You all have, collectively, put rather a lot of effort into trying to convince me, a solitary individual who, as it happens, will be voting (or not) in a solidly blue state, to cast my vote for Biden. You have failed—I will say because your arguments range from bad to beside the point, you will say because I am irrational and stubborn, but in either event you have not failed for lack of trying.
I hope you all will put even half that effort, and preferably more, into actions that will do much more to bring about a juster world. Mark has already done so, in donating to the MFF. Thank you, Mark. I've wasted a lot of my own energy and effort in this rather tedious discussion, so I've taken my own advice and just made a donation to a bail fund based in Seattle, to support the community I will soon call home. There, as elsewhere in the country, police have been assaulting and arresting peaceful protestors without cause.
This discussion of voting emerged from a discussion of the role of national electoral politics in resolving the problems of police brutality. I assume we are all in agreement that their role is slight (especially when the lesser evil's solution is training cops to shoot for the leg rather than the heart), and that other forms of effort—whether that's donating money to relevant causes, attending protests, supporting candidates in local elections who support evidence-based police reforms (up to and including police abolishment)—are of far greater importance. I hope you will all consider contributing to such efforts in whatever ways best suit your abilities and your temperament.
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