Varewulf

I Am A Delight

Old queer trans woman from Norway. Mainly post in English. I write stuff sometimes. Expect bad jokes. Girls and cats are nice.


AllisonIsLivid
@AllisonIsLivid

How can voting be a necessary condition to fight for a more equitable world when anything worth voting on has been removed from the conversation?

Tell me; who do I vote for to end U.S. support for the genocide of Palestine, or even to just stop obstructing other nations efforts to end it?

Who do I vote for to break the backs of the absurd technology and media monopolists that dictate the direction our nation develops?

Who do I vote for to fix the corrupt electoral system?

Who do I vote for to shut down the barely concealed conservative conspiracy to outlaw queer people?

Who do I vote for to stop our brutal immigration practices?

Who do I vote for to end our brutal and full on punitive 'justice' system?

Who do I vote for to take climate change seriously?

Who do I vote for to free Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the rest of America's imperialist holdings?

Who do I vote for to start the process of land back? Or reparations?

Yeah, please just let me know who I should vote for to address the endless deluge of obvious problems caused by capitalism. It might help.

Oh, and how many of these voting cycles do we have to go through before anyone we voted for in the interest of change actually manages to effect change? Because a lot, A LOT, of these problems are not going to wait for us to gradually bring about a solution through our farcical political system which is defined by it's inability to respond quickly or appropriately to anything, unless it's simply reacting. You know, like a reactionary government would.

No. I can't see that voting matters at all. Nothing we need a resolution for is even on the table. Our politicians and pundits are baffled by the idea that anyone would even want to vote based on issues, and not something asinine like 'party loyalty' or 'which candidate seems stronger.' I'm not interested. It's too late for this system to both get itself in order and also act effectively toward solving the innumerable problems it fosters. It won't even acknowledge that most of these are problems, let alone that they're problems caused by this system, which could be solved with a little thought and effort.

But go ahead. Vote for Joe Biden. And then Kamala Harris. And so on. I guess we'll eventually get to A.O.C. right? She'll definitely fix things when she's the president! Yep, all we need is five or six cycles of Blue presidents, with Blue Congresses, and Blue Senates! Just uh... I don't know, wait until then. Wait between 16 and 24 years or so, and maybe somebody will finally be willing and able to address minimum wage! I'm sure by 2050 it'll be at least 10.00 federally. Sure!


AllisonIsLivid
@AllisonIsLivid

Say, who do I vote for to install a system of accountability into the government, anyway?


AllisonIsLivid
@AllisonIsLivid

But this is exactly what I mean when I say 'there's no ethical voting under Capitalism.' It doesn't matter who you vote for, you're voting against your own interests, and the interests of everyone else on Earth.


rotsharp
@rotsharp

and would not think twice before destroying your families by oversight or acceptable losses deemed to not cost enough unrest to be worth preventing

democrat mayors were among the most vicious of the uprisings. they are all killers and all committing conspiracy to genocide by participating in the processes of domination. democracy is a fig leaf on a surreal murder scene.

if the vote is uncomfortable for the current agenda, do you really trust those people who are already organizing and commanding the murder, worldwide to be like "ah yes we respect the public will to not desecrate basic human rights?" they fudge the votes with inconsistencies that never get fully resolved or investigated or just flat out ignore us.

the fact that people have not been fighting and killing in the streets about leaky, treacherous voting computers means that democracy is a pure fantasy inside the evil empire.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @AllisonIsLivid's post:

People like that are always talking about "fighting for your rights", but they never actually seem to go out to get a gun and start fighting. In fact, they seem to be opposed to the idea of guns in general. And fighting. And rights >:I

i get the frustration, part of why i had joined the pirate party here, but.... well.. i havent become miraculously more interested in politics during my membership... less rather, so... the idea of the pirate party is really neat (suggest and vote for topics instead of ppl)

but, it takes more than just joining to be of any difference.
more than just logging into their collaboration platform...

im sure if i was 20% less of a "lazy bum" i would have stayed and tried to get something done, but it would not have made much of a difference compared to just voting.

i mean, sure, the pp got into state-parliaments, but eh... mostly as a joke i guess. (i'm sure the elected pp members were all very serious, i mean the voters voted for them mostly as a joke)

in reply to @AllisonIsLivid's post:

Buy time for what? That's a question nobody ever answers. What good does staving off overt fascism do when it's polite cousin isn't interested in doing anything more than that? It keeps us stuck in a cycle of begging to be allowed to live for one more election term, under the same deteriorating conditions, until the fascist knife is brought back out to dangle over us again.

The only things liberalism does, the only things it has ever done, are run interference for the capitalist class, protect fascists as legitimate political actors and close off the left as not legitimate. From my perspective, the only thing that changes when the Ds are in power is that liberals stop pretending to care about shit, and decide the actions that were so vile under the last guy are okay now, thus further normalizing fascism and shifting things right faster than the Rs could. So absolutely fuck the electoral system. It's no more supportable than any other system of oppression.

"You don't vote for someone to make things better, you vote for them to make things worse with our consent". What a disgusting fucking attitude.

buy time to live and organize. it becomes harder to start unions when unions are illegal, and it's harder to protest when protesting is illegal. it's harder to be a communist when being a communist is illegal. and selfishly it's harder to be alive when hrt is illegal.

i'd like to stay alive. that's the point of delaying overt fascism. because if we don't, we die. and if we don't stay alive, there is literally nothing we can do.

yeah we're stuck in a cycle of begging to be allowed to live for one more election term. allowing fascist canidates in makes that cycle even harder to get out of.

I fear the hidden problem in this is that electoral politics are designed to soak up all the organizing fervor. To ameliorate legitimate efforts with platitudes and promises, and abscond with anything resembling popular action or organization. It's certainly the aim of the 'vote for us or those guys'll kill you' campaign style we've all become accustomed to.

Go out and vote if you think it'll help. But I feel like anything more than that given to the blue party is a waste of effort, and they're very practiced at making sure we waste our effort on them.

I'm still not sure it's really helping to reduce harm though. Not compared to burning down cop shops and beating up fascist agitators - activities the Liberals will never support, because they want more cops, and they think fascists are politely owed a public platform. Voting for them is inherently voting against doing anything subversive or necessary that might make change possible. I mean, we all saw them take 'abolish the police' to 'defund the police' to 'reform the police by giving them more money and resources.' Which is what they were going to do anyway. They'll do that with any issue we let them take control of, and it's our votes that give them that control. This is why 'be ungovernable' is more than a catchphrase for internet leftists. It really is a necessary part of usurping the present conditions.

they will take control of any issue regardless of if we vote for them or not. they were already doing it while trump was president. the only difference is if we don't vote for them, then we get fascists in power. which causes a lot of harm.

voting isn't against doing anything subversive. voting keeps you alive so you can do subversive things.

They can't take control of an issue they aren't given any say in. That's why they use targeted assassinations and other incentives to drag troublemakers to the table where they're forced to play by 'the rules.' Organizing needs to be invisible to them somehow. And unassailable by their methods. The problem is we never get to that stage because of how efficiently this system works to disassemble movements. Because the red and blue aren't actually opposed to one another, and they both don the imperial purple when the peasantry gets uppity. We need to treat them all as the oppressor, with equal fervor, if we want out from under their thumbs.

Anyway this just gets back to the question of 'how many coin flips have to land heads' for us to finally have enough breathing room that anything we attempt to do re: organized resistance to the status quo will make a difference in spite of the entire government, red and blue, coming at us with both barrels at the first sign of legitimate potential?

I don't think we're going to agree. I might think it's too far gone to matter, and you might think I'm nuts for not seeing the obvious benefits of participating in the cycle.