this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Free Elections: ✅ ❌
Free as in you're free to choose between 2 curated fascist candidates 😂
I forgot free elections is when a rogue elector decides to say "fuck it" to the entire state's voting wishes between two parties. DPRK has more parties than the U.S. What does that tell you?
"Free" is one of the most abused words in the US lexicon. The US is, at best, "democracy for the rich" and the donor contributions you can find on how much billionaires spend on elections helps show that. The concept of it as free exists primarily in the imaginations of US people and in the myths pushed by the rich, so that people will blame themselves and other working class people for any problems*. The concept doesn't materialize when votes are suppressed, when rich donors spend more on a single election than you've ever seen or will see in your lifetime, when candidate choices are filtered through two parties thoroughly owned by such rich and corporate interests, when the electoral college and the supreme court hangs over any fading remnant of a notion that populist will could take control of the system from within, and so on.
*Incidentally, it's a common tactic in US propaganda for them to redirect blame to the working class and individuals more generally. Another example of this is the narratives that portray obesity as a kind of individual failing, while ignoring how pervasively unhealthy so much US food is or how for many people, the structure of transportation makes walking non-viable for getting places, and leaves you to sort out exercise as a side hobby.
So long as you believe in fictions like "free elections in the US", it's harder to understand how systemic so many issues are. But topple one and you might start to see how much like dominoes the narratives fall.
Except for felons in many states. And then Nixon and his strategists decide to make certain drugs felonies so they can disenfranchise specific segments of the population. And then it's revealed that this is what they did and why they did it. And it's never reversed.
https://nlihc.org/resource/history-voter-suppression
And that's the system you KNOW about. You don't know shit about the DPRK system so the idea that you could possibly compare them when you don't even have an accurate understanding of your own system is ridiculous.
I unironically don't really believe in democracy, so I don't mind bad elections so much. But I think you're basically saying there are some flaws with U.S.' elections. But the fact that nobody can predict the outcome of the next election though means in my books that it's pretty close to a free election. In contrast, I can with great certainty predict who will be in charge of NK next year, even though I don't know anything about their electoral system.
The real problem with U.S.' election system is that both parties suck.
You actually can tell exactly who will win basically any election in the US, and it's whoever spent the most money
Who's the current president in North Korea?
me
We can and do predict with 100% accuracy that one of two candidates will win the US election. Both of those candidates represent essentially the same tiny minority of ultrawealthy donor-class elite. The fact that anyone falls for this obvious hoodwinking and thinks they have a "choice" or any say in who rules over them in the US still astounds me. Even when I was a lib I knew US elections were nothing more than a good-cop/bad-cop routine. Nah, we know exactly who will "win" the "free" election in the US every single time with zero deviation: the bourgeoisie.
The reason for this is that the dems can't drift leftward lest they lose to the republicans, who are backed by the wealthy. Seems like an unfortunate scenario unrelated to the actual electoral process, caused by capitalism and the interference of money in the election. It'd be great if we could prevent money from interfering in the election.
No, more like the dems are also backed by the wealthy and they are both perfect little tools for the capitalist ruling class of the United States whom is also the global hegemon of the world who enacts crimes, interventions and even funds/arms genocide. Biden did that, by the way! Because he was completely lying out of his fucking ass about asking for a cease-fire!
Don't worry though, they're both making money off dead kids. We possibly can't go left-wards though!
Most likely you think that way because you're so used to the government not doing shit for you that you're in disbelief at the idea of people wanting to willingly elect the same person over and over.
No. I would think that in such a scenario, other parties should copy more and more from the winning party until (in the limit) they're indistinguishable. Of course, at some point before that, they'll get elected. This is IMO the reason why the democrats and republicans are so similar.
But why would they get elected in that scenario? When people in the US talk about elections and different candidate, they aren't going "I really like the incumbent party, but the other party is saying similar stuff and I'd like to give a shot to somebody who could be similar but hasn't proven themself." They are going "I don't like the incumbent and want different."
Admittedly, "hasn't proven themself" is quite a disadvantage. But not everyone cares about if they've proven themself if they are offering a change that matters to them.
Everyone has different ways they'd like the current party to change. This is why as another party approaches the incumbent's platform, some people will jump to vote for the new party. Some people are one-issue voters and if the ruling party wronged them then they will change their vote to the next best party no matter what.
Still, I can't argue with the idea that the incumbent party might be truly optimal and most everyone likes them. Seems implausible to me as a Canadian but you could be right. Nonetheless, you must surely agree a constantly changing ruling party in the U.S. ought to be sufficient proof of a (relatively) fair election.
This is more or less how I view that: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7781901/6329586
In particular, this part:
In other words, I see it as this:
It might be called "fair" as a contest between rich people if you are wealthy and can lobby sufficiently to sway the outcomes, so that if one party is failing to do what you want, the other might. But since neither represents working class issues well, much less issues of marginalized groups, and there is nothing to hold either party accountable to those groups, the average person isn't really getting an experience of fairness.
A critical difference you see in a socialist state, like the DPRK (what some call "North Korea") is the existence of a vanguard party, who represents the working class and works to ensure not only that working class issues are truly represented in policy, but that the capitalist class cannot gain control of the political system. And they do this by force when it comes down to it because if they didn't, there would be nothing material stopping the capitalists from taking over.
In contrast, a system like the US ensures that the capitalist class is in control, by force, suppressing any attempt at a challenge to the capitalist class's hold. Some examples of this force in practice being COINTELPRO or the vilification of, and violence, toward the historical Black Panther Party.
You literally just said 4 vibes and nothing else.
how free was it when gore won the election but didn't become president?
so free to chose between two genocidal corporatists
you're free to chose but only if you pick the right one.
Do you even know how elections in the DRPK work? No? Then you can not judge if they're free or not.
oh is that why over 80% of Americans want universal healthcare but it never happens?
In 2000, a judicial coup gave the presidency to George W Bush. Nothing has been done to stop the supreme court from doing so again. Not only are US elections not free or fair, nobody in power seems interested in making them so.
The 2024 election was the first one since 1976 without a Bush, Clinton or Biden in the running.
Mr. Clinton Bush-Kennedy would have been god-emperor of the US empire if he existed in the 2000s
And where did those "free" elections get you lol
More like, rigged elections: ✅ ❌
Why haven't American elections granted anything on this list?
because they're free. this is apparently a good thing.
free as in beer