Quantifying the ‘Contrarian’ Narcissism of the 3rd Party Voter
Yesterday, Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer at The Atlantic and protege of Andrew Sullivan, offered an explanation for why he chose to spend months blasting Mitt Romney as more evil than Barack Obama but will still vote for Gary Johnson instead. He titled the piece “Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama“:
Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can’t bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn’t believe in Darwinian evolution, and they’ll nod along. Say that you’d never vote for a politician caught using the ‘n’-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern Mitt Romney’s flaws, which I’ve chronicled in the course of the campaign, and still not vote for Obama.
Don’t they see that Obama’s transgressions are worse than any I’ve mentioned?
I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I’d have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.
Nope.
Emphases added. In the first three paragraphs Friedersdorf references himself five times — all without need.
How much more does Friedersdorf talk about himself as he lays out the case that the death of 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (in the drone strike that killed his Jihadi father) morally disqualifies Obama from a second term in office? The 1798-word piece contains 35 variations of I. Among the most narcissistic passages:
If I vote, it will be for Johnson. What about the assertion that Romney will be even worse than Obama has been on these issues? It is quite possible, though not nearly as inevitable as Democrats seem to think. It isn’t as though they accurately predicted the abysmal behavior of Obama during his first term, after all. And how do you get worse than having set a precedent for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens? By actually carrying out such a killing? Obama did that too. Would Romney? I honestly don’t know. I can imagine he’d kill more Americans without trial and in secret, or that he wouldn’t kill any. I can imagine that he’d kill more innocent Pakistani kids or fewer. His rhetoric suggests he would be worse. I agree with that. Then again, Romney revels in bellicosity; Obama soothes with rhetoric and kills people in secret.
One should also note that in his explanation for why not to vote for Obama the only killings that Friedersdorf mentions as a concern to him are those done by America to defend itself. So little surprise that he never gets around to the question of which candidate will do a better job protecting American lives.
Well, he’s not voting for President Bullskit and maybe he can convince a bunch of other people to not do so also, so don’t complain too much…
Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer at The Atlantic and protege of Andrew Sullivan…
Articles I (!) never finished reading.
– an asteroid headed straight for Earth? Hmm. How will this affect me as a gay man?
…and what implications does it have for the circumstances of Trig Palin’s birth?
Shorter Freidersdorf :
“Maybe Gary will stand up for the rights of Islamists’ without bombing a few in the middle of the night like President I-Want-It-Both-Ways”.
You can call it narcissism if you wish, but I support Gary Johnson because I don’t see any way to change the two party system by voting for one of two equally bad candidates.
Voting for the lesser of two evils ALWAYS leaves you with evil.
It’s always going to boil down to a two-party system. Always. For the simple reason that very few issues have three distinct sides to them.
If we had three parties it wouldn’t last for longer than one or two election cycles, because whichever faction was smallest would join whichever larger party it saw mostly eye-to-eye with in order to have some influence. Most people who want a third party think it would serve as a kind of tie breaker (like being simultaneously pro-life and pro-gay marriage, for example), but the idea that any party would do so isn’t one with much history to back it up.
If there’s not a candidate you like it doesn’t mean the two-party system doesn’t work. It just means that the candidate you prefer couldn’t get enough support to win. Well, welcome to representative democracy.
So the basic gist of your position is this: the “system” didn’t give you what you wanted so it is therefore “broken”. And since it didn’t give you what you wanted you’re going to cast a vote that has absolutely no chance of affecting the election’s outcome just to make yourself feel good.
Yeah, that sounds pretty narcissistic to me. But if it’s going to cost Obama a vote please don’t let me stop you.
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/06/08/7-reasons-why-the-right-should-not-seek-to-convert-the-left/4/
C’mon Dave. Self sacrifice, patriotism, wanting a better life for future generations is sooooo last millennium. Its all about ME now. That’s what they taught me in school. Those crackpots in Sunday School were so wrong about life. I’m on my way to becoming an ascendant master in world of warcraft! What higher goal is there in life?
I’d have to agree with Chris, it makes little sense to elect a Dem in drag over what we already have in the WH now, it’s just two sides of the same coin. The GOP could’ve, and should’ve, had this election in the bag, but the establishment decided early on that they’d rather loose the election than nominate a conservative, so they shoved the RINO down our throats. The GOP establishment has no one to blame but itself if (probably when) Mitt looses. I will happily cast my vote for Gary Johnson, secure in the knowledge that in the GOP will implode in the aftermath of a Romney loss, and we’ll get a true conservative choice in 2016.