Not an American, but as I see it, the only chance for a big change is to build things from the ground up block by block starting at the local elections level.

Another option is to bypass traditional politics as much as possible by using the power of civil society groups which are independent of political parties, such as Unions and politically independent single subject groups (for example, groups of people formed to combat setting up a data center in a specific region) - as shown in Europe a couple of General Strikes tend to focus politicians back into actually working for the interests of voters, at least temporarilly.

Yet another option, though weaker and much more indirect, is to consider that the vote in one electoral cycle affects which candidates are fielded in the next cycle, which is my main counterpoint to the OP’s point of view since such a perspective justifies not voting for the lesser evil to send a message to Democrats that they need to field better candidates.

That said, personally I think Americans are seriously fucked and I doubt any change will happen before things properly break in terms of quality of life (I’m thinking proper dystopia with widespread starvation and homelessness) and people rebel and even then the reaction of the powerful will probably be to turn the place into and overt Autocracy rather than the current Oligarchy with some Theatre of Democracy.

Agree.

Just pointing out that the entire system is designed to make that almost impossible.

That doesn’t alter the fact that the entire electoral system in the US is Mathematically rigged to make it pretty much impossible to succeed in a candidate from a 3rd party being elected as president - the level of difficulty is that of getting over 100 million people to switch their vote in a single election (you can try it over multiple election cycles, but what happens is that after years of trying and failing, most people give up, so it has to happen quickly or it won’t work).

As I see it, for a 3rd party to grow in the US it has to start by winning local elections since the number of people who need to change their vote to it is much less and then build on such victories to win seats in Congress, then build on that for the Senate, and only then for the President.

Anyways, my original post was about what can be done and how things should looked at “in the context of how the election system is in the US” (as fucked up as it is) and what it is realistically possible in it, rather than what it should be.

Good point!

Venezuela, Iran, and Iran’s proxies are …

… better than genocidal fake Democracies like the US and Israel.

Which is not at all the same as being fine.

They’re spoiled food to the US and Israel’s shit sandwishes.

Libya is an even better example of a situation of were Western attacks claiming to be meant to “Overthrow a murderous dictator and bring in Democratic values” made things vastly worse.

Oh yeah, as I mentioned there is a lot of closed-doors choosing going on before the Primaries.

Then the Primaries are rigged (with things like super-voters in Democratic Primaries).

All, of course, all assuming there are Primaries.

This does not add up to Democracy, IMHO, it’s just slightly better than only having a 2-choices Vote with no Primaries at all.

Well, in Accounting terms, once you sell your investment you have realized the gains on it (and if you’re a person or a company, are now liable to pay tax on those gains), even if you use the money from the sale to buy the same thing again.

Gains on an investment which hasn’t been sold yet are unrealized gains (in common parlance “paper gains”) and don’t really count in accounting terms until you sell that investment so you don’t have to pay tax on it.

Amongst other things billionaires use this to pay no tax when the share value of the companies they own goes up: if they need money rather than sell their share holdings they take loans using the shares as collateral, and because the shares aren’t sold any gains aren’t realized, hence no tax is due.

The number of combinations of choices in social and human affairs is pretty much infinite so politics in a real Democracy could theoretically be infinite-sided (though only if there were no “representatives” of citizens and people directly voted on everything - i.e. direct Democracy)

Because the US isn’t really a proper Democracy (more like an attempt at one), the vote itself in American has only 2 real options, but there are other ways to expand the number of choices because the two main parties in America are umbrellas for ranges of possibilities and they do have somewhat democratic (rigged, but still with more choices than the actual vote) internal selection systems in the form of Primaries.

If one properly analyses it, it turns out the presidential selection system in the US is really a multi-stage affair in which two of the stages - the Primaries and the actual vote - are open to the public (though there is quite a lot of selecting going on behind closed doors even before the Primaries).

So if people participate in both Primaries and the actual vote, they de facto have more choices than 2.

Also another thing to keep in mind is that this is a cyclical process and the outcomes in one cycle - i.e. who won and by how much - influence what happens in the next cycle so the vote itself defines not just what happens in one election, but also which choices will be made available - i.e. which candidates will be fielded - in the next.

All this means that if one actually cares and makes an effort, there’s more “Democracy” to be had than it might seem at first sight and the vote itself has more influence than just that immediate choice, so anybody claiming that “you have no choice but to vote lesser evil” either has a simplistic view of things or are purposefully trying to deceive others.

This is without going down into the whole local politics and civil society participation, which in the US is almost as livelly Democratic as in Europe.

Only true if you think the entirety of politics fits in 1 bit.

It’s pretty sad that we didn’t even got a straightforward Dystopia like, say, Mad Max.

Instead we got a 1984-wrapped Stupidocracy.

If America and especially Israel were treated as pariah states, this shit would’ve been less likely to happen.

As it so happens Australia is one of their biggest cheerleaders.

Now is a very good time to exercise one’s Delayed Gratification ability.

Personally I think the canary was Britain with Brexit, but I grant you that unless one has lived there for a while it’s hard to really understand the politics of it all since due to their cultural favored image style, the Fascists in England are sleazy posh types kniffing others in the back rather than loud, obnoxious types punching others in the gut.

As I see it, America’s Iran is the violent and loud country version of Britain’s Brexit.

According the the lastest polls over 110 million Americans still think Trump is great and doing the right things.

Just keep unwaveringly supporting America and Israel mate!

The cost of the Artemis II mission is estimated to be $4.1 billion

Each day of the Iran war is estimated to cost $2 billion.

There is plenty of money, just not the will.

And this is not just a Trump thing: all US Administrations in the last couple of decades spent many, many times more in war than space exploration - for example the Iraq War was estimated to cost in total $1100 billion, whilst the one in Afghanistan was $2300 billion, which would be a lot more money in today’s terms.

Just not going to Iraq would, directly (so, not counting indirect costs due to increased terrorist threats as result of the growth of ISIS that happenned due to Iraqi military being put in the same prisions as Islamic extremists) have financed 275 Artemis II missions and that’s without taking in account Inflation (if done back then Artemis II would’ve been cheaper)

America, fast going backwards, has today reached 1969 1968, assuming that this mission succeeds.

(Edit: this is not even a moon landing so more Apolo 8 than Apolo 11).

Most headlines about America in the international press in the last month could just have been “Liar lies” and “Liar was once again proven to have lied”