True Story
True Story
Poor one out for all your LGBTQ+ homies in America, they're about to be hunted for sport.
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It really isn't leftists' fault, though. Trump easily won the popular vote and flipped georgia, pennsylvania, and wisconsin from their dem vote in 2020. Low voter turnout/voter suppression are the real culprits - along with dems failing to do almost any of the things that could've changed this outcome. Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.
Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.
I'm not necessarily attributing blame here, but I'm pretty sure that OP is suggesting that leftist memes helped lead to this apathy. Say what you will, Trump voters were excited for their candidate... somehow, despite the list of reasons not to being far too long to be listed here. But many on the left either were just lukewarm on her, just considered her the lesser of two evils, or were protest voting third party or abstaining for one reason or another, mostly over Palestine. And there were memes galore to make clear to everyone what the general mood was. It doesn't exactly inspire enthusiasm to those that need that a lot of enthusiasm to even bother (those people are frustrating, btw). I don't know how much it actually contributed to or propogated the apathy versus how much it just reflected the apathy already there, but a case could be made either way.
They didn't lead to the apathy - they pointed out the existing apathy would cost Dems the election. It's like saying the person who said you need to wear a seatbelt caused the wreck.
You're exactly right about people being excited for Trump and lukewarm on Harris, but that's entirely on the Democrats for picking the platform and strategy that lost to Trump in 2016.
Harris had a notable and surprising lead when they announced Biden was out - then they changed nothing else. People didn't just not like the candidate, they didn't like the policies. They only changed the candidate and thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn't work.
thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn't work.
What kinda ass country is this?
Oh boy, if you haven't, read its history. Its real history. Wild stuff.
Kamala isn’t on the left. The democrats aren’t on the left. This is a false dichotomy. They’re all capitalists. You can’t be on the left and be a capitalist, so leftists had many more disagreements with Kamala than Palestine.
Now, if you want to look at a great analysis of fascism and the false dichotomy in American politics, read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
It is on the candidate to inspire people. Yeah, the left was lukewarm to a candidate that was trying her best to court Republicans. How else could you expect that to play out?
Why do you think the turnout was so low? Millions of idiots were pressuring people to withhold their vote over Palestine in a colossal self-fuck. That is if you assume these people spreading that are really that stupid. Some were, but I think a large percentage were paid trolls. And their campaigning worked. Russia owns the United States now
Yeah there are only so many times Biden can go "hey isreal, you'd better stop that genocide or else!" While doing nothing whatsoever and even giving them the weapons to continue the genocide before people go "well they aren't going to do a damn thing about this"
and that's why I voted trump! /s
I'm not supporting that idea nor voter apathy. But i can certainly understand why Kamala lost Michigan, Dearborn has the largest muslim population in the country. I can understand why so many people there might be apathetic or uninterested in voting for a party that has put forth no pushback or even plans to stop an ongoing genocide against people of their faith.
Again, Trump will absolutely be far worse by just greenlighting isreal.
Trump will absolutely be far worse by just greenlighting isreal.
Something every human had the means to see coming. They just either didn't care or plugged their eyes and ears to it.
I'm not disagreeing with you. All I'm saying is that I understand why say a Palistinian American might be adverse to voting for the side actively faning the flames to a genocide including their own family members. I can imagine waking up and being told you should vote for the side that supplied the bombs that exploded half your family and going "why? So the other half can also get bombed? My whole family is going to die either way" and that being their rational for not voting.
Wh vote for the side that didn’t interfere when someone else bombed your family, when you can help elect someone who will encourage them to bomb every living relative too
Oh you mean they didn't show up to support your preferred minority issue? huh. I wonder how the arabs felt this entire campaign?
No one owes you their vote. You need to earn it. Your support of the shit behavior towards arabs (and others) demonstrated by the democratic party and its candidate is what caused this.
go home trick. connect with your community. get support. if you need some help lines to call I can find them.
Again, Trump will absolutely be far worseby just greenlighting isreal.
The aim of a genocide is the same whether there’s someone with a blue tie approving it or a red tie approving it. Israel wants to displace or kill every Palestinian and break their culture and heritage.
That’s what genocide is. You can’t get worse than that, and that’s what’s happening.
I see, so in order to save "democracy" people should have supported Genocide.
Honeslty maybe the Democrats should have seen this coming to themselves for supporting, and I will repeat it once more in case you don't understand, GENOCIDE.
Imagine voting for 100% Hitler because another guy could be 150% Hitler.
I'm on this kick of pointing out that the utilitarian ethical calculation still works with 100% Hitler and 100.1% Hitler. Harm minimization, baby!
yeah its why no some takes utilitarian's seriously. Hi friend I have this new policy where you give me your left arm and I don't take your legs!
You say that, but "vote blue no matter who" is exactly this argument under the paint.
And I've been telling people for years thats a terrible fucking saying as well. (Also notice how little play that saying had this cycle.) Statistically speaking you may have lost your arm but you'll still have the ability to write and walk! Sorry left handies! Nothing can be done for you! (Left handies are the arabs in the gaza story, lgbt in others etc)
Only 10% of the electorate even cared about Gaza. You're giving the American people entirely too much credit.
I don't know what point you think you're making, but after yesterday I give the American people zero credit. Millions of voters stayed home pretending it was about gaza. It's not my job to psychoanalyze them but I do know their actions contradicted their stated goal and that makes them frauds.
Another contributor to low turnout was massive voter suppression. It'd be interesting to see that quantified. Hundreds of thousands of voters were being purged in each of several states. The single-issue Gaza vote was lost in the noise of those gross examples of electoral manipulation.
I'm sure you're right. It's hard to know where to focus the blame most, but I am livid that this country is worse than my worst fears. On a certain level I am losing any desire to even care specifically how/why. I wouldn't have considered not voting before this but now I honestly am 99.9% of the way to saying fuck it all.
I distinctly remember hearing about unusually high voter turnout.
It just wasn't blue voters.
If Harris had campaigned on the issues she would have had so many Republican women jump ship. Just look at how many of them voted for abortion in Missouri.
There's a million reasons people have given me for voting Trump, none of them rational. But the classic tropes of fear and disgust won out again. I'm old enough to remember the 2004 election, then it was gay people. Now it's trans people and dark-skinned migrants. I really didn't think those old tropes would work this time, but it just keeps working. Americans will just keep falling for it, apparently.
While it's depressing that we're reminded of the power of dumb at hateful people yet again, we should remember that nothing actually changed in that regard this election. We're just discovering what's always been there beneath the surface. I don't think the malaise we're feeling now is so much about what Trump will do - sure scores of people will die from bad policy, but that's nothing new. Rather, we're upset about what this reveals about ourselves. But we shouldn't be upset about the act of revelation, because it tells us what we need to fix.
To continue this thought, you might be interested to know how neuroscience tells us the brain works: In short, the unconscious mind decides and acts, and the conscious mind makes up stories about why. Quite often, the story is just wrong, or at least misguided. Those voters have a real reason that they don't understand or won't admit to themselves, and a million reasons that they give instead to explain it.
Yes, we need to drop the misconception that people rationally decide about much of anything, and learn about their real reasons.
It wasn't 'voter apathy' it was a misplaced sense of voter moral superiority. It's the thing leftist rhetoric has been weak to for a very long time. That love of withholding support except for perfection. The idea that compromise or chosing a lesser evil from two bad options dirties you. It doesn't matter what you lost if you personally took "the high ground".
This cutting of our noses to spite our face was exploited all to shit this election. They lulled people by appealing to the same zeal of righteousness that they know divides us fundamentally knowing that when push comes to shove people will turn up their noses on principle of not being personally catered to and forget that their ability to help at all is contingent on the freedoms that one party was explicitly putting on the chopping block.
It will be a while before people can admit that they were duped and there's a lot of fault to go around, particularly in those funded astroturf campaigns designed to bait the hook... The right have been watching us for the past decade they knew how to divide us and it is on US that so many of us fell for it.
You really think the 15 million people who voted for Biden but not Kamala was "misplaced sense of moral superiority"? Why?
Because that explanation makes them feel better
Because the alternative involves accepting that moving to the right has failed as a strategy, and they don't want to do anything else.
Yes I do. Because The situation in Gaza was not an election issue for Biden. There was a fantastic amount of campaigning, a lot of it bought and paid for, that turned that genocide into a single issue vote with tis holier than thou reaction of withdrawal from the entire system toted as the answer. It is political suicide to run a mainstream Pro-Palistine presidential campaign in the US. A candidate of one of the two main parties need unilateral support from their donation streams and encumbant systems and the Republicans knew that. They know that's the devil's bargain every DNC candidate has to sign to even get a shot.
Republican money supported Jill Stein to serve as a spoiler candidate to engage those with a naive veiw of the system but still wanted to vote and then they helped pipe that message through all manner of socials that if enough people withold their vote then Kamala would have shift her position... Because they knew how enticing that is. The idea that you don't have to compromise your integrity and that that will be rewarded. They turned this into a single issue campaign for so many people knowing that they didn't need to shift their position even a little. They could let their Red capped demogogues talk about literally beheading people and those high on this intoxication of absolute righteousness would ONLY care about an issue that Republicans can flaunt their support in favor of.
It was misplaced moral superiority in part that got us here because if you were lulled into not voting or voting third party because one candidate wasn't "leftist enough" when the alternative is someone popular with an entrenched imobile base of support who wants to make sure leftistism dies dead then you failed to get the assignment.
This is just astoundingly out of touch. When I asked "why", I was looking for evidence. What evidence do you have to support your supposition? Nothing.
To the contrary, polling says that only 10% of people cared about Gaza. The American people are largely tuned out of politics. Democrats' first instinct is to always blame leftists, but the problem is that people don't want to vote for more of the same.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
Dude, wow okay. let me inform you how voting works.
- a person (or group) has ideas, and says 'hey friends, support me so I can implement these ideas'
- people then look at your ideas and say 'oh that sounds grand!' or 'No thanks, pass'
- the person who gets the most people to say 'oh that sounds grand!' wins.
now here is the thing. harris 'grand idea' was a fucking genocide, and no support for labor. this isn't about fucking moral superiority. its about a complete fucking lack of morals by harris across the board.
If you walk into a fucking room of people and tell them to 'join you for some genocide' dear fucking god do I hope they tell you to fuck right off. Now unfortunately 30% of the population is down for genocide. another 30% are willing to go along with it if you threaten them enough (or won't impact them personally). and a final 30% is like 'lulz newp'. Why the democrats thought it would be good policy to try to out compete genocidal fucks at their own game for votes is beyond me.