And MY fucking loved ones. And lots of other people’s fucking loved ones.
My anger grows each and every day. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through what’s coming either from a mental health perspective or from a keeping my family safe perspective.
YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
God, I love how seriously Americans take their civic duty, you can tell by the effort they put into researching the candidates they intend to put in the most powerful positions in the country.
I don’t get it either. I always try to read up on things. Sometimes there’s not enough info on candidates in a local race for me to know who to vote for and so I abstain. Other than that, I always vote for the candidate I think is going to do the least harm. They didn’t do their due diligence to even figure that out.
I remember in 2004, as a kid, my mother (very conservative at the time) teaching me to go through OnTheIssues with the presidential race coming up and examining the policies of each candidate, and to consider whether I agreed with each individual stance in making an overall opinion, not just to presume which one was good and bad by political allegiance.
She taught me good citizenship. Many people aren’t so lucky - or didn’t take the lessons to heart.
Ah you young whippersnapper! When I turned 18 in 1995, the best way to find out about local candidates was a pamphlet you could get at the library for free (and probably elsewhere too) put out by the League of Women Voters. Sadly, there were always lots of pamphlets not taken.
People like us are the abysmally small minority.
The average adult American has the reading comprehension level of a 5th grader.
Less than 10% (possibly less than 5%) of adult Americans are capable of objectively reading multiple stories about the same topic in different newspapers and being able to figure out which bits of info are objective, which parts are editorialized, what information is left out… and why different sources include or disclude those elements.
Turns out if you destroy public education, you get idiots, and idiots are very easy to mislead, responding almost entirely to pathos, misjudge ethos, and actually become angry when presented with logos.
We are a largely, functionally illiterate society.
It’s the social media algorithms, man. Folks think that what they’re being fed is reality, so they never double check the information being given to them.
Full disclosure, I’m just as guilty. For months I had built up this whole narrative about private equity buying up all the houses and causing the current housing crisis. Apparently, private equity only accounts for like 10% of home ownership, and the reality is that we just don’t build enough housing. The issue is the same (and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that private equity is still at the heart of it somehow), but I allowed the algorithm to show me inaccurate info, and I bought it—hook, line, and sinker.
But when it comes to candidates, there are multiple neutral websites that will just give you their stated platform (if they have one) up and down the ballot.
Plus don’t people get something from school? My schools, way back when, and my kids schools always had some class trying to bring current affairs into the lesson, and certainly during a presidential election.
My teen has a law and gov class where they had various debates about real people and real issues - it’s amazing that teacher can sit back and let the kids have their opinion but he does. Obviously not everyone has a law and gov class, or the Econ class where they’re going over proposed policies of each side but everyone has a history or social studies where they’re do that, don’t they?
How doesn’t at least some of that carry over into adult life?
From personal experience, when you’re working 2 jobs and raising 3 kids and spend every waking moment worried you can’t pay your bills or that you suck as a parent because you’re not around enough, taking time to research candidates feels impossible. Which is right where some like to keep us.
I’m in a better place now and have the time to do the work to make better decisions, but it still feels like an uphill battle against the multitude of the uninformed.
I see what you’re saying but it’s also kind of an excuse. It’s not that hard to find out, for instance in this case, where candidates stand on LGBTQ issues or on education.
The place I was in at the time, it was a struggle to convince myself that I should shower more than once a week and not cry over how I was going to find the money to buy my kids socks. When life is that stressful and depressing, it’s hard to see and to take on more issues than what you’re already trying to overcome on a day to day basis.
Again, I used to think that people in power couldn’t be that evil, but now moving past that place I can see how keeping people down, under pressure, and uneducated really does benefit certain groups.
Yeah, I spent about 8 hours going over every person this election, including local mayor, city council, and board of education members. And, yeah, 8 hours isn’t an amount of time everyone has all in one block, but most of the research was pretty easy to digest quickly, and I could’ve split it into a bunch of 5-minute pieces whenever I had a bit of time over the course of a couple months. I get that it’s not the most interesting or calming activity, but I think people could at least take a small amount of enjoyment knowing they’ve properly educated themselves on the goals and qualifications of all the people on their ballot.
I think its more like the mindset of:
“ugh I’m so tired and have to work tomorrow, I don’t feel like I have the energy to look up the candidates, it’s just one vote, is it really gonna matter”
My US citizen mom doesn’t even vote until I tell her how to register and fill out the out the mail ballots. And didn’t even make up her mind until I told her to vote Harris.
and the vibes around Trump were good? the dude is a shitstain on the very fabric of existence
We all fail somewhere …. I voted wrong on one ballot question, for the vibes, and wish I could take it back.
My state had a question whether the auditor should audit the state legislature, and after so much news about corruption, conflict of interest at the national level, I voted “Hell yes”. However when I read it afterwards, too late, it was a separation of powers question and I would have voted “no, the executive branch can’t police the legislate branch”
These are the people who vote on vibes and emotions, it’s important candidates and politics don’t discount them because they’re the main voter block.
They’ve been reacting to the perceived moralist shaming of WOKE since 2014, and the right have kept that perception around whilst mocking it, being unPC, and joking around to show they’re “cool guys”.
So when Kamala makes a face when Trump says something about eating cats, the left think he’s an idiot whilst emotional voters think he’s play a game, joking and she’s being rude/shaming.
Or when he dresses like a garbage man, and the left calls them stupid for enjoying it, that pushes emotional voters towards voting for him, and away from voting for her/them.
Dems lost sight of the emotional game/narrative being played. So he played the fun guy, they played the shaming upright moralists who can’t take jokes and want to be serious or angry all the time (often bejng baited into this role).
Made for an easy choice for emotional voters. It was not rational (hence the regret). But it’s what got the Republicans into office.
At lunch yesterday, I overheard two women talking about how they should totally be hired for the new department of government efficiency, and how they have a lot of great ideas to offer from their years of experience in federal jobs.
It’s so easy to shit on voters for not being informed.
Dems had $1B to reach this lady with a message about how they were going to improve her material conditions and they couldn’t or wouldn’t. At least they got that sweet sweet Cheney fan vote.
When people have to work constantly or their kids will starve and it just keeps getting worse wtf is anyone supposed to do?
“You didn’t do your homework, so you deserve to have your life destroyed lol”
The system is fucked. Well and truly.
When people have to work constantly or their kids will starve and it just keeps getting worse wtf is anyone supposed to do?
I agree with you when it comes to a lot of things in terms of civic engagement, but in this case, there are lots of websites out there with information that won’t even take you more than 20 minutes to read in terms learning of who the candidates are and what they stand for.
You can literally do that on a break (or more than one break since you’ll get them every day) at work. And if you’re not getting breaks at work, your boss is violating the labor laws which should be posted where all employees can see them. Not that they ever read them. Employees are entitled by federal law to a 5-20 minute paid break. I realize 5-20 minutes is shit, but most full time jobs at least give you longer unpaid breaks than that, if for no other reason than they don’t want their employees passing out from hunger.
You’re not wrong about having the physical and temporal capacity to inform yourself regardless, but you’ve also got to have the mental and emotional capacity as well.
I’m sure you’re aware of how exhausting it is to live here, even just having nominal exposure to all the campaign ads and the outrage bait “news.” That’s before all the regular stress of living here with a family, all of your material conditions. Is my car gonna break down? If it does will I get fired? How can I afford my kids soccer cleats? Will the babysitter cancel on me for my extra shift?
If the only exposure you got for the election that you paid attention to because it was “entertainment” was a “funny” Joe Rogan clip your buddy sent you of the Trump interview it’d be real easy to be like “well, we made it through the first one, and at least he acknowledges that things are more expensive…”
Obviously if you’re tuned in, you know that’s a bullshit front. But if you don’t have the capacity to be tuned in because fucking everything is designed to stress you out and extract what little money you have… Well, here we are.
I guess you’re right. It’s just so damn important to them and their families… I have been there, super exhausted from all that, but I knew the risk of not being informed about who I’m voting for. I guess it was enough for me to make sure I knew, but not for others.
If the only exposure you got for the election that you paid attention to because it was “entertainment” was a “funny” Joe Rogan clip your buddy sent you of the Trump interview…
This right here is hitting on the real problem. People are fed bullshit from firehoses coming in all direction, so they feel like they are informed because of what they have passively taken in. It takes some real effort to step back and think “What if the things I’ve been hearing are not the full story?”, and even more effort to take the next step and actively seek out information that might challenge what you have already heard and internalized. We are ALL guilty of this to some degree.
But if you don’t have the capacity to be tuned in because fucking everything is designed to stress you out and extract what little money you have…
Precisely–it is 100% the point. If you are stressed out working 2 jobs and raising a kid, you are going to have a lot less energy to keep your bullshit detector running and the simple solutions to complex problems naturally sound more appealing.
there are lots of websites out there … You can literally do that on a break
Correct. Now your task, should you choose to accept it, is to show someone how to do that. Teach them to do their research. Easy? Now come up with a way to communicate the same message to maybe 150 million people. And make sure they don’t ignore it.
This is why strategies like advertising, canvassing, and media interviews are effective. Unlike expecting voters to “just do the research,” these methods meet people where they already are—at home, watching TV, listening to the radio, scrolling through social media, or catching up on the news. They reach voters directly, without assuming any prior knowledge or effort on their part.
I guess. I was told in high school before I was even old enough to vote that the League of Women Voters always gives out election info. They used to do it in a free pamphlet and now they do it on their website. Are people really not told that in school anymore or do they just not pay attention?
Democracy isn’t government on cruise control. Democracy is a responsibility. Blaming politicians isn’t going to change the fact that it is not institutions that uphold democracy. It’s the people.
So yeah, ultimately the people failed themselves. Some people just need to learn the hard way. If that is the only way these people will learn, why try to stop them from getting their lessons?
Americans are basically spoiled children. Never experienced government hardship. Why expect them to understand the value of what they have that prevents the hardship?
Maybe if they just googled? Takes about 15 sec. They’d see something like this: https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/kamala-harris-2024-campaign-promises-here-are-her/ It’s hard to imagine it could have been any easier for people who weren’t aware of Harris’ policies.
I can see why they might woo current Republicans… In the case the lose by a thin margin, it would give them greater leverage to block Trump’s administration.
“Maybe if we work to bring the nazis into power, they’ll think about us later on!”
