Sure, do that. But also vote.
0 Boosts
1 Like
And yet so many people don’t vote. And even more people don’t vote in primaries.
Like, I genuinely believe that if everyone just voted on the primaries (incl. for local govt) we’d be fine. That’s where the problem really lies IMO. We get shit candidates because nobody shows up to vote for the good candidates in the primaries.
Voting will not save us, huge numbers of problems stem from fundamental imbalances in power, power which the political class require in order to impose their will (or that of whomever they serve further up the chain), even when their will is genuinely benign.
Voting just decides which people (with already powerful people/structures frequently playing an outsized role in exactly who you get to choose between) get into power, then this power both alters their brain and causes their lived experiences to diverge with those of the electorate.
Our solutions need to include a fundamental redistribution of power or we are just maintaining the conditions (a key component being the concentration of power centres, which has been dramatically accelerating for the past few decades regardless of how people have voted) that will lead us right back here. This redistribution is not going to come from people who, however pure their intentions, require power over others to fulfil these intentions.
I won’t discourage voting, ^*^ but we have to stop pretending that we just need the right rulers and everything will be fine, voting is not enough.
^*Although I do understand people; particularly in FPTP safe seats; who choose not to play their part in the theatre of pretending that we are granting them some kind of justified authority over us- if not one single vote was placed, they would just choose how to distribute power amongst themselves after all, they wouldn’t leave the seats empty to reflect the outcome of the theatre, because that isn’t where their power actually comes from. This becomes clear when you consider ideas such as designated survivors, they collectively assume power over all of us and have a clear delineation of the rulers and the ruled.^
Too many don’t, they vote and consider it done with, but the voting is not the solution part of this. With how things are, particularly under FPTP voting systems, it is mostly holding off the worst of it until enough people feel disenfranchised enough to either not bother or vote for some far right conman or another…
Our only way out is by building systems of mutual support for ourselves and one another, but regrettably voting is much easier than that, so it rarely happens.