I will respond with a fanciful and inexact analogy:
There are three animals outside and ten of us inside the room. Behind door number 1 there is an adorable kitten. Behind door number 2 there is a pit bull of uncertain temperament. Behind door number 3 there is a large, starving, particularly ill-tempered hyena. With rabies. We will vote as to which door we will open.
I should add that door #1 has been bricked shut, as we are all aware, so in practical terms we are obliged to consider whether to admit the pit bull that might bite one or more of us or the hyena that certainly will, and which—did I mention?—regards human viscera as an especial delicacy.
Several of us are fond of kittens, a couple, perhaps, to the exclusion of other furry creatures. Two or three admire the noble American Staffordshire Terrier, and a couple of others at least prefer them to the monster prowling outside door 3. Four of us, alas, think that a spotted hyena is just what we need to tie the room together, and one or two of the kitten fanciers, resenting the fact of the bricked-up door, think that admitting the hyena, or at least doing nothing to impede its partisans, would teach the rest of us a well-deserved lesson. Let's vote. It is not to be wondered at that feelings run high.
Well, enough of me. Let's cite the classics. First, from Dr. Strangelove: "Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed."
From the estimable tbogg:
There are three animals outside and ten of us inside the room. Behind door number 1 there is an adorable kitten. Behind door number 2 there is a pit bull of uncertain temperament. Behind door number 3 there is a large, starving, particularly ill-tempered hyena. With rabies. We will vote as to which door we will open.
I should add that door #1 has been bricked shut, as we are all aware, so in practical terms we are obliged to consider whether to admit the pit bull that might bite one or more of us or the hyena that certainly will, and which—did I mention?—regards human viscera as an especial delicacy.
Several of us are fond of kittens, a couple, perhaps, to the exclusion of other furry creatures. Two or three admire the noble American Staffordshire Terrier, and a couple of others at least prefer them to the monster prowling outside door 3. Four of us, alas, think that a spotted hyena is just what we need to tie the room together, and one or two of the kitten fanciers, resenting the fact of the bricked-up door, think that admitting the hyena, or at least doing nothing to impede its partisans, would teach the rest of us a well-deserved lesson. Let's vote. It is not to be wondered at that feelings run high.
Well, enough of me. Let's cite the classics. First, from Dr. Strangelove: "Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed."
From the estimable tbogg:
[There are those who say] "The Democrats don’t deserve my vote. They aren’t helping the left, why should the left help them?"cordially,
Let me see if I can explain it this way:
Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.
You don’t live there.
Grow the fuck up.