> Assuming things have always been kind of shit and are likely to just get shittier takes us all off the hook far too easily imo.
I've seen this same mindset that you're pointing out.
However, I don't think that it is usually used to "let people off the hook" - most of the time that I've heard it used (a bunch of times in real life, not just on the internet), the subtext is "...and so we should replace the current government with another [highly authoritarian, non-constitutionally-limited] one that can fix these issues, either through voting for an extreme candidate/party, or straight-up violent revolution".
That might be just my experience, though - I went to a university with a significant anarcho-communist group in the student body.
> "...and so we should replace the current government with another [highly authoritarian, non-constitutionally-limited] one that can fix these issues, either through voting for an extreme candidate/party, or straight-up violent revolution".
The interesting thing to me is that this kind of attitude has become dominant across the spectrum of political ideology, in just the space of a few years. A large number of people, or at least the most vocal ones, now seem to support an authoritarian extra-constitutional goverment, they just differ on who they think should be crushed first.
I suppose myopically I'm not sure thats how I see our 2 party system.
I do see two dying parties unwilling to rejuvenate leadership in the fear that it will lead to additional (and I do mean additional) socialist tenants being infused into our version democracy.
However I'm not sure I see a lot of people on the left looking to dismantle voting rights, the US postal service, the EPA or department of the interior, the supreme court, etc. The last time the supreme court was dragged into an election for example was bush v gore.
I've seen this same mindset that you're pointing out.
However, I don't think that it is usually used to "let people off the hook" - most of the time that I've heard it used (a bunch of times in real life, not just on the internet), the subtext is "...and so we should replace the current government with another [highly authoritarian, non-constitutionally-limited] one that can fix these issues, either through voting for an extreme candidate/party, or straight-up violent revolution".
That might be just my experience, though - I went to a university with a significant anarcho-communist group in the student body.