My disenchantment is based on how differently the current administration reacts to 2 conflicts: Ukraine-Russia and Gaza-Israel, in the latter supporting Israel’s indiscriminate war against Palestinian civilians with the excuse to exterminate Hamas. This post summarizes my disappointment after finally accepting that the US is not the benevolent hegemon I thought it was and how even the supposed American liberals, the democrats, while publicly calling the Israeli government to restrain itself, keep sending them every weapon they ask for and protect them at the UN with our veto. I’m now politically orphan.
I always thought America stood against bullies, America was the great nation, a country where we help others protect their human rights, fight authoritarianism of any kind, be it left, right, religious… the way we did with Ukraine against Russia. Ukraine fits here because authoritarian Putin decided he couldn’t accept an independent Ukraine anymore: I’m all for sending Ukraine the means they need to defend themselves to deny authoritarian Russia a successful occupation. The Ukrainian war is not a morally gray one like the ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, this one is black and white. Putin has to be stopped. America is here on the right side of history supporting Ukraine.
However, in Gaza, America doesn’t act like the benign hegemon I thought we were, but like a external power supporting a client state: Our government supports the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians in the name of fighting terrorism and calls everybody that questions the narrative that Israel is fighting against terrorists an antisemite, yet ignoring that Gaza has been an open air prison for 20 years and that these conditions make it ideal for fanatics and hate to thrive.
No, I’m not an Islamist (I don’t care about any religion) and no, I don’t want Israel to be wiped off the planet and no, I don’t have anything against Jews or Israelis, and no, I don’t deny the holocaust and the 6 millions of Jews who were murdered. It’s ridiculous to have to say this before even criticizing Israel.
America loves to support Israel’s right to defend itself, yet this same right in practice means carte blanche to kill Palestinian civilians as well, destroying their hospitals and their capability to function as a normal society. The Israeli army and government are not behaving any better than the Hamas fanatics that invaded Israel and killed 1300 Israeli civilians, the Israeli army has killed far more Palestinian civilians than Hamas did when they invaded Israel, yet simply saying what I did, simply comparing both sides like I did or calling for a cease fire gets you labeled an antisemite, hoping that simply uttering those words will make everybody rally against you and justify killing Palestinians.
A life is a life everywhere. All lives matter.
No, not every Palestinian is a terrorist, yet the media and the Israeli and American right insist in no making distinctions, make no effort to create a separate Palestinian state and keep not questioning the conditions of deprivation that will make another violent reaction against Israel in 20 years possible, when the current Palestinian children, now bombed and homeless, grow up and reach maturity, accusing Hamas of hiding behind civilians, ignoring that the policies of the Israeli right created them.
And our government does nothing to stop that. Worse, keeps arming and protecting the other side, the more powerful side.
Where do I go now?
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.
But was it really on purpose? It could very easily be an unintended consequence.
It was maybe an unintended consequence a 100 years ago, it’s completely intentional now.
Power struggles are on purpose. They do not want company as it would split either of their constituents
Even if it wasn’t on purpose in the very beginning it was obvious very early that politics were coalescing in two coalitions. The US had 200 years to fix the problem, and there are plenty of examples and alternatives on how to fix it around the world but it chose to keep its system. So, right now, it’s very much on purpose.
There are two things you do when voting in a two-party system:
- Vote to keep out the candidates that would do real damage
- Vote to communicate your preferences for candidates with platforms that match your priorities
I know it seems like a third party is the only solution to your current situation, but it’s not. The solution is to keep the idiots out by voting Democrat in general elections, and then to vote in primaries or with your campaign contribution dollars for Democrats who match your views on Israel/Palestine.
You might also support candidates who are in favor of voting reform, including things like ranked choice voting, which also happen to be people who currently run as Democrats.
Yes, exactly. The short term solution requires that people recognize the greater evil in the room and defend what little progress we’ve made. We can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Our first part the post voting system is horrible, but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system, priority 1 is exactly what you said.
Choosing not to vote for Democrats because they’re not perfect is choosing to step back and give republicans a free ticket to burn all of our progress to the ground. It’s naïve to think otherwise.
And honestly, that naïveté is holding us back from actually addressing issues like us aid to israel. Enoguh splintering among progressives will by default give control back to republican leaders who would happily sit back and watch palestinians die while lying about it and blaming it on anything anyone else other than themselves.
but until we can build up enough progressive movement to update it to a better system
We also need to try and expose as many people to the alternatives as possible. Anyone who can should be trying to utilize RCV. Trying to figure out what game(s) to play at game night? Use RCV. There are plenty of free apps out there to facilitate.
The more people who use it, see it’s benefits and that it’s not as complicated as people make it out to be, the faster it will happen.
Instant runoff voting is terrible and more complicated than people think, and I will never support it. It’s a false improvement whose adoption will discourage meaningful change.
If it’s a single winner election and you want a simple improvement, use approval voting. If you want to take on a little complexity for some further improvement, use delegable yes/no voting. I have one idea for further improvement, if anyone is really interested in voting methods.
STAR voting offers the same benefit of “vote for as many as you want” without Approval Voting’s drawback of being unable to rank your preferences. I have yet to find a better method. It is, of course, miles better than IRV, both in complexity to the voter (rate candidates 0-5 stars) and simplicity of tallying the result (two steps).
Any thoughts on the alternative I mentioned, DYN, described here?
At first blush, that sounds really complicated for the voter to understand what happens to their ballot. Potentially delegating part of their vote to one of the candidates? That’s going to be a hard sell. Sure, the direct mechanics for voting seems simple, but the system that ballot would go into feels unlikely to lead to better satisfaction than STAR, and might even lead to less informed voters. Even reading your link several times, I’m still not sure I correctly understand how the delegated votes are supposed to work, because I keep going back to “Why would anyone want that?”
My takeaway is either what we value in a democratic voting system is significantly different in some key area, or I don’t understand how the delegation in DYN is supposed to work, but I suspect it’s the former. I’m not a political scientist or a voting system enthusiast though, I just happen to like STAR.
It’s not ‘terrible’, but it does have issues just like every other voting system. It’s significantly better than what we have now.
Approval voting simplifies things but also has limitations because it removes any weight/preference people may have. If 55% vote for A, and B, but prefer A over B, and 45% vote B and C, but prefer C over B… B wins but 55% of the voters preferred A. Same exact issue you’re raising with RCV but occurs more often with approval than RCV.
Keep fighting the good fight, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Approval voting simplifies things but also has limitations because it removes any weight/preference people may have.
Yes, but nowhere near the problems of IRV. If those particular limitations bother you, as I said:
If you want to take on a little complexity for some further improvement, use delegable yes/no voting.
. . . don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I see zero “good” in IRV, for all the reasons outlined in the rant. Its failures are absurd and beyond unacceptable given that there are strictly better and simpler alternatives. Don’t let something shiny and terrible stop you from using something actually quite good.
☝️☝️☝️ this ☝️☝️☝️
Nobody gets their way 100% in democracy. Vote in the primaries or try and run… Then vote from who’s on the field.
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.
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
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.
Support third parties, vote strategically, push for voting reform to bust the first past the post duopoly.
To add: it should be possible for Democrats to win your vote, iff they oppose FPTP. It’s been gaining in both visibility and popularity within the Democratic party - the push is working.
There is literally no qualified candidate who supports FPTP.
FPTP
Can you explain in more detail? I’m unclear on what First Past the Post voting has to do with the OP’s concerns.
First Past the Post ensures that, to prevent a party from winning, the only option that’s effective is to vote for the party that stands for as much the opposite platform as possible, and it favors the incumbents.
This means that in the US system, it will always be one of the two parties that wins, instead of people being able to vote for the representatives they actually want to represent them or for the policies they actually want to see put into action.
There’s no way to say “whoever wins, I don’t want X to win” or “moderate politician that everyone sort of likes is my first vote, but if he doesn’t get enough votes, I’d prefer the Democrat to win instead of the Republican.”
Because of this, saying “no” to the Democrats supporting the war on Palestine is saying “yes” to the war on women’s rights, for example.
Sure, I guess that’s a… very long term?.. solution to the OP’s problem.
To be fair, we’ve had 250 years of bad voting systems to put us into this problem. I don’t think there are any realistic short-term solutions at all. We’re not going to be able to turn this ship on a dime, especially because democratic politics is driven by public opinion, but being in power is a position of influence over public opinions, so it’s self-reinforcing to a certain extent.
I’m repeating myself here because a lot of commenters have a misplaced hope for IRV improving things:
Instant runoff voting is terrible and more complicated than people think, and I will never support it. It’s a false improvement whose adoption will discourage meaningful change.
If it’s a single winner election and you want a simple improvement, use approval voting. If you want to take on a little complexity for some further improvement, use delegable yes/no voting. I have one idea for further improvement, if anyone is really interested in voting methods.
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.”
By not voting for the lesser evil, you’re helping the greater evil. Badee badee badeep, that’s democracy!
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.
It’s absolutely mind boggling that the bar for election is “supports a free and fair election”, and we’ve reached that stage in such a short time.
The death spiral is a steep one.
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
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Fix the political system by supporting IRV. Until then vote for the best offered that can win. Be involved in the party process too so the best is better then it is…
Keep in mind that both the Palestinians and Iran and Russia enabled Hamas and are enabling similar entities in Lebanon and Syria. Hamas is the government of the Gaza Strip. They are heavily armed and well entrenched with something like 40000 solders on their side. Until the Palestinian death numbers reach 40000 the Hamas sourced numbers really could be all combatants as they are not broken out nor are they third party numbers so who knows. They also do not care about the rules of war… they will murder anyone. The war would not have stared without Hamas, Palastinians, and their supporters making it so. So hold all of these parties to the same standards you hold Israel.
That said yes. Seems like Israel is over the top. Then again look at what the US did after 9/11 and about 3000 killed. How do we justify that. Consider if 30000 were killed in 9/11. This is roughly proportionally what Israel experienced. What would you have them do instead.
Only responding to the IRV portion of your comment, and repeating myself from elsewhere in this thread:
Instant runoff voting is terrible and more complicated than people think, and I will never support it. It’s a false improvement whose adoption will discourage meaningful change.
If it’s a single winner election and you want a simple improvement, use approval voting. If you want to take on a little complexity for some further improvement, use delegable yes/no voting. I have one idea for further improvement, if anyone is really interested in voting methods.
I think you can choose almost any system and be better then what we have.
We have IRV for some offices. I love it. Biggest problem ranking 6 or 7 candidates takes some time and looks complicated.
Frankly open to other systems. Proportion representation seems interesting for example in some cases.
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
RussiaUSSR).in Gaza, America doesn’t act like the benign hegemon I thought we were
It acts like the
drugarms 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).
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.
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!
