The following is the transcript of my troop deployment (i.e. ending rant) from episode 115 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast
Politics selects for bad people. This is obvious to anyone paying even a little bit of attention. The higher the office, the more it adversely selects against anyone with integrity, honesty, or genuine concern for the world. If you’re voting for your local city council, maybe you can find someone who isn’t a garbage human being. But once you get to the level of Congress, it’s personality disorders all the way down. If you’re voting in a presidential election, you’re lucky if you can find someone who wouldn’t stab their grandmother for a slightly louder cheer from the mob.
Elections still matter, none moreso than presidential elections. The US president wields immense power to influence events around the world, and bad people aren’t all interchangeable. Some are worse than others, and some of their personality defects are more relevant than others when it comes to wielding power. It’s technically possible that you have the exact configuration of values where both major candidates would be equally bad for the things you care about, but it’s much more likely that one or the other would be better for the world, no matter what you see as better.
Sometimes, people acknowledge that, but say something stupid like “I refuse to support a person that doesn’t reflect my values.” As if the point of politics is for you to feel good about yourself rather than, you know, decide who runs the country. If you have this kind of attitude, you probably tell yourself that it means having integrity or being principled instead of what it actually is: being a baby. In most circumstances, we rightly look down on people who elevate their own moral purity over the practical outcomes of their actions. Inspector Javert is the villain in Les Miserables. Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter was just trying to enforce the rules. We all tend to acknowledge that Kant was an asshole when he said you should never lie even if the Nazis are asking about the hidden Jews in your attic. You do not want to be like these people! Principles are great as heuristics, but sticking to them even when they demonstrably create bad outcomes doesn’t make you virtuous, it makes you an idiot.
If you want to vote for someone you actually like, the time for that is the primary. Anyone can run in a primary, so sometimes you get people who are actually decent, and it’s not always clear who has a chance. In a primary, a person can lose and still end up with some influence over the party or a path to future victory. It’s also the case that a lot of candidates in primary are mostly interchangeable, so it matters much less who wins.
When it comes to presidential elections, until we change the system, it always was and always will be a choice between the lesser of two evils. There will never be a candidate with any chance of winning that you feel good about. You should still have an opinion about which douchebag you want to win, and at minimum, you shouldn’t be encouraging people to withhold their votes, or do something even stupider like vote third party. Unless you live in a swing state, your vote is not going to make a difference so do whatever you want with your vote, but for fuck’s sake don’t try to influence other people to waste their votes, especially not if you’re the host of a popular and influential podcast!
Sometimes people like to fool themselves by saying that withholding their vote “sends a message” to the party that their vote is available if they nominate a better candidate. This is possible in theory, but in reality it never, ever works. Withholding your vote just sends a message that nobody should bother taking your views into account. Major third parties such as the Green party or the Libertarian party are more extreme than the major parties, so the only message they’re going to send is that they could win your vote by taking more extreme, unpopular positions. Even if you want the parties to take more extreme positions (which you shouldn’t), every study shows that presidential candidates win more votes in elections by becoming more moderate, so the incentives don’t even work.
This November, either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is going to win the presidential election. That’s the reality of the situation. You probably don’t like either of them, but that’s no reason to throw a tantrum and knock over your whole block tower. Be an adult. Pick whichever one you think sucks the least and encourage people to vote for that one.