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?

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.

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.

@fraying It's not so simple.

Voting isn't the first thing but the minimal.

It is legit to ask for voting to any standard individual who isn't engaged in any other political activities.

However there are people rather more engaged in improving the life of the others, participating in whatever organization of their choice or doing polithics every single day at the streets.

Those people have all the right to decide that they don't want to validate the current statu quo.

@nestor Google moral narcissism.

@fraying Just the opposite,

Those lazy people, who as the only political activity just vote once every 4 years should not claim anything to those who are doing polithics every single day.

This said, i'm in the lazy 'only vote' team who annoy my even lazier 'not even voting' environment, to vote.

I just realize that not all the not voters are the same , nor their motivations are just 'moral narcissism'

@nestor and all their non-votes count exactly the same.

@fraying They are »doing« very different things.

Do > words

It is just democracy allow people to vote options that we don't like, including not voting at all.

We are in a dead end and it seems clearly that we are not going to reach anything similar to an agreement.

Let me to offer to you a final though, not directly related with the 'not voting categories' which we has been discussing:

if you want to movilize previous staled votes, you should try to seduce them rather than despice them.

And also, if somebody is not going to vote or is going to vote an option that you don't like, trying to understand why will be more productive than simply overlook them.

@fraying googled.

It seems to be a pretty usa centric concept with this full thing about saying vs doing, i was just applying the concept of narcissism to moral until now.

My full point is that Do > say and do every day > vote once every 4 years, so nothing against critizise those who doesn't vote as a pose (possing?) but all against about simplifying all the not voters in the same category

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To avoid missunderstandings this is the definition that i'm managing from https://www.commentary.org/articles/roger-simon/moral-narcissism-least-great-generation/
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«That form is moral narcissism—a pathology that underlies the whole liberal left ethic today and some of the right as well. What exactly is this form of narcissism that is destroying—if it hasn’t already destroyed—our families, friendships, workplace atmosphere, and democratic republic?

The short form is this: What you believe, or claim to believe or say you believe—not what you do or how you act or what the results of your actions may be—defines you as a person and makes you “good.” It is how your life will be judged by others and by yourself. In 19th-century France, the gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin told us that “you are what you eat.” In 21st-century America, almost all of us seem to have concluded that “you are what you say you are. You are what you proclaim your values to be, irrespective of their consequences.” That is moral narcissism.»

Moral Narcissism and the Least-Great Generation

am of the generation that read The Communist Manifesto before we read the Constitution. Well, not exactly. I did read the U.S. Constitution and The Federalist Papers, mostly in student-outline versions,

Commentary Magazine