Slashdot Mirror
Ralph Nader Moderates One Last 3rd-Party Debate for 2012
Late Tuesday, both the 2012 U.S. election (the popular vote at least) and the 2012 campaign season should be over. Tonight, though, whatever your ability or plans to vote are (see the current poll for a peek at what other readers claim about their intentions), you've got the chance to see one more presidential debate, to be moderated by Ralph Nader, and featuring third-party presidential contenders Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green), Virgil Goode (Constitution) and Rock Anderson (Justice). Yes, the same ones featured in another debate a few weeks back. (We promise, this is the last debate of this go-round.) If you're voting (or would, if you could) for other than the Democratic or Republican parties' candidates this year, what drives that decision?
I am also a Nader fan and a 3 time Nader voter, and I'm voting for Jill Stein. A vote for a mainstream candidate in a non contested state is the real wasted vote.
... and I was just voting my conscience (last Sunday, during early voting, as it happened). The two 'major' parties both want to send your children to die in countries that did not attack us in 2001, and both parties enjoy ordering record numbers of wiretaps, both with and without warrants, every single year. Both 'major' parties are also huge, huge fans of welfare, as long as the recipients are banks. I know one of them will win (and given their similarities, it doesn't matter which). But I'll sleep better knowing I had no part in endorsing their sociopathy.
Technically, since the Republican and Democratic parties have taken turns, term by term, doing eventually, exactly the same thing the other would do, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, for around a century, we've no reason to consider them separate parties. Minor differences between them have supplied the illusion of a separate entity, all smoke and mirrors, this is a one party system: The Repubmocrats.
To continually do the same thing over and over, then to expect different results each time is crazy and stupid. Therefore to cast a vote in favor of the presiding one party system is logically a waste of a vote for an improving break of this mad cycle.
You can argue that radical changes would be made by the other parties, I give you that radical changes must be corrected due to our incompetence over the last century. Yeah , it could hurt. Wanna pawn it off on your kids? Grandkids? Want more of the same ol' downward spiral for you and them? Just keep voting Repubmocrat if you do. Frankly, I would vote for a one eyed, hump backed, anarchist Hobbit, if I thought it would mean an end to Repubmocrat tyranny.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!