Mecha82 wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 5:54 pm
Captain Crimson wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 12:38 pm
Draco Dracul wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 11:10 am
Captain Crimson wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 10:49 am
Draco Dracul wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 10:45 am
Captain Crimson wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 10:03 am
Draco Dracul wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 8:22 am
I'll be honest, I don't see the big deal because both parties have already determined their candidate, and Sanders has basically lost all leverage he could have had simply by virtue of losing much harder this time around than he did in 2016.
It strikes me as hypocrisy. I hear Wisconsin kept its GOP primaries open, yes? I'll admit I don't follow cable news, nor would I ever want to, and yet it is the DNC that canceled its primaries, not the GOP, as far as I could tell. That is going to help them tremendously in their campaigns. "We love democracy! We kept our primaries open! If democrats love democracy, why didn't they do that?" Whatever valid reasons you could bring up for this, the COVID-19 spreading around, doesn't matter because it's not about pragmatism, it's about optics.
Bad enough I have to choke down a vote for Mr. Biden this year because I worry about my mom's health. But I just wish the democrats would at least pretend they like the democratic process, even a little bit.
Bluntly, you are recalling that incorrectly. For starters the GOP canceled a large number of primaries before Covid 19 was even known to exist as to prevent even a minor insurgency against Trump. Additionally in Wisconsin the GOP kept the primary open in a bid to tilt a supreme court election in the state, they provided strong mail ballot access to Republican areas while closing almost all polling places in democratic areas hoping to use the long lines and health risks to intimidate Democrats into not turning out.
I stand corrected! Thank you for that revelation.
Even so, I still feel like I could gag. It's like I've sold out. I never intended to vote this year, I never have, I never want to, and yet I feel as if I don't my mother's health will deteriorate even further. She watches MSNBC and... really, that says it all. But I feel like it's a wasted effort since if I vote for Mr. Biden and he loses, it has the same effect, only I've compromised my integrity on a meaningless gesture that goes nowhere. But I have to try.
2020 sure has been rough on all of us.
I'll be honest this kind of sums up why I dislike a lot of self described leftists despite sharing most of their political views. That you could see voting against a fascist like Trump as compromising your integrity speaks to a profound lack of prospective. A big reason why I was never able to back Sanders despite liking much of his policy is that he struck me as someone that would rather maintain his purity than achieve his goals.
I don't even think Biden is going to be a good president, and would in fact argue that Warren was the only major candidate that would be, but he'd be better than Trump and that's enough.
"Better than Trump" for only four years, eight at that. Any meaningful change takes a lot longer. No, I dislike Mr. Biden because of his creepiness towards women, his outdated views, and that for the party that boasts diversity, he's a major step backward. A hundred years after women got the right to vote, no less. This is who we put up. "Better than Trump" is quite a low standard, I am afraid to say. Against any decent republican or democrat, this man's candidacy would not hold up.
That my friend is called choosing between lesser of two evils. And Biden does seem like lesser of two evils when compared to Trump. By mile considering how clueless Trump is and that Biden is more likely to know what he is doing and be able to be leader.
My larger contention is that it's a temporary stopgap measure in the long run. I feel as if it was pretty high and mighty for Draco Dracul to just assume that I was a leftist. I've never voted. This year will be my first time, and it's only for my mom's health. I'm not a leftist or right-winger. I am a self-described pseudo-intellectual since I never went to any kind of an official school to politics or philosophy. I'm no more qualified to judge the truly important stuff than all the politicians or billionaires who run and in many cases ruin our country. I also was never a fan of Mr. Sanders either. Yeah, he talks a good game, but the same accusations I've leveled at Mr. Biden or you could level at Mr. 45, you could level at him as well. I don't know where Draco would think I'm a leftist since I've talked s$%# about SJWs running the entertainment industry.
Granted, you could make a legitimate case that compromising your principles for the greater good is a duty. I certainly don't dispute that. But that refers to my first point. It's putting what is in essence a metaphorical band-aid on a maimed and bleeding leg. It's not a fix. The rich keep getting richer, war still happens, and racism and sexism are sadly not dead, but merely have grown to encompass a much wider range even if the severity is nowhere near the same level it was fifty years ago. Past my mom, why should I compromise my principles when it will not amount to a hill of beans in the end? The rich and other corrupt figures abusing our power systems are entrenched, same way the government is, so that removing them or reforming them is a colossal battle that will require patiently playing the long games in a chess mindset and most people don't have the temperament or maturity to engage in that. I feel as if our last shot at genuine reform was tossed out the window in 2016 from Ms. Clinton's loss, because whatever you criticism you could level at Mr. Obama, we were at least slowly trying to build toward something better. My contribution would not have changed anything.
I just don't understand how it is that we're still fighting the same battles we were ten thousand years ago. While I'd never follow the AnPrim school of thinking, in some ways, I can't help but to wonder if life was a lot simpler then compared to how complicated we've made it in our insanely dense society that in some ways takes the life out of life. Just how I feel, though.