I shouldn’t weigh in that much as I don’t live in the US and only follow US politics from a distance.
I can even very much understand the opposition against the “lesser of 2 evils” notion. Of course I also have emotions (haha) and when I look at the far-right populists in my own country and how the established parties have failed so many people and let the rise of inequality continue… Then I too don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils.
But I regularly realise how my emotions misguide me. How I become more blind to the reasons why politicians (even conservative ones) act like they do and that it’s not just out of greed, evil and ignorance. How complicated the world is and how grey instead of black and white. Luckily I live in a country where a respectful discourse between political rivals does occasionally happen and allows me to deradicalise myself a bit.
If you want to take concrete steps toward the US murdering fewer brown people, the question IMO would be “where do I have the most leverage with my vote?” If you think that voting neither for Biden, nor for Trump does that, that’s perfectly fine for me and it’s your right, of course. I doubt that voting for a 3rd party in the US has any leverage at all but surely I’m no expert.
If you want to take concrete steps toward the US murdering fewer brown people, the question IMO would be “where do I have the most leverage with my vote?” If you think that voting neither for Biden, nor for Trump does that, that’s perfectly fine for me and it’s your right, of course. I doubt that voting for a 3rd party in the US has any leverage at all but surely I’m no expert.
US “democracy” is structured so that most people living in it are essentially disenfranchised. People make a big stink about voting online, but there’s no popular vote, if you live in a “blue” or “red” state your presidential vote is pretty much purely symbolic. If you’re not a white suburbanite basically all of the centrist elected representatives you will have will smile at you, but ignore 100% of what you say.
To add to what you said, if you use your symbolic vote to vote for people who give weapons to murder brown people and bomb people for being opposed to murding brown people, then your vote symbolizes support for those policies. If people will vote for those policies, then politicians will adopt them. If people won’t vote for them, then those politicians will “evolve” on those issues. Why would they change if it gets them elected?
Unless there’s more than a 0.0000000001% chance of my vote changing the election, I won’t consider voting for Biden when a lot of his policies are so far from policies I want in a number of ways. Why wouldn’t I use my vote to prove to politicians that there are votes to be had from different policies?
