Amen.

Best comment.

Voting won’t solve all of our problems.

Absolutely, but not voting will make solving all of those problems more difficult, not easier.

I think everyone on Lemmy knows that?

The bigger problem is people who think withholding their vote is a form of direct action, and means they don't have to go out and protest against the oligarchs.

I’ll say it again, you dumb fuck Americans should have voted

Ftfy lol

Seriously, though, he’s as qualified as almost any US President during my lifetime, and more intelligent than most of them. Vote Vermin.

We can beat aipac. We've proven it in Illinois.

Just checked ballotpedia and found out that my rep has competition this year. Looked the guy up (Kyle Gauck) and he some ok stuff on his campaign page including that he won’t be taking cash from aipac and expanding healthcare access.

Aug 11th is voting day :)

This is the correct answer.

The people who support the "both sides bad" argument and the "protest non-voters" are children who still need their parents to order their tendies for them at Chili's.

• Get involved.
• Understand the actual candidates.
• Vote in the primaries.

The general election should be the last step in executing your civic duties and by that time you should be voting for your team.

The psyop'd to defeatism think the lesser of two evils is the best they can do. Remind them, it's not. It's still evil.

Awareness of the totalitarian tacking tip-toe con may help dispel the groupthink affirmation of succumbing to that. One "side" loudly promises one personal freedom cared about while quietly taking two economic freedoms that "side"'s herd don't care about, then the other "side" loudly restores one economic freedom their "side"'s herd care about while quietly taking two personal freedoms that "side"'s herd don't care about, back and forth, stripping you of freedom, keeping you blinded in fear of what the other is going to take from you, divided and conquered. ... But try explaining that in a tweet/tictok sized explanation to those who've had their attention spans crippled.

Some say it's futile. It's not. Defy that dire prognosis.

Carry on mendwards. :)

That's true, but I think neutral voters need to be told to do direct action a lot more than left voters. Everyone I know who does direct action voted Democrat. But I know lots of people who didn't vote and don't do direct action.

Republicans also really love when you vote third party.

Yes! Thank you. When everyone was calling that outsider in the northern Atlantic area a neo Nazi in disguise really bothered me. While he did have a bad life decision on display, once he learned about it, he almost immediately covered it up. People are stupid, especially when young, and sometimes make a bad decision they didn't think all the way through.

Also, it's ridiculous for someone to think that every "Both sides suck" posts are bought and paid for propaganda. Some may be. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen sometimes. But, the majority are probably just understandably frustrated people.

We shouldn't be policing people's expression of frustration with the system. If someone can't express frustration without being told they're a shill or a propagandist, they're not suddenly going to become an engaged happy partisan. Instead, they're probably just going to get even more disillusioned with the process and will stop talking about it and maybe stop voting altogether.

The democratic party sucks. It bends over backwards to help out corporate interests. It's more interested in winning the next election cycle than it is in making important changes. It often goes wherever the wind blows without having any conviction.

OTOH, the republicans are much worse. They're hell bent on enacting racist and sexist policies that will ensure straight, white, christian men remain in power. They're currently led by an absolute moron who's by far the most corrupt person I've ever seen in my life.

So, the options are currently between a status quo party that might not make your life better, vs a party led by a chaos gremlin which will systematically destroy everything within its reach. Voting for the lesser of two evils may be annoying, but it's often important.

Yep, millennial Facebook-tier Office memes aren't going to make me sign my name to endorse genocide, sorry Blue MAGA.

The idea of a "revolution" is just a meme. The only people who dream about them are people who are too online and college students, and the reason for that is because these are the people who don't have a lot of responsibilities. A revolution means violence, it means destruction, it means instability, it means danger. These are things that most people want to avoid because they have families, work, and lives of their own. The only people who go out and do things like this are people with nothing to lose, like the people of Iran a couple of months ago. Just like what we saw in Iran, revolution attempts are not guaranteed to be successful, and even when they are, sometimes the new system is even worse. This is often the case, and for the people who gave up everything, their sacrifices will only be in vain. A revolution is not something that's desirable or realistic.

We're basically living through the second gilded age where robber barons are robbing the country blind to their benefit while government is rolling over. What we need is somebody like Teddy Roosevelt. Somebody who can't be bought, can't be influenced, and can't be shaken. We need somebody who's not scared of the billionaire class, not wooed by dark money, and is principled to their core so much so that they see it as their life mission to break up monopolies and take the billionaires. Once we have that person, a coalition will form around them, and that's when real change can happen.

The popular vote isn't better. The issue is having a first past the post system. We need something like ranked choice voting on a national scale.

Dump the entire electoralist system.

Exactly. And a two party system basically ensures that.

There haven't been fair primaries in three presidential cycles. The DNC is a business and the primaries are entirely up to them and they have sucessfully argued in courts they have no duty to not medel in them any way they see fit. If primary turnout is low, the DNC owns a big share of why too.

That’s why ranked choice voting is needed

Ah america. The 'do nothing and hope for the best' system of election.

I know it sucks, I wish we had approval and ranked choice voting too

Exactly. I personally believe the election is going to be stolen, but nobody should fucking do the job FOR them. Voting MIGHT work, and you can still prepare for ridiculous, shortsighted guerilla fantasies after taking a day to go TRY the easy solution.

“But they’ll steal the elections!!!”

LOL. Yup. That's the crux of the terror that knocks people out of their considerate, critical, creative forebrain, and pushes them into their reactive social-dominating survival-focused fearful limbic reflex where they're easier to control.

This time, America... stop falling for it. :) We can still mend this.

Fascism only wins if you just give up and let it.

And so don't fall for the false dichotomies. ;D

More than voting may be required. And that does not mean badgering your fellow Americans into deeper divisive groupthink. :)

question everything and then give up looking

?

Why the second part?

Why not just remain questioning everything?

Propaganda is designed to flood you with so much crap that...

... that you [in the current form of propaganda] start to believe the truth is unknowable, because of all the lies in all directions at once. This primes you to give up [on truth and democracy], and seek a totalitarian/fascist strongman to save you.

Carry on questioning everything. Cannot have a fully informed public without educated minds. The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting nor rejecting it.

Deploying non-belief may decouple you from susceptibility to such psyop propaganda.

We can still mend this.

(Also +1 Josh Johnson, probably my fave comedian these days.).