Upvoted for suggesting that the oligarchy is solely responsible for the state of American politics, downvoted for pointing out that this means the voters aren’t.
Never change, Lemmy~<3.
Upvoted for suggesting that the oligarchy is solely responsible for the state of American politics, downvoted for pointing out that this means the voters aren’t.
Never change, Lemmy~<3.
Where is the dichotomy? Both statements in the image are consistent with each other
If we’re talking about the votes, different people could have voted on different messages.
The statements are consistent, but the responses to them are not.
I find it amusing that there are still people who want to hold the voting public accountable in this, the most heavily propagandized country on earth.
You mean holding voters accountable for their vote?
Precisely.
We don’t even have accountability for elected officials and their sponsors, but we have to hold the poorly-educated and wildly propagandized voting base responsible for choices that were made for them?
No, this is obviously more propaganda meant to insulate the ruling class. Keeping us poors at each other’s throats so we don’t notice that wealth concentration in the USA has gotten worse than it was in France before the revolution.
I hold anyone who voted responsible for their vote - that’s their choice. If they were hoodwinked, hornswaggled, tricked, swindled, and brainwashed - or if they’re clearly understanding exactly what they’re voting for. It’s their muscles that pull the lever, so to speak, and it’s not forced on them. They own it.
That’s true. But a poor “christian” nazi who loves Trump is still an asshole who should be metaphorically pelted with rocks and garbage for what they’ve done. A young idealist who doesn’t know shit and therefore chose not to vote should own that too.
Those weren’t choices made for them. They spent the last several years loudly breaking all the norms and social contracts for trump or whoever was telling them to hurt others. Fox News didn’t make them. ExxonMobil didn’t make them. Facebook didn’t make them. They all helped, but that’s a different argument entirely.
You’ve got your concept of voting turned the wrong way around. The point of elections is not for the people to decide who their leaders are, that’s the process by which elections achieve their actual purpose, to legitimize the State’s claim on the right to rule the people.
Own what? 1/165,000,000th of the collective responsibility for the choices of the person they elected?
Or is it that elected leaders are actually responsible for their own actions?
You don’t get to have it both ways.
By this logic, one could also blame Harris voters for their failure to elect Harris, and that’s the fatal crux of the argument.
Collective responsibility is always going to be a ethical nightmare because the responsibility is never actually collective. Individuals in positions of power made all the choices that narrowed the Overton Window to two bad candidates, which they then offer to the electorate so that they can avoid being blamed for the outcome.
So-called “Democracy” is the wool that’s been pulled over our eyes to keep us from seeing what’s really going on and sending all our former presidents to the Hague about it.
The voter is responsible for their vote. The elected leader should be held accountable by law, by society, and by the voters. All three failed here.
Dude, back up off the pipe. No it doesn’t.
A voter chooses. That’s the entirety of the argument. If the person they voted for turns out to be a psychic space monkey from Alderaan here to create a new religion which wasn’t known to them, well - okay that was unexpected, but the voter is only responsible for voting for them. If the person they voted for turns out to be a demented rapist hell-bent on stealing money and corrupting government for his own power AND THAT IS WELL-DOCUMENTED AND EXPLAINED BEFORE THE ELECTION, then they’re onboard with that. If they’re too stupid to understand that, well, okay everyone gets a second chance. Oh wait this was the second chance. Well, they’re fucked then.
What collective? No one’s saying trump voters should go to prison for selling secrets to the Saudis. No one’s saying the Jill Stein dipshits should be excommunicated from the . . well, actually that might be a good . . no, no they’re not saying that. Your logic is broken here - it’s not holding the voter to account for what the elected leader does. It’s holding them to account for giving the leader the vote. It’s entirely different.
I disagree entirely. One of them was a good candidate. Lots of them were good. They were defeated by a minority of racist “christians” and a ton of pithed idiots who refused to vote on “principle”. And now we’re all fucked.
Votes themselves are meaningless without context, and their context is defined by the actions the elected person makes. You can try to ascribe responsibility by claiming that those actions are taken with the assumed blessing of the voting public, but only if you decide that the person taking those actions isn’t fully responsible for them.
At the risk of sounding cliche, you’re using the word “should” to paper over the entire reality of the American political system.
It’d be nice if we had real government accountability, but you have to be clear-eyed and admit that the only people our politicians can be reigned-in by are billionaires, their lobbyists, and their media. The law doesn’t constrain them, “society” already elevated them to their unaccountable position, and the voters are trapped in a two-party system that limits the available choices to only those politicians who are already part of this system.
You’re ignoring a key aspect of voting in America, a voter can only choose between the two candidates they are offered. We don’t even have “none of the above” as an option.
Therefore, the choice made by the voter isn’t really a choice at all. One either supports the system as it currently exists in the hope that the government will wear their preferred face for the next 4 years, or doesn’t. The real choices; who gets to represent the party, what policies should they support, which issues get focused on and which get ignored, are all made by party leadership long before the primaries.
I’m unclear as to the functional difference between these two perspectives. Blaming voters for the decisions made on their behalf and blaming them for enabling the person who made those decisions are the same thing.
If they were a good candidate, why did they lose?
Then you should either admit that what is “good” in America is defined by racists and idiots (and therefore that our Democracy is working as intended), or admit that the “Democratic” process is fundamentally broken (and therefore blaming the voters for the outcome of the election is about as useful as blaming water for being wet).
I don’t know that I’d define it that way - how can a vote be defined by somerthing subsequent to it? That’s like an act is good or bad depending on what happens - that’s not a thing.
It would be nice, wouldn’t it. But the naked criminality you attribute to the “system” or both major parties or whatever, is relatively recent. I would say it stems from the TEA Party created by Fox News and billionaires to fulfill their mission of supporting a Nixonian Imperial Presidency which they’ve done.
Prior to that, politicians were able to be reigned in any number of ways which we still see today - their own party, the courts, the media, (or if you want to go old school, “the press”), sometimes their families. It’s relatively recent. So don’t use it as an “it’s always been this way” because that’s not true. You can make analogies to earlier times but they don’t hold up that well.
Nope. A voter can choose anyone they want; themselves, Batman, Jill Stein, whatever local cowboy just stopped a crook at the Park-N-Save or whatever - the “only two options chosen for you” is a different discussion.
Yes, there are two major political parties. Primaries are usually held to determine which candidates those parties support - voters vote for that too, although that’s not as popular. There’s also other ways voters can affect “who is chosen”, but the main point - the crux of the biscuit, if you will, is that that voter’s vote, okay, that decisiont they make, is a decision - that they - make.. “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
The System, to which you ascribe the lack of choice to was created specifically to allow choice. It didn’t include political parties by default (Washington famously decried them) and the Electoral College, the bane of modern society was created as a compromise in what we look at now as a deeply disturbed age. It’s current incarnation is also deeply troubled by contemporary issues, I’m with you on that, but that doesn’t mean voters have no vote. They do! It’s theirs to say “here’s the direction we should go”.
This is about the responsibility the voter has. It is, “To Vote”. To make their voice heard in the system that was conceived to hear their voice. That’s it. If they throw away that responsibilty, they’ve supported destruction. If they vote, they’ve supported the democratic principle of the country which is the very first and most important step. This is related to the original post, which, apologies I can’t recall enough of right now (and the comment window obscures it).
You cannot be serious. Really? First of all, that’s a different discussion from “are people responsible for voting”. Secondly it’s a lot more nuanced. And thirdly - c’mon. Really? One reason they lost is some people didn’t vote, and thereby allowed the “bad” candidate to win. Is that not clear?
Nope. Not sure how you get to that declaration but I think it might be a confusion of who wins the vote with what is good? I think? Not sure. As far as the ‘“Democratic”’ process being fundamentally broken - that’s a valid question. Also irrelevant as to whether someone is responsible for the act of voting, and so is not covered here.
For my two cents on the latter, yeah the Electoral College, first-past-the-post, and other considerations including party direciton and leadership are all problematic at the best of times. They should be addressed. Because enough people didn’t vote, we will not do so and thus the system still requires work. It takes a very, very long time.
With the environment in the precarious state it’s in, and the economic disparity of the world that time is running short. This election was so critical for that reason. And still a bunch of people who are able to read, write, perform relatively advanced arithmetic, operate powerful motor vehicles and fire powerful weapons, write heartbreakingly beautiful poetry and take care of others - didn’t vote. So we’re fucked. that’s what’s broken. The reasons why are a different conversation.