You have control over one variable... your vote. You can’t make fewer conservatives vote in an election. You can’t make more liberals vote in an election (as you seem hell-bent on illustrating). Do you take steps that have any chance, however small, of helping your circumstance or do you take steps that have no chance…

Just like I knew Hillary wasn’t a viable candidate in my state. Ha!

If a 3rd party was viable, as they have been in some previous elections, that would have been a fine idea. The fact that you, and pretty much everyone else, knew the libertarian candidate wasn’t viable was relevant at the time. As it stood in 2016... that would have been ethically equivalent to throwing away your vote…

1. Thinking this way, and attempting to justify this thinking, perpetuates your circumstance.

I’m sure that is comforting for you.

I didn’t vote for Trump, even effectively.

Trump is the farthest thing from a conservative. He’s a populist. He won much more of the union vote. How many conservative Republicans who voted for Reagan/Bush/Dole/Bush/McCain/Romney refused to make a mark for Trump? We have no idea. Is that number as big as the number that refused to support Hillary? Probably not.

...but there are also millions of people who considered voting for Trump, but didn’t.

Not illegitimate at all. You play the game by the rules you’re given.

The thought experiment I’ve run through that seems most relevant to your personal situation... how different would his presidency be if he had lost the overall popular vote in a landslide? What if most of the red state dems/ind had voted against Trump, in the only way that was actually a vote against Trump (by voting…

It certainly made all the excuse, including yours, seem more rational at the time.

No matter how red your state is there is always a chance, however small, that your vote could matter.

You are out of date.

Yes, but... assuming the person is rational... the only reason they wouldn’t vote for Clinton in 2016 would be if they preferred Trump as president. Acts of omission are often every bit as morally bankrupt as acts of commission.

Well... I’ve certainly been called a blowhard before.. but, where did I say that I “know better than everyone else”?

Most people think they know right from wrong. That is a mundane truth. People willing to “martyr” themselves, on virtually any level, are a rarity.

Why would he?

Pretty much the only thing they could do to completely fuck ES6 would be for them to lock down modding in the game somehow. Virtually anything they give us short of that insanity will inevitably be modded in to something better than they could have possibly made in the first place.

I view game development culture and the issue with trolls on the internet as two very different problems.

It was the movie to see, at the time, if you cared at all about visual effects. I think this is why it doesn’t hold up well to new viewings. If you aren’t distracted by the stunning (at the time) visuals then all that’s left is a hopelessly derivative and boring narrative.

That being said... people were wacky about…