The fact that those are your choices should be enough to alert you to the reality - that voting is a charade to make you feel “heard” and to keep you from turning on your overlords, who will continue to wage war for profit (be it on Palestine or on their own poor and marginalised) no matter what.
Sadly the propaganda is so strong that most people can’t see beyond the pretend field laid out in front of them and the “blue vs red” mentality that is enforced along with it, so focused on this artificial division that they don’t see that the real “teams” are society and those who exploit it for profit and power (and who control the media and the education system, ensuring you’re indoctrinated this way from birth).
By all means, vote for the lesser (but still) evil (I’m in the UK, we are able to vote “none” which I will be doing if there is no one on the ballot who represents me), but you don’t get to pat yourself on the back for it as if you’ve just stormed the beach on D day and singlehandedly defeated fascism, because that’s nowhere near the truth, which is that you’ve just participated in a bit of theatre where you were given an illusion of choice. You being uncomfortable doesn’t change that.
It could change you, if you decide to engage the discomfort instead of ignoring it, you can start here:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
People who think voting doesn’t matter are the ones that make it a reality. Everyone who shows up to not vote, or throw a protest vote, make it that much easier for the fanatics who do show up to get their way.
It’s not a perfect system, but refusing to participate doesn’t make it better. And “patting yourself on the back” because you decided you’d rather support your pride and ego instead of change (imperfect as it always is) is no less a sign of delusion than believing one election for one position is all that matters.
Every election matters. From local dog-catcher to state reps to president.
but refusing to participate
Who said anything about not participating. All anarchists I know are at most lukewarm on voting but put more effort into political change by organizing that all the votes in all the elections of a lifetime combined.
The election system doesn’t really change anything and makes people complicit by giving them the illusion of a democratic process that’s actually worth a damn.
It doesn’t change anything because people of action don’t participate. Voter participation is shockingly low for a supposedly “free” population. It’s not the only thing that matters, but it does a whole lot more than screaming from the rooftops about how much of a fool other people are for actually participating.
When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.
We get it bro, youre the arbiter of truth. Voting is meaningless, so don’t do anything other than bitch and moan about everything.
I don’t think anybody is legitimately saying that voting blue is the end of the matter. Activism is way more than that–it’s attending local board meetings and making yourself heard, getting involved with your local/state parties to push for change, communicating with your elected representative (even, and especially if, they disagree with your position), attending donstrations and protests, volunteering for your preferred candidate’s campaign, voting, and most importantly–never giving up, even if it takes decades. If your preferred candidate loses in the primary, you immediately switch to the next closest candidate and start campaigning for them and pushing them towards your preferred policies. If a referendum you support loses, immediately start pushing for a similar referendum in the next election that tweaks the wording to avoid the reason why it lost last time. And so on, and so forth, across all the various levels of government.
This exact playbook is what got Roe overturned. Religious mutters pushed, and pushed, and pushed. They voted in lockstep for the farthest-right candidate in the primary, and if they lost in the primary they voted for the farthest right candidate in the general. They protested outside abortion clinics daily. They pushed and pushed, and over the course of 50 years they gradually transformed an entire political party from having roughly equal representation of pro-choice and anti-choice candidates to one where supporting a nationwide 15-week abortion ban with no exceptions is considered “moderate.”
I think a lot of people actually are saying that voting blue is the end of the matter. When you ask people who hate leftists what they are doing besides voting for Biden, most have no answer.
Yeah, because they’re lazy, and/or don’t have the ability to wage a sustained campaign. That’s the vast majority of voters on both sides–myself included, sadly, though in my case it’s largely because I’m afraid that a furry getting involved in a campaign would do more harm than good. Did you think every (or even a majority) of single-issue pro-birth voters were on the picket lines? Hell no. Most voters cast a vote, maybe in the primary (but usually just the general election, and only in the presidential elections) and that’s pretty much it.
And for the record, I absolutely don’t hate leftists, I agree with the vast majority of leftist positions, and I think protesting and advocating like this is a critical part of creating change. I just feel like it’s just as important to practice harm reduction and push from the inside, too.
