• Verdant Banana
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    64 months ago

    thanks for proving my point

    in the US the biggest perpetuated piece of propaganda myth is that we have only two options and we will never rise above the shitty choices so pick the one that smells better

    obviously with that mindset nothing will ever change

    elites have won for now

    • @aubeynarf
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      4 months ago

      They’ve won forever if you check out. Use your vote to move the needle just a bit - waiting for a perfect solution means things get worse.

      • @[email protected]
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        14 months ago

        But if we don’t vote, the bad guys will take over!” Scaring people into voting is no way to create change nor prevent disaster but rather glosses over deeper problems of the political system that voting doesn’t address. However, for those who truly believe some politician is not as bad as the other one, it’s not that I disagree. Despite my many grumblings, I don’t insist that voting is entirely futile, just that it’s mostly so. If you think it’s worth the minuscule effort, go for it and don’t feel bad about it. I’m just critical of the widespread belief that voting will have more of a positive effect than a normal effort-to-reward calculus would indicate. The degree that voting is overvalued as a form of political engagement is the degree it displaces other more effective forms and forestalls social change. source

    • @[email protected]
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      144 months ago

      Given the current electoral system it isn’t a myth - it’s how we ended up with Woodrow Wilson after all.

      I’d love to see us break out of it too but the voting system needs to change before we can seriously consider a third party option.

      America was basically the alpha release of Democracy and it has an absolutely broken electoral system - ideally the president wouldn’t even be elected and we’d only have one branch of congress but we’re working within the boundaries of what we have and if you choose to help get Trump elected that’s fucking on you.

    • @[email protected]
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      84 months ago

      Jill Stein had 1/3 the popular votes of libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016. They both had the same number of EC votes.

      At 3.3% of the popular vote, Johnson did better than any third party candidate since '96. Maybe if you close your eyes and wish really hard you could get a libertarian to claim a single EC vote.