Derek Powazek 🐐Aug 5, 2024
What if voting wasn’t something you did to express your personal preference? What if it was something you did to protect the people you love?
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Aug 5, 2024

I keep hearing people I know who I thought genuinely cared for the people on the ragged edges of US society saying that they’re not going to vote for Harris. I wish they’d see voting as a thing we do *for each other* instead of something that speaks to your own self-centered opinion.

It’s just moral narcissism - the idea that how it makes you feel about yourself is the most important thing. It’s wildly, WILDLY selfish. And these are the same people who lecture others about privilege.

Wild.

Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Aug 5, 2024

People say I shouldn’t shame others for not voting, but fuck that. We have this one lever we get to pull. This one task. If you can’t make that bare minimum requirement to participate in a democracy, I have no goddamn respect for you. You’re not more morally pure for opting out, you’re just a petulant child.

Voting isn’t everything, but it’s the first thing. If you have this right that so many fought and bled for and you don’t use it, shame on you.

Show thread1337 $#!+ I did thatAug 5, 2024
@fraying don't @ me, I vote. But I know people who genuinely don't care in the least because neither major party has the slightest concern for their issues or their lives. Before you say something about fascism or democracy, the same thing, they care about neither. They wake up on November 6th with no better or worse outlook either way. And they feel something in either platform compromises their identity. So rather than vote either, they just keep heads down and try to keep their shit together.
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐
@stalbaum that’s called living in ignorance and it’s bliss until the world goes to shit around you.
Aug 5, 2024 at 4:44amWeb
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Aug 5, 2024
@stalbaum And, anyway, I’m not taking about those people. As I said in the second post, I’m talking about “people I know who I thought genuinely cared for the people on the ragged edges of US society saying that they’re not going to vote for Harris.” They know better. They know the stakes. And they’re refusing to vote against the greater evil because they think it makes them morally superior. I’m saying it doesn’t.
Show thread1337 $#!+ I did thatAug 5, 2024
@fraying world is already shit around them. And they are not stupid, just poor, exploited, and pandered to in a way they totally understand. Members of both major parties always think they have them figured out. They don't. Members also don't want to go where these Americans are. There is this great wet dream of reaching them through media and social... Useless. Because when someone's only power is that they have nothing to lose, they know that giving an Nth of a $#!+ is just more exploitation.
Show thread1337 $#!+ I did thatAug 5, 2024
@fraying If you want to know who is in their neighborhoods, who is successfully working for them, it is entrepreneurial Evangelical churches. My libs will think this means MAGAish churches, and while not wrong this is not universal... Many of the non-denominationals are in their minds, government. They are equally disengaged from US politics and are building their own little cults in place of government. Our Americans understand the Evangelicals too, and say a prayer for a Walmart gift card.
Show thread1337 $#!+ I did thatAug 5, 2024
@fraying Walmart gift cards goes in a stack of other pittances. Stealing, squatting, bartending 20 hours for cash, collecting Walmart cards from churches, sometimes getting a used car from an inspired churcher for good attendance, clothes donation days, taking a job for three months because they know they are going to get unemployment for a similar time, nobody represents them. Even these churches that try to MAGA them get very frustrated! The lumpenproletariat. No practical interest in voting.