36
votes
USA: "The undecided voters are not who you think they are"
Link information
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- Title
- The Undecided Voters Who Could Decide the 2024 Election
- Authors
- Ronald Brownstein
- Published
- Sep 26 2024
- Word count
- 2340 words
This is the underlying mechanic behind every election. Only about 39% of voters are registered democrats, 30% are republicans, and the rest are "independents" that are all over the map and usually apathetic. Elections are a game of convincing that non-partisan crowd to actually come out and vote. (Or, more commonly for Republicans, stopping unaffiliated voters from voting...)
https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_affiliations_of_registered_voters
That's how we get "swing states." They're just states that have a larger portion of those unaffiliated voters and lower political engagement, so tipping the scale results in winning a state, while most states' demographics are entrenched enough that an out of trend outcome is unlikely.
On another platform a guy wrote that he is voting for the first time in his life, in his 30s.
I asked him why he never voted before.
He said he didn't see it as having anything to do with his life.
I still don't grok that.
I wonder if he grew up in a subculture that taught him not to be concerned about anything that didn't effect him or his family directly.
I'm that guy, let the insults fly for not fighting your battles as I see they already are towards people like me. The way I've always viewed it, if people in office make my life harder, that gives me more fight. If they make it easier, it makes me lazier. In the end, I just don't care so much, I just want to live and let live. Conservatives tend to do this better when it comes to stemming certain tyranny from government, liberals tend to do it better when it comes to tyranny from religion and weird societal expectations. But this is the first election I actually thought about voting although I'm still very apathetic. If it takes an idiot like me to keep America from going down, its trouble is endemic and the best thing to do is just see if it sinks or swims. It'll either come out much stronger or sink; either can be exciting and either is deserved.
And yeah, people will chide me for not caring but that's a deeper issue. I'm struggling enough just to fix myself, let alone a country and you want me to also fight your battles? Also there's many personal issues that can't be fixed by telling other people what to do, ie, voting. No matter where you go, there you are. You can leave a place but problems are still the same, sometimes the biggest problems are local. It's so many factors that people don't think about when they denigrate non-voters, it just makes me want to vote less if it makes those kinds of people pissed off for not fighting their battles. There's lots of political soldiers trying to manipulate and control people to choose sides in all these silly political games, little of which I want nothing to do with. I also realize you can't avoid it to some extent so I'd eventually vote if I had to but if it pisses off people that I don't vote, people who seem obsessed with controlling other people, then that's my vote.
You approach voting as if you're being told a sales pitch, that seems to be part of the divide we have.
I vote because it's the highest ratio of impact to effort I can do without making my entire life revolve around it. We can debate the impact but when everything I could do is higher effort I may as well do what I can.
I'm also lazy so I'm just optimizing my citizenry. I spend a few hours reading various opinions but... Well, if I considered a few hours of reading effort I wouldn't be here on Tildes, would I?
Our battles. We didn't start the fire, but we're all stuck here together regardless. It's not fair but life's never fair.
If it helps, I'm African American, so me and I imagine many of us were raised to Vote because not even a century ago, we would have NOT had the choice. Blood was spilt to give us that choice, from people who may still be walking in this earth today. We were taught that being quiet about the status quo is accepting it, and I do not currently accept it.
I won't tell you how to go about life of course. I'm just explaining my mindset. Voting for me is my way to defy the tradition of the old ways, because those old guards are also still alive. The oldest boomers would have been full adults during the Civil rights movement, so inevitably not all of them would have changed their minds.
This is the most-correct answer.
If one is apathetic and jaded by the status quo, their butt should be in the ballot box every election hitting the third-party button or the anti-incumbent button. It's like the absolute bare minimum and takes less than 5 hours out of the year.
Otherwise, the non-vote is saying "I accept the way things are."
It might be more accurate to say that you accept whatever the outcome of the election will be, whatever it is. That often does include changes.
But suppose you do vote. What happens after the election? You accept the outcome, whatever it is. It's the same thing!
Accepting the outcomes of elections isn't necessarily bad. This is what elections are for; they're a peaceful change in government. After the election, if enough people don't accept the election results and act on that dissatisfaction, we don't have a democracy anymore.
There have been large, noisy minorities who didn't accept election results, but protesting them didn't change the results for George W. Bush or for Trump (either time). Not enough people joined, and that's probably a good thing. We want people to accept the election results because the alternative is worse.
So it's kind of a weird situation: we want people to not be apathetic, so they vote, but then, after voting, it's ok to go back to ignoring politics again. And that's fine? Most people don't need to be as obsessed about politics as we are.
I think voting out of tradition is as good a reason as any.
I'm not talking 'rejecting the results of a democratic election.' Accepting a loss is a neccessary part of democracy functioning.
When I say "Accepting the way things are," I'm specifically referring to peoples saying things like "what's the point both parties are the same," when that is both objectively not true and a false dichotomy that voting third party is useless.
Further evidence for all the doubters: In 2023, a third party accrued enough votes to oust a Republican minority seat in Philadelphia's city council, further weakening their political influence on the area.
This kind of thing is made nearly impossible by apathetic voters who check out.
If there's a ballot question to pass a law, say to give voting rights to women, not voting is the same as voting against it. In that same way, not voting against the staus quo is an acceptance of it.
well that's why we have entire organizations dedicated to being obsessed with politics. It's a full time job to organize people, traverse policy, and introduce bills to propose to representatives. They are the reason we even have bills to vote on in the election. Those took years of advocacy.
It's hard to expect everyone to spend whatever free time is left in helping with that. Plus it can be come too many cooks (you want a lot of people to be aware, not necessarily to help draft the policy. I'm sure many white collars can recall some drafting meeting that could have been done quicker without a democracy).
Try 6+ months if you're an expat, your last state of residence doesn't have e-voting, and you are required to use a bizarre and shitty combination of local and embassy mail for sending registration and ballots back and forth.
While I do think most all of those things should be easier (except e-voting), I don't exactly consider it highest priority because if you're not living in the USA anyway, you should be voting in your local elections of your residence and not your country of origin. I'm aware that it doesn't work that way right now, but it probably should.
Firstly, a huge portion of people who vote from abroad are not abroad permanently, so it's silly to insist that they should no longer be able to vote in US elections. Secondly, the US still taxes citizens living abroad, so the bare minimum we should have is the right to vote in elections. Thirdly, voting from abroad includes federal elections, not just local ones, which absolutely affect citizens living abroad to a massive extent. Finally, non-citizens in most places can't vote even in local elections, so you're essentially arguing that people like me should be unrepresented in two democracies that hold massive control over policies that affect our lives, rather than just one.
"Actually we should make voting by mail harder for a subset of people because I don't think they matter" is a bad take.
I didn't say we should make it harder (except evoting, which is impossibly fraught with problems), I said it's not high priority. I did also explicitly state that you should be able to vote in those local elections, regardless of citizenship, because residency is far more important. Not that you can, and that's an utter failure of the systems in question.
Ex-pat does have connotations of permanently not living in the country of citizenship though.
Whether "expat" is used to mean temporary resident in another country or just an immigrant from a rich country varies based on context, but is 100% irrelevant because I never used the word "expat" or referred to specifically to expats in my comment. I simply pointed out that a lot of US overseas voters later return to live in the US. This is objectively true -- especially given that members of the military and their families are a huge subset of US voters abroad. "Overseas voters" as category includes any US citizen who's otherwise eligible to vote who resides permanently or temporarily outside the US during the election.
No, but the person I was replying to did.
And while their process is onerous as stated, on the whole it's still relatively streamlined with mail-in voting.
I don't understand? How would I vote in elections for a country where I am not a citizen?
I don't know if that's what vord means, but at least in Sweden you're allowed to vote in your municipality election as long you live there. No requirements on citizenship.
This is highly variable based on location. Here in Germany, at least, that's only true for EU citizens. I have no voting rights here. And, to be fair, removing the ability of non-citizens to vote in local elections was on a recent Ohio ballot (and passed despite me voting against it, unfortunately).
Hear me out: If you've got say a yearlong lease and a long-term visa, you should be able to register to vote.
In the USA, you can register to vote in most states if you've lived there at least 6 months and have proof of residency (and US citizenship). That should be sufficient to participate in the democratic process regardless of citizenship.
Why not just leave them alone instead of telling them what they should be doing with their lives? If you use the excuse that the other guy is trying to tell them what to do with their life, perhaps what he thinks is for the good, and you think you should be viewed as different and not trying to control their lives either, then you just don't get it. Ordering them to vote is just really out of touch if you're trying to manipulate that same crowd.
While I understand what you're saying, there's a solid argument for mandatory voting like Brazil and Australia. If we truly believe democracy is about trying to represent the will of the people, shouldn't everyone participate?
I do think that with mandatory voting there should always be a "fuck this I don't like these options" option, as well as a "this isn't important to me" option. But there are all types of matters on the ballot and even if you opt out of most you might find a certain ballot measure or local political battle to be relevant to you.
Well yeah, I'm in favor of forcing everyone to submit a ballot, but everyone should also have the option to spoil their ballot and go with "none of the above". I just think there are a ton of upsides for mandatory voting when it comes to things like ballot measures etc.
Currently you can no-vote, but that could mean too many things. It's nice to have an option that separates people that want more choices and people that just don't care.
Eh. As long as a voter can submit a ballot with just their name, that seems good enough.
The will of the masses? What about the will of the masses who don't just want to live to, by and for themselves without others forcing them to make decisions on others' lives? That'd get me to vote, I guess, so tyranny of the masses has less chance of prevailing.
Yep, it's some degree of tyranny just like speed limits, drunk driving laws, medical regulations, etc. So it goes living in a society where people influence other people.
Aka, things which keep others from being harmed. And other people use that excuse to do things I'm sure you don't like, "for your own good" or for the good of their gods, their religion, their views, etc. You're doing me a disservice by not acknowledging you may fall in the same category.
Oh I'm fully aware. It's not a perfect system but nothing is perfect, so everyone makes the best decisions they can. We all have our own unique beliefs and experiences. I sincerely believe that mandating people show up at the ballot box and submit something (could even be blank) is important enough to make it a government mandate.
I'm aware of the potential harms and know you don't agree with me and that's fine. I really appreciate you sharing your opinions on Tildes and discussing these things.
You make decisions about other peoples' lives no matter what. Even living off-grid, out in the woods. You generate waste, you consume resources, you impact people figuratively and literally downstream of your existence. Better to do it in an informed, responsible way.
I'm not ordering them to vote with a gun to their head. I'm judging them. Pointing out the error of their ways, and when they say 'nothing ever gets better' I can list off numerous reasons why they're part of the problem. Like a student complaining about their classes being too hard, but they spend all their evenings getting high instead of trying.
If all the non-voters voted Green Party to protest instead of not voting, we'd have a Green Party president. Let that sink in for a bit.
If all the non-voters split between Libertarian and Green, both parties would be eligible for federal campaign funds from the tax coffers, drastically improving their ability to compete.
You can't call yourself a gay ally if you don't vote against anti-gay politicians. Especially if you're in any remotely swingy area. Even voting third party is a vote against bigots. Or writing in. It's a signal that you're a voter who cares enough to vote, but aren't swayed by the major parties.
Even if you end up voting for a bigot in an anti-incumbent stance, you're sending signals that you're not happy with the status quo. Incumbancy is one of the most powerful forces for staying in office, and helping buck that trend is still helping, even if its in a fairly invisible way like picking a piece of trash off the ground when nobody is watching.
I don't know, it sure seems popular according to the other comment the idea of legally forcing people to vote, ie, vote or you will go to prison. This is the tribalism I'm talking about where one party pretends to be the "good" guy yet doesn't understand how it negatively affects another person who just peacefully wants to live.
Australia requires people to vote, among a number of other countries.
The penalty for not voting isn't prison. It's a relatively small fine.
From the Australian Electoral Commission
It's reasonable to at least consider comparable systems rather than the most extreme possible scenarios.
In my mind, even a fine is extreme. It's entirely ablest against people who have a hard time deciding who to vote for or if even to vote at all. Maybe those people have mental issues, intellectual issues, too depressed to care, etc. If you force those people you'll just get an inaccurate, perhaps even unwanted outcome, the same when people force other people to be "nice". You'll get what you want, it may not even be authentic, so be careful. It's just entirely an obtuse way of trying to manipulate others into voting.
People here seem to virtue signal compassion yet where's the compassion for non-voters? It's totally insane and ridiculous to me that even not doing anything in that regard is seen as contentious and implies an underlying maliciousness that people aren't comfortable with exposing otherwise; it's hypocritical of people who want to come across as "good" people.
The fine doesn't force you to vote, it forces you to show up at the polling station. If you don't want to vote, then just draw a dick on your ballot then dump it in the box.
This whole thread is Finest American Brainrot, mandatory voting is a fact of life here and the sky hasn't fallen, and it makes vote-suppression (which the US is facing profound problems with) a whole lot harder.
Being against neutrality and speaking ill to those who wish to not assign themselves to tribes or else you denigrate them, that's "brainrot". Mandatory voting isn't a fact of life in the US and speaking for myself, I'm not suppressed as a voter. Those kinds of laws also suppress the minority group of people who don't want to vote, what about their rights? As I said before, this mindset is just meaningless virtue signalling. Making laws to force people to do things because others think it's for their own good, or just as well for the good of the lawmakers and not necessarily the suppressed minority group of those who don't want to vote. Hypocrisy at its finest European (if you want to denigrate nationals) brainrot.
I'll not press the issue, but just wanted to say that I (and perhaps others) have a difficult time with the idea that not voting constitutes any kind of neutrality. In my mind, the two concepts are orthogonal… one can be a neutral voter or partisan abstinent.
I might be entirely wrong but I get the sense that there's a few disconnects like this in the comment chain that might be throwing a wrench into communication.
Like with infinities, there's different kinds of neutralities too that reside in different domains. I'm not saying anyone else isn't "neutral" either, it's semantics I don't care to argue. Is "left alone" a better term that will help you understand my mindset and maybe others who don't vote?
I'm also arguing that even if I'm a complete dumbass, which I may be, and can't articulate myself well, that I should still have the right to not be pushed to a voting booth or join a political army if I don't want to. Or if I'm too dumb to figure it, too depressed to care, and so on, the reason should be moot. Even if I can't articulate well my reasons, I think it should still be respected. I shouldn't have to explain and a person sufficiently capable of understanding non-voter motives would figure it out, it's the ones who can't figure out those people who seem to have a problem. The Amish get respect for staying out of the insanity of the modern world, why can't some of us get respect for staying out of the insanity of the modern political world?
It sounds like you don't think people should have any duties as citizens at all? How do you feel about jury duty? Paying taxes?
How do you feel about being forced to serve people? How would you feel 200 years ago about certain groups being forced to serve people? Oh, but you're for slavery as long as it's done equally? Well jury duty, taxes, etc aren't done equally; there's much corruption in the system and a lot of it is just human behavior that can't always be legislated away. It's not an easy question.
...all of which can only be addressed by participating in the political process. You won't just wake up one day in the Platonic ideal of government.
Rather than making an abstract comparison between voting and slavery, I would prefer to instead look at what a voter physically has to do and say it’s just paperwork. Multiple choice, with no penalty for wrong answers or leaving questions blank. A child could do it, if they were allowed.
But it seems clear that it has symbolic meaning that you feel strongly about.
To me it's not so much the physical effort but the chastising, which I feel even more strongly about now because I didn't think it was so contentious and controversial to not vote but now I see, considering all the people arguing against me. It represents the same bully mentality that spawns slavery and in worse times when war is upon us, the neutral can get treated like slaves. So I admit, there's no escape from the political drama, especially when it gets bad, but neutrality or being a conscientious political objector is a hill I'll die on and for others who just want society to fuck off without having to be engaged in these crazy political battles.
There's conscientious objectors of war, individuals and groups, and they generally get respected for their views. Why shouldn't non-voters get respect for abstaining from the crazy?
I'm going to be honest, you really just seem to have a victim mentality in this thread. You pop in to tell us your viewpoint and then call it bullying when anyone questions the logic of your arguments.
There's not a lot of questioning the logic, and more just telling them their logic is bad. This comes across as though people don't want to understand them, they want to tell them they're wrong. There might be a few comments that don't go at it this way, but there's a lot that do.
My concern is there's not a lot of logic involved, there's a lot of identifying as a victim, from the jump of them entering the conversation, but the comments shifted from "people here are treating me this way" to " not here but any where" and "I'm not being manipulated here I'm upset about being manipulated in the outside world" to "I'm being manipulated on Tildes" and back again. A lot of "you claim to be nice but you're being mean to me" by disagreeing. A lot of associating themself with victims such as of slavery or how their neutrality is like being neutral during WW2. They have/had a lot of misconceptions about voting at all.
And they're still free to make the choice not to vote, but tbh I was really trying to engage and it was not a productive conversation. So I'm sure they do feel persecuted here and elsewhere, but the idea of how a threat against anyone is a threat against them because someone might think they agree with that person... That's a terrifying place to live in, and not someplace I can get to rationally. In fact, it's an argument, I think, to take a stand if not having one puts one at such risk. Being disagreed with sucks, but it's still not persecution. And I see little point in trying to convince someone who insists that being pressured will make them vote against their actual wants/interests, or that if we "made" people vote we'd be sorry or something.
From the comments I had read, I had developed an understanding that the person seems to have a lot of personal and/or life struggles (which to be fair, many of us have in some form or another), and I chose to interpret through that lens that they simply lack the capacity to deal with problems outside of ones they're already dealing with that feel overwhelming enough as it is.
Now that may be entirely off base and not what they intended to convey, I'm not trying to function as an interpreter or translator, but I interpret it that way for a few reasons. For one, I do see evidence to support that viewpoint based on what they said, two because I think it gives more benefit of the doubt than many of the other comments that immediately jump down their throat even though its a person who already said they're struggling.
To me much of those threads that spawned from that initial comment seems like going up to a homeless person and criticizing them for not helping others out. I'm not saying buddha is homeless, I'm saying that based on what they said, it seems to me that they're overwhelmed in their own life and then because people judge before they even know what a person is going through, the conversation necessarily gets defensive. It's not necessarily even representative of why many people don't vote, so the logic of deriding someone for having what you view as either a harmful or negligent perspective is just odd to focus that much energy onto a person.
I get that isn't how they explained it initially, and I'm using comments that came after the initial one to come to that opinion that I explained above, but I think it happened that way because people weren't asking questions or questioning the logic, the discussion became adversarial in nature.
I do agree that they expressed dealing with quite a bit, but I think they came seeking controversy and argument based on their very first post in this thread. Which again is their choice but I'm not terribly sympathetic to "hey everyone, hate me" followed by "why do you all
disagree with mehate me?!"I got the same impression as you did in general, but I don't think that really accounts for the issues with the "argument" they made that I mentioned.
It's more like a person walked into the room full of people talking about how to help people and said "I'll never help people, go ahead and hate me for it!" They may indeed be homeless but that's not necessary obvious at first glance, and as you realize they are, you disengage some, but still want to help them. And then they say you're threatening them, or that all threats are to them. Or that this criticism is like slavery. And I know I'd disengage further. It's actually the internet of course so you may be willing to stick around more.
I respect and empathize with rough times, not for not voting or implied accusations, or misinformation.
This is where I think internet conversations tend to go bad, because there's an assumption of the worst in people. I mean to be fair, the internet has made it easy to make these assumptions because it's easy to say the worst things to troll people, but I did not get the impression that person was seeking controversy or trolling. Acknowledging that they were aware their statement was going to generate controversy and they posted anyhow could be taken to mean they were seeking controversy, but it could also be taken as they wanted to share their perspective and perhaps they feel alienated and were anticipating a response that would further alienate them. A lot of their remarks do express some alienation as I interpreted it. I'm not trying to armchair psychoanalyze but rather consider a perspective that is reasonable enough to be possible and giving more credit to the person behind the words than many of these other comments.
I surely wasn't trying to make it super contextually accurate when I used the example that way as it would quickly go off the rails to make it contextually accurate, obviously they chose to post rather than someone going up to them unsolicited to criticize them as I initially phrased it, but they also chose to post in response to a comment where someone says they don't understand and wondered why someone might not vote. I would say that is a pretty big distinction.
I didn't assume the worst, this is a retrospective analysis of the situation. As I said, I engaged in good faith, and I wanted to have conversation but in the moment wasn't't able to really do that with a constantly shifting narrative.
"Let the insults fly for not fighting your battles" (emphasis mine) was not just an anticipation of controversy in my opinion. Its an oppositional stance. I've made plenty of oppositional stances. It's not a value judgement about them. They definitely expressed alienation and actively pushed people away but whether they're feeling that way or not, good faith efforts at conversation are difficult they feel threatened by literally anything, per their own words.
If Tildes is supposed to be where we don't assume the worst, that'd be incumbent on that poster as well.
And framed "voting" as "fighting your battles" and compared their experience to that of slavery. I don't believe the fault of the conversation going awry is the responses to those comments. I don't think the conversation was necessarily going awry, just that the person in question came in hot and didn't like the response. Which was mostly to have a conversation with them about the thing they seemed to want to talk about.
I reframed the hypothetical because they walked into the room, they made the big statement, and they then kept changing the conversation and made some statements I don't think made a ton of sense. And felt persecuted for that. I didn't see that happening here.
Anyway, I hold zero ill will, but I do put the responsibility for the conversation taking such weird turns and ending in slavery and WW2 comparisons on them. No one here can make them vote or is going to threaten them on the grounds they "could" hold any POV.
Conscientious objectors of war aren't abstaining from the political process, they are actively participating in it—subversively and dangerously. Many conscientious objectors still vote.
It may be prudent to familiarize yourself with the history and experience of conscientious objection. Many Quakers and other pacifists have faced execution, imprisonment, severe fines, destitution, and job loss for refusing to fight in wars. If young men today refuse to register for the Selective Service for moral reasons, they face felony charges, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and lose access to many government-sponsored benefits. (Alternative Service exists, but requests may be rejected.) When modern Quakers refuse to pay war taxes, they are committing themselves to a lifetime of harassment from the IRS, litigation and risk of incarceration, and poverty.
In contrast, non-voters are ignoring the political process. They don't personally suffer meaningful targeted injustice because of not voting. Being chastised for not voting is simply not comparable.
Non-voters still benefit from political decisions like public infrastructure (roadways, electricity, plumbing, internet, etc.), public education, healthcare, regulations protecting public health, social security retirement benefits, disability benefits, economic policies like anti-monopoly laws, non-discrimination and worker protection rights, and other matters that activists have fought and died for. It is privileged to accept all of those societal benefits and not participate in the voting process, especially when many of those benefits are at risk of being dismantled. Procedurally speaking, voting is simple, speedy, unobtrusive, anonymous, non-violent, can optionally be done by mail or absentee, and has no inherent negative consequences.
In Quaker consensus-based decision-making, a neutral vote is called "standing aside consensus." It is functionally different than not participating in quorum.
I think we're probably working off different frames of reference for what things like voting means. To a lot of people here, elections matter because there are some politicians that will actually harm Tildes users through their policies and actions.
To many people, politicians like Trump are bullies, and by not voting against him, you are choosing to be a bystander that does nothing. You're certainly welcome to be a bystander that does nothing when the bully starts bullying (in fact, "didn't vote" would win almost every federal election), but many people will feel personally harmed and slighted that bystanders have chosen to do nothing about the bullying they're seeing.
Nothing is a perfectly valid philosophical choice, and I don't even think elections are the most important thing you can do socially (that'd be helping friends, family, and community). Still, it's a painful choice to many people because it really does feel like someone is telling you, "I don't want to do anything about you being bullied." The judgement is basically: "You're not simply 'abstaining from the crazy'. You're choosing not to help the hurt and needful when they're asking for the bare minimum." I'm sure you don't see it that way, but that's how these things can feel.
You’re getting dogpiled here which is not pleasant. Keep in mind, though, that it’s just other people chatting on the Internet, even if it’s rather a lot to deal with. Nobody here has the power to change things.
It seems like a good time to take a break.
Without jury duty, taxes, or voting on how to fix those systems, how could society possibly function?
I can make the same arguments for your choices if I exaggerate them to great degree as you do mine. There's degrees, discretion, nuances and contexts in my opinions, it's not that I want society to do the same thing I'm doing the same way and the same degrees and such; I'm not telling others what to do or not to do here other than it shouldn't be so controversial to not vote. Besides, many things would be bad if we all did them. If you had everyone being teachers, society wouldn't function either because it just can't function when we all have the same role. You're not giving a good faith argument when you argue to those extremes.
My intention wasn't to exaggerate. It seems that I'm misunderstanding you. Are you not against the current implementation of taxes and jury duty, as well as disinclined to vote to change them? If you believe that some people should vote but not yourself, what is it that makes them different from you? If you believe that it's okay that no one vote, then how could society function? If anything that I've said seems not representative of your opinions, that's due to a misunderstanding on my part and is not willful, and I would appreciate clarification.
I didn't even advocate for it, I just suggested not claiming the outcome is "prison" because that's not accurate. Find it as extreme as you like.
Compulsory voting generally comes along with making it very easy to vote as well as having options to select no one. It's far less ableist than our current system IMO. And its bad form to use "insane" from an ableism perspective. It's weird to me to use the outcome of required voting as a threat. I'm not advocating for it, again, but yeah the people who support it find that they do get the outcome they want, which is for the citizenry to vote. That's the outcome.
Using the term virtue signal implies, and your later sentence basically states, that you don't find that compassion to be a real emotion. I don't think anyone is trying to convince you they're a good person. I don't want to convince anyone of my "goodness." My empathy for individuals isn't related to their voting. I think people should vote. I would still have empathy for them, but it's unrelated to their voting status. They don't really get empathy for "not voting" in the same way I don't really have empathy for someone for "not skateboarding.". Not doing something you don't want to do is fine.
I think you may have an idea of this narrative in your head that isn't accurate to the reality of this thread.
What I'm speaking about isn't entirely related to this thread, I'm speaking of the greater, it's human behavior in general when you don't choose sides. Look at WWII, sometimes no fucks given if neutral and in other times they treated you more harshly because for some, if not for, they see you as against. That is what I'm speaking about in the underlying maliciousness toward neutrality. If you're not for, you can be seen as being the worst of the other party. When you're neutral you can be seen as the worst of both parties. It's not generally seen as an entirely benign position but I contend it should be in a rational world.
If you're neutral about someone else's suffering it seems entirely reasonable to me that they think you callous and cruel. Bringing up WWII is such an odd choice. Of course if you're neutral to the idea of someone being dragged off to a camp to die, they'll find that stance upsetting. People should be against other people being dragged off to camps to die!
Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to a stated position of neutrality, rather than the action of voting or abstaining. I'm not referring to seeing someone being harmed and saying "this is terrible but I don't believe that voting will prevent it" or "I don't feel confident in my understanding of the situation in order to vote in a way that would make it better". I'm referring to seeing someone being harmed and saying "I have no opinion on this."
My view, no one should ever get upset if people don't fight for you, if people don't love you, if people don't care for you. I'm not so self-obsessed that I expect anyone to love me or fight for me; I fight my own battles. And yes, I will fight for someone being abused or bullied as I know how that is. Just don't expect it because some of the worst evil is manipulating yourself and others into thinking innocence (abstinence from political positions) is evil. You seem to want to care for people yet you forget about those suffering so much that they're absorbed in their own struggles in life and can't stay afloat on who the latest person is that we should be offended by and aren't educated enough or care to be to know their views. Turn on the news, they're trying to tell me who to hate. Turn on social media, same thing. Go to work, gossip is all about who's feelings are hurt by who's. God damn society, just stfu and deal with it and get on with life, I dgaf. Sorry for the rant but the last sentence is the nutshell; tired of having to explain myself so much.
It seems a bit like you want to be validated for choosing not to participate in a process that affects everyone's lives. You're not content with people saying "I don't think it's the right choice but do what you want I guess", which is about the lowest level of condemnation that can possibly exist. You want to be told that you are just as good as people who are putting effort, even just the tiniest bit, into making the world around them better, when you refuse to do the same. You feel that if we refuse to do so, we're hypocrites, because the world is not already perfect for you. Maybe this is me misunderstanding you. I've read all of your comments and this is as clear a picture as I can get.
You won't "fight my battles" by requesting an absentee ballot and bubbling in a few choices once every few years? That's your right, do what you want, but it's awfully hypocritical to want to be validated for it.
To that end I'll leave you with this. Evil thrives when good people do nothing.
The wikipedia page
In the USA at least, one of the candidates is supporting the rapid deportation of over 5% of the entire population. If no other country will accept those millions of refugees, they end up in concentration camps.
Being neutral on someone's suffering isn't merely not loving them. It's not merely not caring for them. It is believing that their suffering is neither a problem, nor a positive. If you don't feel that someone is justified in being upset that you don't seem them being dragged to a concentration camp to die as a problem, then I don't think we can have a reasonable conversation.
I think if you wanted to advocate for neutrality you could have chosen anything but the war that is nearly universally agreed to be against a horrible evil. There's plenty to complain about in the war itself, and some countries had a gun to their heads on neutrality.
But I don't think that's in any way comparable to choosing not to vote in the United States.
If you're talking about a more general point, perhaps don't refer to "people here."
By "people here" I mean the general consensus of people that I've replied to. I don't mean it to be offensive but it's a true generalization of my experience here so far. And I think comparisons of human behavior that drive wars to some degree manifest to human behavior in less conflicting situations so it's noteworthy, imo.
In the culture wars, it's comparable to other wars for people who stay neutral because I just compared it and noticed similarities. If things got any worse you'd see people like me getting persecuted just as anyone else. My fight is just as valid as yours.
You misunderstand me. I'm not offended. But you have continued to switch back and forth between referencing conversations on Tildes vs the broader world. Has someone called you evil here? Declared you to be the enemy? You said you were denigrated, could you link the posts? I've read this thread but I could definitely have missed something.
I have not told you anything about "my fight", I said yours wasn't comparable to World War II, nor even remaining neutral in WW2.
I do encourage you to try to make changes, including at the ballot box, if you don't want "things" to get any worse. But the fact that anyone is vulnerable to persecution is why I am so personally opposed to the current persecution in the world, what has happened to many minority populations, can happen to anyone if those in charge want it to, so I personally vote for people that oppose those things.
Once again though you've adjusted the frame from Tildes to the world.
One argument in favor of mandatory voting is that the incentives to vote are so weak (for individuals) and yet it's a good thing collectively, so there needs to be an external incentive - to show up or vote by mail, not necessarily to spend any time studying it. After all, you don't get to opt out of paying taxes (unless you have little income), and that has similar importance.
But this would change the game considerably. Making it hard to vote and required to vote would clearly be a hardship.
It's not actually going to happen so this is just theoretical.
What about this is partisan?
If you want to get technical, it's partisan as even if you don't participate or want to, even the group of non-participators can be seen as a party. I'm recalling analogs to the paradoxes of Set theory.
This describes my feelings very well. Like anybody else, I'm busy and have my share of problems, but even so at the very least I can fill in and mail out the ballots that show up in my mailbox.
Shared feelings here too. Even as someone who'd probably fare the least badly in an extreme right-wing takeover scenario (straight cis white guy), there's friends, family, and strangers in passing who don't match that description who I don't want to see suffer as a result of my indifference. That's enough for this to be personal and not somebody else's battle.
I don't blame you for voting but these days, we're so politically decadent that even pronouns are a big issue. One hundred years ago some people were fighting for their lives, now we're fighting over pronouns. I try not to hate but it makes me want to hate people who care strongly one way or another when people like me are struggling just to stay alive, struggling to even care about life anymore, let alone care about voting. Maybe it's a mental issue that I don't vote but I guess you can vote to do something about those too mentally ill to care about voting; you can vote to "fix" me.
I won't die on many hills but I'll definitely die on this one, that I am as right as everyone else thinks they are, that I'm just as justified and valid in not giving a fuck about people trying to manipulate me on who I should hate or love, ie, politics. I want as neutral and peaceful life as I can live, free from political fighting and as much as I know it's impossible, it's an ideal worth fighting for in my own way to be my own party, my own brain, divorced of as much human emotional bias as I can. And of course I know tildes has a generally politically left leaning and it's something that brought me here, as well as the responses tend to be more thoughtful.
I grew up conservative so I don't feel I need to hear the right's views on things as I know it well and experienced it so I come to left-leaning chambers to get a more objective view. I got more liberalized as I got older and generally agree with tildes on many things but I also agree that neutrality should be a respected position. I do have people that irritate me, like the orange rich guy trying to manipulate everyone, but at the same time I just want some peace from all the insanity. If it's a problem that people stay away from problems you think are a problem and they don't, then soon you might have more problems.
I don't blame you for not being super educated about these types of issues or even for not voting necessarily, I think there are a lot of places we start out and where we end up. But this line of your post in particular does not come across as someone who's neutral about this issue. The vibe I get from this is that you resent this issue for existing, for forcing you to disrupt your status quo to give it attention. You view it as trivial at best, as a distraction from the concrete things that affect your life.
It feels like you resent those of us for whom this is not a trivial issue, for whom this is fighting for our very lives (and I cannot emphasize that framing it as such is not remotely hyperbole), because you don't want to feel obligated to care about something that doesn't affect you. I can't make you care. I'm not "trying to manipulate you" into giving a shit about whether me and my friends live or die or can't visit Florida ever again. But not caring about these issues and resenting people for wanting you to care is not the same thing as neutrality -- at least, not the type of neutrality that you want, the type that makes it somehow wrong for people to cast judgment upon the morality of your choices and beliefs. This is us struggling to stay alive.
Exactly.
Trans teens having their identity, and thus pronouns, accepted by their families cuts their suicide rate in half.
This is literally a fight for their lives.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I do care about trans people, probably moreso than the average person as I feel lots of empathy for them, I don't always feel according to my gender. I think a lot of the ridiculousness of it is the people who are offended by trans people. I guess it all comes down to your philosophy, do you believe in the greatest good for the greatest amount of people? That's democracy in a nutshell, sometimes tyranny of the masses which can bite us all individually. I don't know how I feel sometimes but I do know I feel much repulsion about people telling others on how they should feel.
I absolutely agree there's a lot of ridiculousness when it comes to people being offended by trans people -- but of course, being against that ridiculousness is also not neutral.
We've had single issue voters from centuries, so nothing new. That's choice in and of itself. I can't choose what they care about anymore than I can with you.
I'll just say that you can't stay neutral on a moving train. The train it's hitting it destination no matter what. You can get off when you want and choose your direction, or when the train line ends where it wants and the train makes you get off. Best of luck.
Ok, if I can't be neutral then I choose to go against the people who won't let me be and are making me choose. Like I said before, if you have a problem with people not having a problem and you force or manipulate others to have your same problem, you might have even more problems to come. You reap the manipulation you sow.
If you allow yourself to be manipulated out of spite, I'd say that's still manipulation. There are plenty of people who will tell you that X party is "making you" feel some kind of way. Wants to "force you" to do a particular thing. If I know I can make you pissed at one group by pretending to be them and telling you how to feel, then I've got the same remote control button on you that you're afraid of that group having.
If you truly have no conviction to vote, I'd personally rather you not vote at all, it isn't worth any of our time to convince you. I'm barely making ends meet myself, and I'm so exhausted half my office commented on it today. It can be hard to care about anything when you're exhausted.
I'd personally argue it's the time I have to care but that's for me. Philosophically I think everyone who can should vote. but practically it doesn't make sense to yell people into doing that.
In regards to the first part, do you honestly think there's a party here that's using reverse psychology to try to get me to not vote? Context matters and in this context, I think I've not been manipulated here to change my mind in any way that it wasn't before. Out in the wild, sure, I know there are parties trying to get certain groups to not vote.
Here on Tildes? No. My point stands that if you have a remote control button, even if it's a reverse one, you're still vulnerable to that manipulation. And most likely when you fall that way you were already disinclined to vote for that thing that pissed you off anyway. You said if pressed you'd vote against whoever you felt was manipulating you, I'm saying that's still being manipulated.
It's similar to the idea of when someone claims to be an ally, until they (perceived that they) are treated rudely and then decides they don't support X anymore. That's not true allyship. And if they can be swayed away from the moral principles by that (again usually perceived) rudeness, they didn't really hold that principle, they just claimed to for a variety of reasons. But with an added bonus of someone intentionally pushing those buttons (which, again, plenty of bad actors do)
Anyway, as I said, I don't care if you vote. No one here will know if you vote or not. You won't be persecuted or prosecuted for it.
Edit: wait in another comment you said all conversations are manipulation, so you do think you're being manipulated on Tildes?
Yes, to degrees as conversation manipulates neurons. You can manipulate someone to process an idea, a more benign form, which I mean in that context as opposed to greater ones which manipulate neurons which physically manipulate people. Again, context matters. And I'm not entirely against being manipulated either but I don't want to be forced or else I'm not against retorting the same, depending, with context, with nuance, with discretion, etc., it's not always so simple.
OP seemed to beg an answer for why people don't vote and that's what I've explained here yet no one here as reassured me that I'm ok with trying to maintain my own peace to not delve in politics and I've even gotten a few denigrational replies. That's just how toxic today's political atmosphere has become, that if you're neutral you're essentially evil and the enemy. That's just another thing wrong with society that can't be voted away because it's inherent in human behavior, that you have to have a discrete opinion or side or take part in society or else you're bad. To paraphrase Nietzsche, in trying to find monsters it's become a monster.
If we're not going to have an operant definition of manipulation this isn't going to be productive.
Multiple people have told you you're fine not to vote, and being told you should is not being told you're evil. I think you feel passionately about this but you're also sharing some inaccurate information/assumptions, and being disagreed with is not the monster at the heart of humanity.
You call me innacurate for saying people would call me evil for not choosing sides? I'm not just saying here on tildes but in general, it's something I've noticed. Yet tildes generally upvotes comments about trans lives being on the line, as harmless as they are, so there's definitely people that would harm me and assume I'm their enemy if I don't take sides on those issues. For every lift-threatening issue, those who are neutral can be threatened just the same for their neutrality and you downplay it like I'm not threatened either. Choose the worst of all sides, that's what the neutral middle gets accused of. Just looking at how much I've had to defend those who don't vote, it's very obvious here that many people aren't fine with non-voters.
And I don't see what I said as any less accurate than what you said. I'm not saying disagreeing with me is the monster of humanity. You're making many assumptions that I don't agree with.
You did indeed at least strongly imply that it was the conversations here you were speaking of, if you changed topics part way through your post it was unclear. Yes, there are people in the world who will call me evil too.
As harmless as who are in this context.
Barring once again some very extreme outliers - there are people in the world who would hurt me for wearing pants - no one is harming you for not commenting on trans rights. I'll be honest I don't understand not supporting trans rights, and I'll disagree with you if you don't. That's not persecution.
Well you were implying these threats were happening here. I was unable to find any statistics on threats to people not voting.
No one has to be fine with your choice. And you don't have to defend it.
That's fine. You're changing your definitions and topics (what is manipulation and where are these negative comments and threats occurring) enough that its difficult to engage in conversation with you on this topic.
I'm not virtue signaling anything and I don't believe anyone else here is either. We're not trying to convince you of our goodness or niceness. Sometimes we'll disagree on principle but no one will force you to vote this fall.
People who want to change genders.
Any threat upon people on all sides I see as a threat to me because I can be mistaken for those people if I don't pick sides.
Oh, but I do have to defend it. That's the paradox of "neutrality", as much as I want to maintain it. Sometimes I have to speak up because people wish to do me harm if I don't fight their battles for them. Perhaps it's due to being a lonely "nerd" most of my life and having no friends but so I found, not allying with anyone can be a dangerous prospect. You realize all too well the inherent subtle violence within society by not joining it or being able to join it. I have no delusions that the comfort of the here and now, in all its benign glory, can't become something more menacing should I maintain my neutrality if a political circus comes to town.
Out of all your comments what I really don't get is HOW. How does one achieve neutrality?
You see something. You have an opinion on it because you're human. Opinions form ethics form ideologies form political beliefs. Neutrality demands that you have none of the above, just a single guiding principle: Be Neutral.
Kittens being fed? Neutral. Kittens being stuffed into bombs to drop on orphans? Neutral.
How is that possible? Are you using "neutral" as a synonym for "leave me alone I don't want to deal with this"?
The rest of that sentence doesn't make sense to me in that context then.
That's an interesting perspective. Anyone could by this standard feel threaded all the time. That must be exhausting. However none of those threats happened here on Tildes where you were describing behavior, correct?
Do you have a specific example or is this the above perception of l threats directed at anyone being directed at you.
As I said, internalizing every possible threat to anyone for any position must be exhausting. I hope you have some support for managing that.
I actually sorta agree with this one, but it really depends on your definition of "manipulation". If your definition is anything that makes someone think or feel a certain way, almost all communication is some sort of manipulation.
Yeah I can understand this philosophical perspective but they had just said no one on Tildes was manipulating them and then said to someone else that since all conversations were manipulation, they were being manipulated. It was more the dissonance than the philosophy because the definition was changing post to post.
I'm not that person, but I imagine it was more a casual point based on phrasing. Almost no-one operates on completely consistent universal philosophy cause that'd be exhausting and mechanical. Broad strokes are sometimes more important than the details!
It's been a pattern with that person where their frame of reference keeps changing and I can't reply without knowing what they're actually talking about.
I think there's validity to it from a linguistic perspective with a given definition of manipulation, but if you're using that definition of manipulation, saying that you are repulsed by people trying to manipulate you is so absurd as to be difficult to even parse.
I spent both my posts saying that it's your choice. And Neutrality is still a choice. If your interpretation of me after those two posts is that I'm manipulating you, I don't know what to say. And I suppose there's not much left to say given your responses.
I wish you the best.
Technically all conversation is manipulation of some kind, for better or worse. And sorry if I offended but I'm going against the hivemind here and when you face stronger numbers you sometimes use stronger words. One person has so far called my desire to not be into politics and trying to keep what peace I have as the "finest American brainrot". Some really have a problem even if you're just a neutral person doing your own thing and to me that is one of the greatest of all evils. That will indeed get me to fight, probably not in a way that want, but fight against them.
Best to you as well.
I'm confused why you say in the past people were fighting for their lives and now you don't want to vote because you are fighting for your life. Why are they different from you?
Because as I just said, my problems won't be fixed by ballots; they're not a cure-all.
Okay...and? Why does something have to be a cure-all to be worth doing? Do you not brush your teeth or wash your hands because they don't kill all germs? Do you not eat because there's no food that gives you every macro- and micronutrient in perfect balance? Do you not use medicine because it's not a cure-all?
It's not a cure-all and it's not worth doing, as opposed to hygiene. Your responses and others have done nothing to convince me to be offended enough by anyone to go out and vote. If anything, the antagonization of non-voters here and elsewhere, ie, if not for than you're against, can make one not want to vote even more. Because in their eyes a neutral person is the enemy and so it comes to be that my vote to piss off my new enemies is then to not vote.
Yeah this was exactly what I was talking about.
I am sorry you feel this way about your life. I often feel like I am just screaming into the void, and the depression just wants to draw me in so everything turns to grey. The only thing that I have found that draws me out of it is to turn outward and try to do something for someone else. But of course, we are all different. I have a good friend who is schizophrenic, and his struggles are both different and greater than mine.
I find this pretty reductive. There are plenty of people in the US who are fighting for their lives, especially people who are or can become pregnant and many people who are not white. If you feel too overwhelmed to take that burden on, that is a position I can understand and accept. But it's hard for me to accept denying that it's happening.
If it's mental illness you're struggling with, I acknowledge that what I have to say will probably not do much. I've been there---in fact, I'm still there, though not like I used to be. (Actually, the 2016 election played a big part in helping me "snap back".)
For what it's worth, though, even mental illness relates to politics, in multifarious ways. The fight for universal healthcare is, in part, a fight for universal mental healthcare. And in a broader sense, the material world, shaped by politics, can create mental illness, either through trauma or by creating conditions that pathologize otherwise-normal human behaviors.
Many of those people "fighting over pronouns" are still fighting to stay alive. At risk of bringing up some dark stuff, stats about trans homelessness, murder rates, and suicide rates make that clear.
We could also say that, for lack of universal healthcare, people living in poverty are fighting for their lives (nontrivially overlapping with the above).
Furthermore, the people in, say, Ukraine are also fighting for their lives. The two parties actually do have tangibly different foreign policies (or, should I say, the policies of the Democratic party are tangibly different from the policies of That One Guy); and though we may wish it otherwise, America is such a large player on the international stage that the choices we make here have significant effects in so many other places.
Your mindset still scans (to me) as conservative. I sense, most importantly, a lack of vision: a lack of understanding that, among the space of all possible worlds, there is nothing special or inevitable about the actual world as it currently exists, that it could be much better, and that voting is one small way to push it in the right direction.
I personally deeply understand and empathize with the desire to not give your self completely over to an ideology or a cause, for fear of no longer being your own self. This is something that I struggle with, and I particularly cringe at the way that the modern media landscape encourages people to essentially turn themselves into zombies or bots promoting whatever cause or candidate. But I reject the idea that pragmatically choosing a side necessitates losing your self. You can say "I choose this side, for now, because I believe that it will lead to the best outcome" without giving up your ability to disagree or be critical. I don't call myself a Democrat, I definitely don't agree with the Democratic party platform on a lot of issues, and I personally really dislike the party establishment, but I still vote Democrat for pragmatic reasons.
But if it's better to let people try to struggle themselves so they can be more independent, then the making of policies to help the mentally ill will in turn weaken/tax society when many people can't or don't want to be bothered. There's not simple answers here. We exist in an ecosystem and when you give time and effort to one, it's lost elsewhere where it can potentially be "productive".
The pronoun part (sticks and stones) I specifically pointed out, not the harming of trans.
Sometimes it's not the world or universe that needs to change, as it's greater than us all. Sometimes it's we that need to change, things we can't just vote away.
I feel a bit of disgust being labeled as conservative. I abhor tribalism and if anything, I lean more "liberal", just a pretty apathetic liberal that also revels in being antagonistic to mostly conservatives. Lately they've defied my creed of just letting people live more than liberals so that's how I "vote", I antagonize those who feel you can't be neutral.
You seem to be separating yourself from society, at least mentally. It's not about "their" battles, there's no "outside" for you to be in. They're your battles as well, presuming you believe in anything.
At the end of the day politics will reach out and change your life, it's up to you whether you want a say in how.
Uh... but here's the thing... it really doesn't take that much effort. At least not to the amount you equate it to. No one is asking you to go out and campaign for people. Hell, you can stay out of political discussions. Just get yourself registered and take a day to go out and vote (or in my state take an hour or less to fill out the forms and drop it in a mailbox or ballot drop).
You don't have to fight some huge battle like you make it out to be. It at most (In states that are trying to dissuade voting) takes some filling out of forms and maybe a day or two of driving or takign the bus somewhere to vote/get registered. Just get your ballot in and forget about it afterwards and go on about your life. It really isn't that much to ask.
I see democracy as the idea that the average person is at least more good than bad. So we use the sheer quantity of people to try and outweigh individual nefarious influences. Stupid as you may be (and certainly not more than average) you’re at least not out here with a goal of manipulating others to your benefit. Which makes you virtuous enough for your vote to be of help.
Democracy is fine sometimes, sometimes it's mob justice and of course that's why we're a constitutional republic, to help deter tyranny of the majority, although it doesn't always help. Then we can implement certain policies to this thing or that for this person or that, it never ends and with the overhead of political externalities that have to be assessed to make good judgement calls, I just can't be bothered to fix things this way; I have more jarring local problems.
I suppose you can vote and use your paper ballot to fix people like me so we'll start to care, then I'm sure you'll realize the limit of your paper. Like tech bros who don't realize the limits of technology to fix endemic societal issues, so too does your paper have a limit.
100%. So many issues people experience in their day to day lives are hyper-local. Those local issues are usually shaped by your local politicians though. Small things like where new coffee shops open and what makes traffic better or worse are all influenced by your city council and maybe even state/county representatives.
Would you consider voting for your local representatives and council members? Your voice and vote has the biggest impact there with issues you see and experience in your daily life.
I just try to go with the flow, for the most part. There's many ways to go about life and manipulate others into leaving you alone besides voting. Also people who want you to go vote typically don't feel that way if they know you have opinions antagonistic or at least benign to theirs so I feel that idea is kind of meaningless virtue signalling.
Hey, I'm the same person advocating for universal mandatory voting, so I'm not just virtue signalling about everyone voting :P
I just truly believe this whole democracy thing works best when everyone is represented. I can't knock your way of life if it's working for you though, so as long as you're happy!
No judgment--if you don't care enough to vote, that's fine. I've never liked convincing anyone of anything, I just kind of make my point, hope I'm clear, and let other people listen and respond or not. The thing that confuses me is how little effort it takes to vote. You don't have to care all that much to vote. I've always seen it as my duty or just another chore--it takes a half hour at most out of my day a few times a year. Of course, you also have to add the time it takes to decide who/what to vote for (or against), so maybe that's the issue more than the actual voting.
Then again, if there's absolutely nothing to sway you either way, maybe it makes sense to give it absolutely zero time or thought.
I don't understand not having a preference, especially toward this election in which so much appears to be at stake (does it not seem that way to you?), but I suppose I don't have to understand!
I've just never looked into it. I live in a very small town and I assumed I'd have to travel many miles away to do so, then I'd have to sign myself into a political party (something I just abhor as tribalism can be a plague on society) and do countless amounts of research if I want to be a responsible voter. Besides this and the many many reasons I already discussed, I feel no need.
I generally don't like to talk about politics and stay away from it but this time, this thread, I'm letting it be known the motives of at least one person who's politically apathetic and probably won't do it again because as this thread shows, people just antagonize you and put you in the same box as their enemies. That's another reason you probably don't hear from us and we don't want to participate in the madness.
Correcting some information here for others that may have an interest in voting in the US. Please feel free to ignore as I know this doesnt apply to you!
Good to know. I just never investigated, asked or even cared before.
That I didn't know and I'm corrected now.
I think another issue is choice anxiety or analysis paralysis. I'm the type I want to know as much as I can before I make a choice on important things. I'm sure I'm not the only non-voter where this is partly an issue.
Sure, and you can do research, or not, and vote, or not, as you like. You can go in and vote for only one candidate/elected position (president or mayor for example) or you can vote for them all.
Wanting to do research before choosing but not wanting to invest the time is a choice, not a disorder. Being unable to choose because you might not have all the information despite having done a lot of research could be, but I'm not licensed in this state.
Regardless as I said, I'm speaking to the general "you" as I'm not trying to convince you to vote.
Thanks for participating and putting yourself in a vulnerable position. I'd be curious to hear what would convince you to care about voting, but totally understand if you're completely done with this topic.
As a random aside, I thought about voting apathy this morning while in the shower and came up with a dumb situation in which I had the option to vote between McDonald's and Burger King. The winner would continue operations as normal but the loser would have all of its locations everywhere closed forever. Obviously the stakes are way lower and this is a completely unfair comparison, but I don't think there's anything that could convince me to participate in that election due to my extreme apathy about it.
You should by all means do whatever you like, but the idea that what our society is amounts to "silly games" is a dangerous misunderstanding of the things that determine how most of your life is set up.
You gave what I "asked for", I was curious about. My mindset is completely different from yours, nonvoters, so I was really curious how nonvoters see things.
The mindset you described above, did/does your family think the same way, did you pick it up from where live and work, or from both?
My mother is pretty political, father toes the line between political and apathetic, sometimes very politically apathetic like me as in I'll vote or fight for people to not have to fight if they don't want to. A lot of my family is political so I stay away from that subject. I have enough hate within, I don't need other people trying to manipulate my mind to make me hate others. I've finally found some peace for myself and if you/they have anger issues or problems with others, do your best to keep it to yourself as I do, respect the peace of others. Don't let your hate impose upon others, that's my vote. And I guess most of you do realize that you can "vote" without voting, right? That political voting is not the only way to fight battles, or in my case, fight the battle to not have to fight and be in peace.
And another factor is that I grew up with anxiety and depressive issues so saw psychiatrists and school counselors as early as five years old, even though I was a good kid, never got in trouble with others and one point sent to a mental institution. Early on I was being studied, analyzed, manipulated in ways to make me be like everyone else. I felt like a lab rat and for someone with anxiety, slight paranoia, depressive issues, I guess they didn't realize just how much more paranoid it made me about society in general trying to control and manipulate us to fit in and fight the battles of others so they too will fit in. Maybe modern psychiatry is better these days but then, they just exacerbated the issues like a bad cop who doesn't know how to de-escalate a situation. Between that and all the drama lately in politics, I get sick of it. There's people on both/all sides and inbetween you have people like me who just want to be left the fuck alone, trying their best just to keep themselves afloat in ways no paper ballet will fix.
The only moral abortion is my abortion.
Gay rights only matter once my son comes out.
I don't think it's even that insidious, the usual Republican responses that is, I think it's more akin to the somebody else's problem generator. If you're familiar, the mere concept of "how big" voting is makes it functionally invisible. Even voting in a local election doesn't seem to get potholes fixed and every month there's more homeless tents on the side of the road - all the voting that everyone else does doesn't seem to change anything either - it just... Doesn't exist.
Yes, that's a privileged position to hold but when it's all so 'impossibly' big and confusing, your brain might just decide to ignore it.
Man made horrors beyond comprehension and all that.
Your point is somewhat irrelevant for the never voted crowd, but is the driving motivation behind the no longer vote crowd. Keep voting D and things don’t improve; vote R and things got worse; too cowardly to be a third party partisan.
Or they’re in a location where the “real” election is the primary. The other major party has just as much chance as winning as Jill Stein.
The places where primaries are the real election bug me so much because the participation is always so damn low! Primaries have the lowest barriers to entry too, so it's usually easier to find a candidate on the ballot that's closer to your beliefs.
This does come with the caveat that you can’t effectively vote in all races if, as in my town, the state and national races require you to register for a different primary than the local races.
Jill Stein, the physician who refuses (refused?) to support vaccines? Jill Stein, the woman running for president for the third time who thinks there are "what is it, 600 something?" members of the House of Representatives?
Just pointing out that anyone who refuses to vote for either major party would be better served to find a different third party candidate or just not vote.
The point they were making was that some places there's no actual chance of either Jill Stein or say, the Republican, winning as it's a Democratic stronghold (or vice versa)
Right, I just wanted to take the opportunity to point out how awful she is.
Still quite off topic to the parent post.
Fair point, she sucks in particular.
I don't know, but I have cousins like that in families that are otherwise relatively politically engaged, albeit divided between Democrat and Republican. They are just really apathetic and seem to have a high external locus of control, i.e. they don't feel like their actions can materially change most things about their situation, even when looking through the lens of collective action.
I don't understand it or have any greater insight, but I'm sure there are folks like this from all walks of life.
My partner did not vote until the Obama election. He has philosophy/political science degree. It wasn't that he was uninterested or unaware. He generally felt like the options presented to him were equally unpalatable and unrepresentative of his interests. When that changed, so did his behavior.
Wow this comment spun people of into some really amazing vitrol and name calling.
Let's dump on a guy and put all sorts of imagined ills and failures upon him.
Drunken hillbilly? Radical communist? Insensitive privileged white guy?
For people not just interested in casting venom on an unknown person, but rather hope increase voter participation, the more interesting aspect (Which someone did briefly touch on, but derisively) is why did Obama make him change his behavior?
My partner grew up extremely poor and a minority in a family that sort of skirted legality in many ways to survive. Any government activity was suspect, from welfare to police to elected representation. Despite what someone posted, a degree in political science (I have one) does not imbue you with faith in the system, it acquaints you with all of the shortcomings. He was not wrong to believe that the people running did not represent his interests. Personally, I believe this is true on most cases, but I have voted in every election since I turned 18, because I see shades of grey much more clearly than he does.
Why did Obama change him? Because his blackness did in fact matter. Having a black president in a country like the US, where my great-grandmother owned a slave-run plantation, where black people are still routinely murdered for their blackness was huge. No Obama was not Mao, or even all that liberal, and he didn't bring a lot of the changes people hoped for, but he represented something really huge and positive, especially to people of color.
More interestingly, voting for Obama prompted him to vote in every election since. Why? I'm not altogether sure. In part I think that voting itself feels good, and I'd like to believe that my years of encouragement about small change and making him aware of the local issues at stake have paid off. Maybe it's because the Trump-Maga thing makes the differences pretty stark. Maybe its just demographics, older people tend to vote more.
I vote despite the fact that my vote matters very little and I expect very little change because our 2-party system in the US does very little to support change. I am dismayed by how few people vote, because I believe democracy is the best possible governmental system, and democracy requires free and fair elections. More than that however, democracy requires full participation and representation of it's citizens. Many, many Americans have been shut out of participation and representation in our country's history and some still are. Instead of casting stones at those who feel alienated, should we not instead try to welcome them?
Did he really, honest to god think that Al Gore and George W Bush were 100% equal in every way per his beliefs?
If he genuinely did, I guess it is what it is, but maybe the university should think about rescinding that degree.
So I'm pretty sure that isn't what @ahatlikethat meant with their comment:
I get that the use of "equally" could imply they meant "unpalatable and unrepresentative" in the same way, but I don't think that was the intended meaning. Instead, I think they just meant that their partner didn't like either candidate (but for different reasons), not that their partner thought the two candidates were the same.
Isn't english fun?
That doesn’t really change anything, though. Whether you’re conservative or liberal, I find it extremely unlikely that you could genuinely find bush and gore “equally unpalatable” unless either out of willful ignorance or because you have like the null vector of beliefs.
Like take climate change. Maybe you believe in it, maybe you think it’s a liberal hoax, but with insanely disparate platforms surely one of them appeals more to you.
The null vector people are definitely out there. They also don't wash their hands when they go to the bathroom.
I don't know, I'm hesitant to speculate, but maybe their partner is a hardcore communist? I also know, from growing up in North Carolina, that there's an undercurrent in Appalachian hillbilly culture of (surprisingly) not being ultra-conservative, deploring all politicians, and generally wanting to be left alone and make moonshine (dying breed, they are).
I suppose if your political beliefs are just so radically past normative politics then both candidates could seem pointless, but at the same time, for this example, how could Obama make them vote? Not exactly the reincarnation of Mao. Obama is not so radically different from Al Gore or Kerry.
The only thing I can think of is if they're a hyper-single issue identity politics voter - like, "I won't vote for a white person, no matter what".
There's definitely a subset of hardcore communists who could be convinced by conservative propaganda that Obama-sama was finally going to bring the Cultural Revolution to America and run over some protesters with tanks. Or maybe they started washing their hands?
You're right about the 'live and let live' hillbilly (hellbilly) culture being a thing and somewhat of an influence on me growing up. Little care for politics or societal norms, just kind of live and let live. Although with the world more connected now, it seems to be dying as more are being recruited to fight battles for one party or another, especially the conservatives because, like most, they're too weak to fight their own battles and so need more minds and matter for their culture wars, not to speak of the meta discussion to be had here as conversation is inherently trying to capture minds.
Yea the moonshine will do that to you. It doesn't help that Appalachia has been screwed over so hard by the feds (well and their own corrupt states) I don't fault them for this attitude.
It does kind of suck that their politicians are kinda using this apathy to push through some truly horrible agendas nationwide though.
As someone who grew up in that part of the world, the whole situation is depressing. It’s such a mess that I’m not sure that there’s a way out for those states… anybody who has both the money for a viable campaign and the will to run for office is probably among those who intend to further exploit the people and the land and treat their locality as a fiefdom within which to enforce their backwards ideals.
He might also be saying that neither candidate were acceptable for whatever reasons. It is clear to me, for instance, that Trump is worse in literally every respect than Harris. And yet one of the qualifications I have for vote for someone is that they are not actively doing a genocide. With that in mind, I might say that both options are equally unpalatable in the sense that I can't vote for either of them. There are clearer ways to say it, but maybe that's what they meant.
Maybe, but Trump is still litterally worse in that regard because he's going to support the existing genocide, but also is aiming to kick one off at home for everybody with sufficiently brown skin.
Thanks for that clarification of my behalf, mate.
Bleh not worth escalating. Suffice it to say I find this kind of comment low effort and borderline bullying. .
Was that only true for presidential elections or local elections too?
I find it incredibly hard to believe that your partner never thought anyone on any ballot was worth voting for. What about the hundreds of people locally?
Yeah, I agree with you that he should have seen that (although in our area its more like dozens to a handful, depending on the year) I spent decades trying to get him to see the value of the lesser evil but he could not.
Off topic: highlighting the use of "grok" in the wild to let you know its appreciated.
I've never heard of it before, what does "grok" mean?
It's a Martian word meaning to understand profoundly and intuitively
Definition
It's from Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein (but was also used by Star Trek Fandom protesting to keep it on air "We Grok Spock")
It's from Stranger In A Strange Land (at least that's how I know it) and what I remember is that it means to drink in full or embody understanding of a concept or thing.
I've only heard it in tech circles like on HN so as I came to understand it, it's another level of the information input stack. You parse info, you process it and then you grok it (understand and 'set' it), although the latter two might be the same.
In the original, there's a connotation of not just knowing someone or something but to fully understand them so much as to merge with them. It literally means "to drink" but just like "seeing" means understanding, so does grokking.
some bits from the book via Wikipedia
Grok means "to understand", of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, "to drink" and "a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. 'Grok' means all of these. It means 'fear', it means 'love', it means 'hate' – proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you – then you can hate it. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate – and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste.[4]
Grok means "identically equal". The human cliché "This hurts me worse than it does you" has a distinctly Martian flavor. The Martian seems to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that observer acts with observed through the process of observation. Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed – to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man.[4][5]
The Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and had taken action; asteroid ruins were all that remained, save that the Martians continued to praise and cherish the people they had destroyed.[4]
All that groks is God.[6]
So it makes sense that grokking is where the information you learn is fully integrated. You understand it maybe to the point past your ability to explain (or at least more intuitively and explanation requires more conscious thought)
Could be societal. I obviously don't know they guy, but I can start to understand why you may not have the energy to care about who's calling the shots up top when you're just trying to survive your 2 minimum wage jobs for 12 hours a day just to barely pay this months rent. You may also be raised to think none of it matters. How many times has a person promised change in politics and it lead right back to the status quo?
There's so much disconnect with filling a form out into a better outcome, especially with policy bills. So it's easy to reinforce that notion that your choice doesn't matter when even good outcomes for you feel so far away. I don't really know how to bridge that connection together.
Except of course when things are really dire like this election season. It's most easiest to get people to say "I don't want that person in office" and actually get out and vote. But that "enraged" voting is short term.
I really do think it's important to consider that for a lot of American voters (White, cis gender, unlikely to join the military or be affected personally by an overseas war) the last few presidents really haven't affected them much. For all the evils created, most of them don't really affect that group of voters. And while climate change has affected that block, many people have been told there is nothing we can do but accept it.
Archived link
So I brought this up on a different thread and people didn't like it but this mythical undecided centrist voter is a fruitless endeavor to pursue. If they are undecided then they just don't feel compelled/motivated to show up and realistically it's like... A small percentage of the voting populace. If you're just going to stick to largely party oriented planks for your platform then sure... I guess you can expend billions trying to capture that three or four percent that will swing the vote... OR you could read the fucking room and start moving farther left.
If you are Harris and the Democrats right now you're expending untold resources trying to capture center right people who want to vote for trump but find it unpalatable. That's like the few thousand mccain/Romney Republicans at this point and guess what? They are gonna die in like 5 years. Fuck those people who also enabled the MAGA crowd because they didn't understand the movement or were too naive to recognize the fascist overtones. Meanwhile, you have this solid leftist movement that actually exists and is actually looking for something to vote for. It's the same group that came out for BLM and voted for Biden... And what did Biden do? Told them to pound sand and did nothing, literally nothing that his campaign was about. Remember the 2020 immigration policy of the Democrats? Now what's the policy? Oh they adopted the same xenophobic trumpian policy in an effort to capitulate to the right? What about codifying roe? Didn't do that either? Oh you did some bullshit related to NATO? Literally the only person that would give a shit about that is some psycho that just tried to unalive Trump a week ago. How's that electorally working out? Struggling to get the +4% of electoral votes required to beat the Republicans? Great politics... Morons.
If the Dems would just tack left... Weapons sanctions on Israel, deescalation in Ukraine, student loan forgiveness, reducing housing costs, universal healthcare... They would literally dominate electorally. But no... Here we are with a democratic party that just keeps being dragged farther and farther right because they can't fucking figure out that as long as they offer nothing, they are going to have to constantly rely on harm reduction based rhetoric as we keep continuing this slow methodical march right... It's absolutely pathetic.
And you base this grand assumption on what evidence?
Progressive policies are popular. That's just a 2019 article but there are tons of data points that speak to that and they have spoken to that for years. Obama's years in office proved that but he was awful for progressive policy and history will highlight it.
The problem... The real problem is people with your specific attitude that comes and instantly try to shit sling by asking for unreasonable amounts of evidence and if I were to legitimately provide it, you'd just pivot or hand wave it away even though what I am arguing for would absolutely benefit you as well. My politics aren't exclusive. I don't give a shit if I give that NAZI trump voter free healthcare or better material conditions. I don't give a shit if that racist's kid gets free breakfast and lunch on my tax dollar. My politics are based on material analysis. Your bad faith questioning doesn't phase that. I don't care that you come at me to sling shit and throw my views into a negative light. I want you to have a home, better pay... a good fucking life. This is what all people inherently want and I truly believe that. I believe that if we address and tackle material conditions, all this shit gets instantly better. I don't think bombing brown kids, marginalizing Haitians, dunking on like three trans kids in Ohio is really what people want.
Maybe stop making wild assumptions about people’s beliefs because they ask for a minimum of proof and then insulting them for being some straw man you’ve concocted.
And yes, progressive policies are popular, mostly in places the democrats are already winning. The goal is not to crush California or New York. It doesn’t win the election