The democrats aren’t much better either though.

Your definition of “much better” seems lacking.

Supporting imperialist wars, being pro Zionism, receiving the majority of their funding from extremely rich people.

The GOP not only supports all of those, they are the origin.

I haven’t seen them implement some extremely obvious and beneficial policies like a proper universal income, decent minimum wages, free healthcare, etc.

But you have seen them implement things like negotiating drug costs, building infrastructure to poor people, providing disability benefits to people affected by toxic chemicals. Is this nothing to you? Is this literally nothing? Is this not preferable to the alternative?

Does a simple preference exist? Y/N?

On one hand, I totally, wholeheartedly agree.

On the other, it is the duty of the people to maintain their democracy, irrespective of the attempts of the wealthy to subvert it.

Show me the better alternative to voting strategically. I never claimed the US system is great and perfect and directly produces wonderful results. Nobody over age 12 believes that bullshit, especially not lately.

In our deeply, deeply flawed system, consistently voting strategically is one of the most effective things we can do to effect change for good. Not perfect, but good. I urge all my fellow citizens to master the art of holding their noses and voting for the candidate more likely to improve their lives, or less likely to fuck them over. The alternative is accelerationism towards collapse, and the people on the left who say they want that are all woefully unprepared for the consequences. (The accelerationists on the right are also unprepared, but at least they have a lot of guns.)

As for doing more: I agree. AFTER we charitably elect the lesser evil, we should be calling their offices every day. We should be demonstrating. We should be engaging in civil disobedience. Our jobs do not end on election day, but we should never, ever allow the GOP to seize power electorally when it’s so easy to keep them out. That is tying both hands behind our backs and making sure the people in power not only disregard us, but despise us.

That’s the thing: we did vote for this. Look who won the last election.

Forgive my oversight. Running for office yourself is certainly one of the best things you can do.

There are a bunch of other actions you can take, of course. Phonebanking, doorknocking, etc. And once whoever wins assumes office, call them every day.

What is your strategy and can you point to it having worked recently? Electing Obama was preferable to electing McCain, was it not? Electing Clinton was preferable to reelecting Bush Sr., was it not? Electing Hillary would have been preferable to Trump. Y/N? Electing Biden was preferable to reelecting Trump. Y/N? Electing Harris would have been preferable to Trump. Y/N?

This isn’t complicated. The system is dead simple, and certain people keep making the wrong choices. We are a democracy. We have the government we have not because choices are being forced on us, but because our citizens keep making shitty choices. Can we not? Please?

The solution to this is electing politicians who promise not to compromise during primary season, NOT allowing your political enemies to win general elections. Even in a worst case scenario where your candidate is prancing around saying, “I love compromise!”, it’s still preferable to have a candidate who supports 50% of what you want than one who wants nothing you want and everything you don’t.

Voting strategically for the least bad candidate presented by the two major parties is the only thing that has been shown to work. It’s how we have the DSA candidates in government that we actually have. None of them have ever won by running as a third party. Not a single one.

Which is why it’s so important to turn out during the primaries. Make sure Gavin isn’t the candidate by voting for candidates you actually like during the primaries. If he wins the nomination, and I sure hope he doesn’t, I’d still vote for him over JD Vance or whatever sick fascist wins the GOP nomination. That’s how it works.

I feel the pendulum swinging back the other way, but I fear there may too many ropes in place to keep it suspended on the side of fascism. I guess we’ll see.

I have bought appliances in the last three years. It’s pretty easy to get “dumb” appliances, but it’s hard to find dumb, high quality appliances, and you pay a premium for them. I heard Speed Queen is the best when it comes to washers and dryers. I have a dumb LG fridge that doesn’t try to connect to the interweb or anything. My washer-dryer is LG and has an option to connect to the internet I will never allow.

He was obviously referring to telemetry bullshit that spies on you when he said “sensors;” not, like, the O₂ sensor an ICE car uses to calculate fuel injection volume.

That’s also when they started putting “In God we trust” on our money. Assholes.

You sound like you think you are much smarter than you actually are, and you didn’t understand my point.

Indeed.

Four legs good!

Two legs bad!

Four legs good!

Two legs bad!

Huh? Global population is still growing. (More slowly now, but the slope is still strongly positive.) We haven’t hit peak human population yet and won’t any time soon. That means if the population of the US declines, we can just import more USians.

Oh look.

Bread has become expensive,

so here come the circuses.

When this is over, we need to recreate that famous photo of Mussolini a few hundred times all over DC. (You know the one.)

Wishful thinking?

Yep. And I’m sure you know this, but we toppled Iran’s democracy at the behest of British Petroleum (BP) through clandestine action of the CIA.

They used another tactic that I didn’t notice until one of the commenters on the Ars article/forum pointed it out:

Promising good stuff that’s not too close (~5 years) so you’ll remember it and say, “Hey, where’s my <good thing>?!” but not so far away (~25+ years) that you’ll say “That’s way too far you need to fix this shit now.” Apparently it was used in Soviet Bloc countries a lot to keep the population from revolting, and now I’m seeing it everywhere in our society. In this case, the O&G companies said things like, “Sure! We’ll be generating all your fuel with algae in ~15 years and then we’ll never need to drill again!” and “We’re developing amazing carbon capture technology that’s a mere ~15 years away and will repair all the damage we’re not doing!”

Ars Technica might be owned by Conde Nast, but it has a really smart userbase on average, so I tolerate that fact.