Political Memes

I wrote the comment below on a thread that got locked while I was writing. TL;DR: Any bonehead who thinks that every single voter is politically-engaged and fully-informed, and that 6 MILLION of them all made a rational, reasoned decision to sit out the election is dumber than they look.

Oh, well, 18 months, what a slog! /s

Look, I've spent close to 30 years now detailing that this fucking insane "lesser evil" slide-to-the-right thing that Democrats were doing was going to end in evil. (That is, fascism.) Either the Democrats themselves would become what we feared, or the greater evil would happen to win.

Guess what? I was fucking wrong. I admit it now. I didn't guess that BOTH would happen simultaneously. It was bad enough more than 20 years ago when my Senator was the only vote against the PATRIOT ACT. It got worse when Obama decided to abolish due process and the rule of law. But by 2024, Democrats were straight up aiding and abetting the biggest war crime of all. Jesus jumpin' Christ on a pogo stick, how did we get to a place where that is the lesser evil?

Y'all couldn't vote for Nader in 1996, because "he can't win." Well, guess what, bucko, we had to change course somehow. He, or a spiritual successor, had to win, or we'd get... well, look around. It was clear even back then. We had to at least try something different, other than the lesser evil every time.

As they say, the best time to change was then, and the second-best time is now. But, no, Kamala Harris couldn't change her mind on genocide to win. No, sir! We have standards of evil to maintain, you see. Meanwhile, the billionaires weren't going away. The wealth inequality wasn't shrinking. Late-stage capitalism wasn't on track to make the serfs' lives better. The climate crisis would still loom. Charismatic fools like Rogan et al. are still young. So the choice in 2024 was fascism now, or fascism later. 2032, most likely, when the partisan pendulum would predictably swing the other way. 2028, possibly.

Is it any wonder that many voters felt overwhelmed, hopeless, defeated, and declined to participate, through the fabulous power of denial? Politics is depressing, the system is big, my vote is inconsequential... Y'know, denial, that power that we've all honed through a lifetime of practice—knowing the horrors of industrial meat production and still ordering a burger, knowing the role of CO~2~ in the climate disaster while waiting in the car at the drive-thru window for it, knowing the causes of cardiovascular disease and still eating it?

Knowing that someday, eventually, we have to fix our political system now that radicals have found its cheat codes, but still browbeating those disengaged voters that they are the ones responsible for this calamity. Yeah. Denial.

The same denial as 30 years ago. This election has been a long time coming. A year and a half? Get outta here.

This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.

Honestly, the election was three months ago, and we have bigger fish to fry right now. My default assumption now is that anyone still trying to relitigate the Gaza voters is a Russian troll trying to sew division among the left.

Seems like this is more of a candidate problem than a voter problem - Joe and Kamala were very aggressive to anti-genocide voters and protestors - Gov Shapiro even wanted them arrested

Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side, but you know what will - candidates who will listen

How do you change voter behavior?

You don't. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it's to change the rules to what the people want. If you can't do that, the people don't want you.