Because believing it’s unfixable relieves people of any pressure to act.
People look at the current mess, hear bad things about all sides, don’t have the time and background education and logical mindset to work out an approximation of where problems actually come from, then throw up their hands, declare it “unfixable” and stop voting.
Because fixing it would be *hard*. But if it’s unfixable, no guilt.
Because both parties suck, and republicans are just sucking worse lately. Doesn’t help when the media is pushing towards a candidate independents despise.
Both parties have, at different times and places, promoted this kind of fallacy of moderation, that both sides are awful, to keep people at home in disgust when it benefits them.
Also, which candidate “the media” is pushing towards depends on what media you’re consuming. I’ve seen a pretty wide spread across my own media consumption.
“The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Trump, of course, provokes outrage in anyone of an Enlightenment mindset.
Hillary provoked similar levels of outrage due to a carefully calibrated media campaign (probably helped by the fact that she’s got two X chromosomes and worked for Obama).
Obama provoked similar levels of outrage because he has lots of melanin in his skin.
In the alternate universe where Douglas Adams was actually talking about the U.S. political system, the degree of racism in the U.S. can be calibrated by how thoroughly excellent and unimpeachable Obama was in every other way than his skin tone.
(Of course, in our current universe, the President does wield power. He can use his power to incite wars, stir up hatreds, cancel treaties…)
Well unimpeachable except for the prison camp he didn’t close and the thousands of drone strikes on questionable targets.
I say this as someone who wishes Obama would run for Senate and replace Mitch McConnell before we amend the Constitution so he can be President for Life.
Wizard
Oh, and then the Afghanistan quagmire he did nothing to get us out of. And let’s not forget his illegal wars in Libya and Syria. And failing to get Congressional approval for the Iran nuclear deal, thus enabling the current Commander in Cheeto to trash it.
He Who Abides
Might want to look to Congress and its nigh-decade-long hissy fit about some of those things. Obama was willing to respect how the process is supposed to work, but he had too much faith in Republicans to act like adults. Or at least like they cared in any way about America.
Tualha
And the domestic wiretapping stuff we still wouldn’t know about if not for Edward Snowden.
anonamousethatscurriesinthedarkness
And all that and more is legacy stuff from well before ol’ cheeto.
Who want facts when there is outrage?
Tualha
We were actually discussing Obama … see Chris Phoenix’s comment above. Speaking for my own gripe, yes, Obama inherited the wiretapping program; but he did nothing to rein it in, and he made misleading statements about it.
Really, I don’t think it matters whether a president inherited something. If they do nothing to fix it, they own it just as much as their predecessors.
Tunasammich
There’s also congress to vote for, and state representatives
Freemage
And, even more importantly, I would argue… Primaries. The lack of turnout for primaries is the key reason that major party candidates are either bland, lackluster centrists with no ideology whatsoever, or extremist whackaloons (or at least people willing to entertain the actual whackaloons in the electorate).
Yes, primaries tend to favor the annointed candidate of the party’s national committee, but that’s also because people can’t be bothered to turn out to vote in them, or participate in the caucuses in the established fashion. (See: Berniebros, who thought that all they had to do was show up at the party. No, it’s more complex than that, and you have to understand the system before you can participate in it.)
This is your reminder that “*sigh* Neither side is perfect, no point in going out and voting” is the exact tactic the Russian propaganda blog campaign that was rooted out after the last election took in places that were deemed left-leaning.
Kryss LaBryn
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)
anonamousethatscurriesinthedarkness
Well the “Russians” didn’t exactly work from whole cloth.
All that crap was already in the air, they just added a few more fans to whip it even higher and further than those who shovelled it out in the first place ever planned for.
Then vote third-party. You’re not locked into Dems and Reps.
begbert2
In America “third party vote” means “abstaining from voting, but on a soapbox”.
Matticus
So. Much. THIS.
Freemage
Yeah. If you want to change the options, you have to be willing to take the long view. I remember the Before Times, when there was a group of nutjobs listening to a frothing right-wing radio host, dubbed ‘Dittoheads’ because they would call in and just say ‘Ditto’ to whatever inanity he pushed forward.
Then, in the era of Clinton, they became more energized, targeting Republican primaries, making sure candidates they wanted got onto the ballot down-ticket. And when Billzo couldn’t keep his bent penis in his pants long enough to see the country through his eight years, and when the Democrats in Congress made sure he wouldn’t be convicted on the articles of impeachment, they got motivated, hard enough to elect Dubya, mainly by suppressing the vote in battleground states (Historical Fact, at least in living memory: the better the turnout, the more likely the progressive candidate wins.)
They were actually largely quiescent during the Shrub’s years in office, though they continued working the primaries and down-ballot offices.
Then, when Obama came into power, they merged whole-heartedly with the racist segment of the electorate and forged the Tea Party.
Meanwhile, during all this time, the Greens would run a boutique candidate every four years to draw votes from the Democratic candidate for President, and completely ignore the down-ticket races.
And now the Dittoheads have a Presidency, and the Greens are still a joke.
If you want to change the two-party system (something that will require many things, but first and foremost the abolition of the Electoral College), then you need to get a major party candidate who wants to undermine that system, and to do that, you have to participate in the process in early days, not just every four years.
deliverything
I just checked, out of curiosity: apparently, the last time someone who was neither Democrat or Republican got elected as POTUS was in 1850 (Millard Fillmore, of the Whig party).
The most recent POTUS who wasn’t in a political party at all, incidentally, was George Washington.
thejeff
Technically, the last time someone neither Democratic or Republican was elected was Zachary Taylor in 1848. Fillmore was his vice-president and succeeded him in 1850, but didn’t win election in the 1852 race.
Not coincidentally, the first time a Republican was elected POTUS was in 1860. The Republican Party emerged after the Whigs collapsed in the late 1850s during the slavery crises that led up to the Civil War. Many Whigs and Northern Democrats switched into the new Republican Party.
It has always been a two party system, except for brief periods where one party dominates and multiple others compete to become the new other major party.
The last times a 3rd party candidate won any states and thus any electoral votes were George Wallace and Strom Thurmond in 1968 and 1948 respectively. Both essentially ran as segregationist Dixiecrats and won only in the Old South.
Jenny Islander
where’s the fricking like button
If you don’t like 45, my fellow Americans, VOTE FOR THE PERSON WHO WILL STEP INTO OFFICE WITH ACTUAL POLITICAL CAPITAL TO SPEND AND ALLIES IN CONGRESS READY AND WILLING TO BACK THEM UP. Yes, even if that person is not ideologically the best. As long as their record proves them to be capable of shame, or of reacting to sustained public pressure, VOTE THEM IN.
45 and all of his various remoras and manipulators out. OUT. That is the primary goal. If you vote for purity you vote for nothing.
Jenny Islander
And furthermore: If you want to see a third-party president in power, vote for third-party congresspeople, governors, mayors, judges, sheriffs, service district commissioners, and school board members. Or run for a minor office yourself if you can and there’s nobody you want to vote for. Build a base for a future third-party president to rise from. And remember: The president is not supposed to be the one supreme boss pope of fixing everything from the top down. That’s not what democracy is for.
BBCC
…You don’t actually vote for judges in the States do you?
I’ll be over here, adding to my ‘horrified Canadian screaming’ list.
Deathjavu
Yes, local and state judges are sometimes elected positions (always? I don’t know).
Mostly a joke, since the local judges are often running unopposed. I counted 21 unopposed races on my 2016 ballot iirc, and 10 on my 2018.
I marked nothing down for those races, since they are such an obvious farce.
thejeff
Sometimes. On a state by state basis.
BBCC
…Not as bad as I was worried about but STILL.
Jenny Islander
Actually it’s only in some jurisdictions, and it’s more “vote against.” In Alaska, for example, you’re supposed to check each judge’s record before the election (as compiled by an independent observer) and arrive prepared to vote either “Retain” (doing a good job” or “Dismiss” (fire ’em).
I know quite a few people that still do. I mean the assumption is that if they didn’t want either candidate at the time, they wouldn’t change that stance just because one of those 2 choices they didn’t like got chosen.
Well, I mean… we’re quickly speeding to the Point Of No Return, and in about 50 years or so our planet will become too toxic for us to exist and rising CO2 will boil us to death. Our species will be doomed to a slow, painful, drawn out extinction. And what are our choices? On the one hand, we have literal cartoon supervillains who every day slowly turn our civilization into a hellish corporate dystopia like something from the 80’s but with less neon and cyborgs simply because they only see short term profits and think they can ride out the half-dozen apocalypse scenarios in their fortified underground bunkers; and on the other, a pack of spineless cowards who just let the supervillains get away with absolutely everything, time and time again, and only ever show any teeth at all when it comes to eating their own.
There is no future for the human race. We’re all fucked.
In the face of insurmountable odds, I can’t really condemn anyone for feeling just a little bit apathetic.
This is the bleakest comment I’ve read all day and I’m very upset that I read it.
Deathjavu
This is like my mental background radiation, except I think it’s more like 25 years and we’re past the point of no return. Something like a dozen positive feedback loops, from methane released from permafrost to oceanic CO2 solubility levels?
And that’s only one of a few different ways humanity could be wiped out. It never ceases to blow my mind how many ways that could happen, and how we do effectively nothing about that.
Yotomoe
I’m-a need you to stop talking about my imminent death. I already spend every night staying awake losing my mind over the incredible fear of dying. I don’t need this rattling around in my brain.
Oh, for crying out loud. Yotomoe, you can sleep at night. We are not 25 years past the point of no return. Any time we wanted to we could use nukes to put enough dust in the air to move the needle as far as we wanted in the direction of nuclear winter. In fact, we won’t do that. What we will do is dump some reflective chemicals with limited lifespans into the upper atmosphere that will slightly reduce the energy reaching earth’s surface. There are several different candidates. Any major industrial nation, say France or higher, could start the process right now. They aren’t going to. The major industrial nations all benefit from increasing access to the resources of the polar regions and most benefit economically in other ways. Russia, for example, needs ports that don’t freeze over for the winter. When it actually starts hurting in ways that “mater” then we’ll do something about it.
I have faith that eventually we will come up with a way to kill ourselves off, but global warming isn’t it. If you wan’t to keep yourself awake at night, decide to worry about something like run-away nanotechnology and AI.
Deathjavu
That’s all theoretical, especially the bit with the chemicals, and it’s nice to believe that’s true but it doesn’t make it true. There are plenty of economic downsides like drought, fire and hurricanes that have definitely offset any increased resource access but that doesn’t matter if governments aren’t rational actors who properly attribute this cause/effect.
And using nukes to combat global warming isn’t really going to make the earth any better. Deliberately using nukes to throw dust is increasing the fallout of the blast – all that dust becomes irradiated, and coating the upper atmosphere with radiation…will probably make more if us dead rather than less.
Nanotechnology, ai and engineered viruses are all much scarier than nukes, I’ll grant you that much.
thejeff
The other problem with using nuclear winter to counter climate change is that nuclear winter is a short term solution – lasts a couple a years, while the greenhouse effects of carbon are a generational problem.
Deliberate use of nuclear weapons to kick dust into the atmosphere on a regular basis doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Clif
Yeah, nukes are not a good solution, though it is possible to design them to maximize dust and minimize radioactives. Chemicals that would act as a radiation shield in the upper atmosphere aren’t just theoretical, though putting them there is, because we aren’t doing it – not even in test amounts to calibrate the effect, which we would be doing now if we were at all serious about controlling global warming. Yes, we would have to keep doing it, that’s the point of choosing chemicals that would break back down. Nor does it solve all the problems associated with carbon, like acidification. But it’s a long way from “We’re all doomed.”
Deathjavu
I guess what I meant by “theoretical” is “nobody has ever tested it in a meaningful way (in the actual atmosphere) on a meaningful scale”, which, I think, is about the same thing for complex engineering.
Positron
The point of no return is not well known, best estimates put it at 10 years at current emissions rates. That’s not the point when things go down the toilet though, the absolute scariest, most cynical estimates peg that at the 2040s to 2050s – the feedback loops take time.
Positron
To clarify, that would be the absolute worst case. Most likely it will be a bit longer. It’s an important distinction to make too because these numbers are currently the biggest sticking point for so called “sceptics” who assume that because they can’t see the world ending in only 10 years therefore the whole thing is a hoax.
Deathjavu
I said 25 years, which puts us to 2044-2045.
And I don’t trust that the worst case scenarios you reference haven’t been deliberately watered down by constant political pressures, or incorporate all the latest variables – the ocean seems to be much warmer than we thought as of January or so, and that’s 75% of the planet and one of our major heatsinks.
anonamousethatscurriesinthedarkness
Only there are a few problem with all these estimates.
They pull their numbers from somewhere dark and moist.
The models are linear and the world is not linear.
There is a critical point where the system shifts in it’s characteristics and you get a chain reaction of some sort.
Arctic water warms and expands – the cold arctic current no longer flows under the warm gulf current – The ocean streams shift – Western Europe weather turns into Northern Ontario and the US eastern seaboard is cold and under water.
David M Willis
you don’t think scientists also know that stuff
thejeff
There are definitely potential tipping points that are at least uncertain.
Melting leading to frozen methane releases being one of the big ones. We know about it, but I don’t think we’ve got good predictions for how much or how fast.
OBBWG
I get my information from The Onion – America’s Most Trusted News Source. A couple of years ago they reported that we’re fine as long as we take care of global warming before 2006. So everyone just relax.
There’s a difference between bad and extinct. Earth has had all the carbon in the atmosphere before, it’s not going to be uninhabitable. It will be unpleasant, and it won’t be able to carry the same size population than if we’d done better. Assuming a doomsday, whether supernatural or ecological, is bad for decision making.
Deathjavu
Yeah, and nuclear wars won’t leave us /technically/ extinct either, just scrabbling around in the remaining farmlands with 16-1700s era technologies and a society likely even more backwards. And no one would suggest that’s not a doomsday.
Quibbling over the degree of doomsday is just that, quibbling. Rationalizing that it’s not technically a doomsday because the idea is uncomfortable is bad for decision making.
But there’s still a choice between someone who might give us at least a snowball’s chance of survival, and someone who wants to pour all the gasoline tankers onto the fire. I choose snowball.
But I’m certainly pessimistic enough to not want to have children, because I feel it’s highly unethical to have kids that are unlikely to make it to middle age, and if they do make it to adulthood will inherit a burning hellscape.
Clif
I grew up going to high school with a few people that weren’t going going to have kids because we were going to kill ourselves off in nuclear war and life would be horrific for the few survivors. Many of those same people have grandkids now.
Elisto
The difference is, they were afraid of what people *might* do. Here, the danger is what people *aren’t* doing. It’s very easy to just continue to do nothing, which worked out well for the danger of nuclear destruction, but not so well when the danger is precisely that “doing nothing”.
I would agree with you, but there’s still some candidates and politicians who aren’t willing to just let the cartoonish supervillain types get what they want. And I’m hoping with those candidates and politicians in power we can slow and maybe even reverse the bad stuff the supervillain types have been doing. It may seem weird, but I still have some hope for humanity yet. I might lose that hope if the 2020 elections in the US go as bad as 2016 went though.
Keulen
Man it’s weird having a Mike avatar and posting more optimistic comments
Wizard
Eh, I’d describe myself as a cynical misanthrope, yet I still seem more optimistic than most people I talk to. Come visit the real world, I tell them, it’s really not so bad here.
Look, i normally don’t comment, just read the strip and a few comments and leave. Your personal feelings are your own, and are valid, but i could not disagree more with this idea that things being bad justifies inaction. Preaching this kind of despair doesn’t help things. Yes, things are awful, and yes the climate is looking really, really scary, but we can sit back and cry about how fucked we are after fighting with every tooth and nail to prevent it! Even if things are exactly as bad as you say they are, id take the spineless cowards over the actively evil buffoons any day of the week. especially when the spineless cowards have people like AOC and Bernie Sanders who are fighting hard every day to make things better.
I don’t mean to come off like im angry at you or trying to attack you specifically. I’m not. its just that reading your comment made me feel full of despair, and its exactly that kind of attitude we need to fight against. A few years back i watched a powerful documentary about climate change that made me cry. It predicted a lot of the same things you are talking about. Despite having such a scary message it ended on a note of hope. Urging people to keep trying to make things better. It used a phrase they had heard “Its better to light one candle then to curse the darkness” as a way to sum up that point. Thats the kind of attitude we need to have right now. We need to get active. We need to get out there, to fight as hard as we can. If we dont have any candles find a match. If we dont have any matches find a way to make one.
I understand the desire to throw our hands in the air and say “theres no point, we’re all fucked.” i really, really do. But we cant give into that temptation. Ultimately its just a justification to sit around doing nothing. Now more then ever we really have to keep trying.
and please fucking vote.
Kryss LaBryn
I shared this excellent quote above; but Imma share it again:
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)
If you can’t find someone to vote for, then at the very least find someone to goddamned well vote against!! As someone said above, it may be a choice between “bad” and “worse” rather than “good” and “better”.
But I’ll take “bad” over “worse” any day of the week, given no other choice, and we’ve already seen how much worse “worse” can get.
If you can’t vote for someone, find someone else to vote against. But either way, VOTE!!
I have good news for you if you’re being literal; which being text, i can’t tell. Every claim you made is wrong or exaggerated for effect. Humanity will survive the next 100 years. Quality of life is likely to trend downwards for the majority though.
You are instead contributing towards the efforts of said ‘supervillains’ by trying to encourage apathy. Knock it off. kthxbai!
Solenoid
Now if only treating “supervillains” like supervillains and beating them all to hell was at all feasible.
Are we really sure it’s not? They run and cry like little babies at the slightest hint of in-person aggression. Is it so much of a stretch to think we might be able to beat them into the ground, if enough people really put their minds to it?
265 thoughts on “Voter apathy”
Ana Chronistic
how the fuck can anyone have voter apathy after 2016
HOW
Diner Kinetic
If people didn’t care enough to vote then, then some of them might not care enough now?
ValdVin
Agreed.
LeslieBean4shizzle
I have absolutely no idea.
Deathjavu
Because believing it’s unfixable relieves people of any pressure to act.
People look at the current mess, hear bad things about all sides, don’t have the time and background education and logical mindset to work out an approximation of where problems actually come from, then throw up their hands, declare it “unfixable” and stop voting.
Because fixing it would be *hard*. But if it’s unfixable, no guilt.
Tualha
Or, as it was put in a very good novella: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/346096-now-there-s-this-about-cynicism-sergeant-it-s-the-universe-s-most
IndoorCat
Yes!
Bristingr
Because both parties suck, and republicans are just sucking worse lately. Doesn’t help when the media is pushing towards a candidate independents despise.
Deathjavu
Both parties have, at different times and places, promoted this kind of fallacy of moderation, that both sides are awful, to keep people at home in disgust when it benefits them.
Also, which candidate “the media” is pushing towards depends on what media you’re consuming. I’ve seen a pretty wide spread across my own media consumption.
Bryy
“just sucking worse lately”
Please vote.
Chris Phoenix
“The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Trump, of course, provokes outrage in anyone of an Enlightenment mindset.
Hillary provoked similar levels of outrage due to a carefully calibrated media campaign (probably helped by the fact that she’s got two X chromosomes and worked for Obama).
Obama provoked similar levels of outrage because he has lots of melanin in his skin.
In the alternate universe where Douglas Adams was actually talking about the U.S. political system, the degree of racism in the U.S. can be calibrated by how thoroughly excellent and unimpeachable Obama was in every other way than his skin tone.
(Of course, in our current universe, the President does wield power. He can use his power to incite wars, stir up hatreds, cancel treaties…)
C.T Phipps
Well unimpeachable except for the prison camp he didn’t close and the thousands of drone strikes on questionable targets.
I say this as someone who wishes Obama would run for Senate and replace Mitch McConnell before we amend the Constitution so he can be President for Life.
Wizard
Oh, and then the Afghanistan quagmire he did nothing to get us out of. And let’s not forget his illegal wars in Libya and Syria. And failing to get Congressional approval for the Iran nuclear deal, thus enabling the current Commander in Cheeto to trash it.
He Who Abides
Might want to look to Congress and its nigh-decade-long hissy fit about some of those things. Obama was willing to respect how the process is supposed to work, but he had too much faith in Republicans to act like adults. Or at least like they cared in any way about America.
Tualha
And the domestic wiretapping stuff we still wouldn’t know about if not for Edward Snowden.
anonamousethatscurriesinthedarkness
And all that and more is legacy stuff from well before ol’ cheeto.
Who want facts when there is outrage?
Tualha
We were actually discussing Obama … see Chris Phoenix’s comment above. Speaking for my own gripe, yes, Obama inherited the wiretapping program; but he did nothing to rein it in, and he made misleading statements about it.
Really, I don’t think it matters whether a president inherited something. If they do nothing to fix it, they own it just as much as their predecessors.
Tunasammich
There’s also congress to vote for, and state representatives
Freemage
And, even more importantly, I would argue… Primaries. The lack of turnout for primaries is the key reason that major party candidates are either bland, lackluster centrists with no ideology whatsoever, or extremist whackaloons (or at least people willing to entertain the actual whackaloons in the electorate).
Yes, primaries tend to favor the annointed candidate of the party’s national committee, but that’s also because people can’t be bothered to turn out to vote in them, or participate in the caucuses in the established fashion. (See: Berniebros, who thought that all they had to do was show up at the party. No, it’s more complex than that, and you have to understand the system before you can participate in it.)
Cass
This is your reminder that “*sigh* Neither side is perfect, no point in going out and voting” is the exact tactic the Russian propaganda blog campaign that was rooted out after the last election took in places that were deemed left-leaning.
Kryss LaBryn
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)
anonamousethatscurriesinthedarkness
Well the “Russians” didn’t exactly work from whole cloth.
All that crap was already in the air, they just added a few more fans to whip it even higher and further than those who shovelled it out in the first place ever planned for.
Charlie Spencer
Then vote third-party. You’re not locked into Dems and Reps.
begbert2
In America “third party vote” means “abstaining from voting, but on a soapbox”.
Matticus
So. Much. THIS.
Freemage
Yeah. If you want to change the options, you have to be willing to take the long view. I remember the Before Times, when there was a group of nutjobs listening to a frothing right-wing radio host, dubbed ‘Dittoheads’ because they would call in and just say ‘Ditto’ to whatever inanity he pushed forward.
Then, in the era of Clinton, they became more energized, targeting Republican primaries, making sure candidates they wanted got onto the ballot down-ticket. And when Billzo couldn’t keep his bent penis in his pants long enough to see the country through his eight years, and when the Democrats in Congress made sure he wouldn’t be convicted on the articles of impeachment, they got motivated, hard enough to elect Dubya, mainly by suppressing the vote in battleground states (Historical Fact, at least in living memory: the better the turnout, the more likely the progressive candidate wins.)
They were actually largely quiescent during the Shrub’s years in office, though they continued working the primaries and down-ballot offices.
Then, when Obama came into power, they merged whole-heartedly with the racist segment of the electorate and forged the Tea Party.
Meanwhile, during all this time, the Greens would run a boutique candidate every four years to draw votes from the Democratic candidate for President, and completely ignore the down-ticket races.
And now the Dittoheads have a Presidency, and the Greens are still a joke.
If you want to change the two-party system (something that will require many things, but first and foremost the abolition of the Electoral College), then you need to get a major party candidate who wants to undermine that system, and to do that, you have to participate in the process in early days, not just every four years.
deliverything
I just checked, out of curiosity: apparently, the last time someone who was neither Democrat or Republican got elected as POTUS was in 1850 (Millard Fillmore, of the Whig party).
The most recent POTUS who wasn’t in a political party at all, incidentally, was George Washington.
thejeff
Technically, the last time someone neither Democratic or Republican was elected was Zachary Taylor in 1848. Fillmore was his vice-president and succeeded him in 1850, but didn’t win election in the 1852 race.
Not coincidentally, the first time a Republican was elected POTUS was in 1860. The Republican Party emerged after the Whigs collapsed in the late 1850s during the slavery crises that led up to the Civil War. Many Whigs and Northern Democrats switched into the new Republican Party.
It has always been a two party system, except for brief periods where one party dominates and multiple others compete to become the new other major party.
The last times a 3rd party candidate won any states and thus any electoral votes were George Wallace and Strom Thurmond in 1968 and 1948 respectively. Both essentially ran as segregationist Dixiecrats and won only in the Old South.
Jenny Islander
where’s the fricking like button
If you don’t like 45, my fellow Americans, VOTE FOR THE PERSON WHO WILL STEP INTO OFFICE WITH ACTUAL POLITICAL CAPITAL TO SPEND AND ALLIES IN CONGRESS READY AND WILLING TO BACK THEM UP. Yes, even if that person is not ideologically the best. As long as their record proves them to be capable of shame, or of reacting to sustained public pressure, VOTE THEM IN.
45 and all of his various remoras and manipulators out. OUT. That is the primary goal. If you vote for purity you vote for nothing.
Jenny Islander
And furthermore: If you want to see a third-party president in power, vote for third-party congresspeople, governors, mayors, judges, sheriffs, service district commissioners, and school board members. Or run for a minor office yourself if you can and there’s nobody you want to vote for. Build a base for a future third-party president to rise from. And remember: The president is not supposed to be the one supreme boss pope of fixing everything from the top down. That’s not what democracy is for.
BBCC
…You don’t actually vote for judges in the States do you?
I’ll be over here, adding to my ‘horrified Canadian screaming’ list.
Deathjavu
Yes, local and state judges are sometimes elected positions (always? I don’t know).
Mostly a joke, since the local judges are often running unopposed. I counted 21 unopposed races on my 2016 ballot iirc, and 10 on my 2018.
I marked nothing down for those races, since they are such an obvious farce.
thejeff
Sometimes. On a state by state basis.
BBCC
…Not as bad as I was worried about but STILL.
Jenny Islander
Actually it’s only in some jurisdictions, and it’s more “vote against.” In Alaska, for example, you’re supposed to check each judge’s record before the election (as compiled by an independent observer) and arrive prepared to vote either “Retain” (doing a good job” or “Dismiss” (fire ’em).
Jenny Islander
*more often
Adam Black
“lately” since 1933.
You must be very old.
thejeff
Well, arguably since the 60s, depending. I ain’t defending the Dixiecrats.
But yeah, “suck worse lately” is such an incredible understatement, it’s really hard to take it seriously.
One is often disappointing, the other a serious threat to the life and well-being of not only minorities and the non-rich, but to our democracy.
Yotomoe
I know quite a few people that still do. I mean the assumption is that if they didn’t want either candidate at the time, they wouldn’t change that stance just because one of those 2 choices they didn’t like got chosen.
Sheason
Well, I mean… we’re quickly speeding to the Point Of No Return, and in about 50 years or so our planet will become too toxic for us to exist and rising CO2 will boil us to death. Our species will be doomed to a slow, painful, drawn out extinction. And what are our choices? On the one hand, we have literal cartoon supervillains who every day slowly turn our civilization into a hellish corporate dystopia like something from the 80’s but with less neon and cyborgs simply because they only see short term profits and think they can ride out the half-dozen apocalypse scenarios in their fortified underground bunkers; and on the other, a pack of spineless cowards who just let the supervillains get away with absolutely everything, time and time again, and only ever show any teeth at all when it comes to eating their own.
There is no future for the human race. We’re all fucked.
In the face of insurmountable odds, I can’t really condemn anyone for feeling just a little bit apathetic.
Yotomoe
This is the bleakest comment I’ve read all day and I’m very upset that I read it.
Deathjavu
This is like my mental background radiation, except I think it’s more like 25 years and we’re past the point of no return. Something like a dozen positive feedback loops, from methane released from permafrost to oceanic CO2 solubility levels?
And that’s only one of a few different ways humanity could be wiped out. It never ceases to blow my mind how many ways that could happen, and how we do effectively nothing about that.
Yotomoe
I’m-a need you to stop talking about my imminent death. I already spend every night staying awake losing my mind over the incredible fear of dying. I don’t need this rattling around in my brain.
Sheason
Imagine how I feel.
Delicious Taffy
Then stop adding to it.
Clif
Oh, for crying out loud. Yotomoe, you can sleep at night. We are not 25 years past the point of no return. Any time we wanted to we could use nukes to put enough dust in the air to move the needle as far as we wanted in the direction of nuclear winter. In fact, we won’t do that. What we will do is dump some reflective chemicals with limited lifespans into the upper atmosphere that will slightly reduce the energy reaching earth’s surface. There are several different candidates. Any major industrial nation, say France or higher, could start the process right now. They aren’t going to. The major industrial nations all benefit from increasing access to the resources of the polar regions and most benefit economically in other ways. Russia, for example, needs ports that don’t freeze over for the winter. When it actually starts hurting in ways that “mater” then we’ll do something about it.
I have faith that eventually we will come up with a way to kill ourselves off, but global warming isn’t it. If you wan’t to keep yourself awake at night, decide to worry about something like run-away nanotechnology and AI.
Deathjavu
That’s all theoretical, especially the bit with the chemicals, and it’s nice to believe that’s true but it doesn’t make it true. There are plenty of economic downsides like drought, fire and hurricanes that have definitely offset any increased resource access but that doesn’t matter if governments aren’t rational actors who properly attribute this cause/effect.
And using nukes to combat global warming isn’t really going to make the earth any better. Deliberately using nukes to throw dust is increasing the fallout of the blast – all that dust becomes irradiated, and coating the upper atmosphere with radiation…will probably make more if us dead rather than less.
Nanotechnology, ai and engineered viruses are all much scarier than nukes, I’ll grant you that much.
thejeff
The other problem with using nuclear winter to counter climate change is that nuclear winter is a short term solution – lasts a couple a years, while the greenhouse effects of carbon are a generational problem.
Deliberate use of nuclear weapons to kick dust into the atmosphere on a regular basis doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Clif
Yeah, nukes are not a good solution, though it is possible to design them to maximize dust and minimize radioactives. Chemicals that would act as a radiation shield in the upper atmosphere aren’t just theoretical, though putting them there is, because we aren’t doing it – not even in test amounts to calibrate the effect, which we would be doing now if we were at all serious about controlling global warming. Yes, we would have to keep doing it, that’s the point of choosing chemicals that would break back down. Nor does it solve all the problems associated with carbon, like acidification. But it’s a long way from “We’re all doomed.”
Deathjavu
I guess what I meant by “theoretical” is “nobody has ever tested it in a meaningful way (in the actual atmosphere) on a meaningful scale”, which, I think, is about the same thing for complex engineering.
Positron
The point of no return is not well known, best estimates put it at 10 years at current emissions rates. That’s not the point when things go down the toilet though, the absolute scariest, most cynical estimates peg that at the 2040s to 2050s – the feedback loops take time.
Positron
To clarify, that would be the absolute worst case. Most likely it will be a bit longer. It’s an important distinction to make too because these numbers are currently the biggest sticking point for so called “sceptics” who assume that because they can’t see the world ending in only 10 years therefore the whole thing is a hoax.
Deathjavu
I said 25 years, which puts us to 2044-2045.
And I don’t trust that the worst case scenarios you reference haven’t been deliberately watered down by constant political pressures, or incorporate all the latest variables – the ocean seems to be much warmer than we thought as of January or so, and that’s 75% of the planet and one of our major heatsinks.
anonamousethatscurriesinthedarkness
Only there are a few problem with all these estimates.
They pull their numbers from somewhere dark and moist.
The models are linear and the world is not linear.
There is a critical point where the system shifts in it’s characteristics and you get a chain reaction of some sort.
Arctic water warms and expands – the cold arctic current no longer flows under the warm gulf current – The ocean streams shift – Western Europe weather turns into Northern Ontario and the US eastern seaboard is cold and under water.
David M Willis
you don’t think scientists also know that stuff
thejeff
There are definitely potential tipping points that are at least uncertain.
Melting leading to frozen methane releases being one of the big ones. We know about it, but I don’t think we’ve got good predictions for how much or how fast.
OBBWG
I get my information from The Onion – America’s Most Trusted News Source. A couple of years ago they reported that we’re fine as long as we take care of global warming before 2006. So everyone just relax.
Delicious Taffy
Thanks, I needed a little more fuel for my suicidal thoughts.
Schpoonman
Did you, uh, recently add the Ryan background to your gravatar?
Delicious Taffy
Nope. Opacity +5% daily. June is coming.
Corey
Same. Its getting harder and harder to argue back when there seems like no hope.
Huehuetotl
There’s a difference between bad and extinct. Earth has had all the carbon in the atmosphere before, it’s not going to be uninhabitable. It will be unpleasant, and it won’t be able to carry the same size population than if we’d done better. Assuming a doomsday, whether supernatural or ecological, is bad for decision making.
Deathjavu
Yeah, and nuclear wars won’t leave us /technically/ extinct either, just scrabbling around in the remaining farmlands with 16-1700s era technologies and a society likely even more backwards. And no one would suggest that’s not a doomsday.
Quibbling over the degree of doomsday is just that, quibbling. Rationalizing that it’s not technically a doomsday because the idea is uncomfortable is bad for decision making.
Tawdry Quirks
But there’s still a choice between someone who might give us at least a snowball’s chance of survival, and someone who wants to pour all the gasoline tankers onto the fire. I choose snowball.
But I’m certainly pessimistic enough to not want to have children, because I feel it’s highly unethical to have kids that are unlikely to make it to middle age, and if they do make it to adulthood will inherit a burning hellscape.
Clif
I grew up going to high school with a few people that weren’t going going to have kids because we were going to kill ourselves off in nuclear war and life would be horrific for the few survivors. Many of those same people have grandkids now.
Elisto
The difference is, they were afraid of what people *might* do. Here, the danger is what people *aren’t* doing. It’s very easy to just continue to do nothing, which worked out well for the danger of nuclear destruction, but not so well when the danger is precisely that “doing nothing”.
C.T Phipps
I’m saddened I agree with everything you just said.
Keulen
I would agree with you, but there’s still some candidates and politicians who aren’t willing to just let the cartoonish supervillain types get what they want. And I’m hoping with those candidates and politicians in power we can slow and maybe even reverse the bad stuff the supervillain types have been doing. It may seem weird, but I still have some hope for humanity yet. I might lose that hope if the 2020 elections in the US go as bad as 2016 went though.
Keulen
Man it’s weird having a Mike avatar and posting more optimistic comments
Wizard
Eh, I’d describe myself as a cynical misanthrope, yet I still seem more optimistic than most people I talk to. Come visit the real world, I tell them, it’s really not so bad here.
takashid
Look, i normally don’t comment, just read the strip and a few comments and leave. Your personal feelings are your own, and are valid, but i could not disagree more with this idea that things being bad justifies inaction. Preaching this kind of despair doesn’t help things. Yes, things are awful, and yes the climate is looking really, really scary, but we can sit back and cry about how fucked we are after fighting with every tooth and nail to prevent it! Even if things are exactly as bad as you say they are, id take the spineless cowards over the actively evil buffoons any day of the week. especially when the spineless cowards have people like AOC and Bernie Sanders who are fighting hard every day to make things better.
I don’t mean to come off like im angry at you or trying to attack you specifically. I’m not. its just that reading your comment made me feel full of despair, and its exactly that kind of attitude we need to fight against. A few years back i watched a powerful documentary about climate change that made me cry. It predicted a lot of the same things you are talking about. Despite having such a scary message it ended on a note of hope. Urging people to keep trying to make things better. It used a phrase they had heard “Its better to light one candle then to curse the darkness” as a way to sum up that point. Thats the kind of attitude we need to have right now. We need to get active. We need to get out there, to fight as hard as we can. If we dont have any candles find a match. If we dont have any matches find a way to make one.
I understand the desire to throw our hands in the air and say “theres no point, we’re all fucked.” i really, really do. But we cant give into that temptation. Ultimately its just a justification to sit around doing nothing. Now more then ever we really have to keep trying.
and please fucking vote.
Kryss LaBryn
I shared this excellent quote above; but Imma share it again:
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)
If you can’t find someone to vote for, then at the very least find someone to goddamned well vote against!! As someone said above, it may be a choice between “bad” and “worse” rather than “good” and “better”.
But I’ll take “bad” over “worse” any day of the week, given no other choice, and we’ve already seen how much worse “worse” can get.
If you can’t vote for someone, find someone else to vote against. But either way, VOTE!!
jmsr7
I have good news for you if you’re being literal; which being text, i can’t tell. Every claim you made is wrong or exaggerated for effect. Humanity will survive the next 100 years. Quality of life is likely to trend downwards for the majority though.
You are instead contributing towards the efforts of said ‘supervillains’ by trying to encourage apathy. Knock it off. kthxbai!
Solenoid
Now if only treating “supervillains” like supervillains and beating them all to hell was at all feasible.
Delicious Taffy
Are we really sure it’s not? They run and cry like little babies at the slightest hint of in-person aggression. Is it so much of a stretch to think we might be able to beat them into the ground, if enough people really put their minds to it?