My dad just asked me to come to his house and physically fight him over my Facebook posts which are basically just me posting news articles with "this is fine".
So, thats a thing.
Wow, I am so sorry. What's his justification? I mean, are these news articles of Trump doing something your dad agrees with and he is mad at you for not agreeing they're good, or are they articles of Trump doing things your dad probably knows are bad things and is simply mad that you are posting news that paints Trump in a negative light? I cannot understand how anyone's reaction is a call to violence like that.
Rough situation man.
I'm sure many republican voters would go Libertarian if they weren't concerned with sports team paradigms of winning elections, and I'm sure many Democrats would go Green or something else radical for the same reason.
This is literally the case of "more competition is good" but as a country we are stuck in this two party binary.
Le'ts play out this hypothetical scenario.
Let's say our congress is evenly split between the four parties. Republican, Democrat, Green and Libertarian, 25% control for each. A majority is still needed to pass anything, so, great, that means they'll have to compromise! But who will they compromise with? The party most aligned with them because that's where they will be able to get the most support for their bills. The Republicans and Libertarians will compromise with each other, and the Democrats and Greens will compromise with each other. And from what I understand the Vice President breaks ties right? So whatever party the VP is in will basically have control if congress is split up evenly like that.
So you will either be getting bills that will be more conservative than they would have been with simply a republican congress, or bills that will be more liberal than they would have been with simply a democratic congress (which are both gross simplifications of where they all sit on the political spectrum, but I hope my point comes across. The compromises won't be of the moderate center kind).
And that's with a perfectly even split between the four of them. Reality would be messier and would inevitably provide power to one ideological pair of groups over another while the losing pair feuds with themselves.
Also, by voting third party in the interest of increasing competition as you say, you have to remember you can only vote for one person (for a position). A voter for the green party in that mindset must be relying that there is a 1:1 shared vote ratio between them and someone else voting for a Libertarian to balance the increase in competition to both larger parties. You would have to hope that the exact same number of people that are voting Green are also voting Libertarian. Otherwise, the green party voter is not voting in a way that harms the system but is voting in a way that only harms the democratic party, the party that more closely aligns with their goals.
Sorry, I know this is off topic. I guess you could say this is my own way of coping