Yeah the rule applies when it's nonfascist v fascist: change either of those two things and it's less of an obviously clear case

Well Obama didn't end up picking anyone during his second term, and Romney would have replaced Scalia with someone less awful than Gorsuch

Yeah: I wonder if there is some ambiguity about who counts as leaving, though? I read OP as saying no TT job right away = inferior applicant and that's just clearly false for phil: a lot of people adjuncted at their PhD institution for a year or two, then postdoc/vap work, then a tenure track job.

It's within the scope of reasonable disagreement, which hasn't been the case for any election thereafter

I also thought Romney was lying when he said he'd ditch Obamacare on the logic that it was basically Romneycare, and in hindsight I definitely underestimated how much the gop cared at the time

My thinking was that the MA governor wasn't much worse than the first term president; I'll concede that I probably underestimated how much a Romney administration might have been institutionally captured by the gop, though.

I didn't vote in 2012; I was really disappointed in Obama, who I'd volunteered for in '08, and Romney was the least objectionable GOP nominee of our lifetimes.

It hasn't since 2012, at least

yup. especially if you were willing to ask Muslim Americans to vote for Harris (which I was)

everyone with real American manliness and a basic knowledge of military history knows that serious war efforts have never been derailed by such trifling matters as "communicable diseases"

Great piece! No criticisms; I'd just add that liberal arts-based, civics-focused education could play a big role. I think we could subsidize people (start with A.A. holders), for a year of undergrad courses that focus on political science/theory/philosophy, inculcating critical thinking, or both

I'm coming around to the idea that arguing to abstain *is* disinformation, because it intuitively makes sense given the way people conceptualize democracy working in their heads (closer to an Athenian assembly than a modern electoral system, I'd guess), but the consequences don't track that picture

Oh yeah I mean I am still extremely worried about that. But I feel a little more cautiously optimistic about an electorate that temporarily forgot how racist the gop was and then was brutally reminded versus an electorate where like 80% of white people were against the Civil Rights Act

I, for one, am simply glad that we no longer have the electorate that delivered 1972 and 1984

Lol no worries. I also did get a bunch of really bad pushback, for the record

Ross Perot really showed the ceiling of that, didn't he?

Hey, I just said it was interesting pushback 😅

(In this case it was good discussion, but that had everything to do with the two specific philosophers pushing me on that point)

That's a good point. And there are candidates who are clearly taking advantage of the fact that they appeal to multiple factions (eg Talarico appealing to the equivalent of libdem and green factions)

who set candidate and party platforms.

What came out of discussion is that US national elections, between the size and the two party structure, are too noisy for abstentions to count as signals.

That's why I have been thinking about the differences rather than similarities to other systems.

Some possibly helpful context: when I ran my own thread about why you have to vote blue against fascists, the interesting pushback I received was from philosophers who work with decision/game theory. They said that a threat to abstain in a group could function as an effective signal to the people

Right, yeah. I think I want to say that there are (significant) differences in the faction-party relationship: because the parties are structurally different across countries, they need to be used in different ways to get power. I need to think more about how to best characterize those differences

Yeah that's a part of why I think US parties are their own kind of thing: they're basically running the inter-factional elections between, for dems, the analogues of green, libdem, and labour. That's why I want to say that they're structures for factions to use rather than the vehicles of factions

So maybe I want a "factions first" political ontology, where groups of common interest voters are the basic unit, and then there's a question of how they use/interact with, parties

Thanks! I'll take a look as I put my thoughts together on the issue, which are still pretty inchoate at this point. I have a vague idea that there is a deep structural difference: something like, in a parli system, a faction creates a party and in the US, "party" is a structure multiple factions use

I completely agree with the basic thrust of the piece, but I am skeptical of the analysis of parties as universal. Not because every country doesn't have parties, but because I don't think parties in the US two party system are the same kind of thing as parliamentary parties

I mean I don't have all the details thought out, but let's just say the bulldozers our fascist congress just voted to send them could come in handy when dealing with recalcitrant settlers

And I respect the underlying sentiment of "fuck those assholes, I hope they get what they deserve"

I agree we may be reaching that point with Israel. I just don't think we can use that as an excuse to force a single state solution through (though I am 100% on board with as much pressure as it takes to force a two state solution through)

More generally, I'd say forced denazification and receivership are permissible based on a state's actions; "you don't get to be a country any more" is not regardless of whether it solves another pressing problem

I'd argue that the right to self-determination can't be lost, though it can be held in receivership like we did for Germany after WWII (they'd have reunited after about a decade if not for the Soviets keeping the east as a puppet state).