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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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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.
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:
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.
Hey I agree with you on pretty much everything else, but the Vietnam and Iraq war protests are bad examples of efficacy. They were necessary, and should have been bigger, but both those wars went on for like 20 years.
With Vietnam I think the US protest movement played a significant role in the defeat(the docu Sir no Sir! has a good overview of it), less so with recent US wars. But that's also due to the size and growth of the US police state, it's imprisoning of activists, and it's better ability to minimize the efficacy of protests.
But ya I agree with the US rightward turn since the 1980s, it's union and anti-war movements have been on life support. The historian J Sakai thinks that US unionism fully died by then (especially if you look at stats like strikes per year, which dropped to single digits).
Yeah the decline of union membership is what I feel really limits working class political power in the US. We've basically ceded all our power (I understand the reasons are not so simple), and our concept of solidarity. I don't know how we can really build any persistent (and effective) movement without organized labor.
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!
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
Hey Dessalines, have you considered that you can vote and do other things, like activism?
I'm not joining your cult. You've given me no good reasons to join it.
Ah, dodging the question, common tankie behaviour.
They directly answered your question in its entirety.
They didn't
Both voting and not voting have the same effect. Nothing. It is not a democracy and pretending you are in one does fuck all.
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:
Yep, the US Democratic party is not good, both parties are basically parties of the rich, but Republicans are so much worse.
Two different ones, similar, but different still.
Yep, one has a donkey mascot and one an elephant. They are definitely different.
Republicans would never pass something like this
ACA was a copy of a republican (mitt romney's) plan, and it entrenches the parasitic middleman insurance industry and forces you to pay them, and them to accept you as customers. The US insurance industry is the largest and most useless money-sucking middleman in the world. In most countries this would be a far-right scheme, but its considered "progressive" by US standards.
They literally took Romney Care and made it worse. What are you talking about?
Throw bricks at fascists, punch nazis, but also vote, ffs