Great points, I do love me a meandering rant! Could you explain more about STAR voting? From a skim of the wiki page it sounds basically how I understood rank choice voting to work.
I tend towards the more anarchist side of things. The hope of the people ever getting any meaningful control over the existing levers of power, without becoming that which they seek to destroy, seems like a fools errand. I tend to think a more pragmatic approach would be building real, positive, anti-capitalist, local communities that live like the world is dying, and work survive the death throws of the state. And also democratization of the workplace for the love of fuck!
What I really like so much about Lemmy is the apparent willingness of folks to have real honest discussions about things. Even agreeing to disagree. I am intelligent enough to have a vague understanding of how much shit I don’t know, and that there is no end all, be all ideology. I just know that the world could be a damn sight better than those in charge believe it can be.
It would be unfortunate if some of the creators of Lemmy lacked the empathy and curiosity of it’s members, and supposed reason for Lemmy’s existence. I hope that isn’t the case, but it seems, by virtue of the fediverse, to be ways of growing communities in spite of.
I do find it pretty amusing that the supposedly “CCP tankie agit-prop” instance isn’t Lemmygrad, considering they literally have a fucking tank for a logo.