Just a reminder

I was sceptical of this claim so I did some research - 700,000 is almost certainly too high, but other than that it's disturbingly true:

The 700,000 number comes from a Russian parliamentarian in 2023, and refers to orphaned and abandoned children Russia has 'protected' from conflict zones in Ukraine. A later Russian report walked this back a bit, and claimed that most of this number were children accompanied by family voluntarily escaping the fighting by feeling into Russia.

Obviously we should be sceptical of what Russia says about this, but this is not the same number as the number of children abducted - not even Ukraine alleges it to be this high.

The number of children abducted and forcibly deported was officially reported by Kyev to be 19,000 to 20,000 at the time of the above claim based on the data (nearly 30,000 now). The real number is almost certainly higher - many Ukranian officials believe the actual amount is higher, with one saying it may be into the 'hundreds of thousands'. A US report in 2022 estimates that Russia has "interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported... 260,000 children, from their homes to Russia"

Even if we take only the low amount that can be fairly positively stated as abductions, that's nearly 30,000 children. Various reports have shown some of these children being given new Russian identities and false birth certificates, and being put up for adoption in Russia. Some have testified to being indoctrinated and shown pro-Kremlin propaganda.

This broadly constitutes Cultural Genocide - whether it technically is or not is for academics to argue over, because the legal definition of genocide is complicated and so much is unkown.

Whether or not you want to call it a Genocide, it is undeniably a War Crime. The ICC has issued arrest warrents for Putin and Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over this.

And yet not a peep from these “Genocide Joe” people. They’re either Russian disinformation agents, or useful idiots.

It seems like the potential for an ethnicity to disappear completely after decades of starvation, oppression, and embargo is a more pressing concern than a war between two competent militarized nations, but yeah I agree they're at completely different scales in every aspect except funding from third parties.

I'm legit not trying to troll here, but I vaguely recall a news story last month where Biden said it's not genocide. I forget if he was referring to Ukraine or Gaza, but either way I was kind of dumbfounded like wtf.

And you can’t even bring this up as an argument against the “gEnOciDe jOe” kids because it gets removed for “whataboutism” in almost every thread.

They have their agenda pretty locked down

"The news is so focused on children trapped in a war zone but they're ignoring the real issue we should be focusing on: children being safely transported out of a war zone."

Notice how they only ever criticize Biden, and never the Republican party, which fully supports Israeli bullshit?

Is that Jill Stein? She barely scraped past 1% of the popular vote in 2016, less than 1/3 of fucking Gary Johnson.

Oh but this time, this time Dems will learn a lesson and turn full leftist 2028. There's no risk either since muh both sides are dictators so it's equally bad either way.

No, neither has the money

Not continuing to provide them with weapons of war while they are actively committing genocide is not cutting off communication and shunning them.

Does that apply to all countries the US has differences with?

What do you think happens when Israel's back is against the wall, they're running out of conventional weapons, and Iran and/or other groups decide to take advantage?

Do not misrepresent what you know full well I am talking about.

Against Iran. Which is Hamas' big brother.

(This comment is not approval of Israel's actions)

Are you saying that if the US stops sending Israel weapons, they will likely start a nuclear war? Bruh

This. I f*cking HATE having to vote for Biden. I've hated voting for Democrats for the last 20 years. But I'll vote for him this year because right now, our choices are between boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil. I may hate my government but I love my country and I don't want it to end.

You elect trump if you watched Civil War and thought, fuck yeah that looks fun, want that.

Basically I'm saying that only someone who's completely insulated from the lived experience of inequality could be capable of so strongly believing that both the democrats and republicans are exactly the same, because only someone so insulated would have a lived experience in which democratic and republican governments could even remotely feel the same.

All of the replies to you are complicated, so here's a simple summary: The poster implied that a person who doesn't see the difference between Trump and Biden probably wouldn't be hurt by any of Trump's policies or goals.

For example, a transgender person may lose access to hormones and a gay person may be unable to marry or adopt a child. Poor people may lose food stamps (money given for food) and old people may lose social security (money given at old age).

At least one more time based on your comment.

Not enough times, clearly

First past the post favors 2 parties. You can vote for other parties but you'll just end up with the side you disagree with more winning.

The way to actually make progress in this regard is to start at low level. City, county, and eventually state positions have to be the focus if we want to get a broader range of parties into the conversation.

Pushing for voting for other parties in most of the US gets you nowhere because of the way our elections work in the first place. At least, outside of elections where parties (and policy in general) barely matter at all, like very small municipalities; but generally unless you get the entire city council and judicial system in that town/county progressive it's pretty hard for small-town politicians to make much meaningful change anyways. Although it's not impossible – recently an "independent" (I think Republican but idk) city council member I directly voiced my concerns to right before the election about the lack of investment in sidewalks, public transport, and other non-car infrastructure in our small extremely conservative town actually got some sidewalks built which was great.

With the state level, though, it's not coming unless you live in a state with some sort of multiple answer voting like RCV (like Instant-Runoff Voting / IRV), approval voting, cardinal/rated voting (like STAR voting or score/range voting, etc.. Or if you live an extremely progressive state where candidates that advocate for that kind of system are able to get voted into office, almost always a Democrat or sometimes an Independent aligned with Democrats.

IMO the ideal voting system would be Condorcet Single Transferable Vote / CPO-STV (same exact thing as STV to the voter, but implementing a variation of the Condorcet Method under the hood, which would be the most proportional system in both multi-winner and single-winner elections) but I don't think that's actually used anywhere, and a system with such computationally heavy internals would be a hard sell to people who already see IRV as "controversial". As long as we get anything other than FPTP, we can make it better later, the specifics don't matter too much.

For the curious, STV (Single Transferable Vote) is essentially the same as IRV (Instant-Runoff Voting, known simply as ranked-choice in the US although there are other ranked-choice systems) except it's multi-winner instead of single-winner, where you can "rank" multiple candidates, and if your first choice candidate is eleminated or if they have surplus votes, your vote is instead "transferred" to your second candidate. The Condorcet system is basically a voting system that takes into account every possible candidate match-up, and makes the winner whoever has the most votes in each individual match-up – it's very computationally heavy since, especially in elections with many candidates and in multi-winner variations, you can have extremely large amounts of matchups. You can combine STV with the Condorcet method and get CPO-STV, which would theoretically be the system which would be the hardest game/"tactically" vote in (a.k.a. people wouldn't have any incentive to vote against a candidate they like in order to make a different candidate more likely to win, thereby increasing the chance of a candidate they don't prefer winning) and achieve the most proportional/happiest-choice voting.

You can't vote your way out of this one America, time to get serious

That's one characteristic of fascism, but not the whole story. The Dems have slight authoritarian tendencies for sure, but they are explicitly fascist by the actual definition. Republicans are.

I don't agree with their authoritarian policies, but by the actual definition of fascist, they aren't fascist, they are just shitty.

So my point stands, I will vote for the non-fascist every time.

But that cannot happen within the current system lest you allow the Republicans to win. Change must be forced onto the system.

we're not talking about primaries.

i checked your history and you're trying so hard. I'd be really surprised if you weren't a Russian troll.

I like when you bring some of that up and they say, for example, that Dobbs is actually Biden's fault because he was in office at the time. That's the best their think tanks have come up with, literally ignoring causality in favor of correlation.

Nope, it's still used as a way to depress Democrat votes. "Both sides are bad. Republicans are worse." is used as an opener to such arguments as:

• vote 3rd party
• reject the system (ie don't vote)
• accelerationism
• do this pie-in-the-sky impossible thing first (communist revolution, etc)

It's a platform by which people are herded into arguments designed solely to depress Democrat votes, aimed squarely at Democrat voters.

Just stick with "Republicans are bad".

Intent doesn't matter. I've never seen it used differently. You are welcome to disagree.

Does it actually matter at all what the intent is if the result is Trump winning and full on reducing the United States to a fascist ethnostate?

What do you use to tag them? I miss that functionality of RES.

Ahh, yes. The classic straw man. Accuse the author of something they didn’t say, or imply, but something you can summon a paragraph of nonsense to support flawed thinking.

Did say silenced? No. I said CALLED OUT. As in- flush them out for the bullshit they’re spreading.

You claim you’re voting. So clearly this isn’t directed at you anyway. Unless of course you’re just saying you’re voting so that you could follow it with the… “but maybe I won’t if people don’t stop being mean to people that are telling other NOT to vote!”

It's not. I think they were just doing a tongue in cheek joke that 3rd party voters think they are beating the both sides argument but they aren't.

This is the kind of mindset that keeps people from voting third party.... "You're just throwing away your vote" and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, because enough people believe it, and either don't vote as a result, or vote disingenuously, that nobody votes for third parties that they actually want in office.

The problem is self reinforcing too.

The fact is, if enough people are brave enough to "throw away their vote" by going for a third party, the momentum may push others that either are not voting, or are voting for a party they don't believe in, to vote for the third party that doesn't normally have a chance, to actually add their voice to the mix and those people may be enough to actually swing towards a third party.

This rhetoric is the exact same crap that OP is complaining about.

I understand why people don't want to "throw away their vote" on a candidate that isn't likely to win, which is why we need voting reform and an alternative to the FPTP voting that we currently "enjoy", so people can vote for who they actually want, and still not "throw away" their vote if that candidate doesn't get enough votes to get in.

Which makes it even more important for the right to maintain the current voting system. By gerrymandering the hell out of the districts, they can dilute more centrist and left-leaning areas into several strong conservative areas nearby, or concentrate undesirable voters into a single district, which is vastly out voted by the surrounding districts.

The whole thing has been manufactured to optimise the capacity for success for those who do not win the popular vote.

IMO, it's insane that a party can consistently win the popular vote, but not consistently win elections. It's crazy.

Democracy is when you only have one choice and if you don't choose it then you're no better than a fascist.

The first step in fixing the two party system is ACCEPTING that it is a two party system.

Did you really write that sentence down sober?

I usually also fix, like a broken vase, by accepting that it's broken and not doing anything about it. Yes, that definitely fixes the vase...

Only in like 5 states... If you're not in those states you should definitely vote 3rd party

Want to re-read that? I pretty clearly said I would vote, and encourage others to. I can do that, and still proclaim that both of the 'viable' parties are shitbags.

This is exactly it.

<rant>

Another comment the comedian made was that he can hold both liberal opinions and conservative opinions at the same time. For instance, he thinks school lunches should be free. That’s a liberal opinion. And for his conservative opinion, he thinks if a student attacks a teacher, the teacher should be able to defend themselves…. Bro, that is not a conservative opinion!

I should let it go as it’s just a comedy special, but I think many people make similar arguments. Also, after making all the jokes he says he’s surprised that liberals don’t laugh as much as conservatives… Like a liberal can’t laugh at themselves the way a conservative can.

</rant>

I apologize for the rant, I was triggered, but I can move on with my life now…

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see most of the "both sides are bad" posts as a push toward the center, I see them as a "both sides are too far right" telling people to vote blue now, but to also fight for a far more left-leaning candidate by the next election, since we shouldn't be settling for someone like Biden long-term.

Except that's being utterly disingenuous by picking a left wing view that most folks are going to agree with except the far right and the very most extreme right view that all but the most extreme right are going to oppose.

I mean it would be just as easy to look at left wing vs right wing views on guns: Left wing: No one should have guns unless they have them to resist right wingers, because they might shoot minorities! Right wing: Everyone should have guns, so long as they mostly use them legally because statistically the ones who don't will shoot more minorities and poors than whites and rich and a majority of those doing the shooting will be minorities, providing a pretense to demonize them for it!

Or speech: Mainstream left: Speech should be controlled to silence my opponents! (Meaning right wingers generally and the far right especially) Mainstream right: Speech should be controlled to silence my opponents! (Meaning LGBTQ+ stuff aimed at minors and left wing protests) Centrists: I literally cannot tell you two apart.

I think you misunderstood my actual complaint. I was not bothered that he disagreed with my opinions. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to bet he was in agreement with everything I believe.

The logic this comedian used as the basis for his entire set didn’t match with reality. It’s hard to find the jokes funny when they aren’t based on anything true.

This isn’t specific to politics either. There’s plenty of comedians that use faulty logic as the set ups to their punchlines, and if you don’t think about that too much, you may find the punchline funny. For me, all I can think is that the punchline would have been funny if anything that led up to it was true.

Because one party literally has Nazi dinners.

AIPAC uncorks $100 million war chest to sink progressive candidates

We've got a litany of conservative democrats who are perfectly fine taking money from fascists.

It’s one of the few ways US society allows direct input from citizens.

Okay here's my input: I don't vote for people who support genocides or block strikes.

If you want my vote work for it.

Boycotting is also very patriotic

I've been reading "this is the most important election of our lifetimes" online since the 1990s. It's never the same people saying it between elections, and career politicians don't make this argument.

What a stupid world

If we had sane voting, like STAR, we would be able to express such a preference without wasting a vote we need to cast against the worse choice.

I say that like it's happened in every fucking election I've been aware of since I was born.

And if the stakes are even higher then we're actively circling the drain as a nation.

You say that like people haven't been saying that exact same thing every election for all of US history. It's a tactic to silence unrepresented groups and bully them into conformity. Some people think differently from you and do legitimately view both the Democrats and Republicans as anti-democratic organizations.

And since at least the ones on the left were personally deprived of a fair election by the Democrats in 2016 and arguably 2020, pretending the Democrats are not also a threat to democracy immediately makes any argument you make fall on deaf ears. Instead, the Dem base parrots the party lines about progressives being the ones who gave us Trump in 2016. Despite literal evidence that the Dems propped him up during the primary.

If you truly believe that about Trump, you are a fool. Were you stuck in a cave on Jan 6th? Do you know what Project 2025 is? Have you listened to a word Trump has said about wanting to be a dictator “for one day”?