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Does Voting Matter This poll is closed. |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Yes |
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91 | 28.44% |
| No |
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133 | 41.56% |
| Jeb |
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59 | 18.44% |
| Bernie |
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37 | 11.56% |
| Total: | 320 votes | ||
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Ytlaya posted:This part of this post is pretty revealing about one of the key differences in perspective in this thread and elsewhere. It’s not “revealing,” get over yourself and your self-professed mystical ability to understand the lib brain. I simply think there is a bigger difference between Republicans and Democrats than you do. I also think it’s easier to “push a party left” when they start farther to the left than the other party, and I don’t see how it’s even possible to argue otherwise. (Or maybe you’re arguing that what’s essentially a standard European conservative party is as right wing as a a party that is the raging id of a purposely misinformed, ethnically based group of reactionaries, which is also certainly a take.) In any case, it’s not “Democrats” doing those awful things, it’s AMERICANS. You have to win over Americans. A majority of Americans get mad when politicians say we should decrease the size of our military. A majority of Americans get mad when you say we should let in more poor immigrants. A majority of Americans get scared when you say you’ll take away the garbage health insurance their employer “gives” them, or that their electric bill might go up a bit because we can’t keep burning coal and oil. Get rid of Democrats, just snap your fingers and they’re gone; where have all these angry and scared people gone? They’re still there. They’re still susceptible to the same cognitive distortions. They’ve still spent their entire lives building up a well of resentment and a fervent resistance to change. You have to change people’s minds about things. And by that I mean about issues, not about whether Democrats are any good or not. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 06:25
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Ytlaya posted:You're basically using the same logic libertarians use with economics/markets, but for politics/voting. This is something I've frequently seen (ironically often from the same people who make fun of this same tendency in libertarians), and I think the motivation for it is fundamentally the same - it's an excuse for defending aspects of the status quo that you either like or don't want to question. "91% of black people vote for Democrats" is not "libertarian logic", whatever that even is. I'm sorry, but even if you're careful to make it condescending complete nonsense is still nonsense. You will note that if we extend your first sentence, "this is basically libertarian if you don't read it", to other subjects, it is the same as a young earth creationist claiming Darwin is nazi because nazis talk about survival of the fittest cultures.
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Sep 10, 2021 07:19
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Aaaaand now we go back to the part of the cycle where we try to point out how what the Democrats do often has next to nothing to do with what the public at large desires. Yaaay... Also LOL at pushing the Democrats left. How exactly is that supposed to work when they are literally paid not to listen to you?
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Sep 10, 2021 07:31
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Mellow Seas posted:It’s not “revealing,” get over yourself and your self-professed mystical ability to understand the lib brain. I simply think there is a bigger difference between Republicans and Democrats than you do. I also think it’s easier to “push a party left” when they start farther to the left than the other party, and I don’t see how it’s even possible to argue otherwise. (Or maybe you’re arguing that what’s essentially a standard European conservative party is as right wing as a a party that is the raging id of a purposely misinformed, ethnically based group of reactionaries, which is also certainly a take.) Sniping aside I think you're misunderstanding the point. Mellow Seas posted:I also think it’s easier to “push a party left” when they start farther to the left than the other party, and I don’t see how it’s even possible to argue otherwise. THIS is the revealing thing Ytlaya is talking about. You're working on the idea that the Democrats are good and since they are good they can be moved to good things. The argument being made is the Democrats are bad and they will not be moved to good things because they do not want good things to happen. You can't push the scorpion into not stinging the frog by electing better scorpions. Mellow Seas posted:In any case, it’s not “Democrats” doing those awful things, it’s AMERICANS. I'm not sure what this has to do with their post can you explain? I'm also not really sure this is even true unless your argument is that voting for the lesser evil makes you complicit in all of the wrongs they've wrought and your earlier posts seems to suggest that you don't believe that. Sedisp fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 07:42
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Sedisp posted:THIS is the revealing thing Ytlaya is talking about. You're working on the idea that the Democrats are good and since they are good they can be moved to good things. No. You don't get to do this. Please quote the part of the post where I said "Democrats are good!"
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Sep 10, 2021 07:54
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Mellow Seas posted:No. You don't get to do this. Please quote the part of the post where I said "Democrats are good!" My assumption was you wanted to push them left because those are policies that are good. So unless you're making the argument that democrats are bad but they can be pushed into being the party of doing good things I quoted it right there in the post. No idea what I am apparently doing though.
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Sep 10, 2021 07:57
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You have completely missed my point, like aggressively missed it, probably because you're reading all of my words as if they're coming from some imaginary person you made up in your head. There are perverse incentives in politics, but there are also regular, proper, acceptable incentives. (I don't care if somebody crafting policy is "good". I don't even know what it means for a person to "be good" or how it's remotely relevant to this discussion. I understand even less how we can classify an inchoate group representing roughly half of the people in the country as "good" or "bad", like, what?) They aren't out there just trying to gently caress people over. They're trying to keep their jobs, because those jobs are lucrative and having those jobs makes them famous, respected, and important. If Joe Biden said "you know what, Social Security was a good idea, but it's time to get rid of it" then the Democratic party would be blasted off the god drat map. Evil Neoliberal Scum, Inc. could drop a bag full of infinity dollars of campaign cash on Joe Biden's doorstep to destroy Social Security, but he wouldn't do it because that campaign cash would be absolutely worthless, given that no amount of money will make the guy who just destroyed Social Security win an election. My point is, voting matters and the decisions that politicians make are not based on their personal morality, they are based on how many votes they can get, which is dependent on how much they can spend to get their arguments out there, how good the arguments are, and what arguments people are amenable to.
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Sep 10, 2021 08:11
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Mellow Seas posted:You have completely missed my point, like aggressively missed it, probably because you're reading all of my words as if they're coming from some imaginary person you made up in your head. Weren't you just the one who implied I was "doing something"? Maybe take your own advice. Mellow Seas posted:My point is, voting matters and the decisions that politicians make are not based on their personal morality, they are based on how many votes they can get, which is dependent on how much they can spend to get their arguments out there, how good the arguments are, and what arguments people are amenable to. This is an extremely wild argument to make considering how America does not have any sort of universal healthcare despite an unprecedentedly high level of support for decades. Politicians do things against their voters desires ALL THE TIME. If a democrat that lets say works for a union busting consulting firm is running on "I will make Roe v Wade the law of the land" and a republican is running on "Blood and soil lets annex Canada" do people who vote for the first option also want to bust unions? Did democrats support privatizing the post office when Obama tried to do that? Are nancy pelosi's constituents bipolar in their support of universal healthcare? Are you making the point that tactically voting is a bad strategy that gets lovely people in power? Sedisp fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 08:48
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To clarify, "what you were doing" is asserting that I love Democrats and want to marry them, which is something that some people do in D&D to avoid having to engage with actual arguments. Click the little "?" and read my posts in the thread. I'm sure if I thought Democrats were an unalloyed force for good it would be easy to find a quote indicating it. I guess if I were to narrow my argument down as much as I could - One can point to many, many instances where a Democrat winning an election did not make something good happen. There has not been in several decades an instance where a Democrat losing an election made something good happen.
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Sep 10, 2021 09:02
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Mellow Seas posted:To clarify, "what you were doing" is asserting that I love Democrats and want to marry them, So yeah maybe argue with the person you're responding to not the imagined evil doer. I was not implying it and I have absolutely no clue how you could argue I was asserting it. Mellow Seas posted:I'm sure if I thought Democrats were an unalloyed force for good it would be easy to find a quote indicating it. I never said your argument was that democrats were "an unalloyed force for good" I said you think that democrats (or at least the party at large) are good. If this is your main point of contention then here's an olive branch I think socialism is good I do not think every person who is a socialist is good. If someone asked me if socialism was good I would say "yes" I would not assume me saying yes to that would mean that every socialist who has ever lived is an an "unalloyed force for good" So when I said Sedisp posted:You're working on the idea that the Democrats are good and since they are good they can be moved to good things. The argument being made is the Democrats are bad and they will not be moved to good things because they do not want good things to happen. You can't push the scorpion into not stinging the frog by electing better scorpions. I am not saying you think that you want to marry all democrats I am saying you think the Democratic party is good or largely comprised of the mechanisms and people that can enact the sort of policies you want but there are not enough democrats that want to do good things currently. Mellow Seas posted:One can point to many, many instances where a Democrat winning an election did not make something good happen. There has not been in several decades an instance where a Democrat losing an election made something good happen. Okay but then how can you possibly argue that it's the voter's fault when Democrats do bad things? You can't say its the voters fault democrats doing bad things get elected but also you should vote for any democrat vs republican because them losing cannot make good things happen. Sedisp fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 09:15
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Mellow Seas posted:I simply think there is a bigger difference between Republicans and Democrats than you do. I also think it’s easier to “push a party left” when they start farther to the left than the other party, and I don’t see how it’s even possible to argue otherwise. I find this pretty fascinating when the user in question did provide a possible argument otherwise. The Democratic party is not neutral and is as actively opposed to being "pushed left" as the Republican party is. The Democrats are ideologically opposed to the people on their left flank and are opposed to giving up any ground. Whether or not the party starts out "further left" is largely irrelevant, because the party is actively resisting change. quote:In any case, it’s not “Democrats” doing those awful things, it’s AMERICANS. You have to win over Americans. A majority of Americans get mad when politicians say we should decrease the size of our military. A majority of Americans get mad when you say we should let in more poor immigrants. A majority of Americans get scared when you say you’ll take away the garbage health insurance their employer “gives” them, or that their electric bill might go up a bit because we can’t keep burning coal and oil. Get rid of Democrats, just snap your fingers and they’re gone; where have all these angry and scared people gone? They’re still there. They’re still susceptible to the same cognitive distortions. They’ve still spent their entire lives building up a well of resentment and a fervent resistance to change. This part is even more confusing. WasI there any confusion over the nationality of the populace? No one is saying if you snap your fingers and the Democrats are gone the chuds will all disappear as well? People are well aware that a large portion of the country is hostile to basic leftist principles. That's why they want to see politicians that not only say they're pushing for popular policies, but using their power to enact them? Instead of the current crop of people who promise good things, but refuse to deliver? Edit: Mellow Seas posted:
You realize Joe has been loudly advocating for cutting back on social security for his entire time in politics? To be less snippy, this is an interesting microcosm of this thread. You're pushing this as some kind of ridiculous situation that could never happen. However, the position you've chosen is actually a position Joe has, and has advocated for in the past. I'm sure you can find many examples of Democrats (and Rs for that matter) having a sudden change of heart when the cash starts to flow in. The example you've posted completely hinges on posters thinking that Joe Biden wouldn't possibly do something as absurd as destroy Social Security - an issue he has, historically, advocated for. Cow Bell fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 12:30
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Oh god, my throwaway example of “politicians care about how popular policies are” has thrown us into a referendum on “everything bad Joe Biden has ever done, 1972-present”. I’m so sorry everyone. It was not my intention to create an tiny GE thread. At least it wasn’t my conscious intention. I’m like a moth to the God drat flame. 
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Sep 10, 2021 14:52
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Mellow Seas posted:Oh god, my throwaway example of “politicians care about how popular policies are” has thrown us into a referendum on “everything bad Joe Biden has ever done, 1972-present”. I’m so sorry everyone. It was not my intention to create an tiny GE thread. At least it wasn’t my conscious intention. I’m like a moth to the God drat flame. you're a loving moron is what you are
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Sep 10, 2021 15:01
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Stringent posted:you're a loving moron is what you are Yes, I'm pretty sure that only a moron would decide to make multiple posts in this thread when he's having trouble sleeping, so although I may disagree on the particular reason that I'm a moron, I can't tell you that you're wrong.
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Sep 10, 2021 15:04
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Mellow Seas posted:Yes, I'm pretty sure that only a moron would decide to make multiple posts in this thread when he's having trouble sleeping, so although I may disagree on the particular reason that I'm a moron, I can't tell you that you're wrong. dude, i feel for you without reserve. you're still a loving moron. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 10, 2021 15:07
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I was going to reply with links and everything, but as someone who himself is fighting a terrible stomach flu right now, it's more important to get rest than to respond to poo poo online, so I ditched it. Take care of yourself, Mellow Seas.
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Sep 10, 2021 15:18
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Probably Magic posted:I was going to reply with links and everything, but as someone who himself is fighting a terrible stomach flu right now, it's more important to get rest than to respond to poo poo online, so I ditched it. Take care of yourself, Mellow Seas. Thanks bud, you too. Plenty of fluids! I actually have some nice plans this weekend so I'm going to delete the app from my phone and enjoy myself. I'll never post in this thread again - not me, or my children, or my children's children! For one week. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 15:20
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Mellow Seas posted:Oh god, my throwaway example of “politicians care about how popular policies are” has thrown us into a referendum on “everything bad Joe Biden has ever done, 1972-present” This is most assuredly not what is happening. You posed an example that can be immediately discredited by Joe Biden's publicly available history of comments. It's not a referendum on everything bad he's done. It's pointing out that your example meant to depict something absurd, is actually an example of something completely plausible. This isn't the first time people on the "voting matters" have made this kind of argument, where only loonies would believe things that can be discovered by listening to the words of a politician or observing their voting records/political history.
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Sep 10, 2021 18:38
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the problem is that even if the Democrats came out and said directly that they wanted to get rid of (or privatize, which they've been trying to do for decades) social security liberals are still going to vote for Democrats because of the specter of t-t-t-TRUMP!!! (or Marjorie Taylor Green, or Madison Cawthorne, or the MyPillow guy, or who the gently caress ever). There's every incentive for them to move right as much as they please -- because who else are you gonna vote for? -- and no mechanism to move them left. What's that? You're not voting for Biden again because you don't want him to eliminate social security? You don't want TRUMP to win again, do you? etc. etc. etc. If you disagree with this assessment, please think about one thing: if you voted for Joe Biden, and 2024 is, once again, Trump vs. Biden, what would it take for you to not vote for Joe? How bad would it have to get? Pretty bad, I bet. The Democrats are only limited to that exact level of bad, for now, until the GOP gets worse and they can get worse in turn.
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Sep 10, 2021 19:51
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Mellow Seas posted:They aren't out there just trying to gently caress people over. They're trying to keep their jobs, because those jobs are lucrative and having those jobs makes them famous, respected, and important. The bit missing at the end is "without pissing off the people with the money". That's at least part of what people mean when they say that voting doesn't matter: You can't vote for things most rich people would oppose, because the politicians are trying to keep their (lucrative) jobs, and if they support policy that hurt their donors/business connections, they might suddenly find themselves in a much less lucrative position. Mellow Seas posted:One can point to many, many instances where a Democrat winning an election did not make something good happen. There has not been in several decades an instance where a Democrat losing an election made something good happen. Trump committed America to pulling out of Afghanistan, and he was deeply incompetent at enforcing America's will on other countries. I'd say those were good things? I don't mean to say that Trump was a net good, but saying that Democrats losing never makes good things happen seems like an exaggeration. I hope you manage to fall asleep.
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Sep 10, 2021 19:53
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Nevermind
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Sep 11, 2021 00:04
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what on earth does the thread title mean lol
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Sep 11, 2021 04:42
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Herstory Begins Now posted:what on earth does the thread title mean lol People felt the original title was too broad of a question so it was closed and then reopened when the sewage backed up into USNews with this title. I'm guessing it's supposed to be a move away from the question of whether voting "matters" to a broader discussion on voting in general and the merits of "lessor of two evils" style voting that is commonly advocated.
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Sep 11, 2021 12:57
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Elections are about manufacturing consent. When corporate Democrats win, they claim it's because voters actually love all their policies and want more corruption and graft. When they lose, well... https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1435356463430504452
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Sep 12, 2021 00:23
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Continuing the discussion from USPOL. I'm getting tired of being told that the sky is falling, and only voting for the Democrats can stop it. Trump didn't magically turn the US into a fascist dictatorship in his four years. He certainly made things worse in a lot of ways, but it also doesn't help that Biden and the Dems don't seem interested in fixing a lot of those problems. If the sky actually is falling, it seems like the Ds are more interested in capitalizing off of the fear of the sky falling, rather than actually stopping it.
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Sep 19, 2021 03:29
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I've said it before and I'll say it again- if they functionally cannot govern and improvements are so small that when they're added together it's still approaching a number close enough to zero to be called zero then it doesn't much matter what the party is offering, especially when that is then means tested, or cannot actually be delivered, the candidates are largely owned by lobbyists and look out for interests of corporations, and the parties have institutional undemocratic means to protect their status quo so as to be impossible to change from within. To elucidate my first point, though- oh hey the DoJ will protect women in Texas who get abortions. But abortions were extremely difficult to come by there already. The clinics that did exist, in secret often hundreds of miles away from the women that needed their services, are shuttered. The people that worked in them had to operate with a high degree of information and physical security because the clinics would be targeted legally, by protests, threats and terrorism. So great of the justice department to offer to protect no one. This isn't the integration fight and it's clear that congress is incapable of acting to codify a constitutional right that states effectively minimized before stripping it altogether which the Supreme Court dutifully allows. So to get protection from the DoJ women need to do what? Leave the state and go somewhere else to get an abortion or even just health services provided by clinics then return, then be found out, then be targeted by state or local authorities then the DoJ will swoop in to free them. (But not if the person is targeted in the courts because that has it's own separate self-correction mechanisms despite that fact that it'll still be ruinous even when the ACLU steps in to take the case!) The democrats are doing nothing to enforce the rights of women or protect them from harm and are hiding behind the antidemocratic filibuster in order to continue to do nothing. Red states and the Supreme Court have effectively used their own antidemocratic strategy to take away the rights of people and nothing is being done about it. They have control and they know it. This can be applied to voting in states where it has been made legally impossible for candidates the state legislatures don't like to win. It applies to a lot of other things, like education. There is a myopic focus that if we just give them a chance, give them another chance, believe hard enough, vote hard enough then the problems will eventually be addressed... except they aren't even being addressed and even if they are through legislative means, it still has to have an executive with the guts to go in and enforce it (instead of, say, offering up a bunch of money to get new businesses claiming they will enter the meatpacking industry to compete when the real solution is to bust the monopolies/trusts). If the situation on the ground is under the control of people who don't care what the democrats say and are going to enforce their own version of what they think is right and the courts are going to let it slide, or worse, affirm it, then what exactly do the democrats plan to do and why should I vote for them to dither while they imagine some far-off fantasy version of what voters *really* need (because they know best)?
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Sep 19, 2021 04:16
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Fister Roboto posted:Continuing the discussion from USPOL. I think the left is too idealistic. I don’t mean that in the sense of their political objectives, but rather the means they’d be willing to take to achieve them. If you want political power you need a narrative that achieves traction and you need enough people to get something in return for supporting you. For me, voting for the Democrats or whatever flavour of centrist neoliberal party is in your country is a holding action to prevent total authoritarianism from stopping the potential to enact a more socialist oriented policy. It ensures that democracy persists in America until the left can get its poo poo together and do something different. An america ruled by the Democratic Party has sufficient venues and places for the left to organize. A Trumpian america becomes a ironclad police state where the cops will zealously persecute any kind of political movement that threatens the system. I’ve talked about this repeatedly in other threads but what kind of leverage do we have on the Democrats that others don’t? What reason do they have to listen to us beyond “it’s the right thing to do”. They have none. Fundamentally I believe that politics is a transactional concept that requires you to get into bed with a different variety of people who each control some kind of institution that gives you your political legitimacy. In many countries you need to do what the army tells you or represent the army in some way or else the army will depose you for someone they approve of. In Amercia it’s less the army and more a collection of extremely wealthy business interests who’ve co-opted the political process. Vaguely appealing to “the people” for legitimacy is kind of a fools errand when you make your peace with these facts. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that any power broker in America can gain from “the left”. The system works just fine for the people who are allowed to vote. So who does the left have in their corner? All the losers of this system. The poor, the sick, the disabled, second class citizens and folks who have no power and live their entire lives in fear of persecution or just economic destitution. These greedy senators don’t give a gently caress about people like that. The truth of the matter is that people as a whole are easy to manipulate. Almost every major revolution in human history starts out over kitchen table issues like famines, recessions or poor material conditions for the poor. People rage out and start causing a chaotic mob violence type scenario usually over a catalyst or spark like Rodney King for example. But at it’s core the body of every major revolt is always just a raw emotional reaction to economic destitution or extreme oppression. Once these movements take off they usually burn out when the anger burns out and people go back to the old state of simmering tensions. In rare circumstances, Revolution happens. Usually it happens in liberal elite coffee shops led by lawyers, bankers, professionals and people of higher class backgrounds. Most people don’t even realize that all the deputies elected after the French Revolution and many of its leadership were well to do lawyers living in urban zones. “The people” are just a river current you channel into a water wheel or a dam that generates the political power you need to achieve your goals. The real game is played by people of upper classes who fight eachother using regular folks as pawns and they manipulate them with the media or the church. For example noted authoritarian and arch conservative; Otto Von Bismarck famously pushed the king of Prussia to embrace universal manhood suffrage. He did not do this out of the goodness of his heart. He did not do it because he was a crypto liberal. Rather it was part of a series of calculated moves to cannibalize the more popular liberal reforms proposed by socialists and liberals who opposed the authoritarian monarchist order. Bismarck knew that universal manhood suffrage means the rural/agricultural peasant class will vote conservative and significantly outvote the liberal, cosmopolitan socialist elite. Many of history’s proudest socialists had almost nothing to do with working class or peasant class people who in many cases supported the status quo or had no major political alignment with socialism as a concept. So where am I going with this? The Dems could control a trifecta with super majorities in both houses and it won’t mean gently caress all without a political coalition that enables them. Corporations, the military industrial complex, Wall Street, the FBI and the other 3 letter agencies will not tolerate a leftist government. They will all engage in reckless sabotage if a leftist government took office. Companies will simply start firing people or stop making profits and they have enough cash to outlast a 2 year congressional majority. Likewise the news media will launch an aggressive campaign to discredit and destroy your government if you dare so much as move a milimeter left. In a nutshell the left can’t do what’s necessary because they have no allies who have any political power. They don’t control the police, the army, the media or any other institution except maybe education and a few vestigial unions in the public service sector. All the traditional organizations and levers of power the left had were smashed by Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s. You can’t stop air traffic control, you can’t stop the railways or the ports. You don’t control gently caress all. So if the left wants to win, it needs ideologically committed people who can infiltrate major organizations like the media, military, the police or other institutions which have some form of political power. When those institutions are controlled they can then provide the political legitimacy that might sway the Democrats in a particular direction. Until then, the corporations, banks and the media they control get to dictate policy and the Congress is their mouth piece. I’m sorry but this is how it must be done. To win power you need to make deals with bad people and have some real sons of bitches in your corner. They need to benefit from your left wing world order somehow and since everyone who matters is bought and paid for by capital there’s no way to fix the this poo poo without having friends in high places.
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Sep 19, 2021 05:53
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Kraftwerk posted:I think the left is too idealistic. I don’t mean that in the sense of their political objectives, but rather the means they’d be willing to take to achieve them. If you want political power you need a narrative that achieves traction and you need enough people to get something in return for supporting you. For me, voting for the Democrats or whatever flavour of centrist neoliberal party is in your country is a holding action to prevent total authoritarianism from stopping the potential to enact a more socialist oriented policy. It ensures that democracy persists in America until the left can get its poo poo together and do something different. An america ruled by the Democratic Party has sufficient venues and places for the left to organize. A Trumpian america becomes a ironclad police state where the cops will zealously persecute any kind of political movement that threatens the system. A lot of this falls flat for me though because you have several instances just this year alone of what happens when someone with any sort of Leftist cred actually DOES win. Alluva sudden, it's all blue hands on deck trying to pull the rug out from under them. A socialist won the mayoral election? Well hey, who wants to kick around the idea of abolishing the office of mayor? Totes coincidental, we actually had this idea during the previous guy *WINK* The establishment candidate eats poo poo and loses a primary? They were fully prepared to break the rules to let him back on as an independent despite that being against all of the rules until a judge overturned it on appeal. The Dems will fight harder to kneecap anyone to their Left than they'll ever fight to oppose the Right.
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Sep 19, 2021 06:29
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Kraftwerk posted:I think the left is too idealistic. I don’t mean that in the sense of their political objectives, but rather the means they’d be willing to take to achieve them. If you want political power you need a narrative that achieves traction and you need enough people to get something in return for supporting you. For me, voting for the Democrats or whatever flavour of centrist neoliberal party is in your country is a holding action to prevent total authoritarianism from stopping the potential to enact a more socialist oriented policy. It ensures that democracy persists in America until the left can get its poo poo together and do something different. An america ruled by the Democratic Party has sufficient venues and places for the left to organize. A Trumpian america becomes a ironclad police state where the cops will zealously persecute any kind of political movement that threatens the system. Your bourgeois allies will stab you in the back the nanosecond you are no longer useful and the establishment will take steps to force you out if you try to leverage the system to get your people in. I’m not just talking about creative rule changes either. If the situation gets heated enough outright assassinations aren’t off the table. At least, they haven’t been in literally every other country that’s tried to take money and power away from US business interests. Also: quote:I’ve talked about this repeatedly in other threads but what kind of leverage do we have on the Democrats that others don’t? What reason do they have to listen to us beyond “it’s the right thing to do”. They have none. We can withhold our votes and just let them lose. gently caress em’. If they want their cushy jobs they can actually do some poo poo that helps people. Of course for this to work Democrats would actually have to have the self respect to tell the party to go gently caress itself and LOL that ain’t happening.
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Sep 19, 2021 08:20
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the_steve posted:A lot of this falls flat for me though because you have several instances just this year alone of what happens when someone with any sort of Leftist cred actually DOES win. Alluva sudden, it's all blue hands on deck trying to pull the rug out from under them. what are the several instances? There's the mayor of buffalo and who else?
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Sep 19, 2021 08:28
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the_steve posted:The establishment candidate eats poo poo and loses a primary? They were fully prepared to break the rules to let him back on as an independent despite that being against all of the rules until a judge overturned it on appeal. "They" and "The Dems" in this case being one judge, who was immediately overruled
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Sep 19, 2021 08:39
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Herstory Begins Now posted:what are the several instances? There's the mayor of buffalo and who else? The entirety of the Nevada Dems running a party in exile?
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Sep 19, 2021 09:02
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readingatwork posted:Your bourgeois allies will stab you in the back the nanosecond you are no longer useful and the establishment will take steps to force you out if you try to leverage the system to get your people in. I’m not just talking about creative rule changes either. If the situation gets heated enough outright assassinations aren’t off the table. At least, they haven’t been in literally every other country that’s tried to take money and power away from US business interests. Well this is why left wing governments often fail. They either get reduced to paranoid military dictatorships or they get destabilized economically via international trade embargoes and attrition. These debates aren’t new. These are battles we’ve been waging since the political centre first betrayed the left in 1848. I’m not saying you should make allies with bourgeois organizations or at least I don’t think you should count on them to prop up a leftist political movement. They will of course betray you as soon as it’s convenient. Suppose America does fall into some kind of fascist authoritarian society. Whatever resistance that rises up from this will be progressive and multiracial by default. Itll be an alliance between socialists and economically liberal centrists whose short term goal will be to overthrow whatever authoritarian government is currently in place. As soon as they succeed the left will get jettisoned and the right will once again engage in counterrevolution. When I talk about making deals with sons of bitches I mean people who aren’t necessarily morally scrupulous but whose self interest can serve your interests if you know how to use them correctly. We are all waiting and hoping for some kind of critical mass moment where a left wing revolutionary (peaceful or violent) can place themselves at the head of a movement and politically seize power to make society a more equitable place. My belief is that it’s impossible to enact such top down approaches. You’ll never succeed if your goal is to make the government be a more socialist and left wing place. Instead what the left should be doing is turning away from the government and other neoliberal institutions and start forming their own institutions that let them carve out some semblance of local power within their communities. If your community has a food problem then you should start a semi political entity designed around providing food for that community by pooling the resources of like minded people. If you have an education problem then you should seek to find ways to educate or train people if they can’t afford to go to college so they can at least perform work outside of the government system. Basically you need to start building institutions independently of government when the local or national government has failed to perform its duty to protect its citizens. Basically my view is that vanguard leftist politics doesn’t work. You need to make parallel institutions that try to model what you expect from your government and then carve out local bases of power that can be used as a springboard for a national movement. There’s no mental basis for people to invest themselves in left wing movements if they haven’t had the educational background to understand how they work in the first place. You have to show them what happens. And it has to be done independently, at the grass roots level and in parallel to the government. If you succeed you’ll automatically control entire voting blocs within your area. In the past parallel institutions of this nature were churches and unions and they controlled enough voters to give a lot of politicians extreme heartburn. There’s no reason why we can’t start from scratch and do it again. Of course all this fails if the left isn’t somewhat unified and laser focused on particular key policy objectives. We’re often plagued by infighting and splinter apart the moment we get the slightest victory as the various interest groups squabble over policy minutiae while the fascists are at the gates waiting to kill us all. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Sep 19, 2021 |
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Sep 19, 2021 15:31
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Herstory Begins Now posted:what are the several instances? There's the mayor of buffalo and who else? State of Nevada Democratic Party State of California Democratic Party State of Florida Democratic Party Those are just three off the top of my head, parties that resorted to dirty tricks or outright steals or simply rules tilted in favor of corrupt incumbents that make challenges pretty impossible. For example in CA in order for the state party to endorse a challenger to an incumbent, no matter how ill-suited they may be to retain their job (*cough*feinstein*cough), delegates to the state convention have to reach 2/3 of any vote for endorsement, rather than a simple majority. That doesn't seem very small D democratic, but it does have the effect of shutting out leftists. Same for states like Maryland in which elected Dems line up behind the GOP candidate for governor rather than rally in favor of the leftist. If the future of our nation depended on Democrats getting elected then why do high-profile Dems like Biden give speeches praising GOP candidates like Fred Upton (who has probably voted against Biden's entire agenda since the latter became president)?
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Sep 19, 2021 15:56
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Isn't the Nevada party in much better shape after all the old guard quit? Isn't this a net positive? We have to stop thinking that the existing structure will support our ends and see overturning of that structure as progress. Who cares if they throw a tantrum or try to destabilize a movement with dirty tricks. We have to be able to overcome that and keep moving. We know it's coming so whining about it seems demotivating.
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Sep 19, 2021 16:07
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Isn't the Nevada party in much better shape after all the old guard quit? Isn't this a net positive? I think people are scared the parallel anti-party is going to spoil the election.
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Sep 19, 2021 16:08
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Who cares if they throw a tantrum or try to destabilize a movement with dirty tricks. We have to be able to overcome that and keep moving. We know it's coming so whining about it seems demotivating. So I like to use an analogy of a group of people in a locked room when talking about how to deal with the establishment cheating at democracy. Inside this room are some limited resources and the people inside need to figure out how to best distribute them. There is also no outside authority to police behavior so if you punch somebody there are no consequences unless people in the room create them. Since one's actions have no consequences the natural way for the group to solve disputes over resources early on is through fistfights, leaving the strongest people (or at least the faction with the most fists) to make these decisions by force. However this is a pain in the rear end to maintain since violence is messy work and even if you succeed 100% of the time you'll still get a black eye from time to time. As such, a compromise gets put in place in the form of a game people play in order to mediate major decisions. Let's say it's chess but the specific game doesn't matter. Now, this is a loving stupid way to decide things for many reasons but it has the advantages of being non-violent and giving smaller groups a chance to be heard (they just have to play the game skillfully enough) and everybody is satisfied with this for a while. However over time a problem starts to pop up wgere the leading faction starts to cheat at the game. You'll be playing and suddenly your opponent will say "hey! what's that over there!?" and then your knight will be gone. There's a referee put in place to stop that sort of thing, but he works for the leading faction and ~for some reason~ never seems to see anything happen. Which leads us to the important question: What are the other factions supposed to do in this situation? When I hear liberals talk about just voting harder I think about this chess game and it sounds like somebody saying "It's fine guys! Next time we'll just watch our pieces extra hard!" which sounds less like a real way forward (the leading faction can just find another way to cheat and there will be no negative consequences for doing so) and more of a desperate rationalization for the game itself. After all, the alternative is tossing the game aside entirely and going back to solving things with fisticuffs which in addition to being an ugly course of action has no guarantee of success. Plus the system works fine for the person saying that (they are good at chess so they get extra rations sometimes) so really is it so bad that some people die of starvation because they can't overcome a rigged game? Like, I kind of get what you're saying. Yes, the establishment *will* use dirty tricks and we should be realistic and expect such. However just shutting up about it feels more like an attempt to keep people invested in the rigged game than a serious attempt to deal with the realities of the system we find ourselves in. That's not being a mature adult, it's being afraid of confrontation and struggle. It's understandable, but not helpful. Ugly though it may be, I think things are getting bad enough to where the chess game needs to be tossed aside and fisticuffs resumed. That doesn't need to mean *literal* fisticuffs, mind you. We can utilize non-violent tools like unionization, strikes, shutting down profit streams, civil disobedience, and direct action to the same effect. But some sort of direct confrontation outside the traditional channels is necessary. Compared to that I just don't see "vote harder and shut up about all the cheating so people don't feel sad and stop voting" producing much. readingatwork fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Sep 19, 2021 |
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Sep 19, 2021 18:47
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Fister Roboto posted:Continuing the discussion from USPOL. Does voting matter? posted:This can hardly be described as a "stab in the back". If you read the article: The machinery of government is ultimately impervious to voter pressure. Voting, at best, pauses the continued destruction of the environment for a few months before the very best efforts the 'good' party can muster get swept aside, and nobody can stop or change this.
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Sep 20, 2021 02:37
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readingatwork posted:So I like to use an analogy of a group of people in a locked room when talking about how to deal with the establishment cheating at democracy. Inside this room are some limited resources and the people inside need to figure out how to best distribute them. There is also no outside authority to police behavior so if you punch somebody there are no consequences unless people in the room create them. Your chess analogy reminded me of waaaay the gently caress back when I was a kid, and I watched a segment of the 700 Club because I had no idea what it was, I was just looking for cartoons or something to watch. Anyways, there was this little commercial looking segment of this guy playing chess against the Devil. The guy puts the Devil in checkmate and is all "Checkmate, I win!" and the Devil just goes "Lol" and moves pieces around to where the guy is the one in mate. The guy just keeps going "That's not fair!" and the screen fades to black while the Devil is laughing. Which honestly strikes me as a similar analogy, since even when the Left leaning regular guy wins, the DNC Devil is just going to decide they won anyways.
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Sep 20, 2021 03:46
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Nix Panicus posted:The machinery of government is ultimately impervious to voter pressure. Voting, at best, pauses the continued destruction of the environment for a few months before the very best efforts the 'good' party can muster get swept aside, and nobody can stop or change this. The post you quoted was written by me, and contrary to your conclusion, it's actually proof that voting does matter. The conservative judge who issued the preliminary injunction on the pause of lease sales was appointed by Donald Trump.
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Sep 20, 2021 04:32
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