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?
and the vibes around Trump were good? the dude is a shitstain on the very fabric of existence
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.
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.
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.
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”
If it weren’t so sad, it would be almost funny.
So many people are waking up to the fact that… Most people are functionally illiterate children with no understanding of the world they live in.
The easiest way I have to explain it:
You use your phone every day. You know how to use it, menus in and out, all the different programs and their uses. But if I were to pop open the cover and take one single piece out, you would never know, and you would never be able to use it again. Without someone else, you have absolutely no clue how to go about fixing it. You can push it’s buttons all day, but when it comes down to how it functions at the basic levels, you are clueless.
So am I, by the way. I don’t have any reason to know how to build or program a phone. Or computer. I can push their buttons all day though! Even hidden buttons. But if everyone else on the planet disappeared tonight, I would effectively be living in the 1500s, as that’s about where my technical understanding of things ends. (scavenging for replacement electronics notwithstanding, once something electronic breaks, it’s gone since I can’t exactly run a semiconductor factory by myself, or the mines to get the materials)
My point is, most people only know how to “push the buttons” of the world. They have very surface-level understandingsof it. But when it comes down to it, they don’t understand how the internals actually function.
Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.
This is a funny take I haven’t heard. Maybe it’s a bit true.
People I talk to seem to have little understanding of Trump policies. Like it’s mostly projection.
One person I spoke to with a Trump pin said these two statements: “I don’t like where the country is heading everything is expensive. The government spends too much money”… “yeah we got to support Ukraine, Russia would not have invaded if Trump was president. Russia needs to loose and go home so we can end the war”
… like okay? And Trump will help any of this how, as a lap dog to Putin who blew up the budget and raised taxes on those making less than $500k?
These people vote for people who tell them what they want to hear and project the rest… you know morons.
These people vote for people who tell them what they want to hear and project the rest
I think it’s even farther removed from that … these people vote for people their echo chamber tells them are better for reasons their echo chamber tells them what they want to hear, and they never have the awareness to find out from the donvicts mouth. …. You know, morons
As a single person you’d be pretty good for the rest of your (still probably short) life. But honestly, I think ascribing button pushing to some of these people is a stretch. They know the particular buttons to open their social media, or maybe even access their banking, but any mention of settings and you get a blank look. I see that with every generation now, working in IT. It used to just be the boomers, but tech knowledge seems to have degraded over the years.
I felt something die inside me when I realized “display settings” was going way too far into technical territory for most people.
All I was trying to do is tell someone why their screen shuts off “so quickly” after two minutes.
I had to send them step by step pictures with big red circles.
And this was someone I had thought to be intelligent enough to figure something out, and tech-minded enough to know what I was talking about. Turns out they just like buying whatever fancy new gadgets they see in commercials.
Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.
Still have Keiko trapped in the transporter buffer, I see.
I mean I know enough which candidates are the “lesser evil”, but I’d never fully understand how the global economy works.
Most people aren’t gonna understand everything, and that’s fine. But it shouldn’t take much to know who to not vote into office. But unfortunately… it does seem like making a simple choice is a huge hurdle in many peoples minds.
Joe Rogan, before he was horrible, has a funny bit about this exact sentiment: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1i2b6_joe-rogan-on-stupid-people_fun
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!
Queer people voting for conservative politicians will never cease to amaze me. I discovered a queer acquaintance who I had friended on Instagram was following Trump, Pierre Polievre, and that insane Randy Hillier, which shocked me. Why would you do that? They hate queer people.
Because they’re not single issue voters, would be the rational explanation. But probably they also haven’t bothered to reasonably research who has what agenda. If you’re into politics, it can come as a surprise, but many people really don’t want to know anything about it, and they work hard to learn as little as possible.
I’m not blaming them for developing a strong dislike to politics, considering how dirty almost everyone is, but I hope that people can realize that ignoring a thing you don’t like doesn’t make it go away.
There is a big difference between voting/supporting them and following them on social media. I encourage everyone, Left as well as Right, to follow people, pages and communities of the other side. You should know the story the other side tells itself. Even if you don’t agree with it - it’s better to not agree with the real thing than to fight straw men in echo chambers.
