A bit of your meaning is unclear, so I want to add something:
If you are part of the half of Americans who voted for either of the two ruling parties, you voted for torture. The only people who haven't are those who don't vote, or who vote for (certain) third parties.
So I should support a third party that will get no representation in the government and have no impact? We live in a two-party system whether you like it or not, and it's not changing anytime soon.
I quickly grow weary of the constant anti-establishment chant on HN to "vote out all the incumbents" (not going to happen) and support an independent candidate (not going to get elected). How about I vote for the one of the two major parties that didn't opt for the useless wars that spurned this and didn't authorize torture in the first place? I know Obama hasn't prosecuted Bush, Cheney, and the other torture enablers (it's political suicide in case you didn't know), but at least he didn't let it happen under his watch.
Either way, your vote is thrown away. Even if you live in a perennial swing state like Ohio, you're vanishingly unlikely to swing the election to the party that beats you with a velvet glove instead of iron knuckles. And if you don't live in one of those states, it's... even more vanishingly unlikely.
The issue with voting isn't that it influences the government one way or another: it doesn't, and pretty much any of us can get more influence by working all those hours we would otherwise think about politics and using that money to purchase connections with actual power brokers (though even that is mostly a waste).
The real issue with it is its influence on your identity. Electoral politics is a twisted parody of real politics, morphing autonomous values and communal choices into something closer to the emotions felt when watching team sports. My guy good, your guy good. Which isn't bad, in itself--it's a form of entertainment like any other. But it's not real politics.
My suggestion would be to skip voting for all federal offices and maybe even state offices, and focus on the local, if you must do electoral politics.
This is a nonsense attitude. If you vote for a party, then you 're acknowledging that you want them in power. If you don't want them, stop voting for them. Sure, your action won't get a 3rd party elected, but neither will your incumbent vote be needed for the incumbent to stay in power. It's just a psychological illusion of "voting for the winner" and not "wasting" it that drives people to oppose their own interests. Within the past 20 years there have been several 3rd parties with some chance, but enough of their supporters decided not to "waste" their vote that none of them ever made it.
For the presidency, under which the power to enact or prosecute torture lies, there's been no chance for a third-party candidate in my lifetime (and I've seen one election, 2000, thrown in the wrong direction because too many people voted for Nader).
In any event, 3rd parties often look so honest and admirable because they've never had to hold power and make tough decisions. If any of them managed to hold power for a significant portion of time, we'd be clamoring to vote them out of office for their misdeeds all the same. Part of politics is about accepting the dirtiness of the game and doing the best with what you have. I'll throw my support behind the party that's good enough for me, and has a chance of actually bringing about some meaningful change.
> So I should support a third party that will get no representation in the government and have no impact?
In a word, yes. If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you've still voted for evil. The government derives its legitimacy through votes. Even if you "throw your vote away" you can at least say that the ruling party did not derive a single quantum of legitimacy through you.
In that case you effectively voted for the greater evil. They probably played you too, by lending support to the third party to split the vote of the good people.
"at least he didn't let it happen under his watch."
People know so little about how the executive branch, including the President, must do the jobs that we, in our comfortable ignorance that maintains our lifestyle, need them to do for National Security.
At least Cheney is honest when he says he would do it again. There are many things that happen when you and your kids are comfortably sleeping or having hot cocoa.
Trust me. There are worse people in the world than the ones prople are blaming today. And it is just a matter of time before a drone takes care of them. And you want it that way.
If someone is uncomfortable with that notion, then maybe they should run for office or serve in some public capacity. But he or she will then discover the harsh reality.
Just watch a few videos of the news in 2001 or 2002 to refresh your memory a little about what we were asking our leaders to take care of.
Of course, "there are bad people in the world, and hard, tough men like ourselves have to take care of them, even if it's unsavory to weak-minded civilians who just don't understand" is what the leaders of ISIS tell themselves to justify beheading reporters, Putin tells himself to justify shooting down civilian airliners, and Cheney tells himself to justify anal rape and murder of innocents as instruments of public policy.
All of them should be imprisoned to protect society from their machinations.
Consider that if you're so willing to compromise your principles on human rights for the benefit of your family then you're basically practicing tribalism. You might as well enslave a race, or subjugate a class, or annex a sovereign nation for the lebenstraum.
Anybody who feels the need to bolster their argument with "trust me" is trying to fuck you over. It's an ironclad rule that people will only say that when they know they shouldn't be trusted.
I upvoted you. But Cheney is still rotten despite being honest. He doesn't deny that many in Gitmo are innocent (or not known to be guilty), yet still declares them terrorists. In that way he worked against your kids.
Voting for a third party sends a message to the two actual parties that they could get your vote if they took <distinguishing position of your third party>. Obviously, an single vote for a third party will not make a difference, but a single vote for a main party won't make a difference anyway. However, if a third party gets even 1% of the votes, then the two main parties would notice that and think about what they can do to win that 1% of the voting population.
Liberal Nader voters in 2000 were partly responsible for Bush getting elected, because they could have prevented it. Absent instant run-off voting or some other way that a third party can be viable, voting for a third party simply wastes an opportunity to vote against the greater evil. It sends no viable message. The 2 main parties will give it no weight whatsoever, as they have total control.
This is the second time you've categorised it as choosing "the lesser evil". I don't think that's what the system was designed to be. It sounds to me like it's so far off the rails that the real lesser evil choice is to refuse to participate in the process and rob it of its credibility.
If I vote for the losing party, I implicitly agree to abide by the choices made by the winning party because I would expect the same from their supporters if the roles were reversed. None of the parties represent my interests, so I don't vote and I certainly don't agree to respect the decisions made by those who don't represent my interests.
To tie it back in with the original point, those who voted against Bush implicitly agreed to abide by his decisions if he won. Only those who refuse to participate in the system can claim zero complicity.
> It sounds to me like it's so far off the rails that the real lesser evil choice is to refuse to participate in the process and rob it of its credibility.
The result of refusing to participate is that you lose even more freedom to pursue happiness. Your captors don't care a whit about credibility.
> None of the parties represent my interests, so I don't vote and I certainly don't agree to respect the decisions made by those who don't represent my interests.
Then you waste an opportunity to help prevent greater evil from happening. You needn't agree with the lesser evil when you vote for them.
> To tie it back in with the original point, those who voted against Bush implicitly agreed to abide by his decisions if he won. Only those who refuse to participate in the system can claim zero complicity.
The good people who didn't vote in 2000 could have prevented a needless war from happening. They had the opportunity, so they are complicit. Only those who voted for the lesser evil can claim zero complicity.
If you abstain from voting, that doesn't remove you from the process or relieve your implicit obligation under your government.
Even if it did, why would you remove yourself from any philosophical obligation to your government, but live within its laws and regulations? You're basically trying to be separate but, by choice, not really separate and not really equal.
I looked only at the first one. It contradicts sources I saw back in the day. Regardless whether I'm right, the point stands that good 3rd party voters can hand the election to the greater evil.
That's odd, because it backs up sources that I recall, and it links to citations from 2000, and not our vague recollections.
As the first link points out, Monica Moorehead, the Worker's World Party candidate, got 1,804 votes. David McReynolds of the Socialist Party collected 622 votes.
The people who visited for Moorehead, or for McReynolds are the ones you should focus your ire upon. Not those who voted for Nader.
The Socialist Party is more to blame for Bush winning the office than Nader.
Oh, and all those non-voters? They were also partially responsible. And all those who refused to steal ballot boxes from heavily Republican district are also to blame! Because preventing evil justifies everything. Including torture.
Then you must think pacifists like the Amish are immoral.
And somehow have a magic ball to say what the future brings, and what the alternative future might have been.
This seemingly reasonable argument (assuming that you do not reject violence as fundamentally immorally ) is how Augustine turned a religion of peace into one with soldiers, as Just War theory.
But it doesn't stop. It also twists a phrase like "imminent threat of violent attack" into "does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons will take place in the immediate future" and "enemy militant" into "all military-age males in a strike zone, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
The calculus of violence is very coarse, yet you want to hang us all on its balance scales of greater or lesser violence and harm.
Your political opinions are not universal, and those who disagree with you are not evil, and frankly your way is stupid and the reason the mess perpetuates.
I upvoted your political opinion. Of course mine isn't universal, because not everyone has my rock solid ethics. (And that's party because rather than analyze their own choices in the face of others', they call others' choices stupid.) It is certainly evil to support violence, like torture, when it isn't the best choice to prevent greater violence.
the parties no longer represent us. We are lead to fight over wedge issues while the elites take everything. A vote doesn't matter by itself either.
The only way a vote will have any impact is if you use it to add just a little sting to any political activity you do elsewhere. If your only political action is voting, you might as well stay home.
The only real hope is if a large bipartisan alliance forms. That's more important than if we get Romney or Obama as President (two candidates who are mostly different in terms of party affiliation and skin color, but not in terms of approaches to governance).
So you call people out on hiding behind their votes, and that we should alienate those that cast their votes we disagree with.
...and then you admit you're using a throwaway account here. Ironically, you're hiding behind your throwaway account instead of posting it under your real account/persona. Precisely because you are afraid that people will do what you told them is the best way to fix this problem of government we're discussing, and alienate/shun you for your views..
If you are part of the half of Americans who voted for either of the two ruling parties, you voted for torture. The only people who haven't are those who don't vote, or who vote for (certain) third parties.