@benroyce Ooh, I'll disagree with "imagining something better is easy" it seems like it *should* be, but it doesn't seem to be in practice, especially if we say that Democrats are as left wing as we can hope for. We settle for the Democrats because that's the best of what's currently available, but we need to be telling them that we're not happy with them as they currently stand. I want to vote for actually progressive candidates, not just for the people who aren't literally evil.

@StarkRG

two things:

1. i was directly referencing your suggestion for compulsory voting. i agree. and? well to get it we have to show the fuck up. idea -> action. however easy or not the idea is is meaningless without the action

2. "we need to be telling them that we're not happy with them as they currently stand." right. but what is that? whining online or writing emails that get canned fake responses? that "telling" your referring to is our vote. vote them the fuck out. that's telling them

@StarkRG

"a lot of non-voters (or third-party voters) think that way."

right because they're morons. of course the dems suck. because the morons don't vote

"You can't vote people out, you can only vote people in, and the people running as Democrats are usually centrists"

because no one shows up in the primaries. how did mamdani get in, despite no support from the dem org? because people showed the fuck up

people not voting is the *cause*, not the *effect*

@StarkRG

stop thinking of establishment dems as some alien omnipotent force that must be interacted with. in fact they're quite weak. just fucking ignore them

stop thinking the establishment at all. you build it up to be this insurmountable enemy. it's an illusion that causes inaction

we show the fuck up in the primaries, and then we just own the joint. that's it

it all depends upon people showing the fuck up. beginning and ending of the topic

@benroyce Yeah, I agree with all that. The only thing I really disagree with you on is calling the Democrats left-wing. I'd allow "center-left" but I'd still strongly disagree with that categorisation, they are center-right. Just being less right wing than the Nazis doesn't make them left, it just makes them less right.

@StarkRG

there is an ideological center and two parties to either side of it

that this is all much further right than we both want has no meaning. there is a left, because it is the left-er choice

to make it further left, we show up, we sustain, we iterate

there is no other option, and bemoaning things are so far right has no effective or actionable point, and in fact leads to inaction and stasis

it is like this, because the left doesn't fucking vote

@benroyce
I’d like to take this opportunity to explain shifting the Overton Window and its relationship to getting out the vote. In this paper I will
@StarkRG

@benroyce It's not bemoaning things to call the democrats center-right. I'm still voting for them because to do otherwise it's ludicrous. I just disagree with calling them something they're not. Political left and political right are not relative, they have definite meanings and the Democrats simply do not qualify as left wing. That's not to say that they can't become left, the Republicans switched sides after all, but right now they aren't.

@StarkRG

Again you're asserting a 20,000 ft view rather than the functional reality. The dems are the left because they are to the left. Whether they are to the left of authoritarian mass murder or to the left of redistribution of billionaire's assets has no meaning

You're accurate in your words but your words lead to no functionality. The functional position is to use language that describes how it is, not how it should be. We can begin to move to how it should when our language is functional

@benroyce @StarkRG
I have heard this before from people who are so wrapped up in “they are not left enough” that they will do a “protest vote” & not vote at all. I think this is why @benroyce is having trouble with this statement too. The reality is, this country has 2 party system, not enough people pushed for having a “leftist” dem party, but the “radical right” got lots of momentum. The whole system is out of balance & we need to start *NOW* to fix it.

@benroyce @StarkRG
Vote in primaries, help anyone considering to run for any office.
Don’t worry about a person “winning” (this is also a problem, because lots of people see it as a sport and want to be on “the winning team” 🙄)
Keep talking around others why voting is important (cite Mamdani and him winning the primaries because people SHOWED UP TO THEM and not just the main election). It’s a full out thing, not “dems are centrist” because that’s from previous election negligence.

@suzannealdrich @benroyce @StarkRG

At this point, I believe that if we just nudge the Overton window slightly more to the right, it will snap around to extreme left.

Looking from an European PoV, the politics in the US has always been a choice between "far right" and “extreme right”.

@airwhale @suzannealdrich @StarkRG

you could say the same about saudi arabia

you might also say that saudi arabia, to move further left, needs to iterate and sustain and inch it's way gradually left

to simply observe the saudi left is further right than the right in europe has no *functional* meaning. it's just looking at the globe and making comparisons that have no impact

well, the same is true of the usa. and it moves further right because the left just can't fucking be bothered to vote

@benroyce @suzannealdrich @StarkRG

Yes, it all needs to be considered within its own context.

@airwhale @suzannealdrich @StarkRG

functionally

your words are valid and true, but more of a structural observation than a functional prescription

to move the usa further left we have to vote, sustain, iterate

it's grueling and a joyless chore, and the payoff is far away

and many people get turned off by that

@benroyce @StarkRG

You might find this article interesting. It shows how compulsory voting in Australia led to policy shifts in government that benefited those on low incomes, pretty much vindicating everything you've been saying about why high voter turnout matters so much.

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/voter-turnout-in-the-2022-federal-election-hit-a-new-low-threatening-our-democratic-tradition/

@StarkRG @benroyce
@ApostateEnglishman

It starts before showing up in the primaries; have to make sure there are primaries to show up to. If there aren't any leftists running, we can't vote for them.

@benroyce @StarkRG right on! Voting is the original crowdsourcing.

@Fishercat @StarkRG @ApostateEnglishman

and that's where we are right now, before the primaries

some of you reading along here:

RUN FOR OFFICE

we will amplify you

@ApostateEnglishman @StarkRG

Thank you

@StarkRG @benroyce Pleasure. And since this is getting boosted a lot, I'll repeat what I said to you before: I know hardcore anarchists - the sort who think all top-down power structures (including the state itself) should be completely dismantled, and the only real democracy is grassroots and community-led - who 👉🏼still vote👈🏼, because they recognise that however broken the current system may be, keeping the far right out of government, both locally and nationally, is still hugely important!

@StarkRG @benroyce @ApostateEnglishman I firmly believe that doing any little bit of harm reduction you have available to you, however insignificant, is worth doing. And voting is one of those things (particularly in local council elections in the UK, where turnout is around 30% but actually the ideology of the council makes a huge difference to things in people's day to day lives like road or cycle lane funding, recycling collections etc)

@ApostateEnglishman @StarkRG

voting is just tactics in a larger war

and "waah, but i want perfect, waah" is immature impotency

@StarkRG @benroyce @afewbugs Yeah. I was part of a team of 18 volunteers who dropped around 13,000 leaflets across two campaigns - an unofficial one against Reform UK, and an official one in support of the independent candidate - in the run-up to a local by-election. Sadly Reform still narrowly won, but we did manage to shave a few percentile points off their vote share.

Yet most of us think the electoral system is beyond repair. Allowing cynicism to become inaction is, as Ben says, juvenile. 🤷🏻‍♂️

@StarkRG @benroyce @ApostateEnglishman it's a commitment to personal purity, never sullying yourself by touching a system that's less than 100% perfect, over actually attempting to make things a bit better in the world

@afewbugs @StarkRG @ApostateEnglishman

yup

and this toxic idealism is selfish, self-serving navel gazing ineffectuality

nonvoters don't have political positions, they have psychological positions

it's a form of coping. it has nothing to do with making the world a better place

morality without action isn't morality, it's ego masturbation

also:

action is always imprecise and messy

and toxic idealists can't deal with that

so they are not moral people. they're just utterly useless whiners

@benroyce @afewbugs @StarkRG @ApostateEnglishman It's also a great way of not having to take responsibility for any decisions you make except OOPS it's not. But I'm convinced a lot of people - on some level, maybe not top level but it's in there - think it is.