“Again, I understand cognitive dissonance is a difficult thing to grapple with. It’s okay to change your views.”

Maybe follow your own advice? Your argument is both sides are the same, I provided examples of how that’s not true and then you turn around and tell me I’m biased and double down on your existing views.

Again, one side is actively trying to strip away access to healthcare while the other side is taking steps (even if incremental) to increase access to healthcare. This is by definition not a “both sides are the same” scenario.

Yep, remember when we were going through a massive baby formula shortage and 192 House Republicans voted against a bill that would provide $28 million to increase baby formula production?

Or when Build Back Better was being proposed which included expanded Child Tax Credit, expanded Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, universal pre-K, subsidized daycare, paid family leave, free school lunch and not a single Republican supported it?

You can’t claim to be “pro children” then turn around and do nothing to help bring down the costs of raising a child and make sure the they a quality standard of living.

He is a sleazy career politician, no other way to put it. And now he’s showing more and more signs of cognitive decline. Later this year when both of these senior citizens are fatigued by months of campaigning, holy shit just imagine the clips we are going to see.

Biden is better than Trump in just about every way imaginable, but they are both too old and too corrupt to be any good. Biden is also way too nice to the MAGA politicians. 

Some other things Trump wants to do:
Invoke the Insurrection act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and direct the Department of Justice to pursue his adversaries.

Replace everybody within the legal, judicial, defense, regulatory and domestic policy branches with pure Trump loyalists.

Introduce "Berufsverbot" for Trump critics.

Grant himself and future presidents absolute immunity from prosecution for all past and future crimes, including murder.

He also wants to kill political opponents, which he considers vermin.

eh. I will confess, I am getting a little aggressive lmao. However, my resistance to your claim shouldn’t be seen as resistance to cognitive dissonance: this is something I’ve admittedly failed to keep in mind for your side of the argument. That being said, I would appreciate if you at least take the time to consider the points I’ve laid out. You provided examples, and I’ve shared my thoughts on these examples. Ultimately, I do not disagree that one side is trying to strip away your rights at an accelerated pace whereas the other is doing so in a much more “cloaked” manner. One is saying “it’s good that we’re stripping away your rights(!)” whereas the other is saying “we care about your rights(!) *does nothing and progresses in the direction of stripping your rights slowly throughout every bill they pass*”. At the end of the day, yes, I agree the parties are different in this regard…however, when it comes to substantive change in the right direction, they are the same: this is a point I believe we agree on. More specifically, neither side is looking to implement universal healthcare, neither side is looking to end all of our forever wars and remain in our own spheres, neither side truly cares about addressing the mounting challenges facing the working class, neither side truly cares about doing anything for the American people nor the people of this world.

What’s my rationale for not wanting to vote Biden then? The way I see it is as follows: A vote for Biden is a vote to continue the genocide in Gaza, a vote for Biden is an endorsement of the continual expansion of oil drilling and carbon emissions (with some incremental measures — which literally amount to nothing — sprinkled in there), a vote for Biden is a certification that no fresh new face with potentially less harmful practices will emerge four years from now. And if I were to cast my vote, it would be for Cornell West…but he’s not going to win, nor will he hit that 5% threshold. So I see no reason in voting. If you can explain how Biden has truly passed bills *which are substantive* and how Biden’s net outcome has truly been in the direction of what he has promised, then maybe I’ll consider. But at the end of the day, I see it as a two-horse-race toward the same goal, though with one pushing at a slightly faster pace.

I’m a believer in good faith argument, so I’ll refrain further from attacks. I am very sorry about earlier. That was entirely my bad. and I can only that hope a good faith political discussion can still be had.

There are always two ways to look at any given situation/problem:

1. Consider what is right and what is wrong.
2. Align your opinion with the group you belong to, meaning what your group says is right and what it doesn't say is wrong.

If you are a registered republican and just don't get it, you must be looking at this in the first way.

Unfortunately, the majority of people falls victim to the thinking of the second way - the herd mentality - hence why humanity as a whole keeps having so many problems that could actually be solved without too much effort. All too often confirmation bias gets in the way.

Around 30 years ago it used to be that American politics were a contest of center/center-right vs. right, but the democrats in the Bill Clinton era then found more success by shifting a bit more to the right which in turn forced the republicans to shift more to the right as well. This shift continued gradually over time, so today it's a contest between center-right/right and far-right in the USA. This means a moderate democrat today is essentially what a moderate republican was three decades ago, a conservative politician. But it's ingrained in many voters' minds that the democrats are left and the republicans are right, so as self-identified conservatives they'll continue to go with whatever the popular republicans want when they would actually have to vote for the other party for their own best interests, assuming these interests haven't changed much or not at all over the course of the last few decades.

Any given democrat vs. Trump shouldn't be a close contest, if the American people as a whole were reasonable. But single-issue voters are so widespread in the USA that it isn't funny anymore. If the USA was a country of the size and influence of North Korea, we could shrug it off. But sadly the USA is the country with the most influence on the planet, so the average American voter's cluelessness can have major consequences for a lot of other countries around the globe. Worst of all is that we've already had one tenure of Trump, so there is data and evidence for how he handles things. We don't need to discuss hypotheticals when we have history available to us.

But I do know why Americans love him so much. It's because:

Trump is so cool.

Two questions:

1) What bills are you referring to?

2) You talk about the harm that you believe will come from a vote for Biden, but what do you believe will be the positive effect of not voting?

If trump loses, odds he admits defeat and doesn't cause chaos? I'm going 0.5%.

You're very generous here. I'd say it's closer to 0.0005% unless he's defeated by a crushing majority.

I give trump .01 chance he admits that he might somewhat lose but onely if the polls are more for Biden.