It’s a special day, he can treat himself.

I like it, this is clearly very enterprisey and solution focused, but I would like to suggest a couple of amendments if I may?

• Namespaces We should make full use of namespaces. Make the structural tags be in a language specific namespace (to be referenced in every function spec, obviously) but change the in an out params to use the parameter name as the tag, namespaced to the function they’re for, with a type attribute.

• In memory message queues Have all function invocations be marshaled as xml documents posted to an in memory message queue. Said documents should use a schema that validates the structure and a function specific schema to validate the types of arguments being passed. Namespace everything.

I reckon we could power a medium sided country if we could generate energy from the programmers despair.

If you’re talking about being able to regain access with no local backups (even just a USB key sewn into your clothing) your going to need to think carefully about the implications if someone else gets hold of your phone, or hijacks your number. Anything you can do to recover from the scenario is a way an attacker can gain access. Attempting to secure this via SMS is going to ne woefully insecure.

That being said, there are a couple of approaches you could consider. One option is to put an encrypted backup on an sftp server or similar and remember the login and passwords, another would be to have a trusted party, say a family member or very close friend, hold the emergency codes for access to your authentication account or backup site.

Storing a backup somewhere is a reasonable approach if you are careful about how you secure it and consider if it meets your threat model. The backup doesn’t need to contain all your credentials, just enough to regain access to your actual password vault, so it doesn’t need to be updated often, unless that access changes. I would suggest either an export from your authentication app, a copy of the emergency codes, or a text file with the relevant details. Encrypt this with gpg symmetric encryption so you don’t have to worry about a key file, and use a long, complex, but reconstructable passphrase. By this I mean a passphrase you remember how to derive, rather than trying to remember a high entropy string directly, so something like the second letter of each word of a phrase that means something to you, a series of digits that are relevant to you, maybe the digits from your first friend’s address or something similarly pseudo random, then another phrase. The result is long enough to have enough entropy to be secure, and you’ll remember how to generate it more readily than remembering the phrase itself. It needs to be strong as once an adversary has a copy of the file they jave as long as they want to decrypt it. Once encrypted, upload it to a reliable storage location that you can access with just a username and password. Now you need to memorize the storage location, username, password and decryption passphrase generator, but you can recover even to a new phone.

The second option is to generate the emergency, or backup, codes to your authentication account, or the storage you sync it to, and have someone you trust keep them, only to be revealed if you contact them and they’re sure it’s you. To be more secure, split each code into two halves and have each held by a different person.

I’ve found HSBC to be ok using Firefox on Linux. I don’t know if they have integrations with any accounting software, but the web access works well, and you can export your transactions for processing locally.

ETA: I’ve run small business accounting on Gnucash, I found the learning curve a bit steep, but once you ‘get it’ it’s handy.

Sorry for the slow reply, life occurred.

I think I understand where you’re coming from with the desired to be productive and not reinstall. I think I’ve been there too! One thing that I can suggest, if you do have the time, is to learn a system like Ansible and use it to setup and configure your machine. The discipline of keeping all of the config as source rather than making ad-hoc changes reduces the chance of thinking you’ll make just one little change and breaking something, and, if something does go wrong, you can get back to your working configuration quickly.

Bearing in mind that there really isn’t anything you can do to stop yourself if you’re really determined to not lose the data, because if you can read it at any time you can back it up, the closest you are likely to come is something like creating new key with GPG then using the TPM to wrap your secret key and deleting the original. That way the key is only usable on that specific machine. Then use the key-pair to encrypt your ‘guard’ files. You can still decrypt them because you have the wrapped secret keys and you’re on the same machine, but if you wipe the drive and lose those keys the data is gone. The TPM wrapping prevents you from taking the keys to a different machine to decrypt your data.

There’s an article with some examples here,

Having said all of that, this still doesn’t help if you just clone the disk as all of the data, including the wrapped key and the encrypted files will be cloned. The one difference there is that the serial number of the hard drive will be different. Maybe you could use that, combined with a passphrase as the passphrase for your GPG key, but we’re getting into pretty esoteric territory here. So you could generate a secret key with a command like:

( lsblk -dno SERIAL /dev/sdb ; zenity --title "Enter decrypt password" --password) | sha1sum | cut -c1-40

Where /dev/sdb is the device your root partition is on. zenity is a handy utility for displaying dialogs, there are others available. In this use it just prompts for a passsword. We then concatenate the drive serial number from lsblk with the password you entered and hash the result. The hashing is really only a convenient way to mix the two without worrying about the newline lsblk spits out. Don’t record the result of this command, but use it to set the passphrase on your new GPG key. Wrapping the secret key in the manner the article above suggests is a nice extra step to make it harder to move the drive to another machine or mess around in that sort of way, but not strictly necessary as that wasn’t in the scope of your original question.

Now you can encrypt your file with: gpg -e -r <your key name> <your file>'. That will produce an encrypted version of <your file>called<your file>.gpg. To decrypt the file you can get gpg` to use the hashing command from above to get the passphrase with something like:

gpg -d --pinentry-mode=loopback --batch --passphrase-fd 3 <your file>.gpg 3< <( ( lsblk -dno SERIAL /dev/sdb ; zenity --title "Enter decrypt password" --password) | sha1sum | cut -c1-40 )

Once you’ve tested that you can decrypt the file successfully you can remove the original, plaintext, file. Your data is now encrypted with a key that is secured with a passphrase made of a string you know and the serial number of your disk and optionally wrapped with a key from the TPM that is tied to your physical machine. If you change the disk or the machine the data is irretrievable (ignoring the caveats discussed above). I think that’s about as close to your original goal as you can get. It’s rough around the edges, and I’m not sure I’d trust my data to it, but I believe it’ll work. If you do something like this, please test it thoroughly, I can’t guarantee it!

Good faith isn’t just about being polite and sounding civil. It’s about actually engaging with other ideas presented.

I concur, and I have genuinely been trying to engage with the ideas people post. You’re right that I have been focused on an extremely narrow framework, because that is what I see before us. I’ve been asking what people suggest doing in that framework because I’m trying to understand people’s position and what actions they think would be appropriate at that scale. The wide points eloquently made by you and other posters involve seem extreme to me, and I accept you may see that as a failing on my part. That makes it hard to engage with them on more than a superficial level. I felt like the conversations continuously ended up with us talking at cross-purposes, which is why I kept trying to bring them back to the points I was trying to understand.

I still struggle to see how people don’t see trump as a greater threat to their freedom (or whatever freedom they feel they have) than biden, but I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind either, just to comprehend their point of view.

I thank you for actually continuing to discuss this with me, but I think I’ve tried your patience more than sufficiently, so I’m going to disengage from the various threads we have now.

Biden gunning down supreme court justices is of course a jokey image, presented by you.

This was the exact statement Sickos made at the top of the thread: ‘Bro Biden is going to die in the next four years regardless; he could personally shoot every conservative supreme court justice. He chooses not to. How can you respect that?’ I thought it was posted in a jokey way, and so engaged with is as such. It seems I was wrong in that, for which I apologies to both you and them.

Furthermore, given the latest supreme court ruling regarding presidential immunity, it seems I was wrong in assuming such an action it would be too extreme even for the US. I retract my statements to that effect. Seen as he’s been given a green light to do anything that could be considered an official act, this would now seem like an entirely feasible approach to the problem.

I thought the entire concept was jokey, but OK, let me restate my point: Yes, the US government has killed many people, though typically individually and discretely. The president personally shooting multiple supreme court justices as Sickos suggested would be seen to be several levels above that and probably be too extreme for even democrat supporters to stomach. The dems also seem to like to be seen to be playing fair, which suggests they wouldn’t even contemplate that approach.

The difference is, I don’t think it would fail in the scenario you put forward, so there would be a consequence. Now if we assume it’s biden, and he’s unlikely to see out another term even if elected, maybe the risk/reward ration swings enough to make it a realistic possibility, but in general I suspect a president assassinating multiple supreme court justices would lead to them being impeached successfully in short order.

That assumes competence on the part of all participants, which I don’t believe to be the case. Incompetence gives the same outcome, but can, theoretically, be fixed.

No it’s not. There’s more than two presidential candidates.

Maybe I should have been clearer. There are only two candidates with any realistic prospect of winning the election, and only one position to fill. There are many representatives and senators, so their individual contribution to the whole is less. The president is the head of the executive and isn’t diluted in the same way.

And you can (and in some cases do) argue that anything short of voting for, capmapigning for, donating to, and never ever showing any disatisfaction with the Democrats qualifies as this. Why stop at withholding your vote? Or campaigning for change ‘at the wrong time’? Have you been door knocking and phone banking for Biden? If not, why not? If you have, why aren’t you doing it now, and in every spare moment, or quitting your job to do it full time? Have you donated every cent you own to the Democratic party? What about selling any property or other assets you have? Aren’t you part of the problem?

You’re reading things I haven’t said, so I can’t really answer that.

Violence from the right toward the left is already happening. All that’s needed for a civil war is shooting back.

Yes, that’s true, and it’s not just the left but minorities of all kinds too. I would rather find a way of walking back from that brink, rather than deliberately pushing the country over it.

It has been like this since well before either of us were alive, and it will be this way until climate change kills us all unless we stop believing the grand lie of electoralism and realize that politics happens more than once every four years.

If by that you mean that the electorate need to be engaged with politics more than every four years, then yes, absolutely. That’s why I keep saying people should be in contact with their representatives regularly, so they know your name and what you stand for. That should be happening in large groups ideally as it becomes hard to ignore when the numbers start putting you at risk of losing the next election.

As I said, I’m drowning in responses, and I’ve got to them out of order. I’ve seen your response to this elsewhere, but I’m talking about in this election, over the next few months, what are the options? Yes,the analogy was simple to the point of absurdity, but it wasn’t me who brought it up.

I realise there is much that can be done over time, ranging from trying to swing the existing candidates further left via voter pressure to rather more revolutionary means, but I’m more focused on the next event. What happens in November? I perceive that trump would be a worse president, for the US and the world at large, than biden would. I realize that that’s an arguable position, but all I’ve seen against it is people saying bidens bad. I’m not questioning that, he is, but that doesn’t change the conclusion. Given that, from my point of view, there is only one reasonable course of action in the presidential election itself. Actions preceding that are more open, but anything that risks increasing the chance of trump getting in would be dangerous. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that down ticket votes are more of an insurance, so, to my mind, not voting still isn’t the best course of action, but I can understand the other view point too.

They don’t want to, but with enough voter pressure will if that’s what it takes to stay in power. Unless there are candidates who are more left wing that have a realistic chance of wining elections at the state level it’s probably necessary to work with what’s in front of us, which probably means pressuring the dem representatives to move left. That’ll take engaging with a significant portion of the electorate which is likely to be challenging, but probably the only way to slide the overton window left. I think the voters have to move first before the politicians follow, and they’ll probably have to be cajoled as individuals rather than a party.

OK, ignoring the ire in you post:

All I ever ask for these days is some basic fucking stuff, like idk, stop giving weapons to aparthied governments to kill brown people?

As we saw with the uncommitted protests, change can happen with enough pressure. It wasn’t much, but it was a noticeable change in tone. Now imagine that amount of targeted pressure had been, or is, kept up for an extended period of time. Changes would absolutely happen.

I don’t have to build a fucking governing vision for people, as if Republicans or Democrats actually do that.

The thing is, they do present that vision, even if all that amounts to is “more of the same, with some differences that may or may not matter to you”. Without a compelling alternative vision voters aren’t going to turn away from that, because it’s the only message they’re getting. I didn’t mean you personally when I talked about presenting such a case, but a cohesive enough group has to form to do so in order to give people that alternative. I’m not talking about running an electoral campaign, that is clearly out of reach, but finding ways of getting that vision out in other ways. As you say,places like reddit are bot-farmed, or they’re astroturfed, but still huge numbers of people go there and are exposed to the messaging published on those platforms. Again, none of this is about you doing it personally, but about getting people together to do it collectively.

We are at a large, intentional, systemic disadvantage, and we don’t even have the money to get the ball rolling in the right direction.

The more people who get to hear the message and align with it, the easier it is to collect that money, making it easier to get the message out further. As I said, it’s not about an election campaign, it’s about getting enough people to decide they will demand a specific change.

Mostly we just piss people off who can only hear rhetoric, which, while funny, doesn’t actually do anything.

Correct. It’s probably good stress relief, but it’s not achieving much in the way of getting more people to come together.

There are no ‘populists’ you utterly contemptible moron. There are liars for capital and that is it.

I’m not going to argue with you there, I was just using the more common word for it.

I was trying to point out that the numbers of voters who think israel has gone “too far” isn’t high enough to tip US policy at the moment, precisely because of the propaganda you describe. That number seems to be changing, albeit slowly, and we’ve already seen biden’s tone change somewhat as that pressure changes.

Electoral politics is something to spend something like 1% of your political thoughts on unless you are personally running or supporting an electoral anti-capitalist campaign.

I haven’t talked about capitalist politics or trying to change that at all. If you want to change the system that much it’s going to be a much longer, harder job. From a change point of view, what I’m talking about are more immediate issues like the voting model in use or the stance the government should take on minority rights. What I was initially talking about, way up at the top of the thread, was simply that trump had stuffed the supreme court and that maybe it would be a good idea to avoid giving him another chance to do that and worse.

Bruh liberals are constantly organizing letter writing campaigns and calling offices and trying to get meetings with their reps. They are routinely ignored.

I talk about making sure your representative knows who you are, and gathering enough other’s together to do the same because I have seen it have a positive effect, in the context of what I was talking about. Yes, you’re not going to change the fundamentals that way, and a large enough inducement from a ‘donor’ could turn any candidate, even if they know it’ll mean they’re out at the next election, but we’ve seen biden’s tone on israel change when he came under pressure, so it does work, even if the changes are initially small.

In your mind, what does it mean to change the electoral system and how does it compare to what is necessary to undo the intrinsic violence and disposession of the capitalist system?

Changing the electoral system from FPTP to some form of more representative system would be a start. If we stick with local representatives then something like the STAR system might give a fairer result and avoid the need to vote for a candidate just to avoid biasing the outcome to another candidate. A proportional system might work and give a fairer, more representative result in many places. I realise these probably aren’t the sorts of changes you are referring to though.

Fighting the system directly won’t gain much as it’s just that, a system. Why not?

It’s a concept, and idea, not a tangible thing. What is tangible is the implementation of that. Rather than fighting that, changing the system we’re implementing would seem like the way to go. I realise though that we are talking about rather different things.

You do need to communicate with the public but feeding into the false notion that you’re just going to vote out capitalism will lead to almost immediate distrust because you will fail right away.

I agree, but I’ve not said anything about voting out capitalism.

You think people have drifted to the right because they were offered a better future by politicians that had personal relationships with random right wing constituents?

I think people have drifted right because right wing candidates told people that they can make it all better and generally done a better job of “hearts and minds” in certain demographics than left wing candidates have so people start believeing that’s the ‘better’ way.

I mean no disrespect by this, but I’m going to pick only a few points from your reply, I believe you and I have hashed over the others already in many threads.

Elsewhere you say that movements should be grassroots first. Elsewhere in the thread you then state that down-ticket races won’t have much effect. Elsewhere still you argue that presidents taking executive action and pressuring them to do so is largely worthless because they don’t control the other houses.

Each of those is in a specific context. Yes any meaningful movement is going to have to be grassroots first, without that it has do driving force to overcome entrenched interests. Down ticket races wont have as much of an effect if biden is president and, preferably, the dems end up controlling at least one house. If trump wins the presidency then I would want to see both houses controlled by the dems, and certainly at least one. So whether the down ticket races are critical, or have less effect rather depends on who gets the presidency. Assuming the worst and voting accordingly there would seem like prudent course of action.

But that will affect down-ballot races! School boards! Run-offs! Blah blah blah…

As I said elsewhere, each of those is on it’s own cycle. The major election of president, and the down ticket votes at that point are probably the most consequential, so deciding to demand changes in policy for them is probably best done early in the cycle, rather that in the last few months, to give he candidates time to incorporate that into their plans. I appreciate that many people probably are shouting about this, but it’s clear that it’s not loud enough, or coordinated enough to affect the candidates or other voters.

Also, if you think a presidential election cycle as defined by the parties is only six months long then you haven’t been paying attention.

I know their positioning isn’t defined that soon before the election, but if you want to see it change they need time to do so. We’ve seen that can be moderately swift (the unaffiliated protests for example got some small results in a shorter space of time) but changing messaging in the run up to the election is seen as damaging, so parties try not to do it.

Dictators famously require being voted in and run on that ambition.

I refer you to the rather well known case of a certain wannabe artist in Germany. He’d made it clear that he would act like a dictator and was voted in to an amount of power, from which he seized total control. The way I see it, if trump is willing to say he wants to be a dictator, it’s one if the few things he’s said that I should believe.

They also famously do that, succeed, and then insist four years later that in order to do it, they’ll need a second term.

I am not aware of him saying he wanted to be a dictator before his first term, but could easily have missed that. Not winning a second term is what seems to have pushed him over the edge into saying that. The rest of his hateful rhetoric, yes that was going from before term one.

if you believe he is a unique threat why don’t you support any and all options to ensure he never again occupies the presidency?

Short of violence, as far as I can see making sure he doesn’t win this election will do that as he’ll be far to gone to demenia by the next election to be a threat. Who’ll take his place is a separate question, but there is time to deal with that before then. That’s what’s confusing me about so many people’s responses here. The reality is that there are only two people who can be the next president, bad and worse. It’s an atrocious choice to have to make, but it seems clear to me that one one course of action makes sense. I know that to others a different course makes sense. That’s why I keep asking: given the electoral reality in front of us right now, what course of action would you, personally, have people take, and what what would you anticipate the outcome of that being?

Without threatening to withold votes, within an incredibly narrow electoral only parameter, in a tiny time frame where anything less than total guarunteed success means its not worth doing. This is what you’ve asserted here and throughout this thread.

I’ve tried to explain this is a previous post, but again, withholding votes makes sense, if, and only if, the candidate knows why and can respond to that without losing more of their other voters. If you’ve made your case to biden’s campaign then I apologise for underestimating you. The same goes for the down ticket candidates, they can only respond if they know your position and it makes sense from a voter count to do so.

please provide some examples of the Democrats making an about face on policy within one election cycle, based purely on electoralism. Bonus points if you can provide some examples of that without even threatening to withhold votes.

I don’t think I’ve said anything about the democrats making an about face in one election cycle and certainly not without voters threatening to withhold their votes. I have tried to explain that I’m not saying people shouldn’t threaten to withhold their votes, but should do so in a way that gets that information to the parties early enough that they can incorporate it into their plan. Ultimately, if a party thinks it can win an election if it can win over those voters and not lose more voters it already has, it has to do that to win. The uncommitted protest showed that a large enough group of voters making it clear their vote was contingent on certain changes can and will have an effect. It wasn’t a huge effect on biden’s Gaza policy, but it was noticeable. Critically it was done in a way that didn’t risk letting a worse option take over the White House again.

But you assert that if they refuse to change their position, you have to vote for them anyway. So there is no threat of them losing an election, because you advocating for voting for them no matter what, and having not using any leverage you might have. (This is another key point you never address whenever it’s put to you)

I’ve addressed this multiple times. I’m not advocating voting for them no matter what. I am advocating voting for biden in this election because the alternative is worse and the odds are so close to 50/50 that the risk of trump getting in is too high. Down ticket I would be more comfortable seeing more dems get in, primarily as insurance against a trump presidency, but also because so many of the republicans are cleaving so hard to trump that they’re the worst choice in their races too.

They don’t care about losing their job. They care about not going against the wants of donors who will provide them their next job. They’ll become lobbyists, or sit on boards, or even just be given cushy party positions that aren’t voted on in exchange for their loyalty to the donor class. And the donor class and party sure as shit don’t care about candidates losing their positions. They can just drop another one in, usually at less cost than the previous one since they’re not established and have no leverage of their own. In fact, the people who run the party machinary often stand to benefit from their candidates losing elections, as it increases donations which give them power, keep them employed, increase their salaries and comissions etc.

Ok, but by that logic there is no point withholding your vote at all, as it isn’t an incentive, but seems to be what you’re advocating. I agree that most politicians are going to walk out into a comfortable second job for the people who bankrolled them, but in order to do that they need to be of value to them first. In order to do that they need to stay in power for long enough to get some of what the donor wants done. That is why they do care about being re-elected at least a few times. Without that they don’t get their fairytale ending. Withholding votes is therefore a useful tactic. I haven’t argued against that at all, all I have stated is that as the election nears, unless you can honestly say you’ve made the candidates for each position, from president down, aware of your position and what they need to do to win your vote, withholding it isn’t useful. In the case of the presidential election in particular I would say vote to minimise harm, in the other elections give thought to what your vote, or non-vote, will actually cause. If you’re in a solidly non-swing State your individual action probably doesn’t change anything but the margin one candidate wins by, so it might be reasonable to make a point. In a swing State it might be more of a case of aiming to minimise harm again. It sucks. All of it sucks, but that’s the state of things right now.

If you don’t engage in good faith, you don’t get further effort and discussion. And you haven’t, even when you’ve been offered it.

As mentioned in another thread, I’ve been getting replies on about 25 threads, and I’m trying to reply to each in a reasonable way. I wasn’t really expecting this level of response to what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial comment that the supreme court had been packed by trump. We’ve definitely covered a fair amount more since then, and I appreciate the time people have taken to do so. I’ve also noticed that you are one of the most prolific of those responders, so thank you, I know I am almost certainly trying your patience.

Your original premise, that you’ve repeated, is that not doing this is unacceptable. You also never addressed why you draw the line there when I asked elsewhere.

It seems to me that at each election, the sensible thing to do is act to minimise the resultant harm. Between elections is when the work of changing course needs to happen. Yes there are multiple cycles of elections at different levels, each can be treated as it’s own task. I think that’s what you’re asking, but I’m not certain.

Then why would one do something that you acknowledge makes the task much more difficult?

Because not doing so makes it even harder. The further right politics drifts the harder it will be to pull it left and the harder life will be for a great many people.

And then add all the other myriad restrictions you’ve dictated

The only things I’ve be advocating are not doing anything that would increase the chance of trump winning and making sure that candidates in any election know why you would withhold your vote early enough that they can actually do something about it without losing more of the rest of their voters.

Literally hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people throughout history have done this to great success, as I have pointed out elsewhere.

I think we’re talking at cross-purposes here. Yes, many have advocated for different approaches throughout history, and in other countries, with some success. What I am referring to is the here-and-now. Over the last electoral cycles, where has the messaging been to actually inspire large enough groups of the electorate that there is a better way? The fact that large enough groups haven’t been inspired to demand change means the messaging isn’t getting out effectively.

People in this thread have articulated everything from broad marxist philosphies on developing proletarian power, to specific use of strikes, to even electoral strategies that fit within your deliberately impossibly narrow ‘acceptable’ electoral frame. You’ve ignored or handwaved all of them away.

They have, and I thank them for it. I have tried to respond as best I can, if I have missed points, or not articulated myself well that’s on me, but I have certainly not handwaved away anyone. I do worry that the approach of “I’m not going to vote for biden because he is evil/hasn’t earned my vote/isn’t left enough/whatever” ignores the fact that the outcome of the presidential election is a simple either/or at this point. Assuming you are closer to biden’s politics that trumps, not voting just tips the balance slightly towards trump. This doesn’t penalize biden in any meaningful way, but it does penalize the people who trump wants to harm. He’s made it clear he supports all the same genocide that biden does, but to an even greater degree, so that won’t change for the better, and he’s demonizing minorities, so they’ll suffer even more. To me that seems like a simple choice, but it seems it’s not to everyone. Further down ticket I feel like the dems remain the least bad choice, if only to limit trump should he get in.

One of the other posters suggested they would vote for a presidential candidate who couldn’t win, and then dems doe the rest of the ticket, and whilst that certainly wasn’t my first approach, I agreed that it could actually work. They made a good point that that could open up some space for more left wing candidates by showing the votes were there if they were earned. That approach sort of matches with what I was saying before that as long as the dems hold one or more of the houses it would limit the harm from a trump presidency. I don’t like the concept, but I can see how it could have the desired outcome.

But if you really want to look deeper into the issue I’d suggest starting here.

Har har. I was sort of expecting that. As I said, I’m doing my best to engage in good faith, but I think we might be coming at this from such different directions that neither of us are actually getting our meaning across effectively.

The president, senators, congresspeople, and all the way down are all the party

They’re of the same party, yes, but doing a different part of the job of governance. I was trying to draw a distinction between the vote for president, and the votes for senators congress people and all the rest. My point was that there is a single president and so getting the least terrible is better than getting the more terrible. This does assume we agree on least and most terrible, but see below on that. The rest of the votes it makes more sense to do as you’re saying, although I’d be worried about ending up with trump as president and both houses being controlled by the republicans. Having at least one of those three democrat controlled would reduce the harm a somewhat, and having more dem controlled would reduce it further. Not eliminate it, but make the situation worse more slowly.

There are only six realistically possible outcomes from the next election; trump or biden as president and either two dem houses, one of each, or two republican houses. Absolutely none of those are a good option, but one will happen, so it seems sensible to try to push towards the least harm.

copy and pasting the same ignorant vibes-based nonesense I’ve already addressed elsewhere but you couldn’t reply to or defend

Ok, are you saying that you see absolutely no difference in outcome between trump and biden being president? None at all? Because I know too many people who’ll be actively harmed by trump being president who would not suffer that level of hard under biden to be willing to say that myself.

No, it’s not, because you advocate against even threatening to withhold voting for a candidate. That is the original premise of your entire arguement you came here to make.

I was advocating primarily for avoiding trump being the next president, and suggesting that given the electoral reality as it stands, not deliberately acting to increase the chance of republicans being elected elsewhere. Withholding you vote is a sensible tactic, so long as the candidates in question know exactly why you are withholding it, and can adjust to that without losing more of their other voters. The trouble here is that for a lot of policies they all agree, so you withhold your vote from everyone. Fair enough, but there are also issues they disagree on, and now you need to consider those too.

Also, don’t think I didn’t notice you cut the rest of my quote to make it only about electoralism again and not other pressures

Sorry, I’m not deliberately dropping bits, but people are replying to me on about 25 different threads, ranging from the rather curt ‘fuck off’ through the somewhat intemperate, to quite thoughtful discussions suggesting approaches that might meaningfully reduce the harm in this cycle whilst also hopefully leading to longer term change, so it’s a little hard to keep up, especially when life is also occurring. I thought that bit got to the heart of what you were saying, as the previous bit (Plenty of movements throughout history have done this. Polling data shows this.) seemed to be agreeing with me. The call to, or implicit threat of violence, is, I feel, less necessary until all other options are exhausted.

Anything but assured victory is unacceptable and should not be risked. Also you must limit yourself to only a very narrow set of activities, during a tiny time window, that make that kind of organising impossible, while strengthing your opponent. This is definitely a good faith arguement.

I’m not saying it is unacceptable or should not be risked, I’m just pointing out that the outcome is likely to be neutral or (more) detrimental unless there is a large enough number to make it a more sure proposition. Sometimes that (more) detrimental outcome is worth risking, perhaps you see that it is in this election, but as I said above, I see trumps stated desires as harmful enough that they should be avoided. The rest of the ticket is sort of insurance against the presidential vote going to him, and so certainly easier to decide to withhold.

Straw man bullshit because you can’t and won’t address the actual points people, including me have made elsewhere in the thread. No one is advocating for this.

I may very well have misunderstood various peoples position then, as I haven’t seen anyone say they’re actually engaging with their candidates, only that they want to withhold their votes. If that engagement is implied I do apologise for misunderstanding everyone.