Part of the reason for the USA's failure is MAGA but the other big aspect is a left that does not engage the real enemy
Toxic idealism
Spineless capitulation
Mindless cynicism
"Polite society" "high road" cluelessness
And lazy entitlement
Not financial entitlement but this obtuse entitled foolishness that we have the time and space to criticize some aspect of the left according to deranged standards of perfection when we're facing literal fascism
Make MAGA the target of your venom
@benroyce
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What does that even mean?
Toxic Idealism. You are just taking an ugly word, toxic, and put it in front of a beautiful word, Idealism. There is no such thing.
Spineless capitulation exists across the political spectrum.
Mindless cynicism is far more emblematic of the right
The rest is mostly true except the graphic should have far more blue hands to represent how the left vastly outnumbers the right.
Toxic idealism is when there is a better choice but it is scorned or attacked because it is not ideal
There is only better or worse in this world. There will never be any other choice. Forever
So people who do not choose better because they are walled off into inaction by their foolish toxic idealism are only aiding fascism
This sort of inept idiocy is a very real phenomenon unfortunately
Perfect is not the enemy of good
But plenty of morons insist it must be
we are currently suffering through 4 more years of trump as a direct consequence of assholes staying home and not voting for harris
some of this is racism
but some of it is toxic idealism: demanding something better before they get off their lazy entitled ass and prevent fascism
I think 2000 can be more accurately blamed on Florida just blatantly stealing the election than people staying home
florida 2000 wasn't example of people staying home, it was an example of the other problem: idiots who don't understand what a third party vote means in an FPTP voting system
certainly moron nader voters didn't put bush into the win column, what they did was put the results into the hands of a shitbag supreme court
When voters were purged from the rolls before the election and then ballots were not counted for various badly defined reasons after the election leading to the governor's brother winning the state by a razor thin margin, I find it hard to blame voters themselves even if fewer Nader voters would have made the margins large enough to block that theft.
i mean it can all be true right?
and when you look at how many voted for nader, and how thin the margin was, it's pretty obvious that played a roll. and i will castigate such morons for helping to give us bush
Looking back on the 2000 election (which happened before I lived in the US citizen or turned 18 so I didn't really follow it that hard at the time) it is wild just how fucking corrupt that was right out in the open
@davoyager @benroyce @obscurestar
I'm just amazed that there are people who keep getting elected to national positions in the democratic party who just let such blatant election theft slide.
They should have been primaried a quarter century ago and we're still dealing with their shit.
@gbargoud @davoyager @obscurestar
I blame nonvoters
It's a feedback of alienation. Things suck, so they detach. So things suck more. Rinse repeat
I'm not letting leaders off the hook. But you can't change who they are. Meanwhile if people just fucking voted we could get rid of them
Someone might say "well you can't change nonvoters either." In that case we're just fucked. I don't accept that. So I prefer to hammer at the one thing we might be able to change:
Nonvoters, fucking vote already
@obscurestar @gbargoud @davoyager
I understand what you're saying about shaming but I can't buy it
"I'm not voting because someone was mean on Mastodon" is ridiculous. The concept describes someone so emotionally addled they won't ever figure out how to coherently advocate for their own self-interests, nevermind all of our interests
So shaming of nonvoters is for everyone else reading along who aren't so incompetent
Respecting low emotional intelligence is not a path to anything constructive
@FransVeldman @gbargoud @davoyager @obscurestar
agreed
with the tweak that the margins are so close in big elections that a little appeal to just the left leaning nonvoters can matter
the other side knows that: the psyop out there artificially boosts MAGA confidence and artificially suppresses leftist confidence
so there is no doubt in my mind you are correct but that doesn't mean an appeal to *leftist* nonvoters is fruitless. nobody here is trying to appeal to right wing nonvoters
@benroyce it's not fair to blame nonvoters when systematic vote suppression has been a major strategy of the Republican party for nearly half a century, and has been a feature of US policy since the founding. We still have many people officially disenfranchised, including people who have served their time, and many more who have been deliberately removed from voter rolls or intimidated from showing up.
Yes, there are also some people who genuinely don't care. But that too is a product of strategy and execution. We're deliberately meant to feel hopeless and disengaged. The cure isn't to condemn people for falling victim to it, but for the DNC and grassroots left to help them engage with issues in a way that gives them a reason to exercise their vote. Like, feeling empowered to change their income, their tax burden, their healthcare costs, their childcare costs, the quality of their kids' schools, the precariousness of their employment, etc. Give them reasons to take an unpaid day off work, stand on line for four hours under the armed watch of ICE "monitors", and mark their ballot. These are things worth fighting for, but the GOP has made sure that a fight it will be.
not in a million years does castigation of nonvoters have anything to do with people who *can't* vote. it's only about people who *choose* not to vote
in fact, to win back voting rights, that's even more reason to show up and vote
secondly, if someone is psyoped into not voting, that is on them. it's a personal weakness they need to get over
thirdly, the dem party sucks and will not offer up these issues. we need to replace them. by voting (in the primaries). proof: mamdani
One common way that voter suppression is done is by looking at the number of voters in the previous year and sizing the polling stations based on that even if there is a candidate who has people more excited or a population shift.
So on top of everything else showing up for boring candidates means you're making sure that when there's a good candidate in the future, they can't say "no one showed up last year so we're shrinking the polling place"
absolutely, they make voting harder
they also make laws like "you can't bring bottled water to people waiting in line to vote"
https://www.abc27.com/news/is-it-illegal-to-hand-out-water-or-food-outside-your-polling-place/
(this has since been struck down in many places)
but we're only talking about a few more hours of waiting
it shouldn't deter
especially since we reverse such meddling if we show up
we also ask people to protest and strike: those are much greater efforts (we need to do all 3). i see plenty of elderly at protests
That reminds me of the democracy sausage in Australia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage
Anyway the reason I mention the sizing thing is because on the surface, sizing a polling place based on turnout the previous year is a perfectly legitimate strategy for sizing it if context is ignored so breaking that is important since I don't think there is any recourse other than setting state level laws for how to size polling places (which is not happening without turning out to vote anyway)
"For many people that's the difference between still having a job in the morning or their kids getting picked up from school... also be an extreme hardship for people with certain medical conditions or disabilities"
then you are talking about someone who cannot vote, and are therefore classifying such a person as someone forced to not vote
and i agree
so not someone who chooses not to vote
right?
you call me privileged, i say you are lying about the topic
> we also ask people to protest and strike: those are much greater efforts (we need to do all 3). i see plenty of elderly at protests
... That's a weird take. Less than 3% of American are showing up to protests and strikes. Far more show up to vote, yet you are scapegoating the smaller percentage of people who don't make it to the polls on election day vs the overwhelming percentage who aren't at any given strike. The reality is that it takes sacrifices to do either, and both require a lot of grassroots mobilization work in order to increase turnout. No amount of scolding people can substitute for being at their front door and listening thoughtfully to what their concerns are.
"That's a weird take"
as someone who goes to protests, it's called using my eyeballs
"No amount of scolding people"
i do not in a million years think i can scold some toxic idealist or mindless cynic who has no impediments to voting but still does not vote. these people are rat poison. don't defend their entitled laziness
it's for the sake of everyone else, who can still think, reading along
and i ask you to think, and stop lying that those who choose not to = those who can't
> if someone is psyoped into not voting, that is on them. it's a personal weakness they need to get over
no. it's not a personal weakness if a psyop against you succeeds. saying that only contributes to the fracturing.
it's on us, as part of societal fabric, to build resilience against such psyops. we all should work to reduce and remove barriers; some of them are these ops from either rival parties targeting demographic groups or hostile foreign actors just trying to suppress all voting or anywhere in between.
i disagree
malice exists in the world
nothing will ever change that
to retreat merely because one sees menace is a personal failure
if someone hears "donald trump is trying to stop the vote and so it's not worth it for you to try to vote" from some troll and they agree that is 100% on the character and intellectual failures of that person
we need to fight. we need a backbone. anyone who will not fight and has no backbone is no ally. we demand they grow a fucking backbone
please explain to me how:
being forced to not vote even when you want to,
and choosing not to vote when you have no impediment to do so,
is the same thing
explain that
you can't
because they are not remotely the same thing
it is false to suggest those are the same situations
so this what? the third or fourth time i've said that those who choose not to vote are a different situation than those who are forced not to vote
and what do you have for me?
an insistence that what i have clearly stated a number of times now is not what i am really saying
awesome
bad faith lying engagement
will you fucking read and comprehend the words in front of you instead of running on the autopilot of lying bias about what i am saying?
are you trolling or incoherent?
that's it
unfortunately you hear moron voices going "well if they cheat why vote"
fucking cowardly losers
ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES
davoyager
George B
obscurestar
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Frans Veldman ⁱ ᵃᵐ ᵃⁿᵗⁱᶠᵃ🚩
Carina C. Zona
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