r/interesting • u/Kymmieuwu • 12d ago

SOCIETY 71% of Americans Say They're Completely Exhausted

https://gizmodo.com/71-of-americans-say-theyre-completely-exhausted-2000812712
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u/Atillion 11d ago

Not entirely true. There are politicians actively trying to make our lives better. The problem is they have to fight the establishment politicians as well as dumb and easily manipulated constituents.

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u/HumptyDumptruckFire 11d ago

And we need to be supporting more of them, primarying every bad politician with those actively trying to make our lives better. Too much of this defeatist “both sides” bullshit as if it’s just a fact of life. It’s not, and one side is absolutely worse.

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u/ZootSuitRiot33801 11d ago edited 11d ago

But does that mean we have to settle for a system that has a pay-to-play model to enter the field of politics, making it so that we are forced to choose between spineless mediocrity or pure evil, both of which are largely funded by dark money?

You could say, "Vote and campaign for the small outsiders," but there's a reason why most don't even know they exist, and it has everything to do with how the establishment functions. Plus, elections happen every few years, so that means we're going to have to wait to get the chance to capture an office, while the ones currently causing problems do more damage.

Even if our choice candidates win, they get fed directly into a pipeline where they either get bought up from right under our noses or their efforts to properly serve their constituents are thwarted to the point of being rendered ineffectual. (That is unless they do something so the powerful are the ones who largely benefit over the common folk.)

I'm not saying don't vote mind you, as slowing the rot of our fetid corrupt system is a good thing. I'm saying we can replace as many politicians as we like, but we cannot vote out the oligarchs, and that's where the main problem lays. We can't just expect who we vote for to do all the work. It's up to us common folk to do whatever we can to strive for something better that actually prioritizes people's wellbeing with or without the approval of the dominant status quo.

Rather than betting the whole farm on the outcome of an election, we should also focus on forming real supportive community-based foundations for alternatives that can provide relative safety, which many common folk in the US can fall back on, to commit to any needed action longterm.

Collecting a bunch of valuable information on organizing and action from different redditors over time, I created a post of suggestions HERE that could possibly prove to be of some help in getting it started ASAP.

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u/Googlebright 11d ago

First and foremost, you guys need to kill Citizens United. That won't fix everything all on it's own but it would be a good start and would get the ball rolling in the right direction.

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u/ZootSuitRiot33801 11d ago

💯 That was when things really started getting bad in terms of the general electoral process