@Rancid I am getting ready to go and cook breakfast. I have always voted. Why? Because if you think democracy is a system that is leftist you participate in it. Before this republican form of governance there used to be Monarchies. The masses were subjects of the King and Queen and their courts in Europe. They went through religious wars and wars over money and so on. Over power above all. Some King wanted another King's land or routes for trade or some bullshit thing they valued. So they sent out their subjects like pawns on a chessboard to fight for them. What happens to pawns if you ignore their forward movement while you are constantly fighting and looking out and strategizing on how to stop the rooks, and the bishops and the Queen and her knights eh? The pawn makes it to the last line and turns into a real force. That is what democratic voting is about in representative democracies.
I am a backer of Richard Wolff's economic plans for modern economies. He is a Marxist not a neoliberal. What does he say has to happen to improve the lack of power many working class and middle class people suffer through these neoliberal plutocratic setups that we are suffering from? Where a CEO has more wealth than huge amounts of average workers? You solve that problem by democratizing the workplace. If everyone who worked for a living were invested in the place they worked at and were partners and it was about being totally responsible for output, investment, work production, results and YOU as a partner had to vote and keep voting along with others. Meetings with coworkers all the time, trying to reach consensus and talking it out. Pounding out the differences until consensus is reached. Then? If it fails it fails. Everyone has to take responsibility for the failures and move on. But if it works? And it is prosperous? As a group everyone benefits. STABILITY: And finally a system that will perpetuate equality and stability always. Not exclusive rights and inequality which is what the capitalist model is about. So democracy is truly LEFTIST.
The problem becomes when democracy is co-opted by some billionaires and special interest groups and lobbyists for corporations who limit access of the masses to their reps and senators and others. Excluded and locked out for life. Only the wealthy and powerful and FEW have access. It is monarchical government shit from a blast from the past again. The inherited wealth bluebloods only make the decisions. Most of members of congress and the senate are multi millionaires. Not ordinary workers. In true democracies the reps have to be ordinary people making working and middle class salaries if that is what the majority are doing in society. But that is not the case because the system is inherently distorted and has been for a long time.
That is why Skins there thinks it is all bullshit. Because in praxis now? It is.Will it always be that way though? I do not think so. Got to work on what is keeping the democracy so stale and so useless for a change. The vote does do an important function. It keeps the idea of the people being charge. Not an elite.
Any society that the majority are indifferent or only an elite get to make major decisions for all is doomed to fail.
But democracy is innately leftist. That is reality. The issue becomes if the group that is a minority and has a minority of the popular vote keeps seizing power and denying rights to the rest. That happens because the US system is FLAWED. And both parties are benefiting from it. So neither wants it to change.
The people have choices to explore the change. But sitting on your ass and your hands and never voting or working on it? Is not the solution.
However being conformist and thinking Biden and his establishment formulas are gonna cure what is wrong with American politics today? Is an error. He can't fix it.
That is when the people and revolutionary movements are vital forces for change.
Rancid, the reality is that change in human history has never been done in incremental steps. They are like genetic mutations. If you study genes the mutations show up once in a while in genetic change. The definition of a mutation:
The mistakes happen, and because they happen? Change happens. Then BAM.....the society shifts. That is what happens. The substitution of one formula for political action for another one.
In human political life the mutation is often SUDDEN. And it is a social movement. A political movement. Pressure and environment and context. You deal with that in political science.
And eventually the Leftist concept of a government for the people, by the people happens. The issue is that capitalist economics is not a government for the people and by the people. It is about owners and nonowners. And pitting conflicting classes of people workers vs owners of the means of production.
With new forms of manifesting capitalist structures you have new forms of the clash in capitalist models. But in the end the basic premise of profits above people never changes.
So? The structure of the Leftist concept in the US Constitution meets the wall of the exclusive rights problem with the Capitalist economic globalist model. Will this be evergreen and unchanging over human history for all time? People like JohnRawls might believe this to be the case. It is not. That model is going to create tension between workers all over the world and joblessness and so on, and not enough jobs, etc, crime, etc, and the masses flee for borders of nations that have better economic prospects. It has fallout. Constantly.
But? The resolution is there in everyone's face. Democratize the entire workplaces of all modern nations. Make the workers the owners of their own work and labor. And never have capitalist owner messing with everyone's votes via corruption and exclusion. Buying off the political class. Got to make that impossible for them to do.
Is it going to require a long time and hard work? I think climate change issues are going to speed up the ousting of the intransigent 1%. It is simply unsustainable. And the people are going to have to come together and be responsible for their own local government, and state government and national governments. Letting the narcissistic power drunk freaks take over with lies about being working people when they are the farthest from it in the world? Is bound to happen.
The far Left jobs are to pressure with harshness and the other leftists it is going to be organizing with efficiency. Fighting among ourselves will never get the goal accomplished. In that I agree with Rancid. Divide and conquer works.
The Republican Party is going to be divided. And it will face dissolving forever. But that is what happens when you fail to compromise within. The Democratic Party is fracturing as well under the pressure. The reason for the fractures in both parties has to do with something simple. Neither are responding to the original purpose of forming the parties. They are being pulled in an undemocratic direction. Corrupt and useless. You lose your main goal of representing the people who compose your constituency? You have nothing to do there but get paid off and not get anything accomplished for the commoners. You are back to the King and Queen shit model that failed centuries ago.
You have a repeat of the French Revolution eventually. Lol.