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Better than not voting and doing nothing.
The best would be voting and being an activist.
The US is not a democracy, it's a capitalist dictatorship.
Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Romeās in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocratsāpolitician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassusāformed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elitesā endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britainās general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ādemocracyā is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former presidentās wife competing with a former presidentās brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, āU.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propagandaā. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, āthe preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policyā
Okay, and? How does voting harm us? Not voting does a lot more harm.
If your democracy is staged like reality TV, then it does nothing.
Does voting in a capitalist dictatorship work? It got the US to where it is now. Doing the same strategy over and over again, when proven that historically things keep getting worse, should tell you that not only is it a pointless strategy, it's actively harmful because it draws energy into an electoral contest that does nothing to improve people's lives.
Bourgeois democracy is an elaborate theatre piece used to keep people distracted, and give them the illusion of choice.
I'm not going to say the same thing twice, take a look at https://gregtech.eu/comment/3527169
That doesn't address anything. Saying vote over and over doesn't make it a viable strategy, especially in bourgeois "democracy"'s staged elections, where the vote choices are stacked between various capitalist puppets.
Essentially you're asking us to play a rigged game, and insisting both that it's not rigged, and that it's super important to play it. Also that anyone who refuses to play it deserves ridicule. This is the level of zealotry people have in their fake political system.
I never said it wasn't rigged. Not voting is not going to help you achieve the goal of stopping this madness. It will only make it harder. Democrats are, of course, the party of the rich, but so are Republicans. Republicans, however, are way more against the redistribution of wealth.
Not voting is not going to help you achieve the goal of stopping this madness. It will only make it harder.
You can only make statements like this, by ignoring history. People in the US have voted for 150+ years. This is the result.
Again, if voting is working so well, why do things keep getting worse? Are they just not voting hard enough? No, it's the system that's broken, it's theatre, a catch-22, a rigged game. Those of us who've studied US history and it's class history learned this a long time ago. The liberals coming and telling us to vote to fix things, aren't bringing any new arguments, and appear to us like fanatical zealots, who think that if they repeat mantras over and over, it cancels history.
You are absolutely right! And there is so much more we should stop doing:
- We protested for more than 150+ years and see where we are now!
- The world did strikes and for over a millenia and what did it bring us? A dictatorship!
- We opened up communities and grassroot movements, and the only thing they done for us: Donald Trump! We need to stop all of this RIGHT NOW.
- Protests do work, in fact that's how the US got all its amendments, and stopped the imperialist war on Vietnam. The important point, is that this takes place outside of electoralism / officially sanctioned actions within bourgeois democracy. Protests and activism also meet fierce resistance from US police, the domestic enforcers of capitalist rule, primarily because it's outside of their rigged "vote for capitalist puppet" game.
Nowadays liberals are doing their best to cripple the anti-war movement again by discouraging protests, and increasingly corral people into voting. They stood against the Iraq-war protests, just as they stand against pro-palestine protestors now.
I think you can use your vote trying to prevent the pest, since fighting collera is easier. If you think there is no difference what so ever between having a right wing government (democrats) versus an authoritarian (republicans) I would argue that both parties dont care about average people, but with the right wing government in place you have It a bit easier fighting your battles in direct action etc. You bring positive change via Direct action and community building, with your vote you can influence the circumstances a little bit and how hard the fight will be. But There will be a fight no matter who is in charge. But do you want to play this on hard or nightmare mode?
Brother you aren't thinking far enough!
- How many years have we allowed women to vote for them to just not stop this from happening?
- Why did we bother freeing the slaves when we just all ended up slaves to the corporate system man?
- What did we bother keeping that cold war cold for?
Seriously, thank you for the laugh. This is one weird ass twist on "ends justify the means" here. "Current situation retroactively invalidates any previous progress or the tools used to reach it" maybe? Quite a mouthful.
Great point
Both voting and not voting have the same effect. Nothing. It is not a democracy and pretending you are in one does fuck all.
- votes Kamala
- at least 51% of others do the same
- Kamala wins
Explain again how voting and not voting does the same? I know the first past the post system is horrible, but saying that voting does nothing is disingenuous.
This is false, multiple presidents won more than 51% of the vote and lost. Your elections are decided by election riggers during redistricting. It is called gerrymandering. You live in a corrupt society that uses voting and a circus every few years to mollify you. Even if Kamala won, which was basically impossible based on how the districts were drawn, you'd still live in a capitalist dictatorship that would be every bit as bad as it is now. You would still be causing wars around the world, you would still have homeless people everywhere, and most people would still be living pay check to paycheck while she did absolutely nothing. Kamala Harris is a manager of capitalism, not leader in any sense. You have absolutely no vote or say in the people who run your country, the board members of Goldman Sachs, Chase, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and the rest.
The sad thing is, trump won even the popular vote. And, even with gerrymandering, voting still makes a change, if even a small one.
Also, are you saying trump and kamala are the same lmfao
It's clear that you are completely unaware of the history of the US democratic party as controlled opposition, and how thoroughly evil they are.
Here's what the Biden administration did to Palestine:
Some more on your party:
Throw bricks at fascists, punch nazis, but also vote, ffs
Even if one accepts the argument that voting is not productive, that doesn't inherently justify not participating. There's plenty of things people do daily that are not productive or useful uses of their time.
Please demonstrate the harm caused by voting in the presidential elections.
Even if it's not productive, it takes at absolute worst case living in a hellscape without properly staffed polling places, one day out of your time every four years. I was able to do it and get back to my shit in 30 minutes this time, from the time I left home to the time I got back.
So even if it's useless, for me it was the same as sitting on my ass and watching a TV show. Explain why that is such a horrendous waste of my time that I should have instead not done it at all.
The harm is simple, people get the illusion they're making a difference and that it's enough, it also legitimizes voting as the way to change things despite ample evidence it doesn't.
This leads to Dems hating protestors, or telling protestors to protest quietly and no in the road. This leads to liberals hating the working class when they go in strike, because why didn't they just vote for better conditions. It leads to liberals hating anything useful, because they already did the only 'useful' thing and voted.
This leads to lesser evilism and accepting institutions as the foundation of society, instead of any ideology that will positively change things.
Nah, this is not harm, this is "basically, way too many people are fucking idiots". Idiots enough to think that just with "I voted"tm they have done something to really move things toward a better life for everyone
Well... true that only voting does not much help when those who make the rules are not someone you can influence. Also true that abandoning voting is just plain dumb.
Saddest part: I have no answer to the question of how to make a society that works well for everyone with people who do not understand that to ensure wellbeing of anyone the wellbeing of all and everyone must be ensured
Worse would be discouraging voting and activism. Instead try to tell people that nothing they do matters and just bend over and take it up the ass
You are free to participate in any kind of meaningless gestures and genuflection to make yourself feel better, but the US is a controlled authoritarian oligarchy with democratic window dressing and not a democracy in any meaningful way.
Look, if you aren't going to do anything else, you might as well vote. It's the best you can do. And even if you are active, you should still vote.
Right, I said you are free to do any meaningless gestures you want
You're right, if you alone can't fix everything, there's really no point to trying.
My guy, life is filled with meaningless gestures we all have to regularly do.
I frequently know the only viable solution for companywide issues at my workplace. Do I just run off on my own and shove it through because I know I'm right? No.
Even when the change is so buried in the back end that they'd never know, I participate in the meaningless gesture of informing the business folks, taking questions that they don't have the knowledge base to understand my answers, etc. It's a regular process established in my workplace, and despite it not changing anything, it must be followed.
For the price of a few hours every four years, I get to bite back at people who argue that you don't have any say if you didn't vote. And if by some miracle voting ends up effecting some change (companies drawing conclusions from the popular vote maybe?), I'm already doing the bare minimum.
Wow, a lot of words to say nothing. You don't have to do anything meaningless, it is by definition meaningless.
