What? No they wouldn’t. They’ve been putzing around at the station since before either of us were born. What’s taking so long? Show me the firetruck. Wheels, engine, ladder, hoses, all assembled and ready to go. The firefighters haven’t even started putting it together yet, much less on the road. Tick tock, house is burning. How many more decades do I have to wait?

If you don’t want to be accused of being a shill, then stop helping them. Millions of voters refused just like you asked, and now we get genocidal fascists instead of genocidal liberals. MAGA got exactly what they wanted. You might not be a secret agent sent to disperse propaganda, but you definitely fell for one.

Very clearly not.

Where’s the firetruck?

Metaphors aren’t that hard for people with critical thinking skills. Ask one of them to explain it to you.

I’ve got a nickel

I repeat, voting is not mutually exclusive with alternative methods. I never said it was sufficient for change, just that it buys time until those alternatives are mature enough to actually accomplish anything.

This is not sunk cost, this is using a garden hose to try to slow the spread of a fire until the firetruck arrives. Where’s the firetruck? All I see are self-proclaimed firefighters sitting at the station, arguing over what kind of firehose to bring. Until the truck pulls up, I’m going to keep at it with the garden hose, and beg my neighbors to bring theirs to help. Because if we keep waiting for you to show up with the truck, the house will be burnt to cinders.

Spend a little less time criticizing my garden hose, and get the fucking firetruck out of the station.

I don’t support either major party, but I oppose one more than the other. There’s a difference between support and damage control. I’m not so callous that I’ll allow suffering to increase so I can feel like my hands are squeaky clean. Next time you get a bright idea about how to “help”, ask an adult first.

What exactly did that accomplish? Now we have a politician that supports genocide AND Russia’s invasion of Ukraine AND stripping rights away from everyone who isn’t a rich, white, cishet male. “Doing your part” made things objectively worse domestically, and will probably make the genocide worse too since he’s BFFs with Netanyahu.

With friends like you who needs enemies?

Why didn’t you throw out every politician supporting genocide then? Perhaps because that’s not in your power to do as an individual?

Only if you’re a single issue voter, which is dumb. If they’re equally bad on that one issue, but one is objectively better than the other on most other issues, it is in fact objectively better to vote for the one who is better on the other issues. One of the two will win, damage control is the rational choice.

But voting for people who might kill you because their opponents will kill you buys time while you develop better alternatives.

Again, I don’t see how developing an election based strategy diminishes one’s ability to develop simultaneous strategies.

Voting is not mutually exclusive with whatever your alternative is.

After a cursory search it seems like both are acceptable. “Think” appears to be the original phrase, but “thing” is more common today, especially in America.

I assume they’re talking about a reason as in a cause, not a reason as in a purpose.

Minorly inconvenienced. A lot of comments riddled with typos appear, and I’m vulnerable to normal doxxing. I have a few spicy takes, but nothing that jeopardizes a relationship with anyone I’m not willing to confront about it. Still rather not be doxxed out of principle.

Assuming there’s not some new thing:

The recent US general election was, as usual, a face-off between the two predominant parties. The incumbent party, while nominally being the relative “left” party, continued the unbroken support the US has provided to Israel since its conception, despite recent genocidal activity. There are some who insisted that, while that support is reprehensible and isn’t representative of the will of the left, the alternative party would be just as bad for Palestine while also being worse by most other metrics (including LGBTQ+ rights).

There are some who suggest that those insisting such a thing are shills or intelligence agents, logging into niche leftist spaces to manufacture tepid consent, rather than individuals expressing genuine concerns.

Looks like a yummy meatball, it’ll look great on your first spaghetti