It’s so hard to watch people speak their values and beliefs and then promptly vote against them because of feelings based propaganda.

If they were to vote for their values who would they vote for?

The democrats aren’t upholding these values either and while I agree that they are much better than the current republican party it doesn’t mean that voting for them would be voting in their interest but instead in the least bad option.

We vote blue not to change the system but because voting red makes the situation worse. The whole affair with the GOP stacking SCOTUS with Federalist Society jurists provides one example of many. At this time, they’re trying to neuter elections to push Democrats out entirely.

To change society we’ll have to do far more than merely vote. And to date, we’ve had to claw every right we have by force or coercion, and when the public isn’t a direct threat to the elite, they feel free to strip away our rights. Dobbs was only the most public of the provisions: most fourth- and fifth-amendment protections have been stripped away, again by the US Supreme Court.

All that I am saying is that I think we are way past the time were voting is the most important thing we should be doing to make the situation better. People in power are going to make whatever they want illegal and use political justifications for them. There have been many states that have majority blue and majority red power and this same shit of empowering the status quo is common in both kinds of states. So I don’t believe either party is going to protect my rights if it doesn’t benefit them somehow and instead I am going to trust in the direct actions I and people that want change are actually taking to make things better.

It bothers me that you’re being heavily downvoted for saying that direct action is more effective/important than voting, so I’m chiming in to say I agree with you.

This isn’t an ‘enlightened centrist’ position here, just a realistic one. I will continue to vote Democrat and encourage others to do the same, but I don’t have any illusions that doing so is anything more than damage control.

Our political system in the US is corrupt, not just the people within it. Changing it will require external support.