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by CalRobert
505 days ago
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Your condescending and dismissive tone notwithstanding, I am curious to hear more about peaceful protests working when they weren't backed with an implicit threat of removing politicians from power. Ideally, of course, you have a functioning democracy, but I don't really think that describes much of the US at this point (the people who'd protest are mostly in blue states anyway where their votes, even if correctly tabulated, count less). Other examples might be Ghandi, who promoted nonviolence but really only got India's freedom when the British empire was in terminal decline, or the civil rights movement, which happened when the US was a much healthier democracy and swaying public opinion was enough to remove people through elections. You might cite the velvet revolution too, but that also was targeting an empire in decline. I argue that elections in the US _will not matter_ (Trump's cryptic comments about how Elon knows all about these voting machines and they won Pennsylvania thanks to him are telling....) and in that context protest doesn't do anything because the people in power have nothing to fear if they ignore the protestors. |
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Normally, in a democracy, when you get a lot of people together complaining about something, it is already an implicit threat of removing politicians from power.
But if you manipulate the electoral system enough, it stops being. The fact that this mostly doesn't work nowadays is loudly telling people all they need to know.