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Dear Motte, please help me place my vote.
I really want to support the Democratic Party. Biden's FTC, EPA, and NLRB all seem to be working in economic directions which will make my life and the life of my children better: open markets, cleaner air, better working conditions. I can't help but notice that Trump's previous court picks tend to work against my goals of regulating business, increasing vacation time for my family, and limiting the EPA's attempts to regulate fossil fuels.
But voting blue has some tradeoffs. Some of these I'm aware of, but they are less relevant to me: Immigration is high and crime is up, but immigration and crime are intensely local, and my locality is pretty safe, with lots of rich donors and its own competent police force.
I'm going to have a family soon. I would like my child to be able to enjoy a carefree childhood, without needles in the parks and bullies in the schools, and without the chance that they are brainwashed into values that won't give me grandchildren.
But then things happen which force me to reevaluate and acknowledge that I cannot support the Democratic party. For example, this exchange during the VP debate (Transcript from Matt Taibbi):
Matt makes the argument that Walz got the crowded theater analogy backwards, but even more than that what rings alarm bells in my head is the phrase "Or hate speech."
What do you mean hate speech isn't protected by the first amendment? How do you think the market of ideas is going to work?
This exchange was the last straw for me, and convinced me that, however much it may harm my short-term personal interests, I cannot cast a ballot for Walz and the group of people who think like him. No matter how shitty life might get without the EPA or FTC working in my best interest, it will get much more shitty, much faster if donors to the Democratic party (NPR listeners?) get to define contrarian thought as "hate speech".
So here are my options for presidential tickets:
Any ideas who has the most "Grey Tribe" values and best policies?
Important issues to me, in order of importance as far as I can tell:
Edit: formatting of candidate list
Have you considered not worrying too much about it and just going with your gut?
The chance that your vote is the deciding one is effectively zero. You shouldn't think too much about it.
This is what I think about voting. Funny enough, giving the argument "your vote doesn't matter" is probably more impactful than actually voting, but still probably not impactful enough to worry about for most people since they don't really have an audience.
The counterarguments are always something like, "but if everyone thought the same as you, then your vote would matter since way less people are voting!", which is true, but also never going to be the case.
People also always bring up cases of "look at this super close election, the difference was only a few hundred votes!", but, even in that case your odds of changing the election are still only 1 in a few hundred. And that is assuming you know how close the election is going to be before hand. So, yes politics are very important, but your chance of changing anything about it with your vote is next to none, so there is no real point to voting. Paradoxically, this makes telling people to vote, while not voting yourself, more important to do.
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