A thought

[avevale_intelligencer]

If you are going to adopt a plague-on-both-your-houses stance, it's helpful if you occasionally attack (or defend) both sides, rather than consistently attacking one and defending the other.

Comments

[gingicat]

Well, Nader certainly attacks both... (note: I'm not voting for him)

[howeird]

Dedpends on the plague. I personally wish ebola on one house and chicken pox on the other. :-)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Depends whether they give you the ammunition. If one side you dislike behaves impeccably, and the other behaves badly, there's not much you can do about it. For instance, I might not have wanted to joing either Gandhi or the Raj, but it would have been rather hard to find something to say nasty about him or in defence of the Raj.

In the next British election I may well not want to vote for either Tories or Labour (I dislike the policies of both a lot) but if one fights a mudslinging campaign and the other forbears then I'll be criticising the nasty ones and not the others. Not because I am partial to either as potential rulers, purely on their behaviour.

[lindaneely.livejournal.com]

That used to be what good journalists did. Today the media is so biased one way or the other, they have made themselves useless to voters.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Mm. Good point, I suppose, though I think even in those circumstances it would be reasonable, in the absence of further evidence, for others (who did not know you) to suspect you of partisanship. And if one were fighting a mudslinging campaign and the other focussing on issues, and you consistently defended the former and attacked the latter, then the conclusion would be even more inescapable.

There's a lot to be said for neutrality. It keeps one out of the fighting, and gives one an air of moral superiority, if one so desires. And when one genuinely believes that neither side is right, then the fence is the only place to sit. What I've never been entirely comfortable with, in any of the imbroglios on which I've found myself on one side or another, is those people who claim the benefits of impartiality while actually fighting for a side.

In the next British election, assuming there is one (I no longer assume this as a matter of course), I shall probably be voting LibDem and criticising both Tories and "new" Labour. The advantage of this is that the same criticisms will do for both. :(

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is always possible for those who don't know you to suspect that. It is also possible for a person sitting in the middle to be accused of partisanship by both sides, because each side notices mainly the things against them (I've been accused of that myself, and it tends not to help their attitude that I find it amusing). Even if you say nothing you can then be accused of "not supporting 'us'" and therefore "you must be supporting 'them'", again by both sides.

"assuming there is one"

I'm pretty certain that there will be one. Whether any of us will be around to see it is something of which I am less certain...

I'm frustrated in voting by the problem that by voting for the person I would like to represent me (and the community) I am also voting for the party who will run the country. The two are not the same. As the party I would probably vote LibDem as the "least bad", but the reason my current (Tory) MP gets in is because he is a very good representative for the community (indeed, the more I read of him the more I like him). Of course, in my case it doesn't really matter which way I vote because he gets in with such a wide majority that short of him not standing there is no feasible way of getting anyone else in so I can vote however I like and know that he will still be representing me.

(In fact it's potentially worse than that. Voting is for a trinity -- the representative, the party and the PM all in a single vote. I may well want one person as my representative, want a different party in power, but really dislike their leader, but can't express that in a vote.)