• UltraGreen [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Eh. I’ve spoken to a lot of women that don’t feel safe here in Texas. They don’t have the money to leave, and with the governor pardoning rapists and racist murderers, they are afraid of the future here. They are afraid of being raped and being forced to carry, which is absolutely what rightists want.

    They have also asked me who I’m voting for. And if saying I’m voting for Dems makes those in my life and around me feel safer, then I will do that, and I won’t lie to women and fem people. Telling them about socialism, revolutionary politics, imperialism will not help them feel safer or better. It’s so shitty here in Texas, that basic survival instincts are what people worry about. Me and so many of my friends have been catcalled or threatened with sexual violence here.

    Voting is the liberal bandaid, they think it will fix everything. It won’t, voting will not stop imperialism, it won’t stop genocide it won’t even stop homelessness or inflation lol. But will it slow the progression of fascist policies and maybe give people the chance to learn about actual leftism? It might. And that’s all a lot of people can hope for.

    Vote against gross rightist policies, and in the meantime get organized, form a union, talk to your coworkers about how you need to be earning more, form community with people outside of the corpo entertainment sphere. There is so much work to do in the US for there to be an actual leftist movement, frankly we are so far behind and need to start doing shit now.

    • heggs_bayer@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Has voting blue ever actually slowed down the progression of fascist policies though?

      • HamManBad [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        I might get shit for this, but in Wisconsin having a Dem governor has absolutely slowed down the deluge of fascist bullshit we’ve been putting up with for the past decade and a half. I can’t imagine how much worse things would be if Walker was still in power.

        • heggs_bayer@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          That’s fair enough, but somewhat of a moot point when the vote scolding is over the presidential election, where the dems have been worse than useless.

          • HamManBad [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            That’s why Walz is specifically effective at de radicalization. If I were a public figure, my opponents would be making commercials highlighting that I said “if the national Democrats were more like DFL, I might vote for them”

        • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          Let’s think about it this way. The red team and blue team will only band together to beat down anything remotely leftist, so we kinda are limited to organizing in our local communities. Would you rather do leftist work under a old white person who blows hot air about allegedly believing that immigrants are people and that people have inherent human rights, or an old white person who doesn’t even pretend to see non-white people as human and vocally opposes basic human rights? That’s what voting is for, as I see it.

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            When you vote for someone you legitimise them and you are giving them approval. The more legitimate a government is perceived to be, the harder it is to organise resistance against it.
            Furthermore there was way more resistance to government actions and support for dissidents under Trump than under Biden, even though Biden has expanded a lot of Trumps most unpopular policies.

          • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Were you not conscious during the Trump presidency? Remember airports full of lawyers and liberals trying to stop deportations? That was pretty good, right? Where the fuck did they go when Biden got into office and smashed the deportation accelerator? Biden deported more people in his first year than Trump did in four and the liberals have been dead fucking silent.

            So if you’re asking which climate I’d rather organize under, it’s the one where people actually organize against the executive to stop bad things and that literally only happens when a Republican is in office because liberals are blind.

          • heggs_bayer@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Considering they both end up being indistinguishable policy-wise and Mango Mussolini’s presidency pushed libs to actually set brunch aside for a bit, I’d much rather take the latter.

    • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      5 months ago

      form a union, talk to your coworkers about how you need to be earning more

      Doing these two things specifically would get me fired from my job

      • UltraGreen [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        You can’t legally be fired for discussing wages. And if you don’t think you can form a union/join an existing one, there are plenty of leftist organizations that you are probably local to, that you can join. Something, anything is better than nothing. We have to foster true community, and organize before we can even hope and dream for something getting better.

                • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  5 months ago

                  why don’t you just do it anyway as well?

                  I hope you’re sitting down before you finish reading this sentence: a lot of people can’t afford to miss a paycheck.

                • muslimmarxist [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  5 months ago

                  If they are going to violate labor laws anyway, why don’t you just do it anyway as well? All I’m saying is do something.

                  Cool go do an adventurism then LOLOLOLOOLOLOLOL.

                  Jesus fucking christ… “You can’t legally be fired for discussing wages.” SMFH :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              5 months ago

              Yeah it’s not like it’s super common practice to shut down departments that get unionized, give agitators impossible schedules and tasks or just fire them for made up stuff.

    • muslimmarxist [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      rightist

      Does anyone actually say “rightist”? Sounds like some “oh yeah, if we’re leftists, then YOU’RE RIGHTISTS!! HAHA THE PEN IS MIGHTER THAN THE SWORD MLADY!!”

  • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    As a 40 year old voter I can say things have changed. Gay people can get married. They couldn’t when I was younger. I was about to lose my healthcare at work during Bush but it hasn’t been a concern since.

        • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          clinton falls into that category.

          biden is worse: he voted against gay marriage and advocated against gays in federal service for almost 50 years and then pretended that he did none of that and gave token support when he needed the votes.

      • Chronicon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        losing healthcare is not a concern

        I have to guess they had a pre-existing condition or were self employed or something under bush, and don’t consider “you could get fired or go into huge medical debt at any moment” a concern (they should)

        • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Yeah it’s a concern but my company saying “ insurance is going to make us drop some of you if you can’t pass a physical “ was really a meeting we had. So the possibility was way higher for sure.

          • WafflesTasteGood [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            The things is, Dems could have given us a single payer system but they specifically chose not to. They could have completely removed the risk of losing healthcare for everyone but they chose not to.

            • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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              5 months ago

              i wish people could see that democrats always rely on the “bad guy” excuse each time to kill a mildly progressive bill:

              • build back better blocked by manchin and sinema
              • immigration reform blocked by one random parliamentarian
              • single payer healthcare blocked by lieberman.
    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Gay people getting married was pushed through by an unelected body that is appointed, and if the civility libs are to be believed, apolitical (lmao)

      The majority of people in the US don’t have healthcare or are undercovered or are spending a huge portion of their income on it. The US has the worst healthcare system in the developed world, brought to you by the wonders of voooooting.

      Voting he also brought us such wonderful things as endless wars and constant genocide. Very cool! Glad you can turn your brain off and ignore your elected representatives doing those things in your name but I cannot

    • Black_Mald_Futures [any]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I was about to lose my healthcare at work during Bush but it hasn’t been a concern since.

      so what, you think things are good now?

      If I want health insurance it’s going to be like 1/5th of my fucking pay. I would qualify for subsidies under the ACA, but guess what? my workplace offering insurance means I don’t qualify. Even though I have to fucking pay for that insurance

      real good system we VOTED for, love me some VOTE

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I used to think the ACA was pretty good until I started needing to use my ACA health insurance.

      Now I want to burn down every insurance corporation and I fucking hate Obama.

      • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        No. I’m doing decent. I’m pretty good at saving money so I have a pretty decent sized emergency fund. Plus the company I subcontract to would hire me if the OG company gets taken out somehow. Which it’s not.

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Gay people can get married because queer people agitated for that right for decades, and they finally got influential enough that they could not be ignored. It had nothing to do with who was in power. It wasn’t because they voooted. The people who were in power were against gay marriage until the conditions demanded that they weren’t.
      Had the people in power not pivoted then agitation would have escalated until someone else got into power and pivoted.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        no one voted on approving gay marriage; it became legal because of decision from the the supreme court that invalidated doma.

        the closes thing that makes your statement true is the respect for marriage act; which came 8 years after doma was invalidated and whose only real power is to give anti-gay bigots legal protections, since the supreme court already decided against anti-gay marriage laws.

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          My statement is that gay marriage, like all civil rights, was not won by voting, but because of agitation from a large group of people. The fact that it got instuted thru the supreme court furthers this argument, it does not lessen it.

  • Comrade Rain@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    The problem is not voting itself. It is the bourgeois “democracy” framework it is often implemented in, which provides safeguards against change.

  • kevlar21@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Here’s the thing. You can do both (vote and protest or revolt, etc.). Maybe voting won’t do anything but not voting definitely won’t.

    • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      The blue guy won and we still got genocide. Now we get to pick between the red guy who will continue to genocide Palestinians or the blue chick who will continue to genocide Palestinians. Really great system we’ve got here

      • 12022081631 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        you forgot blue lady will also preach at you for deigning to protest at her while she is actively holding the office of vice presinent

    • Black_Mald_Futures [any]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Here’s the thing. Anyone who thinks voting matters is also a civility fetishizing liberal who abhors violence to the 100000th power. Here in the real world, actual change that has benefited working people has only ever come through either explicit violence wrought on their behalf, or by the threat of it. People didn’t get the 8 hour workday because they VOTED for it, they got it because enough pissed off, armed workers scared enough of the owning class that they felt compelled to pass it. 1850-1940s America was nearly a hundred fucking years of low-scale civil warfare and tbh if American workers didn’t get so fat off post-war prosperity it’d still be going. But they did and because this shit isn’t taught in our schools our country is filled with ignorant chuds who want to take us back to the stone ages and ignorant shit-libs who would gladly let them if the alternative meant violence.

      • kevlar21@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        So if you’re not going to vote then you’re going to go do violence? How much actual change have you produced from not voting? You see much benefit to working people from complaining online?

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          Those are the only two things in the world huh? Voting and violence? Oh and complaining online?

          Have you thought about worker organization, work stoppages, boycotts, protests, economic shutdowns and other methods of applying pressure? Education programs, feeding the poor and training camps? Forming disciplined and militant groups to apply pressure?

          Is all violence the same? Is a mass shooter killing random people the same as the working class beginning to defend itself against the ruling class? Even civility liberals admits self defense is fine but you want us to all be suffocated out by the capitalists quietly

          • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            but you want us to all be suffocated out by the capitalists quietly

            Yes, they want us to i-voted, shut the fuck up, and work our bones down to dust so they can have brunch in peace.

        • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          You are willfully ignoring the people giving you very good answers. People like you are the most insufferable people on the planet.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      If you never withhold your vote than you have lost all leverage. Even in the logic of the stupid voting game always voting blue is a big fat L. If you are a reliable voting bloc, you will never get jack shit

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        in houston or san antonio you can get a decent stamina workout by waiting in line for hours at the only polling place in your entire city.

    • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      A no-vote is a vote of no confidence in the system. I’ll continue to vote in every presidential election, and it would be better if non-voters would instead vote for a third party like Green, PSL, or even whatever Cornell West is doing now. But i no longer blame anyone for not voting.

  • bufalo1973@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    The problem is not voting. Is believing voting is the only thing to do to enforce democracy and civil rights.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      In peripheral nations outside the core is the only time where voting actually could lead to improvements, since there are segments of the national bourgeois who stand to gain from de-colonizing, so it’s possible to form a short-term coalition with them. In the core nations is where voting is pointless. The only nations to ever vote in socialism via the ballot box have been “third world” countries.

  • OfficerBribe@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I don’t get the point. So instead of voting, we should hope for some lovely dictator that takes power and hope everyone in country loves that person? What′s the alternative? Just because change of government doesn’t magically fix all the problems does not mean you should not vote.