cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8485777
Burn all US politicians
this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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you're proving my point here without realizing it.
the two tracks are an american framing. pull the lever or don't. vote for the lesser evil or don't. those are the only choices your system lets you consider.
but here's what you're missing: both tracks were laid by the same people fostering the genocide. the lever is a prop. "pulling it" doesn't stop the train; it just makes you feel like you did something.
and here's the part many won't touch: the same system you're defending as "pragmatic" has a body count outside your borders that dwarfs anything it saves inside them. a conservative estimate puts the number of people killed by us sanctions alone at 38 million over 50 years (and that's ignoring the genocides and ethnic cleansings). that's not a rounding error. that's more people than the population of canada. that's the cost of your "realism."
furthermore, consider the numbers most americans care about: how many americans has the system saved by being "pragmatic" inside the voting booth? because 38 million dead outside vs. dramatically less inside -- that's not a trade-off; that's a slaughter masked as strategy.
western teleologists have self groomed themselves into thinking pragmatism means picking between two options handed down by the ruling class. anything outside that frame gets called "virtue signaling" or "immature" because it threatens the real game: managing genocide, not ending it.
deontology isn't about clean hands. it's about refusal to legitimize a system where genocide is a natural outcome. and that refusal isn't inaction -- it's the foundation of any actual alternative. you can't build a track that doesn't lead to a better destination if you keep praising people for getting good at pulling the lever.
also the person who refuse isn't plugging their ears; they're saying the whole track-switching game is rigged so they're not going to cooperate. that's not self-centered. that's the only sane response to a system that made you believe the two tracks is the only world that exists.
No, I'm not. You're just trying to reframe reality in a deliberately deceitful way.
Stopping the train wasn't an option that any voter had the power to effect. Just because pulling the lever fails to solve one particular problem doesn't mean it's a useless prop. The choice was doom Gaza, or doom Gaza and also a bunch of other people. Not pulling it also doesn't stop the train, but it also doesn't mitigate the damage at all.
Pulling the lever does do something. Not a lot, certainly not enough, but something. Not pulling the lever is what actually does nothing, all it does is delude the deontologists into feeling like they took a stand.
No, it isn't. Those are consequences outside my power to prevent. Refusing to vote does nothing to reduce that body count.
Deontologists have self-groomed themselves into thinking refusing to choose stops the outcome. It's immature virtue signaling precisely because it neither manages nor ends genocide. Managing genocide is far better than literally doing nothing.
I see this word, "legitimize", frequently used in this argument, which I think is the main problem. Refusing to participate does not "delegitimize" the system. It does not change the system in any way. "Legitimacy" is not a metric which has any effect at all. It is precisely about clean hands over an actual change in outcome.
That is precisely plugging their ears. Yes, the game is rigged. No, it isn't fair. But refusing to cooperate doesn't suddenly unrig the game. It doesn't save Palestinian children. It just makes you feel smugly superior for not cooperating, for not doing what you can to mitigate damage while you work on building an alternate track.
When you have a strategy to actually make a difference, I'm all ears. Until then, I stand by the obvious conclusion: refusing to participate is childish and self-centered. It's not about building a better world, it's about not feeling guilty in the current one. That's not going to save anyone, it just deludes you into feeling better about yourself.
You're redirecting people to a pressure valve, rather than to disabling the genocide machine. You're talking down on those actually organizing to end the genocide and trying to justify your own complicity in perpetuating it. The actual strategy is to build up organizations like PSL, which are hampered by people having any faith whatsoever in the DNC as a means to prevent harm (which they do not do anyways).
Decades of lesser evil voting has led you to support the worst horrors humans can commit.
now whose being deceitful? you completely skipped the 38 million figure. not a word. that's not an accident or an oversight. that's how this system wants you to see it. that's the body count of your "pragmatism" -- people killed by us sanctions, not genocides or ethnic cleansing like everyone else is talking about here. just policy, managed death and you call it "mitigating damage."
you say refusing to vote does nothing. but what has voting done? the system you're defending has killed atleast 38 million people outside american borders while saving dramatically fewer inside. that's not a trade-off. that's a slaughter you've learned to call realism.
you say "managing genocide is better than nothing." but managing genocide IS genocide. slower, cleaner, easier to ignore like the democrats prefer it. you're not pulling a lever to save people. you're pulling a lever to feel like you tried while simultaneously legitmizing more tracks getting laid.
and here's the biggest dodge: you say "when you have a strategy to actually make a difference, i'm all ears." i don't have a plan, but marxists have a plan and it's been around for almost 2 centuries now. it's called refusing to legitimize the system, building dual power, organizing outside the two-party death cult, and ultimately abolishing the conditions that make genocide a natural outcome. it's fine to disagree with it, but don't pretend the only choices are lever a or lever b.
you've already decided that anything outside voting for the lesser evil isn't a strategy. that's not pragmatism; it's learned helplessness with a moral license.
also refusal to cooperate isn't plugging your ears. refusal is the only leverage people have when the game is this rigged. you don't delegitimize a system by playing along; you delegitimize it by withdrawing cooperation. that's not childish; it's literally how every actual movement for abolition in history started -- by refusing to play.
so no, i don't have a plan to stop the train tomorrow with a single vote. neither do you. the difference is i'm not pretending my lever-pulling is saving anyone while atleast 38 million lie dead at the feet of your "realism." and at least leftists are actually building something instead of just managing the bleeding.
Still you, because your refusal to participate does nothing to reduce that figure.
Refusing to vote didn't save those 38 million, it just condemned others. Voting helped install people who at least rendered some degree of aid, which again is better than the literally nothing that refusing to vote accomplishes. The 38 million is only relevant to your choice if you can make a choice that saves them. You made your choice, they were not saved. It's a purely emotional attack with no actual bearing on the choice.
Around for 2 centuries with no actual material success. It's time to stop pretending that this is a useful strategy. It's time to stop pretending that it's anything other than childish self-soothing.
This is closer to an effective strategy, but it's in no way incompatible with voting lesser evil in the meantime. The only ones who think it is are self-centered deontologists who forever let perfect be the mortal enemy of better. Do you think leftist voters don't also organize? Don't also try to build dual power? Don't also try to abolish genocidal conditions? They're just wise enough to use all the tools at their disposal to the degree that they can be used. Refusing to use a tool because it doesn't solve every problem is asinine.
When you're standing at the lever, those are the only choices. That doesn't mean you can't take other actions, but those are your only actual choices in terms of lever pulling.
You've got it exactly backwards. That precisely describes refusing to vote because the system is rigged. You can't fix every problem with voting, so abandon voting so you can feel morally superior.
No it isn't. Again, "delegitimization" isn't a real thing with any actual material effect, and you need to divest yourself of the illusion that it is. Withdrawing cooperation doesn't dismantle the system, it just forfeits your ability to give input. The illegitimate system is going to keep chugging along without you.
I never claimed to. I only claim to have some small input to mitigate damage. Solving the problem requires other actions, but voting is one action to make the problem easier to solve, and less damaging in the meantime.
Except your non-lever-pulling is equally responsible for 38 million dead. I am a leftist, I am actually building something. I just haven't internalized your helplessness to believe that managing the bleeding is incompatible with that. Managing the bleeding is what preserves something to save. You're content letting the world go up in flames so you can have a revolution in the ashes. I'd like for there to be people left to save by the time the left gets its act together.
"It's critically important to preserve the fascist, genocidal empire! (I'm totally a leftist though...)"
I sure hope you're not referring to USAID here. It was a weapon, not a charity organization.
I, a leftist, really think you all need to put down those goo-goo-gaa-gaa ass marxism books. You just want to feel superior and you're stupid babies. What you need to do is BUILD something. By voting! You need to MANAGE the bleeding by CAUSING the bleeding. You are content to watch the world burn. I vote for the people who burn it. We are not the same.
What?
it's called satire
Of what? If you're ideologically opposed to voting in bourgeois elections, read what one of those goo-goo-gaa-gaa Marxist books had to say on the subject
You are misinterpreting Lenin's work enormously. What Lenin is describing is fronting working class parties in bourgeois elections, like what PSL is doing, not working within bourgeois parties in bourgeois elections. This is abundantly clear if you read Lenin, Lenin's central thesis is that the working classes need their own, united party, and that said party needs to combine legal and illegal work to grow. The DNC is not a communist, socialist, or even vaguely anti-imperialist organization, it's an imperialist party representing capital alone.
I have read it. And either you're just cynically referencing an argument you haven't read yourself, or you're missing two key points of what Lenin's saying there. First, he's not talking about voting for 'the lesser of two evils' he's talking about voting for an explicitly socialist party with revolutionary politics. And the point of doing that isn't to do democratic socialism, it's to demonstrate to the masses the conflict between liberal democracy and actual liberatory politics. The ruling class would never allow a peaceful surrender of their power so a truly socialist party would be stymied and sabotaged by all methods, dirty and illegal included.
What you're arguing has nothing to do with what Lenin's arguing in that link.
That's awfully presumptuous. His argument is to cater your suite of strategies to the citizenry you're surrounded by, and their class consciousness. Strategies ill-suited to the material conditions you find yourself in do not help your cause. Insofar as the proletariat is invested in the system, you must use that system.
Yes, obviously, endeavor to enlighten them. But the people are slow learners, and just because your leftist friends are ready to derail the tram does not reflect the class consciousness of your countrymen. Even the Germans in question had a higher level of class consciousness than modern Americans. Lenin's argument logically extends.
This is just bowing to sponteneity. The party's role is to raise the consciousness of the proletariat to their level, not to remain where the working classes are at. That's the purpose of political parties, to organize and create proletarian intellectuals as a counter to bourgeois intellectuals. Otherwise the proletariat stays at the level of trade union consciousness if it has no means to see the political struggle as a whole.
Stop dragging Lenin through the mud to justify supporting imperialists. Lenin's point was never to just follow along with whatever is popular among the proletariat without analyzing if it's achievable or not, it was to raise them to correct praxis.
Want to uphold Lenin? Start with an analysis of class, what's the class makeup of the US Empire? Largely labor aristocrats, whose spoils have been eroding for decades. The petite bourgeoisie is solidly in the MAGA camp, and big tech capitalists have merged with the big finance capitalists as imperialism is decaying. The people are largely disillusioned in the electoral process. Settler-colonialism is still a primary contradiction internally.
What is to be done? Build up a party like PSL, that upholds indigenous rights and is trying to unite the proletariat at the front lines of every major struggle, both domestic and anti-imperialist.
This is word salad