Why Vote?
Why vote, when politics are vile, the right wing is a pack of intransigent bullies and the politicians who call themselves progressive inevitably go belly-up and give in to them? Obama, the guy who stood for hope, turned out to be just another good-looking guy who let us down, and a true progressive like Bernie Sanders – I’m at an age where I go for older men! – probably doesn’t stand a chance.
......................
........here’s a political argument for those of you who consider yourselves too revolutionary to engage in anything as reformist as voting:
That’s a position of pure privilege.
Why? Because the revolution may take a little while to get underway. I’ve been working on this one myself for close to half a century, and see how far we’ve gotten! In the meantime, all those reformist half-measures do have a huge impact on real peoples’ lives, often the people with the least resources and who are most impacted by policies. They might determine things like whether or not someone goes to jail for life for a petty drug offense, or spends years in solitary, or gets tried as an adult when they’re sixteen. Or whether a pregnant teen can get on food stamps, or get a safe, legal abortion, or get medical care if she keeps her child. They determine whether old people can keep the pensions they worked for or whether corporations pay taxes.
And no, they never work perfectly, or make the deep, structural changes we might like to see. But even incremental change can make the difference between life and death for someone.
And when the right wing is working so hard to keep the young, the poor, and the non-white from voting, why on earth would you want to help them?
.........
great stuff:
http://starhawksblog.org/?p=1019
= new reply since forum marked as read
