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VoTe BluE
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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
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If you had to choose between Neville Chamberlain and Hitler?
I'd say that's a ridiculous choice and it's time to organize with the masses against the system that presented it to us; rather than undermine that effort by treating the system as legitimate and shaming others for not seeing the candidates and their futures the way I did.
Hand me two cups of shit, I still have free will to throw them back in your face. The system can force feed if it wants but you won't see me voluntarily picking a shit cup and eating shit.
Agreed
Nah that's dumb. I don't give a shit about "treating the system as legitimate". The system is what it is, and it will continue to be the system until it isn't anymore. That's gonna take more than a handful of people refusing to acknowledge the system's "legitimacy".
It is doing that though. You get the option to vote for which of the two cups they force feed you, and everyone else. We are not presently in a position to throw anything back right now. When we are, I'm all for it. But part of that is choosing the smaller cup of shit while we gather strength.
The point is I'm not going to lend you any legitimacy by picking up the shit and eating it myself, then turning at the people around me and asking why they aren't eating it yet. I'm going to make it impossible for the shit peddler to hide their willingness and ability to abuse their power. If I'm eating shit either way, why would I do it in a way that makes it apparent to outsiders that I'm choosing to eat shit?
And no, when you scold people for not participating in a system, you are not just not "refusing to acknowledge its legitimacy". You are promoting it, whether you care to or not. You are promoting the idea that everyone is choosing these options out of complete and true support of complete and unbiased information. This is especially true when people like you misrepresent and refuse to understand the arguments of those who choose to abstain or vote third party.
You are saying, "if you participate in this system, you could change the way things are going; and if you don't, then you implicitly consent to it", which is simply not true. Interestingly enough, you know how little power a person has when acting as an individual, which is why you minimize the reach of individuals when it comes to forms of political action other than voting, but you never apply it to the situation of voting where the ruling class has vast numbers of ways to influence people's behaviors in whatever direction they want.
The change can only come when we have built the ability to move cohesively as a class, or a voting bloc if you will, that can either take power for itself or force our leaders to come to our table if they want our compliance. We can only build this by overcoming the resentment we hold for other members of our class, and putting one foot in front of the other; turning one person at a time towards the inner workings of the machine that the ruling class works so hard to hide. Not by stoking resentment and wasting our energy trying to manipulate an illegitimate system while we wait around for the movement to build itself.
You keep saying that, but what does that even mean? What is "legitimacy", in the way you're using it?
Material authority? You don't have to "lend" that, it's enforced by the system; not participating doesn't rob the system of its authority, it just means you don't participate.
Ideological endorsement? That's materially worthless, it's just virtue signaling so you get to feel ideologically pure in your social circles.
How does not participating do that? They still control mass media. A smattering of True Leftists refusing to participate is a whisper at a rock show. That's not making anything impossible.
"Hey outsiders, we're being force fed shit. Blue team is serving it up by the ounce, Red team is serving it up by the pound. The more shit we eat, the sicker we get. Choosing the smaller quantity will make it easier for us to gather the strength we need to escape this situation."
But in any case, voting is anonymous. Nothing is apparent unless you choose to make it so.
How did you come to that conclusion? I'm promoting the idea that the system is what it is, and in the current system some actions are more productive than others. I'm promoting the idea that we should base our behaviors on how effectively they support our goals, not how idealistic they are.
I don't refuse to understand anything. I've heard the arguments and found them lacking. None of them provide any practical advantage.
How is it not true? Participation in the system can change the way things are going, and non-participation is a voluntary disposal of that small bit of material effectiveness. Refusing to use a tool to affect an outcome is implicit consent to either outcome.
When did I do that? I wholeheartedly promote other forms of political action. But it's not an either-or choice. You can strategically vote for harm reduction while simultaneously using all the other tools in the political toolbox to actively push for positive change in ways besides voting.
Which is why I promote voting for harm reduction, whichever half of the ruling class is serving up smaller portions of shit. The people have been influenced to accept the duopoly, so we need to meet the people where they are and promote electoral actions that minimize the work we have to do elsewhere.
Exactly, which is why I want harm reduction while we build that ability. We do not magically gain that ability by splitting the left-of-fascism vote. We don't have that power yet. When we do, my recommended voting strategy will change accordingly.
Which is precisely why labeling those who don't conform to our exact ideals "liberals" is counterproductive. In this very comment, you've stoked resentment for "people like [me]" who "misrepresent and refuse to understand".
I'm all for radicalizing the working class, I just don't think we accomplish that by not-voting/voting-3rd-party.
Still don't know what you mean by "illegitimate", but I'm neither trying to manipulate it nor waiting passively for the movement to build. The amount of energy that voting takes is miniscule, and it contributes to popular consensus. That tiny amount of energy does not prevent us from building a movement. On the contrary, it allows us to secure the most favorable conditions available in which to actively build the movement.
You don't know what legitimacy is? Our political system rests on the consent of the people, because the people have the power of collective action when they are organized and/or believe en masse that the pathways by which the system claims to represent them are illegitimate (re: not actually representing them). The ruling class wouldn't work so hard to obscure their undemocratic nature if that wasn't the case. People don't just accept those kinds of things, they resist and build power that does represent them. That is demonstrable throughout history.
Voting is not only going out to vote on the day of, its all the time you and I are spending now debating it, it's workers canvassing for bourgeois candidates and 24/7 campaign ads planting establishment narratives into the public, its people participating in democratic offices when they could be doing grassroots organizing, it's minimizing anything that doesn't help your candidate like the economic conditions of the working class or the fact the candidate is massively aiding a genocide, it's throwing your hands up when your team doesn't win and callously telling your class members "FAFO" when you could be rallying on a shared struggle. It's fucking toxic, and don't you dare pretend you don't know what I'm talking about with your "no u" ass arguments.
lmfao...
You know what, I was pretty clear and concise with my language. I said what I wanted to say. I'm not going to play point-for-point semantics with you because it would take me writing a several-pages-long essay to fully get my meaning across to someone who is clearly digging in their heels and not willing to take me in good faith. There's also theorists out there who have already done a far better job than I would at that but I doubt you would care to read them.
In short; try putting your ego aside, re-reading what I said, and thinking super hard about it. I've already answered all of your questions, you're just blocking them out at this point.
I don't know how you are defining the word in this context.
Yeah, that's a pretty big hurdle tho. Even when things get bad, most people are relatively unaffected. Things gotta get real bad for the people to take to the streets in revolt en masse. The masses are generally lazy.
And they wouldn't work so hard to propagandize and gerrymander and purge voters if voting didn't threaten them at all.
They actually usually do accept those kinds of things. The times when they actually rise up are rare enough to record in the history books. Typically most people just follow the path of least resistance.
Uh, yeah it is. There are plenty of other forms of activity around voting, but voting is just voting.
I don't know who told you you had to choose. Grassroots organizing is crucial for developing the broad foundation for the future. Electoral action secures stable conditions to grow those foundations.
Liberals will give grassroots movements empty lip service, conservatives will lock them up for terrorism. One of the two is objectively more favorable. That's the bottom line.
Voting isn't the total extent of action, it's one tool in a toolbox. When used strategically, it makes the other tools more effective.
Yes, but it's here, and it's real, and it's decided by population numbers your human brain can't truly understand. People, for the most part, are partisan sports-brained idiots. For now, we're either going to try to ride the wave in a way that's least hostile to us, or we're gonna get crushed by the other half of the idiot population.
Astonishing, I could say this word for word to you, and it would be no less correct.
Perhaps the ego position of assuming everyone who disagrees with you is hostile or disingenuous is the biggest obstacle to leftist progress. Perhaps, if you yourself consider the content of their input instead of resorting to the same partisan sports-brain thinking you admit is so toxic, the left could become something more than a thousand mutually hostile splinter groups.
Bullshit. First of all, I haven't asked you any questions dumbass, nor have i picked apart every last sentence and feigned ignorance on your meaning. Especially not on anything having to do with semantics. I would rather take you in good faith than debate the meanings of words.
In case you need me to define my terms, "good faith" and "understanding things" means comprehending what was said in aggregate and being able respond to the argument's essential points, as the writer clearly intended them, rather than taking issue with individual sentences and words used. The latter is what's known as "looking for an argument" and generally indicates you're just going to waste time and be contrarian about anything I say.
Like I could say the sky is blue and you'll find a way to disagree. Good faith is assuming that yes, I must know that the sky simply appears blue only in certain weather and times of day and I must be using a shorthand for the sake of the format. We're not writing policy here, we're conversing on Lemmy. Well, more like trading insults at this point.
~~I also wanted to let you know I've stopped reading your diatribes so you can stop writing them.~~ I'll read it later. I'm not a morning person and I have a lot of other things I'm doing with my time.
Except the central one, the whole subject of the argument.
A question which I answered.
Hah! That's why your argument has been based on ad hominems, name-calling, and retorts that boil down to "Nuh uh". Don't bullshit me, you never had any intention of considering anything that conflicted with the conclusions you started with. You made up your mind before I ever said anything, don't try and cry "good faith" now.
We wouldn't have to if your entire argument wasn't based entirely on a nebulous definition of "legitimate" which you still haven't defined in a way that makes your argument coherent.
Your essential point is that participating in elections improperly lends them "legitimacy", which is why we shouldn't do it. But "legitimacy" doesn't have a definition I know of which makes your conclusion true, and when I ask what your definition is you get evasive: name calling, non sequiturs, emotional outbursts.
You're not saying the sky is blue, you're Humpty Dumpty using "glory" to mean "a nice knock down argument". If you don't want people to pick apart your semantics, you have to use words in their common definitions. You are not using "legitimacy" by its common definition, and the interpretation of that word is the essential core of your argument.
More like choosing between Hindenburg and Hitler.