Well, yeah. If I started the Dickweed Party and decided I’d be the candidate, I wouldn’t have to let someone else take the nomination if I didn’t want to.
Truly AMERICA is the freest state on earth cuss you can vooooooooooote right? …Right?
I’ve been trying to come up with a term to describe this phenomenon for a while now. Privatewashing, maybe?
Westerners are programmed to not accept certain things if done by the government directly. Publishing propaganda? Bad. Laundering government propaganda through private media outlets? Not a problem. Interfering with a foreign election? Bad. Sponsoring a “Private NGO” to do it? Totally fine. Foreign government influencing domestic policy? Bad. Multinational companies paying lobby groups to do the same? Democracy.
In this case, the government telling people that their votes don’t count and that rules don’t have to be followed would be flagrantly undemocratic. A private organization doing that though? Well we can’t do anything about it even if it’s directly relevant to the outcome of elections and national policy.
I don’t like “privatewashing”. It sounds like the longest part of my shower, and I’m not thinking about Bernie’s 2016 primary race during it.
I do see value in harm reduction, TBH. Dems are shit but, statistically, anti-electoralism is functionally equivalent to voting for the far-right. So, I see it as a way to at least make it take some work for politicians to pretend that the tenets of neoliberalism and fascism are supported by as wide a group as claimed and attempt to reduce their influence in local elections (ex. the coordinated efforts to subvert school boards and have [further] right-wing propaganda taught as fact).
Don’t mistake this as actually thinking that Libs are going to help unless forced, though. They’re absolutely Lucy in the picture.
I do see value in harm reduction
Categorically, regarding the still-open concentration camps across the southern border, the murderously neglectful lack of a meaningful covid response, the expanded oil drilling and permissive retention of the previous regime’s planet-burning deregulation policies and the tax cuts and kickbacks to the rick being maintained, harm is not being reduced at this point.
Relatively speaking, it really still is. It can always get worse. And it would currently be much worse for LGBTQ+ people under a further right-wing government.
Unfortunately in the two party duopoly, they’re the best we’ve got.
Fully aware, but it’s either that or allow the other party, which has become increasingly more fascist, back into power.
The differences between them are getting less and less apparent over time.
Biden rolled back next to nothing of his predecessor’s policies and executive orders. The border concentration camps are still open for business.
