this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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I’m wishing harm on them because they’re racist, sexist idiots that not only vote against my self interest for child predators and murderers but against mine. Being an idiot isn’t an excuse anymore, they need to get out of the way of progress or be moved, permanently.
I think you're attacking the wrong people. You want to attack racists, bigots, and abusers. People vote for all sorts of reasons, and while you and I know just how wrong they are, you've got another thing coming if you think the average American knows the first thing about politics. Most people vote solely on name recognition alone.
I know plenty of these people they vote based on the three headlines. But what I’ve learned from trying to educate these people is that most of them are ignorant by choice. I’ll let them know the bad things that are happening and who is responsible and they are shocked and outraged, but then they go back to not paying any attention and just assume it got resolved. Or search for whatever evidence they can find that will tell them it’s not real so they can continue to live in their fantasy world where everything is okay. That might have flown in the past but when democracy is being dismantled infront of us and people are dying because of the actions of our politicians you being ignorant doesn’t make you innocent, it makes you complicit. Most of them have the entirety of human knowledge available at the click of a button but they choose ignorance. They are shown evidence of what’s happening but they choose ignorance. I’m done accepting that excuse and you should be too.
Also though I know this may come across as angry know none of this frustration is towards you. I agree that the oligarchs and pundits are more responsible but we can’t excuse their sycophants for their behavior because of willful ignorance. They all need to be held to account. You’re free to disagree, and I hold nothing against you if you do. We’re all together in our fight against these new wave fascists and we can argue how far to go once they’ve been beaten.
I just think it's very important to draw a distinction between voters and politicians and propagandists. There are absolutely people deserving of ire, ridicule, rejection, hate. I am here to argue that the vast majority of people who voted for Trump did so genuinely believing it was the right thing for the world and that it would help make things better for everyone.
Obviously, bigotry and the like are common among that group and we should be pushing back against that, but wishing harm on people in red states is a really bad take and I think it just begets more cruelty overall. We are better than this.
I drew a line for years. I gave them sympathy and understanding and tried to help them understand for years. If somebody genuinely voted for Trump believing he would make the world a better place then either they’re too stupid to be trusted having input on the rest of us or their values are so far apart from ours that their “better world” is one of the most disgusting things I can imagine. Either way I’m done pretending we’re all citizens of the same country. I love America, land of the free, a cultural melting pot that stands for progress and peace. Whether that’s the reality of its history or not. As long as they’re in this country we will never be that. Kamala ran on love and she lost. Because we can’t olive branch these invertebrates.
I love my country, I love the good people of this country, I believe in helping the less fortunate, I love equality between all people, I love those who have actual principles and will stand by them even if I disagree with them. They want to destroy nearly every single one of those things. So let’s stop pretending we can share a country with them because they’ve long since stopped pretending they want to share it with us.
Some day the other shoe is going to drop and we're going to have to continue sharing a country with these people. There is a reason this ideology has spread, and wishing harm on them does less than nothing to change that. You clearly have a strong sense of justice and love in your heart. Why is it a good use of time to wish harm on others?
Because no amount of love from me is going to make the same difference for good in the world that them being gone forever would. The only way I will ever go back to the way things were before is when their hearts are broken, their beliefs are shattered and they remain as husks like Wilson in 1984. Forced to live in the hellscape of checks notes equality, liberty and justice for all. I don’t know why everybody has just accepted living with the disease that is these people. It doesn’t have to be this way. There can be a light at the end of the tunnel and the republicans themselves are ironically showing us the way there.
Wishing harm on them does less than nothing to help the situation we're in. It only makes you a worse person.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, from my perspective continuing to tolerate their existence when they do great harm without provocation makes someone else a worse person. Though I suppose saying I wish harm is just petty revenge. I’d be even happier if they were removed forever.
Don't tolerate hate, obviously. Just be above wishing harm on people.
Why is it wrong to wish harm on those who wish it upon myself and others? Why is hatred a tool we only allow them to use? They deserve to know exactly how reviled they are and many of them need consequences enforced if they will ever learn or break. No official force has the courage to enforce such justice on them so I take it where I can get it.
The exact same logic they apply to us, the exact same mental processes that make you dehumanize them in your mind. These things are poison for your mental wellbeing, and serve as a distraction from the real enemies: the ruling class. You will never have a working class movement to rise up against the power of the ruling class and capital with this mindset. This type of thinking is one of the obstacles we must overcome if we are ever going to achieve things like a general strike. But you don't care about that. You want catharsis, schadenfreude, and to take joy in others' suffering. For what? What purpose does it serve? You're not speaking to these people. You're just shitposting on the internet, spreading rhetoric that keeps the working class divided against one another. When you get a chance to talk to these folks, you should absolutely tear into them for their choices, make them face the impact of what they do, and don't allow them to be comfortable in their ignorance. But this? Posting online about how you like the idea of people being subjected to carcinogens because they "deserve" it? You realize the neighborhoods impacted by this are primarily black, right? You think they deserve this? Are you for real? Log off and join a protest, attend union meetings, something but whatever this is? Think critically about what you're doing and saying. Your words have power. Most of the people on this forum are left-leaning working class people. Hate makes us weak.
Using the same logic is the point. The goal is dehumanization and then destruction. Make no mistake, the ruling class are included on my list of inhuman trash. Nobody was happier than me when Luigi allegedly did what he did other than hopefully himself. My question for you is why do you assume hatred makes us weak? The most successful political movement for radical change in modern history isn’t motivated by ideology because by and large most people don’t care about things as nebulous as morality and ideology. It’s motivated by anger, by hatred, its galvanized people enough to risk life and limb to raid the capital building on a vague promise, for people to vote against their self interest, to make the hard decision to put their beliefs over personal comfort. United queers, women, nazis, Jews, supremacists, poor and rich alike. Martin Luther King only became palatable because people feared others like Malcolm X and workers rights were only paid for in blood.
You say hatred is our weakness but I think that’s it is one of our great strengths, and we’re tying an arm behind our back in this fight if we refuse to use it. Love is a necessity, a strength but it’s not our only strength, we need to tap into anger, to foster it in order to build a movement that can last and to temper it with love.
As for posting online sure it doesn’t do much, but reading posts online was formative to developing my world views. The right has used internet discourse expertly to brainwash and reach people on a massive scale that in person organizing can’t quite reach. We need to be radicalizing people and finding new and creative ways to do it. So my hope is that somebody is out there feeling helpless, hurt and exhausted because they’ve been trying to love and educate and be strong and that this can help them realize there are other ways to fight back. To foster extremism so that we can push the Overton window back to where the other extremists are afraid to express their opinions in public again because they don’t know what crazy leftist might be listening.
Don’t assume I’m not going to protests even the pathetically ineffective postcard writing ones in my area. But we don’t have unions here, I fielded the idea at my work and was met with laughter and dismissal there’s no appetite for political change here, the only thing that does speak to people here is anger. So I speak the language because civility and reason aren’t the tools for this job. Trust me I’m not just posting online.
All that said, thank you for engaging me. I can see neither of our opinions are likely to change too much and that’s okay. I know who my enemies are and it’s not you so I won’t spend any more time arguing with you. I also don’t expect you to join my crusade but all I’ll ask is that you consider not being so quick to condemn hatred on our side. Try to temper it and challenge us on it sure but don’t blindly condemn us for being weak or ignorant. We should both save our energy for dismantling the ideas of the other side.
We’re both fighting the class war in our own way and i’m fairly certain we both want the same thing long term. Even if we disagree on whether the suffering of our enemy is a victory for us or not. Keep up the good fight in your way Comrade Sneptaur and I’ll keep it up in mine.
This response is one of the most well thought out, compassionate and intelligent replies I've had in this type of back-and-forth online in many years. I'm seriously impressed and I absolutely cannot be angry after reading that.
In general, I get it. I am not fighting against the way you are using anger and hate here. After all, hate and love are intrinsically linked. We can't have one without the other. I do hate billionaires. I do hate corrupt politicians. I am only cautioning against wishing harm on people like so many are doing in this thread (and in many other corners of the Internet). In a reply to someone else earlier, I mentioned that the county most affected by this is primarily black and voted overwhelmingly for Harris in 2024 - about 32/68 for Harris. That is why I push back in the way that I did. I wasn't very articulate because I was looking for a debate and I didn't want to write a whole page as a top-level reply.
It's not going to be easy for us. It'll take a very long time. I just.. I have this deep unrelenting pragmatic optimism in my heart; I believe most people generally want what's best for everyone. People caught up in identity politics, hate campaigns, whatever -- that's just someone who's lost their way and is caught up in a distraction. Social media amplifies these patterns often, as does the news media. It's painful to watch, and it feels like so many people are caught up in hate, always looking for a victory over a perceived enemy rather than looking for a better world for everyone.
One of the things that radicalized me was hearing a socialist online say (while arguing with a republican or something), "I want universal healthcare not just for me and my loved ones, but for you and yours too. Can't you see that?"
I'm sure I'll see you around this network again. Keep being excellent, and thank you.
While this may not have been clear from my initial response my deepest sympathies are to those who are affected that did not want this. Though I won’t apologize for cheering the supporters of it getting what they asked for.
I’m a cynic at heart I believe there are good people, plenty of them and those are the people I will always fight for. But our society is sick, this division, selfishness and hatred isn’t new, it’s been the status quo for atleast decades. We have valued success over morality, unity over justice, and self over community. It’s just that now it feels we’re reaching or have reached a point that the fundamental values we hold and hopes for the future are diametrically opposed or perhaps we’re just better aware of it.
For all of our sakes though, I hope your optimism is right. Speaking to people like you who believe and stand by their convictions and fight for justice, gives me hope. Because I know even if we disagree on finer details that we both believe that things can be better and will fight to make it happen.
Stay safe, and stay excellent Sneptaur.
How exactly do you imagine that shoe is going to drop? It isn't going to drop itself, fascists will not relinquish power voluntarily. You seem to be either completely delusional about the severity of the current situation, or a disingenous liar.
You have nothing good to say left, obviously, because you're just attacking my character instead of my point. This conversation is over.