“Democracy” has only existed in the pockets of the American oligarchy since before I was born. This is not new, it’s just more out in the open now and y’all too scared to do anything about it.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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I like to think of it as consolidation. Its been an oligarchy for a long time, now it's more concentrated in fewer hands.
Aka End-stage capitalism. All the consumer surplus has been converted to firm profit.
The entirety of US "democracy" has been oligarchical. Voting was originally restricted to white landowning men and naturally the only people who could "serve" as representatives were the richest people from that group. Everyone has always had to struggle to get anything at all and even then it would be incomplete or weak - like getting the right to vote for your oppressor. The largest liberatory changes required violence and direct action, with the most dramatic being the ability of slavery and the battles of the labor movement. And at no point has the root of oppression (and the oligarchy) been overturned: capitalism.
Practically no one bases choices off newspaper endorsements, so we don’t have to pretend they matter. Newspaper owners and their editors want us to care, because they want to feel relevant, important, and venerated. The reason this is big news is that the media love to talk about themselves.
But this is a good reminder that corporate media don’t work for us, they work for oligarchs and advertisers.
Absolutely correct, democracy is just a cardboard cutout if it lets kings and queens live inside it who are as powerful individually as the entire public. That's an oligarchy.
I thought democracy died when we started skipping elections, but hey maybe that’s just some weird delusion on my part.
Maybe I’m off. Just seems to me that deciding to skip an election is like the most literal death of democracy that could ever be described as the death of democracy.
Democracy is when the people vote. Democracy dies when we skip over that part.
Make sense? Am I off here?
Yes, you are off here. Firstly because the US never has been and never will be much of a democracy, and secondly because shaming the constituency into voting has never and will never result in more votes.
Fewer people voting is not the cause of less democracy, it is a symptom of it. Some people have been losing faith in it, and why wouldn’t they, when grinding neoliberalism has slowly worsened their lives over the last ~45 years?
I thought democracy died when we started skipping elections
Like how the democrats skipped the primary election?
People are "voting for putin" in Russia so is that a vibrant democracy in your opinion?
Global oligarchy. Not just America
