RE: If you were or are a Murican, how would you vote in the 2016 election?
April 28, 2015 at 12:26 pm
(April 28, 2015 at 12:00 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote:(April 27, 2015 at 10:47 pm)Chuck Wrote: It's not an honorable fight, much less a good fight, if by fighting, the fighter greatly increases the probability of a worse outcome befalling those who did not chose to fight than they would otherwise have suffered, while affording only a very marginal probability, if that, of improving the lot of either the fighters or the bystander.
I don't see that going along with the duopoly presents a better alternative. Voting for either of the two parties is voting for the "worse outcome" that you worry about in this post.
Quote:Far from an honorable or a good fight, such a fight is nothing more than the self-indulgent but impotent scream at the unfairness, with the added problem of the damage it inflicts upon others, rather than coolly calculated manipulation of the odds to maximize the chance for the good.
I disagree. Trying to change the system through voting for the status quo is like fighting for peace or fucking for virginity. Voting third-party inflicts no damage on others, and while it may be an "impotent scream", it at least is not silent acquiescence.
In order for that to work, you would need to get so many people voting for the 3rd party candidate, they would have a realistic chance of winning. There would have to be one hell of a candidate for that to happen.
I voted 3rd party myself once - for Ross Perot in 1992. It's not that I wanted Perot to win. I wanted Bill Clinton but I saw the polls so-favored Clinton, he was going to win. So I cast my vote for Perot to send the same message you advocate. I didn't worry about practical effects of my vote because Bill clearly had it.
Totally different story in 2000. I voted for Al Gore - as a resident of Florida. I only regret I didn't work my ass off trying to convince other Floridians to vote for Gore. The Floridians who voted for Ralph Nader gave us George Fucking Bush-Lite. As a result, we got Robertson and Alito as SCOTUS justices. Those two dickwads vote on church-state separation issues. No difference than if we had elected Gore? Right.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein