this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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[–] lena@gregtech.eu 47 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Better than not voting and doing nothing.

The best would be voting and being an activist.

[–] Dengalicious@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 6 days ago

Malcom X said,

“ I don’t think that if I was cornered by any fox or a wolf, that I would have to take a choice between either one. I don’t see any choice between a fox or a wolf. A fox is a fox and a wolf is a wolf—to me. Neither one is the lesser of two evils. Both of them are evil. And Negroes, when they become politically mature, I think will realize that you don’t have to throw the bullets out of your gun just because you have a gun. Likewise you should wait until you have a target and bring that target down. I think when Negroes become really mature, they won’t vote just because they can vote. Sometimes they’ll abstain. Ofttimes in a position of abstaining is as effective in its results as an actual vote, as is proved in the UN. You have those who say “yes,” those who say “no,” and those who abstain. And those who abstain have just as much weight. And probably the most intelligent thing Negroes could do at this juncture would be to abstain and withhold their vote completely and make both the fox and the wolf fight it out among themselves.”

This was true when he said and is true now. Malcom X knows far more about opposition to reactionary politics than you do and he what he said was in no outdated then nor now.

(https://www.icit-digital.org/articles/malcolm-x-at-columbia-university-november-20-1963)

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 41 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The US is not a democracy, it's a capitalist dictatorship.

Some Background: History conditions much of our thinking about our political systems and most Western democracies resemble Rome’s in 60 BC when, as Robin Daverman humorously says, three aristocrats–politician Julius Caesar, military hero Pompey and billionaire Crassus–formed a backroom alliance that dominated the elected senate. The oligarchs ensured that proletarii votes changed nothing and that the masses remained invisible unless they rioted or died in one of the elites’ endless civil wars. Two thousand years later, in Britain’s general election of 1784, the son of the First Earl of Chatham and Hester Grenville, sister of the previous Prime Minister George Grenville, and the son of the First Baron Holland and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of Second Duke of Richmond, offered voters offered a choice of dukes. Today, in many European countries (even egalitarian Sweden) ‘democracy’ is a mere veneer over powerful feudal aristocracies that still control their economies. American voters recently watched a former president’s wife competing with a former president’s brother being defeated by a billionaire who installed his daughter and son-in-law in important government positions and ensured that, as John Dewey said, “U.S. politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business as long as power resides in business for private profit through private control of banking, land and industry, reinforced by command of the press and other means of propaganda”. Most Western politicians are related by marriage or wealth and have, like all hereditary classes, lost sympathy with the broad mass of their fellow citizens to the extent that, as American political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found, ‘the preferences of the average American appear to have a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy’

[–] lena@gregtech.eu -2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Okay, and? How does voting harm us? Not voting does a lot more harm.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If your democracy is staged like reality TV, then it does nothing.

Does voting in a capitalist dictatorship work? It got the US to where it is now. Doing the same strategy over and over again, when proven that historically things keep getting worse, should tell you that not only is it a pointless strategy, it's actively harmful because it draws energy into an electoral contest that does nothing to improve people's lives.

Bourgeois democracy is an elaborate theatre piece used to keep people distracted, and give them the illusion of choice.

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Both voting and not voting have the same effect. Nothing. It is not a democracy and pretending you are in one does fuck all.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
  • votes Kamala
  • at least 51% of others do the same
  • Kamala wins

Explain again how voting and not voting does the same? I know the first past the post system is horrible, but saying that voting does nothing is disingenuous.

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is false, multiple presidents won more than 51% of the vote and lost. Your elections are decided by election riggers during redistricting. It is called gerrymandering. You live in a corrupt society that uses voting and a circus every few years to mollify you. Even if Kamala won, which was basically impossible based on how the districts were drawn, you'd still live in a capitalist dictatorship that would be every bit as bad as it is now. You would still be causing wars around the world, you would still have homeless people everywhere, and most people would still be living pay check to paycheck while she did absolutely nothing. Kamala Harris is a manager of capitalism, not leader in any sense. You have absolutely no vote or say in the people who run your country, the board members of Goldman Sachs, Chase, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and the rest.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu -4 points 1 week ago

Throw bricks at fascists, punch nazis, but also vote, ffs

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You are free to participate in any kind of meaningless gestures and genuflection to make yourself feel better, but the US is a controlled authoritarian oligarchy with democratic window dressing and not a democracy in any meaningful way.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Look, if you aren't going to do anything else, you might as well vote. It's the best you can do. And even if you are active, you should still vote.

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Right, I said you are free to do any meaningless gestures you want

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 11 points 1 week ago

Worse would be discouraging voting and activism. Instead try to tell people that nothing they do matters and just bend over and take it up the ass