Not voting or voting for a third party is worse than voting for the lesser evil of the only 2 viable parties.
If I vote for the losing party, I implicitly agree to abide by the choices made by the winning party because I would expect the same from their supporters if the roles were reversed. None of the parties represent my interests, so I don't vote and I certainly don't agree to respect the decisions made by those who don't represent my interests.
To tie it back in with the original point, those who voted against Bush implicitly agreed to abide by his decisions if he won. Only those who refuse to participate in the system can claim zero complicity.
I think it would require some proof to what design you are referring to.
The result of refusing to participate is that you lose even more freedom to pursue happiness. Your captors don't care a whit about credibility.
> None of the parties represent my interests, so I don't vote and I certainly don't agree to respect the decisions made by those who don't represent my interests.
Then you waste an opportunity to help prevent greater evil from happening. You needn't agree with the lesser evil when you vote for them.
> To tie it back in with the original point, those who voted against Bush implicitly agreed to abide by his decisions if he won. Only those who refuse to participate in the system can claim zero complicity.
The good people who didn't vote in 2000 could have prevented a needless war from happening. They had the opportunity, so they are complicit. Only those who voted for the lesser evil can claim zero complicity.
Even if it did, why would you remove yourself from any philosophical obligation to your government, but live within its laws and regulations? You're basically trying to be separate but, by choice, not really separate and not really equal.
False.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/06/1260721/-The-Nader-...
As the first link points out, Monica Moorehead, the Worker's World Party candidate, got 1,804 votes. David McReynolds of the Socialist Party collected 622 votes.
The people who visited for Moorehead, or for McReynolds are the ones you should focus your ire upon. Not those who voted for Nader.
The Socialist Party is more to blame for Bush winning the office than Nader.
Oh, and all those non-voters? They were also partially responsible. And all those who refused to steal ballot boxes from heavily Republican district are also to blame! Because preventing evil justifies everything. Including torture.
And somehow have a magic ball to say what the future brings, and what the alternative future might have been.
This seemingly reasonable argument (assuming that you do not reject violence as fundamentally immorally ) is how Augustine turned a religion of peace into one with soldiers, as Just War theory.
But it doesn't stop. It also twists a phrase like "imminent threat of violent attack" into "does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons will take place in the immediate future" and "enemy militant" into "all military-age males in a strike zone, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
The calculus of violence is very coarse, yet you want to hang us all on its balance scales of greater or lesser violence and harm.
the parties no longer represent us. We are lead to fight over wedge issues while the elites take everything. A vote doesn't matter by itself either.
The only way a vote will have any impact is if you use it to add just a little sting to any political activity you do elsewhere. If your only political action is voting, you might as well stay home.
The only real hope is if a large bipartisan alliance forms. That's more important than if we get Romney or Obama as President (two candidates who are mostly different in terms of party affiliation and skin color, but not in terms of approaches to governance).
...and then you admit you're using a throwaway account here. Ironically, you're hiding behind your throwaway account instead of posting it under your real account/persona. Precisely because you are afraid that people will do what you told them is the best way to fix this problem of government we're discussing, and alienate/shun you for your views..