this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
271 points (81.0% liked)
Political Memes
5600 readers
2798 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The system in the US necessitates one cast their vote tactically instead of emotionally to effect necessary change, and most of these changes bear out only in the long term by design. Because of this, capital interest toils to encourage voters into precisely the opposite behavior; a populace which is driven to make voting decisions by an atomic, emotionally-charged view of a singular candidate's actions, as opposed to a contextual view of the broader system which enables such actions to begin with, is a populace which is much easier to fragment—and much easier to control.
Meaningful change requires a path to follow, but results by a reformist method alone come painfully slow—again, by the system's very design. It's more comfortable to believe that rallying behind a third party advocating radical change is the better way, but power has been consolidated so heavily into the largest two parties that the effectiveness of any others (outside of very specific circumstances) is gutted almost entirely. It has been this way especially since the campaign finance mal-reforms that followed the Bush v Gore race. Abstaining from participation or jumping to a niche cause in protest of atrocities that are occurring now is an understandable sentiment, but in a system tuned to overlook and perpetuate said atrocities it's missing the bigger picture.
Try not to look at your vote as a wholesale endorsement; look at it instead as a carefully-considered stake in the ultimate goal to tear down the walls which have kept third parties unfairly irrelevant for decades—centuries, arguably. Stake it with the goal of working to reform or abolish unjust systems. Stake it with the goal of laying the groundwork for more radical progressive change in the future.
Despite all I've attempted to lay out, if you insist on voting third party anyways, I urge you to find someone to vote for and make that your movement to stand in contrast against reprehensible genocide-enabling. The time for such a nomination is long overdue, and as it stands a candidate does not seem to currently exist in a way capable of capturing the majority of Americans' votes—especially in time for election day. This means a lot of work needs to be done if that's your ultimatum to the current situation, I encourage you to start as soon as you are able. Please understand that the third party route is not only victory or bust, but a bust means the genocide gets considerably and immediately worse if you rally too many to your cause who would have cast their vote for Biden otherwise. This outcome has an extremely well-established historical precedent in the United States, having happened multiple times in elections past, and will continue to be a concern unless/until vote tally reforms are adopted. Such are the considerations in US electoral tactics.