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I am ready to compromise on all sorts of ideals. A smaller increase in minimum wage? Okay. A movement towards accepting trans people? Okay. But, when it comes to killing innocent people, I can't accept a number above zero. That's just a value that I have, because I don't like innocent people killed. If the price of political participation is voting for some innocent people being killed, I don't wish to participate, personally.
Perhaps it goes so far as to evil existing while moving more slowly. My evidence for this belief is the world around us: is it getting better?
Agreed. What would convince me is being very much against killing innocent people.
This is a very confusing stance, you’re advocating for not voting while not being a US citizen so you can’t vote??
And you completely misunderstand first past the post voting. You have it in the UK too. It’s how labor got elected, your far right party split the conservative vote. The risk here is that due to the US’ electoral college system a select few states (incl. TX, NC, GA, FL, VA, NV, ME not just the rust belt strip) will decide the election. Thus for those states, someone who could vote must vote for the Dems.
Any possible vote not for the Dems will help the Repubs get closer to clinching those close states, whether it’s no-vote or one of the virtue-signaling 3rd party candidates. (Yes, they only split the vote and are worthless for reducing harm, build 3rd party from local up)
Only one of two candidates will win thanks to FPTP. Both candidates will continue to enable genocide. But one candidate - Trump - will target trans people and will target women and will target minorities at home. So if you are a US citizen who can vote, you do the proper ethical thing: you vote for harm reduction via voting for the Democrats.
A vote is not an endorsement, you don’t have to feel tied to it; it’s an infinitesimal push to a better atmosphere to advocate for the end of the genocide. If Trump is in power left-leaning people will be split putting out fires: trying to keep trans people alive, trying to get women proper healthcare, trying to keep minorities from being rounded up. There will be less bandwidth for stopping the genocide, much less pushing for more progressive change.
In short, the only ethical move is to vote if you’re a US citizen to mitigate harm and improve the progressive landscape to be able to maximalize effort towards ending the genocide. The only ethical move if you’re not a US citizen is to not advocate for not voting for the democrats; might as well be a Russian bot at that point.
I think it would be for someone who doesn't agree that killing innocent people is wrong.
It’s confusing because you’re advocating for not voting in the US election while not having the ability to vote in the US election. You’re literally doing foreign interference by not being straightforward with your non-US citizen background. State that so people understand the context you’re speaking from, we have a fuckton of foreign election interference from Russia and Israel and more already.
I have interacted with so many people from outside the US who really want to advocate for our election yet don’t understand the shitass limited choices we have to make to try to make the future better.
I lay out that ethically anyone who supports ending the genocide should vote to reduce harm elsewhere since both options continue the genocide. Not voting dem is also sacrificing trans people and Hispanic people and women which is ethically wrong. Sucks ass, but voting anything other than dem is way worse. So the small effort to tick the box is easily worth that effort.
Be ready for your next UK election, you may need to choose labor instead of green in a tight race so that tory or reform doesn’t take your local seat. Sucks ass, but one less conservative is one more not conservative. With so many parties I can’t believe yous don’t have ranked choice.
Again the only ethical thing is to enable harm reduction. Because voting isn’t a direct extension of your values, but a tiny push for not-fascism. The media may make it a 24/7 thing, but it’s really a 20 minute trip once every 6-12 months if you’re nudging for local change. Once every 4 years if you can’t be arsed to vote local for some reason.