Registering intent to vote, then refusing to vote. We have that in the uk today, it’s called spoiling your ballot paper. Ideally by drawing a huge wang on it that gets seen on TV when they count the votes…
“Two heads, saying different things. But the rest of the body still does the same exact thing.”
That’s of course not at all true (same exact) if you look very closely at what they are doing (or would do if they had their way). And as far as presidential elections I am indeed glad McCain/Palin and Romney/Ryan did not win those elections. But I agree that out of the range of total possibility they (the 2 parties) are both operating within a very narrow slice of that possibility, and in several cases I believe the only adequate solutions to the most important problems that government should be trying to address lie well outside of the slice of possible actions being seriously considered at the moment.
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I think there’s a marked difference between spoiling your ballot paper, and making a point out of not showing up at all come election day because your demands have not been met.
Well, showing up and spoiling the paper proves you are interested enough to bother going, and appears less like apathy than not going (at least in the current system)
There certainly aren’t enough differences between parties in places like the US and UK. But people who have ever depended on social support, or a union, or government funding for research, or have ever tried to get an abortion, or marriage to someone of the same sex, or who get hit hard when the economy falls apart can often find differences that affect them in more than minor ways.
There might be a case worrying about those interferes with fixing the still more serious issues - as opposed to that they are orthogonal, one to work on by voting and the other by other efforts - but pretending it’s all of no consequence doesn’t make that case, and disregards people who do face consequences.
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If it’s such a corrupt system, why are people working so damned hard to disenfranchise voters?
That’s not a corrupt system, it’s a corrupted system. One that deserves to be fought for.
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And yet things like social security are being decimated and debt continues to grow. Does research-funding ever increase? Do people have more spending power now compared to 30 years ago? Do you really believe there’s a party with the political will to actually change anything in the status quo? Politics has become a career rather than a service, and so politicians tend to focus in the short-term on their own careers, rather than the long-term good of the country.
I think you answered your own questions.
But are those inherent to the system, or are they things that voters influence? For America here is a graph of debt as portion of GDP:
It is harder to find something on how much spending power people have, but I found a graph showing quintiles for real mean household income from here that definitely shows a downturn, and have tried to mark it in similar fashion:
These are only comparing against the names and parties presidents, without paying any attention to any other portion of the government. And in both cases it doesn’t look at all to me like the changes are universal constants, but rather they seem to depend a lot on who Americans have voted in. To the point where I think the burden of proof would be on you to show otherwise.
Things like social security quality and research spending are still harder to find nice graphs for, but it sure doesn’t seem like who is voted in doesn’t make a difference to them. And there are still other things it impacts that genuinely do make a real difference to people’s lives; for instance, there is the chart @Cowicide has been fond of posting:
For other countries it takes a little bit more work to find figures, but I remember at some point checking the debt to GDP ratio in the UK, Canada, and Australia, and the first two showed the same sort of differences as in the US.
Now there are lots of other things where voting one person or another doesn’t seem to make any notable difference, and I am not going to tell you they are any less important than the ones I have picked out. But if you are going to advise people give something up, you have to have some understanding of what they might lose. And as you can see, deciding which candidates get into office is not the “communist choice” you describe, but affects a number of things that do matter to people.
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VOTE STRIKE
I don’t know about Britain, but in the USA, that would also be known as a Republican wet dream.
Our one demand? A maximum cap on political donations.
There’ll be no hostage, so there’ll be no reason to meet any demands.
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So who do you vote for? Pirates? Greens? As the 2015 election draws nearer, I'm certainly going to be looking more closely at both of those parties. I can't imagine voting for Labour or the LibDems at this point.
I just hope you don’t think that type of “strategy” applies to the USA in the near future. Sure, if there’s a candidate that promotes more civil rights for average Americans that can beat the Democrats and Republicans for executive office, let’s do it. But I haven’t heard any names.
Anyone? Please name someone.
Otherwise, people who want a third party in America are going to shoot themselves in the foot by throwing away a vote and ushering in more Republicans. The same Republicans who already employ wide-scale gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement that will make a third party win down the road near impossible.
I agree that many tactics and actions outside of our political system need to be done in the USA to push us all towards a viable third party candidate in the future, but “not voting” or throwing away votes today that ushers in more Republicans tomorrow sure as hell isn’t one of them.
Hmmm, the problem is also with the voters, I mean what do you do with unimaginable un-informedness?
Educating one another directly and indirectly via the internet and through direct actions will do the trick (except for the hopelessly unreachable, perpetually dense and/or corrupt). Using the internet certainly doesn’t have anywhere near the reach and influence of the corporate mass media (yet), but it’s certainly becoming more powerful as time goes on.
It’s one of the reasons why even the vast American military-industrial complex couldn’t hastily push through air-strikes, etc. on Syria. An informed populace simply didn’t allow it. This was unprecedented, historic and revolutionary (and of course it wasn’t televised).
Speaking of “televised”, there’s efforts in the works now to also inform the populace on the American proxy wars in Syria and elsewhere. 2014 is going to be a helluva year.
It may not be glamourous. It’s often thankless (but rewarding nonetheless). It might even be a little dangerous. But doing our part to educate one another is already working. As internet alternative media gains more and more influence over corporate mass media, it’s only going to become increasingly more effective to reach the uninformed and misinformed with persuasive facts. The most dangerous (for corporatists), revolutionary thing that can happen to society, really.
Think of it as Peer to Peer Persuasion. Are you down with PPP?
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Barack Obama should have shown you by now that there is no lesser of two evils.Same dragon. Two heads, saying different things. But the rest of the body still does the same exact thing.
That’s only if we are to oversimplify things. To say that Obama and McCain/Palin/Romney/Ryan would have been doing all the same, exact things up to this point is to ignore reality.
One example (of many) is McCain thought Obama was weak on Syria and not only wanted to push through airstrikes but also wanted to openly arm the rebels. We’d likely be in another open war with Syria by now (beyond our proxy war) if McCain was in office. Think about where we’d be with Iran right now with McCain or Romney was in office with a Republican majority in tow. I mean, we’ve been there before… remember?
Also, take a look at the articles these right wing idiots write just because Obama dares to not push blatantly towards outright war with Iran:
Am I happy with Obama? HELL NO. I think he’s been a despicable coward by not representing the American public and has a treasonous stance on patriots like Edward Snowden … and I’m just scratching the surface of my utter disgust for Obama’s failures.
But, am I happy we’re not currently in outright wars with Iran and Syria? HELL YES.
We need to struggle to get people like Obama and other elite, corporatist Democrats out of Washington, D.C., but embracing false equivalency and ushering in more Republicans won’t ever accomplish that goal, either.
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I've never seen Paxman silenced like that.
Paxman wasn’t much of a challenge. Russell Brand’s “don’t vote” strategy could be easily destroyed by the right adversary. I like Russell and agree with much of what he said, but his “don’t vote” rhetoric is as childish as it is ineffective.
Russell did bring up America. Here’s a few questions I’d have for Russell. How would Americans “not voting” and therefore putting in more Republicans who employ rampant gerrymandering and incessant voter disenfranchisement possibly make it easier for third parties to take hold in the future?
Explain that one, Russell.
More republicans?
Democrats/republicans/democrats/republicans (Tories/labour/tories/labour) practically since time immemorial.
Have things got better financially? Power continues to entrench itself unabated.
I disagree with Brand re: throwing your vote away. I believe in the power of withholding it with a purpose.
Imagine they had an election and nobody voted. We could bring the entire system to a halt until the demands are met.
Do you see workers’ strikes as childish and ineffective also?
More republicans?
Yep, and quantifiably so.
If lower voter turnout didn’t favor republicans (in many situations), there’s no way in hell they’d put so much time and effort into voter disenfranchisement.
And if higher voter turnout didn’t favor democrats (in many situations), there’s no way in hell they’d put so much time and effort into “get out the vote” campaigns and generally attempting to thwart voter suppression by the republicans.
That fact that you don’t know that lower voter turnout favors republicans just goes to show that we need to focus more on educating one another than simply throwing up our arms in frustration and “not voting” and hoping that poor strategy “works”.
Imagine they had an election and nobody voted.
Imagine that we stopped divulging into fantasy and platitudes and started talking about realistic strategies instead?
Do you see workers' strikes as childish and ineffective also?
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#straw
No, not at all… but then again, direct actions like labor strikes have absolutely nothing to do with sitting on your ass and not voting. As a matter of fact, there wouldn’t even be labor strikes without preliminary votes on them, so your comparison is rather ridiculous.
Also:
• Worker’s strikes don’t usher in more district gerrymandering that thwart third parties in the future.
• Worker’s strikes don’t usher in more voter disenfranchisement that thwarts third parties in the future.
• Worker’s strikes DO have a proven track record of helping labor to overcome obstacles.
• “Not voting” has a proven track record of hurting labor and solidarity.
The United States ranks only 120th of 169 countries that track voter turnout. We’ve already tried false equivalency “not voting” bullshit and it’s been a complete and miserable failure.
It’s time for a new strategy based on reality instead of platitudes based upon hot air, anger and frustration.
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Here in New Hampshire (US), we have this guy:
Brush your teeth; it’s the law.
The republicans will get back into office again, fear not. Then after that the democrats. ad infinitum. You’re mistaking the concept of vote-strike with “sitting on your ass and not voting”. That’s akin to a work-strike being ‘sitting on your ass and not working’.
The difference lies in the demands you make, and working together with the other political persuasions. Strike is active. Not registering nor voting is passive.
I agree, low voter turnout is a problem as it could lead to the things you speak of. If it’s to work, it has to be the entire electorate on strike. That may be a pipe dream, but it’s not an impossibility if we pull together.
We need to stop dividing ourselves by our politics. We need to stop thinking of the other side as different. We all want a better life. We all love our kids. We all want a good job. We’re all the same. I find the concept of ‘us and them’ really rather sickening as it weakens us all when we’re divided.
The best “new strategy” as i see it is to stem the corporate flow of money into politics. If you have a better idea of how to achieve this, please speak.
If you could count on the entire electorate working with you, there wouldn’t be a need to strike. From the charts and links given here, you’d agree that Republicans are a bit worse than the Democrats, right? So then the approach would be simple:
- Nobody ever votes for the Republicans again.
- Third party candidates can flourish because people can vote for them without worrying about giving the election to the Republicans.
- People who are better than the Democrats get in, and a better second party emerges.
- Nobody ever votes for the Democrats again.
- Repeat.
This is an oversimplification because the individual people do matter as well as the party - there might be the odd place where this is reversed - but that’s not why we’re not climbing this ladder. The reason is because despite the higher debts and lower jobs and greater belligerence and so on, we still haven’t tried step one. That’s what’s anchoring American politics in place right now.
I know you say we need to stop dividing ourselves by our politics, but you don’t make a realistic plan by ignoring what people believe. I have seen more than one defense for Citizens United as a proper expression of free speech. If your plan depends on concerted action before everyone even objects to the flow of corporate money into politics, let alone who cares, it will get caught on the same anchor.
And again, in the mean time you’re asking everyone to give up their say in things like debts and social programs and wars against Iran. It might be about the short term, but the short term isn’t always such a trivial affair when you have to live through it.
The truth is a democracy really does give the majority, if not what they want, the things they will accept. What is really needed is for more people to believe in policies that promote things like social security, equality, labor rights, and research rather than debts, wealth inequality, superfluous wars, and corporate influence. That, and I suspect that alone, is what will determine whether you get them in the long term.
