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Remember, no matter how beautiful, morally righteous, or gratifying your strategy is, you should really look at the results
You're on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
More like two options: one runs the bus off the cliff while the other sets it on fire. Sure, we'll live longer in the fire scenario. Maybe we can even put it out!
But I'm still looking for the fucking exit.
FPTP is the real winner here. It's why we have Trump. Why can't we vote for proportional representatives or ranked choice?
I believe there are three reasons our broken two party system stagnates and rots:
Our slavery founders intended for our system to be a plutocratic republic that would resist change, not a democracy
The purpose of every state is to maintain order which requires preserving itself
Fixing our system would require our politicians to vote against their own interests, to risk their own power and status... This goes against every ideal that capitalists believe in. Capitalists believe that as long as they follow the rules, they are entitled to everything they can take. The fact that the rules were written by the rich to favor the rich is of no concern to them.
I bet a lot of people living in Germany in the '30s said "I don't do politics" too. Oops.
Yeah.... But also, Carlin was right saying this shit is all a stage. We've got groups of bullies picking on us, and I'd rather throw bricks than help them decide who to pick on next.
Carlin was great at spotting problems, but shit at recognizing solutions. He was an entertaining crank, not a leader. In the right category he was great.
Good thing I don't follow leaders or have any role models.
If "harm" and "less harm" are the only two options, then the only question is how quickly you die. There's the argument that we have to do "harm reduction" in order to buy time to organize for something better, but we've been procrastinating for decades apparently. Since all of history informs us that humans act only when inaction is no longer tenable (and sometimes not even then), really the only material difference between "harm reduction" and accelerationism is, again, the timeline.
The harm or less harm are thanks to Ordinal voting.
First Past the Post is the absolute worst offender, but every single Ordinal voting system will eventually devolve into a forced choice between this or that.
Thankfully there are Cardinal voting systems. Those always boil down to the word and. For example, I can say that I support getting ice cream, and sandwiches, and a slushy, and even just finishing the route, but not going over that cliff.
My support for any given item is counted independently of my support for any other option.
To see what option wins, you just look at total support.
Different Cardinal systems have their own little quirks, but the key in all of them is that ability to give multiple items identical levels of support.
Chuck Schumer: we beat them at their own game and got them to agree to only drive the buss halfway off the cliff as long as we all stand at the front.
clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap
Well yeah but the one of the people who voted for ice cream downvoted a post about gaza one time so CLEARLY the entire bus sacrificing themselves just in case it might save gaza is the better option. Also there's an atomic bomb factory in a heavily populated area at the bottom of the cliff so basically the same amount of people as the entire population of gaza are going to die if this happens but protecting Gaza is more important than protecting loved ones apparently.
What everyone forgets is that the actual voting already happened. The bus company, Cliff driving Committee, voted before the bus embarked. They voted for the bus driver to drive off the cliff to cut spending to maintenance and health insurance to the driver and bus. There only so much the riders can say at that point
The only option the riders have to not drive off the cliff is to take control of the bus.
Precisely
"I voted for the cliff because I know the ice cream place is down below it and I wanted to get there faster." - Have to assume this person exists, but I'm not sure who they would be in the analogy. 🤔
Edit: Oh, I just had to scroll down a few more comments to find them.
Is voting for controlled opposition harm reduction?
Like I agree that Kamala was the correct choice, but her inevitably milquetoast liberal policies would keep us stagnant until people voted in the next Republican out of boredom
This is why the Democratic Party sucks so bad. The never offered people something to vote for. They didn't even offer something harmless - they only ever offered to drive off a cliff more slowly. When in power, they never did anything against the DHS, the MIC, ICE, the Patriot Act. They didn't even talk about fighting landlords, the bosses, the rich. The Dems even refused police reform, instead increasing budgets. The only thing the party elites ever fought fiercely is Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus.
The Democratic Party is just as much to blame for Trump as the GOP. Stop blaming progressives for this miserable one party state - start holding your politicians accountable.
Everyone's upset about the vegan ice cream voters not voting for regular ice cream.
No one is upset at the regular ice cream people for being unwilling to vote for a vegan ice cream place because their choice is default in their mind.
Both sides are holding each other hostage. One has a moral reason and the other just doesn't want to compromise.
And yet.
I just knew the comments were going to be us tearing each other apart.
I'm just thinking out loud here. What if Progressives that are registered as Democrats changed their registration to independent? Also, stop sending them your money. We could organize it to happen over one week. Then keep it that way for 30 days. See how much power we truly have. If we can show the Democratic party that they would never win another election without us, maybe they would be more likely to listen.
We have to be careful though, I know this President is running roughshod over the Constitution with the blessing of SCOTUS and Congress but they don't have enough votes or State legislatures to amend the Constitution. If they get that, then that truly is the end of this experiment.
im sure the illogical thinkers will start thinking logically any day now
The "drive off the cliff" party vs the "drive off the cliff, but ever so slightly slower and also we'll wave some rainbow flags I guess" party. I know who I'm voting for!