“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…"
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”
That may be so, but isn’t the result always a little bit closer to 50/50 than most of us are comfortable with?
The fate of the most powerful country on Earth hangs on the whims of a tiny percentage of voters in swing states. If you live somewhere like Houston your vote does not matter. That state is going red and always will. It’s batshit insane that a state can be 48/52 and that just counts exactly as if it was 0/100.
If your whole selling point is “Yeah, things are still gonna be shit for you, but at least we’re not Nazis!” then at some point you’re going to lose again.
Yeah, life is going to be no better under the Republicans either, but some people’s lives will be significantly worse, and for some voters, that’s enough.
“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” That’s an actual quote from an actual Trump voter. That’s what you’re dealing with. For some, happiness is a zero sum game. They’ll quite happily suck down a spoonful of warm shit if some other sucker has to suck down two.
I don’t care if remote workers are less productive (although I’ve seen no evidence that they are).
You can’t convince me that spending an hour every morning travelling to get to an office, in order to sit in front of the exact two screens I have at home, is a good use of my time, nor is spending an hour getting home again.
That’s about 450 hours a year for me. 18 whole days. Those days are mine now, and you’re not having them back.