Say the line

TL;DR in advance: voting is still necessary but won't be enough. We'll need to do a lot more to actually try and fix shit in America.

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The American political system is rapidly losing all legitimacy beyond its monopoly on force. When you have unelected lifetime appointments able to decide someone's bodily autonomy or personal life against their will, that is tyranny on its face.

The lack of legitimacy isn't limited to SCOTUS. Our two realistic choices for elected office are:

A party of corporate stooges who will generally leave people alone as long as they keep making money from their donors.

A party of corporate stooges who will restrict peoples' lives and liberties and will fully embrace fascism if it allows them to remain in power and make money for themselves indefinitely.

While the Dems are clearly the lesser evil, they're ineffective at best and serve as "loyal opposition" at worst. They're the only viable option on the national level for now, but we have to start building out third parties and coalitions on the local and state level, with people who will really, truly fight for us, not for their party or their donors.

We need to keep voting and get more people to vote, but it's far past time for Americans to understand voting is necessary but not sufficient to solve these problems, particularly given the context of all forms of voter suppression. We need to put people in power who actually believe in full democracy and civil rights for all Americans, but we also need to make it painful for these politicians when they betray us. Throwing them out of their jobs, pursuing legal action, boycotts, and even potentially general strikes need to be on the table.

We may also need to be ready to respond with force if (and only if) force is used by the government to continue to deny the American people our civil and political rights. I sincerely hope it will never come to that, but I don't think this is something we can take for granted anymore.

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