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And how do you plan on getting that candidate to 270+?
Get a clue
That's not my job. My job as a citizen is to vote for the candidate I believe deserves the position, regardless of party affiliation.
The only reason Democrats and Republicans rose to the top is thay they once held the most generic, inoffensive views that people from the less popular "third" parties could support when it eventually became clear they didn't have chance at winning. That's no longer the case, so why continue voting like it is? Change has to start somewhere, and it sure as hell isn't going to come from someone who benefits from maintaining the status quo.
If everybody voted with hope and optimism rather than despair and cynicism, we might have more variety than blue dick vs red asshole.
I am curious… do you think that there is any realistic chance that someone other than the two main candidates will win the upcoming election?
Wouldn’t you agree that this ‘change’ of being able to vote for a candidate who both deserves the position and also actually has a chance of winning, is not going to happen this year regardless of how you vote?
Unless something major happens very soon, it’s going to be one or the other. Most voters are not happy with this reality, particularly Biden voters, but this is the reality we find ourselves in.
I am happy to hear you express a desire to end the genocide and destruction of Palestine. A large portion of Biden voters agree with you on that point.
Other than his age and his ‘soft on Israel’ position, I happen to think Biden has done a decent job. But let’s assume I am wrong and he has done a terrible job. Would he be worse than trump? Would trump be worse?
Would you agree or disagree that, like it or not, we are in a ‘lesser of two evils’ situation?
Here is your chance to prove that you are not just a troll. These are genuine question which I hope you will answer honestly, however you may truly feel.
If you prefer trump, just say it, you have the right to your opinions. Pulling the ‘genocide Joe - vote third party’ card comes across as disingenuous, far-right propaganda.
Sorry, dude, but I don't feel the need to prove I'm not a far-right provocateur simply because I acknowledge that Joe Biden and his administration are knowingly abetting an active genocide. I cannot in good conscience vote for him or anyone who supports Israel's aggression. If I thought Trump would actually try to stop it, I'd vote for him, but I know he won't, so no, I don't prefer Trump.
I'm normally not a single-issue voter, but there is an immediate risk of an entire culture being wiped out, and while I'm too poor to send any aid myself, if there's even the tiniest chance that enough people are as done with the left/right, red/blue bullshit as I am to vote for someone who'll actually try to help, I have to take that chance, infinitesimal though it may be.
I'd rather live on the false hope of a better world than the false hope of a not-even-worse one. We're all fucking fucked no matter what we do, so why not hope for the best and act accordingly? Maybe it'll catch on.
This is not the choice you have, that’s my point.
Your choices are false hope of a better world, or the reality of a not-even-worse one.
One of the two will win, and one of the two is certainly worse.
I don't really see much of a difference between the parties. You either get blatant evil in Republicans or concealed evil in Democrats. Either way, things will only get worse as long as we're stuck in this two-party loop.
I refuse to directly contribute to either of them, so my choices are to not vote or to vote third party. It's not ideal, but my conscience remains clear.
I suppose in the trolley problem, I choose secret answer C - throw my wrench on the tracks and hope the trolley derails without causing too much collateral damage.
There are 100 people on the trolley and you've just put all of them at risk.
Plus if you don't see much difference between those two, I can't imagine the level of privilege you live with. I certainly doubt you're trans for instance, or in a situation where you may need an abortion, if you're saying that.
You know the real privilege we all live with? Peace. Not being the targets of mass-murder campaigns.
So yes, I'd rather things get worse for a small part of our population for a short while if it means we can stop our government from actively funding a literal genocide.
And not that it's any of your business, but I am trans (enby) and my partner and I fairly recently (post-2020) narrowly avoided needing an abortion.
How exactly does this happen if Trump wins?
Same way if Biden wins: it doesn't.
Though at this point, it's looking like it'll already be too late by inauguration time.
So given the choices:
Things get worse for a small part of our population for a short while, and the government continues to actively fund genocide
That small part of the population is unaffected and doesn't suffer, and the government continues to actively fund genocide
You're picking option 1 over 2?
I'm picking neither.
What I was saying earlier was that if I believed Trump actually would do something to stop Israel, I'd vote for him despite the harm he'd otherwise cause, but he won't, so I won't.
Political nihilism doesn’t grant you a clear conscience.
Maybe not for you. But it's the best option I can see. And with the electoral college making the real decision, individual votes don't really matter, especially in my state.
If you want to throw your vote away, that’s fine. If that helps you sleep at night, fair enough. But going around telling people not to vote for Biden is essentially the same thing as telling people to vote for trump. I understand you wish that weren’t the case, you wish a 3rd party was a viable option, but that simply is not realistic for this upcoming election.
There are a lot of us out here who fear trump more than we dislike Biden… and if you think they are the same then you can’t see the forest through the trees.
"Hey, you should maybe vote for someone who isn't actively financially supporting the most well-documented genocide in human history."
"Hey, this guy wants us to vote for Trump!"
I mean, yeah, he's technically less culpable than Biden, but that's just because he's not currently in the White House. We all know he would be just as bad as Biden in that particular regard.
If telling you to vote with your conscience rather than your fear is the same as telling you to vote for Trump, maybe you're the real Trump supporter.
That’s a clever way to continue to dodge the questions.
Do you agree that it will be one or the other?
Do you agree that one is worse than the other?
Do you agree that telling people to not vote for one is the same as shilling for the other?
These are easy questions and you are dodging them.
Hey, don't blame me if you can't understand subtext. I answered all your less-than-inane questions already, just not directly. But fine, here you go:
Sadly, most likely, yes.
If I wanted a candidate who's a zero, then they're 10 and -10. Either way, things will get worse for everyone, just in a different order.
No, and the fact that so many people think that is a big part of the problem.
Let’s just take the first and third questions to start.
You answered question 1 with yes, which is, to the dismay of us both, the correct answer, congratulations.
Given the context of your correct answer to 1, your answer to question 3 is irrational.
Let’s say you are at a grocery store and they offer you paper or plastic bags. Let’s say you have too many things to carry and you forgot your reusable bag at home. You have two choices, paper or plastic, and no other choices. If you are absolutely going to leave the store with one of those two choices, and I tell you not to take plastic, then I am at the same time telling you to take paper. This is the law of the excluded middle.
Now if you reply to my example with a ‘well I just won’t go to the store’, or ‘that’s a false dichotomy’ then re read the example again a few more times and see your answer to question 1.
On to question two.
I read your response to question two at least 5 times and I still can’t find the words yes OR no. If you think both choices are equally bad, you would answer no. If you think one is worse than the other, you would answer yes. Easy peasy. Instead, you responded with incoherent nonsense… negative ten and positive ten equals zero, things will get worse in a different order… what the hell are you talking about? The question is a very simple yes or no question. You can’t even get this one wrong so long as you answer with yes or no, I am asking your opinion.
If you think they are equally bad, we can discuss that, but you didn’t choose an answer here. No need for subtext, just yes or no will do nicely.
Despite your embracing the roll of a dishonest interlocutor, you made some progress here by, reluctantly, answering question one with a straight answer.
So if you share in my goal of holding as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible, would you like to take another shot at question two, and then show your work for your answer to question 3?
Dishonest, am I? I've answered each of your insultingly inane questions as honestly as I can. My answers just aren't as binary as you were hoping.
In your grocery store analogy, telling me not to choose plastic may be the same as telling me to choose paper from your perspective, but that ignores the option of choosing neither and taking my items out in the cart to load them into my car without bags.
You go on to say I should answer yes or no to whether I believe one candidate is worse than the other, but those aren't the only options. If you insist I use one of those specific words in my answer, then my answer is yes and no. They're wildly different, but either will likely pull us into World War III. One is more likely to have an immediately harmful effect on a marginalized class, while the other is more likely to have an immediately harmful effect on a different (but not mutually exclusive) marginalized class. There's no lesser between these two evils; they're just evil in different ways.
Thank you, citizen.
I get that you are in a downvotes storm right now, but for what it's worth, you're right, and I agree with what you're saying.
It's the party's responsibility to put someone up that is capable of doing the job successfully, and have them earn the votes, and not just being coerced into voting for one party for the sake of the country, and then having that repeated again and again.