• Flying Squid
    link
    fedilink
    325 days ago

    They just can’t get this. Even Ross Perot, who had 18% of the vote- far better than any third party candidate since- didn’t change things.

    He didn’t, Nader didn’t, Jill Stein didn’t, none of the others did either.

    But this time… THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT!

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      425 days ago

      Nader and Stein certainly changed things. They made them worse.

      Ross Perot also changed things, but arguably for the better.

      All by fucking with the election and getting the person on the opposite side of the aisle elected.

      Because that’s how the spoiler effect works.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          123 days ago

          Not really. When the Constitution was adopted, there weren’t political parties at all, no one knew what the spoiler effect was. The smartest among them might have had an idea that there had to be a better way, but no one knew what it was.

          And remember that as bigoted and racist as the founding fathers were, some even considered such for their time, they were extremely egalitarian towards each other. Most of them truly believed in a nation run by free (white) men. A nation of the people (white men).

          A few actually voiced displeasure when candidates won with less than half of the vote, and talked about it with their French counterparts. A man named Condorcet actually came up with a few alternative methods of voting, hoping one of them would allow the best candidate to win, now known as the Condorcet winner.

          The Condorcet winner is the candidate who could win in a 1v1 race against every other candidate.

          Condorcet had a lot to say about elections and such because he was tasked with writing the French constitution. But then a rival power block gained control of the developing government, and they introduced a new constitution that they had written in secret, then ratified it and had Condorcet thrown in prison, where he died two days later.

          Anyway, election science has come a long way since then, and the I’d like to think that at least some of the (white) men who first wrote the American constitution would have advocated for a better voting system had one been available. But not the Montagnards. Fuck them for killing someone as cool as Condorcet.

          A quote;

          ‘The rights of men stem exclusively from the fact that they are sentient beings, capable of acquiring moral ideas and of reasoning upon them. Since women have the same qualities, they necessarily also have the same rights. Either no member of the human race has any true rights, or else they all have the same ones; and anyone who votes against the rights of another, whatever his religion, colour or sex, automatically forfeits his own.’

    • firefly
      link
      fedilink
      124 days ago

      @[email protected]

      But this time… THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT!

      In 90+% of elections people follow your advice and vote along party lines. And they say the same thing then, too.

      So your criticism is the same shopworn logic I’ve heard for five decades. Nothing ever changes, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the wars continue, and you just keep thinking your can, ‘vote your way out’.

      VOTE HARDER! Then maybe things will change.

      #VoteHarder #ThatWillShowThem

      • Flying Squid
        link
        fedilink
        124 days ago

        In 90+% of elections people follow your advice and vote along party lines. And they say the same thing then, too.

        And yet people like you keep saying this time, it will work.

        What do they call it when you repeat the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?

        • firefly
          link
          fedilink
          2
          edit-2
          23 days ago

          And yet people like you keep saying this time, it will work.

          It is actually you that is saying this. That is the very thing I was criticizing. You seem confused and contradictory.

          Your team is not the good guys. There are no good guys. There are the masters and the slaves; the rulers and the ruled. And as long as you keep believing in their game and their rules it will always be so.

          “People like you …?” Are you literally illiterate? You read what I wrote, then accused me of saying exactly the opposite of what I wrote. Read my post again. Realize that you are completely delusional and caught up in the usual election cycle hysteria. I’ve witnessed this same shitshow for nearly half a century. Nothing ever changes, except the rubes and con men want to keep the slaves invested in the fantasy that participating more fully and robustly in their slavery will liberate them. It is you who is demanding to do the same thing over and over expecting a different result. You are projecting your election cycle hysteria on to me.

          Just VOTE HARDER. Maybe then things will change.

          #VoteHarder #ThatWillShowThem

          • Flying Squid
            link
            fedilink
            123 days ago

            What team is my team?

            What am I delusional about?

            I’m looking forward to learning more about Flying Squid from an expert.

            • firefly
              link
              fedilink
              123 days ago

              Your unholy flying squid team is trying to compete with the power of the Pastafarian Pirates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

              Neither team is the good guys. No matter which team wins, non-evil people who don’t want pressed into your chain gang–they all lose.

              There are no good guys in politics. Politics exist precisely because the ‘teams’ involved are ALL evil, delusional, selfish, and dishonest. Call them flying squids, flying spaghetti monsters, vampires, werewolves, leviathans, behemoths, titans, giants … all political parties are evil and have only the interests of their own power and glut at heart.

              “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”