Quote Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman View Post
"Voter suppression" these days in the States usually refers to making it a mild inconvenience to vote. The fact that significant numbers of people will abandon their right to supposedly rule themselves if it takes an extra hour out of their lives every few years should tell you something about how much good it's perceived to do.
In my country, you can register to vote online and they send you a special voter ID in the mail. It's super convenient. And the physical piece of identification, which gets sent every election, is a nice reminder to vote in the election.

The fact that a significant number of people abandon their right to vote is a problem, but it's a cultural one, not something that's fixed in place.


In any case, so what if they do? Democrats do the same when they're in power, and no matter what happens, another corporate stooge will be democratically elected according to the will of the people than another one.

Yes, ideology can blind people to their interests. Instead, the rich employ it to convince the poor to support the interests of the rich. This isn't a stunning endorsement of democracy. No matter which way they vote, the poor vote for the interests of one faction of the rich vs. another, but not their own.

Good, because you don't think Trump did either. Well, Trump and Biden were the only options we got. No matter which was elected, the "working poor" lost; the rich won.


But we know that voting doesn't. We've been trying voting for quite a while now. Why should it suddenly start working? I say: give it up, and try something else.
We know that voting works to create restraints on corruption, as is evidenced by the numerous examples of open, egalitarian, social democratic societies (like Switzerland, to name one), which don't have such a strong culture of fatalism and indifference towards their civic privileges.

FreelancePoliceman, politicians don't have a choice in whom they serve. The types of policies that they're forced to support are limited, quite literally right out of the gate. They serve the interests of their best-mobilized constituents, because promising to serve those who are cynical and apathetic would make them lose their next election. I can't prove this, but they probably don't even have a choice on whether or not to be corrupt.

The evangelical right has been one of the best-organized factions in recent American history, and they have managed to shape the modern Republican party's stance on most cultural issues.