

The American Dream is inherently capitalist, it being a myth doesn’t change that.
The crux of the American Dream is that you have to suffer on the bottom of the totem pole, but eventually you’ll get the chance to be on top and exploit the others on the bottom. The American Dream is very useful to the capitalist class because it gives people motivation to stay in the rat race, to believe that they have a stake in capitalism as a system, because one day their hard work will be rewarded and they will be a capitalist as well.
Outside of the context of capitalism, the American Dream doesn’t really make sense. If realizing that it’s a lie helps push people to the left, that’s good and should be encouraged, but I don’t think that makes the Dream itself anticapitalist.
I think this is less a problem of “nefarious bad actors” and more a problem of expectations. Honestly, I agree with the quoted comment: I think they should be visible all the time, like they already are on Mbin. I think it would help change the way people think about votes so that they don’t expect Reddit-style anonymous votes and instead it’s a more public Facebook/Twitter-style like system.
If you really want private votes, Piefed has feature that lets you anonymize your votes, but a determined bad actor could still deanonymize you. I think it’s better to change expectations than to try to massage a fundamentally public platform into having private votes, but it’s good there’s an option for people since it’s so highly requested.