Of course they are.
MagicShel
I think you should ask a lawyer and not a therapist or internet randos.
I'm warning Google that Google Chrome may soon be disabled on my devices.
Exactly. I agree 100%. The system is what it is and it will only change over the course of lifetimes, not years. Unless your solution is violent revolution in which case I'd still say to also cast meaningful votes based on some criteria of your choosing. I guess you could vote Republican on the hopes a fascist America would more quickly be overthrown internally or externally. That sounds like a terrible timeline to live through, though.
Then I'd say your options are relocate to somewhere with a more appealing government or cede electoral power to others. Third parties are irrelevant on the national scale, and only slightly less so on the state scale.
Agitate for RCV or other election reforms that make third parties more relevant, but until that's the case I'll stand by my earlier assertions.
If you want democrats to be a certain way, vote for those democrats in primaries and local elections. You have to fix it from the bottom up and from within.
You will, however, be politically impotent in that case. Checking out of democracy because one option is only incrementally better than the other isn't really helping anyone.
I have 85 people blocked. Most of them for spamming, probably. The rest for harshing my mellow by aggressively being assholes to others or just because I've realized my personal experience is more pleasant with their absence.
I don't owe my attention to anyone. I see lots of comments here about refusing to censor alternate points of view, but that's not it. I can enjoy healthy disagreement, but some folks make some agenda their entire identity and I just get tired of them constantly injecting it into every conversation.
On the other hand there've been many people I've disagreed with, engaged with, found some common ground, and continue to enjoy their presence even knowing we don't see eye to eye. Or, if they post about other things, I just ignore the rants I disagree with. It's not filtering out points of view, it's filtering out people whose presence makes Lemmy a source of stress rather than an interesting, vibrant community. That's obviously very subjective, but it's my block list and my peace of mind.