#but i also know people who consider themselves conservative and like. arent terrible fascists.

[linddzz]

I've been having some Thoughts on how the push to vote in the past has given people the wrong idea of what voting can accomplish but also why it's still something you should do. I'm not gonna try to convince people who are ideologically against voting (though I have some raised eyebrow Opinions on people who stick to ideology over actionable results/goals set in reality that I'm probably gonna end up ranting about here) but I WILL push back against the people who seem to want everyone else to also not vote and get all high and mighty at any mention of voting.

Some basic facts right off the bat;

1) Voting ON ITS OWN will not stop a fascist state

2) Voting will not Fix Everything

3) If you ever approach voting as only going for who you Believe In you will be disappointed. Politicians are not your friends. They are not heroes. I don't even think 99.8% of them are good people. Ideological Purity and politics don't mesh in reality.

4) Our system sucks. It is flawed. You can't change that by voting. You also won't change it by NOT voting and being smug online about it.

5) Voting Is Step 1. It is the LEAST you can do for civic change.

Bold on the last bit for a reason! You can not change the system from within the system, but voting is not the same as say, becoming a cop thinking you can change the entire institution by being "one of the good ones." A vote does not lock you into the system. You can vote and then go flip a cop car over and spray paint a confederate statue. You can vote and then join a co-op for community improvement.

So why vote if it won't fix shit?

Well for one thing it should be noted that there's a REASON Republicans are putting a lot of focus into make it harder for you to vote. If that doesn't set off a little ding then idk what does.

Anyway my view of voting is something I said for the 2020 election; it's a tourniquet. A tourniquet will not heal a wound. If you ONLY use a tourniquet without any other actions you just delay the inevitable, but the tourniquet is the Step One to give you more time to take those actions.

Voting won't stop a slide into fascism but it can help put breaks on. Things suck and haven't gotten better but you can't convince me it wouldn't be so much worse if Trump won in 2020. There would be MORE hyper conservative judges being put in place, erosion of rites would be happening WAY faster. You vote to slow the bleeding down even slightly so you have less of a battle than you would otherwise.

As soon as you stop thinking of voting as "this is how I will make a difference by voting for who I believe in and like" and think of it as harm reduction you can get way more strategic about it. An example from my red state is how a lot of leftists handled the primaries. There's no way someone even left of center or moderate is going to win here. It just won't happen! So for the primaries a LOT of left leaning people changed their voting registration to Republican to vote for the least awful guy.

They were all awful. All of them are harmful. But ONE was an open supporter of Q-anon endorsed by Trump and his goons. A lot of votes went to the one who still had shit views but at LEAST said Biden won the election and made wishy washy noises on abortion (as opposed to loudly yelling about banning all abortion and birth control. It's understood he will still likely vote against birth control, but he also seems to care about appealing to moderates so you can push back at him more). He may switch later but there's less of a chance of that guy going full throttle on overturning voting rights, and it was understood that guy would be less of an uphill battle than the other one. That guy won. I know other people in deep red states doing the same thing.

This also is a state to state thing. Here you can change party affiliation for the primaries then change again for the main election, which is what everyone is doing because we accepted that we'll probably end up with that shithead but we're still going to vote against him because we want it to be clear that there IS opposition here.

There's also local elections which are SUPER important. Every left community outreach org I've talked with or read up on pushes local voting and they're probably accomplishing more than the average online leftist arguing The Ideal Revolution. We GOT here because the right wing is VERY good at mobilizing a voting base and they have spent DECADES purposely starting from the local level up. Q-anon and openly white supremacist groups are targeting city councils, school boards, all that.

Go to ballotpedia.org, look at everything down the ticket. Then look up that person's social media. See who they're friends with. See what they were posting about two years ago. Look at who follows them and who they surround themselves with.

It's boring. It also often just takes me a few hours or less in an afternoon to look it up and vote down the ballot. The president really is the LEAST important part of the vote except for how they can shape their party direction (moreso for Republicans than Democrats. Republicans tend to fall in line with whoever their Top Man is. Because they're fascist adjacent at best and outright fascist at worst.)

Also most importantly for a lot of you lefties (especially younger ones):

Ideology and Reality are often not compatible. Do not trust that a great Revolution will overturn everything and Fix It because a lot of problems are rooted in the cultural, not political. Revolutions more often than not end in such massive death and upheaval that a fascist power just comes in and promises order anyway. Also even if you DO pull off a revolution, the moderates and neolibs and conservatives will still be here. People will still be complicated and won't fit into ideology. And I think it's pretty substantial that so far I only see a whole lot of talk about how the system needs to be torn down but not what could realistically take it's place. People have been trying to make a perfect system of government since we started living in tribal groups bigger than a village. An ideology is good for an aspiration and basis "if I could have my ideal what would that look like?" but reality will almost never fit that ideal, and you have to be able to learn how to not throw out "slightly better" because it isn't perfect.

I am not a politician or political scientist. I'm not a sociologist. I do not know how to "fix it." I don't think anyone solidly does. But I know that just saying "the system sucks I won't participate" doesn't change the system, and could cause greater harm to those who are in more danger from it than me. I hold my nose and vote based on the approach of harm reduction (even a TINY reduction of harm is a reduction). I expect all politicians to be rat bastards, I try to help my community and friends and work towards what I actually want from that level up. The vote is the base layer.

(anyway Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards recently put it really well. He's a half feral anarchist bastard Man who also believes voting can't fix the system or even change much, but he said he still votes because "voting won't cause more harm and there's ALWAYS a chance that I'm wrong about what it can accomplish." Basically if he's wrong and voting DOES make a slight difference, then he is causing harm by not doing it.)

#also im trying to emphasize Republican vs Conservative #bc i ideologically disagree with conservative politics on almost all levels #but i also know people who consider themselves conservative and like. arent terrible fascists. #hey also NEOLIBS ARE ANNOYING AND CAN BE A ROAD BLOCK OFTEN BUT YELLING AT THEM AND BEING SUPERIOR DOESNT CHANGE MINDS #OH MY GOD LEFTISTS NEED TO BE BETTER AT MARKETING AND OUTREACH #YES ABOLISH COPS SHOULD BE THE GOAL BUT IT ISNT REALISTIC RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THE COUNTRY IS FUCKING SOAKED #SOAKED I TELL YOU. IN A CULTURE OF SEEING COPS AS HEROES. EVEN IF ITS HEROES IN A BAD INSTITUTION. #BROOKLYN 99 STARTED FROM PEOPLE WITH THE IDEA THAT YOU COULD HAVE GOOD COPS #YOU CAN NOT SELL THE MAJORITY ON 'ABOLISH THE POLICE' RIGHT AWAY #if you see people trying to make it a better sell by describing a system of reallocating funds to social work to reduce the load on police #and you go UM BUT THERE SHOULD BE NO POLICE SO DIE #you help nothing! you arent making that moderate neolib go 'wow theyre right!' #im YELLING OVER THIS SO MANY OF YOU FUCKS PUT IDEOLOGY OVER REALITY #THE MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY IS MODERATE. THAT IS REALITY. IT NEEDS TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR WHEN FIGURING OUT WHAT CAN ACTUALLY BE ACCOMPLISHED