Are people generally responsible for the elected officials they vote for?

Maenads said:
Well the people certainly are not responsible for the elected officials they didn't vote for. Third party voters in the US, in particular, can not be held responsible for a system which their party has had no influence over.



Blatantly absurd. 'A people' is not reducible to a single unit that can be judged as being responsible or not responsible, innocent or guilty, complicit or not complicit. Imagine telling those folks who protested for weeks on end at the election of Donald Trump that they were themselves responsible for his election. Goes in the same category as "you should have voted harder". What could that possibly mean? Other than casting more than one vote, how does a person 'vote harder'?

Even those who actively vote for the politicians in power don't see their candidates win elections anywhere near all the time. How could they be deemed responsible for a government which is a hybrid result, of their officials and those of other parties fighting for control of governmental processes and policies? The government, as it stands, is hardly the result of any persons intention. It is a disastrous mishmash of incompatible policies crafted by different parties with different goals over long periods of time.

Maenads said:

Never in my life have I seen 'the people' being used to refer only to some of the people. So I think you can forgive me for not getting your message clearly. But I take it you agree with me - people can't be considered responsible for politicians and policies they didn't vote for.

I guess the question is what kind of responsibility are they taking? Is the responsibility simply that they have to live in the system they vote into place? That doesn't seem compatible with the idea that those who voted otherwise are not responsible. I'll let you provide the answer because this whole exercise is a meaningless pursuit if their responsibility doesn't amount to anything.

Auron_ said:


Setting manufactured consent aside sounds like a pretty weird route to go by as far as I'm concerned. That's like saying, setting aside the behavior of subatomic particles, Newtonian Physics is an accurate representation of reality. Or setting aside market failures, natural monopolies, and inflexibility of certain goods and services, capitalism works fairly well. Both statements are technically correct, but you shouldn't be setting those aside in the first place.

I think news media of any nation does the heavy-lifting on the forming of political thoughts of the citizens living there for the most part. I also know that all these media have their interests and will be vetting the news they display on the basis of these interests. And lastly I know that many people either do not have the willingness and/or the time to really delve in to the policy side of things and construct a material analysis of their societal or class interests. The results is unfortunately, a voter base that is very easily amenable to anecdotal news, culture war nonsense, unnecessary idpol (as opposed to necessary idpol), and in the worst case scenario conspiracy theories or political extremism depending on the rabbit hole they find themselves in. It also doesn't help that many people are just really dumb.

So in theory they should be hold responsible, but well, they got shit to do in their lives, media feeds them with lowest hanging fruits and political junk food, and a lot of policy-wise issues (rent control, public housing, higher minimum wage etc.) are pretty technical which require a good deal of looking into, so they're bound to stay low-information or at the very least low-good-information.

TL;DR Somewhat, to a degree.

Bladezeranium said:


Setting manufactured consent aside as I don't think that's a legitimate excuse that extricates people from being responsible for the officials who they elect. Is it a major part of the system that plays a major correcting role in influencing people? I don't deny it.

While I do think the voter base isn't well informed because of an unwillingness to perform analysis on ongoing political matters, I do think it can be expected of a population that mostly works 9-5, and thus has little time to relegate elsewhere for other matters if you include getting ready for work, family responsibilities, etc. Not that I think these excuse the voting base for their ignorance, but that it's understandable why large numbers of them aren't more politically involved beyond reading and reacting to key headlines on news articles.

I am curious as to what you think is necessary idpol as opposed to unnecessary idpol. I assume you're referring to idpol that actually systemically challenges the system as opposed to virtue signaling, like having a person of minority in a position to bomb foreign places for instance, or diversity commercials from the corporate sector that serve to placate consumers rather than pushing for policies that would alleviate the underlying issues, like systemic racism, etc.

Auron_ said:

I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said there. We're living in an age where getting informed is the easiest it has been due to the sheer volume of knowledge sprawling out everywhere, but precisely because of that it feels overbearing and a lot of it is trash information. The desire to just shrug and say, "this is too much I'd rather read headlines and grandstand to my supposed political opponents." has its presence felt. I guess unlike you I just stopped expecting anything at one point and just embraced futility. I mean, have you talked to the average conservative/liberal/leftist? It's almost like they're going through a dialogue tree. You can predict their next statement with a good certainty I feel. I haven't had much opportunities to converse with fascists but I assume they'd be similar. So yeah it is what it is.

Yeah, you pretty much got it. A lot of people try to leverage the issue of race/gender/sexuality relations to strengthen their position in underhanded ways. "Oh but you're white and talking down to a PoC!", "Oh but we have this much ethnic diversity in our corporation where we exploit the 3rd world!", "Oh but Bernie Sanders had some fans who may or may not have said sexist things at one point." It's the most substantively vacuous thing ever but super effective unfortunately. The necessary idpol would be of course the systematic issues that've been researched and well-documented as it relates to the disparities in policing, justice system, education, infrastructure, employment etc. I'm not gonna be fishing through for links since we've likely seen them already but you get my point.

Bladezeranium said:


Of course you can usually predict what an average conservative, liberal, or leftist (whatever that means, I'm assuming you're referring to a generalized sense of the term) will say, assuming they're adhering to a consistent set of principles. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing, but it could indicate they might be too set in their ways and perhaps unwilling to challenge deeply seated beliefs that they have. I'm surprised you don't identify as liberal or leftist though, since you seem to analyze things from a systematic perspective like many leftists, though I'm unaware as to the totality of your beliefs to make a judgment. To what degree do you support Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders? I'm assuming you're aware of their policies and differences, which I'm trying to gauge with this question.