Your quote didn't answer anything. Nor do you have any evidence that it's true. Your quote basically said "the more people that are included in the political process, the less people who will actually be in charge. First off this makes no sense whatsoever, second how will not voting reverse this trend?
No you should participate because there is a possibility that your concerns will be addressed. If you don't vote there is no chance whatsoever for your concerns to be addressed.
I didn't say it was the only form of political action. Voting is quick and easy, real change requires a lot of hard work and dedication. I'm saying that refusing to vote while performing the hard work that's required for change is counterproductive. It's essentially handing what little power you have over to others. Who will just fight to prevent the change using their newfound power.
Not voting won't change or remove their power. But voting might get them to use some of that power on you.
Those solutions can be developed, but again not voting won't help achive this goal. Peope need to be more involved overall. Waiting till the election to try to make a change will never work. The people who think NOT voting or voting for a third party will cause change are just as misguided as those who think Obama will change their life.
I didn't say he lived the same life as you. I said he lived a similar life to most middle class Americans. If you can't relate thats fine, but you can't fault others for feeling like they can.
To explain the quote (I thought it was an obvious point, but whatever): Think about what you said about the reason why majoritarian democracy exists and why we should participate in it a few posts back. You yourself stated that when you have a massive populace under the aegis of a single nation-state, it's much more efficient to just shift to a representative majoritarian democracy than anything else because of its efficiency. More or less. I'm simply taking that and revealing the truth of it: It blunts the power of the populace by concentrating it in the hands of essentially unaccountable entities (You can vote them out I suppose, but their power base is locked in then, and even long before then. So where does the vote get you at that point?). The populace's will and desires are alienated from them and the already evident power and will of the political elites are substituted for it in the form of representation.
This is the actual structure of majoritarian democracy. Only the blind couldn't see it (not to be disrespectful...)
What I don't get about your argument is that, no matter what, you're arguing from the position that representative democracy is a fait accompli. You frame your responses to my arguments in that form no matter what I actually write about. Consociational democracy is not necessarily representative at all times. Horizontalist organization absolutely isn't representative. Any type of direct action or direct democracy has absolutely nothing to do with alienating representation. And even if we are talking representation, there are different types of representation with different affects. So why do you keep responding to me like that, simply with one type of representation and one paradigm in mind?
What else to address:
-How can you say that if I vote there will be a chance that my concerns will be addressed versus not voting and them not being addressed? That's nothing more than a dualist abstraction firmly seated in a belief in this system of populace organization (I could say biopower, but I don't quite like that word these days...affective labor, maybe?). How can you say that for sure, when everything I've seen makes that seem either aleatory or based on the support of their financial backers more than anything.
-If you're attempting to change or remove yourself from the current system of populace organization/affective labor, then it would be idiotic to place any type of value in it. Create the means for dual power instead, or something. Visualize and create the means for a new society instead of putting faith in the old theology.
-You're still missing my point on Obama, like you are with the quote, but whatever. I don't think I could be more clear than that without just telling you to read something, and that would be overly condescending.
No I don't live in Europe.
