the classic "aha, if you're really so oppressed, why don't you take productive action about it (in a society where all avenues of productive action have been foreclosed)" to you strategy
kinda like asking a black man what he thinks should be done about jim crow, if he's so smart. the tactic really does go way back
like yea oppressive power structures systematically foreclose, neuter, and dismantle any means that might be used to counteract or escape their effects, that's why they're oppressive power structures.
it’s galaxy-brain stuff to be asking the people inside to just wave a wand and dismantle it all, like I guess you think they could have just done it all along and simply chose not to? and “self-oppression” is of course a very real narrative that is pushed in these situation, it’s really your fault you can’t escape!
Okay, let me rephrase. What should I be doing other than voting and working for causes I believe in. I’m not in an oppressed group unless you consider the entirety of the American public not part of the oligarchy to be such a group.
Or to put this in a little less dramatic way - what do you do when the leadership (C-suite, board, and middle managers) are running a company into the ground, abusing the employees, and won't listen to reason? You leave. You're not going to be able to do anything - the real world isn't a RPG where there is always a "good outcome" if you do the right thing. Sometimes all the options lead to bad outcomes.
Well, this is a situation where most people cannot really "just leave". And in fact the US expends considerable resources to make life difficult for those who attempt it.
This will not change unless until and until elites' own interests align in reforming it. And elites are pretty good at making it illegal to make their lives uncomfortable or apply pressure on them in meaningful ways.
It is possible for societies to become so stratified that this change is not possible without violence. Classically, dictatorships, but I don't think that is the only way to get there.
America is in that place, because our society is so geographically isolated and so resource-blessed that a traditional collapse is not possible. There is no neighboring country that is going to topple us if we allow our system to become stagnant and calcified. Any realistic attack would have to cross an ocean or a rainforest/jungle to do it.
So we will continue bumbling along, boiling the frog and allowing our society to become worse and worse, because the US cannot collapse and cannot reform. And there really is nothing that you, as a single voter, could possibly do about it.
Even a million man march cannot do anything about it - easier to just assassinate the commoner's leader and move on with some token reforms to shut people up. The system doesn't mind using (extralegal!) violence on you, that stigma is for commoners not elites.
Bro really thinks every white person got their own personal "end jim crow button" too and everyone just uniformly refused to press it I guess lol
again, commoners of any form (let alone one single commoner working alone) are not going to be able to just do one simple trick and upend an oppressive power structure, it's a better place than being in the fuckbarrel but the point is oppressive power structures don't leave anyone a recourse, if your title doesn't begin with "senator" it doesn't really matter what you think or do.
there is of course one option, the last of the boxes. but if you aren't willing to fight for what you believe in then, yeah, you're effectively consenting to the society you are offered by political elites. consent can still be withdrawn, but in an oppressive power structure that's usually going to be a violent process.
like I am just telling you outright: soapbox, ballot box, and jury box are all effectively powerless to overturn the problems in american society, by design (that's why it's oppressive). and you can either live with that, and the society thus pressed upon you warts and all, or not. some random march for george floyd or voting blue every election is not going to fix america. keyboard warriorism (including this comment) certainly is not going to do it either.
nobody actually walks away from omelas - and omelas news network thinks you're crazy for even suggesting there could be anything better. We all - you and me and every other law-abiding, taxpaying citizen - accept this society knowing that it exists on the back of the largest slave/gulag population on the planet, and an arbitrary and capricious (and usually politicized) "justice" system that could randomly condemn any of us to that slavery and a permanent mark of underclass. We all accept the idea that our attempts at reforms will not do more than trivial and meaningless amounts of good through our lifetimes. And yet we stay and participate.
You're not helping. Why is that, Leon? Why do you consent?
(I consent to omelas too, I just want you to consciously make your own decision in full knowledge of the consequences and responsibility of your actions. Every day you wake up and go about your life, you do it on the backs of the police state and the carceral state/gulag archipelago it has imposed upon us, and even rattling the bars of your cage a bit by voting or activism will not change this.)
I don't think OP was trying to advocate any particular action, merely pointing out that a real and serious problem exists at the heart of our democracy.
Expecting people who point out a problem to also fix that problem in a single social media comment is a little unrealistic, I think, and generally not something people ask in good faith.
Nobody would tell an Iraqi that they can't complain if they don't vote, especially if the only option on the ballot is Saddam.
Would they say the same if the only two options were Saddam and Maddas?
If the nation's leaders are being elected by a 10-20% voter turnout, it'll be very obvious what's going on. That is the thing that they don't want to happen.
Or becoming a lawyer and filing suit against police departments and other government agencies? Or financially supporting those lawyers?