My commitment to a personal code of ethics is the only thing that stops me from becoming a monster.

You have no idea what runs through my head sometimes. No idea. If I ever decide to get "dirty", it won't be to your benefit, in any way whatsoever. If I can't obtain power fairly and rationally, I am very unlikely to use it fairly and rationally. I'll use it to screw you over and make myself and my allies rich on your suffering. That's what people with power do now, and I have observed it to be a successful stratagem so far.

The government is running out of opportunities to present arguments against the possibility of me forming or joining a rebellion composed of strange bedfellows. Every time it changes policy to become more hostile to traditional American ideals, it is prying another board off the portal to the abyss.

Don't tell me to stop watching the circuses and go join one. I'll just nail down the tent flaps and set the big top on fire.

If you don't want me to be a walking time bomb, stop tolerating blatantly unethical behavior in your government and your political parties. Now. For me, it is a beauty contest, and the loveliest of the pageant participants is, at best, a "4". And for some reason, the crown keeps getting taken by someone who is a "1" or a "2".

Perhaps I have just lived too long in places with notoriously corrupt government.

> Don't tell me to stop watching the circuses and go join one. I'll just nail down the tent flaps and set the big top on fire.

But you won't because your peers will put the fire out before it has a chance take hold and then they'll kick you out.

In a mature democracy, no one person can attain enough power to do any long-term damage (at least relative to any other system).

In the USA, a president has limited powers and a limited time frame within which to wield them, after which he will be kicked out, whether he was doing a good job or not, so your analogy isn't really working.

> For me, it is a beauty contest, and the loveliest of the pageant participants is, at best, a "4". And for some reason, the crown keeps getting taken by someone who is a "1" or a "2".

Perhaps this is because it isn't a beauty contest for the rest of the people.

My analogy is intended to illustrate that the citizen participation in political parties is in some measure a distraction to safely diffuse the dissent energy in the system.

If you want real change to happen, you have to make the current wielders of the state's power at least annoyed.

The US is not a direct democracy. It is a republic, and the -cracy of the demo- is highly leveraged. And that's exactly how one segment of the population could abuse and disenfranchise another with Jim Crow laws.

The Democrats and the Republicans have, with their gerrymandered districts and first-past-the-post voting systems and burdensome ballot access laws, systematically disenfranchised a significant minority of the population, and tricked another significant minority into wasting their energy on their internal party politics.

That system is designed to exhaust my energy and radiate the resulting heat away into space, so that it does not adversely affect the workings of the machine. That's why those people who say "join a political party and participate in the process" can go set their heads on fire.

If your political process does not respect your voice, you should resist it, not join it. Misbehave a little. And have a little respect for those with fringe opinions on the opposite side of your spectrum that are also forced to misbehave so that their voices might be heard. There is a path to ethical misbehavior, and I aim to walk it, rather than swim the unethical cesspool of the political parties' unseen inner workings.

> I have observed it to be a successful stratagem so far.

On a short time, yes, seems to be very successful. Over a few generations, a less greed "leave some money on the table" approach seems to beat it every time.

>But TV said all I need to do is vote.

I think you just unboxed jessaustin's point.

Actually that's a fairly common refrain here on HN as well. I'm glad to have short-circuited that somewhat on this thread, to the marginally more plausible "all I need is to be very active in political campaigns and fundraising" alternate narrative.

But what you gain from being politically active is the right to not be abused, at the loss of productivity. Its lose-lose situation.

But who has the gumption to bother with all of that palaver.

I'm no political activist, my expertise lie else where. Surely at least some of us should be able to just vote occasionally.

Changing the world requires caring enough to do something. We'd be in a much worse situation if a friday afternoon's clicktivism wishes were the governing force of western civilization.

Some people think that "do something" means coloring within the lines like 'nabla9 suggests above. Other people don't think that.

You should both color within and outside the lines.

But people who live in democracy complaining that the system is corrupt and not using the system to correct itself are deluding themselves.

There will never be better system that distributes real power without coercive action , corruption and dirty politics.

As an occasional tabletop gamer, I can often conceive several different winning strategies just by reading the rules of the game.

In the game of American representative democracy, I would not recommend your strategy. It's playing for 2nd place.

If you truly believe what you said, you should be recommending that people act to corrupt a public official in a manner that provides some leverage to them, personally. Alternately, poach the blackmail material from someone who already has leverage.

That strategy will increase your power, if it works. But it carries much higher downside risk...

Yes who needs better and more correct code for critical missions, If we all shout loud/longer enough we would win.

You don't have to be activist yourself.

You have to be inside the party machinery where you can show up and vote occasionally and influence who are the activists that get selected into different party positions. Many of them hidden from the media spotlight but set up the scene. There are different interest groups and divisions within parties. Just being member of few and giving some support for others who do the hard lifting work is enough.

Just follow the issues from within the same way as you do now and raise your head sometimes.

You missed the 'Starting a Super PAC' part!

That, of course, is way more effective when there are more than 2 viable parties.

I wish this was the top comment. So true.