this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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The US two-party system is a duopoly, so whichever party you vote for doesn't matter. They are two sides of the same coin pretending to be opposites.
One of the most commonly repeated and least thought through statements in politics.
Unions stand a better chance of advocating before an NLRB board that has Democratic appointees. The FTC is going to do more to fight monopolies under a Democratic administration. The EPA is going to fight pfas and lithium mining.
And god almighty is it fucking frustrating to have to say this out loud in a serious conversation to adults, but Justice Elena Kagan makes meaningfully different decisions than Brett fuddrucking Kavanagh. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you can't acknowledge things like this, I don't know how to treat you like a serious person.
For instance, let's just throw out everything other than the Supreme Court. To maintain the false equivalence, you have to say with a straight face that things like the Janus decision didn't matter, or that overturning Roe vs Wade didn't matter, or gutting the voting rights act didn't matter, or getting rid of Chevron doesn't matter. If you can make any of those arguments with a straight face, I won't agree, but I'll at least believe that you've actually thought this through.
For a single-issue anti-genocide voter, the US is a duopoly of bad choices. For most anyone else, absolutely correct.
The Roe v Wade decision and the Chevron decision literally happened under Biden, a democrat. Before you butter up the Democrats as the second coming of Christ, consider that the Democrats are literally in power and have been for the last four fucking years of hell. It's not that those decisions don't matter, it's that the venn diagram of what your vote can possibly do, and the ways to reverse those decisions, it looks like this: O O
The great thing about this topic is this exact argument has already played out in a very recent historical example. You could, and many people did, make this exact argument in 2016, and it produced the very decisions we're talking about. And now, evidently having not followed that thread of cause and effect at all, you're back saying the same argument again.
It's precisely because SCOTUS appointees lock in long term consequences that impact multiple future administrations that they are important, and a clear example of where differences in power lead to different outcomes.
This has always been the obvious weak spot in the "both sides are the same" argument. The only answer anybody has come up with is to constantly change the subject. Which is the tell.
You act like your argument is infallible lmao the SCOTUS is so important and yet the Democrats refuse to pack the courts because it's not the right thing to do according to some bullshit idea of playing by the rules.
There is a clear and stark difference between the two current candidates and one of them is a convicted felon. This both-sides-ism is what will get that felon elected.
Nothing is perfect, the idea is to work toward a “more perfect union.” People seem to ignore that just so they can try to make a point while letting things burn down around them.