I cringe every time I see this come up.
Because it isn’t what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.
Of course a 3rd party vote isn’t a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.
What it actually is is a discarded opportunity to vote against Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.
Everyone knows that’s what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.
It’s the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it’s broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you’ve shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.
I like your analogy. Let me expand.
This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.
I really like your take on this. So how is the switch going to get fixed, when the only time anyone pays attention to the fact that it’s broken, is when lives are on the line?
Why do neoliberals bring up the trolley problem as if it is some settled debate among scholars that there is one clear possible answer?
Sometimes, I wonder if a Trump victory would be the only way to getthe various leftist factions to stop arguing and stand together, side by side, united in the fact that fascists don’t care what flavour of ideological opposition they’re executing.
Who gives a shit about whether the Trolley Problem is settled - it’s about your answer: Which option do you endorse?
As a center-leftist supporting third party candidates (Go Claudia de la Cruz!), no a Trump victory won’t unite the left, because a Trump victory won’t make me like the Democrats more than I do now. If the Democrats want my vote, they will have to start appealing to me as a voter (stop supporting Israels war, reduce military spending, etc)- but the Democrats don’t have these policies and a Trump victory won’t change that.
Tl;dr a Trump victory changes nothing for my stance as a third party supporter
You missed my point. If Trump manages to pull off what he literally and explicitly endorses, we’ll land in the same grave together and be united that way. He has praised Hitler. You know, the guy who used a fire to suspend civil rights and persecute political opponents.
Support progressive politics in local elections, but right now, damage control is the strategic option.
Put differently, is “protect civil rights” not an issue on your ballot?
We had a Trump victory once. Spoiler: it didn’t unite the factions.
I didn’t mean “unite” in the sense of “we’ll work together” so much as “if he manages to pull off his idol’s stunt and execute his opponents, we’ll all die together”
Dark.
I tried reason and optimism. Maybe morbid cynicism is more effective.
It didn’t in 2016. I wouldn’t expect it to be different now.
Eh, he didn’t quite have the same “desperate christofascist enabler” vibe back then
Yeah. But the writing on the wall was legible enough then to know what we were in for. It’s now in bright flashing neon, and they still won’t budge.
I think my point was made poorly: I don’t think they’ll work together. He has gone fully mask off now, I worry he might pull a Reichstagsbrand 2 and start eliminating his opponents. And no matter how fractured we may be, no matter how we see our differences, at the end of they day we’re all leftists and to him, that’ll be enough to lump us all together as enemies.
I worry that the only way the leftists will unite is by being thrown into the same mass graves.
I’m not a neoliberal, I’m a socialist. I’m just not an idiot who will give a fascist free rein just because his opponent has the same shitty foreign policy as every politician in the whole fucking country has. There is a difference between the status-quo level of bad and catastrophic.
Excellently put!
Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.
Your fears of fascism are ignorant of the capacity that Democrats exhibit.
Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.
Yah, I’ll take “Things that didn’t happen” for a thousand, Alex. Let me guess, they did the “you’re going to be the most _____ person in the camps” joke and you took offense to the harsh, practical truth of it, so rather than reconsider whatever performative BS you were trying to use to justify voting against a clear and present danger, you decided to do exactly what the right does, and spin natural consequences and hurt feelings to make yourself a victim.
The trolley problem isn’t “settled debate” for the same reasons that Kamala vs Trump isn’t “settled debate”.
The point of the trolley problem and why it’s analogous is that it’s coming up fast and you must choose to either pull that lever or not. Whichever choice you make, that’s the moral character you’ve chosen to exhibit.
What is the moral character of someone incapable of questioning the validity of orphan crushing trolleys?
The Dems are running on Trump’s 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it’s time people started realizing that.
The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.
^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.
They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won’t affect them or their loved ones. It’s despicable.
Cringe
This went so far past just being wrong that it might just end up creating an entirely new paradigm of stupidity.
Not everyone lives in a swing state where votes actually matter.
No one is buying the bullshit you have for sale.
Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers
Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.
The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.
What a bold and bizarre claim to think there is any winning margin that would repel suspicions.
If Harris wants liberal votes, why is she courting Republicans?
You sure seem to have every excuse in the book, don’t you?
Thank goodness not enough people in “safe” states think that way.
They use the same logic of people in swing states??
I think we have the best chance to break the third party at the local level.
I must have missed that footnote in their rhetoric.
Come on, guy.
I’m not your guy, buddy!
Hey, not only am i your buddy, I’m also your fwiend, guy.
Check my history. Vote third party if you don’t live in a swing state is literally what I have been saying.
Ex https://lemmy.ml/post/21262971, https://lemmy.ml/comment/14519387
Good. Tell your Lemmy Lefty buddies to do the same.
By definition, most people do not live in swing states.
Disclaimers and footnotes are irrelevant.
At least MAGA is honest. Yuck.
Honest lmao
Yeah – they’re proud of their hatred and open about wanting Trump to dismantle the system.
Lemmy Lefties just posture and virtue signal. It’s disgusting.
It sounds like it’s young people (under 25) who don’t understand exactly how bad it will be if trump wins.
I’ve survived a lot of shit presidents. Trump is the first one who actually scares me.
Hopefully they will do the right thing when it comes time to actually vote.
Even Dick “I did 911” Cheney is against him. He’s an actual evil person who thinks Trump is too evil
Too evil for Dick Cheney is a very special form of evil indeed.
In a way, this is all you need to know right here.
W was actually worse than trump’s first term.
But that’s only because W had far more competent people, it’s like how Germany was severely handicapped in the war by Hitler always getting in the damn way.
This time I suspect he’d have better minions.
Are these Schrodinger’s young people who simultaneously don’t vote, but also single-handedly tip the entire election?
If every young person voted, the Republican party would collapse until it took a hard left turn. This is not a paradox.
If wishes were fishes we’d all be in the sea?
They aren’t wrong. At least not in spirit. In a non-stupid system they’d be correct at every level.
Until everybody in the conversation understands the contents of that video, you aren’t at the point where you can have the conversation meaningfully. It changes the whole game.
And once they understand it, the remaining conversation may just be a mutual nod of understanding. First past the post is a third party killer, and not because the idiot populace lacks the will. The actual voting math itself is the problem, and ranked choice (or similar) solves the voting math problem in a way that third, fourth, fifth parties can exist and win, instead of debuffing allies and by so doing helping their enemies.
the video learned the wrong lesson. party consolidation is the result of strategic voting. values voting is the solution.
You just completely missed the point.
You literally cannot “values vote” your way to a functional First Past the Post voting system.
And trying to get others to join in your misunderstanding of basic reality is actively harmful to your, and their interests.
Maybe that’s the problem. You don’t want to admit that you’re the bad guy…
values voting is the solution. it’s plain as day that the reason party consolidation happens is strategic voting. a refusal to compromise preserves a diversity of parties.
I’m not a bad guy.
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We all already understand how it works. Every single third party voter hears this stuff constantly, from literally everyone. It is impossible to not hear it while telling people you’re voting third party, even if you tried as hard as you could to block it out.
Maybe someday you’ll actually understand then.
Your little party literally cannot win at anything beyond the local level.
Has your third party run for any local positions? No? They only show up in presidential election years?
That tells us they are horrible people who know damn well that they’re helping Trump.
I understand already. The problem is that none of you understand or have any interest in engaging with what third party voters actually believe or why we reject your arguments, you just want to repeat the same BS over and over in hopes that we fall in line.
The only people who are helping Trump are Trump voters, because that’s how votes work.
What you believe doesn’t matter. What reality is, and how it works, and what is on the line is what matters.
That’s not how votes work. And I’m not going to explain it to you because EVERONE here already has. You have absolutely no intention to argue in good faith at this point.
In FPTP, any vote not for one, is an assist for the other. Period. End of story. Case closed. No more debate on it.
That you’re here to continue arguing with people illustrates that you’re not here to discuss it in good faith at all.
Therefore, I’d ask anyone reading along to just disregard this person as a bad faith actor and don’t engage with them any further on this.
So if I don’t vote for Kamala, I’m voting for Trump. But hold on - by not voting for Trump, that’s also a vote for Kamala! But I’m also voting for the person I actually voted for. Am I casting votes for three different candidates?
The way votes work is that they tally up all the people who actually voted for a candidate, and that number is higher than the people who actually voted for any particular other candidate, then that candidate wins. Third party votes do not get added to either candidate’s vote total. So not voting for one is not an assist for the other. Period. End of story. Case Closed. No more debate about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election
Here. This is how your system actually works. Not how you believe it to work. Wilson won with less than 42% of the votes because a third party managed to be popular enough to split the votes and stole enough votes from Taft. This is what would happen if people actually listened to you. Thank fuck they don’t.
Reading this thread is painful…
You say you know exactly how it works. Are you aware that the only possibilities for president are the Dem or Rep nominee? Your comments make it seem like you don’t know that.
It’s because Objection here is a full on ml cult member. They use moronic statements like calling people NSA spies, everyone they don’t like is a lib, they’re trans of course so that’s their defense when cornered, Ukraine started the war, etc etc. Their comment history is a who’s who of all the classic cliches.
It’s not worth your time talking to them. They’re just trolling for 20 comment deep arguments.
Yes, I’m aware that those are the only realistic winners of this election. I’m not aware of anything I might have said that would imply I think otherwise.
by not voting for a candidate that can win, your vote is entirely thrown away, it could’ve been used on someone who had a chance, but was wasted, therefore it benefitted the party you least support
vote strategically, or why bother?
Yeah… they have no intention to discuss anything in good faith whatsoever. You’re spot on with the logic, but they’re not going to even address it. Instead- they’ll just dump an unasked-for ethics lesson on you because it makes them feel smart and superior to everyone.
Check their comment history. They’re like a wannabe Chidi from The Good Place, only he isn’t even a real person, and their interpretation of him is WAY off.
Ok, so now it’s thrown away as opposed to being a vote for Trump.
There are several good reasons why voting third party is better than not voting. First, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy to say that a third party can’t win, and that assumption is based on previous vote totals in previous elections, so the total in this election will affect conventional wisdom in future elections. Second, there are thresholds where even if a party doesn’t win, they could be eligible for things like public election funding. Third, voting third party as opposed to not voting promotes political engagement, and can publicize organizations like PSL that are involved in things outside of elections. Fourth, voting third party tells politicians where you’re politically aligned, and opens the door for the party to bargain with a major party and potentially being able to offer an endorsement in exchange for concessions.
I think there is a point that gets left out in this back and forth a lot. So because of the way our system is, only two parties currently have a real world chance at winning. And yes voting for one is not a vote for the other. Likewise voting 3rd party is not voting for the other. In any literal sense this is true.
The argument that’s trying to be made but is being done poorly imo, is that if you aren’t helping to stop a party from winning by voting against them (and for the only other party capable of winning) then you are actively hurting the chances of said party being defeated. So in this case, not voting for harris, who is the only candidate opposing trump with a real world chance of winning, means that you are helping trump to win, because it’s one less vote to the party capable of beating him.
When they say you voting 3rd party is a vote for trump, it’s not literal. It’s the effective end though. If not enough people vote harris, trump wins. They are talking about the argument from a single perspective, of defeating trump. You can make the argument from the other perspective of trump defeating harris too, that not voting trump helps harris. And both statements are true. If you don’t help a cause, you hurt it. And the same goes for 3rd parties. If you don’t help them, you hurt them.
Let’s take our current race as an example. If I had ranked choice I’d vote 3rd party, then harris, then a 4th party then at the very bottom trump. Since we have FPTP though this really just becomes my order of preference.
In our FPTP system without ranked choice voting, when it comes to a federal presidential election, if you aren’t voting for a party that can actually win (even if they aren’t your first choice), then you are increasing the chances for their competition. In our case the 3rd and 4th party are incapable of producing a win, no matter how badly we may want it. So if I want my vote to make a difference that helps push things towards my preferences, then I have to remove those two from my consideration. I could vote for them. But by doing so my alternative preference of harris doesn’t get a vote. Fewer votes for my alternative preference means that my lowest preference of trump stands a better chance of winning because there is now less opposition from the preference with a chance to win.
Any and all parties want you to vote for them. But their next preference is that you not vote, or at least vote in a way that doesn’t support their strongest competition.
If it were green against democrats as the top two in an election, and you are cheering on green. Would you prefer someone (Joe) that doesn’t want to vote green, instead vote democrat, a 3rd party with no chance at winning, or not at all? I can’t say what you’d choose in actuality, but in most cases, others in the same position wouldn’t care one bit if Joe voted 3rd party or not at all, because at least he didn’t help the democrats.
Sorry, a bit rambly and this is from my phone so probably littered with grammar issues. But that’s my general point of view on it. Most people view it as if someone isn’t helping, they are hurting. Thanks for coming to my ted talk lol
In any literal sense this is true.
It is very much false, in any literal sense. When they count up the votes, they do not add third party votes to the other side. The argument you’re actually trying to make (or should be trying to make, at least) is that, despite being false in a literal sense, it is true in a metaphorical or in a practical sense. Otherwise, you are just objectively wrong.
The argument that’s trying to be made but is being done poorly imo, is that if you aren’t helping to stop a party from winning by voting against them (and for the only other party capable of winning) then you are actively hurting the chances of said party being defeated. So in this case, not voting for harris, who is the only candidate opposing trump with a real world chance of winning, means that you are helping trump to win, because it’s one less vote to the party capable of beating him.
No, I’m not “hurting” Harris’ chances. I’m just not helping them. I am not taking a vote away from Harris, if you wipe me away from existence, Harris doesn’t have “one less vote” than she would have otherwise, she has the exact same number. So this is also wrong.
When they say you voting 3rd party is a vote for trump, it’s not literal.
You just said it was literal.
If you don’t help a cause, you hurt it. And the same goes for 3rd parties. If you don’t help them, you hurt them.
Categorically false. If someone on the other side of the world murders someone, and I did nothing to help the victim, did I hurt them? No, I just didn’t help them. The baseline or zero-point is non-involvement.
In our FPTP system without ranked choice voting, when it comes to a federal presidential election, if you aren’t voting for a party that can actually win (even if they aren’t your first choice), then you are increasing the chances for their competition
Again, false. I’m not increasing the chances for their competition, I’m just not decreasing their chances.
Most people view it as if someone isn’t helping, they are hurting.
I have no idea if “most people” view it that way or not, but regardless, it’s not how I view it and I don’t think it’s a reasonable way to view it.
You’re wrong.
No, you’re wrong.
I can’t be baited bud. That’s not how it works. I have the strength of conviction to say something and stick with it. So I won’t be indulging you by answering your bad faith bullshit.
Not happening.
I’m just here to walk you into the light so people can see what you’re up to and maybe stop taking you so seriously.
Nothing more.
But please, by all means. Continue with your smug little ethics lesson. Im enjoying it!
I voted for Obama, Clinton(at an empty polling place BTW), Biden, and will for Harris, all with no snap in my step and a funeral dirge in my heart, just so I can say I used what little power I have for harm reduction.
I’d rather not have fascist scapegoating along with our antisocial, rigged crony market capitalist economy we don’t get a vote on sucking us dry as we struggle to subsist. We only get a vote on how to address the social issue symptoms of that economy, if at all, and who to blame, and sadly it’s never the private shareholder class that should be.
Let’s be clear , we’re circling the drain. Inequality will continue to increase as greed induced climate change increases scarcity for the non wealthy masses, D or R, but at least with D, we won’t arbitrarily point the finger at brown people and hit them with sticks. That’s is the extent of our vote, whether to starve us or starve us while beating us.
We need a new constitution, one that punishes greed, with life imprisonment when applied to politics, and rewards prosocial activity. This country died under Reagan as anything more than a money printer for the tiny class of people that don’t see you or as human, just resources to extract MOAR value from.
But since that won’t happen, I’ll do the right thing without hope in the face of Armageddon, harm reduction. A vote to leave the water pumps running on this sinking ship, nothing more.
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If anything, lefties shouldn’t be a single issue voter at all. They should be picking someone who might move toward that direction and have the chance to win, not abstaining.
As the famous word goes: Evil triumph when good men do nothing. You can’t abstain or do protest vote and expect anything to change under Trump, that single issue you hold so important will get worst, or even impossible.
Jay Shapiro explains this well in a video:
TL:DW?
In this video, I challenge the dismissive label of ‘single-issue voting’. I break down how a focus on an issue like genocide reveals deeper political and moral stakes, rejecting the idea that elections are merely a choice between the ‘lesser of two evils,’ and offering my reasoning—and hope—for refusing to play the game.
Well this “single issue” of land stealing, white supremacist subjugation of a people on their native land, ethnic cleansing and genocide, has only gotten worse with every election.
If we look at AIPAC they arent powerful because they influence who wins. They are powerful because they onfluence who looses.
That is why being pro genocide remains a staple of both parties policies. The only way to change that, is to punish the side that claims to not be pro genocide generally, so it has to become against genocide specifically.
And we had one year of trying to do that before the election, where people here and in othernplace vigorously defended being pro genocide, as challenging that before the election would be bad for the election.
We saw with Biden stepping down that challenging the dementia candidate was actually beneficial for the Democrats election chances, despite the same denial and backlash over pointing out Bidens failing mental capacities.
Now i am sure that these sentiments of immediately attacking people who wanted the Democrats to become a non genocide party when it was still possible to achieve that for the election, were stirred by AIPAC and other establishment actors, who would rather have Trump win than end genocide or get to meaningful progressive politics like proper healthcare and workers rights.
Most of what you say is exactly correct. The thing is, you have drawn a little outline of a box around this one situation, and allowed its glow to obscure all else outside the line.
Make the box bigger. Let the other issues that still count and effect people be inside the box.
Trans people need you to vote Harris, because they’ll be in extermination camps under Trump. Women in Mississippi whose pregnancies are going to tragically go bad next year need you to save their lives by voting Harris, because Trump will put the final nail in the coffin on abortion. Plenty of people will go homeless under Trump who would have hung on with higher wages and monopoly busting under Harris.
Being a single issue voter is a luxury that assumes everything else is basically solid, so we can press the one issue extra hard and let the rest of the garden tend itself a bit.
We are in the exact opposite of that situation in the 2024 presidential election. Dont confuse the shittiness of the whole situation with relatively much much better choice of Harris over Trump.
So women needlessly dying of miscarriages and trans people getting locked up in camps is fine so long as the democrats are punished.
Mass deportations with sketchy legal grounds are also fine because the democrats will totally learn their lesson this time.
Wake the hell up. You’re only punishing innocent americans. The democrats will be FINE if trump wins.
Okay, sure, but let’s say Trump win and you successfully punish Democrats, the results are…you also punished abortion right, people of colour, the lgbtq community, american with middle-eastern origin, worsening the immigrant deportation, and lastly, eliminating the chance of palestine-israel ceasefire and basically confirming the annexation of Gaza and West Bank. Isn’t that the thing you most concerned with? And now the blood is on your hands too. That doesn’t sounds like left-wing thinking to me at all.
I leave out a lot of thing, it’s really up to you to figure out what you will lose. I’m not even from US and another Trump term will undoubtedly affect the world in one way or another.
Ho Chi Minh knew all about America’s long history of genocide and slavery.
When the time came to work with the American OSS to fight the Japanese he helped the Americans.
Any questions?
Yeah one question, what did America do to Vietnam after that?
What were the Japanese doing then?
Are you saying we should allow the genocide in Palestine to continue, and add suffering in America too?
Im saying using Vietnam as an example why working with the US is good is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
I think it was less, “the US is good” and more “one way or another someone is gonna fuck you over, sometimes the only choice you have is who”
Fine, give me a better example.
I’m not married to that analogy.
I could talk about the women and former slaves who worked for politicians who couldn’t promise them the vote.
Would that get the point across to you?
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all they have to do is point out that they don’t live in a swing state and that’s it, there’s nothing else to say, they just made a strong case and you have no rebuttal
lol
There’s tons to say.
Well, not tons, but a solid-ass rebuttal.
Those states do matter. They only “don’t matter” because everybody in them has historically done and is predicted to do a certain thing. If enough people learn of that prediction, become unmotivated, and don’t do that thing anymore, then those states become swing states which could swing the other way. It’s not guaranteed to always be the way it’s been.
“Blue state” and “red state” aren’t unchanging aspects of the geography, they’re the actions of individuals as seen from an aerial view.
Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.
Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.
And yet, this logic doesn’t apply to unseating the existing parties, for some reason. If Illinois could eventually turn red, then it follows that it could eventually turn green. In either case, it’s just a matter of “enough people” changing their behavior.
The difference between red and blue is often about 5-10 percentage points. But if you’re up 5, that means your opponent is down 5. Because it still has to add up to 100.
To turn a state green, that party would have to be up at least 50%.
You see how that’s a problem, right?
But while Green is pushing ahead, where do you think those votes are coming from?
If the Greens pick up 5% of the vote, they need to take those votes from someone, and that’s most likely the Dems. Now they have 45% of the vote, because percentages still have to add up to 100, the Republicans have 50%, and handily win the election.
For greens to replace, most likely the democrats, would involve the left loosing every election for about a decade or two. Just completely having no voice in government.
You see what parties don’t switch like that right? No, the party has to collapse, and then a replacement has to step in.
And in order for a party to collapse, it needs to be a coalition party. Like the Whigs. https://www.history.com/news/whig-party-collapse
Something that is unlikely to happen to a modern party.
Thus the only way for the greens to gain power is to change the voting system. Real voting reform needs either Approval or STAR as the voting system. (there are a few more, like Ranked Robin, but the main point is that it needs to be a cardinal voting system.)
The Green party under Jill Stein mildly supports RCV, a system that deeply flawed and will not actually fix things.
If the democrats started losing every election because of the greens, then I expect what would happen is that they’d start supporting voting reform, and if that happened, I’d be willing to vote for them so that they can implement it. But currently, while there are a handful who do, they are incentivized not to support it, since FPTP benefits them.
New parties have to get big at local levels first before shooting for the stars
het.jpg
I already voted for Harris. No need to discus this any further.
Like this?
I live in a swing state, and a frightening number of my friends are refusing to vote or voting 3rd party. When pressed if they truly felt that there would be no difference in their lives or the world between Harris or Trump, they just double down on regurgitated excuses and bury their heads in the sand. I really don’t get it.
Lol they’re big mad about this one but it’s true. Next they’re gonna go blame the left in states that voted for Kamala for her loss.
Well in that case it’s not really relevant.
Right right and many of the posts that we’ve seen here over the past 3 months forget about that key point, which is just an insult to the majority of voters in the United States.
And that’s how the Democrats can lose political support. That’s how they can alienate potential allies.
I’m not even convinced it’s even real leftists posting this stuff. It often seems like astroturfing. Not only would fake leftists possibly sway undecided voters, but they also tarnish any positivity the left deserves. Win-win for the right.
Hang around them long enough. They will slip. They inevitably use right wing colloquialisms.
Dealt with someone ostensibly from the UK advocating for not voting and after being pressed repeatedly finally worked their way down to “I’m not voting because I can’t”.
Actual foreign election interference, and the UK has some notable Russian ties. Wouldn’t be surprised if that rube has ties to Russia or is actually on a ruble payroll
Ha, I know exactly who you’re referring to!
I’m a real leftist who is not voting this US election
...
I’m not an American citizen.
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I’d like to think you’re right.
But I have heard borderline stuff like this in real life from people whom I know are solid progressives. (Admittedly, these are folks on my soccer team who are almost 2 decades younger than me. I can’t imagine what ending their teens during a pandemic was like so I kind of expect their politics to be wildly different.)
“Borderline” is entirely different. Voting for Harris while being salty about it is a perfectly reasonable thing real progressives should do, and it’s exactly the opposite of what these astroturf third-party propagandists are calling for even if the (alleged) sentiment is adjacent. That “border” is a knife edge and the difference between a genuine progressive and a[n effectively] pro-Trump useful idiot comes down to which side of it they fall off.
That’s absolutely true and very well put. Doing the right thing and being happy about it are two very different beasts.
Thank you!
Astroturfing exists to poison the minds of on lookers. If useful idiots didn’t adopt the warped logic they wouldn’t astroturf.
It blows my mind that people are dumb enough for it to work but in an era of razor tight electoral margins, even a few idiots can matter.
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But Palestine hurr Durr
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.
2016-2020 was the beta test. If this goes into production we’re all fucked.
I echo the sentiment (regarding Trump being a much, much worse outcome), but you can already “Kiss Hong Kong goodbye”. It’s part of China, they have cracked down, and the two systems has been reduced to like 1.5 systems ahead of schedule.
I am genuinely curious what you think either presidential candidate would do about this, considering they will continue to espouse the One China policy. Where they might differ is in their support of Taiwan, whose status is much more murky.
Hong Kong though? Pretty sure that ship sailed once the UN decided: no Empire no longer, and the 99 year lease came to an end.
Ope sorry I meant Taiwan
Lol, yeah this makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying 😅
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.
Tankies would love that, though.
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in?
It seems like such a basic concept; trump means more dead Palestinians. How can someone simultaneously claim to support Palestinians and advocate for more dead Palestinians?
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Advocating against voting for Democrats, no matter what the particular language, is advocating for actions that will increase the chances of Trump getting elected, of Republicans having majorities and of Israel’s further escalation in Palestine, in addition to all the other bad things Republicans will do.
The time to move Democrats on the issues is not now. Those times were during the primaries (in which I voted uncommitted on the presidential level and for pro-palestinian candidates on other levels) and after the election through things like lobbying.
If there are particular third-party candidates who have any reasonable chance of winning rather than being a spoiler (I don’t know of any), it’s reasonable to advocate to their electorate that one vote for them instead of the Democratic candidate. However, if one supports Palestinians and opposes genocide, the best vote in the presidential election and in most national or state elections on November 5 is for the Democratic candidate. That’s not a “vote blue no matter who” opinion or an “all you need to do is vote for the Dems” opinion. It’s harm reduction in the short term so that we can ensure that there actually are medium and long terms for as many people as possible.
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I’ve had people telling me that I have “blood on [my] hands” because I’m voting for Harris. It’s insane. These people have no fucking concept.
If Harris wins, it will be by razor-thin margin. If she loses, trump wins. If trump wins, the genocide will get cranked up to 11. So voting 3rd party means even MORE “blood on my hands” than a Harris vote.
At least with Harris, there’s a CHANCE she can be reasoned with and stop the bloodshed.
These “Harris = genocide” people are liars, just trying to get trump elected - to sabotage this country.
There is a world where abstaining could be a reasonable approach. That world probably disappeared before I was born.
Even if that 1 to 10 scale was in magnitudes (10^n), 11 would still be an understatement for what Donald Dump would encourage Israel and Russia to do.
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It’s all the fault of the Democrats. If they had run Bernie he would have been voted in and we wouldn’t be here.
The fact that Bernie endorses Harris is meaningless, because he’s not a real Socialist.
Things I’ve heard today on Lemm.ee
To be fair, Bernie would have won in 2016, and I do blame Clinton for Trump winning in the first place.
Didn’t stop me from voting for Harris though in an actually important election. Just glad it’s not Hillary i’m having to hold my nose over.
Ahaha, you had me terrified for a sec there.
Who on .ee are you seeing comments like this from?
I’ve never seen a fellow .ee like this. Curious to hear what communities it’s on
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B-but Bernie is an independent and not in any party. Therefore the democrats can’t really run him.
shortsightedness is a stubborn affliction
I imagine that folks on both sides believe this comment is about the other one.
What other side? America is a one-party country with a republican cancer metastasizing.
I wish that more people could see that there aren’t two sides. Neither side is on your side, nobody is on your side, and you can think you’re on their side but it just doesn’t work that way.
Good point. Same goes for fake news. Let’s address the fear and anger on both sides first, only then we can get some facts in.
It’s pretty simple actually, I’m not voting for him.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.” But hey, I’m sure those good men felt the same way you do.
That quote is such a funny thing. My mom once quoted it to me as a reason to support the Iraq War. I didn’t even know how to respond to that because it was so completely backwards. The way I saw it, the invasion of Iraq was evil triumphing because good people did nothing to stop it.
That’s how I feel about you saying it to me now. Evil is triumphing in Gaza precisely because people aren’t willing to take a stand on it.
I am doing something. I’m voting for the issues at my doorstep. I have a gay child, and a non-binary child. I have another that is autistic.
If Trump wins, there’s a non-zero chance that my children will be in danger.
I’m also an advocate for the homeless (don’t correct me. I used to be homeless, and we hate “unhoused”),.
I advocate for foster youth, a sector no politician cares about.
All you do is complain about one issue. There’s scores of issues. Jill Stein isn’t happening. Vote in reality, and for reproductive rights, non-cis rights, rights for the homeless, and for someone that will actually win.
I won’t say a vote for Jill is a vote for Trump.
A vote for Jill is the same as not voting. I tell people that didn’t vote “you don’t vote, you don’t have a right to bitch”
I respect your decision. But I’m not going to do the same. If Palestinians can be sacrificed today, I can be sacrificed tomorrow. If a line cannot be drawn somewhere, then we will all be fucked, and this is where I have drawn mine.
That’s your decision. In my opinion, it means your not voting. Your line helps nobody.
We will be stuck voting for the lesser evil until the end of time unless things change, and they cannot be changed if we don’t try to change them.
I’ve explained myself in many different ways in this thread, but honestly, that’s what it comes down to.
I don’t live in a swing state regardless.
Ahhh yes, the oh so helpful stand of not voting for a party that could win.
Like, you do understand that Harris likely means fewer dead Palestinians than trump, yes? This isn’t complicated.
Harris is vice president. There’s a genocide ongoing under her and Biden’s approval. End of the story. She has also repeatedly expressed her lack of will to change the current situation.
Ahhh yes, as VP she shouls strike out and create her own foreign policy while under another administration!
The irony is I don’t imagine you understand how ridiculously silly that statement was.
Though I’m curious how helping trump will somehow help the Palestineans.
I understand your feelings, and sometimes I feel the same way. But what you didn’t tell us is the steps you’ve taken to make life better for people in Palestine and neighboring countries who are dying now.
If you want to argue that Harris is the lesser of two evils and that you’re also working to prevent her from being as evil as she has been in the past, you actually have to say that. Or don’t say it, and we’ll assume that you’re doing nothing because you don’t care, and the future is going to be just like the past, which is not acceptable.
I don’t feel the need to get into a pissing contest over who is doing more. Nor do I think it’s particularly helpful to demand everyone live like I do. That being said, if you are curious:
I have taken a 25 or 35% pay cut (40 if the last headhunter is to be believed) so I can work for a non profit and get underprivileged kids a post secondary education, haven’t bought sweatshop clothes in a decade etc. I door knock for every election for the party furthest left that can win. I’m Canadian and relatively support my Leftist party’s positions but generally write in where possible.
Were I American, I’d be door knocking, volunteering and everything else for every damned primary as that’s how we move things.
I don’t believe in the ideology of lesser evilism. The refusal to hold politicians to any sort of standard whatsoever is a part of why we’re in this situation in the first place.
I don’t believe in the ideology of lesser evilism
That’s a very easy view to hold when you aren’t one of the Palestinians who will die because of people like you making the same choice.
Small comfort to the people whom you pretend to care about.
Do you think the Palestinians in Gaza believe in applying lesser-evilism to the US election? I think it’s the opposite, it’s a very easy view to hold when the people dying under the lesser evil are kept safely out of sight and out of mind. It’s much harder to cradle a dead child in your arms and say, “Well, it could be worse.”
I imagine they’d like fewer bombs as opposed to more bombs, yes.
The best would be zero bombs but nothing you are doing is getting them anywhere closer to that.
But you are, through your choice, helping there be more bombs and more dead.
Does everyone see how this person offers nothing but contrarian nonsense disguised as ethics lessons?
Please call them out and move on. Don’t waste time on this.
Right, because Trump is pro Palestine. Why don’t you do something that will actually help. And I’m not talking about voting…
No one said you’re voting for him, but not voting against him is absolutely enabling him while simultaneously saying that you’re completely fine with either outcome.
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Come on man… read the rules.
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Asaaand you’re done.
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Only in the sense that I am “enabling” every single event happening in the world right now.
Yeah. I’m not arguing with your sarcasm. Have a good day.
👍
If you had to vote for Trump or Kamala, which would you choose?
Don’t waste your time with this person. They’re only interested in giving smug ethics lessons that don’t even apply to the situation. Maybe it makes them feel superior to everyone? Who knows, but it’s a waste of time either way.
Trust me, I’m well aware of Objection.
I wouldn’t. I’d stay home.
Not an option in this hypothetical.
Can you answer the simple question?
Why isn’t it an option in this hypothetical? Is there a gun to my head?
I guess I’d either try to spoil my ballot, or just sit there with the pen in my hand until they either shoot me or leave me alone.
Again, the question is Kamala or Trump, no other options.
Can you answer this very simple question?
I just did. My answer is neither.
You’ll have to elaborate on why that isn’t an option in your hypothetical if you don’t accept that.
Do you just not understand what a hypothetical is?
For those reading, the reason Objection won’t answer this very simple question is because they’re smart enough to know exactly where I’m going with it, and they know that it reveals their position as indefensible.
This is the Lemmy Lefty playbook to a T.
I was going to have a witty exchange with you and have an example of what you’re doing, but frankly I’m tired.
I’m tired of everything about you people.
So, I’m just going to block you.
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Bye, Felicia.
Apparently not voting for the Diet Fascist party means you automatically voted for the Fascist party. The mental gymnastics of these election meme spammers are wild to behold.
Remember, voting is not the same as support. But also, voting third party is supporting Trump.
Voting third party, or not voting, is choosing inaction. It’s still a choice. The basic trolley problem of the trolley will kill 10 people if you don’t pull the lever but 1 if you do is analogous to this. Choosing to not divert the trolley is still a choice. However, you’re not culpable for the fact that people are tied to the rails in general. You’re only accountable for the thing you had power over.
We don’t have the ability to have a third candidate elected, or to change the candidates who are running. We can only elect one of the two. It’s really very simple. It’s the absolute basic thing you’ll learn in probably the first day of an ethics course. If you can’t understand the bare minimum, we’ll I don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry. It is pretty weird to argue you have the moral high ground and to struggle with basic ethics though.
Edit to add: There are also other actions you can take outside of voting to try to change opinion and create action that agrees with you. Do those. However, I promise one of the two candidates will never listen to you, and most likely will make it hard to impossible to take these other actions.
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Ah yes, the first day in ethics they tell you how the Trolley Problem famously has one objective answer that everyone agrees with. You have clearly, definitely attended an ethics class.
Dunning-Kruger in full effect here.
The trolley problem famously has a near infinite number of variations to tease out people’s ethical boundaries. The first basic one is the starting point. It’s a point pretty much everyone agrees on. Theoretically you could disagree, but I’ve never seen it. Everyone almost always understands that more people dying is bad, and that pulling a lever is a minimal action that you should feel obligated to pull if it saves lives.
The variation where you push someone onto the tracks to stop the trolley? There are lots of disagreements about that, because you’re actively killing someone to save lives. That’s not so with the lever.
Edit to add: Yes, I have taken ethics courses. I had a professor who was in the CIA, which led to some interesting discussions of ethics, as I’m sure you can imagine.
It’s not something “pretty much everyone agrees on.” There’s an entire branch of moral philosophy, deontology, that completely disagrees with pulling the lever in the original problem, but there’s also plenty of other philosophies that could say the same, such as rule utilitarianism. Do not try to tell me I don’t know basic ethics when you’ve never even heard of a major school of thought.
The entire purpose of the trolley problem is to highlight disagreements between different branches of moral philosophy, and to interrogate our moral intuitions. The fact that it seems better to pull the lever doesn’t necessarily mean that it is better, especially when, as you mentioned, there are follow up to the thought experiment where the intuitive answer is the opposite.
No offense but an ethics professor who was in the CIA sounds like the setup to a bad joke, and I’d ask you to appreciate my restraint in not clowning on that. But if you were taught about the trolley problem in an ethics class, and the things I just said weren’t mentioned, then you were taught poorly. The purpose of such a class is not to give you objective right-or-wrong answers, it’s to inform you about a variety of perspectives and encourage you to identify and question your preconceived beliefs.
Do not try to tell me I don’t know basic ethics when you’ve never even heard of a major school of thought.
OK buddy, I have. Thanks. So I’ll continue.
The entire purpose of the trolley problem is to highlight disagreements between different branches of moral philosophy, and to interrogate our moral intuitions.
As I said. Right. We start with a basic problem and diverge from there to see where the point you decide to not divert the trolley appears. If you don’t ever want to divert the trolley then there’s no point.
No offense but an ethics professor who was in the CIA sounds like the setup to a bad joke, and I’d ask you to appreciate my restraint in not clowning on that.
Which is why I mentioned it… You’re a strange one. It was interesting because he had knowledge of some pretty controversial ethical decisions that actually made for good lessons. Basically the trolley problem in real life, and where the actions were pretty fucked up.
But if you were taught about the trolley problem in an ethics class, and the things I just said weren’t mentioned, then you were taught poorly.
I brought them up… What?
The purpose of such a class is not to give you objective right-or-wrong answers, it’s to inform you about a variety of perspectives and encourage you to identify and question your preconceived beliefs.
Correct. However, we start from a position that we generally all agree on or we don’t get anywhere. We can ignore the people who want people to die because they aren’t really thinking about ethics, at least not in a sense almost anyone else would agree with. The basic trolley problem is the starting point because the vast majority of people will agree with pulling the lever because it’s the only reasonable option.
You got wrecked on your own ethics lessons! That had to hurt a bit!
Dude… your spend all day smearing the walls of lemmy with pseudo-intellectual rhetoric! How can you sit there all smug and sarcastically accuse others of attending an ethics class.
In five days, Everyone knows you are going to vanish from here. Frankly, I’m amazed anyone is taking you seriously at all.
I don’t see how my internet addiction has anything to do with the fact that y’all possess complete ignorance of basic ethics while accusing everyone you disagree with of the same.
y’all possess complete ignorance of basic ethics while accusing everyone you disagree with of the same.
The irony in this statement is nothing short of heaven manifested through words! Thank you so much for having said it! It’s fucking beautiful!
Liberals explaining how “harm reduction” means voting but never demanding anything while calling anyone who criticizes them a “Russian bot”:
Sounds like a Russian bot
Ah im sorry I mean I fully support the party and would never betray it. I apologize for my thought crimes and will fight for democracy by blindly supporting the party :3
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Liberals during election time: VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO
Liberals during the rest of the 4 years:Third party voters during election time: RHEEEEEEE! I refuse to vote because of [CURRENT ISSUE THEY HEARD ABOUT FROM A FRIEND IN PHYS ED]
Third part voters the rest of the four years:
Wait… What issue?Also third party voters during local and regional elections: crickets
Liberals during the rest of the 4 years: Still getting beaten by police trying to change the system
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In a different voting system that would be true, and if you don’t have the somewhat obscure and technical piece of voting knowledge that this video explains really well, there’s no reason not to think that:
Once you understand that the dumb is baked into the voting math itself, “too dumb to vote third party” clarifies into “first past the post is shit”, and the solution becomes pushing like hell for ranked choice voting, single transferable vote, alternative vote, etc. Stopping the fourth reich is an implied portion of that process, as a way of preserving voting itself.
Make sure to watch that video because you’re thinking correctly, just without factoring in one key game piece that there’s no reason for you to have heard of, one that kind of flips the while thing around.
I will say, the voting system that we advocate for is important.
There are three common choices. RCV, Approval, and STAR.
RCV has some momentum, but is just a bad voting system. It’s arguably worse than Fist Past the Post, because in a way, it is FPtP. Or rather, it’s several FPtP elections in a row, dropping the lowest each time.
Which is where a problem creeps in. See, it’s drop lowest, and then never hear from that person again. So if they are the literal second choice of 99% of voters, they’re dropped in the first round and never seen again.
This leads to ballots that look like this;
1 - dropped in 4th round 2- dropped in 1st round 3- dropped in 2nd round 4- dropped in 3rd round 5- Guy you kind of hate and only listed because the rules said you had to list 5. He’s the one who got your vote.
If you had dropped your first choice, Your second through third might have won.
There’s also a version of the above ballot that doesn’t have a number 5, in that case your ballot is just thrown out as exhausted. Up to 18% of ballots get thrown out as exhausted. At least that’s what the data from California and Maine has said.
Most countries that use IRV (RCV’s real name) don’t publish any election data, so we use what we’ve got.
Anyway, Approval and STAR are both immune to shit like the above, because how you rate one candidate has zero bearing on how you rate another. Woo for cardinal voting systems.
I love the “You should just vote in the primaries” Democrats, who didn’t even blink back in 2020 when Chris Matthews was on national television screaming that Bernie Sanders supporters were going to drag him into Central Park and shoot him.
This is the state of modern American politics. Republicans are told that they need to vote for the most reactionary, fascist, fringe candidate or they’ll be murdered by migrants. Democrats are told that they need to vote for the most centrist corporate shill in the Senate or they’ll be invaded by Russia.
Everything is fearmongering all the time. Nobody even talks about policy anymore.
That and the fact that it’s legally impossible for one to win the presidency, yeah.
Voting/Electoral Fetishism replaces actual political action:
Issues, policies, and outcomes are all carefully manufactured and managed by a small number of power elites. The media, political parties, security forces (psych-ops), even the mafia and intellectual and artistic elites all work together to shape a political simulacrum within which our limited discourses and actions circulate. source
Every 4 years, hundreds of millions of people set their conscience to the side and continue to vote for the thing they’ll complain about until the next time, when they do it all again.
