3 ms·

>think about what you want the country and the world to look like in ten, fifty, or a hundred years. This is the candidate's job. She didn't center a coherent

>think about what you want the country and the world to look like in ten, fifty, or a hundred years. This is the candidate's job. She didn't center a coherent vision of the improved future only she could get the country to. Pick one thing that Trump wouldn't or couldn't run on, that wasn't just "getting back thing we lost (under our watch)." Green New Deal. Medicare For All. Defund the police. Build houses for everyone. Monorail. Anything for people to hang a hope on. But any big idea would piss off donor-investors who would be hurt by any change to the status quo. So she offered nothing.

tines 2y ago
> She didn't center a coherent vision of the improved future only she could get the country to. So the default is to vote for a person who will run the world into the ground? I don't understand why the onus on the sane person to prove why they're going to make things better. I guess people think that any change is good change? Yet people voted Hitler into power. My take is that America was founded during a time of very high "mental activity" and engagement. In the 1700s people read for fun, the printing press just having been invented the prior century; and listened to candidates debate for hours, at a level of complexity that is beyond people today. A democracy takes that kind of mental energy and engagement to sustain. The citizens of the US seem to be too complacent, too uncaring, to uneducated to preserve their freedom, and so they won't keep it. Sad to see.
- frmersdog 2y ago
  >So the default is to vote for a person who will run the world into the ground? The default is not to vote.
  - tines 2y ago
    Same thing.
    - frmersdog 2y ago
      It is not, and we are going to continue facing frustration and defeat until people like you learn to accept and understand this. Putting it simply: no candidate is owed a vote. Declining to cast a ballot doesn't favor any candidate. It is true neutral.
      - tines 2y ago
        It's really not neutral though in the outcome. It's as if a lever were going to be pulled to kill a bunch of people (for example) unless you pull on it the other way; and then you claim no responsibility for not pulling on the lever because merely "stopping the killing" wasn't a _positive enough_ outcome. When people are going to do bad things, and you can make things a lot less bad for a little effort, you have a responsibility to do that. Like, wouldn't you say that the people who didn't vote during Hitler's election should have voted for his opponent, no matter how unexciting their policies were? (Obviously Trump isn't like Hitler, but same principle to a smaller degree.)
        valval 2y ago
        [flagged]
        frmersdog 2y ago
        You're conflating contexts. From the voter's perspective, yes, there might be a duty to mitigate harm. That's if you believe that harm can be mitigated in that regard; e.g., perhaps moving the lever simply kills a different (smaller?) group of people instead. In this case, now you're arguing utilitarianism, i.e., it's okay to kill some people to save others, it's okay to kill a few innocents to save everyone else. "I will not choose to kill anyone, and the world shall move as it does," is then an option, and the neutral one. You can, in fact, walk away from Omelas. However, the issue is a lot more clear-cut from the CANDIDATE'S perspective, which is the one that I think matters (because it's the one that is closest to affecting how the candidate campaigns and behaves): you are not owed a vote. No one is being paid or forced at gunpoint into a voting booth. Before the choice of candidate, is the choice of participation, and to not participate is the default, passive choice. It is on you as the candidate to influence not just the pen stroke on the ballot but the step into the polling center.
- nmeagent 2y ago
  > the printing press just having been invented the prior century Just FYI, the printing press was invented in the mid-1400s.
  - tines 2y ago
    My bad, thanks.
  - infinite8s 2y ago
    It took about 150 years after invention before printing really took off in terms of how it changed the way people argued (which was critical to the early founders of the US - see "The Printing Press as an Agent of Change) - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-elizabeth-l-eisenstein/6862777?ean=9780521299558 https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-printing-press-as-an-agent-...
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Can't make a horse drink, even if the owners weren't an issue. Let's be real, people wanted to be patted on the back and told it'll be okay. The want words, not solutions. Trump is happy to do that.

tines 2y ago

> She didn't center a coherent vision of the improved future only she could get the country to. So the default is to vote for a person who will run the world into the ground? I don't understand why the onus on the sane person to prove why they're going to make things better. I guess people think that any change is good change? Yet people voted Hitler into power. My take is that America was founded during a time of very high "mental activity" and engagement. In the 1700s people read for fun, the printing press just having been invented the prior century; and listened to candidates debate for hours, at a level of complexity that is beyond people today. A democracy takes that kind of mental energy and engagement to sustain. The citizens of the US seem to be too complacent, too uncaring, to uneducated to preserve their freedom, and so they won't keep it. Sad to see.

frmersdog 2y ago
>So the default is to vote for a person who will run the world into the ground? The default is not to vote.
- tines 2y ago
  Same thing.
  - frmersdog 2y ago
    It is not, and we are going to continue facing frustration and defeat until people like you learn to accept and understand this. Putting it simply: no candidate is owed a vote. Declining to cast a ballot doesn't favor any candidate. It is true neutral.
    - tines 2y ago
      It's really not neutral though in the outcome. It's as if a lever were going to be pulled to kill a bunch of people (for example) unless you pull on it the other way; and then you claim no responsibility for not pulling on the lever because merely "stopping the killing" wasn't a _positive enough_ outcome. When people are going to do bad things, and you can make things a lot less bad for a little effort, you have a responsibility to do that. Like, wouldn't you say that the people who didn't vote during Hitler's election should have voted for his opponent, no matter how unexciting their policies were? (Obviously Trump isn't like Hitler, but same principle to a smaller degree.)
      - valval 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - frmersdog 2y ago
        You're conflating contexts. From the voter's perspective, yes, there might be a duty to mitigate harm. That's if you believe that harm can be mitigated in that regard; e.g., perhaps moving the lever simply kills a different (smaller?) group of people instead. In this case, now you're arguing utilitarianism, i.e., it's okay to kill some people to save others, it's okay to kill a few innocents to save everyone else. "I will not choose to kill anyone, and the world shall move as it does," is then an option, and the neutral one. You can, in fact, walk away from Omelas. However, the issue is a lot more clear-cut from the CANDIDATE'S perspective, which is the one that I think matters (because it's the one that is closest to affecting how the candidate campaigns and behaves): you are not owed a vote. No one is being paid or forced at gunpoint into a voting booth. Before the choice of candidate, is the choice of participation, and to not participate is the default, passive choice. It is on you as the candidate to influence not just the pen stroke on the ballot but the step into the polling center.
nmeagent 2y ago
> the printing press just having been invented the prior century Just FYI, the printing press was invented in the mid-1400s.
- tines 2y ago
  My bad, thanks.
- infinite8s 2y ago
  It took about 150 years after invention before printing really took off in terms of how it changed the way people argued (which was critical to the early founders of the US - see "The Printing Press as an Agent of Change) - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-elizabeth-l-eisenstein/6862777?ean=9780521299558 https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-printing-press-as-an-agent-...

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Can't make a horse drink, even if the owners weren't an issue. Let's be real, people wanted to be patted on the back and told it'll be okay. The want words, not solutions. Trump is happy to do that.