Ask Lemmy
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Are you pooping at work? Politics that force companies to allow you to have bathroom breaks can be thanked.
Is there a sidewalk when you walk or ride a bike? Thank your taxes and the people that pushed city politicians to install those pathways.
Like being able to take public transit? Then be glad regulations and ordinances in your city encouraged those services to be available.
Your political opinions and your thoughts on how your community and city are run, will most certainly change with regularity if you are putting in the effort to understand what can be done to improve things. And most people start with the things that affect them on the daily.
no, i don't poop at work. is pooping in my own house a political act too?
i ride my bike in the road with cars. riding on the sidewalk is illegal and dangerous.
public transit is often falling apart where i live. it has been underfunded for 50 years. it's very unreliable and nobody wants to fix it because that would mean raising taxes.
I'm not following what your line of questioning is supposed to be asking or proving in this thread.
Everything you do, at home or work, is shaped by political decisions that people have made in your name, whether or not you want to be directly involved in the making of those decisions is up to you, but you're still part of the political system by using it and benefiting from it and paying your taxes.
my line of questioning is to point out the absurdities of what you are saying that derive from such a vastly over generalized as to be totally pointless and any generally broad concept can be used. God, nature, the Force, etc.
You seem to think politics is anything and everything, sort of like how religious people see God, or natural spiritualist see nature. You are imposing a generalized belief structure on everyone, without realizing a lot of people just don't believe in what you believe in. And you deem anyone agree with your belief structure as heretical and ignorant.
I don't believe anyone does anything 'in my name'. But I don't see myself as part of some grand unified force you seem to believe in and call 'politics'. I'm only a part of the systems I choose to be a part of, by my own desires. I vote for certain things, support certain things, and not others. It's all very specific to me and sometimes I don't have any views or concerns on the topic because it has no impact on me...
Pooping itself, no. Probably not political. But getting to the point where you have indoor plumbing, provided by a utility company you probably pay significantly less than the actual cost of said utility? Yeah, that's the direct result of politics.
which politics though? is that progressive or conservative?
It's not about sides, in this context. It's just -political-. Whether you vote conservative, progressive, anything in between, you, me, and the whole rest of the world has to deal with that decision.
So I vote for Harris and she doesn't win, it's my fault she lost? and i'm personally responsible for USAID being dismantled?
No. Politics isn't just about voting. It's everything Every action. Every shitty post on the Internet. Everything you buy - you're voting with your dollars. Your attention. Your time.
No, you individually probably don't contribute that much to the direct decisions, but your voice reaches others, helps mold their opinions, change how they see and interact with the world. Then they go and do the same thing. That's all politics.
I'm getting the vibe here that you think your political involvement is supposed to either improve your life or that you're responsible directly for positive or negative outcomes.
If you're going to take part in a democratic process, you are assuming some level of responsibility for the outcome, but you share that with a lot of other people whether you like it or not, it's a much larger thing than just your vote or your involvement, it's spread across a sociological grouping, it's fairly abstract so you shouldn't have feelings about it, it's just what it means to be part of a larger system.
If the idea of that responsibility bothers you, it's a good place to think about why and what you could do to feel better about your involvement, win or lose.
I'm against self-righteous twats who declare they know best for everyone and anyone who doesn't agree with them is an idiot or bad person.
I am actively politically involved and have been my entire life. I just missed the memo where that gives me the right to browbeat and harass and lecture other people for not choosing to do that. Am I being irresponsible for not lecturing you about going to local town meetings like I do? Or writing your city councilmen, or voting in in local referendum elections?
And yeah, I do think politics is about direct impacts. being politically involved on an abstract level is nothing more than mental masturbation. It's ego stroking. hence why people on the internet love it so much. they get to faff off how superior they are to other people in the abstract, without dealing with any of the real world specifics that complicate their moralizing of their own superiority over 'apolitical' people and how 'stupid' they are.
my brother in law can't vote. he's not a citizen. he can opine all day, but literally can't vote for anything or affect any real change. he has no rights to do so. he is effectively apolitical, as he's not allow to participate in the democratic process by law.
You're doing a terrible job making your point, to the degree that all I can take away from your chain of headache-inducing rhetorical questions here is that you don't like being made to feel feelings by strangers, and honestly, that's a skill issue.
do you ever ask yourself why does it upset you that other people are different than you? have you ever asked yourself that?
or is it that if people think differently than you, they are bad and wrong, because it invalidates your personal choices and thoughts? and you need yours to be validated by other people's agreement?
and why you must insult and demean anyone who doesn't validate your views, rather than consider their validity as their lives, experiences, and knowledge are very different than yours?
I don't even know what you're going off about and I am not dedicating another minute to trying to decode why you sound like a child who had their ice cream taken away when all you've done here is whinge at people who seem to care a lot more than you.
You're American, aren't you?
Politics isn't sports ball. Especially on a local level, it usually isn't "us vs them", it's a bunch of people with different opinions about how things are supposed to be done. Politics is more complicated than red vs. blue.
Although the US "red" and "blue" parties do everything they can to convince people like you it's that simple.
Yeah I am. Where I live it very much is sportsball. Even on the local level.
I am involved in my local cities politics. It is not very complicated. Most people believe in winners vs losers and most every debate is framed that way. it has nothing to do with red vs blue. my city is like 90% blue, but still very anti-progressive on many issues.
for example in my city bike lanes are super controversial, because while the city has been adding them, many residents feel that bike lanes are theft from cars and car owners. many of these very same people are progressives, who have BLM stickers on their lawns in multi-million dollar homes, but think bike lanes are for 'privileged white people' and their are just poor struggling folks!