this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Yes, if you vote on issues that matter to you, things change.
That is voting.
That is why Trump was booted out of office. Because of voting.
Trump didn't get into office because he got the most votes.
In fact voting as important as it is doesn't actually decide what the government does. There was a whole Princeton study about this recently that your vote essentially has no impact on what the government chooses to do.
Voting is largely a public demonstration of how much we are willing to tolerate the government turning on us in any given year. The fewer people that show up to vote the more quickly we march towards fascist dystopia.
"voting is stupid and doesn't do anything"
"Not voting leads fo fascism", ergo voting avoids fascism.
My comment is not long enough for you to have misquoted me twice. You can literally read the entire comment while you are responding to it even if you're on mobile.
Yes voting is important, but it doesn't have the impact we often think it does.
The people we vote for aren't necessarily going to be able to make policies we want, That's not the reason why voting is so important right now. It might be one day, and I hold out hope that if I keep voting for democracy, it'll happen.
Voting right now is basically an up or down vote on "should we keep seeking democracy?"
The Republican party is perfectly willing to make policies we do not want, and their end goal is actually the end of democracy.
So although our votes won't necessarily compel the government to take actions we want it to take, they can help prevent it from taking actions we would like it to not take.
It's a shitty deal, but considering the alternative....
Yes, in a democracy the elected government will not be the government that literally everyone voted for.
No, voting in the United States is not largely a public demonstration on how much we are willing to tolerate the government.
Yes, the fewer people that show up to vote, the more quickly we march towards fascist dystopia: exactly my point and exactly anathema to your false assertion that voting does not matter.
Well then it's a good thing I never asserted that voting doesn't matter.
"your vote essentially has no impact on what the government chooses to do"
Don't want you to strain yourself reading your own directly previous comment that you then contradicted in the subsequent paragraph.
I also went on to explain why just because you don't choose what the government does, doesn't mean your vote is irrelevant.
It's also not me making that claim It's Princeton University that had a particularly well cited study showing that your vote actually does not influence the policy decisions of lawmakers.
Your vote is about preventing the creation of policy that is even worse. It's not about enabling the creation of policy that is good. We are not at the phase of our relationship with our government where we can make them do good things. If we don't keep working towards that we will backslide into fascism.
You have the wrong expectations if you think your vote is going to tell the government what to do. We're just not there yet. You still have to vote If you'd like to get there one day.
"Well then it's a good thing I never asserted that".
Nobody has these expectations you are talking about except for you.
If you were just going to agree with what I'm saying, you can just type "yea".
You can save all that time you spent splitting hairs.
and that's also why he's gonna get in again
Or be kept out again.
Yes.
How voting works.
well I'm not American so I wish you guys luck
Way more fun to watch from the outside
That's also how he was voted in, which totally destroys your argument.
Incorrect.
Voting works both ways.
Trump can be voted in, as he was before.
Trump can be voted out, as he was before.
This is how voting works.
Emphasis: voting works.
Any other president being voted in and out would be proof that voting works.
Trump - and before him, Dubya - being elected is proof that money and cronyism vote presidents in in this country. In no normally functioning democracy can a guy like that get more than a single digit percentage of votes, let alone make it all the way to the White House.
Someone like Trump being elected once - and being allowed to run again with even a slight change of winning after all that's happened - is definite proof that voting is completely broken. It doesn't matter whether you're democrat or republican, this much should be obvious to anyone who's even vaguely mentally competent and totally not a matter of debate.
The electoral process is a dog-and-pony show to convince the populace that they have a say in the affairs of the country. It's a placebo to pacify them. The reality is that they vote from a choice of candidates on offer that invariably come from a community of ultra-politically-connected billionnaires that have nothing in common with their constituents, based on lies spread by the media controlled by the same billionnaires. If you think that's voting that works, you're bonkers.
Nobody said that voting works perfectly, but if you want to examine voting significance relative to the extremely narrow conditions you're talking about, we can look at how terribly conservatives have to struggle to suppress voting to infer its significance.
If voting was not important, conservatives would not have issued injunctions to halt ballot counting, they would not steal away and hide voting machines under false pretenses, they would not fabricate and mail in forged elector certificates, conservatives would not seek to expel minority voters (who tend to vote democratic), they would not try to invalidate mail-in ballots, and subsequently attempt to shut down the USPS when they realize they cannot stop people from voting, they would not fight so hard for gerrymandered counties, they would not push forward the exact false narrative that you have fallen for.
And yet they have done all of these things, and much more.
Conservatives have been struggling so hard to erase and suppress the American right to vote because they know the truth.
Voting works.
Obviously some people still drink the kool-aid in 2024.
Ever wondered why everybody says voting is important, and it works, and democracy-this and democracy-that and yada-yada, yet things have been slowly turning more and more Orwellian and more dysfunctional for decades? Stop and think about that for a minute.
Maybe you'll get wise to reality at some point in your life. But don't worry, it's already too late: if anything, you'll be happier if you keep your blinders.
that is the level folks are arguing at when they say voting doesnt work
voting works, voting does do something, it just isnt a fix to every political issue or a heavy handed enough approach by itself
the irony of losers pushing defeatist cynicism while complaining that 'go vote!!' does nothing would be funnier if it didnt come with this shit eating smug false sense of superiority
Are you 14?
Your misapprehensions are all floating in the shallows, but apparently you think they're deep.
It's hard for people to accept we're not heading towards the star trek future they were promised for their entire lives lol.
Its a real cold shock when they wake up and realize we're in for civilizational collapse and misery.