Be like the French...

Look at the results: one of the lowest retirement ages is Europe, universal healthcare, very progressive tax system. Maybe if Americans disconnected Joe Manchin from the electrical grid and made Washington DC a no go zone once in a while they would actually get something done.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.

Yes, like the insurrection? Always remember, both sides can do that.

Edit: Oh so now violent revolution attempts are not OK.

All this guillotine and revolution rhetoric suddenly just memes? Like the slurs in ye' old gamer chats?

Then what is protest good for, if not getting votes?
- Insurrection != political protest.
  
  Do cause a ruckus in the city streets.
  
  Do not attempt to invade the capitol and/or murder the government.
  
  Not even a little murder? Please?
  
  Keep murder in your back pocket.
  
  My prison wallet?
  
  MY prison wallet now. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- Just like a hammer, political protest is a tool. Using a hammer to smash a nail in a wall: good. Using a hammer to smash someones brain in: bad.
- Because intentions are totally irrelevant.
  
  Yes, when turnabout is invoked you don't get to say "but I was right!" as if they'll just stop and recognize that

the French get more of what they want than Americans

how the fuck can you say you participate and have a voice if you just vote then do nothing for 2/4 years? never apply any pressure? never make them afraid of you?

Idk, where you are from, but there are a lot more elections. Most levels of government somehow get elected. Then there is Citizens participation, like local hearings, letters etc.

"Just vote" doesn't mean go elect the president and let all other levels and branches of government be decided by others.
- uh huh.
  
  in noticing youre still saying "politics" begins and ends at elections. and I'm saying you are why Donald trump (as a political entity) exists.
They live under an even stricter presidential Republic than the US with no regional rights or autonomy, and with a policing system founded by an actual fucking Nazi collaborator with all the brutality that entails, where using gender neutral language even in your own personal writings gets you accused of being a woke college elitist, where a Holocaust Denier's daughter has nearly become the highest official of the land twice on a coalition with members who call for a French reconquista, and where the existence of Algeria as an independent state is still considered a sore spot with a large voting demographic of the French boomers.

But they got healthcare and stuff so totally a socialist utopia compared to America and clearly everything their people do works perfectly every damn time

Question, if the French style of rioting works so much better than voting? Why do they have to keep doing it over the same damn shit far more often than they vote?
- so, speaking as someone living under a literal segregationist, whose predecessor and current opponent for next election is a literal Nazi whose father was a Nazi?
  
  where the cops here murder you in your home for fun then annoint your fucking corpse with cocaine and a ceremonial gun to make it all okay, then if anyone sues it comes out if teacher pay?
  
  oh wow healthcare. I have stories about that here. mostly body horror.
  
  gender neutral language gets you called a 'woke elitist' here too.
  
  we certainly aren't doing better than them. and look, they have fucking healthcare and get to mostly live inside and their food isn't all either plastic or poison! yeah their government are racist assholes, but that does seem at least somewhat representative, according to you, so maybe thats just the ugly side of the system working?
- Question, if the French style of rioting works so much better than voting? Why do they have to keep doing it over the same damn shit far more often than they vote?
  
  So I leave work the other day and it's pretty dark out and some guy walks up to me and asks me for my wallet. He says he has a knife, but fuck that, right? So we fight and I stab him and run and take the subway home. Question, why is this other dude outside my subway station also asking me for my wallet? Did stabbing the first guy not work? Why do I need to stab multiple thieving motherfuckers per subway ride?
  
  Idk man, I mean we could preemptively stab everyone hanging out near subway stations, just like we could stab anyone running for office. But then we're "anarchists" and "murderers" and "lack moral fiber" and "what if a really nice guy wants to take the subway and enter politics?"
  
  It would be pretty cool though. Just to watch these thieving cunts get aggroed first, for a change. We're always just waiting for them to make the first wrong move, would be pretty nice to deny them the chance for once.

Protests and revolutions get actual change, voting isn't as effective. That's not to say that voting is useless, but that meaninful change comes from force.

Politicians just ignore protests, especially if they're peaceful, so they don't directly cause change.

The purpose of a protest is to get media coverage for an issue, because that may convince viewers to vote a certain way. Those votes - or at least the threat of voting someone out of office - is what actually causes change.

Revolutions are a different story. They can change things much faster than voting, but they're volatile and can easily end up worse than before. The people leading a revolution are usually not the people you want to lead a revolution (e.g. the Jan 6 insurrection in the US).
- Protests are don't do much if they don't carry revolutionary threat. The Civil Rights Movement only worked because there was genuine revolutionary pressure.
  
  The civil rights movement worked, because the did "non violence" and got a bunch of pictures into the news, of them getting beaten. This lead to empathy and votes.
  
  The revolution and violence part was something completely separate and on the whole mostly counterproductive/irrelevant.
  
  This is ahistorical. The civil disobediance was extremely disruptive and errupted in riots regularly. This is coupled with the Black Panther Party practicing open millitancy. There was genuine threat to the status quo, and this forced concessions. It isn't a coincidence that the US state has attempted to whitewash MLK Jr.'s historical legacy.
  
  The state did not bend merely because it was the right thing to do, they bent because if they did not, they standed to lose more.
"change must come from the barrel of a gun"
- It doesn't even need to be direct. Cut off supply lines via striking, hurt the profits, and concessions come. The fascists will use every tool in their arsenal, but they can't last.

Because the French voting system is flawed, the politicians are corrupt and the choices we are given to vote for presidents are anything between ultra liberal capitalism and full-on fascism...

Also your right to protest is well protected.

If you try to protest in the US like France you might as well fucking die lol. Either the cops are going to shoot you or you lose your job after day 4 or less of protesting and your kids starve / you can no longer pay for the gas to get to the protest.
- Correct. I think bundling health insurance with employment is primarily to force everyone to work and artificially lower the cost of labor, but a side benefit of forcing everyone to live paycheck to paycheck is they have no time to agitate for change. Also you will be pepper sprayed in the face or beaten half to death by goons backed by the state.
  
  That bundle of insurance or benefits with work was originally a fringe benefit to inflate value of positions iirc, but in current times yeah I think you got it.
Damn, that sounds familiar as a murican.
Sounds like excuses. Voting is pretty basic, even if it's flawed.
- I've not missed a single vote since I'm 18yo, but I understand people who are too fed up to go vote, sadly...
  
  I understand it, but it's still pretty dumb.
  
  People whine (rightly) about money in politics. You know what that money is used for? Propaganda and media and campaign staff to get votes.
  
  You understand idiots who are giving the game away because not getting a unicorn out of it makes them amgy?
  
  You can be frustrated, but if you then choose not to vote you're just feeding the problem out of spite.
  
  It doesn't matter how frequently someone votes, if they don't fake an orgasm at the prospect of their choices being shit and worse shit, some centrist will lecture them anyway.
  
  You sound like some who has never voted.
  
  Last time, I forced myself to vote for Mister Money-for-the-rich despite the fact I hate everything he wrote in his program, I thought I was doing the right thing by participating to "blockade" Miss Nazis-did-nothing-wrong.
  
  Well, just a few months later, it was the elections for parlement représentants and the winning president and his "Party of rich", they just fucked all of us right up in any circonscriptions they got eliminated, they just stated publicly "don't vote for the commies ! They are a danger for the democracy ! (Vote for the Nazis instead, we like their ideas better, but you didn't hear it from me lol".
  
  Now we have Mr Money-for-the-rich as president and Party of rich has the most sits (but no majority) and they are the danger for democracy as every time they fail to vote a law they proposed to fuck us deeper (despite getting help from all the racists on the right side of the room), they use a loop-hole to make it law without vote.
  
  So, yes. I understand someone who doesn't want to get up and queue 2 hours on a Sunday morning to go vote for a person who will ultimately humiliate you at every occasion he has.
  
  You sound like someone who doesn't have any skin in the game if the Nazis actually win by voting when you didn't.
  
  Lemme guess, you're someone who twists with fury whenever Americans point out the Roma situation when you talk about how not racist Europe is compared to America because, "that's different they deserve that!"
  
  I get it, you and other non voters aren't idiots, you're the white communists who knowingly gave up the names of French Arab resistance leaders to the Nazis as the front line began to push back towards Germany again because nobody but you is allowed to control the "we kept out the Nazis" field.
  
  You might be projecting yourself a little bit too much here, my friend. I am a voter, I never missed a vote in my life since I am 18yo. And I don't know what you're on about with your 4-chan copy-pasta.

That chart is so inaccurate. The us parliamentary turnout is zero.

My bad, must be a rounding error
sobs in parliamentary democracy advocate

In fairness 2020 was an exceptional turnout year due to COVID necessitating a development of vote by mail infrastructure, which led to about 40 million more people participating than was the norm before, IDK if that held in 22 but yeah, making voting more convenient leads to more voting, whoda thunk it‽

True, and we dont give a fuck about fixing the economy, we'd rather fix libéralisme/capitalism. Getting rid of the political elite making the business-people elite richer would be a good start. All in all the situation is still much better here from a social rights perspective, but we're following US steps and setting a perfect ground for fascism (which is already on the rise). And far right people vote. And old people who are mostly 'republicans' vote a lot too. And the political elite knows it and targets them. So we're pretty fucked.

Which doesn't mean we won't riot.

They forgot to reserve their right to (literally) hold the gun to their politicians heads. Took back all the power over themselves, just hand it over to some new guys with no durable strings attached.

Still doing pretty damn well compared to countries like Hungary who came full circle in a matter of years.