#electability fallacy

[ssruis]

Having negative fun right now. Previously unheard of levels of 😑 being reached as we speak. Does someone want to take pictures of a 360 view of tsukasa’s stupid emu5 costume so I can be released from this self imposed prison.

[tomorrowusa]

Looking for a Republican who is moderate on abortion???

Then definitely forget Nikki Haley.

It's a no-brainer: You don't get to be the GOP governor of South Carolina nor a member of the Trump administration by supporting reproductive freedom.

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post shines a light on Haley's views and how she'd act as president. (emphasis added)

[A]nyone tempted to believe Haley is a moderate on abortion should be warned: She isn't. Haley's approach is likely to be adopted by the GOP presidential nominee — even if that person isn’t Haley herself. But that will be just as misleading because no Republican administration will seek a moderate course on abortion. It will adopt an extreme right-wing stance in ways that right now are being ignored. [ … ] Haley, meanwhile, delivered lines she uses frequently, calibrated to sound sensible and sympathetic: "Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue," she said, "when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes" to overcome an inevitable filibuster of a national ban. She argued that legislation should focus on areas of potential "consensus," such as a ban on late-term abortions and allowing medical personnel to refuse to participate in procedures they object to. [ … ] Haley is on record supporting a national ban, even if she acknowledges it wouldn’t pass. That means her real plan is to enact a series of steps limiting abortion access, leading up to a national ban as soon as Republicans have the votes to enact it. [ … ] The judges President Haley would appoint would also not be abortion moderates; they would almost certainly come from the Federalist Society’s judicial pipeline to guarantee their conservative bona fides, especially on abortion. Even if she wanted to appoint moderate judges (and there’s no indication she does), it would trigger a revolt within her party. In fact, it’s unlikely anyone she appoints to any high position in the federal government with an influence over health care would be pro-choice.

No Republican president in this century has appointed a US Supreme Court justice who supports reproductive freedom. Despite the soothing double-talk we hear from Haley, she would be no different.

Supporting reproductive freedom means voting Democratic in federal elections and never missing an election. If there are any moderate GOP office holders left in DC they would only tell you so in some back alley after scanning the area for listening devices.

So let people know, starting now, that a vote for Republicans (including Nikki Haley) is a vote against a woman's right to choose.

[gender-euphowrya]

i seriously don't get how any country can call itself a democracy without having classes dedicated to teaching how politics work in its schools

[chloeworships]

Omgosh this woman has said EVERYTHING the LORD has said which I’ve shared. I am so glad someone sees through the smoking mirror 🪞

Why would Israel not go into Rafah if the hostages are said to be there????? HELLO??? Ding ding 🛎️ Why would they not do everything in their power to save these innocent people who didn’t ask for this war? Who didn’t elect Hamas?

I am deeply disappointed our Canadian government made a political decision not to send arms to Israel 🇮🇱 It doesn’t matter that much anyway, because the motion isn’t binding. However it does send a message to terrorists everywhere that we lack strength to stand up against terrorism. That we are weak and give in to pressure. We should be standing against injustice not indirectly voting in support of it.

Public (albeit) fictitious pressure is what led millions of Germans to support Hitler too. Let’s not forget that.

I hope in the future Israel becomes evermore self-reliant.

I posted the article about how the US entered WWI…. 170+ innocent Americans were killed on an attack by a German missile on a boat off the coast of Ireland. Just 170 people. Israel had 1,200+ innocent MASSACRED on their own land and yet people are asking them to stand down. If Canada had done the same to Americans, believe me the US would be doing just the same as Israel 🇮🇱

PS. I heard the name Abdullah Hussein.

Today we should be celebrating Israel finding more evidence of the use of hospitals, (designated safe-zones btw) by Hamas for their attacks not discussing a nonsensical empty political vote such as this.

PPS. I had a dream of a mayor recently, too.

[visenyaism]

Gortash redemption wouldn’t work because he does not give a fuck about growing or improving or breaking the cycle he’s putting fireworks into teddy bears for refugee orphans because fuck ‘em. He’s cooked. Ketheric thinks he’s too far gone the sunk cost fallacy already has his hooks in him. It’s over. Orin though. Six months of secure attachments to people who see her as an individual, an introduction to art mediums that are not finger painting with intestines, a trip to the circus (fun), regular exposure to the sun, and a blunt later and she is picking up trash by the river and voting in municipal elections.

[qqueenofhades]

i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange

Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:

The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.

If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?

On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.

As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.

Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.

[tpwrtrmnky]

debate

[ID: 4-panel "pills that make you green" comic.

Panel 1: A light blueish grey stick figure is talking to a green stick figure.

LBG: "Hey I think the way you debate could use some refinement."

Green: "Oh?"

LBG: "Yeah like maybe check out Dischorse, they're pretty good."

Green: "Dischorse? Didn't they say-"

LBG: "Yes they did but don't worry about that just watch a debate."

Panel 2: Green is sitting at a computer setup with two monitors. On the left monitor is a logo that reads "Disc Hors", without the e, showing a horse head emerging from some kind of disc. On the right is a social media app.

Green: "Well, time to learn debate tactics I guess."

Panel 3: A stick figure with a horse head is slamming their hands into a table while a long chat (transcript below) flies by on the right.

Dischorse: "Look, CouchTruther69, we've been over this already. If your only source is a ten hour rant video then you don't have a source. No, no. Don't try to change the subject again, yes you're trying to change the subject. Behave."

Panel 4: Green continues watching, with the monitors in front of them.

Green: "It's four hours of this? I mean if they're getting paid to do it, sure. Not for me though."

Dischorse: "No, listen to me. We've been over this. That was already debunked ten minutes ago-"

End ID.]

[Chat transcript:

very dark off-white: horse they did a logical fallacy get them. orange: outside is so cool. God damn. games workshop fenrisian grey: horse your take on the season finale of Bexing Mech Politics was reprehensible, I've never seen media literacy this bad. blue: Thoughts on chromomedicalism? I think we should consider it. the imperceptible idea of a color known as "man": hi everyone moss green: If the election comes to microtransactions child versus immortal jeff, I'm voting with violence, actually. fishmoder37: why is everyone in this chat chromatic? where are my grayscale dischorsites at? cyan: lol purple: lmao red: speaking of, when's horse going on hue replacement therapy? in square brackets: user red has been banned for prime directive violation. blue: horse wouldn't look good anyway.

end transcript.]

Start - Previous - Next

[thewoodbine]

Despite being for the peace and safety of Palestinians and against the Israeli government I do not trust " Pro Palestine" people anymore.

They've (speaking to the movement as a whole rather than individuals) proven over and over to have a mob mentality, support terrorism for the sake of terrorism, allow/perpetuate extreme and rampant unchecked antisemitism in their communities, base many arguments on/spread complete and total missinformation, and in general seem more enthusiastic about burning everything down than they are about actually helping people or improving the situation.

Nothing displays this better than people trying to sabotage the US election to achieve ???? No president ???? Absolutely no candidate is good enough for them so they'd rather let Trump win (which would be horrific for Palestine btw) than accept that doing good is always better than theoretical perfect. They're not involved in any meaningful way with local elections, I haven't seen any tangible efforts to encourage peace talks, I've seen no discussion on what comes after the ceasefire (beyond calls to destroy Israel and effectively reverse genocide half of the Jewish population). It's all grandstanding with the only calls to action being destructive ones.

Any attempt to critique the movement or check and balance any of the growing toxicity is met with violent and hysterical backlash about how the other person must love genocide and hate babies. It's their winning hand to take this ridiculous idea of some assumed moral high ground and use it to inflict as much harm, hate speech, and discord as possible. I could honestly go on and on from a rehtoricians point of view on why their arguments are almost always leaning heavily on some time of fallacy or manipulation rather than the very real, very valid factual situation which is terrible enough to be compelling on its own.

It's turned into an extremist movement that the left can hide behind but people are beginning to see it for what it is and it's the progressive lefts very own MAGA group poisoning it from the inside out under the guise of a cause reasonable people find very sensible and good at first and get sucked under before they know it.

[slavicbee]

My new favourite picture from the Slovak Parliament is this picture of Fico (mafia boss newly re-elected prime minister master of obfuscation) and Šimečka (a relatively tolerable guy the leader of the liberal opposition the bravest man in Slovakia)

Please look at his face I can’t I can’t that is exactly how I would react if Fico was so hard pressed in his ass to avoid answering one normal question honestly because he knows that the truth would reveal what a real scumbag he really is this picture is composed as a romantic painting it is my Roman Empire

Context: Fico was supposed to answer some simple questions in regards to the coalition’s political agenda. Since he is physically incapable of normal answers (because he’s a snide, conniving populist) he resorted into the ad hominem fallacy and started insulting Šimečka. If that doesn’t scream “coward” then I don’t know what does.

Source (x) <- Michal Šimečka on Instagram

[hashtagloveloses]

i don't think people understand the insane conditions i experienced november 5th 2020 under. it was an out of body experience for a lot of people but for me specifically:

i was working news, in the year 2020. i spent every day looking at the literal horrors and had become a hollowed out shell of myself by the time the election had came around

an early covid infection and probably that fuckshit job gave me a neurological condition where i was unknowingly put on a psychiatric medication without my consent that is jokingly often called DOPE-amax because of how it makes you zooted out. other than being in the hospital for said condition i kept working in said job the ENTIRE summer and fall of 2020, on this medication, ingesting the brunt of the world's news while numbed to the world, stuck in my house because of covid, protest street curfews, and a diuretic medication that made going in the sun difficult so i could barely even go on walks

because of sunk cost fallacy i was one of the few people still watching spn by the final season and actually was caught up and still watched it week to week so i had the CONTEXT when november 5th rolled around

the week BEFORE the election, i had been doxxed by jack posobiec the white supremacist and said news job tried to fire me for it, so i couldnt say anything political online, leading to my only outlet being TALKING ABOUT DESTIEL for days at a time to which said employer spying on my private social media accounts performed a WELLNESS CHECK on me because of the amount of destiel i was posting

the week of the election i was obviously working more than usual while being on call for the election results for days at a time so when a friend said "oh my god check tumblr" my first response was "theres no election results on tumblr"

i was taken off said medication that made me zooted out about a month or so before the election (and being doxxed), so i went into that fateful day with a clearheadedness i had not had in literal months

please imagine experiencing destiel putin election night under these conditions

[athingofvikings]

For all that I'm completely willing and supportive in letting people identify however they choose, there are some contexts where you can't self-ID completely freely. The types that inspired this? Religion, ethnicity, and politics.

Religion and ethnicity are fairly straightforward; in my context, I've seen so, so many people who think that they can "declare [themselves] to be Jewish" and are flabbergasted and in denial that it's not that simple. This also goes for any closed tribal group or identity, so I think that doesn't need much explanation.

But politics, I hear you ask? How can self-ID be a problem there?

Well, let me paint you a picture.

A number of years back, before Drump's election, I was active on the BoingBoing BBS, and there was an individual who went by Max_Blanke. Max claimed to be a political moderate, insisting on it again and again and again...

But every position he took was on the political right, very often the far-right. Police shooting a black man with his hands up? "Wait for the investigation, we don't have all of the information." Black Lives Matter protestors marching? They're nothing but potential rioters and an active threat to law and order. Muslim women being harassed and assaulted? False flag operation. Trump supporters being socially ostracized? They're clearly one step away from being rounded up and put into reeducation camps. Police officer with a Nazi tattoo on his arm? Oh, that's not exactly a Nazi eagle, it's different in a few tiny details. Republicans engaging in voter suppression? Don't we all know that the real threat is voter inflation and voter fraud?

And so forth.

It got to the point that it was pretty damn obvious that he was either A) a closeted fascist in denial, or B) a troll.

But he claimed, loudly and repeatedly, that he was a moderate, and that we were just bullying him, and so long as he kept his bigotry quiet and deniable, he was able to keep from being censured by the mods.

And this is a pattern I see again and again and again. Max was just one example (admittedly one that I took a lot of pleasure in ripping to pieces, calling out his fallacies and double standards, and showing his patterns of behavior to the rest of the forum, which is why he comes easily to mind); you will have people who claim to be socialists... but who regurgitate every right-wing culture war talking point. You will find people who claim to be progressive... but the actions and rules they want implemented would make society into a totalitarian surveillance state. You will find people who claim that they are leftists... and the behavioral standards they espouse could have come from Baptist preachers. And so forth.

Of course, there's the question of "Why is this important?"

Because end goals matter. This is not a matter of "my tribe wins"; these ideas will affect real people if and when they get implemented.

[velandvithestarlightgullwings]

By a Whisker

ATTENTION MAGANUTTERS!

YOUR GOD KING LITERALLY JUST ADMITTED THAT HE LOST THE ELECTION IN 2020 BY A WHISKER! A PRETTY BIG WHISKER, BUT A WHISKER NONETHELESS. THE MAN THAT YOU ALL HAVE SACRIFICED YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIENDS, POTENTIALLY YOUR JOB, AND FOR SOME, THEIR LIFE, JUST ADMITTED THAT HE LIED TO YOUR FACES, LIKE HE ALWAYS HAS DONE!

You all need to wake up and realize that all he's ever done is lie. And somewhere deep inside of me, I get it. Maybe Trump is all you have left and if you realize that if he's lied about this, that all of the things you all threw away these past seven years was just deemed worthless in his eyes.

By a whisker.

His words.

And it makes me sad because I doubt many will care because of cost sunk fallacy has kicked in but I hope that the few undecided people or those wavering on Trump will understand that this man was never for you.

And maybe if you realize that, you can start the long road to your personal redemption but getting back the family, the friends, and the respect that you lost by putting your all into the orange conman.

[zoobus]

I know Russian bots were (are?) a controversial topic on tumblr but you guys are seeing the Israeli bots on all the other sites, right? All the super young accounts responding to any and all Palestinian sympathetic posts with vague, borderline irrelevant logical fallacies?

A little concerned that a sizable number of otherwise tech savvy people think astroturfing social media is either a) cumbersome and rare, probably doesn't happen often or b) the delusions of US liberals still reeling from the 2016 election

[fiercynn]

you know what’s fucking wild? when @end-otw-racism’s first action started in may, they were incredibly clear that they had narrow and specific demands for the otw, and that their demands were commitments the otw had already made. if you need a refresher, here are their demands:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

and despite the fact that these were taken specifically from the otw’s own commitments, a lot of people immediately decided that this was an overreach on the campaign’s part. they fabricated supposed secret agendas that the campaign must have; they invoked slippery slope fallacies to say that this would lead to mass content removal for anything on ao3 that even skimmed the line of racism; they claimed to know who was leading the campaign and tried to discredit the campaign based on that, because they claimed that those people had larger agendas.

despite all of that, otw themselves came out reaffirming their commitment to these priorities. which is great, but that was not the end of the work, because those commitments were made by the existing board, which is about to turn over in the upcoming board elections. it's essential to hold the incoming board accountable to the previous board's commitments.

but when @end-otw-racism’s second action around otw board elections has continued to keep those specific, clear demands in their focus, they’re getting hounded for it from the other side: by people claiming that this analysis they did of the otw board candidates – in which eotwr made it clear that they were looking at whether the candidates talked about any of the eotwr demands or not – was racist for not counting the work asian candidates raised around reaching out to non-western and non-english speaking fans as fulfilling eotwr’s demands.

(which, let’s be clear, they don’t! issues around access for non-western and non-anglophone fans, around the way chinese and chinese diaspora volunteers have been mistreated by otw, around translation, are all worthy issues to be pushing on. eotwr has even uplifted some of them. but they are separate from eotwr's core demands.)

so first eotwr is overreaching and trying to bring down every fanwork that could be even slightly misconstrued as racist, even though they’ve always been clear about their narrow and specific goals…and now they’re racist for not addressing every form of racism, even though they’ve always been clear about their narrow and specific goals?

it is completely valid for eotwr to look at the board candidates’ platforms and say “they did not mention these things that we are looking for”, because the things that eotwr is looking for are commitments otw has already made. it is not eotwr picking out certain “keywords” that they’d like to see – they are looking at whether potential incoming board members are prioritizing those specific commitments and will uphold them. and otw has had those commitments for three years! this is not new stuff!

also, if you read that analysis again, eotwr is not even criticizing the candidates for not mentioning their demands! they are simply pointing out what we can glean about the candidates from their platforms and bios, because the platforms are the main information we have about the board candidates right now. eotwr has been incredibly clear that they want to talk to candidates and learn more about their priorities. they've also been clear in urging other people to come up with their own analyses of the board candidates, and they have in fact reblogged and uplifted other people’s perspectives on the candidates.

i cannot stress enough that we need more folks in this space to be pushing on anti-racism, and eotwr having a narrow scope is not a bad thing. there is endless work to be done, and others who disagree with eotwr’s tactics should start their own campaigns! eotwr literally only started like two months ago with a call to action. it’s very possible to emulate them and push for parallel priorities.

advocacy work also needs groups with different tactics and approaches. my day job is in climate change advocacy, and we do our most effect work when multiple organizations are representing different perspectives and pushing in different ways. i'd love to see that kind of advocacy ecosystem built up in fandom.

but right now, eotwr is the only campaign i know of trying to do large-scale anti-racism work around otw at all. and to actively push against the campaign because you think it’s racist to focus on specific goals and gently critique board candidates based only on those specific goals? is, i'm sorry, fucking ridiculous.

[max1461]

I've said this before but: as a strict consequentialist about ethics, I don't believe that voting matters because one's vote is almost sure to be inconsequential. This is not related to an larger sociopolitical convictions of mine, it's purely mathematical. People are already happy to acknowledge that (in the US, say) if you live in a state that always goes blue or always goes red, your vote doesn't actually have any effect. But this is true everywhere (except very small elections), it's just most obvious in these states.

Now, telling people to vote might well have an effect. If you have a large platform, and you say "go vote for candidate X!" and 1000 people do it, that might be enough to actually affect the outcome of an election. So I get why voting discourse is the way it is; advocating for others to vote is a very cheap action that might have a large effect size, so lots of people are going to do it. Turns out it can be rational to advocate for something that it is not in fact rational to do. This is pretty obvious if you think about it but for some reason people really don't like this idea.

Anyway, even though people know that their vote is not going to change the outcome of an election, they usually make one of two arguments that voting is rational, and these arguments are both bad.

The first is "if 1000 votes can have an effect, then one single vote must have 1/1000th of that effect, which is small but not zero!" or something like that. This follows from the false belief that effects are additive; i.e. that the effect of two actions is just the effect of one action "plus" the effect of the other. This is sort of patently nonsense because it's not clear what it means to "add effects" in the general case, but that's mostly a nitpick (people know roughly what they mean by "adding effects"). More important is that it's just wrong, and can be seen to be wrong by a variety of counterexamples. Like, to make up something really contrived just to illustrate the point: suppose you want to sit down on a stool. And there are no stools in town, but there are four stool-makers: three who make legs and one who makes seats. And none of them can build the stool on their own, each is only willing to make one part per stool. Maybe it's some sort of agreement to keep them all in business. Anyway, let's say you commission a stool, but the seat guy doesn't show, so you just end up with three stool legs. Does this allow you to "3/4ths take a seat"? Can you "take 3/4ths of a seat on this stool"? No, you can take zero seats on this stool, it's an incomplete stool. Effects are not additive! 1000 votes might sway an election, but that does not mean that any individual vote did so, and in particular if any one of those 1000 people chose not to vote it is very likely the election would have gone the same way!

The second bad argument goes like "if everyone thought like you, nobody would vote, and that would be bad!". This also fails in a simple logical way and a deeper conceptual way. The logical failure is just that the antecedent of this conditional is not true, not everyone thinks like me. And in fact, my choice to vote or not in itself has no impact on whether others think like me. Thus "if everyone else thought like that it would be bad" might be true but is irrelevant, you can't conclude anything about whether I should vote or not from it. Conceptually, I think this arises from this sort of fallacious conception of oneself not as a particular individual but as a kind of abstract "average person". If I don't vote, and I'm the average person, that basically means the average person doesn't vote! Which would be bad! But of course you are not the "average person", you are you specifically. And you cannot control the average person's vote in any way. Instead, the blunt physical reality is that you have a small list of options in front of you: vote for candidate 1, vote for candidate 2, ..., vote for candidate n, and I'm sure you can agree that in actual reality no matter which one you pick the outcome of the election is not likely to be changed. Your vote doesn't matter!

Now, I should say at the end here that I do in fact vote. I vote because I have a sort of dorky civics enthusiast nature, and I find researching the candidates and voting in elections fun and edifying. I vote for my own purposes! But I don't believe that it affects the outcome of things, which it plainly mathematically does not. I have no further opinions on voting discourse.

[mariacallous]

A symbol affiliated with former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” fallacy was on display at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house in 2021, a New York Times investigation found Thursday.

The symbol in question was an upside-down American flag, which supporters of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory began displaying after he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Neighbors who saw and photographed the flag confirmed to the Times that it flew on Jan. 17, 2021. The conservative justice admitted it but said it was his wife’s doing.

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” he said in a statement to the paper. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

The Times found in interviews with neighbors that Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was having an ongoing argument with neighbors who’d put up an anti-Trump sign with an expletive on their front lawn.

You can see a photo of the flag in question in the Times’ story.

Jan. 17 was a little over a week after Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the ceremonial counting of electoral votes that gave Biden the presidency. More than a thousand people involved in the riot have been charged with crimes associated with that day.

While the flag was up, the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear several cases about the integrity of the 2020 election. Alito was in favor of hearing the arguments but was ultimately on the losing side. Currently, the court is set to rule on two cases related to the Capitol riot, including one that could give Trump presidential immunity from some of the dozens of charges he’s facing.

The Supreme Court’s code of ethics calls for the justices to avoid making political statements or sharing opinions on matters that might come before the court.

Take Back the Court, a group opposed to the conservative swing the court has taken in recent years, said this incident is proof Alito doesn’t belong on the court.

“Sam Alito has disqualified himself from legitimate service on the Supreme Court. It’s hard to imagine a more blatant f-you to the American public than proudly displaying a vestige of a failed coup attempt on the country you’re supposed to serve, right on your front lawn,” the group’s president, Sarah Lipton-Lubet, said in a statement.

Alito’s wife isn’t the only Supreme Court spouse to get caught up in an election conspiracy scandal. Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, promoted and attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House that preceded the Capitol insurrection. Her husband has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the attack on the Capitol.

“If the wife of one sitting Supreme Court justice helping incite an insurrection wasn’t enough for Congress to issue subpoenas to these extremists, perhaps another sitting justice proudly displaying memorabilia from that insurrection will be,” she said.