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Originally Posted by Frownland
They don't dictate thinking necessarily, no. However, it does dictate what you are allowed to say.
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^ Well, yes, it's a poll, Frownland - it's not an invitation to write an essay - or attend a town hall meeting. In fact we have polls on MB too; do people boycott those because they "dictate what you are allowed to say"?
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It doesn't and there is. Third parties have to reach higher poll numbers to appear on the ballot and participate in debates. That's without getting into very-difficult to control factors like the media or financial limitations.
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I'd have to be better informed to take issue with this. That's not likely to happen, so I'll concede this point.
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Maybe if I present it as a non-political analogy it will make more sense: You are allowed to vote for a beating or a cigarette burn. You have the option not to vote, but you will receive a beating or a burn regardless. Sure, we're free to make these choices, but that's not liberty.
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Yeah, that's a good analogy, and makes very clear your point about both options being bad. May I make two points:-
i) your choices suggests a victim and a torturer, in which the person offering the vote is willfully inflicting the torture. Perhaps a better analogy for America would be a choice between two disagreeable medical treatments. There's a problem which needs to be addressed and the doctors give you a choice: you've got cancer - do you want amputation or chemotherapy?
ii) even in your bleak analogy, it only takes two votes to work out the lesser of the two evils, and I'm pretty sure I'd would vote for that each time thereafter.