(September 17, 2020 at 5:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: You have a moral obligation to choose the lesser evil if that's your only alternative to a greater evil.

How do you measure evil to know who has less of it?

(September 21, 2020 at 10:21 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: How do you measure evil to know who has less of it?

That's the issue with people whose morals are subject to the party they follow.

The same ways that anyone else does. In DPs case it was explicit. Power. Power equals responsibility. More power, then, would be more responsibility. A converse claim would be true if so, no power, no responsibility. Less power, less responsibility.

Power used for evil - bad...even more power used for even more evil, moar bad, moar responsibility. The underlying notion, if I could be so bold, is that either voting for or not voting against donald trump is to afford him more power to do more things. This would make a person complicit. That you had the power to oppose it, and thus the responsibility. That even if you think that dems also want to do bad things, a vote for a dem is not more power to do more bad things than any vote/nonvote for trump would be.

We don't have to agree with a person or argue the moral making properties of the universe, to understand and accept that this is a rational product. If it's wrong, it's wrong because it gets a relevant fact wrong, not because there can't be more or less evil, or a way for human beings to know that. I'd say that it does get a relevant fact wrong. The relevant fact. Power. I have no power to effect either outcome.

Shouldn't be that way, but it is.

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(September 21, 2020 at 10:20 am)Eleven Wrote: Then what we really need is a revolution against the government, make them change. Unfortunately, I see myself moving out of the country before people here give a fuck.

And me moving out of the no-more-good ole' US of A is not an empty threat at this point. I see this country going sideways in a manner that I don't want to be around to encounter.

It would be politically convenient for them if people opposed to their ideology self deport.  Cheaper, too.

(September 21, 2020 at 10:24 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: It would be politically convenient for them if people opposed to their ideology self deport.  Cheaper, too.

Ironically, I was working on a novel where America had been "abandoned" for a couple of centuries. The country had become the holy land for the conservatives.

Complete with squalor, human predation, and piles of unexpended ords, I hope? Just like the real holy land.

(September 21, 2020 at 10:59 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Complete with squalor, human predation, and piles of unexpended ords, I hope?  Just like the real holy land.

Indeed, the ultimate cesspool.

-and turning that back round to our current predicament. Something like that is on the line, in this. The moral responsibility is that we do whatever we can, however little, to prevent that.

Moral challenge accepted!

We're going to do that by....appealing to centrism, or? By negotiating and including a little bit of column douche on principle? I thought we were morally obligated to prevent column douche from happening?

In the end, only the people gathering together can make the necessary change.

Do you see people looking up from their phones (euphemism for lazy ass people) to make any necessary changes?

The center is better than fascism, and it's where the swing voters are. The presidential election can't be won by Democrats without them. It may not be ideal, but the Republicans have it worse: they can't win without the deplorables and so they've moved so far to the right that they're losing the center. You can't do anything in the government if you lose. I left the LP because the GOP is such a clear and present danger and only the Democrats have the numbers to have a chance of stopping them. I wish I had given up my 'voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil' rhetoric sooner. There's never any choice but between greater and lesser evils when it comes to voting because no candidate is perfect, but you never have to take any blame for your candidate's actions if you don't pick one or your choice can't get elected. If you're not voting against the greater evil by voting for a lesser evil that can win, what are you doing to actually stop it or even slow it down?

I do, sure....but that's because I work in the business of those necessary changes to my narrow interests and novel concerns.