{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.jacky.wtf//essays/2024/not-engaging-with-politics-online",
  "description": "Like do we want change or do we want to be on America's Next Top Commander?",
  "path": "/essays/2024/not-engaging-with-politics-online",
  "publishedAt": "2024-07-28T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm/site.standard.publication/3mniussyp2d2g",
  "tags": "essay",
  "textContent": "The upcoming United States election to see who'll end up becoming the 47th president of the United States has been\nmentally draining. Conventionally, everything is going par the script. A lot of folks who aren't normally engaged in\n_any sort_ of political activity are now becoming vanguards for folks who they'll never meet in person. These folks\nwill most likely disappear come February 2025, during Black History Month. I've spent too much time online and offline\nin situations that I didn't realize that were debates until I felt myself getting hot and I'm personally choosing to\nresign from the topic. This is for a few reasons.\n\nWhite people are America's most loyal defenders\nAmerican white people are the largest conservative block in the United States by population count. The European settlers\nbrought Christianity to Turtle Island some 200 years ago, predominately Protestantism, and it still remains the dominant\nreligion of the country; despite the narrative of it being a religiously-inclusive nation. To this day, they make up\n57.8% of the nation's population. The ethics of Protestantism has been transformed into how we as a society, especially\nin America, perceive our self-worth (bootstrap logics, individualistic survival ideology, work being a _virtue_) and\ndictates how we even see who's worthy of respect or dignity. Tying this with the information in a December 2019 study\nthat noted that \"white women are the only [female] voting group who support Republican Party candidates ... in all but 2\nof the last 18 elections\"; y'all need to work shit out amongst yourselves. Figure out if you _actually_ want the\nHandmaid's Tale to come to life.\n\nIf the actualization of the largest voting block being largely responsible for pushing the policy that we see today\nturns an uncomfortable sentiment in your stomach, I _strongly_ suggest engaging them (if you're in the realm of\nprivilege to do so). My focus on white women here is to exemplify how, even in an opportunity to side with an\nmarginalized identity, people choose oppressive power over solidarity. This is the same for Black men who dive into\nmisogyny as it affords them social capital that they can leverage and transform into other outlets.\n\nCapitalism is the blood of America\nAs someone who's staunchly anti-capitalist, I routinely do not see _any_ part in any of the last elections I've been\nonce forcibly directed to participate in working to reduce this impact. From Obama to Trump, the idea that\nindividual voting that's routinely manipulated isn't one to shy away from. In fact, we also routinely ignore the\nfact that the [proxy voting committee][2], has a tremendous influence over how this goes down. One _great_ example was\nthe [2001 election][1] that eventually led to the mass murder of millions of Iraqi people in the name of oil extraction,\nbolstering support for the destabilization of Iraq and in fear of an Iraqi-Iranian alliance. These elections are pushed\nby privately-funded entities like AIPAC, Freedom House, The Heritage Foundation and dozens of corporately-backed\norganizations by groups like Microsoft, Boeing and the ilk. If people _want_ to see change, we need to see private\nbribery (or lobbying) to be abolished _completely_ and make space for a publicly sponsored means of uplifting electoral\ncandidates such that private money can't interfere.\n\nPrejudice and discrimination defines policy in America\nI can list things like [misogynoir][3], classism and a dozen other fields of oppression in which these\nelections _thrive_ on to keep people engaged and to sustain themselves but at this point, it's borderline repetition.\nbell hooks has [a book][4] that talks about how much of the United States itself _relies_ on racism and misogynoir. And\nin understanding that, attempts to reify (or deify) the virtues of this country reminds me that for the people mentioned\nin the first block, anything that brings them closer to the power that was most prominent in this country will be what\nsatisfies them. Not liberation, not actual reform, not change - but the cementing of authority and guidance that their\nmight makes right and what's good for them _is good enough_ for everyone else.\n\n---\n\nI spend more time in political engagement offline. This means doing in-person surveys for radical organizing groups,\ndoing volunteer labor as a webmaster, translating material to my ancestral tongue to reach folks who are _routinely_ and\n_systematically_ isolated from any sort of political engagement and constantly engaging myself in political education\nwith cadres. The extent at which one can do this online is severely tempered by the control that social media platforms\npermit and I think this has contributed to my angst. YouTube, Reddit, Facebook/Meta/Instagram/Threads and the nascent\nFediverse and ATmosphere are all wrestling for attention and can only deliver enough that'll trigger one's sense of\ncomfortable engagement. This is _never_ enough to be sustainable and make the notion of online engagement very cheap.\n\nIn [#Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice][5], the authors end the book noting the importance of having\nopen access to information on social networks to help gauge the health of discussions on the topic. With the\naforementioned, I find it _extremely_ difficult to see these organizations work to open up in a way that'd give either\nan accurate or recent perspective. Either because of data access, trade secrets or a competitive advantage; being online\nand attempting to use it as a vehicle for political activism is a losing battle the more left you try to push things.\nIt's not something that'll change without the combination of regulation _and_ true mobilization from industry. And as\nlong as the tech industry commits to keeping America great, that won't happen on its own. So I'm bowing out and focusing\non what's _truly_ important: keeping communities safe, educating the masses against state propaganda and expanding our\nperspectives such that we can truly fight for a better future.\n\n[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election\n[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College\n[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogynoir\n[4]: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805050271/killingrage\n[5]: https://www.worldcat.org/isbn/9780262043373",
  "title": "I'm Not Bothering with Electoral Politics Online Anymore"
}