Just note, that I don’t entirely agree that voting changes nothing. However, I’m trying to show that there are serious limitations to voting. Keep in mind that the list above by @anon86154871 had little to do with voting, other than the 19th amendment (which gives women the right to vote, not black men, that’s the 15th amendment, which was passed when the south was not part of the union and it seems that it would have not passed had the south been back in the union).
Gay marriage is another example, where voting had little to do with it’s legalization nationally (certainly, locally in some states). It seems unlikely we would have gone the way of Ireland, if we had had a national vote in 2015.
Perhaps Manning is going through a period of depression, which might explain the outburst in her tweet. If so, I hope she is getting support.
I think we both certainly agree that voting is a tool that can be of us in shaping a democratic system, but that it’s not the only tool at our disposal. Personally, I feel like we’re in a particularly vulnerable position, given revelations such as the topic of this thread. It’s clear that there are people out there looking to disrupt the voting and to make people even less likely to go out and do so. Sadly, I think it’s less the Russians who are the real threat and people here in this country who are the real threat to our democratic processes.
These things were the result of voting; judges weren’t nominated by the people’s plebiscite, out in the streets–they were the result of incremental change made through regular democratic participation, that yes, was massively hampered by Jim Crow, but nonetheless still existed.
Supreme court justices are about as far from being elected as you can get and still be public servants - and they didn’t always vote the way expected by the people who appointed them (Sandra Day O’Connor is an excellent example of that). And pro-civil rights decisions often came with pretty entrenched backlashes, as I noted, including local attempts to subvert the rule of law through democratic means. The current crop of voter ID laws or laws that do not allow former felons to vote, were all enacted through democratic processes (state legislatures voting for laws at the behest of their constituents). And, the current president is most certainly a populist candidate and an expression of democratic will (over and above whatever shenanigans might have been part of 2016).
The street was far more effective in causing a shift in civil rights, primarily because the vast majority of people who had second class citizenship were unable to vote. Organizing by black people in America happened largely outside of voting practices, though within legal ones.
And I never said, once again, that voting changes nothing, only that I can understand manning’s sense of cynicism about voting, given how much push back incremental change through voting often gets, and how little change comes through voting alone vs. other types of democratic action.
Two-words: Neil Gorsuch
There is a direct relationship between voting and what kind of Supreme Court Justices we get; we elect the president who nominates, and we elect the Senators who confirm. This proposition was central to the 2016 election, and unfortunately regarded by left partisans as nefarious blackmail.
They are appointed, not elected. They make decisions not based directly on democratic concerns. They are insulated from democratic processes. And once again, Trump was voted INTO office, and he’s hardly a bastion of progress. Voting can support authoritarianism as much as it can progress. On top of that, we don’t get an entirely new court each time we get a new president. We get a new justice when one dies or retires. That’s entirely unrelated to who is in office at the time (generally speaking).
Counter point, Sandra Day O’Connor, who was put into office by a republican, and proved more to the left than expected.
Once again, voting has a very spotty history of contributing to actual progress on various forms of justice. The Supreme court and presidential executive orders were more often than not flying in the face of actual democratic will. And when there were attempts to vote progressive measures into law, they were met with the voters backlash.
Voting isn’t the same thing as progress. It certainly can be, and has been at times, but it can also be a drag on such, and that’s what manning was expressing in her tweet. And given how vulnerable our voting systems have been shown to be, as well as how open so many Americans seem to be to propaganda through the media, not to mention it’s general conservativism on social issues, being wary of voting isn’t an entirely unreasonable position to take. It’s not like she’s even the first to do so (Emma goldman’s famous missive about voting being outlawed if it led to real change).
I like my garbage people. Xavier and Juan are fine young fellows who never spill any trash on my lawn, and I am pretty sure they didn’t vote for Donald Trump.
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As for Assange, I do not believe it is possible for me to know anything about someone who has angered the powers that he has angered. My informational resources are far too limited to counteract those of his enemies.
maybe a good reminder how critical such jobs are and how often we (as a society) look down on those jobs…
From what you’ve heard from the women (not personally, obviously, but you know), do you think they are lying or being disingenuous about their claims? Or his former wikileaks folks? Isn’t it entirely possible that Assange is both a person who believes in free speech and has done some shitty things?
You certainly won’t get any argument from me that the US system of voting is imperfect, in fact I happen to think the structure of US Federalism explains a lot more about our current political situation than ideological explanations. HOWEVER, there is a world of difference between someone failing to connect with potential voters a year after having their prison sentence commuted, and a failure of democracy. There is a reason that free and fair elections are the standard the world uses to judge the health of any given state, and why virtually every country settles on a some form of democracy as the least bad way to manage change.
Sure, that seems pretty likely, just because that describes a lot of people. Not many of us will make it out of this existence without doing terrible things we deeply regret.
But I don’t know how to sort facts from propaganda in a case like this; it seems (under my understanding of game theory and formal logic) to be literally impossible for me to know anything meaningful about it. The information wikileaks provided that I can verify can easily be used to sustain the claims of Assange’s supporters; the world’s spy agencies are clearly willing and capable of character assassination at the level required.
Luckily nothing changes in my life regardless of what the truth about Assange is, or this would really bug me.
Again, you seem to be under the impression that I’m advocating for something I’m not. We need to keep pushing for more robust and transparent democracy and voting, which we currently do not have. We are not in the top 20 with regards to functioning democracy right now. There was a very small period in our history where we could actually claim to be a full democracy, post voting rights act in 1965. We had an entire group of citizens regularly denied voting rights, which was arrived at through voting.
And there are plenty of countries that have voting and are hardly democracies. The choice here is not voting or authoritarianism. Plenty of authoritarian states hold votes just as regularly as we do. That doesn’t make them free democracies by any stretch of the imagination.
A better system needs us to be able to look at our past and understand where we screwed up in order to be able to move forward to better democratic practices. Again, Manning isn’t wrong that we have serious blocks to being a full democracy. The voting process is flawed and if we can’t look at those flaws honestly, then they will not improve. Things being better than pre-65 doesn’t mean that they are great now. Pointing out that we currently live with a deeply flawed voting system where many people have been actively disenfranchised shouldn’t be understood as me advocating for an end to democratic practices.
While I certainly agree, I somehow doubt you or I would even contemplate what he’s been accused of.
That’s entirely fair. But that’s true of much of the current world. Wikileaks supporters aren’t themselves disinterested parties, either. We do know that spy agencies aren’t particularly trust worthy, but then again, they’ve been known to not have to cook up false claims, but can just reveal the facts to discredit.
I suspect whatever the truth is won’t come out for a long time from now. Till then, he’s stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy, with no internet.
Step one: stop thinking of facts and propaganda as being in opposition.
Only the crudest of propaganda relies upon actual falsehoods. Sophisticated propaganda is instead based around selection and emphasis. Presenting a true story, but not all of the story.
I’d strongly recommend the Citations Needed podcast as a demonstration of good media critique, BTW. Digging back through their archive is worthwhile.
That predates Trump, BTW. Things are considerably worse now, and still on an accelerating downhill slide.
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OTOH, they’re still much too kind. The USA has never been truly democratic. It was designed that way.
In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
James Madison, Statement (1787-06-26) as quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates
Yes, Kiriakou works for a propaganda network. So does everyone on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, BBC, al-Jazeera, etc etc
The leftist American journos on Sputnik and RT aren’t there because they love Russia; they’re there because all voices left of the DNC are systematically excluded by the US corporate media. For most of them, the choice was either RT or a homemade podcast with a microscopic audience, no income and no investigative resources.
Cenk Uygur was thrown off the air for criticising the Democrats from the left, Naomi Klein is similarly excluded, so was Erica Garner. The ideological window of what is allowed on cable news is very tightly restricted…but only on the left. Literal Nazis can get as much airtime as they want.
Yes, the reason why the Russian state funds RT is because it serves their interests to do so. This is also why the USA funds the Voice of America and the UK funds the BBC World Service.
Most of the people on RT and Sputnik are not taking instructions from Moscow; they’re just using the only platform available [1] to them in order to broadcast what they justifiably see as accurate and important journalism.
That’s how this sort of propaganda works. You don’t need to invent dastardly lies about your competitors; you just ensure that their dirty laundry does not remain hidden. And this is a tactic routinely used by all great powers.
If an adversary cynically publicises your sins in order to embarrass you, is the correct response to ignore the sins?
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[1] There’s substantial nuance to be argued here, though. How important is the size of the platform? Are all ethical journalists obliged to retreat to home-made podcasts for the sake of purity? How much of a tradeoff is justified when balancing audience reach vs editorial independence? If editorial independence is maintained, does the broadcast channel matter? Etc
I think you’re diluting the meaning of a propaganda outfit to the point of meaningless if you lump basically all Western (and some non-Western) mass media in the same category as Sputnik.
Propaganda = any mass communication intended to change political opinion.
The owners of the various cable networks have ideological goals, and they leverage their media ownership to achieve those goals. Editorial independence is extremely limited on cable news, and this control is actively used to shape the opinions of the audience. Therefore, propaganda networks.
People have this idea that propaganda is “fake news”. That’s not what it is; only the crudest of propaganda uses obvious falsehoods. Sophisticated propaganda relies upon selection and emphasis and tone. Partial truths, false balances, rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
And often not even that; you can also do propaganda just by telling plain, unvarnished truths that advance your cause. Propaganda is a tactic, not an ideology; it’s ethically neutral, and can be turned to good or evil. MLK’s “I have a dream” speech was propaganda.
The difference between CNN and North Korean state television isn’t that CNN is journalism and KCTV is propaganda. They’re both journalism, they’re both propaganda. The difference is that CNN is extremely sophisticated and subtle propaganda while the Korean stuff is extremely crude and obvious.
(the other difference is that KCTV serves the North Korean state while CNN serves its owners)
Everybody uses propaganda. If you think that one faction doesn’t, that just means that one faction is really good at it.
Western news networks can and do regularly air stories that infuriate the Trump administration without fear of their journalistists getting disappeared. They may not be perfect and they certainly aren’t unbiased but it’s really a false equivalency to compare them to state-run agencies that have the express mission of promoting the Putin government.
A much better analogy to RT would be the “Voice of America” network.
Aren’t you assuming that propaganda must mean in line with the current political party? As @Wanderfound noted, cable news networks have their own corporate agendas.
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