Man I left reddit to get away from the fear mongering like this, and yet here you are.
Both parties benefit from the current system, therefore they both want to keep things the way they are.
The system works.
If you don’t like the current state of things, it’s not the system that needs changing, it’s the people involved in it.
No. One party benefits maintainig the status quo. The other is willing to burn it all down to gain power.
…and yet they’ve had power before - several times, including once with it being literally this dipshit - and haven’t burned it all down to gain power yet.
But then this election is different, it’s the most important election of our lifetimes, just like the Democrats have said about every other election since at least 2004. Down to the literal phrase “the most important election of our lifetimes.”
The reality is both major parties benefit from the system, and both market based on fear because they don’t have anything positive to offer voters that isn’t an outright lie that the voters know is an outright lie. The big difference is the the GOP markets on fear of the other and the Dems market on fear of the GOP.
I dont recall any recent president or serious canidates claiming to be “dictator for a day” or “use the miltary to go after radical left lunatics” or you know, actually attempted to insurrect and overthrow democracy once and plans on doing it again.
But oh yeah tottally a normal everyday election.
You’re not wrong about how they operate.
But there’s absolutely far reaching consequences to major decisions by leaders in power. Don’t fool yourself thinking “It hasn’t burned down yet” just because it’s not a Hollywood societal-collapse movie before your eyes.
Work sucks more than ever for us now. Know why? Long-dead Reagan absolutely destroyed workers’ rights and established precedents that put bosses much higher on society’s totem pole. Recessions happened. People get desperate and forget that they even HAD rights as workers. Clawing this back is the battle of our time at home.
Before that? FDR’s New Deal actually secured quite a bit of prosperity for people amidst a complete disaster. People still benefit from Social Security to this day, even if only a little.
Teddy Roosevelt established the National Park system. Now we’re happy we don’t have luxury apartments in the middle of Yosemite or Yellowstone, or fast food chains all along the Grand Canyon. (Or it hasn’t been used as a landfill or something because the hole was already dug so it saves costs!)
Citizen’s United is why we have trillions of dollars in shadow-money funding “both sides” of a broken system. (Although that wasn’t put up to vote, the people in charge were sworn in by people that were elected.)
TL;DR: I get it. It’s all stupid, we’re all constantly lied to. That’s super lame. We know and we hate it.
BUT:
Votes. Have. Consequences.
Everyone knows capital-first politicians don’t actually care about us. We get it.
I’m all 'bout that fancy praxis and mutual aid and all those lofty but pure concepts we definitely need to be working on. But we live in a society here.
Not voting right now is giving an out-and-out fascist a ridiculous amount of power to start crushing and punishing anybody with a different opinion.
We’re doing what we can with what we have to soften the blow, so we can actually have the chance to work on the higher concepts like “changing the people involved in it.”
I’d much rather be on the ground convincing people to form unions to safely backtalk their bosses, rather than rallying up guerilla units amidst a “boogaloo” because a bunch of hateful and uneducated people put a screeching orange baby on a throne who refused to leave and became “holy immortal emperor.”
Lmao hyperbole aside. Seriously. Standing on the sidelines and going “hmph” is basically a vote for things that are likely Very Bad For You™.
