I've heard so VERY often now that BOTH candidates were freaking awful. I have no bloody clue WHICH groups would have been hurt under Hillary's rule. It doesn't MATTER which ones
What?
To buy something is to support the company selling it... it's a very simple concept.
We're not talking about buying something from the company. The analogy isn't quite right. Would you take a moment to think about that again? The difference is, in a situation where you are buying something, there are three outcomes: you are buying product A, product B, or you go home with nothing. In this situation, millions of people will be forced to live their lives at the behest of a person A or person B. There is no option to avoid both and go home with nothing. The analogy doesn't work.
I also don't like seeing people hurting in a situation where I can DO something (without then hurting an equal number of people, which is all that voting does, in my view).
You haven't described what the alternate universe would be if you had voted someone else. By not voting, you are in fact making a choice. You can't avoid the existence of a decision. That's one of the facts of life. The world turns, whether or not you pull the levers. Your participation- or not- is an active choice. If you are dealt a poker hand, you don't get to decide that the deal never happened. In effect, you folded, and you let the winning hand on the table stand. It's still a choice you made, and you own a part of the consequences.
Both candidates are poisonous: I don't need deep research to know this. Hell, LOTS of people know this, and I guarantee you that very few voters REALLY research their choices.
You "don't need to learn." Yes, you have said this many times. It's no less troubling each time I read it. You have created this oversimplified paradigm where you pretend that you can insulate yourself by staying indoors. It doesn't work like that. By the way, I'm not pushing Hillary. This line of questioning is about voting. In the case of Donald Trump, yeah I think he's a bad guy, but that's not the point here.
they often feel like they have this "duty" to still vote anyway, just because "voting is the thing you do".
I have never heard that. The duty you might be referring to is to make the best choice with the cards you're dealt for yourself and your country (although, people may change the order of those two entities).
Also, you didn't answer the, "if Hitler were in the running, would you be willing to vote for the other person" question. I'm guessing that you refuse to answer that question, and so I will move on from it. I'm just going to add, I find that a little bit disturbing. It's not a trick question. It's easiest question you could ever get.
I find that a lot of the Hillary hate comes from people who are getting their news from Facebook. Yeah, there's a lot about her to dislike. She's not my first choice. But comparing her to Donald Trump, I would surely like to understand why it's a wash. Why are they equally bad?
A quick note, multiple people have accused me of comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. Never happened. Please use the quotation feature before you make accusations. Also, you should understand that the Hitler topic is there as a comparison. It's used as a limit test to see how far the intellectually hollow argument of not participating actually goes. It's to see if there is ever a point at which voting means something. I'm using it as the absurd. But even with a softball like this, I can't get a straight answer, which is really disturbing to me. Anyone who knows anything about history, millions of people including Jews and persons with disabilities were killed. They were poisoned, gassed, incinerated, r@ped, tortured. But people can't even say that they would vote against that? I don't understand any eventuality in which a person voluntarily lets this happen because they are sticking to some dishonest argument they have built up in their heads. It's troubling.
When I make decisions, I have two sieves that I put into action. The first is, character of conscience. I look at an issue and decide, what is the most right thing to do? Even given a bad hand with multiple undesirable solutions, what's the best move from a position of conscience? I have a strong sense of self and justice. To me, living is something we can all agree on and as a common point of reference for what justice means.
The second is, logic. I'm a programmer. I make my living writing sieves. I know how to take large issues and chop them down into tiny pieces, analyze them, research what I don't know, create algorithms and assemble it into the whole. It's my job and my nature.
Together, with those two sieves, I can decide.
After all this, looking at people's arguments, I think what I see is this: compared to the sieves and the order that I use, I think other people are using a different set of rules. It looks like something very subjective, something like a sense of revulsion and dissociation. I'm also seeing a little bit of illness in some of these comments. When you look at external versus internal locus of control, it reminds me of where a person feels that the world around them is what it is irregardless of their participation. There's no connection for them between the world in which they live and their choices in it. In any event, subjective and personal issues rather than a set of rules that could be used by a wider group.
I don't hope to convince anyone that participating is important. Most of the people here are too old to change without wanting to or doing the real work that involves. The one tiny hope I see in Misery's comments (and the best thing that I thought he said) was about how problem-solving would be about coming together and trying to find the best solution. It's the mindset of children, and I mean that in a good way. It's the way we think before we are old enough to become bitter, comprehend politics, become depressed or develop illness, before we are hurt over and over again by life itself. In some people, when they come out the other side of that, it's just too late to go back. But, if there is a chance for Misery to care enough, I would think that particular statement is the one to build off of. I would start there.
I don't object to the point that money in politics is overwhelmingly counterproductive or that politicians today leave much to be desired. Completely agree on that point. But I do think that letting the mold grow on the house and pretending it's not there is not very effective. If you believe that money in politics is hurting our country, doing nothing isn't going to fix it. It's just simple inertia. I was a Bernie fan. I even read his book that just came out in November. Although, having read his book and listened to him in person, I think that a lot of his audience missed the boat. Maybe caught up a little bit too much in the rally part of things without a grasp on the political part of things. Bernie is very much about making the best out of what you have. Not because you are settling, but because progress happens in increments. It's hard work. There's a lot of losing involved. But, along the way, in increments, it can get better even in the face of overwhelming odds.
