this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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New Phone, Who Dis? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Harm reduction. The two options with a non-zero chance of winning are the two major parties. Voting third-party or not voting is essentially splitting your vote between those two major parties. So in the short term, you vote for the harm reduction option while you work to get better options in the long term.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Democracy isn't the right to vote for the Democratic Party, it's the right to vote, period. That means you have to defend the rights of people whose beliefs you strongly disagree with. If you actually care about democracy as a concept, you cannot actually defend the statement "People who don't vote for me party shouldn't vote."

So in the short term, you vote for the harm reduction option

No, you vote for the candidate that you support. That's how democracy works. If a person decides for themselves that they're willing to concede some beliefs for a candidate with better odds of winning, who's better in the long-run, etc., then that's fine, too, but they (as in, the voter) have to make that decision on their own.

spoilerIf it stings, that means it's working.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

No, I can't defend a strawman you're posing. But I don't have to. I only have to defend my own positions, which are:

  1. Under the current system in the US, voting third party is at best ineffective, but often actively harmful.
  2. People who advocate for people on the left voting third-party are either ignorant of the fact that said actions make a fascist takeover of the US more likely or, worse yet, aware of that fact. Either way, their actions are tantamount to advocating for fascism, whether they're an intentional bad actor or not.

Your comment above implies that by supporting people's right to vote, I give up my right to advocate for how they should vote, which is part of where the strawman comes from. I can defend their right to vote whilst also saying that voting certain ways are stupid or harmful. I never have to say "good on ya for making a terrible decision."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Either Harris will win, or the insurrectionist promising to be a dictator will win. The latter has theocratic fascist groups drawing up game plans and a theocratic fascist SCOTUS has granted him a Long Knife.

"If you actually care about democracy as a concept." I do. I wish we had democracy instead of FPTP.