Did you mean to respond to a different comment? Cause you seem to be agreeing with the initial post that you’re replying to.

You’re trying to say that minor, inconsequential elections are the best way to increase visibility?

No, I’m saying make noises in rooms where you can be heard.

Yes! Literally this is what I’m trying to say!

Completely agree, DNC & GOP are far too similar. I’m focused on the differences between them. They are also significant.

There is no net negative of increasing exposure for PSL. Increasing PSL exposure is a good thing. The net negative is in voting PSL on a presidential ballot. There are not enough people concentrated in any area for PSL to register enough to cause any exposure. It simply won’t register in a contest this large. Voting PSL in that contest is only taking votes away from one of the two parties that are going to win. If we can agree that DNC and GOP have differences between them, then those differences should be enough to decide where to spend your vote in that contest. The net negative comes in where the vote for PSL could have fallen in one of the two columns that matter in this contest. Instead of going in those columns, it causes those columns to come up one vote short.

Having a PSL candidate that gained 16% running for Mayor of Long Beach in 2010 is a great way to increase exposure. That’s a blip that registers. That’s only possible in local elections at the moment.

I don’t understand why you can’t recognize that you can do both. Voting to mitigate as much damage as possible doesn’t mean DON’T organize and protect yourself. Casting a vote for the party that is less likely to trample individual rights in less arenas is more effective than wasting a vote on something that has a net negative effect. Voting is the absolute minimum and takes near zero time and effort and has potential (depending on where you live) to affect millions of lives.

Reject both all you want. One will run the country in 4 months.

Which theory?

Your choices for the presidential election are DNC and GOP. If you think that those options are completely equivocal, I don’t think this conversation is worth continuing.

The only way it’s best to protest under Trump is if you want to die while protesting.

That tells me that increasing suffering isn’t actually relevant.

Big oof

That’s what happens when you don’t vote or vote for a third party.

I don’t understand how enabling a Trump victory isn’t an acceleration towards suffering

Police killings have gone up every single year under Biden, yet the streets are empty.

That’s a great stat that should be shared more widely.

We don’t need to increase suffering, we need liberals to stop pretending everything is fine.

Agreed!

If you think those numbers won’t continue to rise under a Trump regime, you and I have irreconcilable differences of opinion

If any third party showed any chance of winning at the local level, the DNC and GOP would collaborate against them. We have seen this in Georgia, where they kicked PSL off the ballot. The only way to legitimately get somebody not in the DNC or GOP in power is via Revolution.

Local is smaller than state. State still has too much money and will trounce smaller parties just like you said. Looking at PSLs election results, the only showings of note are board seats, city council, and mayor. That’s where we need to start.

I’m not saying this is the only path forward. I’m all for guillotines, but you need the people on your side for that and getting the people aware of the movement is a tough process.

This argument doesn’t really work in your favor, Leftist organizing was much stronger under Trump, because liberals had a common enemy with Leftists.

So your stance is that in order to see real change, we must increase the amount of suffering and only then will people be motivated enough to do something about it? Sounds pretty risky to me.

I’m all for revolution. It’s not going to happen at the scale needed before the upcoming presidential election. Depending on where you live, that vote is either going to do nothing, or make a revolution more likely to be stomped out by authoritarianism before it can reach the critical mass needed to enact change.

So what are you going to do about it, and why is that better than making a choice between one of the two candidates that will definitely be in office in less than 4 months?

Saying that people aren’t thinking isn’t how we should be having this discussion. The Israeli government, military, and many of its citizens are acting as a terrorist nation. Palestine should be a free country instead of one oppressed and murdered by its neighbors. These attacks should not be supported, funded, or supplied by any country, especially one that claims to value democracy (and yet continually acts against those values). The UN overwhelmingly supports all of the above. The US is wrong here. The US needs to change its stance.

The US is political system is a two party system. It truly truly sucks that we do not have a ranked choice voting system. Currently, voting in national elections for a third party is only effectively denying a vote to one of the two major parties. (Local elections are a different story and the only way to possible route to national change of our two party system is to start locally.)

Neither viable candidate has a good stance on Palestine. Of the two viable candidates, it should be obvious which one will have less negative impact on racial and religious minorities. It should also be obvious which candidate could possibly change their incorrect stance on Palestine once reaching office. I’m not saying there’s a large possibility, I’m saying ANY possibility.

If all Americans were required to vote, and could only vote for one of the two major parties, which candidate do you think the vast majority of Muslim-Americans would vote for? In the world where you can choose to not vote, or support a candidate that literally has no chance of winning, all you’re doing is lowering the total number of votes for the candidate who closer aligns with your values. Yes, that’s the lesser of two evils. Yes, that does mean voting for someone who hasn’t taken a stance against the genocide currently happening. Yes, it feels awful to support someone that you don’t agree with on such an important topic. The alternative is worse.

When protesting against our country’s stance on Israel and Palestine (which I will do until people are free from the river to the sea), I would much rather be protesting against someone with a shred of empathy rather than someone who is likely to engage the military to use deadly force and brutal repression against us who protest.

What’re you talking about? That’s clearly an RX-7 and a Dodge Challenger.

TL;DR: mine is $660/month for health, $42/month for dental

Most folks in the US aren’t aware of how much they pay for health insurance. I live in California, where law requires full time employees (>30 hrs a week, >130 hrs month) be provided some amount of health insurance. The type of coverage varies not just from job to job, but also within the same job the employee must often choose their own plan from several company selected options at varying price tiers and types/amount of coverage. Usually the employee only sees the amount of the monthly cost that THEY are responsible for, which is then automatically removed from their paycheck. What most folks are unaware of is that the employer is also paying some of the cost (which is the part that the law makes them do). The part that makes it extra frustrating to deal with an already broken and overly expensive system, is that the rate paid by employers is negotiated in bulk with the insurance providers. Larger employers (national corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees) are paying much less than an individual or small employer would. This is the one of the largest reasons becoming unemployed is so dangerous in the US. In addition to not having income for food or housing, people often forego health insurance due to the expense. If you lose (or leave) your job you’re eligible to keep your current insurance plan for 18-36 months with COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which is such a ridiculous backronym that I had to google it just now). This is often the only time people realize the true cost of their insurance as the entirety of it is then passed on to them directly (at the employer negotiated rate) and it shows up as a new monthly bill.

I recently left my employer to start my own business and discovered that my true cost of insurance is ~$700/month ($660 Health/$42 Dental). Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean that I have zero medical bills should I actually visit a doctor or hospital. This is pretty good health insurance, but I still have to pay $5,000 out pocket (annually) before it kicks in at the full coverage amount. Since I had ear surgery earlier in the year and hit that limit, and wanted to be able to continue seeing the same doctors I had for already scheduled follow ups, I decided to keep the same insurance. That $5,000 isn’t the only expense that landed on my shoulders, there’s a bunch of rules that I honestly don’t fully understand and I’ve probably ended up paying somewhere between $7,500-$10,000 for the surgery I had (in addition to the monthly premium).

The main reason I keep paying insurance (in addition to the fact that you’ll now be charged a penalty on your taxes if you go uninsured for a month), is my fear that you mentioned in the original post. Having a car hit me while I’m walking down the street and ending up with a $50,000 visit to the emergency room is a very real possibility without health insurance. California recently limited ambulance rides to a maximum cost of $1,200, so that’s… good?