The conversation moved there though because you said there was no primary; there was, it’s just the left didn’t use it at all and then didn’t show up to the general because they didn’t like the uncontested candidate they chose (or his continuation).

My original point (aside from pointing out it was often the abstainers making moral superiority arguments) was that people who abstain from voting in the general with the idea that withholding their vote will change the party are going about it wrong. The primary is purpose built for this. Even if there was no other candidate in the primary, as in '24, not voting still isn’t going to motivate the party to change. They already did that with Clinton and the next candidate was Biden; while Biden was left of her in some ways, he was clearly another deeply established pick. I’d argue withholding the vote for Clinton did nothing to change the party. I think voting in people like Mamdani, Nixon, and el-Sayed has already done so.

I do understand the argument that allowing the mainstream to shoot themselves in the foot boosts left politics, but I think it’s so diffuse of an effect it isn’t worth taking things on the chin like losing abortion rights that come with that strategy when we have a process right there we can use that’s a lot more effective.

The primary where nobody except Biden actually ran.

This is exactly part of my criticism, though. Everybody is waiting for someone else to run. That’s why we’ve been stuck voting for the same candidates the party leadership approves of every year; what we’re witnessing now with people like Nixon and el-Sayed is that it’s always been possible to challenge them, but you’ve got to actually run to do it. AOC has mixed reception now, but when she was elected she was on a very progressive platform against a deeply established party candidate and won.

Those are not particularly groomed candidates. AOC was a fucking bartender for crying out loud.

My whole point is the left has, until recently, really sucked at using the primary process to change the party. We see now it’s worth doing. There shouldn’t be unchallenged party leadership picks anywhere, essentially.

There absolutely was a primary… the left didn’t utilize it.

rather than addressing anything I’ve actually said

Except you’ve done exactly this in another thread and then whined about people trying to control you when called out on it and told you won’t be engaged with. So nice, much weird.

There’s always a primary. Harris wasn’t selected by primary, but she was clearly - as his vice president - a firm continuation of Biden’s policies. People who voted Biden in the primary weren’t voting to change the party, which is what we’re talking about here; if you want to change the party you need to use the primaries to put actual left candidates on the ticket. That didn’t happen. Whether Harris or Biden was selected by the primary, neither were change candidates.

what does that solve other than satisfying your own desire to be morally superior?

Couldn’t we reverse this question though and ask what not voting and feeling morally superior but getting Trump elected has solved?

Not voting doesn’t change the party. Showing up at primaries and ousting establishment candidates does. We have multiple examples of it working now and getting actual progressive politicians in place against the wishes of Democratic leadership that worked hard to see that they didn’t get elected.

Ah, okay, so it was an actual effort to sidestep criticism, and now you’re stamping your feet because I didn’t let you shift the argument.

Also very telling in this discussion that you interpret the choice of others to not allow you to manipulate them as controlling you.

Do you have any actual defense or can we just take this bit of ad hom as a tacit admission you’re too embarrassed you’ve been caught in a bad argument to respond to it?

One thing I will say, from my perspective, is it’s less that it induces apathy so much as it makes you comfortable with it, and so you lose motivation to change.

That’s the greatest boon and curse of it all in one, imo: it makes bad situations tolerable. Which sounds great to some until you realize that bad situations being intolerable is usually what drives you to try to change the bad situation.

I’m sure it can manifest different for others, but that was my experience.

If you go back and reread this exchange, this is actually an entirely separate discussion. You might be confusing me for someone else… I made no comments on anyone’s agency or even the morality of this arrangement at all.

I made a narrow criticism, and I can’t move on to a discussion about the actual morality of the scenario if you’re not addressing that critique first, because then it acts to sidestep my criticism: I said that “either this is legal or it isn’t” in response to public outrage is not a valid argument here because legality and public acceptance of behavior often do not align (and provided some examples)… a thing can be legal or “legitimate” and still the subject of wide public criticism. Correct? Is a person’s choice to drink themselves to death not a legitimate choice? Is it invalid? Does society have to accept it even if they don’t think it should be illegal?

We can discuss the actual scenario, but not before addressing this first.

What is your point here, though? I don’t think anybody is suggesting this be codified. You seem to be taking issue with people reacting negatively to this, and your response to that was “well, it’s legal”. I’m just pointing out this argument makes no sense to the point of being a non sequitur; society frowns on all sorts of legal activities that will get you shunned by most in it.

We could, in fact, just use your own argument here: “either social punishment for behavior is legal or it isn’t.” So if it’s legal, you have no room to be here complaining about it, right? Isn’t that what you established?

Also, despite what Reddit/Lemmy will tell you there are cannabis addicts.

Being one, you’ll get no disagreement from me. I can’t have just one, I’ll be stoned non stop until I run out. I tried starting with more healthy and measured use at least a half a dozen times… no dice. It’s binge until gone for me.

It’s a bit more insidious than alcohol, because the impacts are less obvious in the short term imo, and there’s less acknowledgement it can be a problem because Bob Saget said a funny line once. It’s a slow burn.

I absolutely believe this and that was my unscientific conclusion as well; a lot of the previous study we have on the safety of cannabis is with comparatively very low THC amounts. Some of the new study isn’t so rosy, as I recall (though it’s been some years since I’ve looked at it). My experience after 10+ years of few issues was a very bad panic attack bordering on psychotic episode. Though it is much better a few years later, I still have issues with panic and dpdr I didn’t have before which were very crippling in the months after the event. I can’t really mess with weed anymore and encourage youngers to at least watch their THC intake.

There are plenty of things you have a right to do and are legal but most of well adjusted society find immoral or at least distasteful.

It’s legal to drink yourself to death, it’s pretty frowned upon to be a drunkard like that, though. It’s legal to walk through the streets preaching the gospel of white nationalism… most would find it abhorrent, though.

In a liberal society (small l) rights to do things often extend beyond what society finds acceptable. This means you’re entitled to do it by law, but you aren’t entitled to social acceptance.

I recall reading some studies showing that it starts to catch up to you, and can certainly say this was my experience. After about 10 years of chronic, heavy use I started to have serious issues with panic and dpdr and had to quit.

If you abuse Mary Jane, she will leave your ass eventually ime.

Weed is legal in more places than ever.

I will say from experience though that long term, chronic, heavy use of weed comes with its own problems, though. Probably not as bad as alcohol, but pretty unfun still.

Always wanted to try and didn’t get an opportunity until a few weeks back. I didn’t stop totally, I still have a beer for meals that call for it, but I pretty effortlessly vastly reduced my drinking. Like, even the standard here in my part of Europe, what Americans call “tall boys”, is a little too much at once, I can only do a short can. Being drunk just does not feel good afterward to me. That wasn’t planned, so I don’t think it’s placebo, just kind of happened.

Yup, people always talk about opiate withdrawals, and they are awful, but they don’t usually kill you directly. It’ll make you want to die, and that sometimes does people in, but in terms of directly killing you not so much. Alcohol and benzos absolutely will.

Can we maybe acknowledge for 3 seconds that people are human, have human reactions, and a very common one upon seeing for the first time truly evil people who have done truly evil things is to wish bad things upon them as a knee jerk response, and that this probably doesn’t really inform their actual desired policies instead of just making a pithy reddit-snark response that ignores that context and blames them for that very human reaction?

“Believe it or not, straight to jail”.

'Eyyyooo, where the genocide deniers at? Love to hear the explanation for how this totally isn’t genocidal intent.

I mean, that’s got to be covid inflation, right?

I’m living in Hungary and our inflation, especially food inflation, was ridiculous in that period… I think it topped out at ~70% (for food specifically, so especially bad). Though we had the double whammy of Ukraine as well…