I will preface this by saying I understand that I am more radical, revolutionary, and extreme of a leftist than most. Despite that, I still ask that you actually engage with this as I'm asking in good faith.
When is enough enough? We have elected a fascist into the highest office and handed the keys to him and his friends. Is now not the time to actually get organized, involved, and armed? In my opinion, the time for peaceful, democratic means of avoiding fascism was before the election. But we have failed to do so, and as such there will soon be a tyrant in power. Are we going to wait until troops are rolling down the street to stage any form of resistance, because by then it's far too late. Now I want to be clear that I am not advocating for random acts of violence or an insurrection like January 6th. But is this not a point of radicalization? Is this not where we start organizing within our communities and getting involved in mutual aid and resistance? How much more do we need before people are actually ready to stand, fight, and maybe even die to avoid continuing down the path that we are on? Fascism is not on the horizon, it is here. Are we really to do nothing about it as a society except lay down and accept our fate? Because that doesn't jive with me. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
ETA: To the people responding, I will admit that I was heated and frustrated when writing this post. Having had time to cool off, reflect, and get some differing viewpoints my stance has changed to focus more on what needs to happen first and what's practical. You may have seen that in my responses. That being said, I don't disagree with what I said here, and I'm still frustrated we're at this point at all. I've linked a comment though that elaborates upon what I actually want to see done though, which is a lot more reasonable and is still inline with this post.
71 million in a country of 262 million adults. 27% voted for fascism. 74 million voted for trump in 2020. This wasn't a shift towards fascism, but the opposition party utterly failing to win voters.
The country has never been majority rule. Every modern election has split the country in thirds, about a third votes one way, a third votes the other and a third choses not to vote.
Over 70% of voting aged americans did not vote for trump.
edit: spelling correction.
And over 70% of eligible voters didn't vote against Trump.
Wait, did Trump win with 27% of votes!? How do you still use this system?
No, he got >50% of all votes that were cast. The voting system wasn't the problem this time, the voters were.
If the voters are the problem every time, the problem probably isn't the voters, it's probably the system. The US always has bad turnout.
A turnout between 60 and 70% is actually pretty standard for a Western democracy without mandatory voting.
The voting system wasn't the issue, here. The people around you are.
No, that's a misleading number.
27% of the entire eligible population voted for him. Less than that voted for Harris. About 45% of eligible voters didn't bother.
So Trump got more than 50% of the popular vote, as well as the majority of seats. First past the poll is a terrible system, but it's not the system that's at fault here, it's the voters.
HE won the fucking Popular vote!?!?!
no, "didn't vote" won the popular vote.
As is tradition
Likely, although all votes are not counted yet. All while getting fewer votes than previously, so he was very beatable. It seems people were just not excited to vote for Harris.
Coincidentally, a woman has never been elected POTUS, and she shifted right to embrace "former Republicans" while shrugging off progressives. Total coincidence.
I'm starting to think that America just really doesn't give a shit about politics if one of their choices is a woman.
Tradition dear boy
This isn't even a system issue (FPTP, electoral college).
What you're remarking on is the need for mandatory voting and a federal holiday on voting day
Unless you make voting mandatory, that will always be the case. Regardless, the split amongst non-voters is statistically likely to be the same as the people who actually voted. Consider the election to be an information poll, with a sample size of ~65% of the entire eligible population.
So with updated numbers, Trump got 72.5M out of ~240M eligible voters, so yeah you could say that 70% of the population didn't vote for him. But then to be clear, you should also look at Harris's 68M votes, and say that 72% of the population didn't vote for her.
The people who mark and deposit their ballots are the only measure we have of the nation's opinion, and in that contest a majority of the votes went to Trump.
If literally everyone is forced to vote things actually lean more left. The way you force people to vote though can affected different socioeconomic groups differently so can have a wide range of effects.
You solution to people not voting is not to appeal more to those people but to force them ? lol
That would not move anything to the left. Democrats would feel free to go as right as they want knowing that the are the only big party that is not the Republicans.
I can already see it, they would spend sooooo much money to make any actual left party unable to compete, then they would shift as much to the right as possible, and then loose.
This is meaningless though.
You said "a clear majority voted for Trump". In fact: a majority of Americans didn't vote for a fascist. That is a good thing.
Neither did a majority of Americans vote for a milquetoast centrist, but I don't expect anyone to take a great deal of comfort or pain in that fact.
It's disappeared ballots and a bought electoral college.
Not twenty million of them.
We should give people tax breaks if they vote.
republicans do voter suppression and purge voter roles. victims of either of these practices would be punished with a larger tax burden. not ideal.
voting should be compulsory