oneiros

Of course, one has the freedom to cast their vote, or not, as they like. But I can't fathom why someone would "choose" an impossible outcome that ultimately makes the fatal scenario more likely instead of moving the needle toward the survivable one. It strikes me as irrational, which I could ignore if it were mere self-sabotage, but this affects others too.

You have misunderstood the metaphor. (edit: Rather, the people you're describing have.)

You cannot opt out. Someone will take the office.

This comment is a joke and you wouldn't want to do it like that in reality, but here are some related keywords you could look up: "Unix cat", "Unix pipeline", "grep", "output redirection", "command substitution".

one time i had a fever dream that was like, "I know how to fix this, I'll just ssh in and see what's up" :|

fyi the comment you're replying to is a reference to Spiders Georg