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Leaving now is the best way to ensure things get worse. If you've given up, your vote no longer counts and your voice no longer matters.

by 1970-01-01 11mo ago

phantasmish 11mo ago
Votes in many contests for many citizens already don’t matter, due to our system of elections being really bad.
lifeisgood99 11mo ago
If the boat is sinking, I wouldn't stay on.
- qaq 11mo ago
  If this boat sinks there will not be places you can hide in
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    The USA is important, but not *that* important. Even the British survived the end of the British empire, and that was bigger relative to the world than the US is now.
  - victorbjorklund 11mo ago
    Silly argument. Empires rise and fall. USA isn’t the end of history. If USA sinks it won’t be great for the rest of the world but no not everything else will fall.
    - qaq 11mo ago
      Sure but if the place you plan to escape to enjoyed protection of the falling empire before the fall things can go south fairly fast
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- kibwen 11mo ago
  Back in 1930s Germany, there were other boats afloat to escape to. Here in 2025, you live in a globalized world. The rats are soon to be out of ships to flee to. There's no free society in the Sol system that survives rampant and unchecked authoritarianism in the triad of the US, China, and Russia. Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third (though increasingly of the first two). By all means, I'm happy for Europe to wake up and prove me wrong, but looking at their tepid reaction to being invaded by Russia three years ago I'm not holding my breath.
  - seszett 11mo ago
    > the triad of the US, China, and Russia. Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third. What an hyperbole. There are also other places in the world besides Europe, the US and China.
  - phantasmish 11mo ago
    The billionaires seem to have settled on New Zealand as the right combo of “stable-enough liberal democracy that they probably won’t seize my treasure hoard” and “hard enough to reach that climate and political-instability refugee waves cannot get there”.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third. The UK may be something close to a military vassal, what with its "independent" nuclear deterrant relying on US missiles, but the French deterrant is not and France is not. Economically, we're all interdependent right now: China depends on the US and Europe, Europe depends on the US and China, the US depends on China and nad Europe. Current US policy is pushing everyone everywhere to disconnect from the US, ironically without even doing the one thing tariffs are supposed to be a tool for which is protrcting strategic domestic industry. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the EU away from Russian energy much faster than it would otherwise have done from decarbonisation efforts. Given who the world's factory is, I'd expect a lot of our PV and wind turbine components to come from China, and even if they don't directly for the Chinese supply to substantially impact the price.
- 1970-01-01 11mo ago
  I'm growing tired of the bad analogies. This isn't some sinking ship in the ocean. It's a democratically elected republic. To re-abuse your analogy, every soul onboard is not dead weight, it is potent buoyancy.
outside1234 11mo ago
You can still vote in the state you are domiciled in (and you have to be domiciled in some state when overseas as a citizen), even when overseas. I'd recommend establishing that in a swing state.
lazide 11mo ago
It’s a classic prisoners dilemma - if everyone starts to run, you’d better be the first because it is going to be a bloodbath. Better for everyone to stay and fight. But the issue right now is, everyone is stopping anyone from fighting. So isn’t the fight already lost? If so, back to step 1.
trvz 11mo ago
[flagged]
- xp84 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - poly2it 11mo ago
    > President Donald Trump on Thursday accused several Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior,” calling for them to “be arrested and put on trial” for behavior that, he said, could be “punishable by death.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-democrats-death-penalty-sedition-military-orders-rcna245003 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-democrats...
  - the_gastropod 11mo ago
    For whatever it's worth, Mike Godwin, of Godwin's Law, has called the comparison of Trump to Hitler "apt". https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-law-trump-hitler-00132427 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-la... Editing to add: > On the other hand, a liberal did kill Charlie Kirk in cold blood because the killer had a trans girlfriend and was mad about Kirk‘a opinions. So, maybe some people should be afraid of violence. My friend, this is a clownshoes-ass take. First, the motives of this dude are still unknown. His entire family are Trump-supporters. Dude grew up shooting guns and being a good ol' boy (hence the reason he, y'know, had access to, and knowledge of how to shoot and kill someone from such a distance at the age of 22). Second, literally on the same day Kirk was killed, there was a school shooting by a literal Neo-Nazi. And a couple months prior to Kirk's killing, a Trump-voting, anti-abortion nutcase literally assassinated the leader of the Minnesota State House and her husband, shot and nearly killed a member of the State Senate and his wife, and had a list of 70 other, all democratic politicians, he'd apparently intended to assassinate. And here you are still focused on the one time you could shoehorn some cherry-pickin' ass example of an alleged "leftist" being violent into this conversation. For 30 years, right-wing extremist political violence has been far more common and far more deadly than their left-wing extremist counterparts. https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versus-far-right-fatal-violence-an-empirical-assessment-of-the-prevalence-of-ideologically-motivated-homicides-in-the-united-states https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versu... The irony here is, you're simultaneously claiming it's ridiculous to suggest Trump wants to "round-up" liberals, while using the same bullshit guilt-by-extremely-stretched-association rhetoric about Kirk's assassination to paint "liberals" as violent that he's currently using to justify treating his critics as "terrorists". Read through this bad-boy, and with a straight face tell anyone Trump's not interested in "rounding up" his dissidents https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun... Would he be successful in trying this? Probably not. But I sure as hell don't feel one bit certain that people like you would move a muscle to stop it, being so easily convinced of such contemptible nonsense.
wing-_-nuts 11mo ago
??? Tons of US citizens vote from abroad every year?
- saulpw 11mo ago
  They are provisional ballots, not counted unless things are close. And sometimes not even counted then.
  - phantasmish 11mo ago
    If things aren't close they don't need to be counted. It's a fact of voting that most folks can vote in every election they can for their entire lives and never make any difference whatsoever, as in, change zero outcomes. We have social pressure and propaganda otherwise to get people to do it, because if too many people rationally stay home then the system works poorly (in aggregate, that does change outcomes). It'd be much better to just mandate voting, because it is individually irrational and it's not great to base a system on tricking everyone into behaving irrationally. This feels different because they're not bothering to even count them, but it's not materially different from any voting. (barring the "sometimes not even counted then" part, of course)
    - saulpw 11mo ago
      I do understand that, in principle. But having a mathematical reason to let some 'difficult' votes go uncounted gives ammunition to those who would put political pressure on vote counting for their advantage, while also making people in general feel disenfranchised. (We have a huge problem with turnout in the US in general, and the message you're presenting only adds fuel to that!) This is why I wrote "sometimes not even counted then", because we do have a kind of apathy towards these small and easily disenfranchisable groups, and once you open it a crack, it becomes easier for some partisan to drive a wedge into it (see Bush v Gore 2000). Also, it's a mistake to think that the only result of voting is to produce the winner of the election. The margin matters also. A politician winning by a large margin (or even a majority) can claim a 'mandate'; one who only wins by a plurality will have more spirited opposition. We've seen this in the most recent US election; imagine if small percentage of those who didn't vote in the solid blue states because their vote didn't matter (a refrain I've heard from many people) actually voted, and Trump swept the swing states but lost the popular vote. The entire political landscape would be different, and we might even have momentum in the coming years to abolish the Electoral College. So if we are fans of liberal democracy, we should be doing everything in our power to structure the system to make people feel as though their voice and vote matters.

Leaving now is the best way to ensure things get worse. If you've given up, your vote no longer counts and your voice no longer matters.

phantasmish 11mo ago

Votes in many contests for many citizens already don’t matter, due to our system of elections being really bad.

lifeisgood99 11mo ago

If the boat is sinking, I wouldn't stay on.

qaq 11mo ago
If this boat sinks there will not be places you can hide in
- ben_w 11mo ago
  The USA is important, but not *that* important. Even the British survived the end of the British empire, and that was bigger relative to the world than the US is now.
- victorbjorklund 11mo ago
  Silly argument. Empires rise and fall. USA isn’t the end of history. If USA sinks it won’t be great for the rest of the world but no not everything else will fall.
  - qaq 11mo ago
    Sure but if the place you plan to escape to enjoyed protection of the falling empire before the fall things can go south fairly fast
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
kibwen 11mo ago
Back in 1930s Germany, there were other boats afloat to escape to. Here in 2025, you live in a globalized world. The rats are soon to be out of ships to flee to. There's no free society in the Sol system that survives rampant and unchecked authoritarianism in the triad of the US, China, and Russia. Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third (though increasingly of the first two). By all means, I'm happy for Europe to wake up and prove me wrong, but looking at their tepid reaction to being invaded by Russia three years ago I'm not holding my breath.
- seszett 11mo ago
  > the triad of the US, China, and Russia. Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third. What an hyperbole. There are also other places in the world besides Europe, the US and China.
- phantasmish 11mo ago
  The billionaires seem to have settled on New Zealand as the right combo of “stable-enough liberal democracy that they probably won’t seize my treasure hoard” and “hard enough to reach that climate and political-instability refugee waves cannot get there”.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  > Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third. The UK may be something close to a military vassal, what with its "independent" nuclear deterrant relying on US missiles, but the French deterrant is not and France is not. Economically, we're all interdependent right now: China depends on the US and Europe, Europe depends on the US and China, the US depends on China and nad Europe. Current US policy is pushing everyone everywhere to disconnect from the US, ironically without even doing the one thing tariffs are supposed to be a tool for which is protrcting strategic domestic industry. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the EU away from Russian energy much faster than it would otherwise have done from decarbonisation efforts. Given who the world's factory is, I'd expect a lot of our PV and wind turbine components to come from China, and even if they don't directly for the Chinese supply to substantially impact the price.
1970-01-01 11mo ago
I'm growing tired of the bad analogies. This isn't some sinking ship in the ocean. It's a democratically elected republic. To re-abuse your analogy, every soul onboard is not dead weight, it is potent buoyancy.

outside1234 11mo ago

You can still vote in the state you are domiciled in (and you have to be domiciled in some state when overseas as a citizen), even when overseas. I'd recommend establishing that in a swing state.

lazide 11mo ago

It’s a classic prisoners dilemma - if everyone starts to run, you’d better be the first because it is going to be a bloodbath. Better for everyone to stay and fight. But the issue right now is, everyone is stopping anyone from fighting. So isn’t the fight already lost? If so, back to step 1.

trvz 11mo ago

[flagged]

xp84 11mo ago
[flagged]
- poly2it 11mo ago
  > President Donald Trump on Thursday accused several Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior,” calling for them to “be arrested and put on trial” for behavior that, he said, could be “punishable by death.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-democrats-death-penalty-sedition-military-orders-rcna245003 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-democrats...
- the_gastropod 11mo ago
  For whatever it's worth, Mike Godwin, of Godwin's Law, has called the comparison of Trump to Hitler "apt". https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-law-trump-hitler-00132427 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-la... Editing to add: > On the other hand, a liberal did kill Charlie Kirk in cold blood because the killer had a trans girlfriend and was mad about Kirk‘a opinions. So, maybe some people should be afraid of violence. My friend, this is a clownshoes-ass take. First, the motives of this dude are still unknown. His entire family are Trump-supporters. Dude grew up shooting guns and being a good ol' boy (hence the reason he, y'know, had access to, and knowledge of how to shoot and kill someone from such a distance at the age of 22). Second, literally on the same day Kirk was killed, there was a school shooting by a literal Neo-Nazi. And a couple months prior to Kirk's killing, a Trump-voting, anti-abortion nutcase literally assassinated the leader of the Minnesota State House and her husband, shot and nearly killed a member of the State Senate and his wife, and had a list of 70 other, all democratic politicians, he'd apparently intended to assassinate. And here you are still focused on the one time you could shoehorn some cherry-pickin' ass example of an alleged "leftist" being violent into this conversation. For 30 years, right-wing extremist political violence has been far more common and far more deadly than their left-wing extremist counterparts. https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versus-far-right-fatal-violence-an-empirical-assessment-of-the-prevalence-of-ideologically-motivated-homicides-in-the-united-states https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versu... The irony here is, you're simultaneously claiming it's ridiculous to suggest Trump wants to "round-up" liberals, while using the same bullshit guilt-by-extremely-stretched-association rhetoric about Kirk's assassination to paint "liberals" as violent that he's currently using to justify treating his critics as "terrorists". Read through this bad-boy, and with a straight face tell anyone Trump's not interested in "rounding up" his dissidents https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun... Would he be successful in trying this? Probably not. But I sure as hell don't feel one bit certain that people like you would move a muscle to stop it, being so easily convinced of such contemptible nonsense.

wing-_-nuts 11mo ago

??? Tons of US citizens vote from abroad every year?

saulpw 11mo ago
They are provisional ballots, not counted unless things are close. And sometimes not even counted then.
- phantasmish 11mo ago
  If things aren't close they don't need to be counted. It's a fact of voting that most folks can vote in every election they can for their entire lives and never make any difference whatsoever, as in, change zero outcomes. We have social pressure and propaganda otherwise to get people to do it, because if too many people rationally stay home then the system works poorly (in aggregate, that does change outcomes). It'd be much better to just mandate voting, because it is individually irrational and it's not great to base a system on tricking everyone into behaving irrationally. This feels different because they're not bothering to even count them, but it's not materially different from any voting. (barring the "sometimes not even counted then" part, of course)
  - saulpw 11mo ago
    I do understand that, in principle. But having a mathematical reason to let some 'difficult' votes go uncounted gives ammunition to those who would put political pressure on vote counting for their advantage, while also making people in general feel disenfranchised. (We have a huge problem with turnout in the US in general, and the message you're presenting only adds fuel to that!) This is why I wrote "sometimes not even counted then", because we do have a kind of apathy towards these small and easily disenfranchisable groups, and once you open it a crack, it becomes easier for some partisan to drive a wedge into it (see Bush v Gore 2000). Also, it's a mistake to think that the only result of voting is to produce the winner of the election. The margin matters also. A politician winning by a large margin (or even a majority) can claim a 'mandate'; one who only wins by a plurality will have more spirited opposition. We've seen this in the most recent US election; imagine if small percentage of those who didn't vote in the solid blue states because their vote didn't matter (a refrain I've heard from many people) actually voted, and Trump swept the swing states but lost the popular vote. The entire political landscape would be different, and we might even have momentum in the coming years to abolish the Electoral College. So if we are fans of liberal democracy, we should be doing everything in our power to structure the system to make people feel as though their voice and vote matters.