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Comment by nolite | Hacker News Reader

Funny... i'm also thinking "What is he about to try to ream us from behind with now, that he's trying to make us look the other way for".

Yeah.. I admit, I voted for him in 2008..

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>Yeah.. I admit, I voted for him on 2008..

As did I. Last year, I just didn't vote.

I went for Jill Stein. After hearing nothing of substance in the Romney/Obama debates, the third party debates were a breath of fresh air. How I wish they had electoral clout, or that we had a system which encouraged voting one's preference.

You think the other presidential choice would have been better?

You really only have a choice between two identical assholes. There's no point in voting unless America drastically changes its voting system to something more democratic.

I would say voting for the lesser of two evils, while not exactly my idea of a thriving democratic process, is still worthwhile. Imagine McCain had been elected. How many of our soldiers would have been killed due to his desire to swing America's big dick around in front of the world? How many foreign civilians? Obama's far from perfect, and his Nobel Peace Prize is a joke, but he's kept the body count relatively low compared to any hypothetical Republican commander-in-chief.

> You really only have a choice between two identical assholes. There's no point in voting unless America drastically changes its voting system to something more democratic.

Some people insist that the entire point of democracy is to restrain power. In that sense, voting for the lesser of two evils is a perfect representation of democracy: you're voting for which set of restraints to put on, not what kind of future you want.

I've definitely heard that argument before. I always conclude with the person that our definitions of democracy are not similar.

Have you ever tried explicitly defining democracy as part of your conversation? I find it usually helps. Or at least makes them very quiet as they realize they have no idea what they're talking about beyond parroting something they heard once that sounded good as a teenager.

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