“What good is it to go out there and do it? It isn’t going to make any difference.”
“Some people are just tired,” he said. “They think it’s a waste of time. But even if it is, we should keep wasting our time until it’s not.”
not sure what tone this is meant to end the article on but: ouch
If only there were some policies that could be adopted to appeal to protesters, it's a shame that is impossible.
Even non-left people remember watching a complete government dem supermajority do nothing to address shit like this.
Black people in America intuitively understand that liberal democracy is a fucking sham. Even taken at face value, it's a system based on majority rule and they're a minority. Even if everything worked how it was supposed to they wouldn't have a voice.
This isn't a good take because -- at face value -- we don't have pure majority rule. At face value, you can't just do anything you want with 50.1% of the vote. You especially can't take away fundamental, constitutional rights unless you have an enormous majority (again, this is at face value). There are all sorts of mechanisms (theoretically) included in our government to protect minority groups, and of course you can having a voice is not the same as getting what you want.
The reason why American democracy is a sham for black people is the centuries of structural racism (along with centuries of more overt racism) baked into every aspect of the country. It doesn't matter if stuff works on paper if in reality there's a mountain of bias against you. This is doubly true when you look at the difference between having a voice and getting what you want. If you and a group of friends are deciding where to go eat, the group may decide to go somewhere you don't like, but (because they're your friends) they're not going to go somewhere you hate just to fuck you over and they'll probably be pretty willing to compromise to someplace they're all fine with and you're at least lukewarm on. You have a voice, and that voice has some meaningful input on the final decision, but you're not getting everything you want. On paper, this isn't a bad way of deciding what to do as a group. The problem isn't with that sort of decision-making process; the problem is that America doesn't treat minority groups like friends. America is more than happy to fuck over minority groups out of spite, and is even happier to tell them "tough shit, deal with it" even if they're not actively fucking the group over.
It's still a broken system, it's just broken for a different reason.
when I was a lib I remember hearing the quote attributed to Stalin along the lines of "it doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes" and thinking he was revealing his cunning plans
even libshit site snopes gets to the bottom of that one nowadays, and the other quotes are interesting:
- “As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it. say?” — attributed to William M. “Boss” Tweed in Thomas Nast cartoon, 7 October 1871).
- “‘I care not who casts the votes of a nation, provided I can count them,’ Napoleon failed to remark.” — New York Times editorial (26 May 1880).
- “There’s more to an election than mere votin’, my boy, for as an eminent American once said: ‘I care not who casts the votes of a nation if they’ll let me make the count.‘” — from Uncle Henry, a novel by George Creel, 1922.
- “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting, Archie says.” — from Jumpers, a play by Tom Stoppard, 1972.
- “Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.” — Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza (1896-1956), Guardian (London), 17 June 1977.
The comments on the article are really something too. Especially the Dem loyalist in there talking about how much hard electoral work things take and that the people in the article just don't understand the process of change. It's hilarious because all those news stories about how Pete Buttigieg neglected and destroyed his community are the norm for dems. They don't work hard, they barely show up for anything and people know it. I've seen my dem mayor maybe twice over the last 5 years and both times he was being protested for being a do nothing piece of shit. Our dem house rep also basically told the local orgs to fuck off when asked to help with any of the police reform issues. They do the bare minimum to get the local news headline and then they leave. All ideological differences aside I would not vote for them on this basis alone.
