If You Vote in Elections or Sign Online Petitions, Are You Making a Difference or Wasting Your Time?

BLOG POST posted on March 13, 2012 by IronBoltBruce

Political Impotence & Slacktivism

Q. IF YOU VOTE IN ELECTIONS OR SIGN ONLINE PETITIONS, ARE YOU MAKING A DIFFERENCE OR WASTING YOUR TIME?

Are you an effective political activist, or an impotent "feel-good" slacktivist?  You may be fighting for the right cause, but are you fighting in the right way?  Have you challenged "The Man", or played right into his hands?   

A1. CAMPAIGNING AND VOTING IN ELECTIONS

"The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a democracy?  Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in office by the Supreme Court and that a number of other elections have been decided by electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail. Others note that elected officials represent the special interests that fund their campaigns and not the voters. The bailout of the banks arranged by Bush’s Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson, and Washington’s failure to indict any banksters for the fraud that contributed to the financial crisis, are evidence in support of the view that the US government represents money and not the voters."

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/02/14/is-western-democracy-real-or-...

"It is no coincidence that of the last 14 U.S. Presidents, 7 have been Democrats and 7 have been Republicans.  Mainstream media focuses on America's two-year election cycles as if who wins or loses in the swinging of the pendulum was a matter of life or death, when in fact even at the Presidential level it makes no more difference than the outcomes of Monday Night Football, American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, Hillbilly Handfishing, the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor, or the latest Kardashian crisis.  Our elections are staged to give Sheeple the illusion of control so they will (a) vent their frustrations and expend their energy, emotions and resources supporting or attacking the Puppet on the Left hand or the Puppet on the Right, and consequently (b) never recognize and challenge the common omnipotent Puppetmaster.  As long as corporations own the politicians, it's futile to believe we can 'CHANGE' things with our votes."

http://open.salon.com/blog/watchingfrogsboil/2012/01/04/american_electio...

"And perhaps there's the real problem. If you believe the US is a democracy, if you believe in the rule of the many and not the rule of the few, then the Citizens United ruling could not be more troubling. But what if this is not a democracy? What if this, as Dionne suggests, is an oligarchy of billionaire capitalists? More horrible to ponder, what if democracy is yet more intellectual cover, another one of those illusions, for the exploitation of American workers?  Then the theory of the ruling class fits perfectly. Citizens United and the United States were made for each other."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012311123627435712.html

A2. PROMOTING AND SIGNING ONLINE PETITIONS

"Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism or slackervism) is a term formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. The underlying assumption being promoted by the term is that these low cost efforts substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them, although this assumption has not been borne out by research.  Slacktivist activities include signing Internet petitions..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism

"The age-old process of collecting signatures on paper petitions is being replaced by the cyber-petition, a device that allows notices addressing social injustices to be read and signed by netizens all over the world in a matter of days. Unfortunately, these petitions often contain misinformation or remain in circulation long after they are outdated, and the mere collection of e-signatures is of dubious value."

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/petition.asp

"One of the largest online petition websites does not list the names of any of the people running it, has no information about the organization or organizations associated with it, if any, and gives no evidence that the petitions they sponsor have been presented to politicians..  Yet hundreds of thousands of people have given this website their personal information including addresses, business information, and email addresses.  If the website was not committed to the petition campaigns, why would it exist? The answer is: MAILING LISTS. Those hundreds of thousands of names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are a gold mine for marketers who use the lists to send various kinds of solicitations and they can make a fortune renting or selling the names to other businesses.  The online petition sites have been a sensational source of not only new names for mailing lists but names of people who can be identified as having particular interests such as supporting conservative or liberal causes, environmental issues, animals rights, etc."

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/petitions.htm

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Psywar: The Real Battlefield is Your Mind
http://www.openfilm.com/videos/psywar

Hacking Democracy
http://www.hulu.com/watch/192687/hacking-democracy

Peace!
http://www.hulu.com/watch/177439/peace

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NO MORE LEFT. NO MORE RIGHT. TIME TO UNITE. STAND AND FIGHT!

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Tag: #activism, #activists, #democrats, #republicans, #voting, #elections, #slacktivism, #petitions, #worldwarweb, #anonymous, #occupywallstreet, #occupy, #ows, #vvvpr

Key: activism, political activism, activists, political activists, democrats, republicans, voting, elections, internet petitions, online petitions, slacktivists, slacktivism, occupy wall street, occupy, ows, vvv pr

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REGARDING REDDIT

Reddit r/Politics exists to perpetuate America's Demopublican two-puppet political system:  What you see posted on Reddit r/Politics is NOT what was SUBMITTED but what was APPROVED by their censorship system.  And what Reddit calls "Karma" is actually a measure of - and psyop pressure for - groupthink conformity:

http://www.reddit.com/user/ironboltbruce

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