Saying that the lesser evil is less evil has nothing to do with liberalism or any other ideology, it’s a tautology, it simply must be true by definition but doesn’t actually add any new meaning. The trouble in the scenario presented isn’t a voter’s attempt to take the least bad option (since taking the other would just get you to the same place but faster), it’s having a system that creates only two viable options in the first place, such that “not evil” either isn’t even on the ballot or may as well not be.
We know the trouble. The solution seems to be the main point of contention.
Some people think that voting lesser evil buys us time to organize so we can take actions designed to establish a system conducive to more viable options.
Some people think that refusing to vote lesser evil will magically make things better somehow. Idk, the logic for this one is pretty pants-on-head.
the pants-on-head thinking is still believing that voting the lesser evil will buy time when decades of taking this course have proved that the time that is bought is always wasted.
still believing that voting the lesser evil will buy time when decades of taking this course
Do you not see the glaring irony of that statement? We wouldn’t have had those decades without the lesser evil, we’d have gotten to where we are now 20 years ago.
What exactly do you suggest? Greater evil? A wasted performative vote? A revolution made up of millions of people who don’t have the organization to vote strategically, but are nonetheless willing to sacrifice their lives in violent uprising?
Yeah, just look at how literally everything has gotten progressively and inexorably worse since the Bronze Age, where median life expectancy was 18 years of age, 90% of the world was illiterate and owned at most one complete set of clothing, women would either give birth to seven kids not counting stillbirths and see only three survive long enough to learn how to walk and talk, or else just die in childbirth and not see anything ever again, polio, measles and tuberculosis killed millions despite all the goats and witches that were sacrificed to the gods to spare us, people owned slaves, and daughters were sold into marriage at 9 years old with 50-year-old men they never met!
Oh and there was no ice cream.
Yep, we’ve been going downhill nonstop. You’re absolutely right to be so pessimistic.
Saying that the lesser evil is less evil has nothing to do with liberalism or any other ideology, it’s a tautology, it simply must be true by definition but doesn’t actually add any new meaning. The trouble in the scenario presented isn’t a voter’s attempt to take the least bad option (since taking the other would just get you to the same place but faster), it’s having a system that creates only two viable options in the first place, such that “not evil” either isn’t even on the ballot or may as well not be.
We know the trouble. The solution seems to be the main point of contention.
Some people think that voting lesser evil buys us time to organize so we can take actions designed to establish a system conducive to more viable options.
Some people think that refusing to vote lesser evil will magically make things better somehow. Idk, the logic for this one is pretty pants-on-head.
the pants-on-head thinking is still believing that voting the lesser evil will buy time when decades of taking this course have proved that the time that is bought is always wasted.
Do you not see the glaring irony of that statement? We wouldn’t have had those decades without the lesser evil, we’d have gotten to where we are now 20 years ago.
What exactly do you suggest? Greater evil? A wasted performative vote? A revolution made up of millions of people who don’t have the organization to vote strategically, but are nonetheless willing to sacrifice their lives in violent uprising?
What’s your plan?
Neither option will make things better.
Things will suck until we die and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I banish thee, doomer god. Self-defeatism is counterproductive. We can do something about it, it’s merely a question of will.
We won’t. We never do. Or if we do it makes more and worse problems.
People are awful and will never not be.
Yeah, just look at how literally everything has gotten progressively and inexorably worse since the Bronze Age, where median life expectancy was 18 years of age, 90% of the world was illiterate and owned at most one complete set of clothing, women would either give birth to seven kids not counting stillbirths and see only three survive long enough to learn how to walk and talk, or else just die in childbirth and not see anything ever again, polio, measles and tuberculosis killed millions despite all the goats and witches that were sacrificed to the gods to spare us, people owned slaves, and daughters were sold into marriage at 9 years old with 50-year-old men they never met!
Oh and there was no ice cream.
Yep, we’ve been going downhill nonstop. You’re absolutely right to be so pessimistic.
Yes but how much better was it before humans?
And I agree that we have created more and worse problems since we killed 95% of males after we developed agriculture.
Now we can kill the biosphere in multiple fun ways, and are the cause of at least one mass extinction so far.
Like I said, no ice cream.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth anyway