The presidential candidates on the issues at a glance

[rva_jeremy]

I do appreciate your your stance on Jill Stein, but I also would like to say that by just performing the act of voting, you implicitly give your consent to being governed by a top-down, authoritarian government. 

I've never felt like, by voting, I give any explicit or implicit consent to be governed by anybody. Why do you feel like voting effects that, Scott? It'd be one thing if, by not voting, you opted out of being governed. But I don't think it works that way: they're gonna do what they want regardless of whether you took part in their little ritual.

For the record, I think voting is a nearly meaningless civic religious ritual that has nothing to do with how power is actually directed. But that means I think it's just as silly to place emphasis on not voting as it is to place emphasis on voting. The vote is not important enough to make a big deal of one way or the other. I've voted in every election I've been able to, but will probably sit this one out or concentrate on down ballot candidates. We have an especially bad set of choices this year and there's no point agonizing over it, though I might come around to voting for Stein just because she's the only one of the four who's a halfway decent candidate and she needs the vote for ballot access reasons more than the others.

I do, however, wrestle with the notion that voting probably has some significance as a mass consciousness event. But that's not the type of significance you're talking about, I think.