We’re not talking about a threat to Democrats, we’re talking about a threat to democracy. Go back in history, and look at Germany between the mid 1920s to the 1940s. Puritanical votes in the face of authoritarianism didn’t empower people to combat genocide, it decimated their ability to do something about it. RFK, Jr., the environmental advocate was so firm in his beliefs that he went groveling to the guy that pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords, doesn’t believe in Climate Change, and just generally doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything unless it benefits him. RFK Jr. wasn’t a serious candidate. Stein? The woman shows up every four years, and didn’t even know how many members of Congress there are — and she’s the one that should be trusted to know the policy and diplomatic complexities to bring peace to an ideological, geo-political battle spanning millennia? Are those the “other things” you demanded? In order to accomplish things in the real world, it takes consensus and working together in order to achieve results without dictatorial power. A vote for Harris isn’t a vote for genocide or a perfect world, it’s a vote for moving forward — or if you want to be super cynical about it, a choice for one of the two candidates that can win who is the least likely candidate to exacerbate tensions and cause the spilling of more innocent blood.

If you can’t understand that, then it just means I can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. There isn’t a third option out there that is coming to save us — it’s up to us to save us, even if we have to do it piece-by-piece because there is no magic snapping of the fingers that is going to fix this.

Except, you’re implying that’s not what you’re doing. You want to believe that your vote can accomplish everything you want, as easily snapping your fingers, but that’s not how it works. No positive change in history has happened in a day, but you seem to want to vote as if positive change can happen immediately.

The “long term” doesn’t matter if the candidate that wants to “be a dictator on day one” gets his way, but you know what, maybe your self-righteousness will save us all. You say what you want but you have no way of achieving it. So, bye Felicia.

It’s not a religion, it’s reality and acknowledging that we can’t always get what we want when we want, and sometimes, the best option is harm reduction. You’re going on and on, like voting is always about ideological purity, but it’s not. The current system we have means you can push as far in whatever direction you want during the primary elections, but when it comes down to the general election, there are two viable candidates. The reality is, most third party slates, don’t even have a path to 270 electoral votes. Of the two that do, only the Libertarian Party has ever received an electoral vote, and that was in 1972 because of a “faithless elector,” rather than support at the ballot box. The Green Party? They only show up every four years to make perfect the enemy of better. They’re not serious. That leaves you with Trump and Harris. If we characterize them as cynically as you seem to view them, the choice is between someone that impulsive, vindictive, transactional, and devoid of even being able to pretend to a modicum of empathy, versus someone that isn’t stopping genocide fast enough. Of those two, which one do you think is more likely to exacerbate genocide the most?

Saying you’re not going to vote for a candidate that “allows genocide,” doesn’t mean genocide isn’t going to happen, it just means you get to feel better about yourself rather than inching things toward less genocide that might actually save some lives. So take how you will feel about yourself voting for someone that “allows genocide,” and set that aside, and ask yourself, out of the two, who is going to make it worse and who will make it less worse — because that vote has real life-and-death consequences.

At the risk of feeding a sea lion, there’s actually a simple reason a candidate might shift their position toward voters that are already “guaranteed” to vote for them: if that “guaranteed” base grows, it provides a voting offset that could allow the candidate to worry less about losing the support of less progressive voters.

I still prefer to refer to him as “Leon.”

Leon Musk is weird.

There’s a lot more to deciding the president than this… this was just cathartic.

Basically legislation. Dobbs just said there wasn’t a constitutional right, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a federal law that makes that a right. A federal law could effectively restore this right (although it wouldn’t make it a constitutional right, which would be harder to take away).

The problem is that they effectively expanded everything the President does to be an official act, and foreclosed a reasonable inquiry into whether an action is actually official.

Well if it’s any help, Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot helps me to remember to be kinder to people. While understand how the vast emptiness of the Universe could make someone feel cold and alone, and like nothing really matters, most of the time, it encourages me to have a greater appreciation for everyone that is here. I don’t know if it comes from an evolutionary instinct to persist and extend my existence, or something else, but the rarity of life makes me root for us more. And I guess that’s why I believe living beings matter, and why I won’t accept an ethical paradigm that ignores consequences that hurt people.

I mean I agree with you that it is always the right time to do the right thing, but at some point, the rubber meets the road and lives are affected. Maybe the “right” thing to do is to teach a man to fish, but maybe I do that tomorrow once the man has the strength to cast a net, and for today, I just give him a fish. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Anyway, I’m glad the tone of our conversation seems to be in a better place now than when we started.

Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.

I am a straight, cis, white male with a roof over my head, food in my refrigerator, and dogs I can afford to take to the vet. In your solipsistic worldview, there are hardly any consequences that I would have to face if Trump were elected. I’m choosing compassion.

In your mind, what is even the point of your ethics if it isn’t rooted in caring for and about other people.

It’s a privilege when you choose your ethics model over the real life consequences of others.

Thinking that voting according to your ethics is totally and completely disconnected from the consequences is a privilege not everyone has. Your ideological purity might have the consequences of harming more marginalized people because in your search for an angel, you believed it was better to vote for the devil than a sinner.

Unless you’re telling me that you think your third-party candidates are absolutely perfect, you’re already voting in degrees of “less bad.” Why wouldn’t you vote for the “less bad” that is more likely to win?