I’m Tired of the Wasting Your Vote BS

One can always move to another country in which one doesn't get to vote.
Plenty of em.
No worries.

Done
Next

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

I sincerely appreciate that post and it illuminates your total view quite well. I wish I could give more than just a star because I believe that post is frank and honest in a way that most content here isn't. I'm glad I took a little time to ask you a sincere question because your answer was thoughtful. I believe, though it seems you're much older than me, we would actually be quite comfortable sharing a beer or bourbon. I'm only 44 but my only real friend, or what for me serves as friendship, locally is 70 or so.

Contrary to idea of what you said halfway through that you were trying to make it as short as possible, I find all of what you said very interesting and I would gladly read more. I'm pretty agnostic as far as beliefs go and I find the route of how your beliefs evolved pretty fascinating. I know my reputation here is mostly one of quick quips and sarcasm, but that isn't really me. I wasn't able to vote for several of the presidents you mentioned. I was actually very much a fan of Perot when I was only a sophomore in high school. I recognized, no matter if Perot was right or wrong, that the two parties were corrupt and didn't benefit the people.

I also had hope when Obama was elected, but just as I feared it was all window dressing and none of it was sincere. There wasn't transparency and there wasn't a presidency of the people.

I can't find any fault in your reasoning, but the question is still hanging there. Whatever you think of Trump as a person, most of which I will agree with, what has he done that points to electing Biden instead? Trump hasn't got us into any new wars, he's got some middle east people playing ball, and he seems to want corruption to get rooted out.

I completely feel as disillusioned as you. It's all a dirty game. Trump isn't infallible and I think most of his supporters will agree, but in action and policy ignoring his atrocious personality, what has he actually done that is that bad?

We can obviously find faults and that's simply become part of the game now, but is a Harris presidency better? Biden isn't going to be in charge. I know it's popular theory to say Trump is unfit and has dementia, but Biden clearly has good days and bad days. Nobody believes he'll actually be driving policy. Ten years ago a Biden presidency would have been mostly more of the same, but now? Not now. Now if he gets elected we get Harris policy and that is really scary. Why, faced with that, would anybody vote democrat this election?

a reply to: Ksihkehe

I understand TerryMcGuire's views for the most part, and I second what you have to say.

What exactly is it that makes Biden better than Trump other than he's not Trump? He sticks to the script?

I mean Terry my man. You mention the frustration of watching as Reagan continued his presidency while affkicted with Alzheimer's. Yet you're willing to vote for Biden when it's possible that he may be suffering from dementia? Why? Because he's not Trump?

You're willing to vote for Biden, which will likely result in Harris being able to be the president despite her shady past? Why? Because she's not Trump?

I'm not trying to convince you to vote for Trump. I don't like the guy myself. He's unprofessional, can't get straight to the point, and has said plenty of stupid things, but if we're being honest all of the hate he receives stems from him winning the election instead of Hillary, and the media really does take his words out of context quite a bit.

Biden has said and done some pretty stupid things himself. Quite a few times. Can you really live with your conscious voting for Biden and Harris if you don't agree with them or like them other than they aren't Trump?

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Thank you for one of the best responses I’ve ever read on this site. You described everything perfectly.

a reply to: underwerks

The truly sad state of our affairs, for me, was demonstrated with the nomination of Biden. For several reasons.
One, that the younger side of the party could not mount a viable candidate, one that could embody the best hopes of the next generations and two, that the old guard could not step aside and promote that hand over of party strength.

I don't think he wanted to run in the first place. He took so long to enter the race I think because he just didn't want to do it. I'm one who thinks that there is good in Biden and that his statements about service hold true with his reasoning. Likely internal polling did present the notion that he was the best bet to win over Trump that that was his motivation, beating Trump.

And like many here, I project that he will only, at most, serve one term.

And truthfully, I don't think that we have, in my life time, ever had a potus who was really up to the job of preparing our nation to meet the challenges of the future. That is what a liberal leader should strive for.

im votig zeezus.

a reply to: Ksihkehe

Well K, I have tried for over an hour to mount a reply to your questions but to little avail. In the grander scope, at least as I perceive it, it matters not which candidate gets in. I see that those on the ''left'' fear a dictatorial administration that favors certtain types of people and those one the ''right fear a dictatorial administration that favors other types.

From this I figure that all of us fear oppression, we just figure that if our side gets in it will be the other side that gets oppressed. It maybe be, and I am uncertain, that oppression IS the way of the future. Hell, why not. It has been the way of the past. Oppress some segments of society so that the advantages of the rest of society can flourish. Heck, wasn't this how the nation was founded? Oppress black people and hold down women. How long was it before women got to vote? Black people? Neither got the vote until the structure of society was already entrenched in paths that favored being a white male. Hell, even poor white men did not have a vote for the first few elections.

So maybe oppression is our future, just who will do the oppressing and who will be the oppressed. If this is to be the case, then at least one thing I would ask of the oppressor would be consistency. Would be competency. Would be at least a modicum of true intelligence. I see none of that in Trump.

His businesses flopped, one to another. His manner of scamming the financial loop holes to avoid taxes all the while borrowing from the big banks and who knows who else was the only reason he was not a pauper. Hell, it is thought that had it not been for NBC giving him that game show and paying him mightily he would have been totally bankrupt by now. Even as that is we find him owing to some one, four hundred million that comes due in 2022.

But even with or without all of that, his claim to be ''the only one'' who can ave America which he proclaimed so often during the campaign was just over the top populism and self aggrandizement.'' I am the only one''. Wow. how can that not ring bells in peoples heads.

And his promises of calling the ''best people'' to serve in his administration. That was a nice brag and I thought for a while it might be good. He said he knew all the ''best people''. Gave the impression that with all of his high finance dealings and hob knobbing with other successful business leaders he could easily tap hihs ''friends'' into government services to help straighten up our mess. What a grand promise.

But what did he do? He took on his daughter and her husband and made the senior advisors. And what about the rest of those great contacts he said he had. Where are they. He seemed to choose between little more than conservative wannabes and even many of those have proven to not be the ''best people'' he had promised. In and out of his administration. You know the list as well as I do. Is that what he promised? No, I think not.

He had become so accustomed to ''yes men'' in his business enterprises that that is what he expected from any one who joined his administration. And guess what, the yes men are still there but anyone who had views different from his are gone. Doesn't that strike a deep concern over not only his ability to work with other people or his inability to function at al level necessary to govern this nation? To me both.

Im sorry I cannot offer anything other than things that so many others are screaming at you, but what can I do about that.
Nothing I guess.

Part of me hopes he does win. That part being that I had hoped that after only 6 months of his first administration, the people of the US would have said, ''enough''. That a strong third party or even fourth party would have emerged. That even the Republican Party would have split into ''yes men'' and true conservatives who recognized this bafoon for what he is but instead they all have almost entirely tucked tail and kissed his ring.

And the Democrats have had four years to pull their shat together and the best they could do is Biden. Holy shat.

Either way it doesn't look good to me.

a reply to: AutomateThis1

I confess. NOT TRUMP.

When we compare Biden to Reagan there is one big difference as I see it. Reagan's inability to lead due to his condition was kept secret from Americans. That, and I count myself one of them, many people think he never was a leader, just a friendly salesman's face that made much of the country happy with the status quo. But that's an entirely different discussion.

So with Biden at least, we all know his condition and for the most part assume that we all know that it will not be him who runs things. Nor will it be Harris. It will be a consortium of Democrats that will prop Biden up as a ''face'' a figurehead'' that will attend functions and give toasts and smile and little else. The rest of the party will battle to find a common ground that will suffice to make them all happy while at the same time appeal to conservatives.

So can I in good conscience vote for Biden? Not my ''best'' conscience but at least an augmented one. One that I have had to develop for many years to at least have hope for our future as a nation. Yep, I have had to vote against my ''best'' conscience way to many times already to pull up stakes and not vote at all.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Well, I don't care what they say about ya. No one can't say you aren't self-aware and intuitive.

I feel ya.

Me personally. I can't bring myself to vote for Trump or Biden. I don't care if people want to argue it's a wasted vote.

I think think the difference between my though process and many others, is that I don't place all of our societal issues solely on the president. I place the blame on decades of corruption, greed, and hate.

A lot people just want to say everything is Trump's fault. It's the conservatives fault. It's Republican's fault.

It's literally everyone's fault.

a reply to: AutomateThis1
I agree fully. I see it as our problems are systemic. The finger points in to many directions at to many causes.

It's difficult to point at just what it is about Trump because so much of what one can point out can just as easily have the finger pointed back. It's Alice through the Looking Glassness. Mirror images in our minds so that everything that is said is just repeated from another point of view.

While I hold my own spiritual sense of reality I base much of it on an evolutionary approach to understanding our world, our reality. I see us as a wild seed that for reasons that go well beyond this discussion have found ourselves at odds with ourselves that no other species can come close to.
So, no, it's not Trump's fault, he is a product here just as you and I are. I guess I am of that old school that sees that we can either just go along and ride it out OR we can use our qualities to rekindle ourselves to meet the future that is coming at us faster than most of us are willing to admit. Just how does a species face it's own demise. Pointing the finger in the other direction is NOT step one of that process.

originally posted by: underwerks
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Thank you for one of the best responses I’ve ever read on this site. You described everything perfectly.

I'm giving you a star and I have never more wholeheartedly agreed with you.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Sorry for taking a while. I haven't signed in since then and I think part of my reluctance to do so was that I was afraid to hear what you had to say.

I was afraid to hear that you, given your eloquent previous post, would echo too many of my feelings. It seems like those most willing to acknowledge the similarities in our fears, of opposition authoritarianism, are just getting too tired to keep holding any kind of middle ground. With that fatigue, already stressed with years of polarization, how much longer can we really hold out against generations of highly polarized zealots on either side?

I don't have an answer. I hope Trump buys me another 4 years to come up with one.

a reply to: Ksihkehe

It seems like those most willing to acknowledge the similarities in our fears, of opposition authoritarianism, are just getting too tired to keep holding any kind of middle ground.

Zoom, right to the center of it. I am always reminded of a poem written by WB Yeats in 1919 called ''The Second Coming'' , the first stanza of which brings that very point to mind.



Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


I've experienced that ''passionate intensity'', first with that cult and then later when I ran with a cell of Marxists in the nineties. I witnessed how that passion pulls a person away from their own thought processes and draws them into the ideologies that they follow until that is all they know. And the really ugly thing about that is that built into those ideologies is the simple lie that because you ''believe'' this , you are right.

So with climate change and over population and pandemics and the realization that our time here is in jeopardy there is now a prominent question being raised not only by religions and politicians, but by a constant barrage of entertainment venues be they big screen movies or little screen series or even video games. Our lizard brain wiring is screaming at us, ''do something, do something. Do something FAST'' But do what? Run to those ideologies that promise a solution. Left and right offer us the very same thing, salvation.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

I'm internally conflicted with the dilemma of if I should praise you for confirming some of my underlying fears or curse you for driving the last nail in the coffin of my hope.

Either way this exchange has been illuminating and you have my thanks. It's been meaningful if that matters to you. I hope we cross paths again somewhere out there in the ether.

I think I'm just kind of done for now. My days ignoring interaction on the internet have increasingly become happier days.

a reply to: Ksihkehe

K

I certainly hope that you do not confirm anything due to my ramblings. I am after all as you can see by the little green squib at the bottom of my posts, '' no authority but one of myriad ways by which existence perceives itself''.

Engaging with the ''larger world'' though these new internet connections is an interesting phenomena to me. In some ways it is the same as past communication yet at the same time very different from what has come before. If you are sensing a happier life by pushing away from the screen, then that is probably best. I have this niggling buzz in the back of my brain that suggests I am not far behind you in this realization.

So, yep, it's been nice chatting with you K and indeed sometime, '' somewhere out in the ether''....