The oligarchs have been choosing our "choices" for us for a long time. But that doesn't mean we have to keep accepting them. If enough of us would vote for alternative party candidates and write-ins, before long those alternate parties would begin to become more legitimized, and would run more legitimate candidates. And the threat of that will put the fear of losing control into the other two major parties, making them have to pay more attention to the needs of the people, instead of the desires of their lobbyists and big money contributors.
This sounds like a pipe dream on its best day. No write-in candidate could get enough support to even collectively challenge the Big Two, especially since our first-past-the-post system makes votes for the smaller parties meaningless.
A fool is one who keeps doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
These are intelligent, educated adults who are attempting to learn from their mistakes.
The mistake of thinking one's vote matters in the current system is one many should learn from.
Because not voting achieves nothing but to let the candidates and the politicians know that you don't care what they say or do to get elected, or what they say or do once they are elected. The only voice we have that they must listen to is the voice of our votes. Because they still have to get elected to have any power. And they still have to get re-elected to keep it.
But to be elected, they don't have to get the largest number of votes. They only have to report that they got the largest number of votes.
All the more reason for those who are informed to VOTE! And to make their votes heard.
And we're back around the circular logic again.
"VOTE!"
"Here are reasons why people aren't voting."
"Which is why you should VOTE!"
It is a dog-and-pony show. That's politics in a democracy. And it's all the more reason for us to stay on top of it, and to stop buying into the spectacle. Because if we don't, the people who are running the show will destroy us all for their own gain. Bet your life on it! We ARE betting our lives and the lives of our children on it!
You admit that it's all just a spectacle, yet demand that we take it seriously for some reason?
The people in charge are going to remain in charge regardless of the outcome of an election.
These are not elected officials, but individuals with more buying power than the government could ever hope to wield.
That's BS. Young people in the U.S. have become notoriously neglectful of public service. They're the ones who can speak out. They're the ones that can march, and protest, and disrupt the status quo. They're the ones that should speak out, because it's their future at stake. But they give up too easy, and join their own enemies just to get by.
The generation of the 60s fought for nearly a decade to end the Viet Nam war and to stop both racial and sexual discrimination. Some of them were even killed doing it, and some went to prison, and many were kicked out of their schools. But they kept growing in numbers until they couldn't be ignored. And they changed the course of the nation.
Then look at Occupy Wall Street. It lasted two years and couldn't even gain a national voice. And now it's already forgotten.
You seem to forget that the glorious Baby Boomer revolution came about in a time of economic boom, when the youngest group of adults did not have to struggle to put food on the table.
It's easy to march and stand in front of a gun when you aren't living in constant doubt regarding whether or not the bills will be paid this month, or when you know that missing a day of work isn't the difference between electricity/running water/a roof over your head and having to sacrifice one of those this month.
We have attempted to make change in the ways we grew up learning, making use of communication technology to reach a wider audience and connect with more people than previous generations could have ever hoped.
And we have found ourselves stymied, stalled, or threatened at every turn by former revolutionaries who have since become the establishment, and thus the problem, but who outnumber and outmoney us a hundred to one.
So at this point, we're pretty much waiting for ya'll to die off.
Maybe then Gen-X or the Millennials will have a chance to fix your continued devotion to several flawed systems.
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