when will be your last time to vote for the "lesser of two evils"?
When will be your “this is the last fucking time I’m voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’, then I don’t care after that, let this country burn to the ground”? For me, this is basically it. This is last election I’m going for that " lesser of two evils" bullshit. After that I’m done. It’s just pointless. Let’s hear it.
It should have been in the 80’s. If those lesser evil folk bit the bullet and refused to vote for whatever shitty candidate they had at that point them maybe the Democratic party wouldn’t feel so comfortable shoveling Biden down our throats. It is 100% the fault of past Democratic party voters that we’re in this situation and it could have been avoided.
In a purely 4-year cycle, it is better to vote for a Dem because they’ll be slightly better. But since we repeated that 10x already, the Dem has gotten to be so horrific that it isn’t worth it anymore. It’s like trying to decide how much grain to use to feed a village and how much to plant for the next season. In the short term, it’s better to feed the people and reduce the amount planted next year. But we did that so much that now there’s no more food.
Boomers fucked Millennials and Gen Z with climate change. Gen X and Millennials fucked over Gen Z over with lesser evil voting.
Gen x and millennials fucked over gen Z over with lesser evil voting
Yes, but that is because we were lied to by boomers. We were told that if we do good and if we work hard then good things will happen. So we've done the best we absolutely can but the boomers refuse to die and let go of the reins to let the New breed take over.
Given the opportunity to vote in its current form, I’ll keep voting no matter how evil the lesser of two evils is. By definition it’s better than the alternative
Two cycles ago. Motherfuck Amerika, motherfuck the electors putting their thumbs on the scales to invalidate millions of votes nationwide, and motherfuck everyone who justifies propping it up too. I’m not cosiging genocidal colonizers; if that means the country falls, then the country deserved it. Die nameless.
Until it actually boils over or we get rid of first past the post (and you’ll need MASSIVE protests to do the latter.)
Fuck accelerationists. They’re either dumbfucks who think their Apocalypse Badass Man fantasies will come true (and contrary to popular belief this person absolutely exists on the left,) or yuppies who know they have an easy out in the form of either a work visa in somewhere like Canada or leeching from a developing country working remotely and not contributing to where they live at all (and so many of these yuppies are self-proclaimed collectivists.) The rest of us are getting out of here in a casket or a refugee boat if it boils over. So how about we take at least a modicum of effort to take care of our society. Voting is the bare minimum.
It's ok, you can stop voting, actually everyone should stop voting, that way there will be no "lesser of two evils", it will just be the WORST evil taking over.
And you won't even be allowed to have the free speech rights to get on the internet and bitch about it, because that's how dictatorships in fascist countries work.
Maybe if Americans knew how good other countries have it, they might stand up and fight for a better nation and DEMAND changes in the laws that govern our elected officials, instead of constantly voting for idiots whose only agenda after getting elected is to destroy America and make it a fucked up theocracy.
You get the country you participate in.
[steps off soap box, turns off spotlight and leaves the building]
Never. Just vote. Be a grain of sand on the scales that keeps things from going to absolute shit. It costs you almost nothing, just a tiny amount of time.
i dont vote. somewhere along the line some dumbass thought it would be a really good idea to pull jury nominees from the voter pool. jury duty is a complete waste of my time, it pays absolute dogshit, and I’ve never really had much trust in the justice system to begin with - so I am not registered to vote in the state I live in. the week before I plan on leaving for greener pastures, I will register to vote.
Jury service is one of the greatest services you can perform. You don’t have much trust in the justice system? For that one case you can help ensure it’s done. Take it seriously
You’ve never seen what most juries look like after nullification have you? Rhetorical question; I genuinely don’t give the first fuck what settler smuggard drivel’s about to leave your keyboard next. You literally read like
so please just do us all a favor and don’t. As usual, cac redditor pissants go mysteriously illiterate every time they’re told to fuck off, will wonders never cease?
That would be 12 years ago! I didn’t see any acceptable future for me in North America, and immigrated to Vietnam. I integrated reasonably well, and this is my culture now. You could say my last vote was with my feet, labor, and wallet :D
I don’t hate the West or anything, in fact I wish you all the best! However I am fully invested in working towards the success of my new country and this part of the world in general.
I gotta figure out how to pull off what you did. I can’t be paid to sell out my principles for these cracker-assed settlers; and especially not my life.
It’s actually just immigration (or, well… technically emigration from where you’re standing). Which is, in itself an absolutely miserable amount of work dealing with a bunch of systems that don’t really want to deal with you, but at the same time, expect you to be an expert in how they function.
Also a bunch of employers looking to exploit you (so if that’s a problem now, expect it to get worse until you learn the ropes), since your visa status depends on them in most cases and they know it. Everything about immigration is harrowing – but if you don’t like where you are, leaving to be somewhere else is a solution that is occasionally not insane! Asia is very hard to immigrate to though.
I knew around 30 other people that tried to immigrate here. ~22 got kicked out for non-compliance, ~6 died (mostly from alcohol or drugs). Of that group, some rich guy that doesn’t have to work, and myself are left. I don’t remember their names or faces, only their misplaced optimism.
If you’re interested in how the legal paperwork gets done, I’m happy to share! I just don’t want to misrepresent how miserable the first few years will be – I’ve been run over, exploded, robbed, bankrupt, severely poisoned with neurotoxins, and I nearly died of cholera. While working 70-80 hour weeks and getting paid only about half the time. I also got shipped into a literal civil war to do accounting of all things. The building next to me blew up, and I shared the streets with insurgents with machine guns. I was so dead inside by that point, I just shrugged and bought a t-shirt. Because of course they were selling t-shirts.
If you’ve got a couple hundred thou saved up, the process is probably less terrible. I came here with 30k and just barely bootstrapped myself to Vietnamese middle class over the course of 10 years or so. Overall I’m glad I did it, but a lot of the stuff I’ve survived haunts me. So in other words, I fit right in with most Vietnamese people about my age.
I’m glad you at least made it against such steep odds. For me, it’s just idle wishing-- I’ve got like three disabilities that automatically strike me off the lists of just about every country where I could actually put my skillset and training to use, and not enough money to offset those disabilities. At this point, I’m just rolling along until I either neck myself, or I get shot twice in the back of my head by some settler pig and they file it as a self-frag on my death certificate. Only living out of spite for the world I was born into, really.
That’s a bitter pill. I was lucky in that regard – my disabilities might be mild problems in the big picture, but give me a significant advantage in specific contexts like cram-studying. Surviving out of pure spite I am also quite good at too.
If we’re being honest, I don’t even know what I’d do if I had to deal with racism and armed police in my daily life. My biggest challenges were smaller things like poverty, bureaucracy, and hunger. Overcoming them made me stronger, sure – but strong enough to deal with that? I think I’d fall apart.
Integrating here was a strange thing. I more or less consider myself Vietnamese (if this isn’t my home and my culture, I don’t know what would be) but I was born white in Canada, and that’s what people see. It’s a weird mix of undeserved privilege and inconvenience. What’s really screwed up, is when other white people in Asia just start casually telling me about their crimes as if it’s a normal thing to talk about when there’s only white people in the room. Most people are not like that of course, but when it happens, it’s so fucked up. I don’t even know how to respond.
I vote third party every time. I don’t care if they’re more likely to lose, the whole point of a democracy is that we vote honestly and that every voice actually serves as a voice which goes against the herd mentality. So I’ve never voted for the “lesser of two evils”, I’ve been voting for actual good people every time because they friggin’ earned it, not the people who have leveraged into victory based on the fact they have victory in the first place.
okay but that’s just screaming into the void… they gain nothing from your vote, you gain nothing from your vote… it doesn’t matter how worthy they are, it’s exactly the same in literally every way as not voting
They gain a vote from my vote (a vote like any other, and it’s not like one of the leading parties doesn’t someday naturally lose as well), and I gain the license to say I acted like a person in this democracy, not the kind of person who “just follows orders” just because the outcome of those who do is the most likely to succeed. I could always “not vote” but I might as well try. To try and fail is better to never try. And I will always vote based on my own genuine thoughts and nobody else’s, naturally this means not voting for the two candidates who are the embodiment of taking things for granted. Plus it’s not like nobody is tuning in.
okay but a vote doesn’t actually benefit anyone, and neither does being able to say you “acted like a person”
a vote is worthless on its own. a vote is only worthwhile when it has a chance of producing an outcome, and a vote for 3rd party has no chance of producing any outcome
you get to take some moral high ground, which is great that you can do that and risk very little… meanwhile, people’s lives are actually at risk
its a shit situation: nobody is denying that at all (well i’m sure some people are, but i sure ain’t!)… but realistically, the only way to make any difference is (as someone further up thread put it) to tug the tug of war rope on the direction you prefer, while working to change the game
That’s the thing. How do you define a chance of producing an outcome? You define it by people deciding to vote to make that difference. To go about it based on how others vote is to be a follower, and to make a difference is leading. I vote regardless of apparent voter outcome because I am devoted to contributing to said outcome. I’m trying to be the change I want in the world. The leading two people have always made it clear that choosing people based on what they have going for them is their game, a game I fight by doing exactly as I do. To be “realistic”, as you say, is to surrender.
okay, but now you’re fighting game theory and maths
that’s just not going to work out well
it’s irrelevant what you want at the end of the day… voting for some “best” option is only useful if it’s even remotely likely to happen… don’t get me wrong, if it’s a slim chance of a great outcome that’s one thing but the odds of everyone deciding to do the same thing at the same time are basically 0
sure, vote how you like, but you’re more likely to win the lottery than to have a 3rd party candidate elected and i think we can all agree you don’t buy lottery tickets because you think you might win
I just don’t think voting for the least useful candidate who happens to be the one up on stage is by definition more useful. It’s similar to upvoting/downvoting a Reddit comment when almost everyone else is going the opposite way. You could argue resistance is futile, but you’ll probably do it anyways.
okay, well if the republicans had their way i’d be tortured forever in conversion therapy, there’d be no movement at all on green energy, the solution to homelessness would probably boil down to if you’re going through a rough patch it’s execution time, christianity would be mandatory
both sides are NOT the same… 1 side is mostly inept, and the other side is actively trying to persecute people, to which i’d say
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Both sides support genocide, and you’re just pinkwashing it at this point. Give the VBNMW nonsense a fucking rest; that tired-ass slogan is exactly why the wastes of skin and bone feel no need to actually move progressively.
both sides support israel, 1 side is on the record as having said that israel’s reaction is overboard… no action still, but both sides are not the same
i’m absolutely not pink washing… republicans are horrific to queers… given that you’ve even suggested that, you’re pretty much beyond reason, but i will say: just look at the don’t say gay bullshit in florida… culture wars cause huge increases in suicide rates amongst the queer community
im not got blue no matter who; im vote in the way that’s most likely to produce a positive outcome in things you want to change… on every metric and category, right now, that’s getting as many people as possible to vote democrat… id suggest people look at republicans if they had policies that weren’t detestable around:
Talk is a free action. Let me know when your “at least he’s not trump” actually does something that isn’t tacitly supporting a genocide by looking the other way and funneling materiel. You. Are. A pinkwash. I just hope you’re getting paid well by your handler.
This would be perfectly fine with ranked choice voting.
Unfortunately, the US doesn’t have that so that’s the same as an empty vote. You get to take the “moral high ground” while still actively voting to let the country go to the dumps. Great job.
How is it voting to let the country go to the dumps when in the same logic it’s supposedly throwing said vote away? It’s neither; I didn’t vote for the country to go to the dumps, I voted for the third party candidate, in contrast to people who voted for one of the two main candidates based on peer pressure and more literally voted for the country to go to the dumps. That, I argue, is wasting your vote, because at that point it’s not even your own vote. The point of voting is that all votes are holons of the result, not drops in a nebulous mass.
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
… your vote has power… inaction allows, or using your vote in a way that will never change an outcome is complicity
I mean the quote is kind of the driving aspect of my point. The quote is a commonly quoted WWII quote, it mentions we should speak up and act when necessary. I consider voting third party to be this, or if it isn’t, it’s still better than voting for someone based on their victory chances because that makes us fall into another WWII cliché, the one where we’re just “following orders” (and because it’s more of an effort than not showing up to the polls, it’s better than not trying).
i’m not talking about doing nothing, but point your effort where it can make change… voting 3rd party is a hopelessly ineffective way of making change… it’s a dream, and that’s it. it makes you feel good, and that’s it, but it’ll never EVER change anything… that is just the mathematics and sociology of how the voting system works
work towards changing from first past the post and removing the electoral college (there are effects to do both of these things that ARE making progress! some of them are even close!)
only THEN can you vote 3rd party and not have it a complete waste
but in the meantime, i beg you, vote for the party that isn’t actively campaigning to persecute minorities, who gave you at least a half way form of socialised healthcare, who’s at least trying with green energy, whose policies and positions are at least internally consistent for the most part
and most importantly, vote for the party that isn’t trying to make it harder to vote for anyone else, because you can be sure that gerrymandering, fucking with the supreme court, playing bullshit political games with voter ID all makes it harder to vote in a 3rd party candidate too
change has nothing to do with people until it does… change is just change. change when it comes to people and social systems is effective only when it effects the majority of people that are touched by an issue. voting 3rd party after not for some time is change of a kind, but i wouldn’t call it social change
social change comes when a large number of people decide something should be different, and the mathematics and sociology behind first past the post means that it’d take something so close to impossible that it’s not worth classing in the realms of possibility for a 3rd party to have any effect on the political system
the reality of the system is that the US is a 2 party system… the statistics of FPTP, and the game theory that leads to defensive voting, spoiler effect, and any number of other bad outcomes ensures that
within such a system, you just can’t hope to have an outcome other than 1 of the 2 parties having any real impact, thus you have to change 1 of the parties to be the way you want it to be, or you must change the system
you could argue that voting 3rd party forces the parties to change their positions, but historically that hasn’t really happened so i personally wouldn’t hold my breath
vote defensively, and work to change the system… because changing the system is incremental, achievable, and less subject to the whims of a few
You say that like there haven’t been third parties coming into power before. For example, the Whig party used to be one of America’s two parties before it was replaced. Or to use a more severe example, when Hitler became a Nazi, the party had six people in it, and we all know what happened next. Social change is also defined by the action, not the actors.
The whole point of etymology is to construct a word that fits a certain definition, so for the definition and the etymology to contradict would render the way the word is built pointless.
What’s so confusing about the fact that word roots are pointless if they don’t point to how a word is supposed to be used?
Suppose I was inventing a word, let’s say “chronocide”, and someone asked “if ‘chrono’ means ‘time’ and ‘cide’ means ‘to kill’, does ‘chronocide’ mean to kill some time” only for me to say “no, it’s a name I gave a new state of matter”, would that not be a waste of word construction?
The word wouldn’t be applied to that for long though, as inevitably people going by the same train of thought as the other person might one day look for a fancy word that means “to kill some time”, and the meaning of “chronocide” would slowly shift to its most fitting meaning.
Etymology has jurisdictional overwriting power over popularly-given word meanings for the very reason that it contains multiple words (in other languages no less) that already have an established meaning that would have to change first and simultaneously.
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