kescusay @ kescusay @lemmy.world

Developer and refugee from Reddit

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2 yr. ago

I don't think you know what "petulant" means. Asking you to be precise instead of dancing around an issue isn't petulance.

I want to ask you something. Don't answer immediately, stop to really think about the answer and what it means.

How many politicians have you voted for that either won or got second place? In our FPTP system, those are the only outcomes that matter. Winning means you got into an elected position. Second place means you may still have a political future.

If you've been voting mostly third-party your entire adult life, there is a very good chance you have literally never had any effect on any election whatsoever. You and every single other voter who voted for your preferred candidates could have stayed home on election day and not only would the winner have remained the same, the person who came in second would have stayed the same.

I'm willing to bet that if you stop and add up every single time your preferred candidate won or got second place, and every single time that person was running as either a Democrat or a Republican, you'll find that it's the same number.

It's true, they do. But not always. It depends on how many there are in any given post, spam-upvoting each other. And... it depends on how successful their divisive arguments are. As far as they're concerned, it doesn't matter if 99% of the time they fail to get traction. They're going for that 1%, that one susceptible person who can be convinced to throw their vote away on a third-party candidate in a FPTP election where that vote has a 0% chance of electing that third-party candidate.

Personally, I don't think you're one of the Russian trolls. I think you're one of their victims.

I thought that would be obvious. Again, this is a self-selecting group of lefty folks. If someone works in one of Russia's troll farms, and their job today is to try to divide the left, then they're gonna go to where the left hangs out.

If someone like that shows up shouting, "Trump 2024! MAGA!" then they're not going to make any headway. Like I said, Republicans here tend to get downvoted into oblivion.

So instead, they show up and go, "I'm a lefty, too. Very left. In fact, I'm so leftilicious that I hate Harris. Don't vote for Harris, she's just like the Republicans! Instead, vote for [INSERT CANDIDATE WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING]! Because believe me, [INSERT CANDIDATE WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING] is much, much better! Be ideologically pure! And whatever you do, don't worry about Donald Trump becoming president, because I'm sure that with enough of us voting for them, [INSERT CANDIDATE WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING] will totes win!"

You need to account for sampling bias. This is a forum that strongly attracts a self-selecting group comprised almost entirely of those on the left. Very few Republicans actually find their way here, and the few that do are typically downvoted into oblivion.

At the same time, there's a flood of supposedly leftist accounts, most new, trying desperately to get Trump elected, at the same time as news comes out that... well, that Russia is doing an awful lot of that shit.

So people here are suspicious.

Should be more, but that's still quite the spread.

I'm going to blow your mind:

https://www.prri.org/press-release/new-prri-report-reveals-nearly-one-in-five-americans-and-one-in-four-republicans-still-believe-in-qanon-conspiracy-theories/

It's certainly not half the country, but a shockingly, disturbingly large portion of the Republican electorate fell for "QAnon" junk being spread largely by Russian sources posing as conservatives. The left is far less susceptible to outright propaganda tactics like that, but Russia is pushing for division extremely hard.

And voter fraud, don't forget that one! I heard over 40 billion illegal immigrants voted in California elections this year!

There is no possible meaning of that phrase that isn't immensely stomach-churning.

I don't hate you. I think you're incredibly naive, and I think you've likely inadvertently consumed Russian propaganda specifically designed to split the left in the United States, but that doesn't make me hate you.

It just makes me sad.

I have a couple kids, as I mentioned, both LGBTQ+. People like you, I don't think you intend my kids harm. But your vote will potentially boost Donald Trump. And your rhetoric online, if successful, would further boost Donald Trump. And Trump is a direct threat to my kids.

So no, I don't hate you. But I'm scared of what you and people like you could do to my kids in the name of ideological purity.

I'm not mad at posts from actual people, which I do think you are. You've engaged in ways that thoroughly convince me you're not a bot or troll. I happen to disagree with you, but that's okay.

Given the much greater size of the population that plans to vote Democrat, not likely.

Let's take this out of the realm of politics for a sec, and bring up a topic nearly everyone can agree on: Chocolate. A full 90% of Americans like chocolate and prefer it to other candy categories. (Seriously, look it up. Americans fucking love chocolate.) Now imagine if you went to a candy discussion forum, and found that there was a flood of similarly-phrased and comments from a bunch of new accounts, all extolling the virtues of gummy bears and denigrating chocolate as a candy choice.

Would you find that believable? Or would you suspect some gummy bear aficionado had set up bots to spam the forum?

Me and most of the people in my social circle.

That's a statistically insignificant blip unless your social circle is, for example, Delaware.

Look at the campaigns of socialist Claudia De la Cruz and the crowds of people showing up at her demonstrations. You think all those people are getting paid?

No, of course not. I was referring specifically to online, where a single person can operate thousands of bots spamming nonsense. You can't do something like that at a physical event.

That said, her rallies attract hundreds of people at best. Harris' rallies attract tens of thousands of people, with thousands more standing outside. And De la Cruz is polling in the low single digits. She's barely a statistical blip. Yet online forums are absolutely flooded with support for her and for Jill Stein.

Has anyone done a systematic study on ballot bullshit like this to determine if it is ever in the other direction, or is it always, without exception, done to harm Democrats?

That's true. But...

We know there is an extensive campaign by the Russian government to divide the left and attempt to get Trump re-elected. And given the nature of our current electoral system, there are only a few reasons why someone would try to get people not to vote for Harris:

• They are an honest Trump supporter. Fine. I disagree vehemently, of course, but such is life.
• They are a true-believing third-party supporter. Very rare, given the low numbers for fringe candidates from third parties. Of course, these people are incredibly naive, because they don't understand how third parties in a FPTP election system empower their own ideological opposition, but at least they're honest, too.
• They are a Trump supporter, but not honest, and for whatever reason, they consider it morally and ethically acceptable to misrepresent themselves and try to get folks on the left playing a game of "let's you and him fight."
• They are a paid actor. I think this is the majority of the supposed leftists posting vehemently and continuously against Harris, while ignoring the grotesque abomination and clear threat to the country that is Trump.

I mean that. I think the majority of people playing that particular game are paid to. Doesn't mean they all are, of course, but it's impossible to ignore the massive uptick in content from them right now, especially from shiny new accounts and from accounts that have been mostly inactive until now. There just aren't that many third-party true believers or Republicans who want to spend all day, every day, pretending to be abrasive leftists.

Eh. I disagree, but I can take my lumps.

I mean, who's surprised by this? Dubya was always a dumbass, and essentially the beta version of Trump.

Agreed, but there are a lot of low-information voters out there who have probably never heard of it because they don't follow political news closely.

Thanks. And for the record, I agree with you that it's 100% fair to criticize Democrats when they don't live up to their promises.

The person you're arguing with has admitted that they want to destroy the Democratic party elsewhere in this thread, with the bizarrely naive belief that somehow this wouldn't result in permanent Republican control.