Firebombing a single building does nothing. You need coordinated violence with a massive group of people. Things that many tend to write off as “riots” like the 2020 BLM protests. My problem is never with voting, but it’s with people who tell everyone to use every tool and refuse to use political violence. Why is it ok to refuse to use 1 tool, but not the other? Both are completely necessary to achieve the end goal desired. We should be seeing more Luigis and Tyler Robinsons at the very least every month instead of telling everyone that peaceful protests and a bit of community outreach is the only things worth doing outside of election time.
i regularly get flamed by asking my fellow so-called (internet) leftists one piercing question: “how?” i’ve been called a nazi, maga, etc. because i want people to actually consider how they would go about implementing their big ideas.
it’s great to have big endgame ideas, it’s important to have a direction. but if all you have are the big endgame ideas and nothing else, you are simply not a serious person and you have a lot of political literacy you need to work on. being terminally online and jockeying with nothing but ideas is not praxis, it’s not even theory. it’s just attention whoring for updoots and likes.
Reading this reminded me of a quote. I unfortunately can’t remember for the life of me who said this, but it was something to the effect of: “I appreciate many leftist ideas. But, in my experience, if your only acceptable outcome is ‘utopia’, and your only acceptable timeline is ‘immediately’, then things aren’t likely to go your way.”
People like that are on the same political level as that one Nickelback song.
We need to democratize our workplaces
It’s important to remember the famous song “everyone I don’t like is literally hitler” by rusty cage and that it applies to a shocking number of people online
Had a very long argument on here with some “leftist” several months back where they were trying to argue voting does nothing and makes you complicit with the genocide in Gaza, but during the argument they conceded that republicans had a much more extreme on Gaza as well as were doing worse things to citizens than any democrat, and that voting doesn’t stop you from doing any other kind of activists, but they still just doubled down on “voting bad”
Genuinely insane
They boil down to:
- Paid trolls
- Genuinely mentally ill people whose decision making centers are broken
Either way the solution is not to engage with them in anyway. You will not convince them to be reasonable and your energy is better spent elsewhere.
Or ai bots that have lost the plot in the argument
Damn AI bots taking away jobs from paid trolls
The people too scared to vote because there might be a guy saying mean things about them. Are the same ones claiming they’ll be the face of the revolution.
I was banned from a certain “leftist” sub for arguing it’s stupid to dismiss voting or dislike voting instead of whatever-else because election outcomes have very practical consequences for a lot of people in the here and now and you might need to start looking at Plan B’s in the event your systemic revolution that gets rid of the US government and allows you to rebuild– a messy process that you’ve not elaborated on– doesn’t happen.
Far as I’m concerned, it’s proof some leftists are just as dumb and easily mislead as ultra conservatives; your rhetoric is indistinguishable from anti-voting memes that came right out of a Russian bot farm.
Agreed. Voters holding out for the perfect candidate infuriate me. The only “perfect” candidate is staring at you in the mirror. Outside of that, compromises are necessary.
It depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
You can do both. It’s not like voting voids some firebombing permit you never had anyway. Just mind the timing, because firebombing might end up barring you from voting.
Also, please don’t firebomb Walmart. You’d just hurt other victims of the systemic evil. The people who are to blame don’t shop there.
Unrelatedly, I hear there’s a killer recipe for flame-grilled parasite…
Felons should be able to vote!
No state’s permanently bar all felons from voting anymore. The key difference now is when they’re allowed to vote again.
For some, prisoners can vote, for some it’s after you get out of jail, and for some, it’s when your parole is up.
There are still certain crimes that do require the governor to grant permission, though.
Sorry, no can do, but how about we make one president?
/s
I guess the Tankies didn’t get the memo that Twitter is only for fascists and hookers now.
“Both sides are the same, you shouldn’t bother voting”
The bad guys win, things get worse
“See? I was right!”
You don’t think the bad guys were the guys doing a genocide?
Bill to Criminalise Being Poor narrowly passes with a 51/49 vote.
The issue is that even if you voted for the democrat every time, due to them not improving the living situation considerably you’ll always end up having the worse guy win at some point.
The only thing that would really help would be to finally start improving the living reality of the people.
Nah, if people cared about politics before Election Day we could be pushing for better candates on the primaries.
We absolutely will continue to get the choice between a shit sandwich and a shit burrito every time if we keep refusing to take part in the ingredient selection.
I’m gonna need to stop you right there.
Pushing for better candidates means defining a coherent set of qualities one wants in a candidate and then actually doing legwork for them instead of flinging shit everywhere from the lazy safety of your bedroom in your parents’ house.
That’s why we need people to vote in the primaries.
The primaries that they can decide not to have? Or that the winner didn’t really win?
at least one state had open primaries, I’d need to check if others do but we got ours from a ballot measure.
Wilding v. DNC is the court case where the DNC admitted that they don’t have to abide by the primaries because they are a private entity and can nominate whomever they want.
They admitted this in open court because so many people voted in the primaries for Bernie, and yet they nominated Hillary, that they could no longer hide this fact from the majority of the Democrat voting public.
The truth was short lived though, as that case is almost completely memory holed, and everyone pretends like none of that happened a decade ago.
I was there. I remember. Sure, vote in the primaries and vote for the “lesser evil”, but we won’t win anything without infiltrating the Democrat bureaucracy and forming unions and serious protests.
You’re supposed to “improve living reality” before and after voting, not instead of… Voting doesn’t preclude protesting or working to that end.
Does voting cause Americans some obscure form of pain or anguish?
I can see no other reason why not to vote.
I’m not USian, but here are some assorted reasons why one might choose not to vote. I do not necessarily agree (or disagree) with any of them, and this is my attempt at a reasonably balanced analysis as a person who is not an expert in politics, but has read a lot of arguments in the comments.
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Voting makes you complicit.
(Let’s say for the sake of argument that it is a given that Democrats will continue aiding Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing just as much as the Republicans, but will improve things for marginalised communities domestically.)
The argument here is that voting for a politician that will perpetuate a genocide makes you complicit in a genocide in a way that inaction does not. The counter-argument is that refusing to exercise what influence you have in the choice between make a choice between Palestinian genocide or Palestinian genocide and trans genocide makes you complicit in trans genocide. This is literally the kind of thing that the trolley problem thought experiment was made to explore. -
Voting for the lesser evil increases harm in the long run.
The argument here is that demonstrating a willingness to vote for the lesser evil - with no red lines whatsoever - incentivises Democrats to only ever be slightly less bad than the Republicans, whereas having red lines and allowing Democrats who cross them to lose will incentivise the Democratic party to change their policies. The counter-argument is that Dems haven’t exactly demonstrated that they willing to adopt certain policies even when it would be demonstrably beneficial to their election prospects, and so the pragmatic thing to do is to delay harm for as long as possible to give a better chance that non-electoral politics will shift in the interim. The counter-counter-argument is that such a shift will not occur while that harm is being delayed, which leads us on to… -
Accelerationism.
(Yes, I’m aware that what I’m about to write isn’t the original meaning of accelerationism. Don’t @ me.)
The argument here is electoral politics either can never progress toward socialism/anarchism/your-flavour-of-leftism (if you’re a leftist), or even that it is no longer even capable of halting a descent into fascism (if you’re a pessimistic liberal), and so we should simply allow shit to get fucked so that a critical mass of people have it bad enough to do some revolution and/or non-voting-based direct action about it. The counter-arguments here include, but are not limited to: a) well, that’s just like, you’re opinion, man; b) that’s an awfully big gamble to take when there’s no guarantee that what will come after will be better; and c) you should prioritise the lives of people that currently exist, now, rather than those of hypothetical future people, and immediate harm reduction is of more benefit to those people specifically.
In case any one cares, I’m English. My position on voting is that I may vote in an election where the Greens or possibly the Lib Dems stand a chance of winning, but otherwise I spoil my ballot. Yes, I’m aware that the Lib Dems are shitlibs. Still better than Labour. I will never vote Labour for as long as it remains transphobic or as long as the likes of Luke Akehurst remain in the party.
This is a spot-on analysis, especially for someone not in the US.
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There was a law a few years back that prevented giving water to people standing in line to vote. Lines in places where your vote matters can take hours. You also do not get time off work so you have to use a personal day or just get paid less that week.
Americans aren’t really allowed to take off work.
Just so people know because this is important, many states have laws requiring employers to allow time off to vote. Check your local laws. Some states even require that time to be paid.
A lot of us have been disenfranchised yet the rest of the world keeps parroting the oligarch shit about pulling ourselves up by the boot straps.
Several reasons - People are lazy AF, maybe a bit “soft disenfranchised” in terms of not preceiving that they have credible information, and also there are active demoralization campaigns going on.
All those are reasons but none are valid excuses. Get off your ass and vote. Many places allow you to vote early. Federal law requires your employer to give you time off to vote.
No excuses… inform yourself and vote.
It’s also funny how they pretend that the two actions are mutually exclusive, as if the rules of the universe won’t allow you to firebomb Walmarts the minute you cast a vote. It’s almost like discouraging people from voting is the actual purpose.
This is it. You can do harm reduction in voting for the least-worst feasible candidate, while organising/protesting on issues you disagree with them on.
E.g. In the UK, Labour is often poor on queer rights issues, but comparatively massively better than the tories/reform would be, not to mention economic and welfare policies. So I vote Labour, and attend pro-trans rights protests and criticise Labour and their stance on this issue.
You can do harm reduction in voting for the least-worst feasible candidate
The research does not support this thesis. Policy is largely independent of popularity.
Average .ml user
Yeah, things like the Democratic party supporting gay marriage after it gained critical mass in popularity are a total coincidence. The policies are just random. Same thing with the the Republican party morphing overnight into a white nationalist cult who doesn’t care about deficit spending anymore. You never know where the parties are headed, and it has nothing to do with the desires of the base and who they vote for.
No, politics is not random, politics is what economic elites want. That’s why Marxist would say it’s a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”.
Here a direct quote from the famous 2014 study by Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Disclaimer: There are sources that say this study has some oversimplifications and claim that at least “limited leverage” is possible.
But we shouldn’t settle for just limited leverage as people. Unfortunately, neither voting nor individual arson attacks will change that.
Instead we should see voting and (the limited effect it has on politics) as our tool to make more and more people realize that big business ruling everything isn’t an error in the system, but its core function. It always existed to protect the interest of the economic elites. We need to understand that the system has to be replaced not fixed.
Okay, but that quote doesn’t support the conclusion that engaging in harm-reduction via voting is instead a bad thing. In fact, it doesn’t even argue that your vote doesn’t matter. The only thing it suggests - and I can’t even say “proves” here, as your own disclaimer brings the validity of this study’s conclusions into question - is that mass voting doesn’t result in policy change from the major parties.
Voting for the party that is going to bomb brown people, rather than the one that is going to bomb brown people, round up locals who look too brown, and de-legitimize LGBTQ+ peoples of all demographics, is harm reduction worth engaging in.
I eagerly await the total failure of capitalism as much as the next socialist, but I am not condemning local minorities just to win some form of imagined moral high ground.
I have had a read through that study, and I would consider the following points striking:
- it is entirely US-centric. Extrapolation to the entire world from this study would be pretty fruitless — in the extreme example, Switzerland is a democracy that uses referenda more than most (any?) other country, and so any policy decided by one of these by necessity follows the will of the voters (though not necessarily their interests, of course).
- it is focussed on a very specific period of time — between 1981 and 2002. What’s striking about that period is Reagan - Bush - Clinton - Bush – in general a rightward swing (3/4 republican, and Clinton was a ‘third way’ Democrat). Is it particularly surprising that these governments aligned with elite interests?
To give a counter example to this study: consider the exit to the gilded age. We have a period comparable to now, where political power was bought and sold; corruption reigned. However, the government of Teddy Roosevelt made a number of moves counter to corporate interests, breaking up monopolies, reserving vast swathes of national parks, legislation protecting food and drug adulteration (note: not an unequivocal fan of TR — I am not in favour of his gunboat diplomacy).
A more recent example: under the Biden administration, there was a significant uplift in antitrust efforts. Lina Khan was appointed to the FTC, and who knows what she could have accomplished given more time. In a UK-based example, we are (finally, thank fucking god) renationalising our public services. It is absurd to think this would have happened under the opposition.
TLDR: democratic socialism is possible; your study is a snapshot of conservative administrations in America and — no shit — they aligned with corporate interests.
I mean that’s ridiculous — Brexit for one is an example of a massive change to the British political landscape that doesn’t happen without the public voting for it.
Shut the fuck up. If you don’t want to vote, then don’t vote. But you have no reason to try and stop others from voting.
His reason is that he thinks anything that hurts the west is good. Because his simply brain can only understand black and white binary arguments one time when he was 14 he discovered the USA are the bad guys.
Do you think the 250 year old country founded on genocide and slavery that has only not been at war for 20 years of its history is the good guy?
Yuuup. Recently called out a post for discouraging voting, but the author was a mod so they removed my comment. Called them out on that and they removed that comment and banned me from the sub.
gonna take a wild guess and say latestagecapitalism or progressivepolitics
But everyone is so corrupt anyway right?
/s
You must vote out every Republican, then drag every Democrat kicking and screaming to the Left.
We cannot make progress if we’re (barely at that) fighting the Republicans everytime they wanna hunt the homeless for sport or force transpeople to strip naked for perverts.
if Democrats ever pass ranked choice voting, then third parties can finally have a chance
I don’t believe that voting will save the world but neither will this comment, still I wrote it and still I vote.
At this point we’re fucked anyway but I want the opium that is slightly better governance with the democrats as the world sinks into a trash fire so I voted for them.
lemmy.ml in a nutshell
Not all of us. I’m fully convinced that the people who discourage others from voting are right wing trolls.
Don’t say that in a Lemmy.ml community. You’ll get called a Zionist and banned.
Meh I haven’t had that issue. I think the instance fighting is very silly.
I literally was banned when I detailed my experiences tutoring Chinese exchange students in university. I noted that their die hard belief that Taiwan is not a country, face to face with Taiwanese students, is not disimiliar from MAGA-brand nationalism. Good luck, but don’t mistake that you haven’t seen it for it not happening. The narrative manipulation over there is real.
Taiwan isn’t a country… It’s literally not called that, lol. It’s China. Both regions claim to be China.
You sure you were there?
Literally none of us, right? Unless, they’re trolling or don’t understand a single thing about Marxism-Leninism.
Take a look at modlogs once in awhile, especially on .ml communities.
I believe, jankforlife would say shit like that. The guy has a fetish for downvotes…
That sweet sweet Kremlin dough!
No ML would see any benefit in individual terrorist attacks, and no ML would disregard the power voting can have in regard to organizing and shattering the belief of “we can change the system from within”.
Nah, proper mls call that adventurism, because it is. Only collective action will be effective against the forces of capital.
Also, firebombing a Walmart is a grotesque waste of resources. Better to organise a worker’s collective to take it over, and only as part of a wider regional or national effort.
The no responses but copious down votes are fucking hilarious, lmao
The only based and true opinion in this whole thread. 🙏 The people voting you down are the living proof that they never even read a single page of Lenin 😭
