@paneerakbari @benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn I'm sorry my unwillingness to cosign the bipartisan death machine of US foreign policy makes you think I'm divorced from reality. I'm not writing these toots to offend you.

I'm curious if you've travelled much outside of the US? Because the only people I've ever met who believe that there is more than one side to how the US treats the world are people who've only lived in the US. My friends and coworkers in Europe and Asia never seem to take it seriously. God knows the military folks I've served with couldn't see much of a difference.

But maybe it's like talking to a European about the subtle differences in baseball rules between the national and the american leagues? The rules are definitely not the same, but you have to be really into the game to appreciate those subtle differences.

@TCatInReality @eswag @benroyce @Pepijn I fully believe that active engagement in the primary process can lead to incremental improvements in a functioning democracy.

But I have no confidence that the DNC and the GOP are going to let themselves be reformed by primaries here in the United States of America in the year 2026.

But primaries are like prayer as a cure for cancer - it works best when combined with surgery and chemo. You can vote in primaries all you want, and it will improve your mental health. But don't skimp on Class War.

@eswag @su_liam @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn My brother, it took the most deadly war in US history to amend our Constitution so that humans from Africa were considered *mostly *human. That was 160 years ago not only have we not made it the rest of the way, but we're falling backwards.

We're unable to amend our Constitution so that we consider women to have the same rights as men.

Getting rich people and their financial instruments (corporations) to not run our government and our lives will be just as hard and likely just as bloody.

@eswag @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn Can people who work really hard with two or three side hustles and not spending money on avocado toast and $1000 iPhones become billionaires?

Probably - it's rare, but it can happen. Mostly, this line of rhetoric is made by the assholes at the top to reframe the problem of inequality and lack of social mobility from structural injustice onto personal responsibility. You're not a billionaire because just you're not hustling hard enough.

This is a post about people voting in primaries.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn I'm happy to help!

We just need a Dem candidate who supports RCV and isn't a sociopath.

Which probably means we're fucked, but lets be optimistic!

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn I understand that the DNC and the GOP have so gerrymandered the states that voting outside of those two camps is unlikely to win. I understand the Electoral College predates political parties, and has been abused by partisans since its inception. We've had 235 years to unfuck this, but apparently we've always had more important things to do. God knows no other nation uses such an archaic system like we do.

Maybe we'll change it after Trump dies. But the DNC has shown no appetite for meaningful change. I guess we'll see.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn My Washington state 2024 ballot had 10 candidates for US president. How many did yours have?

https://www.sos.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-09/Voters%20Pamphlet%202024%20-%20Edition%2021%20-%20Pend%20Orielle.pdf

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn You can draw your line where ever you want to draw it.

I'll continue to vote, but not for candidates on the wrong side of my line. I have other options - so do you. My life is too short to waste trying to unfuck the DNC without having billionaires of dollars to spread around.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn Weird that you believe that "not voting for a sociopath from the DNC or GOP" is the same as "non-participating". Especially when we're having this discussion on Mastodon, far far away from the mainstream social platforms because neither of us support those places. We're both participating in social media, right?

I will always vote if there's a candidate I can support. But I won't support sociopaths - there's too much at stake to vote for a mildly sociopathic candidate if there are alternatives. That's a simple rule, and I'm honestly surprised that it's considered spicy, even on Mastodon.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn You're talking about 2024. I voted Harris. We got Trump anyway - because Harris sucked. Haha - voting for the lesser evil failed because the vast majority of voters thought Harris wasn't worth getting off the sofa to vote for.

Q: If you're not serving your self-interests when you vote, whose interests are you serving?

A: You're serving the interests of someone else; probably you're serving the self-interests of some donors. Talk about throwing away your vote! Those donors are obviously serving their self-interest and could not care less about you and your interests.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn At some point, a system gets too fucked up to heal itself. The usual analogy in engineering is trying to change the flat tire while the car keeps running down the road. To fix things, sometimes you have to make non-incremental changes.

Partisanship has crossed that line, IMHO. We've been voting - me included - for the lesser evil since forever and the situation is the worst it's been in 100 years.

It's obvious the GOP has reached the point of non-repairability. Maybe the DNC is salvageable, but I'll let you optimistic partisans to try to reform those corrupt fuckheads - since I don't write big checks, they care nothing for me, and I'm going to return the favor.

@TCatInReality @benroyce @eswag @Pepijn You lost me at "influence Harris to help the Palestinians".

I not going to try to influence someone to not support murderers because her donors are their friends. She's already a sociopath. Not being a sociopath is table stakes for my vote in the future.

What's table stakes for your vote? Do you have a minimum amount of character where, below that level you won't vote for a candidate?

If you don't, I'm kind of sad for you. If you do, then this whole thread is a disagreement over where each of us draws our line.

@TCatInReality @benroyce @eswag @Pepijn I'm not waiting for a perfect candidate, I'm just rejecting awful candidates.

Harris was awful. Just because Harris wasn't *unusually *awful for the kind of tools that the DNC donors fund doesn't make her less awful.

If you can stomach voting for a worse candidate than me, fine, I guess. Maybe you can eat spicier food than me, too. Or see more rotting corpses before you puke. We're all different.

We all get to decide for ourselves how bad a candidate can be before we "nope" out. I'm not going to feel bad that you and I disagree.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn Harris probably wouldn't have sunk a bunch of boats and murdered their sailors before kidnapping Maduro and stealing Venezuela's oil, but Harris would still have supported Israel killing and starving Palestinians just like Trump does.

I'm too much of a pussy to look at a starving Palestinian orphan being expelled to Africa and say - hey, you have to understand I was voting *strategically*.

Instead, I get really, really pissed off at the party assholes who put me in this position for the sake of the convenience of their donors.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn It's easy to agree when the ballot has good candidates that just happen to be Democrats. But I think we'll end up disagreeing over voting for shitty Democrats vs shitty Republicans.

Personally, I'm getting really tired of taste-testing the shit from both candidates to pick the one that's microscopically less shitty.

But let's think happy thoughts and pray that the DNC won't ever again run two shitty presidential candidates without a primary like 2024.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn I respectfully disagree.

As far as I can tell, parties are the storefronts where big money donors go shopping to buy corrupt politicians.

I will not support a political party. I will support the good candidates that I trust. People - with ideas - not parties.

There's nothing about political parties in my Constitution, and that's good enough for me.

We may have to disagree about this.

@TCatInReality @benroyce @eswag @Pepijn I think the rot is partisanship.

Partisanship got us into our gerrymandered lesser-of-two-evils shitshow.

I don't see how partisanship for an imaginary party that is spelled "d-e-m-o-c-r-a-t" but acts like lefties is going to reform jack shit.

Burn down all parties and just vote for lefties if you like lefties. If your ballot just has assholes on it, do whatever you feel you can live with.

@randahl If you think you can stop a US president being a land-grabbing asshole by showing him a piece of paper, you don't know US history of breaking treaties with the Native Americans.