A couple of points I’d add to this:

1. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. Put another way, should Trump choke on an overcooked steak tomorrow and die, the threat won’t be ended. The cancer is the entire GQP, not just its leader.

2. Americans as a whole have a desire for authoritarianism. ‘Make those bad people behave the way I want them to’ is endemic in American culture.

3. Not only can it happen here, it has, twice, and damn near took our Democracy down with it both times.

Could be, though I’d question the prolificness. I guess that’s why the mods come down on us so hard. You can’t be certain of anything because…well, there ARE Russian bot-farms, Trumpers (even teams of them operating in tandem), and of course True Believers ™, and short of catching the guy in the act and examining his rig, you can’t be sure what you’re dealing with. That said, IMO, there’s not really a huge difference between them when it comes to debunking them. A vote for a third party is a vote for the major party most opposed to your third party in the USA. At least until we get RCV in more places!

Heh, I’ll leave it to you then. I’ll point out the flaws in this poster’s logic as I can, but really…with how prolific it is (can’t say it’s a bot, can’t say it’s a bot…), that’d be a fucking full-time job.

True. Playing Whack-A-Troll is always fun…but we do have to be careful because the Mods have taken HUGE exceptions to calling a spade a spade here, while allowing this poster we’re talking about and a whole metric fuckton of other posters with … similar MOs to post their unmitigated BS unchallenged. Something about wanting to remain civil or something, despite this poster and others like it directly and overtly saying that they’ll keep posting their nonsense just to get a rise out of us. You know, the actual definition of trolling?

Now this is a load of utter, complete, unmitigated bullshit. The mods are almost 100% behind this poster, no matter how much it claims it’s not being showed favouritism. Sure, it’s very careful to veil its personal insults and incivility, but coming in and blathering over and over and over and over again about how it’s gonna do what it wants here, not just without a care about what the community here wants, but directly flaunting the fact that the community doesn’t want any of this bullshit, expressesd as downvotes and a variety of debunking and disparaging comments is most definitely uncivil and should be removed by the mods under Rule 3. But it’s allowed to spew its bullshit without any criticism by the mods, while we even hint as to what we think this poster is, and the Mods shut us down hard? If that’s not Mods showing favouritism, I don’t know what the fuck is.

And this poster’s response to this was as predictable as the sun rising in the east, setting in the west, water rolling downhill, and Russell Wilson sitting on the bench for a different team while we pay for him. 🤣

You called this poster out properly, and the mods refusal to let us call a spade a spade here. Readers, I invite you to read the definition of a troll from Merriam-Webster: to antagonize (others) online by deliberately posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content. The poster that constantly changes its name over and over again repeats it’ll keep posting its content despite being soundly rejected over and over again, just so it can piss us off. I’m not asking for it to be removed, though I sure won’t turn down such an outcome. But can we at least call a spade a spade where this poster is concerned?

The poster you’re replying to is very much designed to drive engagement, and any attention, good or bad, serves its purposes. I’d rather not feed this particular type of poster, but if we don’t point out the flaws in its reasoning, we might lose a few of those genuine Greens and Socialists.

I don’t disagree that voting in America is a pick between a steaming mug of donkey pee, and an elephant dung sandwich, and has been this way for decades. I’m even with you in that we should have a choice that doesn’t include donkey pee and elephant dung. But the reality is you can’t have 150 million different people in the world’s largest picnic each get different food, so there HAS to be a limited menu to vote from, lest nobody can agree on what we’re gonna eat and we all go hungry. And whatever has the most votes at the end of the day will be what we all eat, and unfortunately, that looks like it’ll be between not just donkey pee and elephant dung, but that the elephant has a bad case of gastroenteritis and the bread on the sandwich is EXTREMELY mouldy, AND there are a crazy number of rabid fans of elephant dung sandwiches for some fucked up reason. There are also a lot of crazies who have a taste for donkey pee, but at least you can wash that down with a stiff alcoholic drink. The elephant diarrhoea with two mouldy pieces of bread, on the other hand, can’t be gotten rid of except with a high-pressure wash. Since I don’t want the elephant excrement consumers to dictate what I am doing, and there’s not enough sane people in the world to offset the donkey pee or elephant dung choosers, I’ll pick the lesser of two evils.

And I say this as someone who is already a lockin for Proposition 131 (Colorado’s RCV) and who has voted third party in the past.

Numbers are really clear. When we can’t call a spade a spade, just point out the inhuman posting speed and let people come to their own conclusions…

This poster gets SOOO close to making an observation that would utterly destroy its half-baked, IMO inauthentic reasoning, if it’d only take a closer look at what it’s saying. So, I’ll close the gap here.

Suppose we could wave our magic wand and get everyone to agree with this poster, getting everyone who is voting Kamala Harris today to vote for … Rachele Fruit. But the price of this vote is that everyone who WAS voting Rachele Fruit now has to vote Kamala Harris. Suddenly, it’s Harris who is spoiling the vote for Fruit…and Jill Stein remains as much as spoiler for Fruit in this magic universe as she is for Harris in this real one. That’s the problem with third parties. No matter how the votes line up, whether it be for the Social Workers Party in this parallel universe or the Democrats in this one, votes for Third Parties merely harm your political ideology by taking away votes from the major party on your side of the political aisle and empower the major party most opposite of your ideology. You’d have to go to another parallel where we made Ranked Choice voting work before you could risk a SWP vote in a Rep-Dem world or a Dem vote in a Rep-SWP world.

SOOOO close, yet so far away.

Goddamn, Mods, you finally remove something this poster says? Are you starting to see the light in regards to this…person?

As another poster pointed out, Ohio is not a swing state anymore. It voted Republican in 2016 and 2020, and is Right of the country as a whole. Trump is +11, +9, +6, +8, +9, and +9 on polls in September, which is in line with August and July numbers. 538 has Ohio in Trump’s column 892 times out of 1000 runs. Harris only wins 108 out of 1000 simulations. Ohio is Trump Country. Period.

Yep. I’m not concerned one bit what self-described Socialist Chaos Tro…w is going to do in the privacy of the voting booth. If all it was doing was voting Third Party, I’d only blame it in aggregate for the outcome if Trump won by thinner margins than the number of idiots (and I’ll stand behind using this word to describe them) who voted for Left-Wing Third Parties.

What I’m arguing against is this poster and its ilk coming in and saying we shouldn’t vote Dem, and pushing inane BS like the Dems are somehow as bad as or even worse than the GQP and that it’s OK to throw our votes away as Third Party votes in light of what Team Pepe and the Trumpster Fire has planned for everyone in this country.

I’m too OLD to fight in a Civil War!

I’d seen the quote, but not the withholding of endorsement. Well, I guess he’s going to join the ‘both sides bad’ crowd.

Still. What does his opinion matter? He’s leaving the Senate next year so his proper alt-Right replacement can take over…

Things that make you go HMMM……

The people you call “Moderate Republicans” - the ones that you say Harris is ‘reaching out to’ - I consider to be fascistic.

And I call bullshit on this entire line of reasoning. Everyone right of you is not Fascist, and calling everyone who is right of you a Fascist is a really shitty thing to do to people, and is a good part of why this country is so paralysed.

lmao, Clinton lost because she arrogantly believed she didn’t need to address progressive concerns, just like Harris is doing now.

Bullshit equating Clinton with Harris but par for the course for these people.

I happen to be tired of the liberal bullshit being spewed here, personally.

Well, here’s this poster’s problem in a nutshell. If we don’t give these particular type of posters EXACTLY what they want, they’re gonna lump us in with the Christofascists that are currently taking over the GOP.

If you find .world’s politics intolerable, you should really try spending time in an instance that hasn’t gone as far out of their way to avoid leftist perspectives.

Why would I subject myself to such a bullshit factory. Little echo-chambers where nonsense like “Kamala Harris is a Fascist that murders Palestinian babies” is the same kind of bullshit factory that produces nonsense like “Kamala Harris is a Far-Leftist that murders and fucks babies for her Master, Satan,” just on the Left instead of the right.

And no. I don’t find .world’s politics intolerable. If I did, I wouldn’t be here. I find the brigade from .ml and other instances, coming here to push their bullshit that Harris is a secret Fascist who is just going to implement Project 2025 for Trump, to be intolerable, as much as the shitheads from the other side that pop in to say Harris is going to sell us off to the Mexicans and the Muslims, while being a baby-eating, baby-fucking Satan worshipper that plans global domination from the basement of a pizza parlour that doesn’t have a basement…

I’d suggest this poster and its fellow spreaders of left-wing conspiracy theory bullshit might fuck off back to a “Leftist” instance of Lemmy and circlejerk with each other about how EVIL the Democratic Party is and how UNLEFT it is, but that would be mean and censoring their opinion as another purveyor of this kind of bullshit I’m calling out here put it. So, instead, I’ll just call out the bullshit as I can, and call this stupidity that Harris is a secret Fascist as exactly what it is…stupid bullshit.

You actually remind me of another user here that was repeatedly banned for constantly accusing other users of being russian (sic) trolls…

Well, this is the Internet, but I’ll say I’ve only had comments banned. That’s why I am not engaging with this … person directly, because if I said what I want to say to this person, it would get removed, and I might get banned. I’d also point out that if you keep acting like “russian” trolls, you’ll keep getting called Russian trolls, just not by me, because we’re not allowed to do that here, DESPITE the fact that there was a troll operation discovered and exposed doing the exact same things that are being done here, today. That’s my only beef with the mods. But since I can’t call a spade a spade, I’ll just keep debunking the bullshit being pushed by… people I disagree with (see, I didn’t call 'em Russian Trolls, mods! I are good catboy!) This isn’t a fight we can give up because Russia DEFINITELY wants Trump running the show here regardless of the motivations of a given poster.

It might be time to log off and touch some grass, bud.

For a member of a faction who really screams loudly about being censored by other factions on the Left side of the spectrum here in the USA, this poster really likes to try to censor those other factions.

That’s OK. I’m touched that this poster is concerned about my health. I had a nice relaxing bike ride, that included lots of grassy areas. My health’s good. But I think I’ll stick around and keep pushing against this frankly offensive bullshit being pushed that Harris is somehow Fascist. I don’t care if this particular poster is motivated by a paycheque from Putin, one from Trump (but I repeat myself), one from Stein (but I repeat myself), or because it’s a True Believer ™, this bullshit serves Putin’s and Trump’s purpose, so I’m not gonna stop calling it out. I hope that doesn’t inconvenience this poster too much! :)

My pronouns are very publicly displayed in my displayname, you can fuck off with your intentional dehumanization. It seems like you’re going out of your way to not accuse me of illegitimacy directly, but you sure as hell seem content to imply I’m a russian asset, a bot, or both. While I appreciate your intentional avoidance of accusing me of those things to my face (not for a lack of clearly wishing you could without getting moderated), I’d appreciate it even more if you could resist the urge to speak to me/about me in the third person and refer to me as ‘it’.

This poster is demanding I show respect, here on the internet, where the Men are Men, the Women are Women, and the Children are FBI agents, while it and its ilk treat the rest of us like children at best and shit at worst. This poster bitches about the fact that I don’t see fit to refer to it as a person. Well, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms I can’t call these posters out as the way I want to, so this is the best they’re going to get. If they got their druthers, I’d only be able to refer to them in the most glowing of terms, enforced by mods picked by them to stifle my dissent to their bullshit that Dems are in any way endorsing Fascism, and that the answer is to let an actual Fascist in by voting third party. I’ll be damned if I give them any more respect than referring to them in this disconnected sense. And that they’re leveraging a tool designed to let people be who they want to be gender-wise makes it worse.

This poster splits hairs trying to claim that it didn’t call Democrats Fascist when it most clearly did:

• point of comparison for just how fascist of a candidate they themselves would still be willing to vote for
• But setting the electoral math aside for a second: eligibility odds aren’t a valid defense of being complicit in the most public international genocide in recent memory.
• The democrats are already ceding ground to anti-LGBTQ and minority movements.

I’m fucking DONE with this bullshit. I’m not going to let these claims stand unchallenged.

And I’m not going to just simply give up pointing out the stupidity expressed in these posters’ positions either.

A majority of americans (sic) support halting arms shipments to Israel.

…except it didn’t. It said 52% +/- 3.5%, based on a survey of 1000 people, support halting arms shipments to Israel until attacks on Gaza stop. That is within the margin of error, and could be as low at 49%. And a whole 21%, again +/- 3.5%, aren’t sure if we should halt weapons shipments to Gaza and 27%, again +/- 3.5%, suggest we should maintain support for Israel. What happens if Iran or Syria or the rest of the Middle East jump Israel’s case while we’re withholding weapons? Note that the article ALSO doesn’t address demographics in this 1000 person poll. If you poll 1000 people of Arabic decent, I’m sure you’ll get a different result than if you poll 1000 Jews or 1000 Christians or 1000 Republicans. The poll itself makes clear Republicans have a much more militant view on this!

Since my point was that we’d only need to turn off 50% of Jews to lose far more votes than we gain from this poster and its ilk, it dishonestly blows this bullshit in our face, ignoring my point altogether, and then gets all offended and shit over pronouns. I stand by what I said. There are no heroes over in Gaza, just villains and victims. And how many of these people saying they want to stop arms shipments are part of the ‘vote blue no matter who’, given the OTHER guy who has any chance of winning has said he’s going to ship MORE guns and bombs to Israel! Meanwhile, closer to home…

Oh right. This poster has a line for that too.

If you’re only concern is winning a single election against a loud and obnoxious fascist bafoon (sic), go ahead and turn a blind-eye to the rhetoric the democrats are using in order to appease those “”“”“moderate”“”“” voters.

1. More bullshit accusing Dems of catering to Fascists
2. YES, I am more concerned about winning a single election against a loud and obnoxious fascist buffoon who has a clearly spelled out plan on how exactly he’s going to ‘make it so you don’t have to vote again’. If you’re fucking concerned about what happens next, maybe get Jill Stein to start working the day after the election to stand up RCV and other voting initiatives and work to get Third Parties elected in large enough numbers so that future possible Third Party candidates for POTUS have some allies in Congress, maybe? That’s what I’m going to tell this…poster.

You kind of need to worry about your own home before you start worrying about the homes across the street, unfortunately. Doubly so when the choice is between a woman who may not be doing enough to placate all the posters coming out of the woodwork shitting on the Democrats and only passively mentioning how horrible the Republicans are, and the Republicans who are gonna do everything these people and the CONFIRMED bots from Russia say the Dems are gonna do, dialled up to 11, not only to the people these people are ‘concerned’ about, and a whole bunch of extra people, right here.

I’m just done with the nonsense being spewed on Lemmy by people who seem to be all to eager to do the same kind of ‘blow up every molehill into a mountain’ that confirmed Russian Troll Farms did with Clinton in 2016 and end us up with another 4 years of Trump. At least in 2016, Hillary DID have that stench of Third-Way Corrupt Democrat and we didn’t know what Trump would do versus what he said, but it’s 2024, people. We know Trump is going to do what he says he’s going to do, and Harris is light-years better than Clinton.

PS: I find it amusing that what was a claim that Lemmy lets stand Russian propaganda got turned around into an endorsement of Reddit. And this poster wonders why I don’t consider it worthy of directly endorsing. I may not be allowed here on Lemmy to directly say any given poster is a Russian Propagandist, Bot, or Useful Idiot, but Lemmy can’t stop me from having those thoughts and choosing how I’m going to interact with these people. Maybe if this poster wants me to treat it was respect, this poster can start treating us with respect and stop accusing us of being blind to Fascism.

And that means Harris must campaign to those voters and affirm their most wildly fascist opinions about minorities and immigrants?

This poster wants you to believe that what Harris is doing to cater to the middle makes her equivalent to Trump. It does not. She’s trying to bring everyone to the table, and believes that not screaming to the high hills how Left she is is the best way to make Trump fail again in 2024. I do think she should go more like “Hey, Moderate Republicans. Thanks for your vote. Please, stay during this election, but after the Election is over, go back and fix your party. We’re not going to become Republican Lite over here for you. You need to fix your party so America can have two choices again,” but I won’t hold it against her if she doesn’t do that. I certainly don’t buy the notion that Harris is catering to Fascists, though…

What kills me is that I would be happy to discuss the ways in which MAGA actually does pose a danger to the republic, if not for the fact that Liberals will use it as a point of comparison for just how fascist of a candidate they themselves would still be willing to vote for, as if the act of voting is some twisted real-life game of “would you rather”.

This poster could go far by discussing how much MAGA poses a danger to the republic. Hell, it could also promise to hold Democrats accountable, by threatening primary opponents and reminding Dems that the only reason it voted Democrat this election was how dangerous MAGA is, but it doesn’t seem this poster wants to talk about that at all…

The democrats are already ceding ground to anti-LGBTQ and minority movements. Harris is already running on anti-immigrant and anti-asylum policy, she is already turning away from protecting LGBTQ rights in red states across the country, she is already fanning the flames of anti-Muslim sentiment. In pursuit of defeating a loud and obnoxious fascist, Liberals are actively affirming those fascist fears while abandoning minority and working class protections. They are proudly advertising themselves as the more pleasant fascists, the steady hand that will provide order to those who are afraid that immigrants are bringing drugs and weapons across the boarder to kill their children.

I can’t have a conversation with anyone who spouts this level of bullshit. Attention: Mods. I am specifically calling the above paragraph as bullshit, not the poster, so please don’t ban me under Rule 3. I won’t address what I think the poster is because of course, Rule 3 only allows me to call ideas and subjects of articles {expletive}, and while I do think some pointed expletives aimed at this poster and others is more than warranted, I’ll stick with pointing out the flaws in this poster’s reasoning.

This above paragraph is utter and complete bullshit. It is so far opposed to reality that I just can’t have a discussion with this poster if it believes this nonsense. This both-siders-bullshit is exactly the kind of Russian Propaganda that was peddled in 2016 to convince people to throw their votes to third parties. This included the IRA spreading propaganda to convince African Americans not to vote, creating 10 Youtube Channels, multiple Facebook channels, 571 videos, and more than 1.2 million followers in their attack on Black voters. I brought all the receipts for this, just check the hyperlinks above.

If this poster truly believes this, there’s no common ground for discussion here. Dear reader, keep in mind that this poster was preceded by posters just like it in 2016 confirmed to be IRA agents, who pushed very similar bullshit about Hillary Clinton that this poster and others like it are pushing today. If you don’t want to read the link, here’s some key numbers: 1017 videos posted over 17 channels, 3840 twitter accounts with 72 MILLION engagements across 1.4 million people, and 44 fake news Twitter accounts with 660k followers between them, peddling disinformation.

If you think this poster is on the right course, you’re as lost as it is, and you’re doing Putin’s dirty work for him. We can and do criticize Team Blue here, but there’s a difference between saying Dems aren’t liberal enough for some of our tastes and saying Dems are just as Fascist as the Republicans. I call that bullshit out here, and invite you to reconsider if you buy this bullshit or not.

PS: I’m glad to see that it seems like /r/politics on Reddit and most other forums on the Internet, save for the fever swamp of conspiracy theories, aren’t being filled with bullshit like this. I guess the moderators of most mainstream forums see this bullshit as Russian Propaganda and shut it down. So maybe I’m overestimating how much impact this bullshit has. Still, I want it to have ZERO impact, so a-countering I go. As much as the mods here will let me go, at least.

The only reason Jill Stein has a chance to spoil this election is because we’ve got a large and rabid minority of voters who actually like what Trump is serving. If Trump were down 10 points in the Swing State polls, Jill Stein’s 1% wouldn’t matter. If Harris had 270 EVs worth of locked in states, Stein could take double digit vote counts in places like Oklahoma and California and still be a non-factor. But in this closely divided of an election, with the political system the USA has, your purity crusade will result in possibly the last election you ever get to vote in, and at minimum, 4 years of policy that will utterly destroy every priority you have.

And do you really think cutting support for Israel will gain more votes for Harris than it loses from people who happen to think Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself? Here’s a hint. It won’t. First, we are certain you’ll just find some other reason not to vote for Harris, and second, it’ll piss off moderate and conservative Jews and run them straight into the Republican’s arms. According to this article, there are somewhere around 3.6 million Jews nation-wide who vote for Democrats. In 2016, only 1.4 million people nation-wide voted for Jill Stein. If you only turned off half the Jewish vote while capturing every Stein voter there is, you’d still have a net negative, and I’m absolutely sure AIPAC would go apeshit over this (and they support Republicans too), and Stein voters would just find another reason they couldn’t possibly vote for the Democrats.

So, if you are really dumb enough to think a protest vote is a good idea, know that your meaningless protest will cost LGBTQ and minorities and non-Christians and women HERE in this country dearly, while doing absolutely nothing to help the Palestinians. It’ll also fuck the Ukrainians over, and maybe even the Taiwanese, as I can see the Shitgibbon leaving them to China’s tender mercies. Muslim voters who back Stein over Harris will own-goal themselves as they’ll be the first to be attacked by Project 2025 and Trumps Mass Deportation/“Remigration” plans. LGBTQ, Minority, and women Third Party voters will also bring their doom, while White, Male, and passable-as-Christian Third Party voters will benefit from their privilege but best get down to being Good Americans because the Trump Goon Squads will be set loose looking for Leftist rabble to round up.

Again. This is not how this works.

Stein isn’t taking Trump voters. She’s a Left-Wing distraction candidate. In some systems, like RCV or Proportional Representation, her candidacy wouldn’t hurt the Dem as long as voters were thoughtful with their votes. But in FPTP, which we have here, she’s definitely a threat. We’re bitterly divided here, to the tune of close to 51% wanting lefties and 49% wanting righties. All she needs to do to throw this election to the Right is poach 3% plus whatever Right-Wing third party candidates there are. Since the Right is unifying behind the Shitgibbon, it’s real easy for her to spoil the election and get all 51% who want progressive and/or liberal policies to get conservative policies instead. This is even worse when you realise Conservatives have gone Fascist.

This. We need to turn out in such numbers that they’ll have to be blatantly fucking transparent and have to expand their bullshit into purple and blue states .