Happy Sunday, or Monday, depending where in the world you are!
the thing is, every time i tune into local or even national politics its always some kindergarten level problem between two or three groups of people who through their kindergardenness should have lost the privilege to rule us on our behalf… but i dont make the rules, so i guess those kiddos can keep throwing shit at each other and not be adults about leading a country and what that should entail… its just laughable, so it is far easier, bequem geradezu, to just look away
I totally agree, mainstream media is a dog and pony show in most regards. The trick is to educate yourself on political economy, propaganda, and ideologies, so that you can extract underlying meanings behind much of media. For example, by coming to understand the concept of manufactured consent, and the role the private media in the U.S. plays in reinforcing state ideology, you can more clearly see the role that they played in creating support for actions the government intends to take, eg. The rapid spread and use of misinformation and failure to effectively fact check State Dept claims during the lead up to the war on terror. The media was effectively complicit in ensuring that any deviation from the party line they were to hold was sidelined, and even when presented, made into a straw man for ridicule. We can also look to former CIA and FBI officials who publicly acknowledge their use of human assets, either knowingly or unknowingly, to spread false information and create a desired public response.
I could say more, but I just got a video call, so I will have to stop here.
i think here in germany the problems are usually due to varrying levels of corruption, discrimination and nepotism
And to a large degree actually being entirely outdated in terms of worldview.
Over here in Germany we have politicians who plainly do not understand how the world works nowadays. Not even in the “conservative” way but genuinely in a “Holy shit this person is out of touch” way.
Also frightening news is the rise of neo Nazi supporters (AFD voters) over here.
Oh also don’t look up our age of consent. It’s INTENSELY outdated and not in the good way.
I could definitely see that, and I will defer to your knowledge, I am in no way knowledgeable about modern germanys political situation, nor their media apparatus. What do you think are the biggest issues faced by the general working class in Germany right now? If you don’t have time or don’t care to respond, no worries, I know this kinda stuff can be draining to discuss. If that’s the case, we could chat about something you’re excited for instead, I’m always up to learn something cool!
We need to organize outside of the current framework. They want to play circus then let them, but we are the ones lining up in the front row to watch the show. We can just hang out in the cheap seats and talk amongst ourselves on how to bring the big tent down.
How to achieve this I don’t know. That is dependant on your local area. It won’t be immediate, and it will take time before there is any sizeable movement to actual begin direct action, but it has been done many times in the past and it must happen again if we are going to see change.
Ignorance is the cloak of the Privileged.
Removed by mod
I suspect it’s shorthand for “the person forced into prostitution through economic and social circumstances beyond their control”.
That would be my reading as well, but since I only have this meme, I can’t say for certain their views on such matters.
Is there consent under capitalism? Selling your body (any job) cannot be willing when the alternative is death.
You’re right, let me get pissed at everything that I have no real legal power to change.
Yes you absolutely should. Because when you get pissed about those things you will hopefully start to elect the right people who then HAVE the legal power to change them.
If voting didn’t matter, they wouldn’t work so hard to make it difficult.
The biggest and best changes have always come because the working class made it so.
Prior to universal suffrage, we had to fight and die for every small gain.
Since then, we have the luxury of just voting and protesting.
And when we look back at how much has been achieved, it’s just amazing.
My personal pet peeve is that we haven’t gotten around to getting tough with tax avoiders. Gotta start really heavily fining those advisors and enablers. Some probably should be jailed.
That’s the key to reducing inequality, which will then make the middle class much wealthier and stronger.
Here’s the problem: I’m just some random guy in a shitty red state, I HIGHLY doubt my one vote will actually change anything in this state, especially when it gets canceled out.
Some things to consider:
- Local elections and proposals…
- …make a huge impact to people’s lives
- …tend have quicker impacts
- …are far more heavily influenced by a single vote
- …can jump-start a leftist politician (or a policy position), getting them ready for state or national campaigns down the road
- Judges really friggin matter, and they aren’t categorized by party, so they’re a prime section for a well-informed voter to make a difference
- All elections cost money to win
- Even in deeply red or deeply blue states
- If the GOP lead shrinks from 20% to 15%, that will translate to more money the GOP has to spend next time around or else risk further slipping into single digits and making a new battleground state
- Momentum really helps keep costs low. It doesn’t seem like slipping from 20% to 15% should make the GOP panic, but it would
- Voter turnout is lower in more deeply red/blue states, meaning your vote actually counts more in closing the gap
- Getting your preferred candidate in office is not the only measure of electoral success
- Even candidates that get absolutely destroyed on election day can still shift the local or national conversation
- Candidates that perform better than pollsters expected can influence future candidates to pay more attention to the issues that brought out those extra voters
- There aren’t just voters staying home until there’s a candidate worth voting for – there are also good candidates who are staying home until there are enough voters to support them
- Milton Friedman, bastard that he was, was right about this:
Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
- We want leftist ideas to already be lying around at the moment they are needed. We can’t wait until after the crisis has already occurred to start organizing and showing up. It’ll be too late.
- The Patriot Act was 131 pages, signed into law 45 days after 9/11. That wasn’t a reaction to 9/11, starting from scratch. Someone had a wishlist already, and they had a PowerPoint deck ready to go on September 12th full of proposals that Congress had already seen 100 times but was never ready to vote on before.
- Local elections and proposals…
You’re right, your one vote won’t change anything, but you could organize around a shared need in your community, and make a significant impact there. That’s the thing, politics isn’t just voting. It’s all the little things that make up the political aspects of our lives.
I don’t think it’s healthy to expect everyone to be tuned in and turned on all the time. Nor do I think that watching the news regularly is a way to stay up to date. Rather, it’s just a way of inundating oneself with the perspectives of the elite. The best politics are in real life, in our every day situations.
What helps me is to build my frameworks and models of the system. As I gain understanding of the structures underlying our society, I can more easily identify and understand the intentions and desires of various groups around me. When I see something on the news, when I watch the news, I don’t just read what is written and accept or deny it as fact. I think, “Who’s material interests are served by this?”. I think, “has the conclusion been appropriately interrogated, and if not, what needs to be done to reach a meaningful understanding?” I will research the author of the article and the owners of the media in question, to determine where their biases will lie, because all of us are inherently biased in one way or another.
With a strong framework, traversing the media landscape is significantly less overwhelming, and making political change becomes a possibility when we stop expecting to elect or vote someone in who will change it, and create alternative structures that change it without reliance upon the paternalism of the state to save us. Create the structures that can create the change you need first, use them to make the changes, and let the government play catch up to you, instead of always begging for scraps from them.
See your problem is you still give a rats ass about what they tell you is and is not legal.
True but slight issue: I would get shot at.
I live in Louisiana as a communist. Doesn’t stop me. The threat of violence is all the more reason we need to speak up when we can.
Either you die a slow death forced onto your knees in poverty or you stand up and die doing something about it.
All you have to lose are your chains.
considering how right wingers defend gun right like rabid the least one can do is use it against them
Join your local SRA today!
Been saying for a while we need a new Blank Panther party for LGBT+ community, like a Pride Demons party.
Yes, get pissed. Feel that shit, but instead of just letting it get the best of you, direct that anger against our oppressors. Live in spite of them. There are small steps you can take to make change, but first just get angry so you can process this.
There’s no provenance for this actually being from Brecht, but it was originally published in Terra Nossa, a leftist periodical used to communicate Brazilian socialist ideas to English speaking Americans.
So weather or not Brecht, a Marxist, said those words or not: they’re not about voting!
but it applies to voting, we can argue about the effectiveness of voting as a tactic but people who vote are more politically engaged than the type of person described in the quote
this was published during the lost decade’s tumultuous end before brazil even had an election.
a few years after the ops quote was written inflation hit 84%, people were literally fighting in the streets.
it’s more than a little out of context to say that the quote applies to voting.
I think they’re saying that it applies equally to voting, whether that was the originally intended meaning or not.
i guess what i was trying to avoid saying right out is that it’s an indictment of the seriousness of electoralism when the supporters have to roll out quotes about bodily struggling to create a livable home after twenty years of fascist military dictatorship so they can support it.
surely there’s people who wrote stuff about voting that can be used to make the case for voting.
mobilizing words written to encourage peoples involvement in worker struggles as a call to vote doesn’t do any favors for liberal democracy.
That doesn’t really respond to what I said
but it applies to voting, we can argue about the effectiveness of voting as a tactic but people who vote are more politically engaged than the type of person described in the quote
There are many people who vote, and do nothing else, and that is condemnible. But unless you have direct evidence that the quote originates with someone who explicitly denied the effectiveness of voting in totality I see no reason why the quote would not apply to forms of political advocacy you happen consider ineffective
I don’t particularly want to argue about the effectiveness of voting, beyond to say that I strongly disagree with any bright-line distinction between “electoralism” and whatever other strategies you would care to mention, and that EVERY successful movement (leftist or otherwise) that had the option had the ballot as part of their strategy.
The temptation and crucial flaw of a totalitarian mind are that everyone must play a part in a superstructural battle between good and evil. Standing on the sidelines or taking a neutral position on present topics is not allowed; one may not merely observe or ignore the madness played out among the power hungry.
Everyone needs a take; everyone needs to “be informed” on the grand, irrelevant events of our broken times. Everyone needs a flag in their profile picture—a not-so-grand gesture indicating that they support the “latest thing.”
Yeah, totalitarian minds also think being able to breathe oxygen is a good thing, but you don’t see me out here holding my breath to try to avoid being like them.
Associating ideas you don’t like with people you find detestable is a common tactic of totalitarians too, yet here you are.
Go get informed and stop treating politics as something that is voluntary. In a democratic society, it’s not. If you don’t want to be informed and involved, then you don’t really want a democracy, you just want to be served, and democratic societies can’t function if that’s people’s primary motivations.
Thank you.
After informing myself too much, always following the news in detail and finally breaking down with the current escalation in the middle east my wife told me something similiar and i finally blocked all “news” pages.
The game is rigged, for we now have a voice, but the daily information we are expected to seek is not only tainted, it is in its very essence to poison our mind. So at the end we make a poor decision begrudingly, while taking responsibilty for
As long as they don’t vote, who cares? It’s the imbeciles that vote that cause the problems.
Everyone eligible to vote who choose not to basically cosign whoever wins. If you didn’t vote when you could, you basically gave everyone who did care enough to go to the polls the right to speak for you.
Now, continue that train of thought. Imagine that the person not voting is one of the politically ignorant mentioned in the quote.
What are they going to do at the polls? Are they going to add signal or noise? What is accomplished by them choosing a candidate at random?
Letting people who are informed make decisions for you happens all the time. Engineers and safety officers determine speed limits. Architects determine how the buildings you enter are constructed. Panels of electricians, firemen, and manufacturers determine the electrical codes that keep your house from randomly catching fire or electrocuting you. Interested people organize community events you attend. What makes politics any different?
My personal ideal would be that only the informed vote. Anyone has the right to become involved, as well as the right to abstain and accept the choice of their peers. Unfortunately, many people form their political opinions in echo chambers and are less informed than they think.
That’s kind of impossible unfortunately. It would be nice if only people who weren’t misinformed made decisions, but there’s no good way to measure how informed someone is. Any method for deciding what counts as “informed” could be used by the state to suppress the interests of certain people. It’s kind of like saying we should put someone who’s always correct in charge. There’s no good way of deciding what is correct.
I’m a proponent of having as few limits as possible on who can vote. We should make it easier for people to predict how different candidates will actually govern, but the person who can best advocate for someone’s interests is themselves. People are often convinced into voting against their self interest, but their interests would not be better represented by letting someone else decide for them. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s the best one.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating tests or anything for voting. We’ve seen what that leads to.
I’m thinking more along the lines of self-determination. If someone has no interest or knowledge of politics, they should refrain from voting.
In some cases, like with climate change, failing to act at all is functionally the same as acting against a solution. Climate change, among other things, is something where statistically we know that more voters would result in more support for preventing climate change, so it’s not just a case of “well what if the voters were all idiots anyways?”. We’ve seen that higher voters turnouts trend in a particular direction regarding particular topics. And ultimately less voter turnout and less people being informed to some degree regarding politics is less democratic by nature.
I’m not arguing against people being informed. I’m arguing against uninformed people being encouraged to vote.
High voter turnout does change the results in many cases, but generally that’s simple negative feedback. Average Americans didn’t have to be well informed to vote against Trump in 2020, for instance - Trump saw to that when he made an ass of himself publicly on a regular basis. And people notice things like wars and recessions and whatnot. That’s not the same as an informed voter base.
I’m not arguing against people being informed. I’m arguing against uninformed people being encouraged to vote.
They’re being encouraged to become informed.
Not in my experience. It’s all just “go out and vote!”
Bring back property voting NOW!
Turns out being an idiot isn’t a barrier to home ownership.
It’s a nice quote, but not from Brecht.
We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”
They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
–Robert A. Heinlein
If uninformed people couldnt vote things would be less bad.
Imagine if you were to go outside and walk amongst the teenagers already drinking and the middle aged worn down from lead in the air and water, almost all of them a carrier of some entirely preventable disease of some sort, almost all of them convicted of crimes that could have cost lives in different circumstance such as speeding in cars or assault, imagine for a moment how incredibly stupid the average person is.
Now imagine half of everyone is dumber than that. You want those people to take a stance on socioeconomic structure and foreign affairs decisionmaking? Really, truly?
I, personally, don’t see all that much harm in a society where only about a third of adults vote, so long as those educated on issues are willing to vote.
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