this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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We literally do not live in a democracy according to a bunch of empirical studies, and also according to basic material analysis.
The opinion of the masses is never reflected in our government.
Does your politics begin and end at participating in sham elections? Why aren't you encouraging people to take meaningful political action?
Imagine being Russian and the extent of your political activism is encouraging people to vote Putin out.
That's how ridiculous you are.
What is your definition of "meaningful political action"? Picking up guns? Got news for you, the government has more of them.
Voting starts at the local level. You vote people into local city government who reflect your views and values. Those people often enough have greater aspirations and want to move up in the political machine. It's extremely rare for someone to be vaulted from average Joe to major political player in one leap. Trump was able to do it by being a populist piece of shit who could pay his way into office.
You have to start small. Get your city council to look like you, then move on to the county, the state, etc.
Do you really think the two options for politics are voting in sham elections and WACO?
Local elections are also pretty much a "which landlord can pay the most money and be the least repulsive"
You have to build parallel power structures before you can meaningfully influence any electoral structure, including local ones.
This is just untrue though.
This is just untrue though
You just can't reconcile the fact people don't vote how you want, therefore the system must be broken. And spreading voting apathy by telling people it's all bullshit is one of the most damaging things you could do to your democracy. You're better for Trump than most Republicans.
You just can't reconcile that your high school civics textbook lied about how the US operates.
What meaningful political action do you propose?
As far as I know, there is one study, and even that is under dispute on secondary analysis of the underlying data.
Okay, now analyze how public opinion is formed and who owns the mechanisms that form it
Still a democracy though.
If the bourgeoisie decide elections through lobbying and media it isnt a democracy in a meaningful sense.
They don't exactly decide, they influence the decision. Why don't you votee that for their goals?
"The didn't do that, they just did something that will predictably result in that"
It doesn't work perfectly and humanity pushes back over time. The issue is the pace of technology is too fast for our ability to push back. I'm hopeful our good side will win but I'm afraid it will take deaths by the millions again for people to wake up and fight back against the real enemies among us.
Once upon a time that would have been a simple answer, given the concentrated ownership of news that could reach any one person. But now with the Internet, there is less and less control by any one group. Certainly the age of the rich effectively controlling the media is over.
Pr teams have successfully learned how to use social media, and social media giants promote views that are beneficial to them like fascism while suppressing left wing content.
I dont think the internet existing makes us a democracy, the parasocial nature of a lot of internet content actually makes it so people are more able to sell their propaganda.
There is plenty of media that exists outside of media giants. Case in point, there is a local blogger here in Portland, OR that runs bikeportland.org to cover bikes and related subjects. His blog posts and discussions on them are a major part of the local discourse around infrastructure in Portland. He's not rich, but he exercises influence.
Okay, but you do see how thats pretty boutique compared to the local news channels, let alone the giants, right?
Small things are allowed to exist that oppose the dominant ideology until they meaningfully threaten it.
Any grassroots media is going to be "boutique". That doesn't make it not influential, especially when considered as a whole.
If independent media, as a whole, got too influential to the point that it was threatening the system, it would be targeted. We've seen this play out over and over again under capitalism. You literally just have to look to history to see this.
Targeted with what? At least in the US, there has been a build up of case law over the past century and a half or so that provides vigorous protections of freedom of speech. The Red Scare is remembered as a scar on the US's past, not to be repeated. Yes, there are still people with a vigorous taste for censorship, but there's vigorous pushback against them.
This is funny because we are currently going through a red scare.
You have a laughably erroneous perspective on the matter. This isn't Russia my guy.
You do realize your comment is just "You're wrong!" with more flowery language right?
We live in a republic democracy which, yes, differs from an outright democracy.
We do not live in a republic democracy, we live in a republic dictatorship of capital.