The Moral Complicity of the 98.61%: A Case Built on Established Definitions, Legal Precedent, Academic Theory, and Documented Atrocity
I. Definitions Are Not Debatable
Before any argument can be dismissed, the words being used must be confronted directly. Merriam-Webster defines "morally" as operating from the point of view of moral rules or principles, in terms of accepted moral standards. The same dictionary defines "complicit" as helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way. Google's AI overview, drawing from multiple academic and legal sources, defines "morally complicit" as sharing responsibility for a wrongful or unethical act through indirect participation, enabling, or inaction, even if not the primary wrongdoer. That definition explicitly extends to benefiting from unfair systems or failing to prevent harm through inaction alone.
These are not activist definitions. They are not radical reframings. They are the standard, dictionary-level, mainstream definitions of the words being used. Any attempt to dispute the conclusion of this argument without first engaging these definitions is not a refutation. It is evasion.
II. The Mathematics of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Throughout 2024, polling consistently showed approximately 60% of Americans stating that the two major parties do such a poor job that a new or third party is needed. This was not a fringe sentiment. It represented a majority of the population. Yet when votes were counted, only 2.13% of the roughly 155 million ballots cast went to third-party or independent candidates. Factoring in the full 238 million voting-age citizens, only 1.39% of the eligible electorate voted for any non-major-party option.
The mechanism that produced this outcome is documented and straightforward. Every election is a jar, every vote is a ball. The only way the jar fills is if the balls go in. Each vote cast increases a candidate's probability of winning, and that is true for every candidate in every race. Therefore, third parties did not merely have a mathematical chance in 2024. They had a realistic one, contingent on the 60% who claimed to want a third party actually voting that way. The logic is straightforward: if the remaining 40% split nearly evenly between the two major parties, each receives approximately 20% of the total vote. A third party does not need the full 60% to win. It needs just over 21%. The full 60% would have guaranteed it. That math holds state by state as well. In most states the two-party split was close enough that 21% of the statewide vote would have been sufficient to take it. The self-fulfilling prophecy did not just suppress a long shot. It buried a majority.
Saying "I want a third party but I'm voting major-party for '____' because third parties cannot win" is the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The losing condition is manufactured by the people who then cite it as proof they were right not to try. And if "only the full jar matters" is a valid reason to dismiss third parties, that same logic must be applied consistently to every losing candidate in every election. It never is. The argument was never about logic. It was about comfort, and comfort is a choice with consequences that other people pay for.
The people who claimed to want a third party and then voted major-party or abstained did not simply fail to help. They actively produced the outcome they claimed to oppose, and then used that manufactured outcome as retroactive proof that they had been right not to try. The structural possibility of a third-party presidency existed in 2024. What was absent was not opportunity. What was absent was conviction.
III. Eric Beerbohm's Complicity Theory: The Academic Foundation
The moral framework underlying this argument is not invented. It comes directly from the work of Eric Beerbohm, a professor at Harvard University, published in his 2012 book "In Our Name: The Ethics of Democracy." Beerbohm's core argument, known as complicity theory or the "acting in our name" thesis, is that in a representative democracy, elected officials act in the name of all citizens. This makes every citizen a partial author of whatever laws and policies those representatives enact, regardless of whether that individual voted, abstained, or voted against them.
Because citizens are partial authors of state action, they bear a moral duty to vote specifically for candidates and policies that reduce injustice. This duty exists regardless of whether any individual vote changes the final outcome. Beerbohm goes further: voting for the lesser of two evils does not reduce complicity. It confirms it. When a voter knowingly casts a ballot for a candidate who will commit or enable injustice, they co-sign that injustice. The only way to avoid complicity, where non-harm candidates exist, is to vote for them. Where no such candidates exist at all, Beerbohm identifies abstention and revolt as the only morally coherent remaining options.
In 2024, non-harm candidates existed. They were on ballots. They had paths to power. The complicity framework therefore applies without qualification to everyone who voted major-party and to everyone who abstained despite having access to a non-harm option.
IV. The Documented Injustices: Gaza and Fascist Collaboration
The argument that both major parties enabled atrocities in 2024 is not an assertion. It is documented by some of the most credible international institutions and humanitarian organizations in the world.
Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International documented mass civilian casualties, the deliberate destruction of hospitals and essential infrastructure, the obstruction of humanitarian aid, and conditions consistent with international legal definitions of atrocity crimes in Gaza. Amnesty International directly concluded that the conduct met the threshold for genocide. The International Court of Justice found a plausible risk of genocidal acts and issued binding provisional measures ordering prevention of such acts and the ensuring of humanitarian access. Critics including major humanitarian organizations concluded those measures were not meaningfully implemented. The United Nations and multiple independent expert bodies aligned with this assessment. Throughout this period, both the Democratic and Republican parties continued providing unconditional military and diplomatic support to the Israeli government, framing mass civilian death tolls running into the tens of thousands, with disproportionate numbers of women and children among the dead, as a legitimate exercise of self-defense. Neither party treated the ICJ ruling, the humanitarian documentation, or the civilian death toll as a reason to condition or withdraw support.
On the question of fascist collaboration: Democratic administrations supported military aid packages to Ukraine that sustained units including the Azov Battalion, an organization with documented origins in neo-Nazi ideology and symbols. Republican leadership maintained documented relationships with the Proud Boys, a far-right organization with members convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, and whose presence within federal enforcement structures expanded following January 20, 2025. Neither party treated these associations as disqualifying. Voters who cast ballots for either party did so with this information available to them.
V. The Nuremberg Parallel: Individual Responsibility Cannot Be Outsourced
The argument that "just voting for policy" and "just following orders" operate on the same moral logic is not hyperbole. It is grounded in Nuremberg Principle IV, established after World War II by the International Law Commission. That principle holds that following orders from a government or superior does not relieve an individual of responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was available to them. Google's AI overview, drawing from Wikipedia and multiple legal sources, confirms that this framework centers on the principle that one cannot absolve oneself of personal moral or legal culpability by blaming a larger structure or chain of command.
In 2024, a moral choice was available. Third parties were on the ballot. Non-harm options existed. The structure of the two-party system did not force any individual's hand. Every person who cast a ballot for a party that was actively bankrolling, arming, and diplomatically shielding what multiple credible international bodies assessed as genocide, or that maintained active political relationships with neo-fascist organizations, made that choice freely and with available alternatives. The excuses offered, including "I only supported their economic platform," "I voted for the lesser evil," and "my single vote would not have changed anything," are structurally identical to the defenses rejected at Nuremberg. They all rest on the same logic: that participation in a larger system transfers individual moral responsibility away from the individual. That logic was rejected by the international community in 1945. It does not become valid in a voting booth in 2024.
VI. The Verdict
In the court of moral philosophy, under mainstream dictionary definitions of the operative terms, grounded in the peer-reviewed academic framework of a Harvard professor, supported by the documented findings of Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the International Court of Justice, and the United Nations, and consistent with the post-World War II legal principle that individuals cannot outsource moral responsibility to structural systems: 98.61% of voting-age Americans in 2024 were morally complicit in genocide and in the political normalization of fascism.
Those who voted for either major party actively co-signed those outcomes. Those who abstained while non-harm alternatives existed enabled those outcomes through the inaction that the definition of moral complicity explicitly and unambiguously includes. The 1.39% who voted third-party, and those who were ineligible to vote, refused to cross those lines. The distance between those two groups is not a matter of political preference or tactical disagreement. It is a moral line. History will treat it accordingly.
Disagreement is expected, but it won't change the minds of those who support this argument. Disagreement requires engaging the framework. It requires disputing the dictionary definitions, refuting Beerbohm's theory, contradicting the findings of the ICJ and Amnesty International, or identifying a flaw in the mathematical logic of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Dismissing the conclusion without engaging the premises is not a counterargument. It is confirmation that the argument has not been answered.
Because ultimately this argument cannot be answered on technical grounds. It can only be avoided on personal ones. And that avoidance forces a question every reader has to answer for themselves, not abstractly, but personally:
Are your moral principles negotiable when the price is right? Or are there lines you will not cross, even if it costs your side ground on other issues?
If the answer is the second, this argument stands intact. If the answer is the first, then be honest about what that means. It means your principles are not principles. They are preferences, and preferences have a price. The entire architecture of this document, the math, the definitions, Beerbohm, Nuremberg, the Gaza documentation, exists as scaffolding for that one binary test. Everything else is just the proof that the test was real and the stakes were not hypothetical.
So where do you land? Do you see the line drawn here as the correct one? Or do you believe there is principled room for trade-offs even while agreeing the two-party system is broken and the outcomes it produced were atrocities?
Your answer to that question is your moral self-portrait. This document did not draw it. You did. I'll say it again, there is no justification for allowing genocide of anything that is not at the threat level to humanity as Hitler and his Nazis, who proportional force to stopping came close to requiring a genocide of. Hamas is a street gang in comparison but genociders of Palestinians every day are giving more and more reason to seriously question their threat level to humanity. Let the bad faith criticisms of this blog begin.
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