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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

Not so much apathy but a lack of any way to change things. We get exactly two choices and both suck (in slightly different ways) plus media that tries to play up differences than don't make any difference. No one wants a revolution which these days is generally an exercise in self destruction. So what can you do to create change? The politicians like Obama know this only too well, the system is designed and supported to make real change unlikely or even impossible. For all we will ever know both parties collude to keep the system in place.

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Guys, guys... stop giving credence to the myth that we have to keep voting for one of the corrupted parties that control the federal government. Yes, you will be stepping forward into a lonely political area, but you can and should vote for one of the other parties that haven't yet proved to be corrupt.

It's not a myth. It's mathematics. We have a winner take all voting system ("first past the post") which means a vote (or ten thousand votes) for a third party who doesn't win is exactly the same mathematically as that number of votes going to the major party candidate least like the third party candidate, because that candidate's strongest opponent is the one who would have had those votes in the alternative, and the winner is defined as the candidate with more votes than the candidate than the second most votes. The candidate with the third most votes is totally irrelevant until they cease to be the candidate with the third most votes. And they can't do that, because the incentives don't work -- if a candidate from e.g. the Green party could actually win an election, the Democrats would just run that candidate on their ticket, and likewise with the Libertarians and the Republicans. Because running two viable candidates who agree on 80% of the issues against a candidate from the other major party is friendly fire -- if you have a district with 60% left-leaning voters and you run a viable Green candidate against a Democrat and a Republican, the two left-leaning candidates split the left-leaning vote and give the win to the Republican. Viable would-be third party candidates are well aware of this, which is why there are no viable third party candidates -- they have an overwhelming incentive to join a major party as soon as they achieve viability.

This is not an insurmountable problem, you're just solving it in the wrong place. If you want a "third party" candidate to win then what you need is for that candidate to win a major party's primary. What is necessary is for people to stop voting for parties whatsoever and vote for candidates instead.

Third party votes are how we punish major parties. Case in point:

"if a candidate from e.g. the Green party could actually win an election, the Democrats would just run that candidate on their ticket"

If the Democrats are drifting too far to the right (i.e. the situation we have right now), then liberals need to vote third party -- until the Democrats get their act together.

Except that it doesn't work. Think about what a Democrat has to do to win if a Green candidate is taking 5% of the vote. The Democrat now has 45% of the vote against a Republican with 50%. If they move to the left to take the Green candidate's voters, the Democrat will stay at 45% and leave 55% to the Republican because moving to the left costs the Democrat votes from the middle. What the Democrats would have to do is move to the right, so that they take 10% from the Republican by losing 10% to the Green and end up winning with 40% Republican, 45% Democrat and 15% Green.

The only mathematical certainty here is that if you keep voting for corrupt parties, they will keep getting elected. If a few swing elections go in the opposite direction, it is a small price to pay.

A small price to pay for what? What are you supposed to be achieving by causing the candidate least aligned with your interests to take office?

Both major parties are corrupt. Therefor, electing any non-corrupt party would be a step forward, perhaps even paving the way for ending the two-party system.

We will keep having corrupt government as long as we keep voting it in.

The problem with voting for third parties (which I typically do unless I want to help ensure that the incumbent gets booted out) is that third parties can't win unless they become as corrupt as the two big parties. Otherwise the big parties will grossly out-spend them to defeat them.

When the system becomes corrupted, corruption is really hard to beat from within the system.

Even if many people felt they could actively do something about it, they are in direct opposition to all of the people who mindlessly undermine their country by spouting rhetoric like "well, we have to give up some privacy if we want to be safe" and have convinced themselves that the government has done nothing against any American and are only interested in "bad guys" (despite the countless documented cases of the government spying on girlfriends, attractive strangers, blackmailing politicians, activists, etc).

There are so many hurdles, well beyond apathy. If there were real meaningful action anyone could take, they would also face the threat of a government that attacks those who criticize it. If that weren't an issue, you would still have to contend not with the apathetic, but with those who enthusiastically accept and promote what is being done in some bizarre sense of self-preservation from a big scary world, because they're deathly afraid that some evil underwear bomber is going to blow them up next time they're on vacation to grandma's house.

>>For all we will ever know both parties collude to keep the system in place.

There was an episode of Boondocks that did this. In the end, Ann Coulter turns out not to be a republican. She's just faking everything to cause controversy sell books.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1seThIG34R8 - Warning, lots & lots of bad language. Can't find the AdultSwim censored version.

Would Second Choice Voting[1] help?

[1]: http://www.karlsims.com/second-choice-voting.html

It would, and we should vote for anybody but the D's and R's until there's enough momentum to push something like this through. The US is way too big and diverse not to have coalition government. We have a great Constitution, but the mechanisms for achieving such a coalition have become demonstrably impotent.

It would have elected Al Gore.

The original premise for surveillance is based on a lie.

The withering of mechanisms to effect change follows directly from apathy. Conversely, those mechanisms flourish with the existence of an engaged, informed citizenry.

We have no one to blame for the current state of affairs but ourselves. To attempt to pin the blame on anything else is to fail to accept that responsibility, which is tantamount to failing to recognizing the problem. And of course, if we fail to recognize the problem, nothing will ever change.

Conversely, those mechanisms flourish with the existence of an engaged, informed citizenry.

Which is quite impossible to build if you have to struggle for your daily bread or pay your mortgage. Even when you're idle, you're most likely arguing against or for abortion and other bikeshedding issue instead of focusing on important issues.

On the flip side, people overvalue their comfort, and are often unwilling to sacrifice extravagancies they have come to see as necessities.

I understand and largely agree with your comment but please don't refer to reproductive rights as bike shedding.

Compared to the other issues we face? We live in an age where teams of soldiers are sent in to execute routine search-and-arrest warrants. Most prisoners were never convicted by a jury, and we are now at a point where if every accused criminal were to exercise their right to a trial the court system would be unable to handle the case load -- we literally cannot afford to have people exercise one of their most fundamental rights. We have a military intelligence agency giving information to local law enforcement agencies, and then demanding that those agencies lie to judges and even to prosecutors about where their evidence originated.

We can talk about reproductive rights once we have restored basic civil rights and reined in the executive branch of government.

It is bike shedding. The state of the law on reproductive rights hasn't changed meaningfully since Roe v. Wade in 1973. It stays in the news because there exists an inflammatory minority willing to make extremist claims that whip everyone into a frenzy and the media eats it up because it gets ratings. The probability of abortion being banned in the United States is in the low single digits. It's a distraction, not because it doesn't matter but because it doesn't change, and there is nothing more to be said about it that hasn't already been said a thousand times.

Excuses. Everyone has nothing but excuses.

What could possibly do more to convince people that they should engage in the process of government than to be nastily judgmental of their reasons for not so doing heretofore?

Is this too much? My point is not so much a Nazi comparison, as, learn from the very best. Read all their leaflets, more than once, draw the parallels that ought to be drawn, and take courage. If these kids could do that, nobody alive today has an excuse. You may say they didn't really change anything, but there as Sophie Scholl said: "One has to do something, in order to not be guilty oneself." If we can't save the world, let's save our souls, figuratively speaking. This we can do, nobody can keep us from it but ourselves.

http://white-rose-studies.org/Leaflet_2.html

Hitler himself wrote in an early edition of “his” book – a book that is written in the most awful German I have ever read, despite which the nation of poets and thinkers have elevated it to the status of the Bible: “You would not believe how one must deceive a nation in order to rule it.” If this cancerous growth in the German nation was not too noticeable in the early phases, then that is because there were enough forces for good at work to try to slow its growth. But as it grew larger and larger and finally ascended to power by means of one last vulgar corruption, the abscess erupted and defiled the whole body.

This caused the majority of its previous opponents to hide themselves. German intelligentsia took refuge in holes in the cellar like Solanaceae, hiding from light and the sun, gradually suffocating. And now we are facing the end. Now it is a question of mutually coming to our senses, of mutually keeping one another informed. We must always keep these things in mind and allow ourselves no rest until the last man is convinced of the utmost necessity of his battle against this system. If a wave of insurrection surges through the country, if “it is in the air,” if many join us, then this system can be cast aside with one last mighty effort. An end with terror is always better than terror without end.

http://white-rose-studies.org/Leaflet_3.html

But our present State is a dictatorship of Evil. “We’ve known that for a long time,” I can hear you say, “and it is not necessary for you to remind us of it once again.” So I ask you: If you are aware of this, why do you not stir yourselves? Why do you permit this autocrat to rob you of one sphere of your rights after another, little by little, both overtly and in secret? One day there will be nothing left, nothing at all, except for a mechanized national engine that has been commandeered by criminals and drunks. Has your spirit been so devastated by rape that you forget that it is not only your right, but your moral duty to put an end to this system? If a person cannot even summon the strength to demand his rights, then there is nothing left for him but destruction. We will have deserved to be scattered to all corners of the globe, as dust before the wind, if we do not pull ourselves together in this eleventh hour and finally summon the courage that we have been lacking till now. Do not hide your cowardice under the cloak of cleverness! Because every day that you delay, every day that you do not resist this spawn of hell, your guilt is steadily increasing, like a parabolic curve.

Many, perhaps most of the readers of these leaflets are not certain how they can practice resistance. They do not see the possibility of so doing. We will attempt to show you that every person is in a position to contribute something to the overthrow of this system. It is impossible to lay the groundwork for the overthrow of this “government,” much less to effect its overthrow as soon as possible, if one opposes it alone in the manner of embittered loners. This can only be accomplished through the cooperative efforts of many unshakable, energetic people – people who are unified regarding the means necessary to achieve their goal. There are not a great many choices we have regarding the means to use; one and only one is at our disposal – passive resistance.

[..]

Clearly, it is impossible for us to give every individual specific guidelines for his personal conduct. We can only allude to general issues. Everyone must find his own way to realize resistance.

Sabotage in armaments factories and other businesses vital to the war effort. Sabotage in all assemblies, rallies, festivities, organizations that were breathed into life by the National Socialist Party, prevention of the smooth operation of the war machine (a machine that operates only for one war, one that focuses on the preservation and maintenance of the National Socialist Party and its dictatorship). Sabotage in all scholarly and intellectual realms that exist for the continuance of the current war – this whether it be in universities, colleges, laboratories, research facilities, or technical offices. Sabotage at all cultural events that could possibly exalt the “prestige” of fascists among the people. Sabotage in all branches of the fine arts that have the least connection to National Socialism and serve its goals. Sabotage in all areas of literature, all newspapers that are on the payroll of the “government”, and that fight for their ideas, for the dissemination of the brown lie.

http://white-rose-studies.org/The_Leaflets.html

Of course, you can also simply click a button without even saying why, like a responsible adult with a spine would do.

Or even better, just flag the story altogether to make it disappear, once again. Stay classy.

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