ive had this thought in the back of my mind all day
all of these corporate voting initiatives are just damage control: they saw what happened over the summer with the protests and now are having to try to deaden that energy as much as possible by persuading people...

...to place faith in electorialism as the primary means of change
they of course really dont care who wins, as long as they arent challenged they will keep making money

ideology at work, making sure that nothing gets out of control

this is of course part of the much larger state apparatuses that spread and perpetuate the ideological norms of society, via education, media, politics, art, etc, but i think the chaos that we've seen lately has laid bare this process

whereas a few years ago ppl declared ideology dead, i think its time like these that show it most clearly.

for more on this, check out ideology and ideological state apparatuses by louis althusser, or any of zizek's lectures or works on ideology

people can be agents of this too, unknowlingly or not, by the way. part of this ideological hold is the idea that there is no alternative to the current way of thinking, that any other society would sacrifice freedom and be disastrous

unknowingly*

so vote if you want, whatever, but you're placing stock in this illusion of choice that is meant to pacify ppl. the only path to true freedom is direct action, but first we must overcome the idea that we've no alternatives. we must become conscious that we do have a choice

(by choice i obviously dont mean electoralism, but rather alternative society etc etc)