But he voted Trump in 2016. I think that’s what @Chuymatt@beehaw.org meant by a ‘historical conservative’.

Further thoughts on this:

Criticising the Democrats as merely a type of Republican has other downsides: it effectively takes the Republicans as the standard type of politician, i.e., it turns every argument into an argument on their terms.

This also means that we don’t effectively criticise the Democrats, who are best criticised on their terms, not as merey lesser or mutated Republicans.

The “lesser” fascist is still a fascist, and fascists spend much more of their time attacking us than attacking each other, and on top of that even if they do attack each other it’s through attacking us.

But the Democrats aren’t fascists, lesser or otherwise. They’re not ‘the Republicans, but less so’; they’re a different organisation with different histories and philosophies, different people and different priorities. The Democrats, for example, are not promising to overthrow the constitution, but overthrow it a bit less than the Republicans; they’re not planning to overthrow it at all. Degrees of evil are not possible in this case, nor in many others. The Republicans are straight up wrong in a way that the Democrats just are not.

For these reasons, I don’t buy the framing of lesser evil at all. If I did buy that framing, I would still wholeheartedly vote for the lesser evil, because it would still be better than more evil, by definition. Even your definition of ‘the same amount of evil, but slower’, would be better.

Seems like a good choice from where I am (which is, granted, the other side of the ocean). Republicans want to depict Democrats as dangerous extremists, but Walz comes across as a friendly dad, so that just won’t stick. No one will care about his policy record, they’ll just sound weird talking about that stuff.

Real (I assume you mean proven) conspiracies start off as theories.

No, they don’t. Conspiracy theories are not ‘theories about conspiracies’. You are both misusing the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and wrongly describing the Tuskegee experiment as a conspiracy, which it never was. One of the people who originally called it out did so after reading about it in a published scientific paper! The pereptrators of that ‘experiment’ lied to the participants, but they were not otherwise secretive, otherwise they wouldn’t have been writing and publishing papers about it.

Fuck off

I’m not going to discuss this further with someone who cannot do so civilly.

The thing is that when Americans voted for the oldest Presidential candidate ever, with Harris as the VP, they were effectively saying they were okay with her as President. So, it’s safe to have some faith in Americans in this one!

Absolutely correct. And Trump is very beatable. The Democrats have loads of candidates who could beat him (including, IMO, Biden, but that’s in the past, now).

The Tuskegee Experiment was not a conspiracy theory. So, in that sense you’re right.

Conspiracy theories and theorists are homogenous: the flawed thinking is inherent to the concept. Conspiracy theories are untrue by definition, and nothing to do with real conspiracies.

No, it isn’t. He’s a conspiracy theorist. Voting for him is endorsing conspiracy theorists.

RFK is less coherent than Biden politically and intellectually, which is what matters.

OP has given us no info about the candidates they’re considering other than RFK, who is a lunatic. There’s no merit to encouraging RFK’s views, so Biden should be OP’s choice.

Please explain why it should be given to anyone else.

No. Vote Biden.

If you can spare the time or money, volunteer and donate to the campaign in places they can actually win.

EDIT: Also, vote Democrat if there are any other elections going on at the same time. If Trump does win, the only chance of holding him to any kind of account is to have as many Democrats in positions of power as possible.

Sincerely, someone who can’t vote in your elections but still lives with the knock-on effects!

Dinosaurs aren’t people.

No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone’s historical existence.

Very lame of me, but I’m really looking forward to the Conservatives losing the next British General Election.

It sounds like a dial tone to me, with a lot of fuzz. Could be a pager, as doctors used to use them a lot.

I kinda think that if you can imagine a one-line fix to a plot hole, it isn’t really a plot hole.

I remember someone insisting to me that there was this huge plot hole in the film of the Fellowship of the Ring, because Merry and Pippin don’t get told about what Frodo and Sam are actually doing until the Council of Elrond, but still willingly run around risking life and limb to help them. Now, not only is this not a plot hole in itself (I’m pretty sure I’d help anyone fleeing a demonic horseman, just on principle, never mind if that person was my lifelong friend/cousin), it’s also quite obvious that they could have been told everything offscreen. The audience didn’t need to hear all that explanation again, five minutes after we first heard it.

A lot of plot holes people like to complain about are basically of this nature. ‘Can you imagine a fix?’ Yep, easily. ‘Did the audience need to hear it?’ Nope, because I could easily imagine it. ‘Well, there you go, then.’

You’re right and it’s very weird, because it’s not at all interesting to think of films this way. Basically, the form it takes is:

None of this film is real!

But… I knew that already? It’s a film?

Extra weird hang-up to have, because the films have always had English and American accents side-by-side, even though there’s clearly no England or America!

Anyway, it’s really no different to them calling their ships X-wings and Y-wings, even though they don’t use our alphabet.