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"No, I'm not doing nothing I'm raising awareness!"
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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Of course I understand what a hypothetical is, and I answered what I would do in the situation you presented me with. You don't accept that answer for some arbitrary reason, but you won't explain why it wouldn't be an option.
My position is perfectly defensible. This is like asking a vegan "Would you rather eat pork or beef?" and when they reject both options, you claim that it means their position is indefensible.
Let me make this simple for the people that might be swayed by your rhetoric.
When you throw away your vote, you will still be forced to have either Kamala or Trump as your president after the election. That's a simple fact.
But as a vegan, you will continue to have the option of not eating any meat.
Again, you're not stupid enough to actually try and make that comparison. I'm just appalled that you're so disingenuous that you'd do it anyways.
No, you created your own hypothetical and answered based on that. My hypothetical has only 2 possible answers, and you refuse to answer it because you know it dismantles your stance.
The hypothetical you presented about asking a vegan if they'd eat pork or beef is perfectly valid by the way. If they answered "neither" they would also not be answering the question. But that wouldn't make veganism indefensible, don't put words in my mouth.
Both options are fundamentally unacceptable to me. There is no conceivable situation where I would vote for either.
If you're somehow compelling me to act against my will, then, I don't know, I might pick one randomly, or I might pick the one you don't like out of spite, or I might pick the one you do like out of the hope you'll be merciful to me in the future, since in this universe you can apparently control my body against my will.
Since you refuse to engage, let's rephrase:
Which would be the better outcome, Trump winning, or Kamala winning?
Kamala winning, at least in the short term, but it does set a bad precedent if it means the democrats learn they can support genocide and get away with it.
And in the long term?
(Thank you for finally answering)
I'm not a psychic, so it's difficult to say, but I will answer Kamala since you are so insistent on unambiguous answers.
So in the short and long term, based on our best assessments, we agree the better outcome of this election is for Kamala to win over Trump*.
Do you also agree that there is an (effectively) 0% chance of a third-party candidate winning this election? That come election night, the winner will either be Kamala or Trump?
Yes.
In that case, do you think people in swing states should vote for Kamala?
No. I don't live in a swing state, but even if I did, I wouldn't. However, I can respect their decision as long as they respect mine.
I'm not asking about you and your vote, I'm asking about the position and rhetoric you push around here.
If you agree that Kamala would be better than Trump short and long term, and that one of them will be president, then how can you, in good faith, advocate for people not to vote in a way that increases the odds of the better option and decreases the odds of the worse one?
Because one being better than the other is not the same as being an acceptable choice. If I'm in a burning building, what fundamentally needs to happen is that I escape. You can argue that the flames on one side of the room are higher than the flames on the other side of the room, but I don't care, because if I stay in the room I'll die. The only thing that matters is finding the door.
You asked if I thought a third party could win this election, and the answer is no. But could a third party win a future election? The answer to that is yes, maybe. The results of this election will inform voters in future elections of whether a third party is viable. The most important thing is increasing the chances of getting to an acceptable outcome, everything else is secondary to that goal.
In the meantime, voting third party can influence things in other ways. If the Democrats can only win by getting a third party's endorsement, then they can potentially be brought to the bargaining table.
But you already agreed that for swing state voters, there are effectively only 2 choices, and that one is better than the other in both the short and long term.
Again, you agreed that escape is effectively not an option through voting. Moving toward the side of the room with fewer flames is objectively the better choice while you work on establishing an escape.
Why on earth would you stand in the middle and let the fire decide?
No. Not in a first-past-the-post system. Can't happen.
I bet we'd agree that that system needs to change, but it will not happen by voting 3rd party every 4 years.
Precisely. And within this system, with this short of a runway, Kamala is the only acceptable out of the 2 outcomes we agree are the only 2 possible.
Hold up. All I agreed with is that in this election, it wasn't realistic for a third party to win. You're trying to take that as meaning there's no reason to vote third party. As I explained, it's possible for third parties to wield influence, and giving them more votes gives them more ability to do that.
There are effectively two possible winners but that's not the same as there being effectively two choices. The question isn't "Do you think a third party can win this election," the question is, "Do you think voting third party cause any positive effects?" to which my answer is yes.
I did no such thing. You're twisting my words and jumping to conclusions.
I'm amazed that you managed to miss the point that hard. I don't give a shit which fire is more comfortable to burn to death in. If there's no way out, then I will still try to wail on the walls until I can't anymore.
Kamala is fundamentally unacceptable. Again, you're just acting like things are established when they very much are not.
Again -- no shot. Not in FPTP. You virtue signaling every 4 years has never and will never change that.
Yes you did. You agreed that that only Trump or Kamala will be president after this election. Don't backtrack, there's a reason I insisted on these answers.
Again, why would you not wail on the walls in the room with less fire? What an absurd stance...
Again, you already agreed she is the better option of the only 2 outcomes that will happen. Don't twist my words ;)
That is incorrect. Lets say the polls show, Green 15%, Democrat 40%, Republican 45%, and the Greens say, "We'll endorse the Democrats if and only if they do X." You have not addressed why this is not a viable strategy at all. Saying "no shot" doesn't make it true.
That's not the same thing. You're conflating "being able to win this election" with "being able to ever change things." It's possible to change things without winning, and it's possible for future elections to be different. You're taking a much more limited claim and expanding it to a much larger one that I never agreed with.
If anything, it'd be better to wail on the walls in the room with more fire, to die quicker. But the point is that that doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is escape.
And as I already stated, "better" does not mean "acceptable." In the same way if you push a vegan into saying beef is better than pork, that doesn't mean they consider beef an acceptable food.
Because you haven't demonstrated it to be a viable strategy...
Can you give examples of this tactic playing out favorably in the past? How does your 3rd party vote materialize into meaningful, actionable pressure on the Democrats? Why am I not surprised you didn't say "We'll endorse the Democrats / Republicans if and only if they do X."?
Not under FPTP.
If the only thing that matters is escape, then the only thing that makes sense is choosing the scenario that's most likely to allow for it. Which is to move to the area with less fire. This should be absurdly obvious.
You can't have both. If you choose the room with more fire then you're admitting that your whole position is a facade and you're actually just a deluded accelerationist. Which we both know you aren't.
If you think both of the only 2 possible outcomes are unacceptable, then acceptability is a moot point. Better and worse still exist, and you already agreed on which is which.
You’re destroying them at their own game. This is fucking beautiful!
Parties are always looking at how to attract or retain voters. It's very intuitive that if a significant number of people defect from a party, the party will be reconsidering the issue that caused the break. I don't think this needs to be proven.
Why would I? Are you suggesting that trying to influence the Republicans to become an acceptable party is a viable strategy?
...what? I thought your whole reason for caring about the "more comfortable fire to die in" is because escape was ruled out entirely.
No, it isn't. Unacceptable means unacceptable.
Dude… you are getting wrecked here. You should seriously start thinking about finding something else to do with your time. Because this Isn’t working out very well for you.
And under FPTP there can only and will only be 2 parties with any real opportunity to enact policy. Do you think the Democrats are worried that you're going to vote Republican? That the GOP is going to start appealing to Leftists?
Of course not. But the implication is that the Democrats could be influenced. Which is exactly why I can't agree with advocating for swing state voters to do anything but vote against Trump.
Nah, I think escape is possible, but we need to move away from the bigger flames. You're the one who thinks standing still and letting the fire choose is the way to go -- for some reason...
It sure does. It's still moot in this context though.
Yes? That's why they're all about Dick Cheney.
Then you agree that escape is what matters and choosing the more comfortable flames to die in is not what's important. There's a difference between claiming "I can survive longer in these flames which will help me to escape" vs the previous position you were arguing for, "Forget escaping, what matters is these flames are more comfortable than those flames."
No it isn't.
How many different analogies and what-if scenarios does it take for you to finally have a valid point?
Jesus man!
The moment someone calls out your bullshit you move on to another ridiculous version of reality to try and mold into something that resembles an actual point-
And you fail every time!
Yeah, people already explained to you that you can choose neither beef nor pork and you will get neither beef nor pork, but if you choose neither the geriatric loony nor the sane candidate, you will still definitely get one of them. The vegan analogy is bogus because it's a scenario in which there's a free choice from a vast number of options. You keep saying you want neither, but you can't have neither. You have to have one of them as president.
What a vegan wants isn't just to not eat either pork or beef, but for neither animal to be killed. You can kill them anyway, but that doesn't mean I have to eat. Same way, you can elect whichever of the awful candidates you want, but I don't have to support them.
Still doesn't compare.
If 10% of citizens who care about animals consistently don't eat pork or beef, the food industry reduces production and fewer pigs and cows get slaughtered for food.
If 10% of citizens who care about Palestinians don't vote, Trump wins and it's in Netanyahu's interest to prolong, advance and widen his genocidal flattening of Gaza, extend it to the whole of the West Bank, wipe out as much of Lebanon as he can and take the war to Iran. That and all the turning the military on left wing citizens, mass deportations, leaving women to lose their fertility or die for lack of healthcare nationality, put trans people in jail after calling them pedophiles and let their pedophile friends off scot free. Meanwhile the Democrats see that left wingers don't vote and the only votes they can chase are "centrists" and adopt more right wing policies because nothing moves the Overton window right more than a right wing government and there's no loopy logic that'll get you out of that reality.
If those 10% vote for Kamala Harris she continues to call publicly and privately for a ceasefire, and if the Democrats win both the House and the Senate they have the chance to actually change stuff and shit like the republicans' new law removing the president's power to delay and shipments gets washed away and there's a chance, albeit small, that Harris is in power long enough and securely enough to do as you advocate and pressurise Netanyahu to stop, but there's zero chance of that if she loses.
There's no third option. It's either Trump winning and everything getting worse, especially in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, the Middle East generally and the USA in particular, or Kamala winning and things getting marginally better.
Vegans make a positive difference by refusing both.
People like you make things much, much worse by refusing both.