What’s happening now is the culmination of things that have been happening for a long time. Trump getting defeated wouldn’t have stopped it and we can look at the 2020 election as proof of this. Even after he croaks, this will happen (as evidenced by Dick Cheney’s late demise) until the people stand up against it.

The system is broken and following the rules and path laid out by that very system isnt going to fix things.

This is the status quo. If you want positive change then you need to make a change instead of repeating the same behavior over and over while expecting different results.

I legitimately don’t understand how you can gesture at everything terrible happening around you while arguing that voting differently for once is “voting against your own best interests.” If that’s the case then what’s happening now is in your best interest, and you should be happy about that because this is the result of constantly maintaining the status quo every single election.

So you vote for different people. There’s these things called “Primaries” and “Campaigns” where you can contribute before the general election to get more amenable candidates.

How’d that work out in the '24 primary?

The main reason we don’t see these better people is because people choose not to participate.

Can you expand on your reasoning behind this statement? If we have a two party system where the two parties are incredibly polarizing, and we shouldn’t vote outside these two parties, what mechanism ensures additional voters bringing out better candidates?

In this scenario, both parties know you’re not going to vote for anyone else, so why would they care what you or anyone else thinks of them or their performance? They win by percentages not by the number of votes, so it wouldn’t make a difference whether three people or 300 million people vote.

Furthermore, why don’t you admit you extend this same faulty logic to party primaries? Are you really going to vote for the socialist candidate if it means they’ll have to face the opposing party’s candidate in the general or are you going to vote for the status-quo, establishment candidate with the belief that they’ll have a better chance at winning in the general? I’m willing to bet you believe the latter and if that’s the case, at what point are these “better candidates” supposed to come along?

Well if you’re so eager to keep people voting for the establishment choices, you really shouldn’t complain when either one of them wins, nor should you complain about the state of the government as both represent the system working exactly as you want it to.

Frankly, we should just simplify things by making everyone’s vote automatic based on which ever one of the two parties you register with and restrict any unapproved party or candidate from running for office. There’s no point in filling out ballots as this just leads to people voting incorrectly and opens the possibility of things happening outside of the establishment’s expectations, which is bad for everyone.

We just need to have faith and hold on to hope that the establishment will change the system that keeps them in power at some indeterminate point in the future, but for now we must do as the establishment commands.

Say that to the people who chose to vote for Harris over a third party. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.

See this holds true both ways.

Can we see your proposed solution? Continuing to vote for the very same people who’ve made things awful with the hope that "it’ll be different this time"doesn’t really seem like a logical solution.

“The two party system makes things terrible but dont you dare vote for any party other than the two parties or else things might become terrible.”

And people wonder why nothing ever changes.

Glances out across growing 3D print farm, Lego collection, and media server at project truck sitting in the driveway

I have no idea what you mean…

$15.99 for two LD2410 is a bargain considering I’ve been looking a presence sensors for HA and they easily cost $60+ each. This is legitimately useful information!

Do you only need the ESP and presence sensor or is extra circuitry needed? I can probably print out some type of enclosure.

The US government did that via a guy who wanted a promotion at the DOJ.