They remove the right to vote from our poor, our people of color, our citizens who have made mistakes but paid their debts to society, they remove polling places, making people wait hours and hours standing in lines to vote, giving them water is illegal, they purge voter roles right before elections…. And so so many more things. So many Americans don’t vote because they can’t because our right wing government has put so many roadblocks in the way.
Because most Americans have knee-jerk reactions to labels as opposed to policies. Like how everyone supports all the protections Obamacare provides, but how they all want to get rid of Obamacare.
Because while a lot of Americans support a lot of left wing positions, there are no major left wing parties, and a very small number of politicians who run for national or statewide office who actually take action to further left wing policies. There’s Bernie Sanders, who isn’t a member of a large party. AOC, and a few others qualify, but being a small proportion of those running, they’re a small proportion of those elected, and have relatively little actual influence.
Ideas neither major party supports are basically impossible to see happen.
Money, Propaganda, Tribalism, an undemocratic voting system…
Further, the uneveness of Power is gigantic: billionaires have way much power than common people, who are only powerful if together in large numbers and that’s incredibly hard to make happen in a structured way with everybody aligned in the same way compared with what a single billionaire can do if they feel like spending $100 million, and the entire system is set up against people organising in such a way - notice how the biggest demonstration ever in the US, the George Floyd protests, achieved pretty much nothing at all, and the police in the US is still a force of Injustice rather than Justice.
The vast majority of people are either played like fiddles or made to feel impotent and hence just turn of from politics and just live day to day.
Others have commented valid points but I also wanted to bring up propaganda;
A lot of people are unwilling or even unable (i.e. there is only one tv in the house and you don’t get to control the remote most of the time) to get their news from sources that aren’t constantly telling them that Democrats are out to get them and 2SLGBTQIA+ are the enemy and that if they just vote for (wealthy conservative) then all their problems will be solved overnight. Couple that with an education system that has failed to give people the critical thinking skills to ask what trans folk have to do with the economy and you get the 2024 election.
To make you more hopeful, they have to constantly fight to keep these systems of oppression in place. We win if/when this stops. All we have to do is keep fighting them. Make them work to oppress us, and it’ll crumble.
My take is that there are a lot of Left people who won’t vote for anyone except a candidate they support 100%. Hilary Clinton should have destroyed Trump. Those people ignore the simple truth that any time any GOP gets elected the whole country moves to the right.
There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote. Until the rest of us fall in line like they do, they’ll keep on winning. Show me where I’m wrong.
There is an evil witch that lives underground in the Moon and who is mind-controlling non-Rightwing votes in the US so that they don’t vote. Show me were I’m wrong.
The easiest thing in the World is to come up with a wild-ass theory without backing it with any evidence and then demanding others disprove it - I do believe that’s even a 4chan special.
Donald Trump won the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton. How much more evidence do you need that people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP?
That’s as much “evidence” for your original “two sides” theory as it is for my “witch in the Moon” theory.
Also you’ve moved the goalposts to a self-fullfilling and generic to the point of uselessness statement “people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP”.
That’s like saying that “all drivers in car crashes should have done more not to crash their cars”.
Well, true, but also about as worthless as “insights” go as “the sky is blue”.
Also by blaming people you’re implying that “the system works and is fair” hence the fault is entirelly of people who have full agency and control. I’m afraid that things like the partisan support in the US for Genocide or the extreme level of police violence show that “people” don’t really have full agency or even much control - in fact I could spend the whole day listing how most people don’t really have much in the way of control of how the US is managed, though granted those wo do have most of the control are people (unless one subscribes to the theory that the ultra-rich are lizard-men).
By worring so much about the puppet instead of the puppet masters, you’re playing into the hands of the handful of people who control the politics of the US and hence the US.
Go after the real power of the land: the ultra-wealthy.
You’re wrong by blaming the fictional non voting left for all your woes. Don’t be stupid.
It’s very simple. 36% of people didn’t vote on average. What percent of those people are leftists? If you don’t have that information, then you’re making shit up and demanding other people prove it for you.
As others pointed out, there’s major structural issues. There’s also issues with apathy and people buying into the anti-electoralism/accelerationism con with religious ferver.
You’re not wrong but, that’s really the trap that many of us on the Left hand fallen for. It takes a long time to build things and make positive changes in the face of resistance from moneyed interests. Leftists refusing to participate in every election, including primaries, is a good part of how we got here in the first place. Non-voters are the largest bloc and, with surveys consistently showing Left-of-Center policies to be popular with the populace overall, it’s safe to assume that the Overton window could be dragged to a better place if they bothered to participate and participate consistently in a calculated manner.
It is absolutely infuriating, indeed, to see all efforts being for nought, though. In less than a year, almost a century of progress has been undone and that would not have been possible if people had been voting stategically. At this point, I’m certain that things will not get appreciably better in my lifetime.
You’ve got extremely valid feelings. Mine are quite similar. I do find myself asking “what’s the fucking point?” far more often than I’d like.
Rather like the classic “what’s the meaning of life?”, I don’t think that anyone can answer that for anyone else. For me, it’s a love of my fellow human beings and belief that, based upon historical evidence, authoritarianism’s grip on society always crumbles. It might take a World War, or it may take centuries of insurgency, but it is inevitable. In order for that to happen, people need to experience kindness and empathy. And people need to be willing to be builders, rather than just violent fighters (every society founded in violence and bloodshed has been vulnerable to authoritarians coopting the movement). So, I keep pushing because it might help others when I’m gone. Hell, maybe it will help lead to the cultural and psychological changes necessary to approach the anarchic society of my ideals (I don’t think I’ll ever directly have that much influence or desire it but every small bit helps).
And there’s also spite. Authoritarians of all flavors are fundamentally cruel douchebags and the current ones are exceptionally stupid to boot (and revel in their anti-intellectualism). Continued resistance and standing up for people and showing them kindness really gets under their skin and I’m a big fan of that.
Politics is dumb and people are terrible. I want to leave the planet.
Yup. Me too buddy. Me too.
I might suggest, if you’re able, looking about for local (non-political) nonprofit orgs to see if there are any that really align with what you think is important. Helping others in a tangible manner can really help to stave off apathy.
Then why is the government so completely dominated by the right if most politically active people are on what Americans call the left?
Gerrymandering and other structural means of disproportionate representation in federal government are big parts of it
Two words, voter disenfranchisement
They remove the right to vote from our poor, our people of color, our citizens who have made mistakes but paid their debts to society, they remove polling places, making people wait hours and hours standing in lines to vote, giving them water is illegal, they purge voter roles right before elections…. And so so many more things. So many Americans don’t vote because they can’t because our right wing government has put so many roadblocks in the way.
Because most Americans have knee-jerk reactions to labels as opposed to policies. Like how everyone supports all the protections Obamacare provides, but how they all want to get rid of Obamacare.
also voter suppression gerrymanderinng élite control of the media etc
Because while a lot of Americans support a lot of left wing positions, there are no major left wing parties, and a very small number of politicians who run for national or statewide office who actually take action to further left wing policies. There’s Bernie Sanders, who isn’t a member of a large party. AOC, and a few others qualify, but being a small proportion of those running, they’re a small proportion of those elected, and have relatively little actual influence.
Ideas neither major party supports are basically impossible to see happen.
Money, Propaganda, Tribalism, an undemocratic voting system…
Further, the uneveness of Power is gigantic: billionaires have way much power than common people, who are only powerful if together in large numbers and that’s incredibly hard to make happen in a structured way with everybody aligned in the same way compared with what a single billionaire can do if they feel like spending $100 million, and the entire system is set up against people organising in such a way - notice how the biggest demonstration ever in the US, the George Floyd protests, achieved pretty much nothing at all, and the police in the US is still a force of Injustice rather than Justice.
The vast majority of people are either played like fiddles or made to feel impotent and hence just turn of from politics and just live day to day.
The US is not a Democracy.
Others have commented valid points but I also wanted to bring up propaganda;
A lot of people are unwilling or even unable (i.e. there is only one tv in the house and you don’t get to control the remote most of the time) to get their news from sources that aren’t constantly telling them that Democrats are out to get them and 2SLGBTQIA+ are the enemy and that if they just vote for (wealthy conservative) then all their problems will be solved overnight. Couple that with an education system that has failed to give people the critical thinking skills to ask what trans folk have to do with the economy and you get the 2024 election.
The fact that there are so many valid reasons makes me extremely unhopeful.
To make you more hopeful, they have to constantly fight to keep these systems of oppression in place. We win if/when this stops. All we have to do is keep fighting them. Make them work to oppress us, and it’ll crumble.
So the electoral college and the apportionment act will go away, too?
And Americans won’t be a bunch of fucking idiots with the attention span of a goldfish?
And we’ll get proportional representation when they crumble?
Because most of the issues pointed out are structural and have nothing to do with Trump
Well, either they will be fixed or the state collapses eventually. If they keep this up people lose faith in the government.
Too late.
My take is that there are a lot of Left people who won’t vote for anyone except a candidate they support 100%. Hilary Clinton should have destroyed Trump. Those people ignore the simple truth that any time any GOP gets elected the whole country moves to the right.
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There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote. Until the rest of us fall in line like they do, they’ll keep on winning. Show me where I’m wrong.
There is an evil witch that lives underground in the Moon and who is mind-controlling non-Rightwing votes in the US so that they don’t vote. Show me were I’m wrong.
The easiest thing in the World is to come up with a wild-ass theory without backing it with any evidence and then demanding others disprove it - I do believe that’s even a 4chan special.
Donald Trump won the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton. How much more evidence do you need that people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP?
That’s as much “evidence” for your original “two sides” theory as it is for my “witch in the Moon” theory.
Also you’ve moved the goalposts to a self-fullfilling and generic to the point of uselessness statement “people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP”.
That’s like saying that “all drivers in car crashes should have done more not to crash their cars”.
Well, true, but also about as worthless as “insights” go as “the sky is blue”.
Also by blaming people you’re implying that “the system works and is fair” hence the fault is entirelly of people who have full agency and control. I’m afraid that things like the partisan support in the US for Genocide or the extreme level of police violence show that “people” don’t really have full agency or even much control - in fact I could spend the whole day listing how most people don’t really have much in the way of control of how the US is managed, though granted those wo do have most of the control are people (unless one subscribes to the theory that the ultra-rich are lizard-men).
Let’s turn it around.
What’s your plan? How do you propose to get Trump out? Be very specific.
Trump is a symptom, not the disease.
By worring so much about the puppet instead of the puppet masters, you’re playing into the hands of the handful of people who control the politics of the US and hence the US.
Go after the real power of the land: the ultra-wealthy.
A General Strike would be a good start.
You’re wrong by blaming the fictional non voting left for all your woes. Don’t be stupid.
It’s very simple. 36% of people didn’t vote on average. What percent of those people are leftists? If you don’t have that information, then you’re making shit up and demanding other people prove it for you.
There’s your tankie behavior.
You’re saying I’m wrong, and not providing anything like actual information. Why don’t you give me some facts and figures to explain it?
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The electorial college and gerrymandering
In one word: money.
As others pointed out, there’s major structural issues. There’s also issues with apathy and people buying into the anti-electoralism/accelerationism con with religious ferver.
It’s not hard to be anti-electoral when elections don’t seem to ever fucking work
You’re not wrong but, that’s really the trap that many of us on the Left hand fallen for. It takes a long time to build things and make positive changes in the face of resistance from moneyed interests. Leftists refusing to participate in every election, including primaries, is a good part of how we got here in the first place. Non-voters are the largest bloc and, with surveys consistently showing Left-of-Center policies to be popular with the populace overall, it’s safe to assume that the Overton window could be dragged to a better place if they bothered to participate and participate consistently in a calculated manner.
It is absolutely infuriating, indeed, to see all efforts being for nought, though. In less than a year, almost a century of progress has been undone and that would not have been possible if people had been voting stategically. At this point, I’m certain that things will not get appreciably better in my lifetime.
And if things won’t get better, why bother?
I’ve been voting as much as possible and doing the other things for a quarter century and we’ve always gotten further from what I’m hoping for.
I wasted all that time and money and stress and have nothing to show for it.
Politics is dumb and people are terrible. I want to leave the planet.
You’ve got extremely valid feelings. Mine are quite similar. I do find myself asking “what’s the fucking point?” far more often than I’d like.
Rather like the classic “what’s the meaning of life?”, I don’t think that anyone can answer that for anyone else. For me, it’s a love of my fellow human beings and belief that, based upon historical evidence, authoritarianism’s grip on society always crumbles. It might take a World War, or it may take centuries of insurgency, but it is inevitable. In order for that to happen, people need to experience kindness and empathy. And people need to be willing to be builders, rather than just violent fighters (every society founded in violence and bloodshed has been vulnerable to authoritarians coopting the movement). So, I keep pushing because it might help others when I’m gone. Hell, maybe it will help lead to the cultural and psychological changes necessary to approach the anarchic society of my ideals (I don’t think I’ll ever directly have that much influence or desire it but every small bit helps).
And there’s also spite. Authoritarians of all flavors are fundamentally cruel douchebags and the current ones are exceptionally stupid to boot (and revel in their anti-intellectualism). Continued resistance and standing up for people and showing them kindness really gets under their skin and I’m a big fan of that.
Yup. Me too buddy. Me too.
I might suggest, if you’re able, looking about for local (non-political) nonprofit orgs to see if there are any that really align with what you think is important. Helping others in a tangible manner can really help to stave off apathy.
because Dems allowed gerrymandering to go without protest
Because the left keeps falling in with the ineffectual center-right, leading to widespread voter disillusionment.
Mainly because your average person is apathetic to their own governenance