Voting | ContraPoints (incl. transcript) in Those Public Entries

Video originally posted October 19, 2020, and yet somehow even more applicable as of July 30th, 2024. Just replace “Joe Biden” with “Kamala Harris”, insert a 🤷 for the VP pick, replace “police brutality” with “Palestine,” and seriously, it’s applicable to the last fucking syllable.

Video and transcript © of Natalie Wynn

[Natalie]
Children, if I have to crawl off the goddamn floor on the morning of November 4th, brush aside the empty wine bottles and pick up my phone to discover that Caligula Jackson is President For Life; I am going to chew my way through the bathroom tile and I will not stop until I reach the gates of hell.

🍾

You know what America, things have not gone well. We’re having a hard time, we are. Between the plague, the quarantine, the oppressive policing, the unrest in the streets, the rising tide of fascism, the criminal negligence of a president who’s refused to admit the danger of a disease that has killed 200,000 people and counting…

Of course, there’s gonna be some Trumpet in the comments saying “it’s not that big a deal, calm down. People die all the time”. Funny that’s not what you said about… BENGHAZI

We kind of need a hero to lead us out of the darkness, and unfortunately Uncle Joe is not really the man for the job. I was a Bernie supporter, and I regret not being more vocal about it when I had the chance. So this time I’m gonna say something. Because even though Biden is not my boy, I still think that dethroning Trump by electing Biden is the single most important thing any American can do right now. So allow me to make my case gorg. By now leftist Twitter already has seen the title of this video and I’m sure they’re firing off hot takes as we speak.

[Tabby]
Typical t-thot normie radlib endorses the electoral farce. Is this your ‘leftist Queen of YouTube?’ Looks more like a rich Karen who’d rather complain about ‘cancel culture’ than revolt against the neoliberal status quo. 😾

[Natalie]
Tabby-chan, Tabby-chan! You know what Tabitha? For once, I’m actually gonna take the bait. So this will be a conversation with the communist Twitter catgirl that lives in my brain, nyaa. I’m making this video because my timeline is full of leftist 22-year-olds who are so disillusioned with “The System” that they intend not to vote in this election.

And yeah some of them are probably Russian bots but that’s fine, maybe I can win over the Russian bot vote. So I really do understand the perspective that Biden is not worth voting for, because that was also my first reflex when he was nominated. But on reflection, I think to throw away this vote would be a terrible mistake. Don’t make me eat my bathroom tile children. There’s probably asbestos in that tile, because America’s so great even the floor is made of poison. Okay Tabby-chan, give me your worst.

[Tabby]
I want free healthcare, student debt canceled, and worker ownership of the means of production. Biden won’t give us any of that and I don’t wanna vote for someone who won’t actually change things. 😾

[Natalie]
Well listen Tabby-chan, no one of us want to vote for Joe Biden. I don’t wanna vote for Joe Biden any more than I wanna retile my bathroom. But sometimes a situation gets so toxic and so dangerous, well you have no choice but to get your hands dirty. And in this election, I consider a vote for Biden primarily a vote against Trump.

You know, voting for a politician is not necessarily the same as “supporting” the politician. I don’t think anyone should stan Joe Biden. I am not asking you to like, comment, and subscribe to Joe Biden’s OnlyFans, fascinating though I’m sure it is– “the president has a big stick”– to me, voting is more of a utilitarian calculation based on the likely consequences of each candidate winning. It’s not hero worship, it’s not choosing a person to have a beer with, it’s strategy.

[Tabby]
Bad strategy. Biden is no better than Trump. The Dems are just Republicans with a ceremonial facade of meaningless liberal civility. 😾

[Natalie]
Well I agree that the Democrats are sucky libs, but it’s simply not true that there’s no difference between them and the Republicans. I remember leftists saying in 2016 that there was no real difference between Trump and Hillary. But there’s a lot of things Trump did that Hillary would not have done.

Things like, filling the supreme court with anti-abortion fanatics, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, appointing climate change deniers to head climate research, attempting to remove medical non-discrimination protections for trans people, constantly maligning the integrity of elections with no evidence, declaring the press the enemy of the people, calling white nationalist militias very fine people and telling them to stand by, aspiring to be an autocratic dictator and disdaining democracy itself, trivializing a deadly pandemic in the name of delusional macho posturing.

So sure, the Democrats suck and they’re libs, but it makes a real difference if they’re in control instead of Republicans. Especially if you’re you know, a woman, or LGBTQ, or you know a human who lives on the planet Earth.

[Tabby]
So Biden will give us rainbow capitalism and streets named after Black Lives Matter, but he’ll do nothing to bring about systemic change. 😾

[Natalie]
Well Tabby-chan, I’m sorry to say I agree with you about that. I fully expect to vote for Biden and then protest the administration that I voted for.

[Tabby]
So you sit here vote-shaming me and in the next breath admitting it won’t do anything. You’re a counter-revolutionary lib with no plan except ‘just vote’. 😾

[Natalie]
Tabby-chan, Tabby-chan. Look, I promise I’m not as dumb as I apparently look comrade. Why is it that when you tell people on the left to vote, they think you’re saying quit your job, abandon your family, retreat from society and fall into a deep slumber from which you emerge once every four years to vote for a shitty lib, before fleeing into the forest and re-entering a ritual slumber on a stone slab in an eldritch temple awaiting the return of Beelzebub.

Voting doesn’t take that long. At most it takes one day. You can vote and do other things also. I guess you’re probably still mad about that white woman with the “we’d be at brunch” sign. And I feel you, though to be honest, I would eat a Louis XVI style armchair with a pair of chopsticks if it meant I got to go to brunch right now.

[Tabby]
Could you be any bougier? 😾

[Natalie]
Don’t call me bougie. I’m beyond bougie. When my carriage passes by the bourgeoisie, I scoff at them openly. I’ve had enough of this radlib merchant class trying to abolish my fiefdom.

[Tabby]
You’re a famous YouTuber whose class interests do not align with mine. Why should I listen to what you say? 😾

[Natalie]
Oh you shouldn’t. I don’t know why anyone listens to me honestly. But also, I’m a degenerate class traitor and in my opinion influencers should be the first against the wall. Honestly I just wish you’d just guillotine me quickly and get it over with. You at least have to admire that about us libs. We have a remarkable willingness to have polite conversations with people who are trying to kill us. Speaking of which, we’ve been talking a lot about my plan but what is your plan Tabitha?

[Tabby]
Uh, protest? Unionize, mutual aid, strikes, 😾¹

[Natalie]
So I totally agree those are all good things to do. I’ve gone to protests myself this year, I’ve given to a mutual aid group. You know you’re right that voting won’t fix all our problems, and it’s great to get involved in local things like that. But it still matters who’s on the supreme court right? And who’s leading the national response to the coronavirus. So in addition to whatever else you’re doing, vote.

[Tabby]
Why participate in the charade of a farcical election? America is not democratic, it’s a rigged two-party corporatocracy. 😾

[Natalie]
Well, I mean, yeah. There’s a lot wrong with our elections. Big money financing campaigns, the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression, DC being disenfranchised. All of this should obviously be changed, but I don’t think that in this moment, leftists boycotting the election is an effective form of protest.

[Tabby]
Okay, but voting is for liberal normies who use Facebook and Reddit, ew. 😾

[Natalie]
Okay, yeah it’s true that voting is not cool. It’s boring, it’s incrementalist, it doesn’t make you feel like you’re owning the libs, or being edgier than your parents. But you could always vote in secret and maintain your radical image around your friends. Isn’t being involved in politics inherently not cool? Because politics is for people who care, people who believe in things, people who place their hope in fallible human beings. All of which is very not cool.

I feel like so much Internet politics, whether it’s radical or centrist, is just posturing. It’s showcasing that you’re funnier and smarter than the normies, that you see through all the bullshit, the corrupt system, the electoral farce. But all you’re doing about it is sitting here shitposting, and demeaning the people who are actually trying to accomplish what little can be accomplished. And in effect, edgy leftists who complain about both sides and do nothing are no different from edgy centrists who complain about both sides and do nothing.

[Tabby]
Ok but you yourself said Trump is an aspiring autocrat who doesn’t believe in democracy. Why bother voting against someone who won’t leave office even if he loses? This ends in violence either way so we may as well smash. 😾

[Natalie]
Well, you’re right, I don’t expect Trump to go quietly. But if there’s a decisive Biden victory and it’s not some kind of vote-recount nightmare scenario, 🤔 then I think the military will force Trump to leave. Don’t get me wrong Tabby-chan, times are tough. The president is a fascist. I think this country is closer to some kind of violent uprising than it’s ever been in my life. But if it comes to smashing, you’re gonna want allies. And for a lot of people, Trump rejecting a decisive Biden victory and therefore, rejecting democracy itself, that would legitimize smashing. So you should still want every Biden vote you can get.

[Tabby]
But capitalism is the root of the problems with our world. The whole system is broken and voting won’t change that. We don’t need a Democrat, we need to end capitalism. 😾

[Natalie]
Tabitha, capitalism is an epochal world economic order. When you say end capitalism, you’re talking about a tectonic shift in global politics that is so much bigger than all of us, that I don’t really understand what course of action you’re recommending.

Like before capitalism there was feudalism. And feudalism ended over hundreds of years of complex shifts in population and production, not because people just decided it was time to end feudalism. So won’t capitalism end just whenever a new economic system overtakes it? I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that can be accomplished by a small group of activists.

And I say small group because, I’m sorry to break it to you, but the vast majority of Americans are not communists. I think a lot of Internet leftists have a vastly overinflated sense of how big and important they are. I fall prey to it myself. Like I was so sure that Bernie was gonna win the primary, in part because when I looked at my timeline I was seeing this unanimous ocean of support for Bernie and contempt for the mainstream Dems. But what I was seeing, and what we’re all seeing on our feeds, is a finely curated and very unrepresentative sample of the population.

You have to remember that only 22% of Americans use Twitter at all. Most users rarely tweet, and 80% of tweets come from 10% of users. So 80% of tweets come from 2% of Americans. And it’s not a representative 2%. According to Pew Research, Twitter users differ from the general population in that they’re on average younger, more likely to identify as Democrats, more educated, and higher income. And far-left hammer-and-sickle Twitter is an even smaller, even more unrepresentative sample within a sample. We’re talking about less than 0.1% of Americans. And that less than 0.1% does have an outsize influence, because they’re prolific Tweeters and their tweets get seen by public figures who use the platform. Which is why there’s so much discourse about cancel culture even though cancel culture is produced by a relatively tiny group of people. [emphasis mine]

So if you wanna understand why even Democratic politicians cater to this retrograde soft conservatism, you have to pull your head out of the radical bubble. Back in 2012 I volunteered to work on the Obama campaign, and I enraged people’s dogs by knocking on their doors and ruined their dinners with canvassing phone calls. And I really recommend that leftists try doing this for at least one election, even though it is the worst thing in the world and I hated it so much. You know, you have to listen to a lot of: “I don’t want Barack Hussein Obummer redistributing my wealth!” Okay Ronald, I’m pretty sure Obama’s not sending his death panels after your landscaping business but whatever.

Talking to voters teaches you the hard realities of what your fellow Americans actually care about. And when I was canvassing, I did talk to some left-wing people. I talked to union families, but I don’t think I talked to a single communist. You know, most people do not read theory. Most people are concerned primarily with themselves and their families. They want personal security and prosperity. And if you look at the talking points used by politicians, they reflect that.

It’s why the right hammers on about antifa so much, because it works. Most people are afraid for their personal property and safety. And this idea of antifa looters and riots, it scares the shit out of people. Of course in reality antifa is not scary. Like I’ve met antifa, and antifa… You know antifa is Ryan, it’s Ryan and his transgender furry anarchist friends.

But look if what you want is socialism, or even just social democracy, then you have a lot of work ahead of you in terms of outreach. You have to engage people, educate, raise awareness. But you don’t wanna do that because it requires you to stop owning the libs and start actually communicating with them. You have to build alliances with like Facebook moms who ask ignorant questions like “What’s indigenous peoples’ day?” And who think Kamala Harris making sassy faces is the height of praxis, and who probably watch ContraPoints, how embarrassing! You know you can’t let your radical queer friends catch you associating with mainstream normie libs, how very bourgeois.

[Tabby]
But revolution. Revolution to end capitalism. 😾

[Natalie]
Okay, so you’re saying that your plan is to do a communist revolution and overthrow the US government? That’s very valid. That’s super hecking valid. That’s extremely valid.

I mean, I guess that I admire the ambition. Uh just a couple quick follow up questions though, are you counting on the US military and police taking the side of the communists, or is your plan to overpower them? Because unless you know something about the military that I don’t, I don’t think that much of the military is gonna defect to join a communist revolution. So there will have to be a war, and revolution doesn’t happen overnight.

After the Russian Revolution there was the Civil War from 1917 to 1923, so you are gonna need to raise a Red Army. Well you can’t have a communist revolution without a Red Army right? So how’s that going, Tabitha? How many weapons have you amassed? How many units have you trained?– Why are we talking about this? Why am I even entertaining this notion?

You know when the far-right talks about violence and overthrowing the government, they actually mean it. And you know they mean it because they have literal militias, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo boys. They’re stockpiling weapons and training to use them. They have ex-military men in their ranks, and connections to white supremacists within the police and the military.

Whereas when leftists talk about revolution on Twitter, it strikes me as ideation, not intent. Psychiatrists have this distinction between two kinds of suicidal thinking. So there’s intent which is when you have a plan for how you’re gonna do it, and then they have to commit you cause you’re a danger to yourself. And then there’s ideation, which is you’re not actually gonna do it but you just have that inner monologue that’s constantly saying “I just wanna die”.

“There’s no joy for me left in this world. “I just can’t stand it anymore. “I just wanna end it all.” And then my psychiatrist says, “Well, we could try putting you back on Lexapro.” And I say, “Not again doctor. Not again.”

So right-wing extremist discourse is violent intent, whereas left wing radical discourse often amounts to “revolutionary ideation”. It’s a kind of fantasy escapism, an alternative to politics.

[Tabby]
Well you can’t plan a revolution. Revolution is the spontaneous reaction to intolerable injustice. 😾

[Natalie]
Yeah, so a riot is the language of the unheard. But what kind of language is it? What is the point of speaking through a riot, or a protest, or a strike? Is it just emotional expression, like an angry diary entry? Or is the point not just to speak but to be heard? Heard by whomst? Who are you trying to persuade, the Globglogabgalab? No, you want to be heard by people with power to change things. So it matters whether the people with power are likely to listen.

This year the US has seen one of the biggest protest movements in history. And what has that accomplished? Well, at the moment we have a president promising to double down on law and order, on military police suppression; a president who told a room full of cops not to be too gentle with people they arrest:

[//baaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrffff//]
“And when you see these thugs being thrown to the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’”

[Natalie]
And let’s be clear, both Biden and “Cop-mala” have an ugly record when it comes to crime and policing. For most of his career, Biden called for more policing, which is the opposite of what we need right now. I’m right there with you Tabby-chan. But the 2020 protests have shifted the discourse about policing and criminal justice. And Biden has responded by beginning to shift his position.

This years’ Democratic platform includes things like stricter use-of-force standards, banning chokeholds, restricting qualified immunity, creating a registry of police misconduct, limiting no-knock warrants, decriminalizing weed, investing in crime prevention and social work. And is that good enough? No, it’s not good enough. But it’s a start, it’s progress. It shows that the Democrats are at least willing to listen to protests.

When John F. Kennedy first took office in 1961, he didn’t want to propose a civil rights bill because that would’ve been super unpopular with the Southern Democrats. But then 1963 happened, and there were protests and uprisings all over the South and the March on Washington that summer, and Kennedy listened:

[clip of JKF speech]
“The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city, or state, or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.”

[Natalie]
He was moved by the protests, and he responded by introducing what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But what if Kennedy hadn’t been president in 1963? What if some fascist had been president? What if Trump had been president? We might not have gotten a Civil Rights Act. So it does matter who’s president. It actually matters a lot. And please Tabby-chan, do not let a fascist win to own the libs. Goddamn it.

Alright fam, let’s open a new tab. Go to vote.gov and enter your state. And yeah I know this is boring, but I’m trying to think about the tantrum Trump is gonna throw when an entire nation rejects him and I’m letting that motivate me. In some states you can still register, so register now if you still haven’t.

If you’re voting in person, go to vote.org and find your polling place and make a plan for how you’re gonna get there. Make sure your phone is charged and you might wanna bring some snacks or even some friends. If you’re like me, you need to set an alarm so you don’t forget. And then just try not to get inconsolably high until after you’ve placed your vote, because we’ve been living through a year of hell. And I for one think that we all deserve to begin 2021 by collectively purging from our lives this swindling, pestilent doofus. Vote him out!

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¹Hey, do-nothing and know-nothing know-it-all “leftists”: Where is that mutual aid you were so fucking horny for back then? Where is the community in your communism? Until you can answer both of those questions, maybe shut the actual fuck up about “normie liberal bootlickers” like me, who donate their precious little time and disposable income to community aid and charity? Because believe it or not, my imperfect “normie liberal bootlicker” activism is doing 100% more to better this world than your obsessive reposting of dead Palestinian children [because Palestinians aren’t real people to you; they’re social justice porn] and pretending that there’s “nothing else you can do” because you’re straight-up fucking stupid and lazy “autistic” (self-diagnosed, ofc) and can’t speak with NTs, even when those “NTs” (read: people who might actually be just as neurodivergent as you, but aren’t half as self-obsessed and -absorbed, and realize that the world is bigger than them and communication paired with action is literally the only way anything gets done) have the same goals and desires as you.

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Last updated July 30, 2024