they always have been thrown under the bus not just this time around.

its north korean style adherence to the “great leader”

Im not ignoring my right to vote. I am using my right to participate or not as a catalyst for dialogue. Also voting someone in doesn’t guarantee they will do what we want them to or even what they say they will do. this has been proven time and time again. at this moment they want something from me, my vote, and I am denying them that until they change. Do you give a child what it wants just because it is whining? no. these politicians are supposed to answer to us, not the other way around.

Voting for someone that does not represent you because you are more scared of the other guy is indistinguishable, as a signal, from someone that fully supports them. By voting against your own interests you are actively undermining the democratic process.

People protest to make themselves feel better

right, cause the stonewall riots didn’t catalyze the dying lgbtq+ movement that was originally only made up of white gay cis men “calling democrats” and trying to be respectable. sure thing bud

just call up Democrats in Congress and tell them how you feel. They will listen.

yea the voicemail listened so well and didn’t interrupt me at all, except to tell me that there is no more room for messages.

Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, however you try to window-dress it. In practice, all forms of democracy have been used by a majority group to control or otherwise dictate to a minority group. All forms of democracy have been used to smother autonomy, to stifle self-determination, and to absolve rulers of responsibility for their actions. How can a ruler be responsible for their atrocities when “the people” elected them and empowered them to commit those atrocities?

Instead of a large group laboring to make democracy work so they can agree on a course of action, it would be far more productive for smaller groups made up of people with shared interests to splinter off and co-operate to follow their own plans that require no compromise because their interests are already aligned.

oh really? NYS is a blue state no? One of the bluest, as I have been told. Should have some decent legislation surrounding incarceration, right? You ever hear of securis? Do you know how much it costs to talk to an incarcerated individual over the phone and how much that company makes in profit price gouging incarcerated folks families?

Democrats allow this to happen.

In new york, they were making hand sanitizer for COVID with prison labor. Yea, big blue New York uses prison labor. Very left of them. I’m sure the democrats are really interested in rights for convicts.

lmao anyone would be so much better than biden in the dem seat

Sure, but is creating discourse the goal?

I can’t speak for everyone but for me, yes

Is the discourse even helping?

Depends on a lot of things. I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. Ik there are aggressive democrat voters trying to shame and bully people into compromising themselves in an already compromising situation. They are told that what they think doesn’t matter and they “don’t have a voice” unless they vote. They don’t have a voice because y’all wont listen. We have voted, for what… to feel dirty and used by people you will never meet? I hope my replies and posts reach the eyes of those so they know that they aren’t voiceless and that this is an effective means of protest. Its obviously working by how much time and energy has been spent to try and convince us we are wrong. This is how democrats disenfranchise leftists. By saying this kind of protest and that kind of protest is ineffective, which is as ive pointed out demonstrably false because they are talking about it. You’re only allowed to protest a certain way even by democrats standards.

One fateful night, Marsha P. Johnson dropped a bag of bricks on a cop car and inspired millions of LGBTQ+ people over multiple generations. A trans woman that lived on the streets and was disenfranchised her whole life and couldn’t vote made real change happen that politicians could only dream of. Even trumps failed insurrection can’t put anything on that series of nights at the Stonewall Inn

There is a time to vote for people based on principle and that is what you are asking me to do by voting for biden. When the next major genocide is literally being conducted with the full support of the United States and the ones overseeing it are up for election and you can literally stop another holocaust like event from happening by telling those in power that they better do something or fuck off and make a lot of noise about it, then you have to take that opportunity.

yes we made a bunch of noise about the failures of the democrats in an effort to pressure them to fucking do something. whether you think we are stupid for refusing to vote or not, you can’t deny how much discourse there is and how much engagement has occurred.

Western democracy originated in ancient Greece. This political system granted democratic citizenship to free men, while excluding slaves, foreigners and women from political participation. In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, this was what democracy meant. An elite class of free men made all the decisions for everyone. Before Athens adopted democracy, aristocrats ruled society, so “rule by the people”, or the idea of a government controlled (in theory) by all its (free) male citizens instead of a few wealthy families seemed like a good deal. But really it was just a new iteration of Aristocracy rule rather than the revolution it’s painted as. The rich still rule society by feeding voters carefully constructed propaganda and keeping everyone poor, overworked and desperate to be granted basic needs by the state.

In democracies today, only legal citizens of a country are granted democracy. In a lot of countries, people who have been convicted of a “crime” are denied the right to vote, regardless of how long ago they served their sentence. In the US, this is used to deny voting rights to minority groups, who make up a large proportion of the prison population.

In some societies only a small minority group are allowed to participate in the democracy. In Apartheid South Africa, the minority group (European settlers) granted themselves democracy and excluded the native majority, using democracy to deprive the native population of the rights granted to European settlers. Anarchy, of course, is an absence of government; of rulers. Democracy aims for the individual to be governed, ruled, controlled by others.

Our rulers use democracy to separate us into in-groups and out-groups, pitting the majority group against the minority groups and giving everyone a false sense of control. We’re made to believe we have a say in how our lives are run because we get to participate in glorious democracy. Of course, all of us outside the ruling class continue to be exploited, living in perpetual servitude, and the only people who really benefit from democracy are the ruling class who use it to keep us alienated and distracted so we don’t rise up and kill them all for the debilitating misery they create.

Democracy grants authority to favored groups to oppress minority groups. Democracy ignores the autonomy of the individual in favor of the collective will of the dominant group. Democracy exists to enable rulers to uphold brutal power hierarchies. It’s really the full embodiment of authority; used to maintain the tyrannical capitalist-statist status quo all over the world today.

They throw their temper tantrums, shit all over everything and then disappear after the election

Sounds like everyone we have ever voted in

you realize this is talking about not voting in a PRIMARY, for a nomination he can’t lose, right? tlaib is not suggesting that they don’t vote in the general for biden. she is saying write uncommitted in the PRIMARY. personally I don’t think that will pressure them enough. a large number of people denying biden a vote in the general might make them get the picture though.

I wonder which party is more favorable to enfranchising convicts

neither the republican or establishment democrats are interested in that

Yes, direct action is very cool and very hip, and I encourage it, but we’re talking about voting.

not voting and voicing why you are not voting has so far created more discourse around the failures of the democratic party than saying “vote blue, no matter who”. so to me this seems much more direct than just quietly voting.

dems thought they may have it in the bag with biden but they don’t. the biden admin has the lowest approval rating of any administration. enabling a genocide and aligning with the country perpetrating it for most of your political career will do that to your approval rating.

all they have to do is say permanent ceasefire and they get all those votes back. its not a hard concept. maybe instead of threatening voters with what will happen if they lose, they should do the thing that is preventing them from winning

You are disrespecting the dead

you are disrespecting dead anarchists and communists by saying you need to participate in bourgeois virtue signaling instead of direct action for your fellows

People died. So you could have a say.

Innocent people also died at the hands of the government that was voted in. Many people have died for amerika’s imperial expansion and due to it. Many have been indentured and still are.

People should be disgraced and shunned for not voting.

What if the state bars you from voting because of past criminal history, regardless of time served? What if you are disabled and cannot make it to the ballot and you live somewhere that has heavily restricted mail in voting? What if you are unhoused and don’t have a physical address? You are calling to have these people shunned? How democratic and fair of you.

your obligation in the social contract

As if the social contract is upheld by the people you vote in. We get lied to so they get the vote and then we don’t even have recourse to sue or hold them accountable. All we can do is “vote them out” but then they tell us if we don’t vote for them, the world will literally end cause the other guy is evil. As if to say democrats are a force for good. lmao

Sounds like you think that one: we live in a democracy, and two: that democracy somehow equals more freedom. this is not the case.

Western democracy originated in ancient Greece. This political system granted democratic citizenship to free men, while excluding slaves, foreigners and women from political participation. In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, this was what democracy meant. An elite class of free men made all the decisions for everyone. Before Athens adopted democracy, aristocrats ruled society, so “rule by the people”, or the idea of a government controlled (in theory) by all its (free) male citizens instead of a few wealthy families seemed like a good deal. But really it was just a new iteration of Aristocracy rule rather than the revolution it’s painted as. The rich still rule society by feeding voters carefully constructed propaganda and keeping everyone poor, overworked and desperate to be granted basic needs by the state.

In democracies today, only legal citizens of a country are granted democracy. In a lot of countries, people who have been convicted of a “crime” are denied the right to vote, regardless of how long ago they served their sentence. In the US, this is used to deny voting rights to minority groups, who make up a large proportion of the prison population.

In some societies only a small minority group are allowed to participate in the democracy. In Apartheid South Africa, the minority group (European settlers) granted themselves democracy and excluded the native majority, using democracy to deprive the native population of the rights granted to European settlers. Anarchy, of course, is an absence of government; of rulers. Democracy aims for the individual to be governed, ruled, controlled by others.

America is and always has been an illegitimate apartheid state.

Either voice your opinion for who is less bad, or have no voice.

That’s not how living in reality works. Tell that to the rioters of the stonewall inn. That was the most meaningful change to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. They used their voices for multiple nights and it mobilized the community like never before. No thanks to the “repspectables” Also what do you tell the disenfranchised, the people that have been robbed of their opportunity to vote? You are essentially telling them that they are voiceless which isn’t true in the slightest. They are just living under a repressive government that people have voted for time and time again thinking they are doing something good. Yet what this allows people to do is say they don’t need to participate in direct action and they create “officials” that maintain narratives that further disenfranchise more people. And democrats do this too, not just republicans.