Just to be clear to non-Koreans, this is NOT the president who was impeached for declaring Martial Law and locking out Parliament. This is the guy who stepped in that other guy’s place as acting president and was impeached for not trying hard enough to stop the declaration of Martial Law.
This is why showing up to vote, not throwing your vote away, and making smart/informed choices at the ballot are so crucial. Once a bad politician digs in, good luck getting them out.
I agree with your second statement, but in the case of my county, all options tend to be very bad. I realize this comment will be well unpopular, and am not trying to convince anyone of anything, just explain my perspective.
I don’t vote.
Voting is mandatory here, so I show up and fulfill my civil duty, and have even been in charge of voting tables when “drafted” to do so by authorities. I just don’t vote for any candidate because I’ve always disliked all of them, their policies and their discourse. Furthermore, our electoral process is so full of fake news, statements taken out of context and general mudslinging, it’s nearly impossible to make a genuinely informed decision. Peer pressure gets wild too.
I don’t want to vote for someone who will later on go on to continue the pattern of corruption, populism, nepotism, selling out to foreign interests, authoritarianism and incompetence that has been the hallmark of the vast majority if not all of our political leaders the last century.
People get very worked up about these things too, and I also don’t want to jeopardize my bonds with loved ones due to my decision, which I didn’t even believe in to begin with.
I’m deeply sorry but I’ve lost all faith, not only in the democratic process but also of any possible political candidate or system fixing society for the vulnerable and deprived.
It just seems to me that healthy societies emerge from social trust and solid values, not votes… So I try to do my best to be an example in those regards, hoping it will make a small difference in the long run. I wish we would all focus on that to be honest.
Whatever you believe in or do, I wish you, your society and our world the very best.
I get that, but even with limited choices, one is always worse than the other. More often than not, casting a vote is more damage control than expressing your support. And I wish people in my country would understand that. While they’re hemm-hawing around waiting for the perfect, ideologically pure candidate, the bad one is getting full support from his side.
I agree here. Even ones you like often disapoint in the long run. Im going to steal your damage control phrasing I think.
They’re all bad ones, from what I can see and have learned. At least the ones we get here.
From my perspective, I don’t think there’s a good way to tell who is worse. Plus, even if we were fully able to predict all consequences of electing anyone in the ballots, there’s the value of the short term vs the long term and what demographics benefit most, which get punished, what interest groups are supported, which are persecuted, and which economic activities benefit.
I don’t feel qualified to make judgement calls or bet on anyone in any of those regards.
I have my opinions and values, and none of them align with the candidates I’ve been presented during any of the elections during my entire lifetime.
You feel differently and that’s great. By all means vote. I honestly hope it makes a difference for you and those who you care about. I really wish I agreed with you too, I just lost all faith. Don’t want to convince you either.
Hope it goes better for you guys than it has for us.
Think of it like voting to change the thermostat
Say you want 72F and neither candidate is close. Well, no party is going to think they can get away with running a candidate who is pushing for 72F when the existing options are 32F and 212F. A progressive party might think 35F is ok or even 40F but 72F? Surely they would just lose the election outright.
By putting in for the 32F team, you’re trying to bring the average temperature closer to 72F. If you and a few million like you start pushing together, the party will eventually start running candidates calling for 40, 50, 60 degrees. 72F may be a long way off but if you don’t move the needle the candidates never get better.
So for now? Vote for 32F, hand out blankets, and tell everyone else the end goal is 72F. Reassess if/when we progress if the best choice is still the cold team.
This assumes single-dimensional political repercussions, though, which i don’t personally consider a good analogy.
Imagine if they not only set temperature, but also humidity, average rainfall, barometric pressure, wind speed, intensity and frequency of sunflares and chancea of tornado. Imagine if the person handling the thermostat set it for millions of locations with different needs simultaneously.
Imagine if your expectations were likely to be missed by a longshot in all regards and furthermore, all the information you were given regarding any possible consequences was completely untrustworthy.
This is what politics feels like, to me, in latin america.
Hope i’m wrong and you guys have it better. Best of luck.
I will throw what is likely an unpopular opinion. I think what you are doing is responsible. If you don’t actually feel like any candidate is any worse than the others, in any way, in even the least way ; then I think you are doing the right thing. If you vote randomly, with no basis at all, doing eannny, meanny, minne, moe or such. Its way better to not vote. Now if you think any candidate is even the slightest bit worse for your country than the others ; then you should vote. I have much more respect for you deciding you have no basis to cast a ballot and choosing not to do so than some folks in my country who seeing and acknowledging a greater evil choose to not vote to punish the lesser evil for not being good enough. Your take as I read it is sensible.
Damn they were so close to being a functioning democracy
JK lol I’m American
Wow. Just wow. Not to make this all about us SK but we could really use an international example of someone declaring martial law frivolously getting their comeuppance.
I’m not South Korean. Why was this a bad thing? The court ruled 7-1 due to the methods of impeachment not aligning with the constitution. I think rule of law is important. If you want to impeach, then either follow the law or amend the constitution - or else try to circumvent it and set a precedent to your own eventual peril.
