#i hate the 2 party system

[a-continuous-cutting-motion]

When people (me) say that Democrats build the state apparatus that Republicans use to harm us, this is what they mean.

[loserdudelover]

i just tried to watch the VP debate and only made it 20 minutes into it. I still plan on voting, but I can't get over how depressing and dystopian it is to feel that my choices don't matter and that most people are only voting to pick who they think is the lesser of two evils

[out--of--ordinary]

The 50,000 or so people that voted third party in PA counted so far I just wanna talk 🔪

[jewishbarbies]

hate hate hate leftists created a fucking 2-ideology society where you’re either “good” or “bad” and now you either want all Israeli jews dead by violent means or you’re sucking netanyahu’s actual dick and there’s no other option

[syscultureis]

Plural culture is having "persecutor parties" where after a rough day all the persecutors end up fronting at once and just dissociating so hard because 3 of them won't stop yelling at each other while the other two are trying to do chores

(spoiler warning; nothing gets done and we stare at a wall for like 3 hours)

[rinshairandthoughts]

I have been seeing a concerning few posts floating across my dash recently. I don't really know if I want to reblog them, but I do need to remind everyone that will listen that voting 3rd party in the US Does Not Work right now.

Literally all it does is give Republicans a better chance at winning this election. It scares me to think there are people out there that want to vote 3rd part, when that is not how our current political system works. There is a history of 3rd party voting letting republicans win. You are literally throwing away your vote if you do this this year. You may as well not vote at all this year if you do not vote for Harris/Walz.

If you want a third part to win, you need to pass the info around and campaign for them a lot sooner than a few weeks before elections. At this point it is literally just a tactic to get votes away from Harris. I do not want to see that a 3rd party got 1000's of votes and Trump won by less than that amount of votes. It would make me sick to see that. This is not the change I want to see. The campaigns are too late in the game and it feels like sabotage.

So Please. Vote for the lesser of two evils, or watch as your vote is thrown away for a false feeling of a moral high ground.

[obituarybug]

Everytime I tell someone I'm independent/no party and they immediately start spouting bullshit to me about the importance of voting and why I should vote and that "a vote for third party is a vote for x" an angel loses its wings

Like sorry I wasn't aware that only Republicans & Democrats are allowed to vote for their respective parties and independents can't and that if they see you're registered independent they fucking rip up your ballot in front of you and don't count it

I AM STILL GOING TO FUCKING VOTE SHUT YOUR BITCH ASS UP.

[whitegumballs]

Where are my rubles, Russia!!!

I actually don't give a shit if you vote third party, the US.

The electoral college. Which is not democratic, is why trump won.

Hope this helps.

I'm not a democrat or republican I live in a red state that the only third party is libertarian (even further right) so I can't vote for Jill or whoever you want to blame for your threats not working.

So I don't give a fuck.

You don't give a fuck that my state allows zero abortions.

Or that DHS declined to support an Oklahoma woman who had to wait to get a life saving abortion. (No im not linking the story I know you haven't heard it because you think us Oklahomans deserve what we get)

That a trans kid was killed in school & president biden called it a fucking suicide.

Fuck off.

Vote however you want.

Now where are my rubles?

For people who don't remember the 2016 Tumblr was full of Russian trolls who posed as progressive social justice blogs and urged young liberals to throw their vote away on a third party. You can read more about it here :https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-russia-trolls-propaganda/ This camapign was extraiordinary succesful and third party voters were a key reason why Trump one( if you look at the electoral results you will see that the race was so close that if the third party votes had gone to Hillary she would have easily buried Trump) Sadly we didn't know that this was a orchestred camapign until Tumblr released the data itself and told us who the blogs were. Those were not simple spam blogs. They were pros. They knew how to talk to people, they made real posts and interacted. They tried this in 2020 but we were wary because the memories were still fresh But now thy are trying again. I just found this guy who is running the EXACT same play book as in 2016. Pretending to be a person of color , poting progresive posts while at the same time urigng everyoe to vote third party. As soon as I called him out he immedately blocked me beause he knew I outed him. So now i's up to you guys. Don't let Trump supporting Russian trolls run their psy ops here. Report en masse and get them now instead of waiting for months for tumblr to tell us they worked for Trump REPORT THIS RUSSIAN TROLL NOW. DON'T LET THEM PULL THEIR GAMES AGAIN: https://www.tumblr.com/decolonize-the-left

[tuliptiger]

ANYWAY ranked choice voting for the win. APPARENTLY red states have actually went so far as to ban it because they know they'd lose.

RCV is more democratic than the 2 party system we currently have. If someone outright wins at 50% or more they win! Outright, just like the good old days yadda yadda no participation awards here. If nobody does they still technically have the majority just with the help of 2nd place votes. It gives people a stronger vote for their real preferences.

RCV gets more people to vote which Republicans don't actually want unless! You're voting for their team period. They do not outright want more people to vote they just want to win period.

One quote from some idiot politician from a state that banned RCV PREEMPTIVELY might I add, say they banned it because (something to the effect), " we believe in the two party system like our country was founded on!" (It actually was Not founded on a 2 party system and George Washington famously stated that a 2 party system would ruin the USA in the way that we have it now where the parties serve themselves rather than the nation and it's people.)

RCV doesn't demolish democrats or republicans but rather makes better candidates from both sides AND introduces candidates that may be more in line with how a state or even nation operates.

It just makes the 2 biggest and strongest parties shape up and do better or move out of the way for a candidate better suited for the JOB and not who's more POPULAR.

[out--of--ordinary]

Just got into it with my dad about politics oh I love being a woman

[xxdrowninglessonsxx]

Hmm. Funny. Could have said something of substance, I don’t know…7 months ago. Pussy.

“When we talk about college campuses, I want everybody to know there are no protests on college campuses in Gaza. You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed.” - Bernie Sanders, 5/8/2024

[xfang-is-deadx]

Me when my existence is considered a political stance

[theghostiedyke]

not me already seeing vote blue no matter who liberals already talking about how 3rd party voters are throwing away their vote and blah blah blah blah

[ahaura]

i saw someone point out the frequency with which liberals back social justice movements... how, for instance, when ferguson happened under obama it was not popular and there were many, many liberals who found the blm movement, in a sense, "in violation of [liberal] sensibilities" (when liberalism as a rule does not challenge the status quo, only maintains it and sees any call for revolution or real change as disruptive or 'bad for optics' and therefore not acceptable) but then when trump became president and he opposed blm a lot more liberals decided that the blm movement had merit because they viewed it from a team-sports perspective rather than a worldview based on morals and an understanding of the systems in place in the U.S. - that it was more comfortable for them to operate from a "trump bad" basis rather than "the american justice system and the police are inherently white supremacist, which are inherently, automatically, and always violent"

+ that, if trump was president while israel is carrying out its genocide, liberals would have NO problem denouncing israel and demanding for a ceasefire because they're comfortable operating from the 2-party system basis, NOT from a framework based on material conditions or factors or any acknowledgement or analysis of imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism. but because biden is a democrat, and democrats are supposed to be "the decent party" "the lesser evil" "more respectable" when, in functionality - in real practice, they don't want to disrupt the status quo. (internally, maintaining systems of white supremacy and capitalism; externally, furthering U.S. imperialism by maintaining hegemony and continuing the practice of exploitation and extraction of labor+capital+resources from the global south)

which is why we're here, a month into a genocide, and liberals are so cowardly and gutless that, in the face of our democrat president allowing and funding the genocide of palestinians in order for the U.S. to maintain its military base in the middle east, liberals IMMEDIATELY jump to "well, you HAVE to vote for him still, because trump will be worse!" and go "well im powerless there's nothing i can do", immediately folding like a wet paper bag in the face of the american empire rearing its ugly head in the most blatant, naked way in years, instead of thinking "this is unacceptable, i should pressure my elected officials and do everything i can - be it combating propaganda, contacting my congresspeople or senators, protesting, or engaging in direct action - to ensure this stops as quickly as possible".

there are liberals STILL IN MY NOTIFICATIONS who go "well you'll be electing a fascist if you vote for trump" not realizing that YOU CAN'T SIMPLY VOTE FASCISM AWAY. (which is not to say you should vote for republicans; that's not what i'm saying. none of us have said it.) we're pretty much already there. it's 2003 all over again, with the patriot act and all. the american war machine is pumping out racist, orientalist, pro-colonial, pro-genocide propaganda on behalf of the ethno-state america and its allies have backed since the so-called state's inception. people are being doxxed, fired, harassed, and attacked for visibly supporting palestine/opposing israel. islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise; a 6 year old boy was murdered not one month ago, an arab doctor in texas was stabbed to death. antisemitism is on the rise as well, thanks to the conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism (which nazis have and will attempt to co-op in order to 'justify' + then act on their antisemitism, racism, and genocidal worldviews). our government is silencing people, brutalizing protestors, and arming and funding an ethno-state committing genocide - everything that would have been called fascist if it was under trump. but because it's a *democrat* liberals place "vote blue no matter who" and "optics" over the extremely basic moral stance that "genocide is wrong and people have the right to self-determination, autonomy, and life". arabs and muslims are already so dehumanized in the west that liberals (whether they consider themselves liberals or not) consider it an inconvenience to talk about the ongoing genocide that is happening with the blessing of OUR government. in this they expose their selfishness, the shallowness of their morals, their chauvinism, and their racism/orientalism/islamophobia/et cetera.

for example, if you see israeli troops waving a gay pride flag and the israeli state touting its support of gay people while said iof soldiers are murdering men, women, and children en masse every single day and you somehow????? think that because gay people are the ones doing the killing or a state claims to support gay people is doing the killing is ok then 1) you have fallen for pinkwashing propaganda and 2) that you find the murder of palestinians, or any people, permissible by a colonial force that uses causes liberals may genuinely care about in order to disguise, whitewash, or "lessen" the severity of the injustices it does unto usually black and brown people outside of the U.S., then you are just as bloodthirsty and depraved as anyone you would personally assign those descriptors of.

once again, it goes back to resorting to a team-sport understanding of the world rather than approaching it from a material one.

[xbuster]

No it hasn’t. It’s been incredibly common for RPGs to give out-of-combat party members at least a fraction of the EXP received by combat participants and many others will give them full EXP since even Dragon Quest IV on the NES. The post-DQIV RPGs that don’t do this are usually not traditional turn-based RPGs.

It’s so funny how controversial the EXP share is among Pokémon fans as if every RPG ever doesn’t distribute EXP among your whole party. Pokémon fans would know this if they played another RPG.

[hexhomos]

Dropping into the Mel convo to add that I don't see how the stans that erase/ignore the Things She Actually Does And Says and claim she was just helping Jayce out of the goodness of her heart can claim that anyone pointing out that she's a billionaire imperialist who manipulated him for her own gain is racist when THEY'RE the ones claiming she spent all of season 1 helping a nonblack man for. idk. reasons. Why is it "better" for her to be a Black woman who supported a man and asked for nothing in return...?

That reading of her makes everything with her mother make no sense. Is she like, just mad her mom is interfering with her ability to Support and Love Jayce? Lmao.

The reading that the text and the inherent set up of the politics of Piltover/Zaun supports is a complex woman with her own personal motivations, wanting to live up to the image of the family she believes shunned her on her own (nonviolent) terms, using the craft of social engineering (manipulation, etc) within the political and economic sphere rather than through weaponry and warfare. She starts to shift due to growing some actual attachment to Jayce, but it's not a perfect switch flip, and then her mother arriving forces Mel to contend with what she had actually been doing by "preparing" the city for her family.

That's infinitely more interesting than "oh she just helped this guy out of the kindness of her pure heart and because he's hot" and also has canonical basis that can be pointed to In The Text. That's a complicated, multifaceted character. The fanon Mel who just helped Jayce because she's a good person is a flat, tired trope.

And personally, I find people who "love" characters but have completely inaccurate readings of them to be far more annoying than people who "hate" characters but understand them perfectly. Love/hate is just a matter of taste. If someone can spend time honestly analyzing a character, that's more important than ten thousand blandly positive comments or tweeted out fanfictions dressed up as appreciation.

Paragraph #2 on this actually blindsided me like I could kiss you on the cheek (consensually) rn I've never been able to properly articulate WHY the take rankled me so much even when I tried to see it from a completely best-possible-intentions perspective. And this gets it. It's like you're not even flattening her into a girlboss caricature, it's worse, you're actually making her a 2D saccharine pastry servant with no will of her own except furthering some man's narrative as his mommy and denying the one massive, defining character conflict Mel has in the entire show: she is her mother's daughter! She IS a wolf in sheepskin!

When you have all this power, all this privilege and resources at your disposal from day 1, and you choose to look the other way - what happens then? Is this really being kinder than her mother? Is this being merciful, or just prolonging a sort of system-wide torture? It's absolutely relevant to how we see kid-Mel in that flashback from s1 too. Her idea of mercy and salvation from her mother's more violent ends is to enslave someone. She puts it in gentle terms and dresses it up fancily as a beneficial thing to both parties, but that is what she is proposing, in the context of the Noxus' hostile invasion of Ionia; they'd chain that princess and mold her in training until she became an useful asset in their service. Is that kindness? Is that good? I don't think Mel is able to answer to this even in her big age during season 1.

She certainly thinks it could be, when compared to death, but it's also a lie she tells herself while she ignores the rest of the world and the place she holds within it. Mel hates getting her hands dirty, because she's never /had/ to do that to enjoy the brilliant spoils of success; her mother loves her enough to make sure she could avoid the bloodshed. She carries the strategist's fallacy of thinking whole wars and countries can be managed from the privileged seats up top, out of touch with the blood and gristle. From up there, when people die you don't see it. You can mark the numbers off as necessary collateral damage in the path to Exponential Growth.

The core assumption that has always bothered me is defining this as 'kindness' without actually examining what it says about her character and the story. She was created that way for a reason. She was clothed in this way for a reason. The first fact we learn about Mel in the first episode she appears in is that she is the richest person in the entire city, and then there is a 10 year timeskip, and she hasn't truly done anything to address or prop up the undercity at all (they are ONE city too, under her own philosophy; Zaun is only a separate entity in the mouths of the zaunites who want freedom.) In that context, when her goal of statecraft clearly is to continue advancing Piltover as much as it can be advanced and do nothing about the screaming bleeding diseased dying hordes below the bowels of her capital - is that goodness? Is that really better than mother? I think Mel's arc is about finding out really quickly and really horrifically that it isn't, and that she played a big part in making a lot of things worse.

It's not that she failed at her job, it's quite the opposite. She succeeded in her mission so incredibly well her mother could swoop into power in a single day and then put another hundred necks to the blade, no sweat, and Mel has to reckon with what that says about her, and what she thought of herself. The power she has obviously always had and never sought to use as it Should have been used.

The idealistic future-path here is that now in full control of her Mother's armies, she's returning to Noxus to challenge the predatory system it perpetuates on a world scale, but only god knows what we'll see come January. And all of this is infinitely more interesting to me than docile fandomized ship accessory n.9999