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this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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politics
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Only if the whole “representative” part of democracy is a sham and a joke. I don’t think it is.
It’s weak, yes, in some ways broken, constantly under siege, in actual existential danger at the present time - but it’s real and the best version we’ve come up with yet in the history of the world. And it wasn’t easy to get here.
It's representative because the representatives need their constituents' votes to stay in power. It may not be a spoken exchange, but that's exactly the exchange that takes place with every call. That's not a sham, that's exactly what makes it a democracy. The idea that elected officials broadly act out of the goodness of their hearts is describing a benevolent aristocracy. Also a fantasy.
. . . ? Sorry, it’s representative but only because politicians need votes?
Not sure what the point is there.
And they do things for their constituents because otherwise they will lose votes. Which you seem to think would only occur if the democracy was a joke rather than the very core of the system.
Not “only” because they’d lose votes, but yes that is a feature of the representative system. What is it you think I’m saying about it? I think you’re saying representative democracy is bad because the representatives need votes to be in office . . . ?
This sounds like you believe telling a representative that your vote is assured but your angry with their choice will get them to take your concerns seriously unless the "representative" part is a sham, but there's no inherent expectation of goodness in a representative democracy. If they don't want to do something and you (and all your allies) tell them "we want you to change your position, but we're going to vote for you regardless of what you do", you've told them all they need to know, because ignoring you won't cost them any votes and presumably the other choice either will or is just what they'd like to do.
"Representative" democracy just means we hand over immediate power to the people we vote for to do the day to day governing. It doesn't mean they actually innately represent their constituents nor does it involve just guessing who'd be best every four years and then sitting back and hoping it goes well.
Politicians ignore their constituents all the time. I'm glad that Biden doesn't give a fuck that some pro-life zealots are big mad that he doesn't ban abortion. He knows they have almost no chance of voting for him and it would lose him a bunch of his actual voters. But if we all got together and said "hey Joe, don't worry about what we want on abortion, we're 100% with you regardless", he might start thinking about softening his stance on abortion bans to pick up a few more votes from the zealots. You can leave the threat to not vote for them unsaid, but the threat is what gets them to change their stance, and if you preemptively rule out ever taking away the thing they want in the transaction, they have no reason to do so.
Votes in exchange for policy is the whole deal. There's no requirement in a functioning democratic system for the representatives to just do stuff out of innate goodness.
I guess it would depend on your representative. If your hyptothetical representative in this case is simply saying words to secure your vote but has no intention of working towards what you've asked of them, then yeah that's fucked up and you shouldn't vote for them. But again, that's also part of the system.
If you're saying on the national stage we have a two-party system and the only way to extract concessions from the one party that will listen is to throw the election to the other party - that's insanity. Firstly, it's not the case, and secondly, the second party will absolutely make everything worse for everyone. It's like saying if I can't have ice cream for dinner I'm going to shit in the food.
So here- your representative in the House - whoever that is - have you gotten their position on Palestine? Have you told them what you want them to do? If both of those are yes, then you've done the direct action part of it. The rest of the marching and protesting and whatever else anyone wants to do - absolutely fine and not specifically ineffective. All the college protest press has created some momentum, so maybe the DNC will add a relevant plank to the platform in September when the convention is.
But here's the thing - if your representative (and/or Senator, same rules apply) is either saying but not doing, or not saying what you want - you support their competition. Practically that means another Democrat, unless you've got a shot at electing an Independent as in the case of Maine or somewhere else. It does not mean allowing republiQans to run riot because we "only" agree on 90% of the issues.
Is the entirety of the system broken? No. It's managed - yes. And that can be seen as bad, absolutely I get it. I'm not a huge fan of the DNC or the DNCC in particular. But the fact that it's managed is relatively meaningless for what we're talking about - a particular position wrt Israel & Palestine. Those people should agree with us, and if they don't we should be able to persuade them with logic and reason. And if we can't, we have to look at why.
For what it's worth, I think there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff regarding arms sales and political donations going on that isn't accounted for because it's not talked about. By talking about it we can get closer to what the fuck is wrong with them. Are they not holding Israel's right wing (republiQan) administration to account because they need their money? Their political intel? Their spies? Their footprint in the middle east? All of that must play some sort of role in the decision, but it's never mentioned by either side. The one side, in power, who knows it won't talk about it, and the other side, not in power, doesn't know it.
So what we're left with is an imperfect system that nevertheless is functional and has all the avenues necessary to affect change. Is your representative (like mine) a republiQan dipshit possessed by the evil MAGAt virus? Well, I'm supporting their challenger, a Democrat, who will vote the way I want them to. If my rep was a Democrat who was voting the way I wanted to in 90% of the issues but this one, I'd back another Dem who voted 100% of the way I want them to. Those are valid paths to getting what we want done.
Not voting, which is as previously discussed effectively allowing the republiQan incompetent corrupt turd circus to win, is not a valid path. Third party is a valid path, it's just not likely. Like, at all. Hey - if you and some friends can raise a third party to win national elections, hell yeah, go for it. But there's a reason it hasn't been done yet and no one has addressed that reason. Until then, we have a bit of an existential issue in this upcoming election. Like we can discuss how to deal with Netanyahu but there's still a ticking nuclear weapon under our feet we should probably address first.