this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
554 points (93.8% liked)

People Twitter

5829 readers
2032 users here now

People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.

RULES:

  1. Mark NSFW content.
  2. No doxxing people.
  3. Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
  4. No bullying or international politcs
  5. Be excellent to each other.
  6. Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] remer 48 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

The Trump voters replied that we’re in a constitutional crisis because they believed we were (and still are) in one from the Biden administration. They believe Trump hasn’t fixed the crisis yet.

[–] vala 3 points 22 hours ago

This is unfortunately the answer.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Didn't trump win with about 27% of the population voting for him?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Why didn't more people vote then when it was public knowledge that this could be there result?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Turnout was one of the highest at 64%. (2020 was the highest recently at 66%) It's hard to get everyone to do anything.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election

Turnout over time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

Looks like all we need is a civil war or threat of civil war to get people to the polls, since the last time it was higher was the mid-1800s...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Some of it was voter suppression. And not just the overt kind but also things like voting on a weekday and hour long queues when in most civilized countries voting takes less than half an hour total including wait time even at the busiest times of day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

But more people did vote, as evidenced by @[email protected]'s post here.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (30 children)

They should've, but.. it seems a lot of Americans just aren't compelled to perform their civic duty. I personally could never understand it, I obviously voted Harris, but in my experience (With Examples!) the average American is not:

1) solution-oriented

  • "I can't eat healthy to improve my health, it costs too much money! Oh, beans are incredibly cheap? But some people (not me) are allergic to soy!"
  • "Everything costs too much money, I have no savings for retirement! Oh, I can dedicate even just a small portion of my income ($50 or so) to a retirement account, just to get into the habit of saving? But I'm already being as frugal as I can and it's just not possible!"
  • And of course "Politicians are all evil and corrupt! Oh, since I live in a democracy I can vote for candidates who aren't or, if there's truly no good candidates, run for office myself? But that's too much effort and I'm too tired from work!"

2) interested in learning

  • "I don't think I can vote, since I don't understand politics (never mind the fact it takes maybe max 4 hours to research which candidates you like)"
  • "I can't go to a climate rally, because I don't understand the issue enough (never mind the fact I hold the Library of Alexandria in the palm of my hand)"

3) capable of caring for others in their community at potential cost to themselves (even if that cost is just "effort" or "time")

  • "Communism is bad bc imagine if everyone's grades in school were equalized!" (heard this one in high school, the guy who said this was infuriatingly praised by the whole damn class. Regardless of any discussions of Capitalism v Socialism v Communism, this terrible analogy always irked me because it really emphasizes just how infantile most criticism of socialist/communist policy really is. You know what? If "getting a bad grade" because you "didn't work hard enough" in this analogy led to you literally dying because you couldn't afford healthcare, I would share my damn grades with you. And I was a straight A student lol)

4) capable of thinking with their logic rather than their emotions

  • See every single person who abstained from voting because they were single-issue voters over Palestine even though Trump was way worse on their single issue. Once someone even told me something to the tune of "If you're thinking with logic and doing anything other than outright crying at everything that's going on, you're an awful person" (susceptible to propaganda much?)

Idk. This got long lmao, didn't realize how many gripes I had bottled up. This is all stuff I have actually heard or seen ppl say. People in the US frustrate me, and I am hoping this is an effect unique to America, perhaps because of American exceptionalism or the massive quantities of Russian/Chinese propaganda aimed to destabilize the US or too much individualism or something, because I really want to just leave the country and be done with American culture forever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

Americans just aren’t compelled to perform their civic duty

Maybe, it could also be that voting feels like a waste of time in the majority of states where the outcome is pretty much known after the primaries.

For example, I live in Utah. The R candidate will win by more than 15 percentage points even if a popular independent runs against him (e.g. Evan McMullin). On my ballot, some seats aren't even contested because everyone knows running against the R is a waste of time and money. I've considered running if only to give people in my district a choice, and I'd probably get 20% of the vote as a protest, but still lose even with an incredibly strong campaign. Even for many of the non-partisan seats, candidates get endorsements by R office holders.

If that's what happens every single time, why bother voting?

I still vote and am disappointed every single time, mostly because I feel it's my civic duty. And apparently 69% of Utah does as well, though I guess something like 60% of those like the outcome of the election.

  1. I'm guessing this is true in most parts of the world
  2. Same as 1, though going to rallies also don't really matter IMO. Real work is done through lobbies.
  3. The US is #5 for most charitable donations. There are multiple ways to care for your community.
  4. Look no further than here on lemmy to see that this isn't an American thing. People are tribal, and going with the group is way easier than thinking for yourself.

This is all stuff I have actually heard or seen ppl say.

Sure, and I've heard people say exactly the opposite. Be careful about your own biases and get a larger sample than just your personal interactions. That's why we have polls and studies.

I really don't think this is unique to the US, I think it's pretty common for humanity as a whole.

That said, there are certainly things to dislike about American culture, and as an American, I certainly have plenty of my own. However, there are also a lot of things to like about American culture.

I highly recommend you look for the good instead of the bad, because you'll find it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Hit the nail on the head. American culture has become increasingly apathetic and cynical in recent years. There's a lot of factors at play but I would say the concentration of wealth and resulting decline of the middle class as well the erosion of a sense of community are two key factors behind this.

load more comments (28 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

The system has always been rigged. Many people can't vote, most people's votes don't matter at all, both candidates are trash, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

The second and third absolutely apply to me, but since my vote doesn't matter anyway, I just vote for a third party that I believe in. The expected winner will pretty much always win my state by 15-20 percentage points, and all third party candidates combined are something like 5%, so even if nobody voted for spoilers in my state, the outcome wouldn't change.

There are only a handful of states where your vote for President actually matters, and only a handful more where it might matter if you got literally all third party voters to oppose the expected winner.

We simply need more people to vote, and we need to fix our voting system so the rest of the country feels like voting matters. And I don't think we even need to throw out the electoral college, just throw out first past the post and we could get some interesting upsets.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] sumguyonline 34 points 1 day ago (9 children)

More importantly, with how this exact thing happened once 4yrs ago, how did the Democrats do nothing to add checks and balances for the abuses of power he so freely showed he was willing to commit last time? Not one law limiting executive orders, or codifying protections for positions the president chooses. So many additional steps they could have taken to curb the reach of the president, and they instead sat on their hands while the supreme court expanded the powers of the presidency to those damn near an emperor. Nearest we've ever been.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why do people trust the voting system in USA, when everything else is highly manipulated?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This election in particular was very suspicious. Not the inordinate amount of bomb threats, not only the statistically impossible high numbers of bullet ballots only in swing states just enough to push the vote counts over the 'automatic recount' limits, not only the guy who lost the popular vote twice winning all the swing states and the popular vote, not only Elon knowing the results hours beforehand, and not only how much Trump & Elon openly bragged about how easy the election was to hack:

"[Elon] was very effective. He knows those vote counting computers very well, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania, like, in a landslide." - Donald Trump (https://www.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/comments/1i5bnpp/trump_praising_elon_for_well_he_knows_vote/)

Even still, the point does remain that a good plurality of our society is openly fascist even if you factor out those ridiculous bullet ballots, I guess. It's frustrating how it seems like everyone is just ignoring all the improbabilities just because Republicans have gaslighted us into believing that any and all election skepticism = stupid conspiracy theorist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

I don't doubt there was some localized fraud going on. I do doubt fraud was responsible for the red-shift in the vast majority of counties as shown on this map: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/presidential-election-2024-red-shift.html

I think they tried to steal the election, but didn't need to. I do wish there were more investigations, because they're probably going to do all the same stuff and much more in the next elections.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

The word conspiracy theorist is extreamly effective, most people are afraid to be connected to that word.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Because admitting that he cheated would take away all hope for our government. I suspect that no one wants to go there.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

A bunch of them think the crisis is we haven't done enough fascism yet.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] hOrni 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How hard could it be? You go into a voting booth, look at the ballot, see Donald Trumps name and pick the other one. It was literally that simple, yat half of Americans fucked that up.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] brendansimms 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Only 20% of the country voted for him (77mil votes out of 330mil pop) or 49% of people who voted (77mil out of 156mil) so statistically I guess that 27% accounts for people who voted for fascism.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Some amount of those may believe the crisis is that the Constitution itself needs to be ignored or rewritten, because they heard so on right wing media. The ladder-pullers who believe birthright citizenship needs to go, alongside those who now desire a king rather than our backsliding and slightly less corrupt system of checks and balances.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›