What are you tired of helping and educating people about because you know they'll just be ignorant anyway?
When it comes to dealing with advertisements when they're surfing on their browsers. I've just learned recently about how Google has or is killing UBlock Origin on the Chrome browser as well as all Chromium based browsers too.
We've heard for years about people complaining, bitching, whining and vice versa about how they keep seeing ads. And those trying to help them, keep wasting time to tell these people that they're surfing without extensions. Whether it'd be on Chrome or Firefox or another browser.
By this point, I've long stopped being that helper because if you cared at all about the advertisements you see, you would've long had gotten on the wagon of getting adblockers by now. You bring this onto yourself.
That if they vote third party before we can get rid of the first-past-the-post system, they are helping their ideological opposite. And a corollary: if they do it because of the genocide in Gaza and Trump encourages a total wipeout of the Palestinian state like he's telegraphing, the blame for the deaths of those innocent civilians is on them for being self-righteous instead of honest.
At those times I love the two rounds system. It's a pain in the arse to go vote twice, and it is by no means perfect, but you can still vote based on your conscience without "wasting" your vote.
For example. This month we got mayor elections here. There were 10 candidates in the first round; I voted in a socialist as usual. They had zero chance to win, but showing them some support is a big deal in the long run - it shows that at least some people are interested in their platform.
Then in the second turn we had Total Piece of Shit vs. Somewhat Shitty. Then I simply voted in Somewhat Shitty to make things not so bad.
Third party can work on solid states. Using 2020 numbers, if every Trump voter in California had voted third party, California would have still went to Biden. But there's an alternative result that would come out. If a third party candidate gets 5% of the popular vote, they are eligible for over $120M in federal funding for the next election. Obviously he Ds and Rs spend way more than that, but a third party could make use of that money. And it only affects the next election really.
I just got banned from a sub for trying to explain this exact thing. Their response was "not that's not how voting works - if I vote for a person, they get my vote. If I don't vote for someone, they don't get my vote." and "Harris is literally saying the same thing." I sent a thank you to the mod for banning me because my brain was breaking.
I have been trying to figure out how to combat this bullshit argument succinctly. So far I am at this:
If you vote for a person, it tips the ratio of votes they recieve (which is the only important thing in our system) in their favor. If you vote third party, not only does the ratio of votes between the two forerunners not change, but you completely throw away your representation.
The way the system is set up right now means that only half of the voting population is even represented by the elected person.
I worry about the state of this country. Half the country doesn't understand tax brackets, I don't expect them to ever understand the problem with FPTP or learn about RCV
yeah just getting some people around to the whole idea that, right now, voting is part of how we all have to work together to get along somehow on this big rock, and that means compromises sometimes. sometimes ugly compromises.
@[email protected] is arguing practical impact. You're arguing intent. You will never agree to anything if you continue to keep discussing different topics disguised as the same.
Also what I learned from Jill Stein is that 3rd parties never try local elections in states, cities. They seem to only pop up in national elections to steal votes and make no impact
And when they inevitably fail, that is only fuel for the fire for third-party denialists who'll go "SEE?! THIRD PARTEH WILL NEVER WORK!". Then they'll go back to voting two parties who actively fuck everyone over, it's just one party fucks over a little less than the other.
It doesn’t matter who Meh and Oh no are for that voter. The results are the same.
If you have a Meh candidate, and Oh No candidate, and a Please Something Else candidate, and you vote for something else, its now easier for Oh No to get elected, because Meh has fewer votes.
And I'm sure the Germans who "never supported the Nazi's" were proud of their acts of abstinence after the fact.
Its a terrible system with FPTP for sure, but doing anything that makes it easier for really bad guys to get in power is enablement, full stop.
Will the really bad guys care about a protest vote? No, they'll thank you.
Will the not so bad guys care about the protest vote if they get elected? Not really, they got elected while ignoring the voice of the people, so why change?
To fix the system you need to get the least worst option elected, and then get out and protest, and cause as much pain for the elected officials as possible to get anything changed. Means protesting at a level that is significantly impacting the economy.
Don't fuck around with a 'protest vote' that's going to do as much nothing as electing the Meh option.
The Republican Party has the will of the Supreme Court. That means they can rule for, or against constitutional changes unilaterally.
They have already ruled that the President is immune to the law if they are acting in 'official capacity', which they have left to themselves to decide if its official or not.
The presidential candidate has said he wants to go after the 'enemy within' directly referencing his political opponents.
He can go out and round up anyone with significant pull from the Democratic party, detail them illegally, (but now legal because its in an official capacity)
Anyone else who speaks out against the brutality will summarily be included in that.
How far off is that from where Putin has established himself, where elections are things they say the have, but is really just a form of performance art?
You think the ideological opposite of anti-genocide progressives isn't a person responsible for genocide, who spent their career imprisoning mostly black men, and who promises to spend hundreds of millions funding a border wall?
The delusions in this space are astounding. Trump is actually responsible for the ongoing genocide??
a person responsible for genocide, who spent their career imprisoning mostly black men, and who promises to spend hundreds of millions funding a border wall
In the the US laws are passed by the legislative branch, in particular laws around spending are passed by the House of Represtatives. Currently the House or Representatives is controlled by the Republican party, the party of which Donald Trump is the undisputed leader. As such Trump has sufficient control over the Republican party to broadly control the parties legislative priorities, including spending. In fact he has already used this authority to enact his legislative priorities around spending and immigration reform among other things.
Donald Trump has directed the Republican party to support the genocide in Gaza, so the Republican party provides the funding necessary to for the IDF to conduct the genocide in Gaza.
Additionally when Donald Trump was president he did several things to empower Israel including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and required all Palestinian affairs to go through this embassy.
While the Democratic party has played a part in supporting the genocide, Donald Trump and the Republican party absolutely have the power to stop the US from passing funding bills to arm the IDF and help stop the genocide. Instead he and the Republican party he leads enthusiastically support what Israel has been doing in Gaza and now are trying to do in Lebanon. There's every reason he'll take the US's support for the genocide even further.
Donald Trump somehow controls Biden-Harris's foreign policy??
"There has been no division of labor or dispute on policy. Vice President Harris shares President Biden’s support for an ironclad US commitment to Israel’s security coupled with a commitment to advancing a two-state solution in order to bring an end to this cycle of violence.” - A US official (Source: “Not the bad cop: Biden officials say Harris won’t shift course on supporting Israel”)
“Biden restricted and conditioned U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine but worried that doing the same to Israel might tempt Hezbollah to attack it. So Biden kept the arms flowing (with the exception of at least one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs) and never imposed serious restrictions on their use.”
“"The United States supports Israel with weapons, funds aid packages, and has vetoed or abstained from the United Nations’ cease-fire resolutions."
IIRC, Donald Trump said he'd have ended the genocide sooner...by giving more support to Israel to "finish the job" of eliminating Palestine/Palestinians more quickly. So if that's the alternative you support, then by all means, don't vote for Harris.
You're not helping the ideological opposite. What you're doing is removing the vote from one of the larger parties that are going to win regardless. The system is rigged against 3rd party and 3rd party will never win the presidency or any major office. At least while the Electoral College is a thing. We should stop with this mindset of "A vote for 3rd party is a vote for the opposition" because it's just propaganda to remove what little power 3rd parties have.
Maybe little parties would have more power if they demonstrated actual political power in local elections instead of trying to win pointless votes in the national election.