• peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Seriously?

    That’s kind of the whole fucking point of democracy, you keep voting. Forever. There is no “one last vote.” If you don’t like voting, don’t vote. But don’t complain about the winners and losers then, as you did absolutely fuck all

  • drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago

    It may be that voting for flavors of capitalism makes you feel like a loser, but not voting is exactly what everyone you hate wants. That’s one less vote for their opposition!

  • snekerpimp@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Voting at the grassroots level will enact change. School boards and county positions can enact just as much change as state and federal elections. Won’t matter if the president is blue if the entirety of local governments are red.

      • kometes@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        My understanding was that it was slowed if not stopped because of lack of funding due to the war…

        • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Damn, you’re probably right. I wish my tax dollars were spent more on aid for Ukraine and less on helping Israel commit war crimes. Then we could find out for sure whether you’re right. Also because that’s just the more moral thing to do, but ethnic cleansing is more of an American pastime than baseball, so that’s probably not changing soon.

  • scratchee@feddit.uk
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    8 months ago

    I mean, isn’t that the whole point? You should vote every time, and if you vote right things will be more good or at least less bad, and then you do it again. It’s only very few years, and you don’t have anything more important to do.

    • sab@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      And the idea that things don’t change is so fucking dumb. Don’t tell me Obama to Trump wasn’t a change. Christ.

      What people are really whining about is that they want a quick fix, and they’re not getting it because that’s just not possible even if half the politicians weren’t rotten to the core. But let’s not pretend there won’t be “real change” in America if Trump is elected again.

      Fucking abortion rights were taken away because enough people didn’t show up to vote against trump, and now the Supreme Court is a joke. That’s a change.

      Just dumb.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    As if populist know-nothings like republicans, whipped into a mindless frenzy by parasites like murdoch and the orange mirror-licker don’t pose a clear and present danger.
    Global warming? LeT’s BaN sOLaR pAnELs AnD eLeCtRiC cArS and sAvE tHe cOaL iNdUsTrY!

    Meanwhile, those who sit their lazy asses at home on Election Day, lovingly fondling their purity then sniffing their fingers:
    bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe

    So above it all, sophisticated… waiting for a charismatic messiah with a magic wand to change things and political inertia overnight, to come into their living rooms and massage their shoulders.

    No sir, that’s not thinking like medieval peasants who fancy themselves to be at the center of the goddamned universe, not at all. Everybody gets a trophy, with no effort but on one ballot they cast in 2008 and 2008 only, for Obama!

    Here’s a hint: Democrats are more government nerds, republicans are anti-science fascists. Democrats are imperfect but flexible, republicans are relentlessly greedy, hate-filled, destructive.

    It’s difficult to get positive long-term things done if non-voters keep pouting and crossing their arms, letting toxic republicans keep on goose-stepping into all our lives, with enough power to sabotage any and all positive Democrat initiatives, over and over and over again.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Look up The Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell.

    Falwell’s people took over the GOP with a simple grass roots strategy. If the local GOP club got an average twenty people at their monthly meetings, the MMs would show up with fifty. They made sure they nominated every dog catcher, county clerk, and school board member they could. After a few cycles the party elders began to see that they didn’t run things anymore.

    You vote, you keep voting, and you make usre your neighbors are voting, too.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    8 months ago

    I came here to argue against this increasingly-transparent “please don’t vote” propaganda being posted here coincidentally in this leftist community, and here’s this unanimous comment section already on the case 😃

    • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 months ago

      Nobody is saying don’t vote, I’ll be voting as I have in every election, including in the 2024 primary and general.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        8 months ago

        Nothing will fundamentally change

        F Biden

        I could see a lot of Dem voters just staying home instead

        Many Arab-Americans in Michigan (and across the country) are running an “Abandon Biden” message

        Nobody is saying don’t vote

        (Edit: That’s are all quotes of yours from the last 1 day which I would roughly summarize as “don’t vote.”)

              • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                8 months ago

                Working to oust the establishment Democrats and push the remainder to the left sounds great. Increasing fairness in the voting system sounds great. Protest outside the voting system sounds great. Lots of things aside from just pulling the lever for the least-bad guy are actually extremely impactful.

                None of that changes the fact that voting for a third party in this election is functionally equivalent to sitting at home waiting for it all to get better on its own which is functionally equivalent to handing Trump the keys to the FBI and the nuclear codes and hoping it all goes okay. For that reason I feel just as comfortable criticizing a vote for a third party (in the general election) as I do a non-vote, both in terms of whether it’s a good idea to spread propaganda about it online, and whether it’s a good idea to do it when the time comes.

          • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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            8 months ago

            Edit: Sure. Here are the full text of some quotes from you from today, which to me effectively boil down to “don’t vote”:

            Which Democrats are actually Leftist and not just centrist or Republican-lite? Bernie? AOC? We tried and the Dem party/oligarchy shut that down real quick.

            Trump and the GOP is the enemy. Biden and the Democrats, to me, are also the enemy to the people because they want the status quo to continue. “Nothing will fundamentally change.” I feel we’re going to get fascism either way. One is accelerated and the other is a slow death march.

            F Trump and F Biden. Both don’t care about the people.

            I don’t think many will go from voting Dem to Trump but I could see a lot of Dem voters just staying home instead.

            Many Arab-Americans in Michigan (and across the country) are running an “Abandon Biden” message over Biden’s handling of the Gaza genocide.

  • 1ostA5tro6yne
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    8 months ago

    ITT people interpret weariness of fear-based politics as propaganda, for some reason. i can’t witchall no more, can’t criticize shit, only fearmonger, or you must be working for the other team.

  • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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    8 months ago

    This is a pretty stupid point. Increasingly consequential national elections are exactly what you would expect in a country that, like ours, has become increasingly polarized since the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. The right keeps getting crazier and crazier, so of course the stakes keep going up.

    Edit; it’s also, simultaneously, to be expected that in a politically polarized country, in which each side has roughly equal electoral power, that no radical change will occur.

  • heavy@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    The right to vote is a hard fought privilege that we should be excited to exercise every chance we get. This post is a poor perspective of voting as it implies some huge cost to go out and vote for the person you feel is right for the job. There’s something to be said about making it easier to vote and giving people time, but we can’t get there if people don’t vote.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I think the main problem is the pro-voting folks go all nuts saying that voting is SUPER IMPORTANT and you HAVE TO DO IT or EVIL THINGS WILL HAPPEN.

    I’ve been voting nonstop for 24 years. There hasn’t been any really huge change because of it. Even when the bad guy wins.

    Voting should feel less like an epic struggle for the soul of a nation, and more like paying your taxes. You have to do it, but you don’t have people screaming at you for the preceding 18 months about how meaningful and important it is only for nothing to really change. No matter who wins on election day I still have to go to work the next day, the sun is still going to rise, and America will kill brown people.

    Edit: Maybe the reason I don’t feel like voting is that effective is that I don’t really have anyone to vote for, just against.

    • AdaA
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      8 months ago

      There hasn’t been any really huge change because of it. Even when the bad guy wins.

      That perfectly encapsulates the idea privilege.

      The lives of people who lack those privileges have changed

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        If that’s the case, why are so many people, regardless of privilege, still miserable? If voting fixed things, shouldn’t things be getting fixed? Because it doesn’t seem that way to me.

        • AdaA
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          8 months ago

          I didn’t say voting fixes anything. It doesn’t, especially in first past the post two party systems.

          I’m saying that the idea that nothing changes is only something you could say if you aren’t a member of any of the many demographics that are actively getting their rights stripped away.

          Voting may not do much to make things better, but it can absolutely make it magnitudes worse for vulnerable folk.

          • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            Absolutely. We don’t get to vote for “better” in America. We get “less worse” and “more worse.” Voting for less worse just makes sense.

            But if you convince people they’re voting for “better” and they don’t get it, I don’t blame them for not voting again.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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          8 months ago

          I know multiple people the entire arc of whose lives were changed by the Obama-era immigration policies. Want me to ask them to tell you how wrong you are?

          • Sybil@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            the deporter in chief? si, se puede? Obama is a border-hawking, bomb-dropping torture supervisor who extra judicially murdered people on his kill list.

            do you know any of those people?

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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              8 months ago

              Whataboutism says what

              I know one guy who got to stay in the US under DACA, and I know one guy who was fighting a legal battle to stay in the country when Obama came into office, and he said fighting his case got easier under Obama. He’s still here now (he stayed in limbo for a pretty extended length of time, and eventually got married which resolved the issue).

              I am not an expert. I don’t know which column of this table the second guy would fit into, or whether the huge reductions in the second column mean that the “deporter in chief” nickname is an unfair characterization based on the relatively-smaller increases in the first column. I just know he said his case got easier.

              What do you know about it? What are your sources of information?

              • Sybil@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                it’s not whataboutism to say Obama deported, killed, and tortured people. it’s a fact, and it’s relevant when discussing his legacy.

                • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                  8 months ago

                  What are your sources of information, specifically about his deportations and his immigration policy? Are you basing this on “everyone knows” type of knowledge, and finding it superior to someone relaying to you (edit: firsthand) secondhand knowledge and a cited source with an argument?

    • Zorque@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Voting is a cumulative effort. It really only works if more than just you vote. One vote is a pebble on a beach. A hundred million is a landslide. Getting discouraged because your one vote didn’t enact real lasting change is insanely prideful.

      And just because nothings changed for you doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed for others. Theres hundreds of millions of people in the country, all with their own struggles and challenges. Just because you didn’t get yours doesn’t mean their hasn’t been positive (or negative) change.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        Which is exactly the opposite message of all the GOTV efforts I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying don’t vote. I’m saying don’t make it such a huge fucking deal, and lower your expectations of what it’s actually going to get done.

        I’m far, far less discouraged with this attitude than the one where I really, honestly believed something will happen because I filled in a box on a piece of paper.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      8 months ago

      the pro-voting folks

      I beg of you to go live in a society which doesn’t have voting in its government. Just for like a short time. It’s incredibly instructive, and will give a reality-check to this idea that you seem to have that things are so bad right now that there’s not even any point in choosing a better future or a worse one. Things may or may not be better with Biden, but they will absolutely be much, much worse with Trump.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        I shouldn’t have said “pro-voting.” I’m pro-voting. I think we should be voting for our bosses. I just think that this system makes voting pretty ineffective.

        But it’s an election year, and nobody’s allowed to dissent in an election season or they’re Russian plants so I’ll just shut up and feel completely alienated from the people who live around me, and now everyone on the Internet.

        Just like every other election year.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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          8 months ago

          Sometimes people are going to disagree with you, when you post opinions on the internet. It is ok; it doesn’t mean we’re against you.

          • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            Not against. Alien. Like everybody loses their damn minds every four years.

            Nothing makes me feel less like an American than an election.

  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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    8 months ago

    Most people are (probably correctly) treating this like attempted vote suppression by people who will definitely vote for other interests in 2024, or who otherwise stand to benefit from low US voter turnout.

    But I’ll take a shot at the premise: it’s suspicious that subsequent elections could be “the most important.”

    But it’s not really odd for “the most” to follow a previous “the most.” You are the oldest you’ve ever been today, and tomorrow you’ll be the oldest you’ve ever been. That will continue for your whole life. Most heartbeats ever. Most breaths ever. The longest modern humans have ever existed. The most times around the Sun Earth has ever traveled. On and on and on.

    There are more humans in America today than 4 years ago. Even if importance of an election to an average American is roughly the same, the aggregate import to all combined is going to be significantly higher.

    The real secret is that I think it will ALWAYS be the case that the next election is more important than the current one. But we only get to keep having elections if we keep voting.

  • Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone
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    8 months ago

    A lot great stuff could happen except the GOP won’t let it. In the cases that something good does squeal through, the GOP takes credit and then does their best to destroy it as soon as they can.

    Progressive care for society vs Dark money greed fueling hatred at false targets.