• argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    I am begging you to think outside the box of electoral politics because it is where dreams go to die.

    I assure you I’ve thought long and hard about this.

    Nobody voted to put kids to work at meatpacking plants

    Ah, but they did. Politicians talk about doing that and people still vote for them. That’s the whole problem.

    Voting has not and never will be enough. It is literally the bare minimum you can do and you should not pat yourself on the back for it.

    The alternative is violent revolution. If you’ll study history, you’ll observe that most violent revolutions result in either failure (in which case the revolutionaries are all executed) or a brutal dictatorship that no one can meaningfully challenge (see Mao, Stalin, etc). Very rarely does violent revolution have a result that could be reasonably called positive. The 1776 revolution in what would become the United States is a historical anomaly, and there is no good reason to believe that doing it again would have the same positive result.

    • slugbones@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      If you think I was trying to tell you to pick up a weapon and charge at the govt you truly haven’t thought about anything beyond the box.

        • slugbones@lemmy.ml
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          2 years ago

          Form a labor union, join a leftist org, start a mutual aid network for your community. Literally ANYHING beyond just mindlessly yelling about voting.

          • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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            2 years ago

            It’s pretty hard to form a labor union as long as it remains legal to just fire the entire workplace’s staff and replace them all, and that will remain legal as long as people keep voting for anti-union politicians.

            Leftist organizations and mutual aid networks already exist in good number, and that’s great, but it doesn’t put good politicians in office. The one and only thing that decides who’s in office is voting.

            I would like to remind you that if voting didn’t do anything, no one would be trying to stop people from voting.

            • slugbones@lemmy.ml
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              2 years ago

              You are literally just making excuses for doing nothing… exactly as I thought. If voting changed anything they would make it illegal.

              • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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                2 years ago

                They’ve been trying. Various voter-suppression campaigns have been the subject of news reports for over a decade now. By your own reasoning, therefore, voting must be effective.

                • slugbones@lemmy.ml
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                  2 years ago

                  Those voter suppression tactics are 2 capitalist parties arguing over whose rich donors are gonna get kickbacks. Not any meaningful change.

                  • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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                    2 years ago

                    Nonsense. Only one party has been imposing onerous ID requirements, removing polling places from opposition-heavy areas, and falsely claiming that vote-by-mail is rife with fraud.