Happens about February-March of every election year (the, ahem, independent media goes out of its way to induce it). Get ready for the next lib wave, and a bunch of iterations of the following script, which they’ve been practicing since like 1999:
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- “Eh, I disagree with [Democrat candidate] on a lot of things, but to pretend he’s not better than [Republican candidate] is just delusional.”
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- “Yeah, I know [Democratic candidate] is a war criminal and complicit in a genocide, but have you considered that [Republican candidate] is a war criminal as well, plus he said rude things about [minority group]? In the interest of harm reduction for Americans only, I have a duty to vote Democrat.”
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- “Your vote actually does matter.”
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- “The only reason the Democrats aren’t Wholesome Progressive Scandinavian Model Chungus is because they have to play politics with the Republicans. You have to recognize the reality of a two-party system.”
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- “We can push the Democrats left.”
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- “Such-and-such Democratic policy (usually the Affordable Care Act) was actually really progressive.”
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- “My [minority group] partner, whom I’ve never mentioned up to this point and very possibly just made up, is voting Democrat.” (This tactic also gets used by libs defending porn and/or prostitution, e.g. “my totally-real girlfriend loves it when I post videos of us having sex online”).
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- “If even one less person dies because [Democratic candidate] is in office, it’s my moral duty to vote for [Democratic candidate]. I am a mature, compassionate person who absolutely understands socialism.”
I think Gaia answered that question pretty well in the affirmative, as have countless communist sex workers before her, that yes, it absolutely can and does help people, including women. Anyone who says otherwise is discounting the voices of women and comrades. That doesn’t mean there aren’t terrible examples of exploitation in the sex industry and that it isn’t dominated by power imbalance. But so too are there terrible examples of exploitation and abuse in most other low wage work. From miners to service industry workers. Sex work is work, and it doesn’t deserve scorn or disdain any more than any other form of work. As communists, this should not be a difficult concept to grasp, but unfortunately patriarchal, reactionary brainworms still infect a not insubstantial subset in some leftist spaces.