When there is an election, in most democracies not voting is allowed and should be viewed as one of the decisions that democracy allows. Its not the anarchist choice, but just one of the many democratic choices.

And I dont agree on "Trump&Biden are the same". I can see why there might be similar outcomes (maybe in some situations the same) from them being in power, but I thb another Trump presidency is super scary and unpredictable on a level that Biden will never be.

I think voting and discussions about voting take way to much space in relation to the impact voting has.

Had trump lost in 2016 we wouldn't have gotten multiple new conservative Supreme Court justices. But we did and they immediately stripped women's rights back decades. We're already seeing tragic outcomes of that. And because they're lifetime appointments of relatively young zealots, now we get to see what else they can do in the next few critical decades.

Biden also wouldn't have shut down or defunded multiple regulatory agencies, or sold off federal land to corporations.

Like, I get that things could be a lot better in so many ways, that's why I'm here. But we don't have to go out of our way to make them even worse.

This is a subject I've done a significant turn-around on in the past couple years after seeing how fascism took hold in the past, and doing a fairly deep dive on the differences in policies between the 'bad and less bad' parties, and the practical outcomes of those policies in people's lives and ability to organize.

Like you, I was completely disillusioned with the system, and thought of voting in said system to be a pointless exercise. However, sometimes it can make drastic differences that can impact millions of people's lives to various degrees. To be clear, I'm not advocating for putting extreme amounts of effort into campaigning, but the critical votes (For the US, the Local State Midterms and Presidential Elections) are absolutely worth putting a vote in. If your country's votes are not completely rigged such as it is in Russia, then I would advocate participating in the vote.

So why do I think that now?

First, let's address the idea of Trump and Biden being one and the same:

While I would never defend Biden to the point of saying he's a 'good' man (he's still a neoliberal at heart, and as you say, he supports genocide), he is allowing some positive things to pass that would not happen under a Trump presidency, and some of those things can be fairly significant.

1. Trade Unions are having a resurgence, mostly due to the fact that Biden isn't actively trying to hinder their existence compared to previous presidents (Ronald Reagan decimated them, for example).
2. The Inflation Reduction Act is actually a big a deal, and is something that Trump would not have passed. It's definitely not perfect, but it will give the renewable energy sector a pretty massive boost, which is desperately needed to get the ball rolling toward helping reduce climate change. It also will subsidize our transition to heatpumps and better insulated homes, to reduce energy consumption overall. Considering how little time we have left to make meaningful change in regard to climate, this is a massive win considering how captured the government is by Fossil Fuel lobbyists.
3. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is another genuinely good bill that will help with climate change by putting $110 billion towards making the electrical grid ready for a transition to solar/wind energy.

Lastly, for all of Joe Biden's many, many faults, he is not a full on fascist dictator. And now comes my biggest reason for voting (not just in the US, but everywhere).

Fascist's rely on passivity to gain power.

I made a larger post about this topic here, but the short version is: When someone trying to get into office is openly fascistic, history has shown that they will do what they say when they get into power, and they will do everything possible to secure that power permanently, and expand it.

Trump is the first openly 'strongman' style fascist that has a very high chance of getting into office. He wasn't quite this fascistic in his first term, but now, especially after January 6th, there is a very real possibility of the US descending into a genuine jackboot dictatorship. And traditionally, fascist regimes help other fascist regimes around the world (And Trump has a hard-on for Putin, so Ukraine would be fucked if he wins).

Yes, Biden is committing genocide, the US is still is an imperialistic government, the prisons are still full of slaves, and he is ultimately a neoliberal that will not enact truly meaningful change on a wide scale. But even with how bad things are, they could absolutely get, way, WAY worse. We've already seen some pretty massive regressions in rights due to republicans, as other comments have mentioned.

I do understand your frustration though, especially as you're living in a country that is fucked over either way by US politics.

So you voted twice and the harm reduction canidate you voted for was not elected. A lot of harm was done by the winning canidates, which were not the harm reduction once. I believe the problem in that case is that the harm reduction canidate was not elected.

Seriously voting takes less then an hour of your time. It is rather easy and if it actually works the consequences can be powerfull. Here in Germany you can really see the differences in new renewables construction depending on the party in power in a given area and time. In the UK there was a wondefull graph showing waiting times for the medical services under Labour(going down) and the Tories(going up).

As for the US there are referendums on a lot of issues, which are run at the same time as big elections to make things easier. Those can have big results. That is how California HSR referendum was done at the same time the first presidential election Obama won was held for example. That was a big win for climate and transport in California and certainly worth going to the elections for. At that point making some more crosses takes something like a minute and worse case they are both corporate dicks and at best the one you voted for actually does something good.

Am tired of it. Will do it again. I have colleagues in Ukraine. I know what is at stake and that both sides may be bad, but they are certainly not the same.

See it that way: if you were in an armed rebellion against a fascist state, hiding from trench to forest dwelling, would you pass on an occasion to spend one hour of your time to reduce a bit the political power of the enemy?

Voting is not enough, but it has an effect. Voting should not be your only political action, but I don't think it should be dismissed.

Voting on your post might reduce the harm of this rhetoric though 🥂

Listen to Frosty the Snowman folks. YT

Voting at least here in the United States for president is stupid because the electoral college will get the candidate they want anyway. Eventually, I would like to leave the United States and taking small steps to accomplish that goal.

I'm shocked at how unpopular this is, in an anarchist community. Tho i'm not american, we've got elections here too and i'm certainly not voting either

The thing about Biden that pisses me off the most is for the first time in a long time the US is party to a conflict where the US's supporting involvement isn't morally questionable & the fucking warmongers got cold feet. If the west gave the Ukrainians what they asked for from the beginning the war would probably be over by now.