I think I'm the outlier here. I couldn't do it. I tried watching this show and I just felt dumber for having done so. To be clear, I don't need all of my shows to be heavy. I can get behind a well-written comedy. But this one ... isn't.
witten
Look at it this way.. We have a portfolio of tools to fight fascism. Sometimes, yes, the proper response to a specific incursion is direct action. Sometimes you can accomplish more with other means (fighting back in the courts, etc.). It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and in fact I'd argue you accomplish the most by picking your tools wisely for each battle.
Violence isn't the only way to fight fascism. It's surely a way. But the courts and the school districts are two early battle grounds where folks are already pushing back (non-violently) and preventing some of that inching forward.
With all due respect, that is some real defeatist dog shit. Yes, Trump and cronies have no respect for the constitution or the rule of law. But if we collectively roll over at the first fascist executive order, that's exactly what they want us to do.. They are testing the waters. The supreme court is packed, but every circuit court in the country certainly isn't. And that's where these battles are already being fought. We need to collectively resist every encroachment, every power grab. Otherwise we're nearly as culpable as Trump for the rise of fascism.
Yes. No transcoding, but that's actually a feature as far as I'm concerned.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here. We're not even on the same page in terms of first principles. A voter voting blue in a red state is voting for a candidate who literally cannot win, and by your logic they'd be an idiot too. It just doesn't make any sense to me. People should be able to vote how they want—especially if their vote isn't likely to sway the election.
Not to mention these idiots could live in a state that’s blue but not solidly blue and that state could possibly flip red because they assumed blue was safe in their state.
That's why I used the word "solidly."
Do you think non-voters and 3rd party presidential voters are smart enough to keep an eye on that kind of thing?
Some of them? Sure. Maybe not all of them. But it doesn't matter for purposes of this discussion. I was just making the claim that your math was including some voters that had no possible effect on Trump getting elected. And I still think that's the case whether or not a number of people in purple states decided not to vote because Harris didn't really speak to the economic realities they face everyday. Now we're just quibbling over how wrong your math is.
To your broader point about the popular vote: I agree that people not voting or voting 3rd party impacts the popular vote, and the popular vote is indeed often used as a proxy for a national mandate. But Trump didn't even break 50% on the popular vote—hardly a Reagan-style sweeping mandate despite initial reports to the contrary. So in this particular election, your point doesn't even come into play. You're calling people idiots for how they voted because of a theoretical outcome that didn't occur.
Yes, voting in the U.S. is basically harm reduction. But what's the point of voting to reduce harm if it doesn't actually have much chance of doing that in your state? To be clear, I'm not advocating not voting. I'm advocating giving people a little grace if, via their vote, they didn't materially contribute to the rise of fascism or whatever. In fact, you could say that someone voting third party in a solidly blue state has just as much impact on the election as someone voting blue in a solidly red one. It's just numbers.
It's marketing, but it's also the value proposition. Average Joes don't see the value in decentralization, privacy, or the freedom from corporate control. Although that may change under an authoritarian regime....
I don't think your math quite works out. Voters who voted third party or didn't vote and live in solidly blue states had no bearing on Trump's election.
Try parchment paper.
I call bullshit. Because no LLM ever says, "I don't know." It just confidently invents an answer out of thin air.
Only mostly facetious here...