I consider voting to be the minimum buy-in to ask something of your representative. You may not get that thing, especially if your ask is far outside the mainstream. That’s part of a democracy. The next part of democracy is protecting its status as a liberal democracy, where the people’s freedoms are protected from the government so there is remove for improvement.
This is why it’s important to build strong democratic institutions to resist fascism, populism, and the like. They won’t last forever, but they can take a few election cycles of abuse. Part of the problem with many countries that have truly fallen to fascism or fascist-like movements is that they started out with weak or non-existent institutions. Contrast that with the US, where even the election of Donald Trump of the “Lock Her Up” slogan (very fascist) got basically nowhere with both prosecuting Hillary Clinton and overturning the 2020 election.
Get out and vote! (lemmy.ml)