Who gives a shit if someone looks like this or that. I want your guys' gut feelings. Look at the inconsistencies. Look at the facts. What do YOU GUYS think happened? Fuck what the media says. Do your own research. Spill it!

Gut feelings are literally the opposite of facts.

Also the places where you're getting your research from is the media, so how can we trust you?

I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to do your own research and form your own conclusion. And I should have been more specific, media = zionist-controlled mainstream media. My bad.

Give us a step by step guide on how to do research using examples related to this conspiracy.

What is the motive behind this so-called conspiracy?

^ Sorry, I didn't know Trollheart was asking about pre-Mesopotamian civilizations. My bad.

Yeah, still not seeing it. Even if voting is "perpetuating evil," of which I am not convinced, not voting does nothing to reduce evil.

This is how it looks to me, in the USA or anywhere else:-

After centuries of nonrepresentation, people died for the right to vote so that they could have some say in their governance. However ineffective that say may be, it's surely better than nothing?
voting = a gesture towards democracy
not voting = go ahead, take it away. I don't need democracy

I prefer suffrage as well. I just think it's a romanticized farce.

I'm not here to humor you, so don't patronize me. My goal is to help people. If you aren't ready to be helped, then step aside.

You tell me.

I literally just asked you for help.

Neither do I.

I don't have or have any reason to have any "gut" feelings about this.

My gut tell me you're profoundly mentally ill, however.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/...e-conduct-code

A representative of the ACLU couldn't speak William and Mary.

****.

You're the skeptic here, not me.

Trump wants to take our guns!

He's welcome to have mine, good luck finding 'em though...

Where do the extraterrestrials fit in?

ETI's will be used as a false flag.

:beer: I've been slacking on that last week but I help register voters as well. Voter turnouts are so low on off years.

This is the reason that I can't be bothered to hear out people's opinions/complaints if they can't even be bothered to vote in the first place. Even more so when it comes to local races that have such close margins. A friend of mines won his primary race by four votes and it was after they counted absentee ballots before those ballots he lost by 6 votes.

When you consider how few people vote in those elections it really drives home just how pointless this democracy thing is. You're basically winning or losing based on the populace's indifference. Any gains you make are a cock smack to the face of what you really want to accomplish tbh. It's basically an oligarchy of some sort, except instead of the leaders being kings of industry or whatever, they're just the people who show up. It's only vaguely democratic tbh, since any decisions based on it are not in fact the will of any people, just the will of that infinitesimal group of people who can be bothered. Just shoot this government in the head and be done with it.

The will of the people that care enough to show up and exercise their right to vote should be the only ones that matter. The rest of the lemmings that don't get how important it is can go ahead drifting through life letting others make important decisions but just don't want to hear a single gripe out of their mouth.

Not voting isn't apathetic. Voting is apathetic. Voting is not doing something.

Elph, you know that the people you're registering just vote for a neoliberal agenda thus entrenching your oppression more deeply. Progressive? lol. Also, if you registered voters, you definitely registered Trump voters. Why the **** would you want people to vote? That **** makes everything worse. Just stop. Please.

Uh, DJ, the whole point of elections in the U.S. is to pick someone to make important decisions for you while you "drift through life". And if the masses pick the 'wrong' candidate, the politicans just go ahead and use either electoral college bullshit, a loophole, or good old fashion tampering to null our decision. We live in a system where the rich and powerful use all of their resources to keep us polarized and neutered. No matter what we do, whether someone votes first or third party, or doesn't vote at all, we're all "lemmings". So yeah, it's not surprising that so many people don't feel the need to vote between one old rich guy and another.

And of course everyone has the right to an opinion and to complain, whether they vote or not. They're still apart of this country. For all you know, they may be affecting others and supporting their ideals in ways vastly more effective and far reaching than voting.

I don't want to hear the gripes of people who do vote. It's your fault we're in this ****.

.

Who else is to blame besides the ****ing sheep that actively acquiesce to this ****?

.

We should just set up a Ninja Warrior style obstacle course, with a cage match against a bear at the end, and whoever wins gets to become President.

.

George Carlin. If you vote you have no right to complain.

I'm very disappointed by the number of you who consider voting to be a waste of time. Didn't you notice that some recent presidential elections went:-
Republican win - Bush
Democrat win - Obama
Democrat win - Obama
Republican win - Trump
Voting did that, and anyone who suggests that America under Trump is the same as America under Obama is disconnected from what is happening to the US.

Yesterday Frownland suggested that voting perpetrated evil, but thinking about it, I'd say that voting is more about blocking evil. The Brits did it in 1924 by denying power to Oswald Mosely, fascist sympathizer and leader of The Blackshirts :-

The vote number is small because it was a local election, but the principle is the same. By my reckoning, Trump is "a cad and a wrong 'un" and should have been blocked from power by more people turning out to vote against him.

Occult and Batlord are both reduced to writing oxymorons to champion not voting:-

Occult by saying that people who turn out and do something are more apathetic than people who stay at home.
Batlord by talking about a "sort of oligarchy" of people who show up to vote. Well, the people who show up to vote is a club open to every citizen, the exact opposite of an oligarchy.

(Apologies if this post seems a bit blunt, but I had to get it off my chest in 10 mins otherwise I'll be late for work.)

Yeah. I'm a sharing, caring kind of guy. But that's my choice. Nobody forces me to, or doesn't. And I don't understand what that has to do with anything. If there are no laws, I go out to the shops (assuming such structures exist in your world and people don't just take what they want, and if this is the case, how does resupply work?) and I can get attacked, beaten up, killed even and nobody will step in, nobody will be tried or convicted or punished? I can see some **** mistreating a dog or horse and not be able to report him, as there's nobody to report to? Women can get raped and nobody will do anything about it? Yeah, sounds like a great world! :rolleyes:
I'd vote for the bear.

Seriously, if voting is such crap, what about the Arab Spring? What about Obama being voted into power by a population that were sick of Republican policies?

Surely the best comment on this is to remember "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing". Huh? Huh?

No, the best way for evil to win is to trick good men into supporting them, thinking that they are doing something. They love when you fight windmills, instead of fighting them. Buying into their bipartisan system in any way, including voting, even if you vote against them, just makes them stronger.

There is not a single change that happens in this country that the rich and powerful don't allow to happen. Obama won because the top at that time wanted it to be so. Trump won because the top at that time wanted it to be so. Either way, regardless of which party wins, both parties benefit from keeping the populace functionally limited to two choices. And if everyone started voting third party, they would exploit that as well.

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Also, @DJ, shaming people for not voting accomplishes nothing. Most of them care about the world, they are simply disillusioned with the entirety of the current politcal system, i.e. why bother voting for one rich old guy over another when despite their differences all the candidates benefit tremendously from maintaining the current system far more than if they enacted real change in the power structure?

Insulting them is like making fun of someone for being fat; 90% of the time, it doesn't persuade them to try to fit your standards, it just makes them hate the world and become less likely to participate in it. You're just one more voice screaming at them to care about a system that doesn't care about them.

ftfy

No you didn't; you just ignored my question by changing it to suit your view of things. Nice one, Hawk. :rolleyes:

I don't understand where this belief in an all-powerful cabal of unified business interests that move swiftly, silently, and unilaterally to stamp out all forms of freedom comes from.

Is Merit not able to spew his ill-informed and regressive conspiracies without fear of arrest of censure? Are all of you not free to choose to vote or to stay home and internet warrior how the rest of us are sheep that will all die slaves?

How shortsighted must the government be that they developed and then essentially released for free the most comprehensive and easily accessible collection of information that has ever been imagined by man. How foolish that our omnipotent overlords allow us to discuss these ideas without having to operate behind impenetrable pseudonyms, carefully disguising our tracks for fear of being disappeared to a frozen gulag.

American Representative Democracy has flaws. But point to a better system. If you can't, then all of your bellyaching is self-pitying intellectual masturbation.

150 years ago, black people were enslaved.
60 years ago, black people couldn't sit at the front of the bus.
10 years ago homosexuals couldn't serve openly in the military.
5 years ago 20 million uninsured Americans were granted access to healthcare markets they could not previously afford.

Government created some of the these problems, but that's a reflection of the people that work there. Just like the people who worked to correct these problems.

I think most of you just hate other people.

Because not caring about the system is giving in to something you see as unjust. It's feckless, it's defeatist, and it surrenders one's moral standing to have any say in the system. This doesn't excuse its flaws. But it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater - and after we know the "baby" grows, improves, and slowly but surely has generated a greater amount of wealth, health, and freedom of personal action than almost anywhere else in the world.

@riseagainstrocks It's not a "cabal" or a conspiracy, because it's not secret. Money and politics go hand in hand. Whichever of the candidates that the establishment deems appropriate for us to choose from wins, the businesses backing those candidates are the real winners. If you think money isn't more important than the support of the people, then so be it, but I disagree.

All the morality in the world didn't end slavery in the U.S. It was only largely criticized and abolished after wealthy northerners figured out that doing so would destroy the south's economy, thus stripping them of their political power.

Yes, every now and then the people get something nice to keep us from rebelling. But in the end, real change only happens when the top figures out how to make a profit from progress.

But thanks for insulting us. Once again, screaming "WHY ARE YOU FAT?!" at a fat person fails to work.

Oh, and please don't reduce yourself to resorting to the "If you can't do it better, or find a better alternative, then shut up" argument. Reminds me of the guy that always gets butthurt when you don't like his favorite movie, and he tells you to try making a better one, as if people can't have opinions unless they jump through all the proper arbitrary hoops.

Enjoying these posts from Ori.

That presupposes a pure top-down model of social change. One that's simply not born out by the facts. Abolitionists existed in every social class. The Emancipation Proclamation had a political component sure, but so does buying one stamp over another.

I'm a cynical guy too, but this kind of cynicism isn't helpful. It also doesn't appear to be true. This kind of cynicism removes agency. It tells people, 'don't try, because the result are predetermined'. Truman defeated Dewey. Bush defeated Gore. Abortion rights were granted and preserved. The Civil Rights Act was passed. Clean Air, Clean Water, the Renewable Fuel Standard, the Environmental Protection Agency, NAFTA, NATO, etc etc etc. All of these things have made us safer, wealthier, and healthier. Has it been a straight line? No. Has the broad trend of history resulted in a better society? Yes. Has representative democracy been largely responsible for these gains? Also yes. Why? AGENCY.

I think part of this the media distortion about Washington D.C.'s importance. Hardly any governing worth doing emanates from Washington, and I say this as a liberal. It's about getting a speed bump in your home town, or keeping the local library open on Saturday. Hell, it's increasing the funding for your local library. I've volunteered on local and state election campaigns and have seen first hand the value of participating in the system, especially when it's local. Anecdotal to be sure, but everyone here is making sweeping statements about how voting is for fools. I feel obligated to point out the benefits of actually giving a damn.


If you're advocating for the rejection of representative democracy, it's incumbent on you to propose an alternative. Unless you're simply advocating for no government, in which case I'll stop replying to you.