#do you understand the PRIVILEGE you're exercising by abstaining from voting?

[bardnuts]

ppl who aren't voting because they think both trump and harris are morally wrong in their policies really fundamentally don't understand the reality of the electoral system huh. They still think they're electing the homecoming queen or something huh.

having the right to vote, and not voting, because you think both candidates are fascists is in fact what the fascists want you to do. i hate to break it to you buster but our democracy is at best a capitalist oligarchy and the power we have over the current system is limited, but voting is one of the most concrete expressions of power we have within that system. it's also one of the first things to go if we become a fascist state for real. People have fought and died over generations for the right to vote. Don't you dare fucking piss it away.

[doux-amer]

I'm sorry, I usually ignore inflammatory posts like the one I just saw, but the amount of condescending lecturing by op and everyone in the tags was unreal and made me see red. How dare you say that to care about people suffering and dying is a privileged stance? To be in a position where you can dismiss people's feelings like that is actual privilege. Marginalized people aren't being heard so abstaining from voting is one of their only tools left to them. That is what it means to live in a democracy (I'm saying this as someone who encourages people to vote now and previously worked as an organizer in getting people registered and getting people to vote). You can't dismiss that.

And you can't "this guy's not that bad except he wants to exterminate people/doesn't care about exterminating people" your way into a better society. If you don't understand either of these things, you are unbelievably privileged af and you've been fortunate enough not to be in a position where you can't exercise the right to vote and/or live in an authoritarian regime, no offense (full offense intended).

I'm going to be real with you. If you're announcing to the world that you're going to vote for Biden this year, don't lie to yourself. Saying that publicly has little impact on influencing anyone reading your tweet/Tumblr post, particularly if you run in liberal and/or progressive circles. Like I said in the tags in the previous post, you're just doing it to guiltsplain to your leftist friends and followers to make yourself feel better about your choice. If you weren't driven by that guilt, you'd just shut up and vote for him quietly, fully aware of what you're doing and how you feel about it. There's no reason to be so loud about it because if you were that worried about democracy dying or whatever, then do something that has a real impact like directly working in the community.