Election Day · 10:04am Dec 12th, 2019
It’s election day in the UK. Anyone who can vote here, please get out and cast your vote for the good guys.
There is an MLP-style friendship lesson here. The Tories are predicted to get a lower vote share than in 2017, but end up with a majority of over 50 (that one analysis). Why? Because the anti-Tory vote is split and our electoral system is totally screwed up. But the uncertainties are huge, and tactical voting could shift things the other way. While the opposition parties aren’t really working together, it is encouraging to hear so many people across the country are holding their nose and voting for a party they don’t really like because they recognise the importance of putting our differences aside and working together to stop Boris. I know people in Scotland who really don't want independence, but are voting SNP. Lifelong Labour voters switching to Lib Dem (and vice versa). And also conservatives who see that the Tories have turned into a Far Right party that no longer matches their values. Thank you, all of you.
Done. Voted tactically for Labour.
I'm also voting tactically for Labour. At this point it doesn't even feel "tactical" - that suggests I'm doing something clever or tricky, when in fact I simply have no reasonable choice.
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We really need a better voting system.
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We certainly do need a better system. It seems that a lot of ordinary voters see tactical voting as just common sense. The biggest opposition to it seems to come from the political activists and nerds - I guess because they feel a very strong loyalty to one party. I have heard some crazy justifications for voting Labour in a Tory/Lib Dem marginal where Labour get less than 10%. Of course there are plenty of other constituencies where it's not clear what is the best tactic.
Best of luck.
The trouble is that everyone thinks they're the good guys. Even Hitler thought that (realizing he wasn't didn't exactly blow his mind; that was the gun's job.)
Hooves and ears crossed.
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Indeed. There are plenty of US voters who think Trump is a saintly man doing great things for America. And plenty of people thought similar things about Hitler for a long time, but eventually they came to realize that they had been misled. I don't think Johnson really aspires to be 'good'. He is more focussed on being 'great'.
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I honestly think the Great Depression would have lasted a fair bit longer if some lunatic hadn't started a war, to say nothing of women's rights.
I’m a leftist so you know I’m rooting for my man Corbyn. Here’s hoping.
Good luck! I fear you're going to need it...
Best of luck!
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There are little signs though:
If there are skulls on your uniforms... you probably aren't the good guys.
If you believe there is a "chosen" or "superior" race... you probably aren't the good guys.
If you believe that people need to be harmed or killed only because ancient texts/traditions say so... you probably aren't the good guys.
If you harm people "for their own good"... you probably aren't the good guys.
If you find yourself doing a cost/benefit analysis to determine if it's too expensive to save human lives or not...
You get the idea.
Lotta people nowadays need to do a Good Guy Check.
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Just pointing out that, before Hitler briefly made antisemitism unfashionable for probably the first time since there started being Semites to anti, these were the only two to actually be signs of evil. At the very least, they're the point where you go from "bad person" to "cartoon villain".
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It's definitely a sliding scale, rather than a hard boundary. So, if you find yourself saying something like, "Well, we're not really across the line yet, are we? We're only sort of near it." you may not officially be the bad guys, but... you probably aren't the good guys.
I think Labour will be winning the election... until 5pm when all the Conservative voters finish work.
Good luck. Hopefully, compassion and human decency will carry the day.
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The skull insignia or Totenkopf dates back to long before the Nazis, and before the unification of Germany. It was worn by Prussian cavalry from the 18th century, to whom it signified a defiance of death. They were among the forces that later fought against Napolean's attempt to conquer the world.
Were those Prussian soldiers good guys? Probably not. Europe was a mess of warring states in the 18th and 19th centuries, each pretty much as nasty as each other, with only the intermittent emergence of a wannabe Emperor to set them apart. But they certainly weren't Nazis.
World War II left such a deep scar on our history and culture that it's hard to see past it sometimes. But almost every symbol the Nazis used, they stole from somebody else. Of course, if somebody wears a skull nowadays, they're either trying to be a pirate or a Nazi; either way they probably aren't a good guy.
I'm so, so sorry. Goodbye UK, I loved you dearly.
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True, even something as "obviously" evil to a Westerner like the swastika is dependent on context, and in most of history, and in many parts of the world today, it's a symbol of benevolent divine power.
But skulls? I'm not sure I buy the "defiance of death" interpretation. When I see a guy with a big ol' skull on his hat coming at me, my first thought isn't, "Now, there's a guy who isn't afraid to die," it's, "That MF is lookin' to murder some folk!" (Which is the military's primary job, after all, but jeeze! They could be nice about it!!! </sarcasm>)
I'm trying to come up with an organization that used (human) skulls as a symbol that was also benevolent. And... not managing it. Maybe some anthropological/archaeological organization? Honestly, I think I'm pretty safe with the skull-as-symbol being an indicator of not-goodness.
Sure, somebody wearing a skull symbol into battle is obviously trying to convey ferocity and inspire fear in their enemies. But if you're facing somebody on a battlefield, I'd say you're understandably predisposed to thinking of them as the bad guys. The reality is, a lot of wars don't have good guys and bad guys, they just have two countries at odds, and whether you agree with one side or the other was a matter of perspective. World War II was the exception, in having such obvious bad guys that the other side got to look gloriously heroic in comparison.
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Knights Templar? No, I guess crusaders don't count as good guys.
Skull and skeleton symbolism is used positively in Mexican culture, as a way of respecting the dead; but that's not a specific organisation.
Plenty of military units have used skulls, though, even on the Allies side. For example:
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There are swastikas in the ancient Roman mosaics at Ostia. I remember being surprised by those when I saw them as a child.
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Ah! That's pretty cool about the usage of the Jolly Roger!
The swastika is probably the oldest symbol known to mankind, after a simple X or hash-mark. (That's recognizable as a symbol, at any rate!) I've seen it on 5000-year-old pottery from Sumeria!
Yeah, it's not looking good.
Y'all screwed up.
5168126 I agree! It seems to me you had a perfect chance to change that back in 2011, but the Alternative Vote Referendum failed. Do you have any idea why?
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Well, except the parts where America teamed up with the guys who routinely murdered millions of their own people and became known as the only country to use atomic bombs in warfare, jumpstarting the proliferation of nuclear power across the globe and giving cancer to innocent Pacific Islanders and stuff, and giving shelter to horrific Japanese war criminals to get information so we could get a leg up on the guys we teamed up with. To say nothing of what we used that power for after the war.
About all that can be said is "we killed fewer people for slightly less awful causes... sometimes."
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Short answer: politics.
I voted for AV in that referendum, but if I recall the general mood back then, there was a general feeling back then that most people didn't really understand the alternative vote, what it was for, or why it was needed. It was seen as unnecessarily complicated, even unfair. How much of that public opinion was swayed by the campaigns of the time, I don't recall... but I think I can guess, judging by how parties have conducted themselves in more recent votes.
Sadly, back then my grasp on politics was even more shaky than it is now, so even I was among those voters who couldn't quite see the purpose of AV. If we had the vote again (which we won't) I would be actively advocating for it.
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If I recall correctly it was also a particularly appalling version of AV that bore little resembelence to the form of AV that its proponents wanted.
The whole feel of the AV referendum was that it was put together with a bad choice so they could say that they did a referendum, but still get the result they wanted.
5168698 Sounds plausible, given what I've heard about how the Conservatives treated the Liberal Democrats in the rest of the coalition?
I am sorry. Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater, in my country, figured out how to make fearful hateful people vote against their own best interest:
It was once true that most hateful fearful people voted in their own interests. Then Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater came up with the Southern Strategy for the republican Party. Basically, it works like this:
The message would be in coded speech such as going after wellfarefraud, so as not to spook the moderates. Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater admitted that his job was to trick hateful fearful people to vote against their own interests.
Those voting Tories will suffer under BrExit, but thus is life.
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I hate to say this, but you need to study electoral mathematics:
0thly, I need to make sure that we do not talk at crosspurposes:
The system we use is called plurality (vote for only 1). It is subject to Duverger's Law:p
Similar parties will split the vote, causing them to loose the elections in the short term and either die or merge with each other in the long term, leading to 2-party domination.
Alternate Vote (AV, Also known as, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is also subject to Duverger's Law, which is a feature of this false reform:
1 of the selling points of AV is that it prevents vote-splitting. This is true; if the US would have had AV in 2000, Gore would have won because all of the votes wasted on Nader in 2000 would have returned to him.
The thing is, that AV can change which entrenched party wins, but it will be an entrenched party:
Let us suppose that we have the Right Party and the Left Party. The people demand reform. For shutting up the people, the parties introduce AV. People on the right vote their conscience, but put the Right Party as their 2nd choice just in case. The people on the left vote their conscience and put the Left Party as their 2nd choice just in case. All votes transfer to either the Left Party or Right Party.
The parties of Australia invented AV as a way of preventing real reform over a century ago. To this day, Labor and the Liberal National Coalition dominate Australian politics.
¿Does a better way exist? ¡Yes!:
Remove the Overvote Rule and count all votes. This is called Approval Voting. Approval Voting prevents vote-splitting and allows 3rd parties and independents to win.
5177068 On the other hand, I've briefly studied electoral mathematics, and I don't think Approval Voting would do that any more than Instant Runoff. In your example, people on the far left would presumably vote "Approve" on both the Left Party and the Conscience Leftist Party; people on the far right would presumably vote "Approve" on both the Right Party and the Conscience Rightist Party; presuming there're a mass of other people who really like the Right Party and Left Party, we'd be back with the exact same result.
In fact, Approval Voting could lead to an even worse result. Suppose we have an alternate election between... since the OP was about a British election, I'll pick Churchill, Halifax, and Mosley (for those of you who don't know, Mosley was a Fascist and Nazi sympathizer). If I were voting, I'd unsurprisingly prefer Churchill. But, if I really wanted to make sure Mosley loses, I might also want to check "Approve" for Halifax. If enough people make the same decision, Halifax might win election even if a majority prefers Churchill. To avoid this, I think there needs to be a way for voters to rank preferences.
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¿What is wrong with Halifax winning?:
By your own admission, Halifax is superior to Mosley. You seem to let the perfect be an enemy of the good enough. Your refusal to accept the good enough leads to fascism. In my country, drooling morons voting for Greens and Libertarians instead of Clinton gave to us Trump. Your ideals will not do you any dood in a gaschamber, followed by cremation, because you let the fascists win, when you could have stopped them by holding your nose and voting rationally.
5177271 If we have approval voting, sure, I'll approve Halifax and be fine with it. But if we have a chance to enact an even better election system, that's another question. If you have a system that prefers the good over the best, even when a majority of people want the best - why not push for an even better system?
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Approval is the 1st step to Score-Voting (Approval Voting is a subset of Score-Voting). Here is how Score-Voting works:
one votes on a range (an alternate name is Range-Voting) such as 0 to 9 or better yet -9 to +9, skipping over 0, thus forcing voters to come down 1 way or another. This is because all scales are logically 0 to 1 or -1 to +1 —— ¡scales from 1 to n are stupid because it is impossible to rate something as 0! Here is an example of how a Score-Vote election works:
We use a range of -9 to +9, skipping over 0, thus forcing voters to come down 1 way or another on candidates. All unscored candidates get -9, thus filtering out the also-rans. Voters can write3 in candidates. Voters must choose 1 candidate to receive -9 and 1 candidate to receive +9. Voters are encouraged to rate the other candidates relative to these anchor-candidates. Voters can rate candidates the same. all nonrated candidates automatically receive -9. One simply sums the vote. Highest sum wins.
This is how I would vote:
All bad candidates always receive -9. If any plausible chance of a bad candidate winning exists, I would rate all good candidates as +9 —— ¡even a not very good candidate is better than a fascist! If no bad candidate has a plausible chance of winning, I would Identify the weakest good candidate, rate that candidate +1, the best candidate is already +9 and I would rate all other
good candidates relative to these 2 candidates.