Democratic elections are the modern equivalent of “bread and circuses”. A system cannot fail those it was never meant to function for. The only way to effect real change in the world is through revolution - as peaceful as we can make it. We must end capitalism before it ends us. And that starts with accepting the reality that the absolute best case scenario for democracy is to slightly limit harm.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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What's your alternative to democracy after this "peaceful revolution"? Who's in charge? You?
Is this revolution anarchist, communist, fascist, or something else?
And what kind of democracy are you talking about? There are many varieties, with some being far better than others.
Sadly, my answer to this quite unsatisfactory: I can’t give you all of the answers, I am but one man, to act like I know the path to a perfect society would be arrogant to the point of excess. I want to start a conversation where we admit that the system we have is so fucking rigged that we have no chance to actually achieve meaningful change through that system, and talk about the alternatives.
Personally, I am an anarchist - so ideally, there would be no one “in charge”. I suppose another way of saying that would be that we would all be in charge. I believe in consensus-based decision making - it’s more or less what democracy should be - you could even consider it a form of democracy, if you like.
The more important part is the abolition of other unequal power structures, the worst of which is capitalism, undoubtedly. The problem with our system as it exists isn’t in the idea that people vote to elect leaders, it’s that we ignore all the other structures of power. Corporations don’t vote, but they have an absolute fuck load more political power than the combined voting power of all of their employees.
Maybe, just maybe, liberal democracies need to do a better job solving problems for constituents and less time fellating billionaires.
That might help.
I mean, when I see a right-wing populist telling me they can fix all my problems, I know they're a lying, opportunistic piece of shit, but I can also see the appeal because at least they're saying that there's problems and that they'll do something, which is more than milquetoast centrists will do.
Then you learn that the "something" they want to do is the exact opposite direction of what solving the problem would look like. It takes 2 seconds of critical thought to realize I'd much rather stick with the "milquetoast centrists" than ever consider voting for regressive conservatives.
Agreed, but those people are totally shooting themselves (and us) in the foot by continuing to act as if certain issues either straight up don't exist or aren't that bad at all. That ALLOWS the rightwing demagogues to offer "solutions" which a huge part of (uncritical) people lap up and run with.
Some issues really don't straight up exist. Outrage TV will always come up with something to stir people up. Other issues are pretty complicated without any promising solutions, so it may just seem like they're being ignored. Conservatives will focus on those and claim to have the answer, but then their answer is something like "to eradicate poverty we need to put poor people in jail".