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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29675 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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The way it works is people will claim

  1. If you don't vote, you've implicitly accepted the majority decision and can't complain about outcomes.

  2. If you do vote, and lose, then by voting you've accepted the legitimacy of the system and can't complain about outcomes.

If you do vote, and lose, then by voting you've accepted the legitimacy of the system and can't complain about outcomes.

I've seen this claim, and it is bullshit. First of all, it conflates two statements about the system:

  • the voting is legitimate
  • the governance is legitimate

And these are two different things. I can't think of an example where someone agrees with the latter and not with the former, but the reverse is all too common. Even if the voting is fair at all stages (ballot access, casting the votes, counting the votes) you can still end up with a party that got only a plurality of the vote, yet rules like a sovereign. Yes, "I wish my party ruled like this" is not a legitimate complaint, but it's not the only complaint.

But what if the voting itself is illegitimate? Why engage with it at all? I have just realized this question is "why haven't you started killing abortion doctors?" in a different disguise, and the answer is more or less the same. Direct action should not be abandoned, but relying on direct action alone turns the normies against you. You need a pyramid of support, from the normiest normies at the bottom that will only go and cast their vote for your preferred candidate, to more active ones that can support the nomination of your candidate, to even more active ones that will volunteer for the candidate, to those that will agree to run as a candidate. And those people totally unrelated to the pyramid that will throw acid onto the teacher that was threatened into ballot stuffing, of course, but you have to be able to point at the pyramid and sigh that this attack was easily preventable by doing the right thing and letting all parties, all candidates participate fairly.

I’ve never seen 2 in real life in my entire life.

I’ve never seen 2 in real life in my entire life.

I, for one, have encountered this view in personal discussions, from multiple people.

That’s wild. So they’re not fans of criticizing sitting presidents or something? I guess I did have an ex-air force friend at one time who wouldn’t criticize the sitting president, but didn’t mind if I did.

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