But when playing by the rules guarantees that you’ll lose (perhaps permanently) because the other guy’s blatantly cheating… does that matter?
To borrow a rather melodramatic quote:
Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.
I get your point. I really do. But when the fight is existential, the constraints are radically different.
Let’s put it another way: if this next election was a D20, it’s like generating crit fails on 9+D4, because the other team has been fucking with the rules behind our backs. And a crit fail means you have a 3/D4 chance of not being allowed to roll any dice ever again.
In plain English: the structure of our electoral system means that the bar for success of one team is quantitatively lower than their opponents, and due to the extreme nature of the party that’s benefiting from that unbalanced system (Republicans), it’s very possible they’ll stop allowing any remotely fair elections to occur.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I don’t think it has to be lies and cheating, but there’s a pre-emptive reaction on the left of “we can’t do that, because what happens when the shoe is on the other foot?”. But then what happens? There’s cheat to win anyway.
IMO the first order of business ought to have been pack the courts, push the limits of gerrymandering, and anything else that guarantees easy wins until there’s a lawsuit that leads to legislation that codifies the rules for bad faith situations in law.
Basically force the grey out of grey areas and ride the easy wins. The slack in the system is the main thing that is being constantly abused. Unfortunately the electorate on our side is to interested making politicians “earn the vote” by chasing every car on the street and never catching any of them.