It’s been a stereotype for at least the last 50 years. Why has this never changed? Why has organized labor not had a substantial effect for such an essential part of the workforce?
It’s been a stereotype for at least the last 50 years. Why has this never changed? Why has organized labor not had a substantial effect for such an essential part of the workforce?
Maybe because 98.1% keep voting for either evil or the lesser evil; but almost none of them vote for the good like Nader?
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities - and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, […] you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public.” – George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrbXOmnW70
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
Please show me one time in the past 50 years that a third party candidate in the US helped the Left win an election.
The GOP constantly funds and pushes for the Greens and Libertarians because they know those candidates sap the Dems.
The Democrats are not Left wing. They’re left of the Republicans, and less authoritarian, but they’re a right-wing party who crippled banking regulation in favor of oligarchy, bailed out the worst banks, lied about drilling for oil[1] and causing a mass extinction event, and kept giving Israel weapons even after they went from defending themselves to committing genocide.
The goal for ethical people is not to get the Democrats to win, but instead to elect ethical people to government, e.g Hawkins and Nader.
It’s possible, even in FPTP voting systems, for people to reject the 2 parties that usually wins - see the UK where the Tories or Labour have been the only 2 winning parties for more than 90 years (including 2 short coalition governments); but where polling shows the 5th party (the horrible Reform) and 8th party (Greens) are now leading.
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/08/16/biden-oil-drilling-production/ As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has.
All that effort to show that you can’t tell the difference between ‘bad’ and completely horrible.’
You can babble on and on, but you can’t actually show one time that a strong third party candidate didn’t help the GOP.
From your point-of-view, the Democrats winning is good, and the Republicans winning is bad. You might see them on a left-right scale of 0-10, where 0 is good, the Ds are at 3, the Rs at 9, and Hitler at 10.
Some other people see a bigger window than that: look at https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 and compare how these people see the distance between Trump +9+9 and Biden +7+6, compared to the distance between both and Hawkins -5-3. These people agree that the Rs are worse than the Ds, but they don’t want to help the Ds win because the Ds are mass-extinction causing capitalists. To convince these people to vote for the Ds instead of Greens/socialists/not-voting at all, you have to convince them that the Ds actions of:
are good, and worth voting for.
Again, you ignore the actual facts.
Maybe you live in a world of privilege where things like schools, roads, hospitals, and wars are merely theoretical. We who actually have to deal with those things know differently.
Nowhere do you link to a 3rd Party that has any realistic chance of making any change anytime soon.
Quick historical note. Look up a fellow named Frederick Douglas. He was a former slave. In 1860 he had the choice of supporting a full on pro-Abolition candidate who had almost no chance of winning or supporting a candidate who had stated he wasn’t prepared to end slavery.
Douglas figured it made more sense to support a winner and have a foot in the door. He abandoned the Abolition candidate and backed the winner instead.
So, when you reply, please explain why people shouldn’t follow Douglas’s lead and back the imperfect candidate who might win over the ‘pure’ candidate who is sure to lose.
If people want to follow Douglas’ example of supporting the lesser evil, they can - as about a third do. But I’m mostly not writing for them, because they don’t care enough that their actions are actively helping and giving legitimacy to genocide, a climate cascade causing a mass extinction event, a psychotic economic system, a food system torturing 2-6 trillion animals to death a year and enslaving 2-4 trillion animals in torturous conditions a year, unsustainable pollution, biosphere degradation… They don’t care enough that by voting for the lesser evil, they’re actively culpable of the system getting more evil after every election.
Instead, for the plurality that don’t vote at all, I’m pointing out there are other options: like voting for ethical people instead, and starting the long fight towards an ethical civilization. It may be a long defeat, but for those who won’t cross the ethical lines listed above, doing the right thing (even if you lose) is better than actively supporting those who are making the system more evil. The difference between +9+9 and +7+6 is real, but for some the ethical lines they won’t cross is between +7+6 and -5-3.
Douglas worked for the best possible candidate, not the perfect one. According to you “They don’t care enough that by voting for the lesser evil, they’re actively culpable of the system getting more evil after every election.”
By your way of thinking, Douglas was happy to let slavery go on and you are more moral than him because you aim for perfection.
I was actually lucky enough to have met and been taught by old school Communists; folks who actually went to fight Franco in Spain and got blacklisted in the 1950s. One thing they always talked about was the 1968 election. The real Lefties were pushing for Humphrey, because they knew how bad Nixon was. The young folks then thought that Humphrey wasn’t as good as McCarthy and stayed home of did protest votes.
Your ‘ethics’ remind me of the folks who will let the mother die, rather than let her get an abortion.
I’m not convinced that voting for genocide and mass extinction is OK, and I’ve looked at arguments in favor of them like the lesser-evil. I may be too stupid to understand the arguments in favor of them, but I don’t think I’m being a perfectionist because I actually disagree with many things in Green and socialist platforms - but they’re not things that cross the line for me.
If you want to fight, you have to be prepared to lose.
It was no accident that Rosa Parks chose that particular seat on that particular day. Everyone that came before her had lost that same battle. Black folks (and the white folks who supported them) were thrown in jail for violating segregationist laws. But with each battle, knowledge and support was gained.
There’s a line in the recent Fallout series that really sticks out to me. A “do good” congresswoman is trying to get an audience with the president. She is roughly shoved aside by security. Our hero helps her up and she says to him, “Fighting the good fight is mostly a series of humiliations”.
I think about that a lot. It’s exactly like that, because fighting the good fight mostly happens when you are alone and outnumbered. Otherwise, you’re just in an echo chamber.
So, apparently you don’t care how many people suffer and die so you can claim a moral victory.
If that’s not the voice of privilege I don’t know what it.
And I don’t want to fight. I’d much rather find an acceptable compromise and be able to make gains afterwards [like Frederick Douglas did when he backed Lincoln over the Abolition candidate.]
If you feel the need to be a martyr, go ahead. Don’t drag other people down with you.
There is no final victory. Ever. Not even an imaginary moral victory.
There is only and has only ever been the fight.
It’s human nature.
Case in point: The tone of your comment above is combative and accusatory, rather than friendly or neutral. Why?
or primaries
That the US voting system lacks the sincere favorite criterion is mathematical fact: lesser-evil voting is necessary to avoid losing the best chance of getting anyone preferable to the worst major candidate. Denying that is like denying laws of physics. You can’t coerce logic & causality to your will. Just because you don’t understand that doesn’t mean others don’t. Primaries exist to select better major party candidates.
Viable 3rd party candidates requires voting reform, which again requires passing those reforms through the current system.
From your point-of-view, the Democrats winning may be good, and the Republicans winning bad. You might see them on a left-right scale of 0-10, where 0 is good, the Ds are at 3, the Rs at 9, and Hitler at 10.
Some other people see a bigger window than that: look at https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 and compare how these people see the distance between Trump +9+9 and Biden +7+6, compared to the distance between both and Hawkins -5-3. These people agree that the Rs are worse than the Ds, but they don’t want to help the Ds win because they don’t want more genocide, a climate cascade causing a mass extinction event, a psychotic economic system, a food system torturing 2-6 trillion animals to death a year and enslaving 2-4 trillion animals in torturous conditions a year, unsustainable pollution, biosphere degradation…
They might instead want to help in the long fight towards an ethical civilization instead. It may be a long defeat, but for those who won’t cross the ethical lines listed above, doing the right thing (even if they lose) is better than being culpable in actively supporting those who are making the system more evil. The difference between +9+9 and +7+6 is real, but for some the ethical lines they won’t cross is below +7+6.
If Stalin is the lesser-evil compared to the greater-evil Hitler, then there’s still the option to vote for unpopular Gandhi and maybe start the process where people realize they don’t have to be culpable in actively supporting Stalin.