Rattrap
Doesn't feed trolls and would appreciate it if you
In the interest of attempting some interesting discussion, I want to talk about voting. Specifically, what voting for a third-party is worth - most folks I talk to claim doing such is a ****** vote, or a favor against whomever they think should win/lesser evil is (i.e., a vote for Green helps Republicans, a vote for Libertarian helps Democrats, etc). I often hear about third-party 'viability' and many times something along the lines of "When [X-third-party] is viable, I'll vote for them!" without realizing that until people do vote for them, they'll never be viable.
I suppose one underlying, optimistic assumption one has to make in this sort of discussion is that voting actually matters. I believe it does for the same reason I often don't believe in many conspiracy theories: the powers that be have already fixed the players (i.e., uninformed, uncritically-thinking, partisan voters), so why go through the extra trouble of fixing the game?
To the ****** vote argument, my counter is often: isn't a vote for an R or D just that, a ****** vote? Other than doomsday rhetoric against the far left or far right, pragmatically little seems to change between the two. I'll give the Democrats the better when it comes to social liberties and this is no small thing - but I'm otherwise unconvinced they work any less for big money interests than the Republicans. One can even bring in the electoral college into this topic, and I think fairly so - in my own situation, my vote never actually matters because my state will always go blue. Red, purple, green, yellow - whoever I vote for, at the point it matters (electoral college), I have effectively not participated due to the all-or-nothing practice of electoral votes in my state.
I've got more I can ramble on about, but I'll leave it here to see if this ball will roll.
I suppose one underlying, optimistic assumption one has to make in this sort of discussion is that voting actually matters. I believe it does for the same reason I often don't believe in many conspiracy theories: the powers that be have already fixed the players (i.e., uninformed, uncritically-thinking, partisan voters), so why go through the extra trouble of fixing the game?
To the ****** vote argument, my counter is often: isn't a vote for an R or D just that, a ****** vote? Other than doomsday rhetoric against the far left or far right, pragmatically little seems to change between the two. I'll give the Democrats the better when it comes to social liberties and this is no small thing - but I'm otherwise unconvinced they work any less for big money interests than the Republicans. One can even bring in the electoral college into this topic, and I think fairly so - in my own situation, my vote never actually matters because my state will always go blue. Red, purple, green, yellow - whoever I vote for, at the point it matters (electoral college), I have effectively not participated due to the all-or-nothing practice of electoral votes in my state.
I've got more I can ramble on about, but I'll leave it here to see if this ball will roll.
