I cringe every time I see this come up.
Because it isn’t what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.
Of course a 3rd party vote isn’t a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.
What it actually is is a discarded opportunity to vote against Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.
Everyone knows that’s what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.
If nobody votes 3rd party then we’ll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.
It’s like bicycle infrastructure. Nobody wants to ride bikes on a highway, but you won’t see bike riders until there’s a trail somewhere for them to ride on. You can say it never matters and that there aren’t any cyclists out there, but you’re wrong. I think there’s a lot of Americans looking for another party right now.
They loved Bernie and praised him to the skies.
Then he endorsed Biden and Harris.
Now he’s a ‘sheepdog’ that rounds up people to be slaughtered.
I saw “sheepdog” for the first time yesterday. As I stated in my first comment, I take it to mean that he’s rounding up sheep to be slaughtered.
To me, expecting any candidate to be perfect is silly.
I like NYC Mayor Ed Koch’s line. “If you agree with me 51% of the time, vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, see a psychiatrist.”
It’s the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it’s broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you’ve shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.
Excellent analogy. If anyone still plays dumb after reading this, they probably are
I like your analogy. Let me expand.
This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.
The whole post is an example of a propaganda technique where you keep repeating one thing over and over until it becomes a default thing where people don’t even question the logic.
The ones capable of refuting it feel tired because of the sheer number of posts while the vulnerable ones get affected.
Today both sides “feel” that the use of this propaganda is fair game cuz the other side is already doing it.
Why do neoliberals bring up the trolley problem as if it is some settled debate among scholars that there is one clear possible answer?
Edit: I think my point was too subtle. What I meant was that it seems like lefties will bicker and infight rather than focusing on the bigger enemy first, until that enemy manages to seize power and it’s too late. We’ll be “united” in that we’ll be executed together.
Sometimes, I wonder if a Trump victory would be the only way to get the various leftist factions to stop arguing and stand together, side by side, united in the fact that fascists don’t care what flavour of ideological opposition they’re executing.
Who gives a shit about whether the Trolley Problem is settled - it’s about your answer: Which option do you endorse?
The trolley problem isn’t “settled debate” for the same reasons that Kamala vs Trump isn’t “settled debate”.
The point of the trolley problem and why it’s analogous is that it’s coming up fast and you must choose to either pull that lever or not. Whichever choice you make, that’s the moral character you’ve chosen to exhibit.
I’m not a neoliberal, I’m a socialist. I’m just not an idiot who will give a fascist free rein just because his opponent has the same shitty foreign policy as every politician in the whole fucking country has. There is a difference between the status-quo level of bad and catastrophic.
The Dems are running on Trump’s 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it’s time people started realizing that.
The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.
^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.
They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won’t affect them or their loved ones. It’s despicable.
Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers
Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.
The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.
Check my history. Vote third party if you don’t live in a swing state is literally what I have been saying.
Ex https://lemmy.ml/post/21262971, https://lemmy.ml/comment/14519387
By definition, most people do not live in swing states.
Disclaimers and footnotes are irrelevant.