What leverage?
“Give into my demands or I’ll shoot myself in the foot”?
Sorry, that should be “give into my demands or I’ll sacrifice the lives of the weak and vulnerable because their lives mean less to me than making a political point”
^^^^^^ the protest non voters are part of why so many Ukrainians are dying, why Israel has stronger and more deadly weapons, why climate change just got massively accelerated, why research funding and USAID got gutted (including life saving vaccines and children’s cancer research). some many of you will die but not me so that’s a price I’m willing to pay.
If you’re going to not vote out of protest maybe don’t do it in the most impactful election of our lifetime.
Every election always seems to be framed as “the most important of our lifetime”. There will never be a perfect time to change our habits and actually do something different.
Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same. —Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973)
So if we don’t attempt to change now, then when? How long do we continue to let perfect be the enemy of good?
I see so many comments leading up to every election talking about needing to flip the system, make big changes, and upset the status quo.
What do we actually see? You all do absolutely nothing, then crawl back into your holes after world democracy slides deeper into hell.
Some of us are out there protesting, and organising, and trying to fix what we can in our community. But we also recognise that we need to work and vote within the system we are trapped in until we can dismantle it.
Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed.
Surprise surprise you immediately go to outdated classroom rhetoric that completely disregards any context of realpolitik. Your solution is outdated classroom theory that has no practical application. Congratulations, you’re a republican, because your solution is literally just let republicans win but be smug about your integrity while me and mine get bussed to camps. Fuck you dude.
Nevermind that even, his solution is literally just protest vote and let the republicans take over. It’s literally surrender with no fight back whatsoever, just smugness at maintaining their principles or some horseshit.
“You can’t vote for who actually represents you! You have to vote for your oppressor because if you don’t they will make me suffer! So, throw yourself under the bus to protect my comfort because I refuse to have solidarity with those who are currently oppressed by the status quo.”
The establishment party you keep trying to force people to vote for are already sacrificing the weak and vulnerable to maintain the system of capitalist-imperialist oppression. The party is the one sacrificing them by refusing to meet the demands of the people they are supposed to be representing.
The only (legal) leverage over the ruling class the people have is their vote for who to put in power. If you prove to always give them power regardless of if they meet the obligations of their representative position then you have thus abandoned any leverage you had to incentivize them to change.
The system is a broken one that is set up to ensure that the ruling oligarchy can continually oppress the working class so long as they threaten the middle with a “greater evil”. And it will continue as is until people stop letting perfect be the enemy of good by waiting for the perfect time to change their habits and actually vote for someone who truly represents them instead of continuing to abdicate all their political autonomy into the hands of the lesser evil.
They’re not our representatives. They never were. They’re the representatives of the ruling class.
Each election there is a set of choices on the table, usually only bad ones. But one of them always included extra suffering for minorities. It’s your duty in good solidarity with the minorities to vote against that.
If you want better choices you need to fight for a new table. That gets done every other day that isn’t election day. 99% of your time spent on getting a new table, like the French. 1% of your time protecting the vulnerable through harm reduction.
Right, so weeks out from the midterms your suggestion is… to withhold your vote from one party to send some sort of scolding message, while letting the pedophile and his army of racist goons continue to round up minorities and threaten to deport elected officials they disagree with?
No one is asking you to throw yourself under the bus, just to realise that we are all, globally, under the bus already. Some people are just trying to get their head out from under the wheels for the slim hope of dragging their mangled bodies out of the way of the next car.
What leverage? “Give into my demands or I’ll shoot myself in the foot”?
Sorry, that should be “give into my demands or I’ll sacrifice the lives of the weak and vulnerable because their lives mean less to me than making a political point”
^^^^^^ the protest non voters are part of why so many Ukrainians are dying, why Israel has stronger and more deadly weapons, why climate change just got massively accelerated, why research funding and USAID got gutted (including life saving vaccines and children’s cancer research).
somemany of you will die but not me so that’s a price I’m willing to pay.If you’re going to not vote out of protest maybe don’t do it in the most impactful election of our lifetime.
Every election always seems to be framed as “the most important of our lifetime”. There will never be a perfect time to change our habits and actually do something different.
So if we don’t attempt to change now, then when? How long do we continue to let perfect be the enemy of good?
Cool, so what is the plan?
I see so many comments leading up to every election talking about needing to flip the system, make big changes, and upset the status quo. What do we actually see? You all do absolutely nothing, then crawl back into your holes after world democracy slides deeper into hell.
Some of us are out there protesting, and organising, and trying to fix what we can in our community. But we also recognise that we need to work and vote within the system we are trapped in until we can dismantle it.
This:
—Karl Marx “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League.” London, England. March 1850.
Vote within the system, sure. But make sure you voting for those who represent you, not the lesser evil who keeps you trapped in the system.
Surprise surprise you immediately go to outdated classroom rhetoric that completely disregards any context of realpolitik. Your solution is outdated classroom theory that has no practical application. Congratulations, you’re a republican, because your solution is literally just let republicans win but be smug about your integrity while me and mine get bussed to camps. Fuck you dude.
hmm
Nevermind that even, his solution is literally just protest vote and let the republicans take over. It’s literally surrender with no fight back whatsoever, just smugness at maintaining their principles or some horseshit.
“You can’t vote for who actually represents you! You have to vote for your oppressor because if you don’t they will make me suffer! So, throw yourself under the bus to protect my comfort because I refuse to have solidarity with those who are currently oppressed by the status quo.”
The establishment party you keep trying to force people to vote for are already sacrificing the weak and vulnerable to maintain the system of capitalist-imperialist oppression. The party is the one sacrificing them by refusing to meet the demands of the people they are supposed to be representing.
The only (legal) leverage over the ruling class the people have is their vote for who to put in power. If you prove to always give them power regardless of if they meet the obligations of their representative position then you have thus abandoned any leverage you had to incentivize them to change.
The system is a broken one that is set up to ensure that the ruling oligarchy can continually oppress the working class so long as they threaten the middle with a “greater evil”. And it will continue as is until people stop letting perfect be the enemy of good by waiting for the perfect time to change their habits and actually vote for someone who truly represents them instead of continuing to abdicate all their political autonomy into the hands of the lesser evil.
They’re not our representatives. They never were. They’re the representatives of the ruling class.
Each election there is a set of choices on the table, usually only bad ones. But one of them always included extra suffering for minorities. It’s your duty in good solidarity with the minorities to vote against that.
If you want better choices you need to fight for a new table. That gets done every other day that isn’t election day. 99% of your time spent on getting a new table, like the French. 1% of your time protecting the vulnerable through harm reduction.
Right, so weeks out from the midterms your suggestion is… to withhold your vote from one party to send some sort of scolding message, while letting the pedophile and his army of racist goons continue to round up minorities and threaten to deport elected officials they disagree with?
No one is asking you to throw yourself under the bus, just to realise that we are all, globally, under the bus already. Some people are just trying to get their head out from under the wheels for the slim hope of dragging their mangled bodies out of the way of the next car.