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I think the main problem is the pro-voting folks go all nuts saying that voting is SUPER IMPORTANT and you HAVE TO DO IT or EVIL THINGS WILL HAPPEN.
I've been voting nonstop for 24 years. There hasn't been any really huge change because of it. Even when the bad guy wins.
Voting should feel less like an epic struggle for the soul of a nation, and more like paying your taxes. You have to do it, but you don't have people screaming at you for the preceding 18 months about how meaningful and important it is only for nothing to really change. No matter who wins on election day I still have to go to work the next day, the sun is still going to rise, and America will kill brown people.
Edit: Maybe the reason I don't feel like voting is that effective is that I don't really have anyone to vote for, just against.
There hasn't been any really huge change because of it. Even when the bad guy wins.
That perfectly encapsulates the idea privilege.
The lives of people who lack those privileges have changed
If that's the case, why are so many people, regardless of privilege, still miserable? If voting fixed things, shouldn't things be getting fixed? Because it doesn't seem that way to me.
I didn't say voting fixes anything. It doesn't, especially in first past the post two party systems.
I'm saying that the idea that nothing changes is only something you could say if you aren't a member of any of the many demographics that are actively getting their rights stripped away.
Voting may not do much to make things better, but it can absolutely make it magnitudes worse for vulnerable folk.
Absolutely. We don't get to vote for "better" in America. We get "less worse" and "more worse." Voting for less worse just makes sense.
But if you convince people they're voting for "better" and they don't get it, I don't blame them for not voting again.
for sure. could you imagine living in Gaza?
I know multiple people the entire arc of whose lives were changed by the Obama-era immigration policies. Want me to ask them to tell you how wrong you are?
the deporter in chief? si, se puede? Obama is a border-hawking, bomb-dropping torture supervisor who extra judicially murdered people on his kill list.
do you know any of those people?
Whataboutism says what
I know one guy who got to stay in the US under DACA, and I know one guy who was fighting a legal battle to stay in the country when Obama came into office, and he said fighting his case got easier under Obama. He's still here now (he stayed in limbo for a pretty extended length of time, and eventually got married which resolved the issue).
I am not an expert. I don't know which column of this table the second guy would fit into, or whether the huge reductions in the second column mean that the "deporter in chief" nickname is an unfair characterization based on the relatively-smaller increases in the first column. I just know he said his case got easier.
What do you know about it? What are your sources of information?
it's not whataboutism to say Obama deported, killed, and tortured people. it's a fact, and it's relevant when discussing his legacy.
What are your sources of information, specifically about his deportations and his immigration policy? Are you basing this on "everyone knows" type of knowledge, and finding it superior to someone relaying to you (edit:
firsthand) secondhand knowledge and a cited source with an argument?feels like you're asking me whether I'm believing statistics over your anecdotes. I am. I am believing statistics over your anecdotes.
Okay, so you don't have a deep familiarity with the topic. It's okay, I'm not really an expert either. But, I've looked at the full statistics (I sent you a table), which add some extremely important facts to the "deporter-in-chief" quick one-liner criticism. And also, I have some secondhand experience with it, which is usually a pretty valuable thing to have when the anecdotes are used in addition to statistics.
So, where did you get your information? Is it just that you know the term "deporter-in-chief" and that deportations went up, because everyone knows those things, and that's it as far as what you know about the topic?
Voting is a cumulative effort. It really only works if more than just you vote. One vote is a pebble on a beach. A hundred million is a landslide. Getting discouraged because your one vote didn't enact real lasting change is insanely prideful.
And just because nothings changed for you doesn't mean it hasn't changed for others. Theres hundreds of millions of people in the country, all with their own struggles and challenges. Just because you didn't get yours doesn't mean their hasn't been positive (or negative) change.
Which is exactly the opposite message of all the GOTV efforts I've ever seen. I'm not saying don't vote. I'm saying don't make it such a huge fucking deal, and lower your expectations of what it's actually going to get done.
I'm far, far less discouraged with this attitude than the one where I really, honestly believed something will happen because I filled in a box on a piece of paper.
the pro-voting folks
I beg of you to go live in a society which doesn't have voting in its government. Just for like a short time. It's incredibly instructive, and will give a reality-check to this idea that you seem to have that things are so bad right now that there's not even any point in choosing a better future or a worse one. Things may or may not be better with Biden, but they will absolutely be much, much worse with Trump.
I shouldn't have said "pro-voting." I'm pro-voting. I think we should be voting for our bosses. I just think that this system makes voting pretty ineffective.
But it's an election year, and nobody's allowed to dissent in an election season or they're Russian plants so I'll just shut up and feel completely alienated from the people who live around me, and now everyone on the Internet.
Just like every other election year.
Sometimes people are going to disagree with you, when you post opinions on the internet. It is ok; it doesn't mean we're against you.
Not against. Alien. Like everybody loses their damn minds every four years.
Nothing makes me feel less like an American than an election.