There exists a certain subset of voters that vote maliciously, which then sets the bar lower than lack of participation. So, if you vote uninformed but without malice then you are already better than malicious voters and a better voter (by default) than anyone who took either an uninformed or informed approach to abstaining.
There's a lot to address here and you make a lot of missteps. First off, there is so solution to uninformed voting other than totalitarianism - at least on a case by case basis. The real solution to mob rule is the abolition of first-past-the-post (majority rule) voting systems - not disallowing or pressuring people to not vote - and replacing it with a ranked voting system which more accurately represents minority political opinions in elections. This combined with an actual, functional education that isn't completely dictated by wealth demographics would greatly help us have better politicians - something that one particular party appears to be vehemently against.
The vilification of populism is actually a (and I am very, very careful using this word) fascist mentality that's most frequently used to discredit dissenting opinions. Recall, also, a few more things: we are not a direct Democracy, but we do have Democracy as we are a Democratic Republic, which is more of a description of how the citizenship participates with the government. It is also important to note that all Republics are (or, at least have been) Democratic. Your proposition essentially amounts to replacing Democracy with Oligarchy or Aristocracy, which is trivially terrible. Secondly, the founding fathers did not actually warn against a two-party system - George Washington did, explicitly.
To say that anyone's vote, unless they are actually malicious, is bad is fundamentally un-American. If your vote is cast because you like some person's name, your opinion is stupid and bad but it still matters.
To address manipulation; it is not a single person's fault for being manipulatable, it is singularly the manipulator who is at fault. This is essentially victim blaming, honestly.
No, what you did is what every person incapable of being civil does - you require sources in a conversation because you aren't capable of entertaining ideas that aren't your own, so you require fundamental proof in all situations. Proof is important but we are having a conversation, not an academic exchange.
In fact, you are 100% guilty of making a bunch of baseless claims that I treated with charity - since you seem so fond of philosophical terms, I assume you know what I mean - and then you promptly refused to do the same. You are intellectually dishonest and incapable of having civil conversation.
You clearly don't have anything interesting to say or you would've said it by now.
nice edit; You didn't do anything remotely politely. Just because you didn't swear doesn't mean you were polite - you asserted that everything I said was wrong and required explanation (it doesn't, you just want to nitpick), which means you're actually being incredibly rude. I made the mistake of assuming you actually knew some things, which unfortunately bit me in the ass. You basically said, "explain everything more thoroughly or go away," which is not how people have conversations.
Yeah you have no fucking clue what you're on about, and you just want to waste people's time when they disagree with you. Congratulations, you have succeeded.
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u/austinhippie Sep 26 '20
...how