this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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If voting didn't matter the fascists wouldn't be trying so hard to prevent it.
I definitely don't want to excuse how ineffective a lot of Democrats have been, but not voting isn't how you change that behavior; getting more involved is.
30 years ago maybe. It's too late now.
So we just stop and let the rest control? Apathy is how evil wins. If you get 3 people who wouldn't normally vote and they all get 3 people who wouldn't normally vote suddenly there are a lot more people voting in humanitarian minded politicians who can make effective change.
Don't normalize not voting. There are so many meaningful changes that can be made locally that aren't just the Presidential election. If people paid more attention to that instead of apathy voting maybe there wouldn't be so many terrible people in boards of education across the U.S.
Democrats already did. Fascism didn't happen overnight. It's been progressing for 40 years.
When Clinton passed NAFTA and 'Don't Ask Don't Tell', and you voted for him anyway, you helped fascism take root.
When Obama had a supermajority and all he did was tack on more wars, make health care more expensive, and enrich his wealthy donors and Democratic partisans voted to reelect him anyway.
Now we're watching Biden, who is ignoring school shootings, police violence, escalating housing scarcity, a 12% jump in homelessness, stagnant wages, criminalization of abortion, and also doing nothing meaningful to stop the people who perpetrated 1/6, and you're going to tell me that I have to vote for this person as a moral imperative. Biden's time is eaten up by figuring out ways to add hundreds of billions more to the war budget instead.
The kind of apathy that killed this country is the apathy of the partisans, who voted for team color and just ignored the corruption.
How convenient to leave out the surplus we had from 1998 lost by Bush which onset part of the events you described. Which I will never disagree about how unjust the drone strikes were, nor the continuation of the deportations.
How convenient to leave out the progress in education and notably more importantly, the social progress made for queer and PoC communities which made huge strides in acceptance and it was interesting how there were far fewer open Nazi rallies from 2008-2015, I wonder what was up with that. Hm.
How convenient to ignore how quickly protection programs were dismantled after 2016, from dismantling the EPA, shutting down hundreds of CDC sites not including his terrible FEMA responses, the huge setback in education with Betsy DeVoss as Sec. of Education. Let alone the way with which both Trump and the media rallied up hatred as a political play? How there were multiple attempts at voter suppression, some of them physical? The immense rise in police brutality, and again, Nazi rallies which conveniently never seemed to have police at them like the peaceful protests did.
But okay, go on about how Democrats are the same slow burn to fascism. That's not the point. The point is that with one party there's somewhat of a semblance of a chance that we get our generation into politics and not these dinosaurs. But the more we let them influence the youth by having shitty education and breeding hatred as a political play then yeah, you're right, we are screwed and there's no hope. Because that's what happens when you give up.
From the last 25 years to me, it looks like we had a surplus, a huge deficit, almost came out of that after 8 years, back to extreme deficit and now we're dealing with the fallout of the onset of a war (which has its own historical connotations). In the midst of all of those there were huge shifts in social values.
I don't disagree with you that Democrats commit evil. The drone strikes inspired a generation of youth who hoped to be hard leftists. That is no excuse to vote for Republicans, nor is it any excuse whatsoever to not vote. If anything, it should encourage people to vote more, because if every single person who was capable of voting voted for the same thing in their area, guess what? Things would change. So why in the world would we stop voting?
It makes no sense. Democrats may be the slow burn but defeatism is just how everyone loses. Saying there is no point would be true if everyone believed you. Saying vote for X if you live in Y because I believe in their ability to do the right thing. And if they don't do the right thing then vote them the fuck out and get someone in there who will.
We are in a bad spot but turning a blind eye by pretending that not voting is somehow a solution is not the mindset to have. So again, kindly, stop being defeatist and stop spreading defeatism. You don't like Democrats or Republicans? So find the closest person who is running that encompasses your values and vote for them, because at least then there's one person who might have a chance to do the right thing. There's nobody? Find someone and campaign for them. Change starts at the state.
If only people could eat all of these excuses that partisans make. No one would go hungry in this country.
Getting your flash mob to vote instead of making snide remarks about your fellow Americans, thanks.
Have a nice day.
What exactly is your plan for the future, if you really believe it's too late now? Just let the fascists take over and hope they don't come for you?
I'm going to do what I already do, take care of myself and do what I can to take care of my friends. The only real impact any of us can have now is local, because the fascists have already won at the Federal level and I live in a very red state.
The only real plan I have at the moment is just to get a vasectomy sometime this year. I don't want to risk fathering a child when it's likely my state will criminalize abortion in the near future.