Should I vote Republican to slow down full blown let it all hang out fascism because I don’t want to vote Democrat? I am trying to hack a machine that just needs recycled. What a dusty old thing. I have had it with both. The more both parties go at each other the greater the odds of a environment ripe with revolutionary potential. Like I know things are only going to get worse. Has anyone else thought of being a obstructionist? Like some how I am removed from the material conditions. Voting reminds me of the plaform at 3:10.
My take, if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain, simple as that.
Why?
Why should voting status be the be all and end all of who gets their grievances taken seriously?
It isn’t the end all and be all, it is the first step. If you don’t take the opportunity given to you to address your grievances, why should you expect others to do it for you?
I would posit that for many in Europe and America voting has not once addressed a single major grievance. What would you say of those who do not vote as it has never proven a real avenue for systemic change in the West and instead organise outside the system? Do they have the right to have their grievances heard?
I don’t accept the premise that voting has never led to change.
Maybe they’re talking about something like this Key & Peele sketch?
You can not accept it all you please and yet under the western capitalist system it remains true.
[citation needed]
Women’s suffrage, the abolition of (chattel) slavery (as the Americans Thirteenth Amendment explicitly preserved involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, laying the basis for coerced prison labour and the modern prison-industrial complex), the eight-hour working day, the weekend, the dismantling of Jim Crow and legal segregation, the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, partial Irish independence from the British Empire, and universal local-government suffrage and civil rights for the Catholic and nationalist population of Northern Ireland and more. None of these things were voted into existence but won through struggle. Voting under liberal democracy has not once been a real driver of meaningful systemic change.
You’re citing examples of other forms of redress, not disproving the effectiveness of voting. I never claimed voting was the only (or even the most effective) form of redress, only that it is one.
Don’t bother responding, you have nothing of value to offer other than your absurd soapbox.
In history, we learn two things. Either you can work within the system by voting, pressuring the government to change its stance, or striking like the French. Or, you can spark a revolution to change the current order.
If you don’t vote, you’re being passive, like Humpty Dumpty, just looking at the world pass you by without making your mark.
This simply does not follow. Would you call those who work within unions, direct action groups, etc. (avenues that have provably lead to real change while voting in the west never has) passive? Using voting as some grand gauge is immensely flawed (especially given the system in the west where voting is nothing but a spectacle that has no ability to provide systemic change and truly address the major grievances of the masses).
I would expect that people involved in unions and direct action groups to vote on top their other work. It’s the smallest thing you can do, if you can’t do that, why should I trust you to have done anything else?
Because as I posited at the beginning of this exchange many people have come to realise that in the west under the current liberal democratic system voting is nothing more than spectical that provides no real avenue for meaningful change. All that being said I am not against voting just that the idea of taking what is under the current system in the west a meaningless action as the be all and end all of who to take seriously is silly.