Perhaps I came off as too hostile. I read your comment and I thought it was potentially harmful and I’m incredibly depressed, so I wrote a hasty sniping response. I tend to think of things said as their effects in aggregate rather than the virtue of the person saying it.

I’m also bi and arguably aromantic. And intend to remain childfree.

Its a normative statement. It contributes to alienating people without wives or kids.

I consider it normative to suggest that such is “normal” and suggests not having a wife or kid(s) as “abnormal”. At least by implication.

I mean it was pretty strongly implied but ok

“Wife and a kid” = normal life.

hmmmm.

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For once I think I agree with Linux purists.

Fuck I might need a shower.

If you think we were worse off 20 years ago, you either are a psychopath or you are clueless.

Life is going to get a whole hell of a lot worse for a fuck ton of people because Trump won. Way more than during W. Bush.

You are OK with death and suffering if there is a light at the end of a tunnel. You are a psychopath who views individuals as disposable as long as humanity/civilization benefits in the long run.

I would have fought with you maybe if some people (supposedly “on my side”) had not decided to spitefully activate hard mode.

I was in greater despair over the US about 20 years ago.

Then either you are a fascist or you aren’t paying attention.

EDIT: Or an accelerationist. In which case also still just a fascist but a more delusional one.

You aren’t getting laid if you are broke, unless you are very very hot or very very charismatic.

So what are you saying, that a Californian progressive who voted for Stein made a dumb choice and the one who voted for Harris made the smart choice?

Blue states are the area where my argument is weakest, but honestly as a means of voting against Trump I’d probably still vote Harris if I lived in Cali. I’m less judgemental of people in solid blue states here voting third party, but I still think voting third party even then introduces future risk of vote splitting, but its a gaussian and temporal risk. So its hard to conceptualize.

Further, doing so and openly stating you intend to do so encourages people in purple and red states to potentially do the same. And lets be completely honest here: third party voters are going to be incredibly vocal about their vote. Third party and non-voters fucking love jerking themselves off about how virtuous they are for not voting for Harris.

Hypothetical, but still, who would you vote for?

I don’t know. But not for fucking Jill Stein and can tell you that much. I wouldn’t trust her 180 on Ukraine at all and there are other stances of hers I think are dumb. Nor would I likely bother with a different third party. I’d probably look look very closely at my options between red and blue. And I’d probably grit my teeth and vote for Biden depending on how he campaigned but I’d not be nearly as terrified since Trump is out of the picture.

And that’s the rub: in your scenario fascism is not on the ballot. The stakes are significantly lower. So the details would matter more.

Did Harris even publicly utter the phrases “ranked balloting” or “proportional representation” in 2024?

I don’t think she did, but neither did Trump. And in fact Trump is largely interested in destroying what little democracy we have.

I’m going to be honest though, it might as well all be hypothetical. Americans are fucked. Its game over, and we very very much deserve what’s coming.

Yes, I think it’s from Twain.

Its commonly misattributed to him.

I backed my assertions with stats, however poor you think they are as analysis.

Your assertion is too vague to rebut directly. And I did not say stats are “poor analysis” I said using stats on their own without the background in contextualizing stats makes any analysis nearly worthless.

What do yo back up your assertions with, other than lame DNC, CNN, and Vaush talking points?

So you already have made up your mind about what and how I think allowing you to dismiss my actual points contained in my post, which you’ve conveniently ignored.

So I’ll repost my most important point: The core fact remains that voting for a third party under a first past the post system is risking permitting the greater evil to win.

I’m the arbiter of who I trust is arguing coherently or in good faith and I am ultimately not trusting of the average internet poster by default.

I’ve been arguing on dedicated internet debate spaces for a very very large portion of my life and I have a good eye for when someone isn’t worth being taken seriously.

That’s not a critique of democrats, that’s a critique of a portion of democrats and all of republicans.

Election stats? You ever hear the phrase “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”

Stats on their own given a poor analysis of an average joe/jane can mislead just as much if not more than a talking head can.

The core fact remains that voting for a third party under a first past the post system is risking permitting the greater evil to win.

Sure, but on average when some self proclaimed leftist’s opening is “Democrats did a bad thing” in a vacuum my immediate assumption is they’re a campist/tankie, accelerationist, or a rightwing psyop and my instinct is to immediately challenge them (most of the time… sometimes its me critiquing the dems)

Sometimes it turns out they’re giving an earnest critique but usually not.

Given that you can act (in this case vote), your hands are more dirty permitting the worse evil to win through inaction.

You don’t get to clean your hands of things when you have the power to act to effect the outcome.

So saying “People voted for evil” is a selective self-benefiting myopia. Vote abstainers are not virtuous, they are a narcissists.

People who refuse to vote when there is a clearly superior option deserve whatever the greater evil brings forth when they win.