On voting for a minor party, or not voting at all

I feel like we’re in a moment in history that is similar to Gandalf’s “So do all who live in such times” speech.

It isn’t that everything you have written isn’t completely correct, but that the context of our time make these values surplus to the needs and exigencies of the political situation we find ourselves in today. People who don’t perceive Trump’s behavior and policies and the GOP’s enabling / encouraging that behavior don’t perceive Trump and the GOP to be an existential threat to Democracy, so they feel free to do whatever they want, as if everything is still just fine.

That’s the hardest thing we’re fighting against today - inertia. The belief - the faith - that everything is, really, deep down, just a-ok, that sure, maybe Trump has said some off-color things, but still, you know, AOC has also said some off-color things as well! Business as usual guys! Nothing to see here.

And not, you know, the Executive branch and the GOP publicly declaring their political opposition to be illegitimate, publicly denying the helpful rigging of elections by foreign powers on their behalf and doing everything they can to prevent shoring up our election system tp prevent it, publicly ignoring all kinds of policy disasters the President has made and blaming the opposition for the very things they are doing, publicly supporting a President whose entire foreign policy platform seems to be making strategic deals that help his companies regardless of the cost to our standing and the ideals we supposedly believe in, with a party that literally has documents and meetings about rigging elections through the grossest gerrymandering they can get away with, and quite probably is also rigging elections directly, though to what extent and how widespread is impossible to say.

If everything is just a-ok, and there’s not really a crisis, and it’s just politics as usual, and what’s the difference between one party and another party anyway? Maybe voting your flavor makes sense. Effectively doing this today means, imo, that such voters don’t understand the situation, or don’t really care, or have such an overlapping personal alignment with what Trump is actually doing they’d prefer to tacitly agree with it and turn their heads away from clear understanding. That’s after all literally what the GOP politicians are doing today, refusing to read or even hear evidence contrary to their political priors. And that’s probably rooted in a very inertial belief in the day-to-day mundanity and regularity of the world in their immediate vicinity. The sun rises, the sun sets, politicians gunna politician, and somehow it all works out in the end.

But that’s not how it works out in the end. That’s how without anyone noticing the lamps go out across America and how they won’t be lit again in your time. Democracy isn’t just about getting what you want but about being the lamplighters your country needs.

My name is Kevin and I approve of this post.

This is less of an election and more of a method to stop Trump. Why are people even treating this like a normal presidential election? Things like “future elections being held” “rule of law being maintained” are the goals here. All the rest of business as usual politics can wait until 2024.

My opinion is a vote for someone that can’t win isn’t really a vote, it’s a personal feel good moment that’s an illusion. I didn’t want to vote for Hilary last time, but I knew voting for anyone else would just help Trump out. And that’s exactly what happened, near as I can tell.

LOL - fair enough.

This obviously isn’t a great analogy, but I’ll start here: a vegetarian would skip the meal. Here the analogy immediately breaks down because what you choose to eat on your flight doesn’t affect the outcome for anyone else.

But if you’re a vegetarian out of any strongly held conviction (health, ethics of meat, whatever), those convictions are going to make refusing an “obvious” choice look crazy to others, and there’s no getting around that.

I don’t know exactly what @Nightgaunt believes, but I think we might have in common that we have religious convictions that supersede the concerns of any election.

This doesn’t mean voting for a perfect candidate: there aren’t any. As a Christian, to use our jargon, we’re all sinners, and to vote for anyone is to cast a vote for another sinner. That’s going to mean compromise in some areas, but that doesn’t mean there can’t also be deal-breakers. Everyone has dealbreakers, the religious ones just look weirder to the secular world. You wouldn’t be lining up behind the democratic candidate if they were going to defeat Trump, pass the green new deal, oh and also go to war to annex Canada. We all have areas we can compromise and areas where we can’t.

So as a Christian, I get that it doesn’t make sense, but I’m thankful to live in a country where I have the freedom to vote for a candidate I can support (or not vote at all, though I haven’t found that necessary).

I’m tempted to vote for the lesser of two evils. It seems like the practical thing to do. I can’t think of a good secular argument not to. But where I can manage to actually hold to my beliefs, they are that I must vote for someone I can believe in and support, even if you painted some theoretical scenario where my vote was the final deciding vote and “throwing it away” meant Trump walked into the White House again, dismantled the constitution, and never left.

I am also no fun in conversations about the trolly problem.

I just want to say thank you to all the Trump enablers who are doing their part to insure the destruction of our democracy and the upcoming misery for millions and millions of Americans, especially minorities. Appreciate it.

“I mean, Hitler is bad and all, but what if his opponent was pro-choice? I really have no choice but to gas the Jews”.

That’s fine and all but effectively what you mean is that you care less about Democracy than your beliefs. And that’s a choice that is, i suppose, as legitimate as any other choice in some abstract sense, since you might argue Democracy isn’t necessary or necessarily good.

Which, to be honest, seems to underly a lot of what is really going on right now in America.

That is exactly correct.

Thanks for being honest.

I think the response to that then - what do you do if you live in a society that is anathama to your beliefs and is not a Democracy?

And the follow up is - what do you expect people to do that find your beliefs anathama if they don’t live in a Democracy?

Becuase, at least as i see it, Democracy isn’t a solution but a process, and if we care more about our ideals than the process of seeing them implemented, you walk down a road where what is permissible and what is not depends less and less on consent and more and more upon power.

See, I can’t see how we can be Christian and not be supporting democracy with all the effort possible. Not because Democracy is inherantly Christian, but because everything else we have tried seems to end up going against our Christian values so much worse then Democracy had. We live in the world, and are the caretakers of it. We are called upon God to be part of the world and be our brothers keeper.

So, in order to care about my faith and believes, I need to do whatever I can to keep our system working ( and improve on it). Its arm in arm in being a good neighbor and being my brothers keeper.

Anything less then that, well, I could look my pastor in the eyes and tell her that I am a Christian. I would just be someone going through the motions and traditions that someone else put forth.

Also, there isn’t anything I can find in the Bible that is contradicted by any of the platforms of the Democratic Candidates.

Accept maybe having a border. That’s pretty unchristian of us. We should throw open the doors and let people in. That’s what Jesus wants us to do.

And y’all wonder why I want to see religion ground to dust :)

I see my faith as a reason to leap into politics, because I see Jesus message as going hand in hand with political left. I see how it can be a force of good, when you look at Quakers, or the Civil Rights movement. That’s the Christianity that I connect to.

This whole other business that some people have. I don’t get it. It’s like they are reading a different Bible then I am. A warped one that hates Jesus and hates his message.

Supply Side Jesus.

I more meant in the “my faith supersedes my desire to support the frail, barely held-together societal structures in the real actual world we must have in place to keep from eating each other in the unending dark of the night” sense.

But yes, Christians who vote for Republicans are perhaps the most loathsome hypocrites in the world.

Those are such broad hypotheticals it’s hard to respond. Depending on the government and what’s being done, it might be something to endure. It might be something to hide from. It might be something to flee. It might be something to fight against within whatever government/system we’re imaging, it might be something to fight through outright resistance.

I don’t really have an expectation for how someone else should deal with me. I can hope in humane discourse and treatment, I’m not guaranteed that.

I mean, yeah, again, from a secular perspective, or some religious perspectives I see that threat. From a Christian perspective in which I believe God is sovereign above all else and our call is to obedience even if our comfort and safety is threatened (and not guaranteed), well, here we are.

I thought we got into this particular debate because we’re not voting Republican :)

I mean really voting for anyone but me is a grievous moral failure, but that felt insensitive to express in a thread about lambasting people for voting third party.

God emperors don’t condescend to curry votes.

Bullshit I will merrily bribe people with the delicious Muttar Paneer I made last night

It’s for the good of all, by Me!

I think this rubs up against something I think underlies a whole bunch of the political disagreement between liberals and conservatives. Liberals understand the law (and policy) as pragmatic. For us, the law is supposed to be used to achieve some desired good. Sometimes the obvious way to achieve that good through the law is not the most effective one–we tend to privilege the effective over the obvious. And we tend to try to craft policies and laws that are both possible to implement and produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Concerns about both political possibility and efficacy toward the common good are paramount.

For conservatives, the law and policy are about morality. Y’all want a legal system that reflects our moral consensus. (Well, actually that reflects your moral values.) Laws and policy aren’t about achieving results, but about codifying morality.

For instance, legal restrictions on abortion have little correlation globally with abortion rates. Lower abortion rates do correlate well with lower poverty and with laws that promote women’s autonomy and equality. The liberal says “If I want fewer abortions, I will support policies that produce that effect, most efficiently through poverty mitigation and women’s empowerment.” The conservative says “Abortion is wrong, therefore it should be illegal, even if that doesn’t produce fewer abortions.”

I think that divide between pragmatism and ideology underlies this whole discussion.