That was the NFL being political though, this is them being patriotic…is what my troglodyte relatives will say.

No, my entire point is that they are the ones that showed up: hence why we have a more authoritarian president than perhaps ever before. Between the 2020 election and the 2024 election, the raw numbers of votes dropped for the Democrats, not the Republicans. This whole discussion has been about bleeding support from (some) of the Left.

And yes, this is because Harris and the rest of the DNC shit the bed. That they went too hard toward the right is certainly a factor: and again, to be clear,I’m not saying it’s a good idea to move right. What I’m trying to get across is that abstaining is often indistinguishable from wanting a more right-leaning candidate, because then that’s the candidate that wins.

If it was up to me, see my volcano comment. If we want revolutionary change in the USA, I know which party I’d rather fight in the streets against.

I’m sorry that you’ve misunderstood my point so deeply. Let me more explicit. The Cheneys should have been thrown into a volcano. Harris did a shit job. We all need to organize to get milquetoast liberals/moderates and fascists alike out of office.

Unfortunately, over decades they’ve learned who are reliable voting blocks. Not participating communicates that one sees both options as functionally the same. So if anything, it encourages then to move to the right, which is a reliable voting block.

I’m not at all gleeful about voting for them, and desperately want other options. I’m doing what I can to build parallel structures, engage in mutual aid, and in my day job I’m fighting climate change as an environmental research scientist. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, and the tracks of the trolley don’t change overnight.

Well yeah, that’s exactly the idea. Choose the best of bad options, and try to improve things so that the next time there’s better options.

Not choosing either usually leads to the worse option, which makes it harder to improve things.

There are no easy options.

Yeah, a lot of evangelical churches make it abundantly clear that as long as you love Jesus, you can be a giant piece of shit otherwise and still get into heaven.

As a kid I appreciated that line of thinking because I thought it allowed us to strive for better, accept that we’re all flawed, but still understand we’re all worthy of love.

Instead, as I was a teenager watching these same folks froth at the mouth and cheer for blood in Afghanistan and Iraq, I realized it was a way to reconcile any damn horrible thing they wanted to do. A cloak for depravity and hate.