oh, fuck it. I was going to put this in the tags but it got too long and I’m going to get flamed to hell and back by my fellow ~leftists~ but whatever.
I may have said this before, but one of the things I’ve been sort of ruminating on lately is how extremely Western the whole “I can’t vote for a candidate if they don’t align exactly with my idea of Progressive” thing is. like. when it comes to voting, sometimes adhering to your own particular, individual sense of ethics and morality and not voting for the progressive (or less bad) candidate means a fascist gets elected. for this kind of person, if the fascist got elected because you (and millions of similarly conflicted people) didn’t vote for the other candidate, well, that’s just the way it goes sometimes and your conscience is clear, because you stood on your moral high ground and that’s the most important thing! never mind the effects of a fascist’s rule on millions of vulnerable people – at least you didn’t violate your own internal sense of whatever by voting for someone not ~progressive~ enough!
this is a very, very individualistic idea. and it strikes me as extraordinarily arrogant and Western – and, yes, privileged – to think that the priority when choosing between an actual fascist and a left-leaning centrist is to think that the priority in this situation is to stand on your moral high ground no matter the real-life consequences. rather than using your individual vote as part of a larger collective action to try to mitigate the worst case scenario, our hypothetical leftist voter will prioritize their own sense of comfort with adhering to their morally pure stance and find no disconnect whatsoever in the ethics around the real world consequences of that stance. the moral purity in this scenario apparently never extends outside the confines of the individual’s own skin.
is this about the upcoming US presidential election? yes, obviously, but it’s also about every election, ya feel? and it’s about unions, and supporting other organizations’ strikes, and protest marches, and cleaning up litter in your neighborhood, and so so SO many other situations in life that have nothing to do with voting, where collective action for something not perfect (but also much better than the alternative) would be for the greatest common good, but doesn’t happen because every person thinks “it’s not my perfect solution so I’m going to sit this out”.
I’m not trying to encourage groupthink or whatever and I’m not trying to discount the mental conflict of lending your effort to something that you feel isn’t progressive enough for you. I’m saying that progress is made incrementally, bit by frustrating bit, over the course of months, years, decades, and no one person can do it by themselves.
progress is made by groups of people getting together and pushing and pushing and pushing until something changes. we have this idea, particularly in American society (I’m American so I’m speaking to that culture primarily), that our individual actions have either no effect at all on the world or that we are the savior of everything by ourselves. this has just never been true. individuals can inspire, they can lead, they can be figureheads and representatives of a movement, but nobody has ever changed the world alone.
amhrancas 