Fez909
toilet expert
I did the BBC predictor and got 290 EC votes for Obama.
US election 2012
- Thread starter savoloysam
- Start date
I did the BBC predictor and got 290 EC votes for Obama.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I don't think we're that far apart in our views. We just talk past each other a bit.
My theory is that you have to go through all the voting and stuff to get people to the point where they're motivated to organize on the streets. I guess I'm just more willing to bang my head against a rock waiting for that moment.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
My perspective is more that if you tell people to look at the rock, that hitting the rock is important, they'll keep hitting the rock indefinitely, even if someone is standing behind them slowly tightening a vice around their testicles.I don't think we're that far apart in our views. We just talk past each other a bit.
My theory is that you have to go through all the voting and stuff to get people to the point where they're motivated to organize on the streets. I guess I'm just more willing to bang my head against a rock waiting for that moment.
Metaphors
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Is there any evidence that it has to go in those stages? First voting, then realising voting's not enough, then street organising? Why not simply cut to the chase?
Balbi
Hey, Dean Yager!
Comfort in voting. The narrative of democracy. Like trying to get people to jump out of a plane before explaining what the parachute does.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Erm, I don't know if you heard, but these are things enacted on a State level by predominantly Republican controlled legislatures. The point being, Republicans when they get into power very much do intend to do these things, and in fact have been doing them at an alarming rate (counter to your assertion that it's all just so much hot air). A Republican president, with his appointments to the SC, would make that even more troubling, since any attempts to overturn these kinds of laws and provisions would become impossible.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
Whatever you need to get you to vote for a murderer.
(hint. If the process is happening anyway, it doesn't matter a flying fuck who the President is)
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
You have to get people used to idea that they should have some control and input. Voting does that. Besides, organizing and voting arn't mutually exclusive. Citizenship doesn't end at just voting.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Where's the evidence that it does that? Voting is one of the most passive political activities possible; and voting for the lesser evil seems guaranteed to create apathy.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
It's very easy to be dismissive when you're not directly affected by some of these policies. Well done for being so high above us all on your horse that you're able to look down and not care about the realities people face day-to-day.
It's possible to look at a situation with nuance. It's possible to think Obama is a murdering cunt, who has been disastrous for due process, who has expanded the way American unilateral power works abroad in an almost unprecedented way, in a way that will be very difficult to walk back from (and indeed, Romney agrees with Obama on his drone programme), at the same time as being able to see the differences either candidate would have on various vulnerable people back home.
It's a shitty situation to be in, but since no one is in a position where they can, instead of voting, stand up and get them all out of power tomorrow and ensure everyone has a better life, the basic reality of the situation is that people are going to choose. They are going to choose who is going to allow them to get medical care and attention should they be raped. They are going to choose who is going to allow them to have mammograms and cervical screening and birth control. They are going to choose who they think is going to make their economy better because they've been foreclosed on and lost everything. They are going to think about how they want their healthcare to work because they lost their father to cancer and it bankrupted the whole family.
It's great if you can sit across the ocean and be high minded enough that the nuances of political reality don't matter to you because....principle. But you're missing a vital point: the people who live in that country are so ground down into the dirt by the system that without some kind of real alternative, they're going to do what they feel they can, and at the moment that means voting for the person who might make their lives a little less shit.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Have you joined labour as well then?
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
I don't believe in your differences, and I think your line of reasoning is a blank cheque to the regime to do whatever the hell they like. Where's the accountability for any politician in there? The Dems know they have your vote in perpetuity, because the Republicans will always be there.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
You don't have to believe in "my" differences. The people who live there experience them.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
It's not really, though. Like VintP says, you can see that the person you're voting for is scum, and still vote in order to safeguard one aspect that's important to you. Voting isn't necessarily linked to real political activity, neither is it always linked to real belief in the party/person being voted for.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
All I see here is a massive amount of contempt for anyone who hasn't managed to be as enlightened as the amazing people posting here who have opted out of the current political system. There's no empathy. There's no compassion. There's no real caring about the conditions people live in. All there is is contempt, in almost equal measure as the contempt you feel for the politicians.
Treacle Toes
Time
Applauds* ^^^^^ Spot on.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What bit is being materially safeguarded then. Let's see if this argument holds up. Let's try it in other situations too.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
It's also possibly to express contempt by saying, like you did, that people are ground into the dirt, and so will vote. About half of US voters will not vote; and that's based on a very rational understanding of the US political system. They're way ahead of the liberals. What's lacking is any sort of alternative that does offer a chance for "control and input".
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No there isn't - there's contempt for people who have no say in how the things plays out arguing for the most safe possible vote and using those most under the cosh as their ideological shield when they have a platform to argue that lesser evilism produces fake choices like this. Hovis fucking advert here.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
You can vote Labour because you think a LP government, or MP, or council will cut fewer services. You can vote Democrat because you think they will safeguard abortion rights, or gay marriage.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I didn't ask what you think may happen - i asked what materially will happen. You can vote anything you want for any reason at all.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
It's worth noting that not everyone who doesn't vote does so because they are making their own political statement.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Can you re-phrase what you're asking me?
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Usually not a "political statement"; that's the point, really.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Well, i posted on the basis that their vote would safeguard something - as your first post suggested would happen. That's a really important point as it goes. The lesser evil vote relies on that safeguarding happening - without there is nothing. What's your views on that?
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Materially - look back at the link and quote I posted earlier. People aren't just voting for the president today, they are voting on a whole host of other State ballots, which include electing SC justices, congresspeople, voting on specific provisions, etc. Who is it that you are suggesting should abstain from voting? It's going to be those on the left, or centre left. The Republicans and others on the right are still going to vote. Having Republican-led state governments and legislatures - along with a Republican president who will appoint 2-3 Republican Supreme Court justices during his term - will have a very real effect on people's lives. It will continue what has already been happening in those Republican majority States already (again, see my earlier link for an example).
Again, it's very, very easy to sit back with your impeccable principles and say what all these people should be doing, but it's completely ignoring how they are experiencing these things themselves.
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