Scott is entirely correct. However, and he covers this, most of the issues he highlights are unlikely to change because the people benefiting from how things have become, how they are now, don't...
Scott is entirely correct. However, and he covers this, most of the issues he highlights are unlikely to change because the people benefiting from how things have become, how they are now, don't want them to change. And those same people have the power, financial and political and social, to prevent the change. To keep things beneficial to themselves.
There are a lot of ways to break that logjam, and some of them get quite disruptive. Even violent. Which would be unfortunate, but I'm firmly of the belief that when you push someone too far they will snap. And when they do, some of them lash out, will decide they have nothing left to lose. When you're down to rock bottom, sometimes you roll the dice. After all, what can you lose when there's nothing left to take?
The way around all those unfortunate, unhappy outcomes for our society, for the hundreds of millions of us, is for the squished and taken-advantage-of people to change the game. To change the rules. Doing that without violence and dangerous disruption requires people to get politically active.
Now, if the people currently in charge resist the politics and change the rules further to keep a suddenly politically active youth sector from having any impact, then we just end back up at those disruptive, violent solutions. But they might not cheat that far, so maybe it's worth the shot to try? How do we try?
I'm not a fan of social media. It's used for so much horribleness and pain. But it can be harnessed for good.
People, especially young people, spend so much time online. So much time glued to their phones. They scroll and scroll and doomscroll. They post pics and comments and fire shares back and forth, they tweet and retweet, all of that. Right now, it's almost entirely about frivolous bullshit. Movies, people they're laughing at, favorite songs, what their lunch looks like, the latest scandals, on and on.
Change the narrative. Make voting the thing young people scream and shame about online. Because we know it works. People shame each other over fashions and pronouns and all this shit that doesn't affect the root cause of why things are so fucked up and so bad for so many. The George Floyd protests saw protestors using social media live on the ground as they protested, maneuvering to avoid or delay interactions with cop formations, to find each other and grow their numbers, and so on.
Do that with voting. Start shaming each other for not voting. For not registering. For not bothering to exercise the franchise. I'm not saying give up on all the bullshit that's apparently so fun, where you laugh and shame each other for wearing the wrong shoes or going to the wrong parties or whatever. But add voting and politics into that.
And I don't mean issues. That's bullshit unless you vote. It's easy to bitch about issues, you just do it from your phone. You mostly just preach to the choir, because you're talking to your people who will agree with and validate you for the most part. Everyone circle jerks about "yeah, shit sucks and it's bad and we should do something. ... ... So, who's going to John's party on Friday?"
Flip the script. Did John register to vote? Why hasn't Sally posted her "I voted" picture with her in line along with the other one with her outside the polling station wearing her "I voted" sticker? Why is Steve posting from his surf board when it's Tuesday and time to vote? What the fuck is Steve thinking, what's wrong with him? What's wrong with Sally?
Make voting the thing the non-voting generations shame each other about. That's what'll have a shot at fixing things without revolution or civil war. That's what can alter the equation, change the algorithm of the nation.
Scott covers specific issues, in the linked video (and has many others, he's an intelligent guy who knows his subjects and can seemingly discuss them at the drop of a hat). You look on Youtube and he's all over it once you're in his circle. None of the issues he points out are going to change when rich people and corporations don't want them to. Unless they're pushed to, forced to.
I'm not a fan of politicians, but the civilized solution to that is to get better politicians into the mix. Young people love to bitch about how old and out of touch so many "leaders" are. I agree. But then the kids, which in this context pretty much means anyone under 40, don't vote.
So why would "old and out of touch leaders" give a fuck what you think if you and your cohort, you and your friends, you and your siblings, you and all the people you spend time with online and off, why would they care two shits about your complaints when all you do is bitch about them on Twitter and TikTok and whatever else?
Old people vote. That's just the bottom line. They've benefited from the changes Scott highlights because they voted over the years. They show up and make it clear they want certain things, will react favorably to certain things. Since they vote, their concerns will get some level of engagement. Why would a politician wanting votes care about what non-voting people want?
Oh look, they don't.
We have several decades of evidence that they don't. What will make them change their tune? What will make them stop listening quite so hard to the money being waved at them by the wealthy and incorporated?
Voting.
Or, we can just all wait for the collapse and plan to find rifles when the discontent spills out into that kind of action. Voting would be easier. It's one day, sometimes two days, a year. It's not a big deal ... unless you don't do it. Unless you and most people in your bracket don't do it.
Then it's a huge deal, and you see what power there is that might help you is still being seized by others who use it for their own benefit.
Don't just start voting. Start shaming and shunning for not voting. If you can browbeat people over not using the right pronouns and all that, you can do it because they ignore voting and laugh it off. Shame them. Use the power of the social network for your benefit. Rally people to vote.
And you can do it from your phone. Without getting off the couch. Except for that one day each year where you do need to get up and go to the polls. One day that can make a difference, and spend the other three hundred and sixty-four badgering everyone into remembering why that day matters and what they'll be doing on it.
Yeah. Voting is literally the least you can do to be engaged in politics, both in the sense that it's generally easy and that there are many more impactful things you can do. It's a rare and...
Yeah. Voting is literally the least you can do to be engaged in politics, both in the sense that it's generally easy and that there are many more impactful things you can do. It's a rare and unclear signal regarding your actual desires as a constituent. Talking to your representatives, engaging in community organizing so as to have a bigger group of constituents behind you when you talk to your representatives, community organizing to support a candidate for local elections who you feel will better represent you... all of these are far more impactful than your vote alone.
Protestors and the UAW are showing that it takes more than voting. It takes class consciousness. Building a coalition of economically aligned people to combat the ones who hold the power. "Just...
Protestors and the UAW are showing that it takes more than voting. It takes class consciousness. Building a coalition of economically aligned people to combat the ones who hold the power. "Just vote" is a stupid liberal talking point and the way voting has been restricted, limited, gerrymandered, and just become an overall hardship for the labor class proves that it's just a slogan of virtue signaling elites who know it's a meaningless endeavor.
Voting is definitely the answer but it is not the presidential general election that moves the parties in the US (which will always be a lesser of two evils choice in a two party system), it’s the...
Voting is definitely the answer but it is not the presidential general election that moves the parties in the US (which will always be a lesser of two evils choice in a two party system), it’s the primaries.
Unless you’re in a swing state your vote for president largely isn’t that meaningful (though your vote for everything else on the ballot including referendums absolutely does matter) but in the primary your vote has some actual weight (and in the case of Democratic primaries, proportional allocation of delegates).
Compare the party platforms of the democrats of 2000 to 2020 and you will see an incredibly stark leftward jump due in large part to the success of the Bernie Sanders movement. Even though he didn’t end up being the nominee, his primary successes gave him a lot of influence in the party to push it towards his ideology.
Even though the US has a two party system they are not static entities just because the names are the same.
I think a parliamentary system has a lot of advantages in making this kind of stuff more clear as different factions are different parties rather than being factions fighting for power internal to the two parties in the US, but there are still similar dynamics at play. I’ve heard a political science professor describe the US system as coalitions are built before the election, whereas in a parliamentary system, the coalitions are built after.
The parties are shaped mainly by primaries, not by people abstaining from voting. The US system is built so that parties have internal election first, and those primaries are where you get the...
The parties are shaped mainly by primaries, not by people abstaining from voting. The US system is built so that parties have internal election first, and those primaries are where you get the fidelity you're talking about. But young people don't vote in general elections much, and they especially don't vote in primaries. Abstaining does not push your party closer to where you want them to be. You become a nonfactor in their eyes. Voting in a primary sends a way, way stronger message, even if your primary candidate isn't nominated.
Even better than being a semi-voter, vote third-party. For whatever reason, it gets more attention if the margin of victory is smaller than the third-party vote than if it was merely a larger...
Even better than being a semi-voter, vote third-party. For whatever reason, it gets more attention if the margin of victory is smaller than the third-party vote than if it was merely a larger delegation that decided to stay home this year. Probably because third-party votes are objectively measurable while people who stay home are not.
I tend to agree. I believe it is much more important for a functioning democracy that people are taking part in formulating the choices that are being consideredrather than the actual choosing...
I tend to agree. I believe it is much more important for a functioning democracy that people are taking part in formulating the choices that are being consideredrather than the actual choosing between options. There is much more power in deciding what the question on a ballot is rather picking between the options, e.g. "should women have bodily autonomy?" vs "should we allow the murder of unborn babies?". While both questions pertain to the same underlying issue; which you choose to ask will influence the answer people give.
So in general, get organized! Start championing issues you care about within the existing political system. Don't wait and allow others to formulate the choices for you!
Democracy will have to survive in order to solve everything and it’s in dire straits right now. It rather weak from the influence of large donors and PACs, but in more recent years, we’ve been...
Democracy will have to survive in order to solve everything and it’s in dire straits right now. It rather weak from the influence of large donors and PACs, but in more recent years, we’ve been been dealing with the rise of literal fascism. Democracy could solve things, but only if we were to act laws that would empower it.
This video examines a range of topics, yet its core message is straightforward: our societal structures, legal systems, and certain organizations are accumulating wealth, thereby exacerbating...
This video examines a range of topics, yet its core message is straightforward: our societal structures, legal systems, and certain organizations are accumulating wealth, thereby exacerbating challenges for those not already rich and those that will come after us.
Scott is entirely correct. However, and he covers this, most of the issues he highlights are unlikely to change because the people benefiting from how things have become, how they are now, don't want them to change. And those same people have the power, financial and political and social, to prevent the change. To keep things beneficial to themselves.
There are a lot of ways to break that logjam, and some of them get quite disruptive. Even violent. Which would be unfortunate, but I'm firmly of the belief that when you push someone too far they will snap. And when they do, some of them lash out, will decide they have nothing left to lose. When you're down to rock bottom, sometimes you roll the dice. After all, what can you lose when there's nothing left to take?
The way around all those unfortunate, unhappy outcomes for our society, for the hundreds of millions of us, is for the squished and taken-advantage-of people to change the game. To change the rules. Doing that without violence and dangerous disruption requires people to get politically active.
Now, if the people currently in charge resist the politics and change the rules further to keep a suddenly politically active youth sector from having any impact, then we just end back up at those disruptive, violent solutions. But they might not cheat that far, so maybe it's worth the shot to try? How do we try?
I'm not a fan of social media. It's used for so much horribleness and pain. But it can be harnessed for good.
People, especially young people, spend so much time online. So much time glued to their phones. They scroll and scroll and doomscroll. They post pics and comments and fire shares back and forth, they tweet and retweet, all of that. Right now, it's almost entirely about frivolous bullshit. Movies, people they're laughing at, favorite songs, what their lunch looks like, the latest scandals, on and on.
Change the narrative. Make voting the thing young people scream and shame about online. Because we know it works. People shame each other over fashions and pronouns and all this shit that doesn't affect the root cause of why things are so fucked up and so bad for so many. The George Floyd protests saw protestors using social media live on the ground as they protested, maneuvering to avoid or delay interactions with cop formations, to find each other and grow their numbers, and so on.
Do that with voting. Start shaming each other for not voting. For not registering. For not bothering to exercise the franchise. I'm not saying give up on all the bullshit that's apparently so fun, where you laugh and shame each other for wearing the wrong shoes or going to the wrong parties or whatever. But add voting and politics into that.
And I don't mean issues. That's bullshit unless you vote. It's easy to bitch about issues, you just do it from your phone. You mostly just preach to the choir, because you're talking to your people who will agree with and validate you for the most part. Everyone circle jerks about "yeah, shit sucks and it's bad and we should do something. ... ... So, who's going to John's party on Friday?"
Flip the script. Did John register to vote? Why hasn't Sally posted her "I voted" picture with her in line along with the other one with her outside the polling station wearing her "I voted" sticker? Why is Steve posting from his surf board when it's Tuesday and time to vote? What the fuck is Steve thinking, what's wrong with him? What's wrong with Sally?
Make voting the thing the non-voting generations shame each other about. That's what'll have a shot at fixing things without revolution or civil war. That's what can alter the equation, change the algorithm of the nation.
Scott covers specific issues, in the linked video (and has many others, he's an intelligent guy who knows his subjects and can seemingly discuss them at the drop of a hat). You look on Youtube and he's all over it once you're in his circle. None of the issues he points out are going to change when rich people and corporations don't want them to. Unless they're pushed to, forced to.
I'm not a fan of politicians, but the civilized solution to that is to get better politicians into the mix. Young people love to bitch about how old and out of touch so many "leaders" are. I agree. But then the kids, which in this context pretty much means anyone under 40, don't vote.
So why would "old and out of touch leaders" give a fuck what you think if you and your cohort, you and your friends, you and your siblings, you and all the people you spend time with online and off, why would they care two shits about your complaints when all you do is bitch about them on Twitter and TikTok and whatever else?
Old people vote. That's just the bottom line. They've benefited from the changes Scott highlights because they voted over the years. They show up and make it clear they want certain things, will react favorably to certain things. Since they vote, their concerns will get some level of engagement. Why would a politician wanting votes care about what non-voting people want?
Oh look, they don't.
We have several decades of evidence that they don't. What will make them change their tune? What will make them stop listening quite so hard to the money being waved at them by the wealthy and incorporated?
Voting.
Or, we can just all wait for the collapse and plan to find rifles when the discontent spills out into that kind of action. Voting would be easier. It's one day, sometimes two days, a year. It's not a big deal ... unless you don't do it. Unless you and most people in your bracket don't do it.
Then it's a huge deal, and you see what power there is that might help you is still being seized by others who use it for their own benefit.
Don't just start voting. Start shaming and shunning for not voting. If you can browbeat people over not using the right pronouns and all that, you can do it because they ignore voting and laugh it off. Shame them. Use the power of the social network for your benefit. Rally people to vote.
And you can do it from your phone. Without getting off the couch. Except for that one day each year where you do need to get up and go to the polls. One day that can make a difference, and spend the other three hundred and sixty-four badgering everyone into remembering why that day matters and what they'll be doing on it.
Yeah. Voting is literally the least you can do to be engaged in politics, both in the sense that it's generally easy and that there are many more impactful things you can do. It's a rare and unclear signal regarding your actual desires as a constituent. Talking to your representatives, engaging in community organizing so as to have a bigger group of constituents behind you when you talk to your representatives, community organizing to support a candidate for local elections who you feel will better represent you... all of these are far more impactful than your vote alone.
Protestors and the UAW are showing that it takes more than voting. It takes class consciousness. Building a coalition of economically aligned people to combat the ones who hold the power. "Just vote" is a stupid liberal talking point and the way voting has been restricted, limited, gerrymandered, and just become an overall hardship for the labor class proves that it's just a slogan of virtue signaling elites who know it's a meaningless endeavor.
Voting is definitely the answer but it is not the presidential general election that moves the parties in the US (which will always be a lesser of two evils choice in a two party system), it’s the primaries.
Unless you’re in a swing state your vote for president largely isn’t that meaningful (though your vote for everything else on the ballot including referendums absolutely does matter) but in the primary your vote has some actual weight (and in the case of Democratic primaries, proportional allocation of delegates).
Compare the party platforms of the democrats of 2000 to 2020 and you will see an incredibly stark leftward jump due in large part to the success of the Bernie Sanders movement. Even though he didn’t end up being the nominee, his primary successes gave him a lot of influence in the party to push it towards his ideology.
Even though the US has a two party system they are not static entities just because the names are the same.
I think a parliamentary system has a lot of advantages in making this kind of stuff more clear as different factions are different parties rather than being factions fighting for power internal to the two parties in the US, but there are still similar dynamics at play. I’ve heard a political science professor describe the US system as coalitions are built before the election, whereas in a parliamentary system, the coalitions are built after.
The parties are shaped mainly by primaries, not by people abstaining from voting. The US system is built so that parties have internal election first, and those primaries are where you get the fidelity you're talking about. But young people don't vote in general elections much, and they especially don't vote in primaries. Abstaining does not push your party closer to where you want them to be. You become a nonfactor in their eyes. Voting in a primary sends a way, way stronger message, even if your primary candidate isn't nominated.
Even better than being a semi-voter, vote third-party. For whatever reason, it gets more attention if the margin of victory is smaller than the third-party vote than if it was merely a larger delegation that decided to stay home this year. Probably because third-party votes are objectively measurable while people who stay home are not.
I tend to agree. I believe it is much more important for a functioning democracy that people are taking part in formulating the choices that are being consideredrather than the actual choosing between options. There is much more power in deciding what the question on a ballot is rather picking between the options, e.g. "should women have bodily autonomy?" vs "should we allow the murder of unborn babies?". While both questions pertain to the same underlying issue; which you choose to ask will influence the answer people give.
So in general, get organized! Start championing issues you care about within the existing political system. Don't wait and allow others to formulate the choices for you!
Democracy will have to survive in order to solve everything and it’s in dire straits right now. It rather weak from the influence of large donors and PACs, but in more recent years, we’ve been been dealing with the rise of literal fascism. Democracy could solve things, but only if we were to act laws that would empower it.
This video examines a range of topics, yet its core message is straightforward: our societal structures, legal systems, and certain organizations are accumulating wealth, thereby exacerbating challenges for those not already rich and those that will come after us.