I was going to ask: do you think white moderates are willing to learn yet? But just ten minutes after you posted and half an hour before I got here, there’s a what I’ll assume to be a white moderate saying that you’ve misunderstood King. jfc it don’t stop lol.
do you think white moderates are willing to learn yet?
I genuinely don’t believe they ever will be. Pessimistic take, and just shy of separatist? Maybe. But I genuinely don’t believe they’ll ever learn, and as a result, I don’t believe they’ll ever be safe for us.
Yes, Dr. King was wary of so called moderates, but to extrapolate this as support for third party candidates is fallacious. What does voting third party have to do with the direct action that Dr. King is championing in this quote? Non violent direct action such as protests, marches, and sit ins were a very specific strategy to expose social tensions and force society to deal with them when it would otherwise be easier to ignore them. How does voting third party achieve this?
“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” – Kwame Ture
Since you’re apparently incapable of identifying connective tissue, the link here is it’s always “this isn’t the right time”, “this is the election of our lives”, “we can’t brook dissension now”, “shut up and fall in line” every four fucking years; and y’all say the exact same shit every single time. You foist the exact same malfeasant grifter motherfuckers to ‘reduce harm’ in ways that never seem to trickle down to the ghetto. It never ends. You are that moderate. You are the eponymous Fox. If you weren’t, y’all would have ‘pushed Biden left’ enough to get the border camps closed by now.
I think you may have mistaken his meaning here.
Let’s try another one, then.
“The white conservatives aren’t friends of the Negro either, but they at least don’t try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the ‘smiling’ fox.” – el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz
Just because it’s a quote doesn’t mean that’s it’s good advice. (That’s called an Appeal to Authority Fallacy.)
By FAR the best party in America to vote for today is the Democrats, if you want rights for marginalized communities.
So the best you can offer is the same people who wrote the bills to pipeline my community to prisons? The same people profiteering off of carceral slavery? The same people who won’t close the border camps? The same war criminal imperialists? Do you recognize how ghoulish it is to demand complicity in your favored party’s crimes in return for rights for American marginalized?
While we’re here, since you want to place the thought-terminating cliche game, do you know what the ‘fallacist’s fallacy’ is? Relying on calling out a rhetorical device to shut down a conversation.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution, or even a good one, but as long as elections are winner-take-all first-past-the-post, then decisions will always come down to two parties. The fact of the matter is, if people who would vote Democrat instead vote third party, then the Republicans will win. No justified grievances will change that. Given their recent track record, the Republicans will be much worse for equality.
So it comes down to this: a third party may be better than the Democrats, but the Democrats would be better than the Republicans. Voting third party, while better for one conscience, would result in worse outcomes in reality, because it would result in a win of the third-place pick. Therefore the only logical choice is to vote for our second-place pick. Unless we can improve our voting system before the next election, that is.
For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” … This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”
as long as elections are winner-take-all first-past-the-post
… Then… make them not be? “But we can’t use the current system to do that”… Then don’t do that? Throw the entire system away?
People have been trying to do that for decades now. It won’t suddenly happen between now and next election.
“but the Democrats would be better than the Republicans”
No. There is absolutely zero evidence of that and a lot of evidence to the contrary. Neither is better than the other because they are two sides of the same warmongering corporate uniparty. This “lesser evil” argument is just a scam that you liberals still keep falling for.
The only logical choice is to vote third party, or not vote at all because no matter the outcome it will change absolutely nothing with regard to the main policies of the bourgeois imperialist state. But at least voting third party will piss off some libs and who knows, you may get a decent mayor or city councillor elected somewhere if you get absurdly and astronomically lucky.
