It’s not wrong to say regulatory capture is a problem, it just doesn’t go far enough. The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
Right, and if voting was useless, why do politicians want to take it away from demographics they hate? Why would people have to fight so hard for it?
If it really didn’t matter and it really was as you say it is, then they wouldn’t need to distract people.
If you really held onto this stance, then you can’t be mad at people who voted for Trump because it’s all smoke and mirrors anyway and he was picked with what, some shadow government?
Is organizing a revolution so easily distracted that spending like, a little part of a day casting a ballot something that’ll completely undermine everything? Is it that fragile?
Is organizing a revolution so easily distracted that spending like, a little part of a day casting a ballot something that’ll completely undermine everything?
Literally the other person replying next to you said it’s a useless system distracting people. You don’t have to say “don’t vote” exactly to say not to vote.
Also there’s a bunch of people on here saying not to vote so…
Right, so voting is a pointless distraction that… The oligarchs still need to use for some reason.
If the people in power didn’t need to get votes, we wouldn’t be having elections. They would ignore all pretense and just make the whole country into a company town.
But hey, you want conservatives to have an easier time taking power with the system as is? Go ahead and don’t vote.
Right, so voting is a pointless distraction that… The oligarchs still need to use for some reason.
We know the reasons, and we know the oligarchs will dispense with the pretense of elections when they hinder more than they help. Fascism isn’t a grassroots movement; it’s an astroturfed one funded by oligarchs. They fully unleash it when they become frustrated with bourgeois democracy.
Except you’re ignoring when I’ve said that we should change voting laws so third parties are viable. If I only wanted Democrats in office I wouldn’t be supporting voter reform.
They often openly say they think “the masses” are too stupid to be allowed to rule a society. Liberals wear the mask of “democracy” but deep down think of themselves as benevolent plutocrats in waiting, with deep contempt for the average person in the imperial core and genocidal contempt for the average person in a Designated Enemy society.
That isn’t really what people are saying. It’s more that voting cannot bring about socialism, while revolution can, and that therefore treating voting as the primary political outlet for people hampers the organizing efforts needed for revolution.
Revolution: Takr away window dressing like culture, and the crushing majority of earth’s population share our class interest. Most humans want to live in a society focused on taking care of humans, and many revolutions have succeeded or even flourished despite full-spectrum seige from the capitalist bloc.
Reform: reform has been tried for a hundred fifty years and all there is to show for it is two and a half world wars, many capitalist genocides, and an entrenched neo-aristocracy of openly fascist, pedophile death cultists who have kicked off a mass extinction and are driving us towards nuclear apocalypse.
Every communist revolution that survived the 20th century is now either absolutely thriving or at least weathering extreme US seige, and the ones that weathered their seiges already have begun to thrive (see the DPRK). China is currenty the best hope for the survival of any large scale human civilization.
Meanwhile, every capitalist society where people chose reform has backslid or been backsliding into fascism. And at this point, we are out of time to keep trying gentle .methods. Capitalism is the cancer killing the only extraordinary gem of a planet where plants grow and creatures roam, and it’s in part thanks to the history of denial of how bad it is, the continual, suicidal insistence on taking half measures in the face of overwhelming warning that has allowed it to metastasize to such a horrifying degree that our only options now are the risky, painful surgery of revolution or certain death.
Nobody assumes revolution will be smooth and painless, what’s important is that it’s necessary for a better world. We have to work as hard as we can to make sure it works out as smoothly as possible.
I have never said that you aren’t allowed to vote, more that voting is far less important than organizing. You are disparaging organizing in favor of voting on the grounds of voting being better, my question is which issue is voting better for?
People laughed, saying a vote for Kamala was pointless, and a vote for genocide, but everyone has suffered under this atrocity of an administration. I don’t know that Kamala would have called Marxists terrorists.
Gotten people who can do better into positions of power? Kept people who can do harm out? Gotten rid of the feudal system where you only have power of you’re genetically born into it?
If voting didn’t matter, why would people fight and die for it? If voting didn’t matter, why do conservatives want you to not vote? If voting didn’t matter, why bother pretending and gave elections?
Why should you give up your agency over your government?
Or are you cool with the people who didn’t vote and kinda let Trump take over?
Gotten people who can do better into positions of power? Kept people who can do harm out?
Trump won even by popular vote this last time. You sure you want to make the claim that it’s voting in particular that gets people who can “do better” in positions of power? How can a person be so dense as to think that voting is what keeps those who do harm out of powerful positions when every president, certainly at least within living memory, has wrought unmitigated harm upon the world?
Gotten rid of the feudal system where you only have power of you’re genetically born into it?
LOL. You honestly think voting is what ended feudalism?! And you think people in power now weren’t born into it?! Behold, the intellectual heights of liberal “thought.”
If voting didn’t matter, why would people fight and die for it?
Right, 'cause no one ever fought and died for something that wasn’t true or didn’t work the way they thought. (facepalm).
Also, if voting did work as you say, why do people still have to fight and die for their basic livelihoods and the well-being of their children, let alone the myriad other reasons people to this day are fighting and dying? There are just so many ways in which these questions reveal a deep and fundamental misunderstanding about how material reality works, I don’t know where to start. Oh and wait, didn’t you just say that voting ended feudalism? I guess all that fighting and dying was the sideshow, just done for emphasis apparently.
If voting didn’t matter, why do conservatives want you to not vote?
Why do you, a liberal, not want conservatives to vote? Or maybe you do, in which case you should be content with Trump who was voted in. But to answer your question about conservatives: it’s rather obviously because they’re the part of the machine that generally has less popular support for the time being. This isn’t rocket science. Funny how despite that fact, conservatives still have as much and usually more power than the liberal “progressives,” I thought this voting thing (that ended feudalism! lol) was supposed to magically solve all of that.
If voting didn’t matter, why bother pretending and gave elections?
Because people like you believe the lie that it gives them some sort of power and control over the systems that rule them. Obviously. In other words, it clearly does work miracles to placate doofuses.
Why should you give up your agency over your government?
You shouldn’t, and that’s the point. Only a fool thinks voting within this system is exercising their agency.
In response to all of your “iF vOtInG dIiNt WoRk tHeN WHY” questions, how about this: If voting did work to give ordinary people power, why would your bourgeois overlords (who literally control more absolute wealth and exercise greater relative power and control than any rulers at any point in human history) let you do it? Answer: they wouldn’t.
Or are you cool with the people who didn’t vote and kinda let Trump take over?
Ooooh, so it’s all about people who realized they were only given shit options to vote for, they’re the real problem here, not the people who… umm… voted for Trump? According to you voting has all this amazing magical power to effect the world. But the people who actually used that supposed power for their choice of Trump aren’t actually what put Trump in the presidency let him “take over.” No, you think the problem is the people who can correctly identify a rigged system. Trump won the election via people doing exactly what you say they should do, by voting, but when it’s not the outcome you wanted, you say the man who literally won the popular vote “took over” and proceed to blame that “takeover” on the people who chose not to use that supposedly great power to endorse genocidaires. My god liberals are such a fucking joke it still gobsmacks me somehow.
Yeah, you’re making a lot of assumptions and accusations about what I believe and that’s just full on strawmaning.
You go back and forth on how voting is useless than talk about how voting got Trump into power, and honestly, you haven’t made a single good argument for not voting. All that does as far as I’m concerned is get conservatives into office, and I’m not going to do that.
Have fun on the high road, the rest of us have to deal with consequences of people like you who don’t care if people like Trump get elected, because you took the “mOrAl HiGh GrOuNd” and wouldn’t do the minimal effort to keep a Nazi out of office.
Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back door being a doormat.
You go back and forth on how voting is useless than talk about how voting got Trump into power, and honestly, you haven’t made a single good argument for not voting. All that does as far as I’m concerned is get conservatives into office, and I’m not going to do that.
People have made plenty of arguments, and if all you’re focusing on domestic issues then you’re arrogant and selfish who is only concerned with having your treats threatened.
Have fun on the high road, the rest of us have to deal with consequences of people like you who don’t care if people like Trump get elected, because you took the “mOrAl HiGh GrOuNd” and wouldn’t do the minimal effort to keep a Nazi out of office.
Yeah man, the Orange Nazi is terrible, we need to have a BLUE Nazi instead! Just ignore how they both treated genocide as a bipartisan issue or where Biden ramped up the genocide significantly and Kamala promised she’d do the same.
You only dislike Trump because he’s mean about it, you’d sleep soundly if you had a president who enacted genocide, overthrew governments and killed millions of people but cared about “decorum” and “optics” as you liberals are obsessed with.
Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back door being a doormat.
Says the doormat that says “WELCOME, BLUE NO MATTER WHO”
Yeah sure, both sides ism, heard this all before. No room for nuance, may as well let the people who want to shoot trans folks waltz into office unopposed.
Democrats are also throwing trans under the bus what do you mean?
And “nuance”? lmfao you are literally hyperfocusing on getting in a democrat above all else, to the point of “blue no matter who” while ignoring all points being made to you and you’re talking about nuance? LMFAO
Remember that most people on this website don’t live in your parallel universe where voting ended feudalism. They live in a world where voting didn’t end feudalism, so they won’t understand most of what you say.
As opposed to the Lemmy solution, “Don’t vote! That’ll do something!”
Who is telling you not to vote? What we’re telling you is: https://lemmy.ml/comment/22575324
Right, and if voting was useless, why do politicians want to take it away from demographics they hate? Why would people have to fight so hard for it?
If it really didn’t matter and it really was as you say it is, then they wouldn’t need to distract people.
If you really held onto this stance, then you can’t be mad at people who voted for Trump because it’s all smoke and mirrors anyway and he was picked with what, some shadow government?
Is organizing a revolution so easily distracted that spending like, a little part of a day casting a ballot something that’ll completely undermine everything? Is it that fragile?
Not at all. Again, who is saying not to vote?
Literally the other person replying next to you said it’s a useless system distracting people. You don’t have to say “don’t vote” exactly to say not to vote.
Also there’s a bunch of people on here saying not to vote so…
The distraction is the voting system itself. Seems to work better on you than on most other people.
Right, so voting is a pointless distraction that… The oligarchs still need to use for some reason.
If the people in power didn’t need to get votes, we wouldn’t be having elections. They would ignore all pretense and just make the whole country into a company town.
But hey, you want conservatives to have an easier time taking power with the system as is? Go ahead and don’t vote.
We know the reasons, and we know the oligarchs will dispense with the pretense of elections when they hinder more than they help. Fascism isn’t a grassroots movement; it’s an astroturfed one funded by oligarchs. They fully unleash it when they become frustrated with bourgeois democracy.
when they vote against genocide you complains. What you want is a dictatorship where everybody should vote democrats
*you complain
and why tf would I want a Democrat dictatorship? I’m literally encouraging people to vote, which is about what they want.
If there was a Democratic dictatorship you wouldn’t vote against it.
You encourage people to only vote for democrats , if they vote for a third party you claim they vote for trump meaning you support a one party
Except you’re ignoring when I’ve said that we should change voting laws so third parties are viable. If I only wanted Democrats in office I wouldn’t be supporting voter reform.
They often openly say they think “the masses” are too stupid to be allowed to rule a society. Liberals wear the mask of “democracy” but deep down think of themselves as benevolent plutocrats in waiting, with deep contempt for the average person in the imperial core and genocidal contempt for the average person in a Designated Enemy society.
That isn’t really what people are saying. It’s more that voting cannot bring about socialism, while revolution can, and that therefore treating voting as the primary political outlet for people hampers the organizing efforts needed for revolution.
I don’t know why anyone assumes that revolution will get them what they want. There are so many more ways for things to go wrong than right.
Okay, let’s look at the results to far:
Revolution: Takr away window dressing like culture, and the crushing majority of earth’s population share our class interest. Most humans want to live in a society focused on taking care of humans, and many revolutions have succeeded or even flourished despite full-spectrum seige from the capitalist bloc.
Reform: reform has been tried for a hundred fifty years and all there is to show for it is two and a half world wars, many capitalist genocides, and an entrenched neo-aristocracy of openly fascist, pedophile death cultists who have kicked off a mass extinction and are driving us towards nuclear apocalypse.
Every communist revolution that survived the 20th century is now either absolutely thriving or at least weathering extreme US seige, and the ones that weathered their seiges already have begun to thrive (see the DPRK). China is currenty the best hope for the survival of any large scale human civilization.
Meanwhile, every capitalist society where people chose reform has backslid or been backsliding into fascism. And at this point, we are out of time to keep trying gentle .methods. Capitalism is the cancer killing the only extraordinary gem of a planet where plants grow and creatures roam, and it’s in part thanks to the history of denial of how bad it is, the continual, suicidal insistence on taking half measures in the face of overwhelming warning that has allowed it to metastasize to such a horrifying degree that our only options now are the risky, painful surgery of revolution or certain death.
Nobody assumes revolution will be smooth and painless, what’s important is that it’s necessary for a better world. We have to work as hard as we can to make sure it works out as smoothly as possible.
What are some examples of it going right?
USSR, PRC, DPRK, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, GDR, Yugoslavia, etc.
The USSR, Cuba, DPRK, China, Vietnam as some examples.
We’ve had this argument before and you haven’t convinced me this is true, especially with more immediate political concerns.
I’ve also talked with people who literally are against voting so your statement does not speak for everyone.
What “more immediate political concerns” are not fought better on the ground?
Why only fight on one front when you could fight on all fronts? You can vote and do other things, you know.
I have never said that you aren’t allowed to vote, more that voting is far less important than organizing. You are disparaging organizing in favor of voting on the grounds of voting being better, my question is which issue is voting better for?
I have never, once, at all, ever held that position, nor have I said such a thing. I have always been a proponent of organizing and voting.
Don’t you dare put those words in my mouth.
Can you please explain what these “more immediate political concerns” are that voting is more important for than organizing?
I think I’d rather have an apology first if I’m going to do you any favors. You just spat out a lie about me and you’re going to brush it off?
People laughed, saying a vote for Kamala was pointless, and a vote for genocide, but everyone has suffered under this atrocity of an administration. I don’t know that Kamala would have called Marxists terrorists.
The DNC are complicit in the present state repression against left-wing groups, and the genocide in Palestine has continued.
You’re absolutely not wrong.
lol what has voting achieved??
Local election voting is much more important. You can bring change to your local community with effort. Federal not so much.
Gotten people who can do better into positions of power? Kept people who can do harm out? Gotten rid of the feudal system where you only have power of you’re genetically born into it?
If voting didn’t matter, why would people fight and die for it? If voting didn’t matter, why do conservatives want you to not vote? If voting didn’t matter, why bother pretending and gave elections?
Why should you give up your agency over your government?
Or are you cool with the people who didn’t vote and kinda let Trump take over?
Trump won even by popular vote this last time. You sure you want to make the claim that it’s voting in particular that gets people who can “do better” in positions of power? How can a person be so dense as to think that voting is what keeps those who do harm out of powerful positions when every president, certainly at least within living memory, has wrought unmitigated harm upon the world?
LOL. You honestly think voting is what ended feudalism?! And you think people in power now weren’t born into it?! Behold, the intellectual heights of liberal “thought.”
Right, 'cause no one ever fought and died for something that wasn’t true or didn’t work the way they thought. (facepalm).
Also, if voting did work as you say, why do people still have to fight and die for their basic livelihoods and the well-being of their children, let alone the myriad other reasons people to this day are fighting and dying? There are just so many ways in which these questions reveal a deep and fundamental misunderstanding about how material reality works, I don’t know where to start. Oh and wait, didn’t you just say that voting ended feudalism? I guess all that fighting and dying was the sideshow, just done for emphasis apparently.
Why do you, a liberal, not want conservatives to vote? Or maybe you do, in which case you should be content with Trump who was voted in. But to answer your question about conservatives: it’s rather obviously because they’re the part of the machine that generally has less popular support for the time being. This isn’t rocket science. Funny how despite that fact, conservatives still have as much and usually more power than the liberal “progressives,” I thought this voting thing (that ended feudalism! lol) was supposed to magically solve all of that.
Because people like you believe the lie that it gives them some sort of power and control over the systems that rule them. Obviously. In other words, it clearly does work miracles to placate doofuses.
You shouldn’t, and that’s the point. Only a fool thinks voting within this system is exercising their agency.
In response to all of your “iF vOtInG dIiNt WoRk tHeN WHY” questions, how about this: If voting did work to give ordinary people power, why would your bourgeois overlords (who literally control more absolute wealth and exercise greater relative power and control than any rulers at any point in human history) let you do it? Answer: they wouldn’t.
Ooooh, so it’s all about people who realized they were only given shit options to vote for, they’re the real problem here, not the people who… umm… voted for Trump? According to you voting has all this amazing magical power to effect the world. But the people who actually used that supposed power for their choice of Trump aren’t actually what
put Trump in the presidencylet him “take over.” No, you think the problem is the people who can correctly identify a rigged system. Trump won the election via people doing exactly what you say they should do, by voting, but when it’s not the outcome you wanted, you say the man who literally won the popular vote “took over” and proceed to blame that “takeover” on the people who chose not to use that supposedly great power to endorse genocidaires. My god liberals are such a fucking joke it still gobsmacks me somehow.Yeah, you’re making a lot of assumptions and accusations about what I believe and that’s just full on strawmaning.
You go back and forth on how voting is useless than talk about how voting got Trump into power, and honestly, you haven’t made a single good argument for not voting. All that does as far as I’m concerned is get conservatives into office, and I’m not going to do that.
Have fun on the high road, the rest of us have to deal with consequences of people like you who don’t care if people like Trump get elected, because you took the “mOrAl HiGh GrOuNd” and wouldn’t do the minimal effort to keep a Nazi out of office.
Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back door being a doormat.
People have made plenty of arguments, and if all you’re focusing on domestic issues then you’re arrogant and selfish who is only concerned with having your treats threatened.
Yeah man, the Orange Nazi is terrible, we need to have a BLUE Nazi instead! Just ignore how they both treated genocide as a bipartisan issue or where Biden ramped up the genocide significantly and Kamala promised she’d do the same.
You only dislike Trump because he’s mean about it, you’d sleep soundly if you had a president who enacted genocide, overthrew governments and killed millions of people but cared about “decorum” and “optics” as you liberals are obsessed with.
Says the doormat that says “WELCOME, BLUE NO MATTER WHO”
Yeah sure, both sides ism, heard this all before. No room for nuance, may as well let the people who want to shoot trans folks waltz into office unopposed.
Democrats are also throwing trans under the bus what do you mean?
And “nuance”? lmfao you are literally hyperfocusing on getting in a democrat above all else, to the point of “blue no matter who” while ignoring all points being made to you and you’re talking about nuance? LMFAO
Remember that most people on this website don’t live in your parallel universe where voting ended feudalism. They live in a world where voting didn’t end feudalism, so they won’t understand most of what you say.
Every US president is a war criminal genocider. Trump isnt special. Americans dont deserve to vote, they’re stupid