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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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No, the true detriment is civic illiteracy and widespread apathy. If people voted in droves and stayed engaged in the decisions that affect their lives, the institutional power of political parties would be nullified. The parties are powerful specifically because most people don't give a shit. There's a vacuum, and the party apparatus fills it.
Perhaps it's different in other places, but in my experience people do give a lot of shits. The system is just built against us in such a way that it's almost impossible to either have any hope of changing anything or see any changes that do happen. A huge cause of that disparity is the party system with it's incessant bickering and corrupt propaganda.
Fifty-four percent of eligible voters sat out the 2022 midterms where Republicans took control of the House. Thirty-four percent sat out in 2020. Half of the country either doesn't give a shit about the problems that could be fixed through active political engagement, or they don't give a shit about active political engagement. Both forms of apathy lead to the same conclusion.
A significant portion of that apathy is driven by people who look at these numbers and somehow still come away with "it's rigged@!!" as a conclusion. And that goes for both sides of the political spectrum. If the other 80 million people showed up to participate both during elections and afterwards while local, state, and federal decisions are being made (like, for example, at city council meetings), then the shockwaves that would send through the system would register on the Richter scale
People who think like you are part of the reason 80 million people sit on the sidelines and complain when shit doesn't go their way. You know how Republicans completely changed the course of history in 2010? By showing up in numbers. You know how women changed the course of history in the early 20th century? By showing up in numbers. You know how black Americans changed the course of history in the 1960s? By showing up in numbers.
Nobody is going to do a damn thing for you if you sit on your ass and complain that change is impossible.
Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter are pretty recent examples of where "showing up in numbers" just wasn't enough. The system is rigged and blaming victims isn't getting us anywhere. Anecdotally throughout my life, I have seen uncountable numbers of people come to work/school/etc. with an "I voted" sticker, and my conspiracy theory is that the numbers are meaningless and the people who rigged the system already decide who is winning before the first vote is cast, unless they abandon the plan because their polling shows an absolute landslide that would reveal their fuckery.
Occupy Wall Street lasted 59 days, and BLM lasted 1 year in total, while most of the protests lasted little more than 5 months. Women's suffrage groups started their organized resistance in the 1840s, roughly eighty years before they earned the right to vote, with significant violence erupting at their events in the 1850s and organizations forming at a rapid clip in the decades after the Civil War. Many women's suffrage activists died of old age before they saw significant progress.
Civil Rights era activists campaigned in the streets for fourteen years. Hundreds were killed, thousands were injured, and tens of thousands were imprisoned. Cops sprayed peaceful protesters with fire hoses and had police dogs rip the flesh from their bodies. But still they showed up, they marched, and they fought as a group.
What you're describing are part time slacktivists who showed up until it got uncomfortable and they got bored, at which time they let their apathy take back over and buried their noses in their cell phones. What you're talking about is a bunch of virtue signaling, and it amounted to nothing precisely because there was no class solidarity or significant grassroots organization.
And fuck off with your "it's rigged and votes are counted by the lizard people Illuminati" nonsense. You sound like a Proud Boy wannabe, and you're eroding the faith people have in their own nation. Shame on you.
No true Scotsman and Godwin's law, nice. Anyways, BLM is an obvious continuation of the civil rights movement, and calling them "slacktivists" is derisive and reductionist.
Protesting until you die of old age is not what it used to be. The surveillance of the modern world makes protestors into easy targets if they ever become a true threat. The powers that be have learned plenty from the civil rights era.
Nobody should have faith in any nation to erode in the first place. Every single one has fucked over their neighbors and their own populations to further the ambitions of the rich and powerful. Look to the erosion of antitrust and privacy laws to see where we are headed. Look at how SOPA and other protests have gone. You seriously think nobody knows how to protest anymore, and it's just a generational failing? Despite the obvious ways the oppressors have adapted to the modern world?
1 year. They organized for one year and then went home. The rest of the country completely fucking forgot about whatever it was they were asking for about 5 months in. If they're the new generation of the Civil Rights Movement, then they're inept crybabies who don't actually know anything about what Civil Rights leaders went through, were imprisoned for, and died for, before they came along.
Excuses. Either you give a shit enough to put up a fight, or you don't for [insert reason here].
Or....they've succumbed to outrage du jour and voted to put representatives in office who only care about what keeps the outrage going. If the average citizen is dumb enough to turn politics off in favor of the Real Housewives of [insert stupid place] then they deserve the elected representatives they keep sending to office over and over and over again.
I absolutely do think our generation has lost its grip on what it means to a) have nothing to lose, and b) put up a fight. People are comfortable, fat, and lazy, and they find more solace in their smartphones than they do in talking to their neighbors and organizing groups of powerful citizens. Know why Moms for Liberty gets so much awful shit done? Because they're organized and motivated. It's crazy how lunatic conservatives somehow find a way to stay plugged in and show up at every local school board meeting even when it's just to cause drama, and the rest of the community who has a sincere stake in the outcomes of its decisions can't do more than complain that they have to pick the kids up at soccer practice or can't miss their yoga class. MLK Jr. wrote "Letters from a Birmingham Jail"....from a jail cell.
You want something? GO FUCKING GET IT AND STOP COMPLAINING. Nobody is going to give you what you don't take.
I'm not really interested in arguing this kind of stuff and I don't disagree with you that a lack of voter engagement is a problem. But, I would encourage you to try and understand exactly why it seems like people don't give a shit about the state of politics.
I'd be willing to bet that it's not actually a lack of giving a shit, just a feeling that our time is better spent on other things in life. Those 80 million people "sitting on the sidelines" aren't complaining for the fun of it, they are busy trying to live their lives and deal with their own problems. People feel like the system is rigged, not because of some ambiguous statistics, but because every time they try to work with the system they get shit on and forgotten. How can it not feel rigged when the majority of the country votes for one president and gets a different one instead? Or how about when states, without ever asking its citizens, take away a persons right to choose what happens to their own body? How is a system with an archaic electoral college, gerrymandering, corrupt politicians, and a parties that only represents the top 1% not a rigged system?
It's not that we don't know that showing up in numbers is a good way to enact change, nor are we just sitting on our collective asses complaining and expecting things will just magically change. We just aren't holding out hope that enough numbers will show up to make a dent in our lifetimes, or that the changes will even be ones that benefit us.
The majority party in this country is the party that doesn't vote.
The second major party is the party that complains endlessly about "both sides".
The third major party is the party that votes one way because that's what they've been told to do their whole life.
The fourth major party is the one that actually does research and engages that's being driven mad by the other three.