The fundamental tenet of a working democracy is voting. Everyone should have a vote and everyone should exercise their right to vote. To that end we have been seeing posts attempting to shame/mock or otherwise influence people not to vote. While this is a meme community, the idea that people shouldn’t vote goes against the fundamentals of a democracy by the people and for the people. To that end, we are adding a new rule that disallows posts that discourage or shame people from voting. This doesn’t mean that you can’t address how people vote, but even those who don’t agree with you and your political views should still vote. We all should. Everyone. Part of the reason we are in the mess we are in now is because participation in democracy is abysmal. Posts discouraging people from voting are essentially propaganda and will be removed.
PoliticalMemes is a community for having fun at the expense of our political hellscape we find ourselves in. People not voting is a big part of why.
We are taking feedback on this change, please let us know if you agree or disagree in the comments and why.
No, the reason for the mess is a system deliberately designed to benefit a handful of people at the expense of the rest. Blaming those who don’t participate in the system for the system is an absurd little act of mental gymnastics (as well as a service to the aforementioned handful of people, by buying in to the division they sow for the sake of distracting us from them, who are actually responsible).
Should people vote? If they want to. Will it change anything? No. Because the choice is an illusion, as is “democracy”.
Perhaps if you actually let people have the conversation instead of shutting it down because confronting the actual depth of the problem makes you too uncomfortable, we might reach a point where we can be rid of this rigged system and build one that is actually “by the people, for the people”, because that sure as fuck isn’t the case at the moment. Maybe the real issue here is for you to consider with yourself why you’re so invested in defending the status quo…
https://web.archive.org/web/20230803021951/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/american-democracy-was-never-designed-to-be-democratic
https://libcom.org/article/capitalist-democracy-illusion-choice
https://truthout.org/articles/fascism-is-possible-not-in-spite-of-liberal-capitalism-but-because-of-it/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
E: having seen the example you’ve given, I’m outa here anyway, new rule or not, would love to know if you mod any other communities so that I can block those too. 👍
Oh look at that, they’re also the mod of like a third of lemmy.world including news and world news. Such unbias, very discussion.
Oooh!! The same World News that i wasnt banned from for calling out russian propaganda?! No way!
The rule isn’t in place yet. That’s why this post was made to generate feedback, and attempt to engage with the community instead of rule with an iron fist, but you don’t seem to understand that.
Bye.
I understand fine, the fact that it is even up for debate is already enough of a problem, which you don’t seem to understand… But hey, way to demonstrate how unbiasedly you’re willing to “engage” lol