worse with Trump. For any other issue that progressives care about the difference is obvious. If Biden sticks to his promise “Nothing will change” that already makes him better than Trump, who knows what changes his Evangelical and alt-right supporters want.

No Joe Biden isn’t “good enough” but the reason why movements like feminism exist is because society as a whole is not “good enough”. You choose the best option available and often there is nothing that is “good enough”. The more I think of it, believing that “making the world a better place” and that reducing human harm is inherently good requires something like “Utilitarianism” which requires you to do the thing that has the best outcomes. The difference between Trump and Biden is small, but it is bigger than whatever feelings of exhaustion and disgust one more “lesser of two evils” will bring. The only possible silver lining to Trump re-election is maybe the Democrats will learn their lesson, but this recent primary seems like proof that didn’t happen in 2016 and it won’t happen in 2020.

There is no real purity to be found by staying out of the voting booth (excepting possible Corona virus). Maybe you will feel better metaphorically washing your hands of all of this, but reality is influenced by your actions not your feelings. I’ve had mornings where it feels like I’m on the verge of a panic attack and it feels like only way to survive is to hide under the covers, but I’ve had to learn the hard way that the consequences of my inaction is the same regardless of my reasons. So there will be a lot of emotionally necessary showers next November, but Trump is still way worse Biden.

As for Stefan Molyneux, well his position is consistent in that “communism is bad” when China does something good they are capitalist, when China does something bad they are communist. A rational person would suggest that “Is it good or bad?” depends on the facts, but for some people the facts depend on whether the situation is good or bad.

Lainy – I am deeply sorry to have caused you grief.

I am also a survivor.

I did not mean to talk down to anyone. Again, I am sorry for having talked down to you.

@ Lainy

You certainly don’t need my permission on how to feel; but if the assessment of some person on the Internet means anything to you; this is an issue where there’s no such thing as too emotional.

If Scildy were here she’d brilliantly explain how important, and rational, emotions are.

@Naglfar:

Biden’s not great, but he’s not a fucking mass murderer.

He voted for the Iraq war, so yeah, actually, he is.

@Perry:

The writing is pretty much on the wall. Besides the encumbancy advantage, the electoral college advantage and the deeply entrenched mechanisms of voter suppression benefitting Republicans, Trump has something behind him that Biden never will — enthusiasm. Because despite accusations of non-voters being privileged and detached, the truth is that most people don’t vote. And the people the least likely to do so tend to be the most socially and economically alienated. You’re not gonna convince those people that Joe “nothing will fundamentally change Biden” is gonna make their lives better.

So, it’s going to be 2016 all over again, except with more virus. 😛

@Snowberry:

The windows for genuine improvement for those who need it the most will always be short, always be seen as a “luxury” that can rarely be afforded. Not unless something big changes, but there’s no clear path to that.

Oh, there is. It just runs through terrain that you really aren’t going to like, because it requires large scale direct action such as a general strike, and most likely escalates to armed insurrection.

@Cindy:

Refusing to vote for Biden tells me you are privileged enough to survive four more years of the Mango Mussolini, and that you don’t give a fuck about those who aren’t.

Or, it could be you realize that a Biden win would only be a four-year stay of execution, after which all of the problems that existed at the end of the Obama administration will still exist (and most will have grown worse) and another Trump-like demagogue will win. Only this one might be even worse: maybe their dark triad will tilt less toward narcissism than psychopathy, and they might be more intelligent, capable, and competent to enact their agenda. If the alternative is “four more years of Trump, vs. four more years of Obama-like do-nothing technocracy followed by four years of Hitler”, which is worse then?

I think Dalillama is right here. The most voting for Biden does is postpone the inevitable. This won’t be fixed through electoral politics, and now it can’t even be stopped from getting worse that way, and can only be slowed down marginally. And this with a climate change clock counting down to zero. It could be that the best futures are ones where Americans “get it over with” somehow, likely through a second revolution, and then do something, rather than trying to cling to a pre-Trump state of miserable “normality” for four years longer before facing the inevitable.

But, I can’t be completely certain of that.

One thing I do know: the Senate is at least as important as the White House here. For example, if Trump is reelected but the Senate goes blue, Trump can be blocked from further judicial nominations and the Senate can hold a proper impeachment trial — not just of Trump, but of the most vulnerable of his judicial appointments, too, particularly Kavanaugh. (Getting enough Republicans to defect to get the supermajority needed to convict might not be as easy, but it only takes 51 for 25th Amendment removal of the president, doesn’t it?)

But that also just staves things off for four years. A Trump stalemated by a hostile Senate might not be much worse than four years of Biden, but won’t be better, and won’t fix any of the underlying issues either. That’s going to take direct action in a big way. Downing tools. Sabotage. Perhaps even secessions of blue states, or at least quasi-secessions in the form of widespread municipal and state level civil disobedience of the dysfunctional federal government — “sanctuary cities and states on steroids”.

Guilt tripping people to vote Biden because our accused rapist is slightly better than theirs is certainly a new low for the corporate Democrats, but really Bernie must take part of the blame.

Bernie ought to be saying to people ‘you deserve better than a vote between a right wing nut and a slightly less right wing nut. You deserve a new New Deal and that’s why I’m running as an independent democratic socialist candidate’

But no he didn’t, he voted with the rest of the Senate for a massive corporate giveaway and has left the country with a choice thats somehow even more awful than Trump v Clinton