• MagicShel@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    I used to mainly vote third party as a protest vote for both sides to do better. Didn’t matter the party, really.

    I voted for Obama out of genuinely wanting him in office. I thought he was decent overall but he did disappoint me.

    I voted for Biden purely to keep Trump out of office. Even so, I think Biden has largely been a better President than Obama was, though the Gaza/Israel thing is really testing that. I would love to have a more progressive choice, but any time I am disappointed in Biden, I just remind myself the alternative and I would crawl across a mile of broken glass to vote for him.

    So I would anecdotally say this election is outside the norm.

    • btaf45@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      So I would anecdotally say this election is outside the norm.

      If you mean “unique in 240 years of American history” I agree.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      So I would anecdotally say this election is outside the norm.

      as will be the next, and the one after that, as well as all of the ones following; meanwhile you’ll continue crawling over broken glass and giving a pass to ongoing genocides because you believe it’s better than the alternative somehow without realizing there’s one alternative.

      no one knows the right answer, but there are plenty of wrong answers and 2 of those have been placed before and you’re told that you must select one.

      • MagicShel@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        Told? It’s just math. If you want to change things, you have to either do it from within an existing party or wait for an existing party to implode and then maybe there is an opportunity for change.

        I’m fifty. I spent a lot of fucking elections wasting my vote on third parties, thinking I was sending some kind of message or making things better, but here we are. I wasted every single vote prior to 2008. Would anything be different if I hadn’t? No. Would anything be different if a bunch of people hadn’t? I don’t know. Maybe.

        • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          as i said before: no one knows the right answer, but there are plenty of wrong answers, we know they’re wrong because we’ve tried them and things don’t get better (and we sometimes try it again with the same results); we’re only allowed to pick from among those wrong answers only.

          trying anything otherwise might also be a wrong answer; but we will never know because there are plenty who will shame you if don’t pick the same wrong answer they do.

          • MagicShel@programming.dev
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            5 months ago

            Fair. Government is hard. There is no such thing as a right answer. Just shit that we find out later didn’t work. I’m not happy with either of the two parties; I don’t really believe in parties anyway. But here we are.

            Fight the good fight, my friend, but just don’t let fascism take us. My grandfather fought against the fascists in WW2, and here I am doing the same (though admittedly with way less personal risk) 80 years later. I don’t like it, but it is what it is.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      So I would anecdotally say this election is outside the norm.

      I worry that it’s the new baseline.