You want to paint a house yellow. You go to the store. The salesperson offers you a can of red paint. You say you don't want that. He says if you pass on this, your only other choice is "that"...pointing at another can of red paint. You say that's the same color.

He is FURIOUS.

"THIS is barn red. THAT is blood red."

"They...really look about the same."

"Shows what you know. That's an extreme red, 0 degrees on the HSV scale, whereas this is FOUR degrees."

"They're both so dark you can't even tell."

"Hmph! Again, this is a whole NINE percent lighter!"

"Okay but I don't want a dark red at all, I want a yellow."

"Well if you think of colors on the RGB scale, yellow isn't even a color. Meanwhile this color you dismiss as 'red' has green and blue in it, whereas the OTHER one is nothing but red. Representation MATTERS."

"Did you just switch scales on me? Anyway look the red is not my issue. If I were to talk in your terms, I need a lot more green in there. As much as the red. Otherwise it's not yellow."

"Well if you go with this color you do get some green. That's a start!"

"THEY'RE BOTH RED!"

"Look you're erasing the differences by reducing these colors to 'red'. This is BARN red. The color of the barns that farmers, the brave backbone of our great nation, live in. Do farmers mean nothing to you? Do you want BLOOD red? Is that the violent message you want to send?"

"I'm not trying to send a MESSAGE with my house, I'm trying to live in it! I don't care what they're called, those are both dark depressing reds. I want a bright yellow!"

"Look, if you paint it barn red now, later we can talk about getting a brighter red for the repaint."

"I don't want a brighter red! I want a yellow!"

"WELL. I thought you JUST said you cared about brightness. I guess it's all performative for you! You might as well just pick blood red because I just caught you red-handed anyway!" *high-fives self*

"..."

This is the argument US liberals make when they say "the two parties are not the same".

Sure, in the sense that they have different barcodes on the can, they are technically speaking not the same item.

The difference means fuck-all when you want yellow though.

Yellow will never be on the shelf. Bernie was not yellow. Bernie was not even orange. Bernie was barely a brown and they raised hell over that. You might get lucky enough in a local election to maybe paint a door purple -still not yellow- but the house is staying red.

Repaint the house if you feel like it, I'm not gonna yell at you for that. I just don't want you deluding yourself. As long as you keep going to this store, you won't be getting any new colors.

That's the extent of your "harm reduction". Same cops, same drones, different label.

Even though I never said "communism" in this thread, I can GET the people who inferred that. My bio says I'm a communist, that is a reasonable guess.

But the people thinking I'm calling for Bernie here when I LITERALLY SAID "Bernie is not yellow"?

Do you just go down a list?