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Originally Posted by The Batlord
See, this is called "selling out". It's when you compromise your principals in the name of pragmatism. You know a leftist lefty ain't gonna win, so you go with the gutless moderate. Perfectly reasonable, and I don't fault you for it, but just recognize that it's what keeps the status quo in power. If you choose to remain engaged regardless, then be my guest, but that **** doesn't motivate me.
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I don't know what's wrong with pragmatism. I mean, yes, I prefer some stuff getting done to no stuff getting done. Anyway, nobody close to me ideologically is going to win an election anytime soon, so I don't really see what's wrong with wanting the better person of the plausible options to win. Just to be clear - we keep the status quo either way, whether Hillary wins or she gets dragged down by Sanders and loses to Jeb Bush or whoever. (Even if Sanders could somehow win the election, there's a pretty strong argument to be made that he'd still be a continuation of the status quo.) The difference is that Clinton would be
better for millions of people, and if I didn't honestly believe that, I wouldn't be making these posts.
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But this is basically pointless. Sure, people like to think that they're voting according to their conscience, but just like in real life, they're really going by self-interest whether they like to admit it or not.
And any attempt to make people act the way they "should" (in this case, vote based on a worldview rather than selfishly) as opposed to the way they actually do, is a fool's errand. If they were going to act that way, then you wouldn't need to tell them to, cause they'd already be doing it. The only thing you can do is account for self-interest and mold your political framework around that, and not the other way around.
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Okay, if you don't believe it's possible for a person to think with other people's interests in mind, or have any degree of compassion or empathy, I don't know what the point of this conversation is.