Going Back For Thirds

With a contentious election in the US, both parties are trying to get every vote out. And that means the quadrenial effort to explain why you shouldn't vote for a third party. This year they are particularly tempting given the acrimony of the primaries. If you had your heart set on Bernie Sanders, you might be tempted to vote for the Green Party's Jill Stein as an ideological alternative. Similarly, a Republican turned off by Donald Trump's racism or anti-free-trade stances might be looking at the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson.

Fortunately, the third party candidates themselves are doing plenty to encourage voters to go back to the mainstream candidates. Johnson's biggest splash in the whole campaign was his interview embarrassment where it turned out he had never heard of Aleppo, the besieged rebel-held city in Syria. Embarrassing as that was, I have to give him credit for owning his ignorance and saying he would research the topic - most modern American conservatives would have tried turning it into a positive: "of course I haven’t heard of some little town in Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m more interested in what matters to American taxpayers."

As for Stein, she seems to be an amalgam of all the bad attributes of left-wing politicians:

• populist promises that the country can't afford
• promises the president doesn't have the power to implement
• simplistic understanding of economics
• flirting with conspiracy
• citing or ignoring scientific evidence as is convenient.

But as always, the main reason not to vote for them is that they simply can't win. Even if you have solid evidence that one of them is the best of all possible presidents, a vote for them would still be a wasted vote unless you know there’ll be a groundswell of support for them unprecedented in American history. By a nice coincidence, Facebook’s memories feature brought up this cartoon I made eight years ago, for illustrating the concept. Also, tech writer Clay Shirky does a great job of explaining it.

It's a really frustrating topic. It can be depressing when we see just how few people have a passion to make the world a better place. It can also be hard to come to terms with how few people have the skills to apply it. But times like this expose how few people combine the two into effective change. And when I see that it's easy to lose hope.

But now I find out about a new group that has this combination of hearts and minds. I've come across a Facebook group of actors, writers and producers from various incarnations of Star Trek who are campaigning against Donald Trump. And interestingly, they're putting special emphasis on reminding people not to vote for a third-party candidate. Oh Star Trek, however crazy the world gets, you're always there for me. On the other hand, I'm more than a little worried to discover that Star Trek is the lone oasis of humanity in America.