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Or we can go directly to the bottom frame like we’re gonna do - but go ahead and keep rationalizing why your moral pedestal was too lofty to vote for Kamala.
Only fascists can be accurately represented by Kamala Harris.
So you really think we’re better off with Bonespurs? Cuz realistically he was the only other viable choice, and reality trumps moral purity pedestals.
Voting for lesser evil is important although the lesser evil is still evil
You are 100% correct.
Look at OPs meme and ask the obvious question: “Why is this moving to the right, and not to the left? Aren’t both options equally possible?”
The answer is that it moves to the side that wins elections.
“Why is the right winning elections” is the much much better question to ask. In the meantime, do everything you can to move the center in the other direction one step at a time, and that doesn’t come about by losing elections while standing on principle.
That’s what I’ve always thought, it feels like the dems instead of compromising on ideology they should look for policies that benefit the rural Americans that feel increasingly excluded from the society happening in cities. Just throw them farming subsidies for small to mid sized farms, benefits for undeveloped land, agricultural loans for the energy transition to help them conform to new climate regulations.
Then maybe even throw in benefits for rural fire departments and so on are all democrat ideology policies. When the right becomes unelectable people move left.
Voting for non evil is the way to go. By keeping to vote for the lesser evil, you get it to become more evil while keeping non evil out of power. This is how the system games you.
I think depends on the voting system and the election. US has a really bad system with FPTP voting. In that case tactical voting should be used for governor and president but representatives should be voted by the heart to build up better support for third party candidates.
It’s also very important to vote in primaries and and party national conventions because those votes affect national policies way more than the elections themselves.
US is very presidential heavy but voting in local elections really counts and allows third parties to slowly build up enough support to create a hung parliament where voting system concessions can be made.
I like to think of it in a “market” way. By voting there is a signal into the market, that their is a demand for a certain political direction. So “stocks” with that profile increase in value. This might be individual politicians, specific laws, parties, or general ideology/values.
Politicians want their portfolio to be attractive, so they get more votes. As a result they will adjust their portfolio of political positions accordingly.
If you vote “tactically” you send a false signal into the market. So instead of getting more politicians to represent the ideas you like, you reinforce them in the ideas you don’t like, as that had more buy signals. On the flip side if you send your sell signal, by removing a formally loyal vote from them, you can show them that their portfolio has gotten lopsided.
The difficulty is to think these things longer term. It is not just this election cycle, but 8 years, 12 years maybe even 20 years ahead. The way media and politicians like to represent elections got more and more pointed towards just this single one being the one and only. This is not just a problem in the US, but also countries without FPTP. Also the reporting got less about the specific policies and more about the how and who, turning it into a show of game of thrones, rather than a fight for the best ideas.
That’s all true, by voting for minor parties you do entice the established parties to grab some of their policies. This does not address the fact that in FPTP a fractured ideology loses because of the spoiler effect. If you get 5 parties with 10% vote share. Dems on 20% and Republicans on 30% it’s a Republican win even though their ideology doesn’t resonate with 70% of voters.
You need tactical voting to get the majority of seats in this case also and in a situation where everyone would vote tactically against Republicans they will be pro voter reform since it’ll reduce the power of a united right wing.
Yes! The problem is, non-evil is not currently on the menu. So I think one should limit the rate of evil increase by voting for the lesser evil.
The evil is sowing doubt in people voting. Representatives fail to represent sometimes, or even often. But not voting just means they don’t represent you at all, and don’t care that you exist when they represent you.
If people didn’t show up and vote for their local officials, and state government officials… They have sabotaged their city/county/state/country.
All of these representatives start somewhere. If we don’t follow and support the local ones that are good, they never get a shot at being say a congresswoman who can break the majority of super majority and help move politics in whichever directions we want them.
(Cause guess where they come from if they aren’t politicians moving up… Either A. Rich or B. funded by the rich.)
Yes! This is a form of organization. Which I think is a requirement for getting a more progressive government.
Colombia be like rn…
I feel as though there’s a significant amount of extra info that isn’t strictly conveyed here.
The core issue is that you only have 2 real options in america, third parties may as well not exist. So, come election time, your harm reduction option is to vote for the least evil party.
But that’s not the way to solve the issue, and neither is abstaining or voting third party, IMO. The way to solve the issue happens between votes. Picketing, protesting, demonstrating, taking action, making noise. You won’t solve the broken 2 party system at election time. But you do have to actually get out and take action, not just say that you will and keep letting the overton window shift right.
(Take with a pinch of salt because I’m not american)
The core issue is that you only have 2 real options in america, third parties may as well not exist.
There’s false assumptions necessary to reach this conclusion. Typically the false assumption is that the role of a third party is to win. The root cause of making this assumption is often that the scope of evaluation has been limited to one term or cycle.
I’m not convinced that voting for a third party has any positive effect, in one election cycle or over longer time. But I’m open to hearing your perspective.
The false assumption that most make is that one cycle doesn’t effect the next.
However, if a third party garners just 5% of the general election vote for POTUS then their platform and higher quality candidate will be on every ballot in the next cycle.
If there’s a third choice on every ballot then the the third party platform places tremendous and immediate pressure upon the platforms of the two major parties. The third party doesn’t actually win unless the other refuse to compromise. Long term, the continued threat is of greater value than a subsequent victory.
But, the electoral scheme doesn’t work unless leftists trust leftists to determine the collective risk of voting third party for the states they reside in. Even Jacobin failed to trust twice.
Things are pretty fucked. Electoral means are slow. I tend to advocate for boycott, strike, and riot (encompassing a wide scope of wisely breaking laws).
I suppose that is a tangible way to affect change under the existing electoral system, so more power to you. I guess, with that in mind, you need to vote third party on an occasion when third party will actually get that 5% threshold, which as you say takes trust.
need to vote third party on an occasion when third party will actually get that 5% threshold
non sequitur
You weren’t really very open to ideas. And, you were the best of the bunch in this thread.
That’s needlessly dismissive, I was repeating my understanding of what you’d said
I’m sorry you feel that way. Try something different next time.
All you do by consistently voting the “lesser of two evils” is kicking the hangover down the road by keeping to drink more alcohol. You know every time that it will get worse and the sooner you get through the hangover, the sooner you could actually move on, but in fear of the hangover you grab the bottler another time.
With the measures you mentioned the problem is in particular that the current Democrats are not caring about them. They assume they will get the votes nonetheless and if they don’t it is fine because the Republicans will cover most of the donors interests anyways. Making noise only works, if it is followed by consequences. Leaving political violence aside, the only consequence a normal person can realize is not giving the vote if they aren’t heard.
This. I’m in the US and was fully prepared to protest whether Harris or Trump won, I’m opposed to them both in different ways. Trump and team may get me off my ass very quickly though.
But that’s not the way to solve the issue
So… revolution? It worked once before!
I mean sure! Take the whole CEO situation and springboard off that, you find yourselves in circumstances similar to pre-revolution France so the conditions are right.
I mean, you’re not the first one to say thing. People picket, people protest, people make noise. College students are arrested, protests either get Zero media attention (or worse, are regulated to an ineffective location because of regulations) or the protestors switch to disruptive tactics that actually get noticed and are demonized by everyone for it.
Like I keep hearing this “You have to go out and take action”, EVERYONE IS! People are walking up and knocking on people’s doors and getting punched in the face. People are outside houses getting cops called on them and arrested. Everyone is now more able to point out the bad actors and exactly how that’s effecting the parties and policies.
You have Bernie Sanders and AOC out protesting and “making noise” in the spot light every damn day.
- third party doesn’t work
- you can’t solve the 2 party system
- The way to solve the issue happens between votes
our election cycle is every 2 years or less depending on the occasion. IT IS ALWAYS ELECTION CYCLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS. They have to plan early and extensively to knock off any candidate they don’t want (pulling national resources to squash anyone they view “outside” their establishment).
At this point the “make noise” comments need to reiterate what the end goal is for that make noise. You’re setting people up to just be angry and upset and protest the inequality or inefficiencies of our system when that’s exactly what the politicians want (it’s a feature, not a bug). No amount of protesting, a litany of policies at that, will be effective when the complete political spectrum is against change. Take a look at the Civil Rights Era and the voting that was concluded, it looks completely unlike anything we have now.
The political parties have strengthened their stranglehold (I’ve argued in the past that they are “political parties” in name only, they are more incorporated or an oligarch representatives at this point and should be regulated as such). They listen to power only, the power was taken from the working and lower classes a long time ago. We get our shows we can put on, but it doesn’t move the needle anymore. It used to at least force them to talk about moving the needle, even that’s gone now.
I think its quite obvious that the people I’m advising to get out and take action are the people who… aren’t? I’m well aware that action is being taken and that it is growing in numbers, but more needs to be done.
That aside, how does voting third party or abstaining from voting affect change against the issues you’ve highlighted above? Because I don’t disagree with the issues you’ve raised.
How exactly does “picketing, protesting, demonstrating, taking action, making noise” affect change against those issues, when the Democrats will just ignore you and get your vote anyway?
You don’t think you can affect change outside of your vote?
I’m really wondering if next election cycle we’re gonna hear people say “we’ve got to vote them in first then pull them left” again. It was a notably absent phrase this past election. Biden most certainly did not move left from his “Fundamentally nothing will change.” platform.
Well, I was reliably told by ten million Vote Blue No Matter Who people that there wouldn’t be another elections if Trump won, so I guess we’ll just never know…
…and those people call me defeatist. Sheesh!
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I think you need to look at the above the graph and try again, maybe with less f****** around and more using your brain.
Oh well it’s in a doodle on the internet, must be gospel-grade truth.
Is that a thing you have to apply to some formal committee for?
Or do we have to ask you specifically whether or not it qualifies?
Ooh maybe there’s ASCII symbol for it like ® or © ?
No.
Look at how the system actually works. There are two choices. Both candidates have to compete for all the people who vote. If you sit out the election that doesn’t mean either candidate will try to get your vote; they’ll ignore you and go after the people who do vote.
Someone else came up with this analogy. It’s like the trolley problem except the there’s a third option. The third choice is to throw the switch to “Neither,” but “Neither” isn’t connected and the trolley kills someone anyway.
George Carlin did a great job blowing this nonsense apart
If George was alive today he’d be begging people to vote against Trump.
No he wouldn’t, and the video I linked explains clearly why. Maybe watch it and try to comprehend what he’s saying there.
Let me explain something you may not be aware of.
The man was an entertainer. His job was to make people laugh. I can cherry pick his work and come up with all kinds of absurd ideas he put into his act.
If the only argument you can make is based on a comedy routine, then we have nothing more to discuss.
Let me explain something you may not be aware of. Entertainers often say serious things that cannot be said in other mediums. If you don’t understand that Carlin was doing political commentary, and appreciate his insights then you’re a very dim individual indeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_George_Carlin_Show
George did a TV show on the FOX network.
I love his stuff, but that doesn’t blind me to the fact that he was primarily an entertainer.
The fact that you thought this was a good argument shows how utterly intellectually impoverished you are.
Yeah bro, the anti war hippie who was challenging the FCC in the 70s would have totally been team corporatocracy. Carlin had several interviews where he talked about how the two party system in America is an illusion of choice and ragged on Bill Clinton for being phony, and that’s the farthest left liberal candidate in like 30 years, a fucking neoliberal.
Yall sound exactly like the conservatives claiming MLK.
Like I said, if you can’t come up with anything except a comedy act, we have nothing to discuss.
Here’s a clip from his early days, proof that he couldn’t possibly have ever changed his thoughts about anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKO8qMJtbng this is from the 90s through the early 2000s, but I imagine you’ll find another reason to dismiss his words to pretend you know what was in his heart was different tho.
For the record, I don’t agree with his defeatist outlook, I think there’s comedians with better takes on American politics, but to pretend Carlin would be blue MAGA just because you wish him to be is ridiculous.
Make your 3rd party an arm of the dems. A coalition of sorts
If you’re saying that the Left should vote for the Dems I agree.
I’d love to have Bernie as President, but our side dropped the ball twice and failed to get him nominated.
You understand how things work! Ignore the apathy trolls. They are trying to silence your vote. Here’s what actually happens if you vote for the lesser of two evils. You’re rights are protected and next time use the primary process to pick someone even better.
Do yourself a favor and read the novels of Ross Thomas. He was a Washington reporter turned crime novelist. All his books have a strong political basis. Two of his best; “The Fools In Town Are On Our Side,” an ex-CIA hot shot is hired to clean up a small Southern city by making it so corrupt even the pimps will vote for reform; “The Porkchoppers,” a nuts and bolts look at a Union election with characters ranging from White House aides and Washington power mongers to factory line workers.
Lol. What planet do you live on?
You’re rights are protected
Like how Roe V. Wade was protected when Biden got into office? Like our right to protest the atrocities which our taxes are paying for in Gaza?
You’re rights are protected and next time use the primary process to pick someone even better.
Oh, Like how we voted for the lesser evil in 2020 and didn’t have a fucking primary in 2024. Don’t tell us to do something that your party makes sure doesn’t happen.
Or as Rush put it, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
If 5% of the general election popular vote for POTUS, knowing that the candidate cannot win, still voted for the Green Party platform then what effect would that have upon the Democratic Party platform?
On a five point difficulty scale this is a two. The test gets way harder than this.
If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a tea trolley.
Right now the reality is the Donald Trump is going to take office because a lot of people didn’t vote for the alternative.
All the ‘what if…?’ games in the world isn’t going to change that.
Thank you for the opportunity to teach.
If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a tea trolley.
Minimization.
Right now the reality is the Donald Trump is going to take office because a lot of people didn’t vote for the alternative.
Red herring.
All the ‘what if…?’ games in the world isn’t going to change that.
Minimization.
This is a bit better than typical nonsense because there’s two tactics in a sandwich. Next is usually ad hominem. But, this one may have another trick up their sleeve.
Everything you said.
Pompous.
Simply naming fallacies isn’t teaching. The point of learning fallacies isn’t so that you can just name them and feel like you’ve made a point.
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I asked a question. I received a fallacy sandwich in return. There’s no point in investing further.
Simply naming fallacies isn’t teaching.
unsupported
The point of learning fallacies isn’t so that you can just name them and feel like you’ve made a point.
strawman
The point of teaching is sharing knowledge, not just poking holes in whatever argument you can (intentional hyperbole, not strawman)
The point of learning fallacies isn’t so that you can just name them and feel like you’ve made a point.
strawman
Instead of just “strawman, therefore you’re wrong” and leaving it at that, how about you explain what was incorrect in that statement. That way you become more understood, and everyone understands you more.
This isn’t a courtroom debate. This isn’t a debate you “win” or “lose”. This is a debate where everyone should be trying to understand each other, so that everyone ends up better off by the end. This sort of debate is a cooperative thing, not competitive.
The audience I wish to reach doesn’t need their hand held as a child.
None of your assertions have been supported
unsupported
How do you not choke on your irony?
With well-reasoned and nuanced principles supported by vast experience.
Right now the reality is the Donald Trump is going to take office because a lot of people didn’t vote for the alternative.
Red herring.
You’re going to have to explain that in detail. Trump got more votes. He won. How is that anything except a cold, hard fact?
My friend, what you wrote totally ignores the passage of time. Everything you wrote is true if we only look at one election, and none of it is true if we consider the passage of time and how pressure operates. If the political party is not getting votes, if all of their candidates are losing, either they will disband or they will find different policies to push.
Actually I paid attention to history. The pendulum swung the other way a few years back; arch Conservative Ronald Reagan courted the Left by picking the first woman on the Supreme Court and making Colin Powell his Number One guy.
Also the lesser evil kills all enthousiam and loses the election.
Which is just fine by the lesser evil wing of the party.
The image only works if the right always wins though?
The “lesser evil” won in 2020. We didn’t move back to the left.
Pray tell, how is strengthening unions & workers rights, forgiving student loans, not ‘left’? SMH
Pray tell, how is genocidal fascism “left”? SMH
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and the Biden administration did more to restrict sales than most
Oh? Provide examples.
Genocide apologist
Ok I’ll try this again without calling you a c***: saying that X is is not responsible fo Y does not mean that you think that Y is good. In this case, nearly everyone in the US govt (regardless of party affiliation) has supported arms sales to Israel for as long as they’ve held the position. The fact that you think me pointing this out is equivalent to excusing or approving it surprises me, but then many single-issue individuals can get irrationally passionate on those issues, so I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was I suppose.
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Pray tell, how is strengthening unions & workers rights
Strikebreaking and photo ops didn’t strengthen shit.
forgiving student loans
Was the only bright spot in his presidency.
Now how was supporting a genocide “left?” I mean, it may be to your left. Maybe you want active participation?
Are there more examples of this happening? One event isn’t a very good sample size… “IT DIDN’T WORK GUYS, SEE?!”, I mean, sure… But there are more circumstances and variables and conditions to an election lol.
How many times do you want to move to the right and not back to the left? How many more times will it take to satisfy you?
I mean, as long as it’s a stable ratio, the whole concept in this post falls apart. What are the statistics on left/right leaning presidents throughout history?
Does the rightward shift that has resulted in the “good” party supporting genocide indicate stability to you?
It does not, but this happening for one election doesn’t prove an unstable ratio, or rate of change. You have to look at the historical pattern for that.
I don’t think this is the problem of some sort of “phenomenon” of a left party becoming the right party because people are voting for the “lesser evil”. That makes no sense to begin with. If everyone voted for the lesser evil (the left), the lesser evil would not feel the need to take on some evil from the right to please the American people who are voting with their rectums, dropping straight up doo-doo in their ballot boxes. They would be able to just have sane politics. No? Otherwise, why are they doing some evil? And why is the right doing a shit-ton of evil? It’s because they are playing the American people for fools. Exploiting their culture of “protect our land of the fReE” and their “black or white” argumentation and “we vs them”, “good versus evil”, “no gray areas” small brain mentality.
For one election?
Which of GWB’s rightward policies did Obama undo? Which of Reagan/Bush’s policies did Clinton undo?
You’re defending a rightward shift that has been going on for decades.
No?
Then please explain how this works. This image isn’t doing it for me.
If the republicans win, it goes further right. If the democrats win, it stays where it is. So the only movement is to the right, never left.
That simply explains what’s visible in the image, not whatsoever why.
If the democrats win, it stays where it is.
Like, why is this the general assumption?
If this were true, there wouldn’t ever have been a democratic president, right? Except maybe once in the beginning?
I think you’re taking this a bit more seriously than it’s intended to be, but yeah, there have been Democrat presidents, but there still isn’t gun control, univseral healthcare (not even for children!), etc.
Politicians are walking a fine line between catering to what the people want and deciding on things that actually benefit the people. It’s a difficult thing. Should politicians represent the people, or should they have the mandate to make decisions the people may not agree with but are better for the people.
At the very least, they shouldn’t make decisions that benefit only themselves and their rich friends. 💀
I have a hard time taking this as a joke, if it was intended as one, because there were very serious discussions regarding this before and after the election.
What?
😐… where exactly did I lose you? Just asking “What?” doesn’t really help me to answer you. What is your actual question, please?
this is stupid.
a system where you get served only two options to vote for but are held responsible for the outcome instead of those who limited the available options in the first place?
eh yes, you are right, this is stupid.
as a completely unrelated sidenote:
“winner takes it all” is the actual opposite of democracy, no matter how the voting was done, and this fact can already be read 1:1 within those 4 simple words 😉
this is stupid too. Democracy is mathematically impossible. Condorcet’s paradox and all that.
Care to explain?
The argument is when there are more than 2 options a majority of people would not have selected the “winner” over any of the other individual losers. Therefore majority rule is an illusion, democracy is self-contradictory!!!
However, by reducing the options to just 2 you no longer have the same result and “democracy” is more “self-consistent”. You can do this in a fair/Democratic way by “simulating” the pairwise interactions (IE ranked choice voting, pairwise majority rule, etc.) or by establishing a false dichotomy (2 party systems, left v right spectrum, etc.).
This is not ‘not a thing’ but it’s a really old idea and is largely solved (ie. Distributed networks like the social media platform we are currently on, or stuff like this).
However, the claim isn’t entirely misplaced as modern social institutions refuse to implement any of those methods because it would be against their best interests as those in power are deeply unpopular (yes, especially your favourites whoever that may be). So yes almost all “Democratic” systems you interact with on a daily basis are inherently self-contradictory on the most cursory of examinations, but they dont have to be.
the link you shared is paywalled, curious about it but can’t find it anywhere else. Could you link as pdf?
I just wish those campaigning were required to provide policy ideas/plans for what they want to do, and where they want the money to come from. In an ideal world I would give the candidates 0 face time, possibly even no names to the public at first. (Would never work but would be interesting)
The options get a set of questions framed around current events, past events, and possible future events that they would give detailed responses to how they would have, would currently or would plan for those events. No party affiliations known. Eliminate contenders from the list by most accepted answers from the lists bringing it from say 50 candidates to 25, then 10, then 5, the 3 then 1. The election period is 6 months. No prior rallys, no posturing, no ads, and no names tied to the responses so no one cares about popularity.
The President is whomever wins 1st, Vice President 2nd, and 3rd place is placed on stand-by but works directly with both members to stay informed. If at any time a person makes decisions as president that the other 2 do not believe coorelate with the responses they gave to the people, they call an emergency vote to veto that directive, and recall a ranked choice vote where the population votes for all 3, where the 1st takes the presidency, 2nd VP, 3rd taking the back seat.
Would be fucking crazy, but at least itd be more fun than what we have now…
I don’t think it’s crazy in the slightest and see no reason why it “would never work”, it’s just not a conservative idea. Why did you feel the need to minimize it so?
Because it is creating a checks and balances for the president within the checks and balances of the current government. It would require such a constitutional change, it would require more actions than just a super majority as we believe it would.
Edit: sidebar. Each round of eliminations would present new questions, each candidate would submit. Some would be “illusion” of current or future events but were really past events. This prompting a past president or leader (Congress member, senator etc). To bring up and discuss what the false narrative was, showing what the realism had been. Then giving evaluation of how they responded at the time, and how it went right, wrong, and what could have gone better if done differently. Thus educating both the population and the candidates in doing so. Basically, the first reality TV program worth turning in for or watching brought to everyone via national TV/internet services for free… and using the ad segments to pay for the costs associated with the applicants. Doing away with campaign fees.
Side bar 2: Yes that means if you serve the nation as a president/ congressperson/ senator / or ambassador you may be called upon to serve your country for a lecture… But that should be fair, as we pay the secret service to protect you for life. A lecture twice after you retire won’t kill you. (Shit even Carter would have loved to do this 2 years ago because he wanted to believed in this country). And I would have called him to old… but with cards and his choosing, I would have been greatful to hear him give peanuts to pinenuts
It’s certainly an intriguing idea, but its not as good as the current system. It’s a hyperreality of voting that would simply exaggerate flaws of the current system.
First off, good luck keeping anything anonymous. And, even if you could, candidate anonymity is a horrible idea, because you’d have even less accountability and more campaign dishonesty than you have now. Without anonymity, politicians have to at least try to fulfill campaign promises if they want to get reelected. But with anonymity, I can get elected and not follow through on campaign promises because when I run for reelection nobody knows which candidate is me and I can just lie again.
You’d probably also seriously exacerbate political capture. In the interest of putting forth the best policy proposals, people like presidential candidates would certainly outsource writing to powerful lobbies that have the top policy analysists and writers. And these lobbies or other groups would almost certainly only offer services in exchange for certain favors once the candidate is in office. It would lead to massive corruption, more than we’re already seeing, because at least without anonymity we can put names to faces and prompt some honesty.
Plus, you’d cut out so many candidates. Not everyone excels at writing. Some candidates might articulate their plans best in real time and on a stage (like JFK, or Reagan, etc.). Demanding that everyone only write and publish policy proposals removes the ability to gauge how good they’d be in office, interacting with staff and other world leaders.
Combining anonymity with a bracketed system would also create an echo chamber, where candidates learn each other’s messages every round and the survivors shift to mimic the most popular message to bolster their odds of making it into office. In the end, all 3 people will sound the same in a desperate bid to copycat the clear winner and steal votes. Which obviously creates issues for voting again, like the aforementioned Condorcet’s paradox.
Also, voter engagement. We can barely get people to turnout when they are emotionally won-over by a given personality candidate, it would probably crater if voting were a purely rational process as @lifeinmultiplechoice suggests. If you take after John Adams or Rousseau, this isn’t entirely problematic because you don’t believe in carrying out the principle of “the will of the people” in a literal sense (not to say J.A. was Rousseauian, he obviously was not, but they overlap in this area of restricted voting). But if you are interested in accurately representing “the will of the people” in a non-gnostic sense, this is obviously an unsatisfactory system.
This isn’t meant to dismiss @lifeinmultiplechoice out of hand, I admire the imagination. I think they’re onto something when they point out that technology has sort of… swapped lenses on the camera of Democracy. We can seriously reinvent Democracy in ways that overcome previous hurdles due to all our technology now… we just don’t know how exactly yet.
Democracy is mathematically impossible.
if democracy was not possible, how does it come that the greek did democracy and it is said they were once overrun in a war because of beeing democratic? if something was a cause for a turn of a war, i pretty much believe it to really exist, no matter what some kind of half baked formulars “predicted” once.
if democracy existed and your math says thats not possible, i’ld guess your math might simply be ‘slightly’ wrong about it or was created with (un-)intentional biases in mind ;-)
just to note:
in the history of human predictions based on thought through and wordly/mathmatically described rules, the most common thing afterwards was, that those rules and also their predictions were just fundamentally wrong and biased.
Oh my. You win the argument today!
Thank you, thank you for taking the time to put together such a meaningful and well thought-out comment. We are all slightly better off because you paused your surely very important work and gave us your insights.
I live to please.
Things move to the right when the right wins. Things move to the left when the left wins. If the center wins, then things don’t move much at all. The lesser evil prevents greater evil
.
Honestly I’m just at the point where I’m sitting back watching this country be torn apart. Everything anyone ever has done is wrong but also maybe it’s right and everyone acts like they know which is which. The country is entirely divided when the war within itself kicks off I’ll be just on my porch watching because I’m done trying to make heads or tails of this mess.
You know what they say, evil happens when good people stand back and let it happen.
Quote from Eddy Burke, Edmund’s less fancy-worded relative.
Why use lot word when few word do trick
I’m not privileged, they just won’t attack me or my family yet. /s
With no scale this is absolutely meaningless
lol, get this nerd. It’s not meant to be a scientific graph like a Moody diagram for calculating things from, it’s illustrating a concept which it does perfectly.
Ok. So apply this to 2016. The left choice was establishment neoliberal who if had won would have put left leaning judges on the Supreme Court ensuring the court for decades. Since she lost a far right extremist won who captured the judicial branch. I guess this doesn’t count because people didn’t vote for the lesser evil. Or does it?
So the following election again was establishment neoliberalism who won and basically had the most progressive policy’s of the last century. I guess that moved us right?
Next election, let’s see, establishment neoliberal again. Hard to pinpoint if she was more left or less left because she ran a campaign catering to “on the fence conservatives” but was part of a very progressive administration.
Maybe this what happens when you don’t vote for the lesser evil. That’s all I see.
“Joe Biden has the most progressive policies of the last decade” - incredible.
I can think of zero politicians with a further left policy platform than Joe Biden. Think of all his progressive moves, like allowing the overturn of roe vs wade, Joe Biden who railed against school racial integration policies, Joe Biden author of the 94 crime bill, Joe Biden who continued building the wall, pro union Joe Biden who compelled the train unions to accept the companies deal. Joe Biden who lends his support both materially and in influence to right wing governments in Ukraine and Israel, supporting genocide in the latter. Etc etc. A real hero of the people this guy, fly out the red flag.
like allowing the overturn of roe vs wade
Voters did this by not voting lesser evil
Joe Biden who railed against school racial integration policies, Joe Biden author of the 94 crime bill,
This was not part of his presidential administration and not my claim.
pro union Joe Biden who compelled the train unions to accept the companies deal
And went back and got sick days for the union after the deal was signed. Only president to march with the union.
Biden who lends his support both materially and in influence to right wing governments in Ukraine and Israel, supporting genocide in the latter. Etc etc. A real hero of the people this guy, fly out the red flag.
I never made the claim he wasn’t a neoliberal. I only cited the fact that he was the most progressive president we’ve seen in the country for as long as I’ve been alive.
This is true, but it’s also STILL WORSE to vote for the greater evil. You need to change the options available to you to fix this.
It’s also true that you get backlashes normally if the system doesn’t get to far out of wack. FDR wasnt right of Hoover Coolridge and Harding. Sure one can argue overall we were shifting to the right… But we were NEVER going to be left of center so long as the U.S. existed, because the constitution is built on capitalism. Capitalism has a slow decay, can it be fixed? Maybe. Is it fixable now, maybe not. Could we have fixed it if we followed Carter with a closer to center President instead of Reagan, A LOT easier to have done it then… It took 60 years to get taxes on the rich to this point.
I don’t think the constitution is very capitalist tbh
Not sure this makes sense. I think the window shifts right as people continue to vote right.
From the Wikipedia article about the Overton window:
The most common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window. That is absolutely false. Lawmakers are actually in the business of detecting where the window is, and then moving to be in accordance with it.
