I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
I would love to have a conversation with someone who actually abstained. At least on Lemmy, the level of snark seems to drown out whatever actually was going on in their heads and I don’t see a lot of constructiveness in that pattern.
You won’t get much more sense out of them than you’ll get from a Trumper.
With all respect, I said I want a conversation with them now that there has been an increase in harm, not people like you making predetermined analysis of their mindset. Thank you.
Voting is a collective exercise. Because you voted, and you didn’t get the outcome, doesn’t mean your vote didn’t matter.
Don’t let that feeling stop you from doing everything required to make sure your vote is cast (and counted), especially moving forward.
Yeah I really tried to engage with some of them before the election, and it was impossible to break through the snark and the disingenuous/naive arguments they were spouting. I would also love to have an earnest conversation with someone who withheld their vote, but based on how how they explained themselves at the time, I’d doubt there’s a ton of critical thinking going on. Which kind of makes sense at least for Palestinian Americans whose families are being slaughtered. For them the raw emotions are justified, and I can’t fault them for not voting, even if it was ultimately against their interest. But they’re the only group I’ll give a pass.
Does voting for De La Cruz count as abstaining, for the purposes of the conversation you’d like to have?
I mean it’s not abstaining, but I would love to chat about it. What was your mindset or train of reasoning going into that decision?
I mean I did not abstain, I voted PSL, however I would have abstained if PSL was not available in my state. I get its not the same thing, however half the time it is construed as the same, if you would like to talk about it.
Edit: I should mention for clarity, I was going to vote that day anyway because of a state constitutional amendment that I wanted to oppose, however I was going to abstain from POTUS elections if PSL was not on the ballot.
We can now say that anyone who could and didn’t vote for Harris in magastan is a genocide enabler.
Like most people… I live in a state where my “vote” literally doesn’t matter at all.
It’s hilarious how “adults” assume that voting actually matter and that there’s a meaningful difference between the two flavors of the state.
About 3 million voters who voted in 2020 decided their vote “didn’t matter” in 2024. Kamala lost the popular by 2 million.
Always always vote, even if you think it’s pointless.
If everyone who thought like you got out and voted, the results would come out very different.
The adage for as long as I can remember has been, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
I desperately wish that liberals realize that reality is the arbiter, and no amount of wishing more folks would fall in line will work.
It’s hilarious how people still think that something good will happen as a result of inaction. But no, all your refusal to participate said was that you are fine with the outcome either way. That you trust others to decide this for you. Refusing to choose doesn’t negate the results. Just as doing nothing won’t create something. If it helps, I can explain it in simpler terms:
• You can’t get an answer if you don’t ask the question.
• You won’t ever get anywhere if you don’t make plans to ever be somewhere
• You can’t rightfully expect any change for the better if you’re not willing to do the bare minimum it takes to make it happen.
Even simpler:
• No vote ≠ no election.
And additionally, do you not understand that saying “but I live in a red state! My vote doesn’t matter!” Only proves to everyone that things like gerrymandering are effective ways to manipulate votes? Because, congratulations… you’ve inadvertently discovered exactly why they do it!
Blue votes in red stats are FUCKING VITAL.
You know, it’s sadly funny in a very bleak way- how you all excused your poor decisions as “making a statement!” and “sending a message!” when the messages you should have been sending is that you will do WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES to stop a rapist felon that laid out exactly what he intended to do to us- from taking away the rights of your brothers, sisters, and others. Even if it meant voting blue in a red state.
But you didn’t. So sit down, accept your responsibility, and if you’re fucking lucky, you’ll be given the chance to do better next time.
I was up and down many threads immediately before the election straining with every fiber of my being to explain to people the variety of ways in which their democracy is actually a sham and isn’t effective or reflective of popular will or sentiment.
The most I got in return was that, nah, none of that applies, because I just don’t really feel like it. It’s infuriating.
Every 4 years the machine churns, every 4 years people forget everything that happened the last time, forget every detail of the system, and just decide to kind of, sloganeer constantly rather than discuss critically, because that brings them some sense of control over the way things are going. It can be prefigured into their personal narrative of events, and how much they, personally, put on the line, how much they tried to change people’s minds. A participation trophy for their rubber stamp, for their ticking of a certain box, while the real rulers are off in washington making the real decisions. Ultimately it’s kind of fruitless, I think, or should only be viewed along the same lines as being personal slop-entertainment, or “self-improvement”. Anyone who’s not honest with at least that much can’t really be trusted to speak on these things, I think.
Yes it is and it’s such a good example of logic that its archetype is now a formal part of game theory in the prisoner’s dilemma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
Thank you for this. It’s always nice to have valid reasoning backing up something you find so obvious lol
So, the 80 million nonvoters in 2020 voted for Biden? I voted for Biden and Harris. That does not imply my consent for genocide. Complicity is only maintained through inaction. When I denounce the genocidal action, my complicity ends.
Since we’re erroneously referencing logic thought experiments, the trolley problem refutes the prisoner’s dilemma.
I’ve been saying since the election that anyone who voted for Trump or abstained in protest is complicit in Trump’s regime of terror. Trump and his staff spent months on the campaign trail telling the public exactly what they would do when they took power, showing everyone exactly who they are, and now they’re doing all of it. No one has the luxury of claiming ignorance.
Probably not helpful to be this divisive with your anti trump allies. Whether in your eyes the abstention voters made a mistake or not, we’re going to need all the solidarity we can get to oppose/survive this administration
These people pretend to be allies until the next election season where when they don’t get exactly what they want, rabidly push everyone to not vote or vote fascist.
We can’t change the past, so the only choice we have is to work together to start fixing this situation. I understand why they did it, but they refused to think about how their actions would affect the larger outcome. We shouldn’t let abstention voters forget the role they played in getting us into this mess while we encourage them to make better (or at least less bad choices) in the future.
Now that you got you dopamine, feel better?
Great, now it’s time to stop pushing propaganda that makes poor people infight.
Oh, so telling people the truth is now propaganda?
I’m sorry but even if my enemy is trump and his billionaires and not their voters, I don’t have to like those who helped him get there. They put him there, and it’s good if they get some consequences.
If the amount of protesters isn’t even enough to get 1mil more votes you’re just riling yourself up for no reason. And that’s pretending that any of them would have actually voted to start with, considering young people don’t vote.
You would be better off focusing your anger at the demographics that actually voted for Biden but refused to vote for Harris.
Spoiler: it’s older white women/men and hispanic men.
That’s the dark secret that no one really wants to talk about. We’re all genocide enablers. Every single person decided to enable genocide. You didn’t vote? Genocide enabler. You voted third party? Genocide enabler. You voted for Harris? Genocide enabler. You voted for Donald Trump? Whew boy, genocide enabler and then some. No matter how you cut it the American populace has and is enabling genocide. Every single fucking one of us.
I think that’s why there’s so much rancor on this topic. People don’t want to admit that to themselves. I enabled genocide. You enable genocide. Everyone in this thread enabled genocide. Till we all admit it acknowledge that we’re not going to move forward.
I have a (conspiracy) theory that those “genocide Joe” and “killer Kamala” folk are astroturfing for MAGA.
It’s mostly information warfare from the various social media. There have already been a few analyses showing that pro-Republican anti-Democrat sentiment was algorithmically pushed on tiktok, Facebook, X(obviously), Instagram, YouTube, etc. I do believe a lot of people even here on lemmy were Russian/Chinese just stoking the flames because a divided america is good for them.
I think there are significantly more “useful idiots” than actual state actors trying to sow division. Most of them probably had good intentions, they just refused to listen to reason.
Of course there’s absolutely evidence of pro-Republican, anti-Democrat manipulation. But find me evidence algorithm manipulation of pro-Palestine anti-Democrat sentiment. Otherwise you are doing some pretty hateful fearmongering.
The “everyone on here is a Russian bot” narrative here is so embarrassing. Get real.
All the .ml crap that is suddenly silent was often revealed to be pro-ccp accounts doing exactly that.
> Pretending we didn’t see it happen already
Allow me to remind you of Rally Forge’s “America Progress Now” and Jeff Ballabon’s “Jexodus” as two recent examples.
Cite a proven example of pro-Palestine manipulation, and we can discuss it. Otherwise, no.
Both examples you provided are trivial as they don’t interface with literal apartheid or genocide. This is a significant difference being overlooked, and without evidence, I have no reason to believe this conspiracy.
Okay so this may come across as crazy, but myself and many other people didn’t want to vote for a candidate that supported ethnic cleansing, even if they were on “our team”.
I get that; I do. But there was no better alternative. I’m all about changing our electoral system, but at the time of an election is not the time to do it. How is Trump better than Joe of Kamala?
He’s not, don’t get me wrong. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris still supported genocide. If I voted for her, I’d have been voting for this fundamentally evil policy. Frankly, I’m not interested in doing that, and I stand by that.
A vote for Kamala is a vote for Kamala.
Any other vote or not voting is one less vote trump needs, and is a vote for trump. (Statistically it would have been a blue votes because they tend to be people that don’t align with conservative views that are pro Palestine)
They will never understand that.
Both are bad on Gaza, so it is irrelevant. One could be talked to and has some sense of empathy and could potentially be swayed, the other is going to destroy Gaza without remorse, ruin lise for the most vulnerable Americans, and make sure the US is a a part of the new Axis powers on the wrong side of the global power struggle. These people chose the second option.
And given the shitty system we have, any vote, or non-vote, that wasn’t for Kamala was a vote for trump (by way of it being one less vote he needed to win). Can’t walk into a chess tournament and start putting checkers on the board just because you don’t like chess…gotta change the game first or you just lose and get kicked out.
Everything I don’t like is a psyop
It’s not wrong to say that the right/outside actors made the issue more pervasive, but let’s not exonerate the “adults in the room” who decided it was better policy to unflinchingly support war criminals and a slow motion genocide, instead of defusing the wedge issue and forcing Bibi’s hand. Israel is nothing without US political support and weapons. Recognize “who’s the fucking superpower” and act like it when your client state gets out of line in a way that’ll cost you domestically. China does it with North Korea all the time when they got testy. Russia routinely interferes with domestic politics of CSTO members.
Nor should we pretend that all criticism was astroturfing. Some of us wanted to drop Biden before “we beat Medicare” made him obviously unelectable. And called it that Harris was going to lose swing states like Michigan for maintaining Biden’s posture on Israel. If team blue is all I can realistically vote for, I’m going to call out shitty policy that loses elections and kills voter enthusiasm. It’s up to you to listen and understand that we need to do better
