> You're conflating contexts ... However, the issue is a lot more clear-cut from the CANDIDATE'S perspective

Ah, I hadn't realized you were wanting to shift to candidate's perspective, I thought you had said

>> think about what you want the country and the world to look like in ten, fifty, or a hundred years.

> This is the candidate's job

as if the fault lies with the candidate that the voters chose an authoritarian over democracy, and that she should have just done her job better. If you want to talk about the candidate's perspective, I don't think Harris thought people owed her a vote. She never said anything to indicate that, to my knowledge. Maybe you could make an argument that the party leadership thought they could pick whomever they wanted to run, and people would "have" to vote for their pick. I agree that the party shouldn't have that mindset. Ultimately it doesn't make a difference in this case, however, because, the facts being what they were, people chose an anti-democratic candidate over a democratic one.

And originally I wasn't talking about policies, I was talking about whether the country is tending toward democracy or authoritarianism in ten, fifty, or a hundred years, not whatever policies are the topics du jour that the campaign would need to comment on.

> ... But any big idea would piss off donor-investors

The "big idea" was that we don't like dictators, and that's all that should have been needed, but it wasn't.

> who would be hurt by any change to the status quo

Ok, so no change on one side, and a descent into authoritarianism on the other side. Seems like a simple choice to make, given that we have to make that choice. If we don't like the choices, then we should vote in other elections to replace the people giving us those options. But those are the options we have now (or, had), nonetheless.

Choose Harris, and you will have time to work your problems out. Choose Trump, and you may not get the chance. (It's not even about Trump himself, it's about what he's paving the way for.)

> because it's the one that is closest to affecting how the candidate campaigns and behaves

The campaign's behavior was nothing special, and it shouldn't take anything special to vote against someone with a dictator's mindset. The Harris campaign made their stances clear to anyone who was listening, and the Democratic Party's platform is not hard to find. Trump was never closeted, it's apparent to everyone who and what he is. Blaming the rooster for not acting differently somehow is a terrible defense for the hens who gave the fox the keys to the henhouse.

> That's if you believe that harm can be mitigated in that regard; e.g., perhaps moving the lever simply kills a different (smaller?) group of people instead. In this case, now you're arguing utilitarianism, i.e., it's okay to kill some people to save others, it's okay to kill a few innocents to save everyone else. "I will not choose to kill anyone, and the world shall move as it does," is then an option, and the neutral one.

Please don't waste our time trying to make this a political trolley problem.

> You can, in fact, walk away from Omelas.

Abstaining from voting (while remaining in the US) is not walking away from Omelas. It's staying in Omelas and also not lifting a finger to change anything. Even this is a tortured analogy, because Omelas is about to burn too.

In a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people reap the benefit, but they also must bear responsibility.