this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
51 points (98.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43944 readers
540 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The government is looking out for your best interests
I came here to say that.
It will if everyone votes for politicians willing to do so. We get the government we vote for.
"Go Vote!" Rings more and more hollow every day we have watch the country crumble. I am begging you to think outside the box of electoral politics because it is where dreams go to die.
Nobody voted to put kids to work at meatpacking plants and we will almost assuredly not be allowed to vote on a solution but there are children suffering dangerous jobs right now. The capitalists that run the country do not care about your votes they care about profits and they have so many more resources than us to tip things in their favor.
Voting has not and never will be enough. It is literally the bare minimum you can do and you should not pat yourself on the back for it.
--Lenin
I assure you I've thought long and hard about this.
Ah, but they did. Politicians talk about doing that and people still vote for them. That's the whole problem.
The alternative is violent revolution. If you'll study history, you'll observe that most violent revolutions result in either failure (in which case the revolutionaries are all executed) or a brutal dictatorship that no one can meaningfully challenge (see Mao, Stalin, etc). Very rarely does violent revolution have a result that could be reasonably called positive. The 1776 revolution in what would become the United States is a historical anomaly, and there is no good reason to believe that doing it again would have the same positive result.
If you think I was trying to tell you to pick up a weapon and charge at the govt you truly haven't thought about anything beyond the box.
Well then, enough mysteries. What do you propose?
Form a labor union, join a leftist org, start a mutual aid network for your community. Literally ANYHING beyond just mindlessly yelling about voting.
It's pretty hard to form a labor union as long as it remains legal to just fire the entire workplace's staff and replace them all, and that will remain legal as long as people keep voting for anti-union politicians.
Leftist organizations and mutual aid networks already exist in good number, and that's great, but it doesn't put good politicians in office. The one and only thing that decides who's in office is voting.
I would like to remind you that if voting didn't do anything, no one would be trying to stop people from voting.
You are literally just making excuses for doing nothing.. exactly as I thought. If voting changed anything they would make it illegal.
They've been trying. Various voter-suppression campaigns have been the subject of news reports for over a decade now. By your own reasoning, therefore, voting must be effective.
Those voter suppression tactics are 2 capitalist parties arguing over whose rich donors are gonna get kickbacks. Not any meaningful change.
Nonsense. Only one party has been imposing onerous ID requirements, removing polling places from opposition-heavy areas, and falsely claiming that vote-by-mail is rife with fraud.
The Dems couldn't even protect abortion rights. I don't know if you noticed but things have been going backwards. The problem is capitalism and you can't fight it from within. Dems are a lost cause and you are actively hurting those who want real change by directing their anger into an institution that doesn't give a shit about anything but their donors. You are delusional my brother and I hope one day you will see it.
They never had a sufficient majority with which to do so. (Manchin and Sinema don't count.)
Maybe it is, but that doesn't make voting ineffective. Capitalism, too, can be voted out.
Please refrain from insulting me. This is not Reddit.
Fine naive then if you find that less insulting. You are Charlie Brown trying to kick the football and the Dems are Lucy snatching the ball and making you look like a fool.
But what if every option is corrupt?
Then there isn't sufficient demand for non-corrupt candidates, so non-corrupt people aren't bothering to run.
How can voters show demand for non-corrupt candidates if their only options to vote on are corrupt candidates? How can we change this?
There was a non-corrupt option in 2016: Bernie Sanders. Almost no one voted for him.
How can we change this? Somehow convince all of America to consistently vote for the least-corrupt candidates in both the Democratic primary election and the general election. This will shift the Overton window back to where it should be.
I cannot fathom why people aren't already doing this, so I couldn't tell you how to convince them to start, but that's what has to happen. Somehow.