No, DO vote! Think of all the meaningful, measurable changes your one vote will bring about!!!

At least SolRo understands (on some level) that what matters isn't your vote, but rather your ability to sway large masses of votes by buying propaganda time, selecting the short list of candidates who'll be offered to the public, or even simply controlling the voting machines themselves.

Homer, despite what you've been taught at university and in the military, Democracy does not mean that one person (in this case you) has the sole authority to decide who is the president. You keep insisting on this point, and I have to tell you, your fly is wide open my friend.

Of course it doesn't, and I have never once claimed it did! On the contrary, I have always maintained that democracy (in the current context) means that one person has absolutely -no say- over who will be the next President.

When have I *ever* insisted otherwise...?

Oh, right, you misunderstood my first paragraph. Sorry! That comment re: the importance of voting was meant to be taken ironically. Of course it doesn't matter whom you vote for, and of course we all know this already.

No, I understand you exactly. Here's your previous comment,

"Let us pretend that we had a time machine, and with this time machine, we conducted the following experiment: on the day of the election, Mr Wildcat vote sfor a specific candidate - let's say, Trump. You observe the results of the election. Next, you go back in time, and vote for a different candidate - let's say Hillary. You observe the results of the election. Now you continue going back in time, voting for any possible candidate - Libertarian, Green, Communist, Constitutional, Monarchist - and even NOT voting, instead staying at home and enjoying your day off of work, taking note of the outcome each time. What do you think will be the result? Will the outcome of the election vary from vote to vote?"

Now, presumably, you want the result to change depending on your vote, no? If you don't, then how can you claim voting is inconsequential? Further, you state above what you think does work, which is to manipulate the system to achieve your desired outcome.

Well in the case of the Republican party anyway, democracy is functioning perfectly. The Party itself is in complete disarray, for they all believe as you do. And Donald Trump is now the candidate. The only way they'll be rid of him is to have a brokered convention, which will directly thwart the will of the voters. We shall see if you are ultimately right and they prevail.

>> Now, presumably, you want the result to change depending on your vote, no?

No, not at all. All I "want" is for people to answer truthfully - and the answer, of course, is that nothing will change, because your vote is inconsequential. I've never insisted that one person has the sole authority to determine who will be president, and in fact, I wouldn't WANT one person to have that kind of authority, even if it were possible! (if you'll recall, I've rejected even *hypothetical thought experiments* regarding Presidential determinism on these very grounds) In fact, I'd do you one further and say that, as a minarcho-voluntarist, I don't believe ANYONE should have sole authority over the citizenry, including the state itself. The solutions to any problem we might *actually* have (as opposed to problems we are merely told we have e.g. terrorism, Zika pox, poor people who ascribe to a different political party than you do) are not going to be found by praying faithfully towards centralized, top-down hierarchies.


Here's what I think: I think that you, Mr Wildcat, are looking for something to argue about here, *but I don't think you actually disagree with me!!!* I think you know that voting, at least on an individual level, on the level that you or I or SolRo or any of our other friends here at poeTV can operate upon, is a pointless act. Now, you *may* have a little bit more faith in the abstract notion of mass voting (which is also fraught with problems; Mr SolRo brought up just one problem out of many) and we could certainly move on to disabusing you of your democratic idealism later. BUT. At the moment, I do not think you're willing to dispute the truth of the observation that *your* vote is literally inconsequential.

No. What we agree upon, in principle, is that our individual votes are not deciding elections. I claim this is by design, and is essential for democracy to function. As soon as your vote becomes, in your words, consequential, that is where democracy will fail.

You then jump to the conclusion that because our individual votes are not deciding elections this makes voting irrelevant. You then spell out what does decide elections, as above.

Again, there is a Elephant in the Republican waiting room, and his name is Donald Trump. The American People put him there. The people you claim actually decide these things, the money people and the spin docs, are in chaos. Like you, they make these same assumptions. It's not that these assumptions _are_ wrong, it's that they _can_ be wrong. Subtle but important difference there.

So then, what allows money and spin to Trump the will of the voters? Why, I'm glad you asked. It's the notion that your vote is inconsequential, and that you shouldn't bother. When turnout is high and people are engaged, we usually get results that more closely match what the majority of us want.

If the American people spent a fraction as much energy working on improving our political system as they do whining about it or voting for retarded novelty candidates, we'd be living in castles on the moon by now.

I love this inane idea that pointlessly symbolic non-actions like this will somehow "send a message." On what fucking planet have you accomplished anything but jerk off? What is the best-case scenario here? Party elites look at the guy who lost and decide to emulate his losing strategy?

there is a non-zero chance that he'll win you overly cynical goon

but my tumblr circle is so invested in Bernie now!!!! We have to lash out at Hilary like the petulant trustafarian man-children we are!!!!

solRo

check out these WHORES http://theindustryaintsafe.tumblr.com/

sounds like they need the ole ONE AND A TWO amirite

Solro

Good link, lotsmoreorcs. That kind of shit (and the general attitude around it) is part of the reason I rarely play shows anymore, I'm sick of having to pretend to be friendly with some of the worst kinds of people just to play a mediocre show in a mediocre bar to 100 people.

On the other hand, social media court-of-public-opinion stuff isn't really helping in the long run.

It's easy to forget that Sanders doesn't even exist for a huge portion of the population.

They don't even use his name in the CNN writeup of the Super Tuesday results, for example.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/super-tuesday-highlight s/index.html


I'm pretty amazed and a bit less cynical for him having made it as far as he did.

I'm kind of torn with the third party votes at this time. I think supporting a third party is a great idea and the more support they get, the more influence they will have as a political party -- even if it is only to nudge policy in a slightly better direction.

But I guarantee that the Republicans will not be splitting their vote.

This cycle you guys have the shittiest choices I've ever seen. At least Clinton is not Stalin-level evil, she's more of a banal sort of careerist politician who doesn't mask her insincerity as well as others.

On the other hand, only The Donald knows what he would actually do once in office. He's pandering to the worst aspects of the GOP to sew up the nomination -- he will have to do a 180 for the general or get stomped.

What do you think abut the (unlikely in my opinion, but not impossible) scenario that the GOP nominates someone else despite Trump's popular success, Trump gets mad and runs as an independent, and the Republican vote is split?

One thing that I've heard is that down-ticket republican candidates are terrified of Trump winning the nomination and that general election republican voters might stay home.

Establishment republicans are so afraid that they are mulling a third party true-conservative candidate who would just be there to save the house and senate.

However, I don't know if anyone out there would really want to spend the time, money, and energy to mount a third party run in that scenario.

I'm just glad somebody in the primaries finally proved "electability" to be the bullshit non-quality it really is; if it's down to who's more electable, then POTUS might as well be a fucking Kennel Club breed. I only wish it had been a Democrat to disprove it instead of Wig Hitler, but well, I'll take my agonizing crawl away from top-down party rule any way I can get it at this point.

I worked on the GM assembly line that produced the first batch of Hummer H3s in America, so it's not like I'm not used to being a knowing accessory to evil. Doubtful this will pay nearly as well, though.

This is probably the last election cycle that resembles business as usual, unless Bernie wins and slows the sharp nationalist decline for 4-8 more years. The next one, things like not-voting, third partiy support, propaganda, rhetorical assault, and culture war will be seen as the more important part of the political process and the more powerful tools of change. America's dirt is owned by two pillars of willing and knowing offense against human prosperity, corp and gov, and it's only a matter of repurposing their own game mechanics to repurpose the dirt.

I think the political process can be rewired completely using the same elements. By jettisoning the established labels of "conservative" or "liberal" you are left with the reality that anyone can be put in those seats, even communists, socialists, fascists, and anarchists. The trick is using not-politics to dig the channel to the chairs. By the time you reach a voting booth, you should already know if you've won or not and voting is the formality, the way to say you're done playing this cycle see you next time. Otherwise it's gambling and the whole political process is the gambler's fallacy. Every voting booth a slot machine is how it is now and we're always thinking this will be the one.

If just a few million people stop gambling and start running the tables, America will change.

I could write a paper about how democracy is Draco's totalitarianism, an ancient Greek scam against a people who should have not consorted their oppressors before undermining them.

"Consorted their oppressors" is the worst Freudian slip I have ever done.

Bravo, me.

Consulted, I meant.

We've been suffering the consequences of the Nader vote for 16 fucking years. Unless first past the post voting is done away with, a vote for a third party is always a vote against your own best interests.

I agree with RockBolt, with the caveat that a vote for a party candidate is also a vote against your own best interests.

It's truly hypnotic how much thought you've put into doing nothing and accomplishing nothing.

Am I the only one here who remembers how this attitude--this exact attitude--is what got us 8 years of Bush? "Ohh, are Al Gore and Gorge W. REALLY that different? Aren't Democrats and Republicans virtually identical?"

No. They're not.

And in case you haven't noticed, no one gives a shit about the Green Party. No one will give a shit about the Green party. It has zero impact on anything whatsoever. You are not "sending a message" or "making a statement" because nobody is watching or listening. All you will so is split the ticket and damage the side you agree with more. I cannot express in words how pointless your vote is.

Back in 2000, a person could perhaps be forgiven for seeing little difference between Democrats and Republicans: the Republicans hadn't yet gone off the deep end (not all of them anyway) and a fair amount of Clinton's foreign policy was straight out of Bush Sr's playbook.

But that was 2000. It is now 2016, and in every regard the Republicans have proven themselves unfit for power. Democrats are imperfect all right, but if you're wondering why better laws aren't passed, that is about 99% the fault of Republicans obstructing everything helpful and trying to pass everything vile.

Job number one has to be booting Republicans out of power. Job number two will be improving the Democrats. The order is crucial.

Tens of thousands of people are going to die when their health coverage is stripped away or their water supply poisoned by unrestricted fossil fuel development, but it's worth the price of me getting to keep my indie cred by not buying into the 2 party system WAKE UP SHEEPLE **flies out of the matrix to Rage Against the Machine **


Seriously, fuck everyone in the comments here who cast a protest vote
in the name of their own retarded John Galt principles. Actual fucking adults are going to spend years if not decades trying to undo the (possibly irreversible) damage you've caused.