Early morning hours of November 10th, 2016 after Trump announced as President-Elect.
Georgina Taylor (Jill Stein voter returning from a semester abroad in Europe): Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it.
After last news reports, before being blacked out, report Russian nuclear missiles headed for Northeastern U.S. Seaboard. Nuclear missiles are assumed to have detonated in numerous Russian cities.
[screaming]
George Taylor (Gary Johnson voter) You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
My corollary: When there is only one viable alternative to pretend that voting for a non viable option is responsible or affecting change is effectively enabling evil.
If you are voting for the Democratic nominee, I won’t blame you. However, consider donating time and money to help the candidate.
If you think the Democratic candidate or party is too corrupt, too militaristic, or too far to the right of your beliefs, carefully think through the ramifications of your actions.
Until the Republican Party is completely destroyed, splitting the liberal/progressive vote is political suicide. Until the nation is more like California with something like a 70-30 split between Democrats and Repulicans in terms of elected officials, voting for an impotent third party is diluting the voting power of the left.
If you can’t afford that dream house at the moment because the monthly mortgage or down payment is too high, do you blow your savings on lottery tickets and hope for the best or drink yourself into a stupor since the economy is rigged against you. Hopefully not, you just keeping plugging away and try to improve your situation by getting a raise, better job, or saving a little more each month. Maybe none of those options are realistic at the moment, but you just keep plugging away. Eventually, if you don’t suffer some misfortune you will be able to afford that house. It may take too long to what you had hoped or expected, but eventually you get there. It doesn't have to be a house, it could be some other type of purchase, achieving a degree or some other worthy endeavor. The point being, if something is worthwhile in life it is very rarely quick and easy to achieve. Why do so many of us expect it in politics?
So many of you bemoan the fact that we don’t have multiple parties like in Europe. Well I used to be like that but are any of you paying attention to what is going on over there? For one example, the U.K. is run by the Conservatives at the moment, because the left is split between three parties. The Scottish National Party’s success has crippled the Labour Party’s ability to form a liberal party. I believe many Bernie supporters would like Jeremy Corbin the current leader of the opposition party (Labour). However, would they think he was corrupt, because he was selected by the British equivalent of Super Delegates which is considered unmitigated evil by so many here. He had horrible favorable ratings when he was appointed, but membership in the party has almost doubled in less than a year. Even the rebirth of Labour, I am sure many Lefties would prefer having a left coalition in power. Then there is the rise of the many numerous far right nationalist parties throughout Europe. There may be numerous problems with our two party system but let’s fix and reform it, not wallow in fantasy of some European utopia that doesn't really exist.
If you are upset with the current situation, who do you blame more for putting us here the Democrats or the Republicans? In the last 25 years, who would you prefer making the decisions Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barrack Obama or Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Denny Hastert, Tom Delay, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, George Bush, John McCain, and Dick Cheney? Clinton and Obama get so much grief for having to deal with so much shit the Republicans leave them with after wrecking the economy. Democrats never get much time to do more liberal things, because they don’t have the votes because the purity patrol sits out mid-terms. Not voting for the Democratic nominee rewards Republican’s bad behavior. Why is this so difficult to understand for too many of us? As Obama often likes to qoute MLK’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” statement, why do some of us want to make that arc even longer? 1968 and 2000 were tragic examples of the hubris of the left, do we really want to do it yet again?
So many of us bemoan the current state of the race or the party, but are unwilling to do the hard work. We have to vote in every race not just presidential ones. There's just not enough left wing support to sit out elections or vote for boutique candidates, because you think the Democratic Party picked the wrong candidate. The Republicans just picked freakin’ Donald J. Trump a person uniquely unqualified by any objective metric. The Barbarian is at the gate. Are you just going to let him in consequences be damned?