Democrats abandon Feingold on proposed NSA censure

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

Those of us on this board who think about this stuff EVERY SINGLE DAY are weird. We don't fit in, we ruin conversations at parties and bars talking about this shit. Am i right, or is it just me?

No. It's me too. Just the weekend before last I caused a major argument between two very good friends of mine by engaging in a little light-hearted quasi-political banter with one of them. We've been known to let our discussions degenerate into yelling, as he's a liberal gay man from San Francisco and I'm, well, me. His boyfriend got all "Just stop it now!" and he was all "We're just talking!" and the next thing you know, I felt bad and left and stuff.

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

The reason I bring this up is that there seems to be this common third party argument that if the stupid voters KNEW about the third parties, they'd vote for them, thus toppling the duopoly. We tend to suffer from a case of the majoritarianism. We think that because our ideas make sense to us, well they MUST float with everyone else, and it's only because they are either uninformed or stupid that they simply keep voting for Coke or Pepsi...often not at all. This is clearly condescending, and also erronious, IMO.

Not when I do it.

Seriously though, any discussion can be taken as condescension. I don't subscribe to your common argument theory. I've never heard of it, in fact. I tend to think that if voters weren't so stupid, they'd vote like I want them to. Sometimes, I also wonder if maybe they are all mad at me and vote for the wrong people just to piss me off.

Actually, I believe that people vote as they do in accordance with their own fundamental societal views. We don't vote for or against politicians as much as we do for or against everybody else. Some of us vote against our neighbors, while some of us vote for some other group or a group with which we claim membership. As I said above though, we generally vote for or against someone's freedom, even sometimes against our own.