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There is no problem so bad it cannot be made worse. Look at more than one issue, and vote carefully.

This rule hasn’t changed.

Support third parties, vote strategically, push for voting reform to bust the first past the post duopoly.

You have no choice.

The US political system is utterly rigged in many, many ways to prevent the emergence of a third party.

In order to change this, the American public would have to somehow pressure both parties to agree to pass many laws, at the federal and state and county and city levels to /effectively/ alter the system.

They are of course never going to do this.

The only possible way to throw off this deathgrip is to somehow get an ‘extreme’ member of either party to become that party’s nominee.

This has been attempted twice in my life time:

Ron Paul was ‘the internet candidate’ of many young people who focused on his opposition to the Iraq War, Libertarian Economic and Social policies, either overlooking or being unaware of his ties to the rather unsavory John Birch Society, and the extremely ideologically fervent but ultimately delusional Mises Institute. Started on 4chan, hundreds of young Americans photobombed any random live newscast anywhere they could find with Ron Paul signs, raised millions for Paul’s campaign, functionally acting as his PR department as he barely had one and it was terrible, and they even raised enough money to rent a blimp, plaster it with Ron Paul banners and fly it around the country.

It didn’t work.

Later, Bernie Sanders emerged as a candidate in the Democratic primaries with a chance to shake up the Dem/Rep balance. The Democratic Party basically did everything they possibly could to sideline Bernie, handing the nomination to Hillary Clinton.

She of course lost to Trump.

Anyway, voting for a third party in America will statistically nearly never work on the Federal level. Even most Congresspersons and Senators in the past 20 years that have not been an R or D have been an ‘Independent’, nearly always being somewhere in the middle of R and D. You might have some third party candidate actually win on the State and Local level, but this is very, very rare.

Functionally all the voting for a third party does is remove votes from a more popular candidate with more moderate views.

Anyway, none of this matters: It was about a decade ago when a study revealed that Congress people of all kinds nearly never advance legislation that is highly popular among their constituents. They nearly always do advance legislation that will materially benefit their donors.

We do not like in a functional democracy or democratic republic.

We live in a functional corporate oligarchy, where hot button cultural issues are used to wedge voters, and massive PR and advertising campaigns are everywhere to convince the public that policies and legislation that helps businesses and hurts voters has a function deathgrip on the mind of the average American.

My honest to god suggestion to you is to either hunker down and form a local group of capable individuals to provide mutual aide to your local community as income disparity continues to rise, more and more become homeless, infrastructure continues to collalse, etc., or to get out of this nuclear armed banana republic with more guns than people, where somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of voters are so incredibly delusional and successfully propagandized that they believe a large amount of the Q Anon / MAGA insano-version of real life.

The problem is we have a First Past the Post system. This essentially means that you get to vote for one or the other, and refusal to vote means the one you like even less gets more voting power.

To complicate matters, this particular upcoming vote is actual Nazi-style fascists (down to quoting Hitler) who would fund the Israel/Hamas war vs Dems (and Republicans) who are funding the Israel/Hamas war. Basically, it’s a really bad time to push for a third party when FPTP is still the main hurdle.

So I would encourage you to look at your local races and your state races to change things from the bottom up. These local candidates are often not beholden to the whims of the DNC. I’m not a fan of Dems, either, but I am also under no illusions that if I don’t help them win in 2024, we’ll wind up with a fascist dictator and lose our ability to meaningfully vote at all.

I believe we can dump both the Dems/DNC and the Fascists/RNC, but we have to vote strategically to get there in several cycles; it’s not going to happen overnight, and the sad reality is a lot of people are going to die in Gaza no matter which option we choose.

ETA: As someone smarter said, “Your vote is a chess move, not a love letter.”

So like, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we’re kind of pushed to frame things in the context of American society. When I talk to people the major obstacles I keep hearing posited are along the lines of “how do we organize enough people or enough social capital to oppose entrenched, corrupt, self-serving power structures?”.

Which, fair, but it’s beginning to look a bit to me like that entire way of viewing things is playing into the game of the established power structure and allowing them to set the goals. The bar for success, or at least initial success, isn’t first getting politicians to be on board. Politicians will only be on board where there’s not just support but an outright demand from the people.

The focus shouldn’t be on trying to fix the pageantry of partisan politics, it should be on waking people up to their own autonomy and their own potential. The problem of politics won’t be solved by finding someone better to vote for, it’ll be solved by winning hearts and minds on the side of compassion and joy over cruelty and misery.

If you ask me, artists are a hell of a lot better equipped to do that than politicians. Politicians are a ph strip more than they’re the quality of the water itself. They show you what’s in there because they show what can win support. But treating the symptoms by focusing on shifting the political landscape may be a bit more taking a magic marker to the strip than actually balancing the ph level.

Not to say those positions don’t matter or that you shouldn’t vote, because, you know, laws; but real change starts at a grassroots level. I’d put your attention there.

I understand your frustrations but unfortunately have no actionable solutions. I wanted to reach out to say that you’re not alone on this, and that we have a lot of structural problems this question is emblematic of. I’m having trouble keeping any sort of hope for a better future, and the Gaza war has not been helpful.

Be well. Maybe we finally get the three seashells out of this!

The us political system isnt about voting for who you want doing what you want. Its about who’s gonna kill less people over time sadly. Dems are center right and GOP is far right but we dont have a choice we can go for that wont result in a split vote allowing things to get even worse. The american political system is broken trash and there isnt room for a third party very very on purpose.

You’re naive.

Ukraine wasn’t attacking Russia before they invaded. It’s a completely different situation.

Gaza has been attacking Israel for it’s entire existence, and far worse since Hamas took over 15 years ago. The Gaza strip was literally created by an invasion from Egypt (and four other countries) when they invaded Israel the day after Israel declared independence.

You call Gaza an open air prison, but it has a wall to another country (Egypt) who doesn’t want to help these people either because they realize that this isn’t actually a Palestinian vs Israeli war.

As with most things, you just need to follow the money. This war isn’t being funded by Palestinians on that side, they’re far too poor for that. So who’s bankrolling them, and what do they want? It’s Iran.

Iran sure as hell doesn’t give a shit about Palestinians independence. I’ll tell you that for free.

The reason why western governments support Israel is for that exact reason, they’re fighting a proxy war against Iran.

You don’t fix this situation by backing off support for Israel though, all that would result in is the mass killing of Israelis, and you’d be complaining the government isn’t doing enough to keep Israeli’s safe.

US is not the benevolent hegemon I thought it was

Welcome to the light, shall you get free of other pieces of propaganda too. 🙏✨

this one is black and white. Putin has to be stopped

Putin’s regime is rotten to the core, and it would be best for everyone, Russians included, if it was stopped.

However, don’t let that blind you to what Ukraine is doing: giving out pensions to Nazi veterans, using the fascist salute along a slogan that used to be “Glory to Ukraine, kill all the Poles”, renaming streets to honor their Nazi heroes, or using the black sun and other Nazi symbols for their troops. In addition to still falling behind on curbing corruption among its own government.

I support Ukrainian people’s right to get from under an oppressive regime, or to not get bombed and raped in their homes, but I’ll hold my judgement about the current government until I see what it does after the war. In the meantime, just be aware that arming Ukraine('s fighters) “too much”, might not be the best of ideas, you might not want (although some might) another US-sponsored “Mujahideen freedom fighters” situation (coincidentally, that was also against Russia USSR).

in Gaza, America doesn’t act like the benign hegemon I thought we were

It acts like the drug arms peddler it’s been for a long time already: fund building new weapons, sell the old ones, destroy the old ones using newer ones, repeat.

Bonus points when you realize that all the “government spending” to give weapons to Ukraine or Israel, goes to the same weapon manufacturers. Aren’t hidden subsidies in plain sigh great? Except for some religious fanatics who want the Armageddon to happen ASAP, helping Israel is not even about what Israel is doing (war? genocide? TikTok bombing videos?), it’s about getting rid of weapon stocks so America (as in, its citizens) can be convinced of a need to pay for new ones… plus reminding the whole world that they better like the USD, “or else”. 💵

Based on latest news, it seems like Israel hasn’t been using up their stockpiles fast enough, so now the US has started attacking “Irani forces in Iraq”, just to “keep the peace” in the region. 💣💥🕊️

All lives matter not every Palestinian is a terrorist

Yeah, all lives matter… they’ve just been severely devalued since there are 8 billion instead of only 0.5 billion of them, and we’re expected to hit over 16 billion. Right now, a good portion of Palestinians and Israelis, are trying to produce new offspring as quickly as possible, with rates like 8 kids per woman or more.

How many women, and men, taking part in that, are not radicalized or oppressed by someone radicalized?

Future generations are f-d… but hey, Israel already floated the idea of “reeducation camps with Israeli oversight for a generation”, that out to fix things, right? 😒

BTW, the “Palestinian state” is kind of a red herring, just get rid of the apartheid in Israel and most people will likely want to live in peace. The UN resolution that Israel promised to uphold in its declaration of independence, used the creation of a Palestinian state as a step towards the integration of both states in one, not as a goal by itself.

Where do I go now?

If you want to fight for your ideal “benevolent hegemon America”… probably into politics. Maybe economic sciences, try finding a way for America to change its business model.

If you want to solve world’s problems… maybe AI. People have proven again and again to be too stupid to solve their own problems.

Otherwise, maybe Canada? Or the EU? We’re having some right-wingnut trouble of our own, but our economies don’t depend on promoting wars (for now).

Protest, write your officials, work on primary campaigns. Make it clear how you feel and then vote for the candidate that will do the least harm actually.

So yes for local races or races that are competitive third party sure. My supervisor is a socialist he’s great.

For federal elections harm reduction and accountability is still the answer

A third party vote for president gives us a fascist dictator which is easily the worst possible option

I’m with you on this feeling sick of this war and the endless apologia but the tide of opinion and our policy is shifting. There is a huge generational divide on this issue that cuts across party lines

I want to just agree with what many have said and reiterate - if there is a party that is actively trying to remove people’s ability to vote, surely not voting would play directly into that?

That aside, I hear you. We’re in a tough place right now

Don’t let a single issue cloud your judgement. Vote green, independent, or don’t vote, or suck it up and don’t let single issues decide your vote. I think if we all honestly looked back on our lives, there are at least a handful of things that could make us hate ourselves. Or others to hate us for. I don’t think anyone should be judged by their worst (to a point at least).

The continuing lack of exposure to the Ukraine/Russia war I find far more disturbing. The lack of urgency about the status of the climate I find far more disturbing. There are for more issues even at home that I find more disturbing.

75 million voters think a 91-count indicted, authoritarian, future-convicted felon with Nazi-istic rhetoric is better than anyone else running. And make no mistake, he would have done the same bullshit, or worse, with respect to Israel, or Ukraine, or whatever.

I don’t care how disenchanted anyone is with the Democratic Party. If that moron is still allowed on the ballot, then the US is facing an existential crisis in the 2024 election. It’s time to put this Trump nonsense to bed. And the only way to do that is to elect people who are against Trump and are for free and fair elections.

I’ve actively spoken against the democratic party since I was in middle school. I voted for Obama, Hillary, and Biden. I am disgusted with all of thwm, but the only way to get the best person is to always support the least awful one. When the GOP is no longer viable, the power Vaccum will be filled.