Queer people voting for conservative politicians will never cease to amaze me. I discovered a queer acquaintance who I had friended on Instagram was following Trump, Pierre Polievre, and that insane Randy Hillier, which shocked me. Why would you do that? They hate queer people.
Bootlickers transcend identity politics. They’re just looking for a boot.
And they make no secret of it!
I was expressing election stress to someone over Discord and they told me they didn’t want to talk about the election (which is fine in itself) because “Joe and Trump are both bad.” 💀 I’m like… Do you not even know how the candidates are? I didn’t want to push the topic because they didn’t want to talk about it, but I’m sure the answer would’ve annoyed me.
No. They really don’t. I was getting some coffee at a drive-up place where they always leave the window open after they take your money, so you can hear them talking. This was maybe a month before the election. One of the workers thought Trump was still the president. They had to tell her who Joe Biden is.
How are people that disconnected, how do you not hear who the president is even just by accident?
I honestly do not know. I was floored.
God, I love how seriously Americans take their civic duty, you can tell by the effort they put into researching the candidates they intend to put in the most powerful positions in the country.
It’s mostly a vibes based democracy
LOL
I don’t get it either. I always try to read up on things. Sometimes there’s not enough info on candidates in a local race for me to know who to vote for and so I abstain. Other than that, I always vote for the candidate I think is going to do the least harm. They didn’t do their due diligence to even figure that out.
I remember in 2004, as a kid, my mother (very conservative at the time) teaching me to go through OnTheIssues with the presidential race coming up and examining the policies of each candidate, and to consider whether I agreed with each individual stance in making an overall opinion, not just to presume which one was good and bad by political allegiance.
She taught me good citizenship. Many people aren’t so lucky - or didn’t take the lessons to heart.
People like us are the abysmally small minority.
The average adult American has the reading comprehension level of a 5th grader.
Less than 10% (possibly less than 5%) of adult Americans are capable of objectively reading multiple stories about the same topic in different newspapers and being able to figure out which bits of info are objective, which parts are editorialized, what information is left out… and why different sources include or disclude those elements.
Turns out if you destroy public education, you get idiots, and idiots are very easy to mislead, responding almost entirely to pathos, misjudge ethos, and actually become angry when presented with logos.
We are a largely, functionally illiterate society.
Brexit, Boris and all the shit that is happening in countries all over the world—suggest is not a uniquely American problem.
We’ve always had idiots. The problem is they appear to me voting more than they used to.
Ah you young whippersnapper! When I turned 18 in 1995, the best way to find out about local candidates was a pamphlet you could get at the library for free (and probably elsewhere too) put out by the League of Women Voters. Sadly, there were always lots of pamphlets not taken.
It’s the social media algorithms, man. Folks think that what they’re being fed is reality, so they never double check the information being given to them.
Full disclosure, I’m just as guilty. For months I had built up this whole narrative about private equity buying up all the houses and causing the current housing crisis. Apparently, private equity only accounts for like 10% of home ownership, and the reality is that we just don’t build enough housing. The issue is the same (and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that private equity is still at the heart of it somehow), but I allowed the algorithm to show me inaccurate info, and I bought it—hook, line, and sinker.
But when it comes to candidates, there are multiple neutral websites that will just give you their stated platform (if they have one) up and down the ballot.
You’re not wrong, but I’m saying it’s an additional step for folks to take. And why would they when everything they’re seeing is confirming their beliefs?
It’s definitely a problem of media illiteracy.
From personal experience, when you’re working 2 jobs and raising 3 kids and spend every waking moment worried you can’t pay your bills or that you suck as a parent because you’re not around enough, taking time to research candidates feels impossible. Which is right where some like to keep us.
I’m in a better place now and have the time to do the work to make better decisions, but it still feels like an uphill battle against the multitude of the uninformed.
Which makes it even more concerning that people who apparently didn’t even have time to fall in a conspiratorial rabbit hole don’t manage to distinguish between a not so great candidate and a raging lunatic.
I see what you’re saying but it’s also kind of an excuse. It’s not that hard to find out, for instance in this case, where candidates stand on LGBTQ issues or on education.
The place I was in at the time, it was a struggle to convince myself that I should shower more than once a week and not cry over how I was going to find the money to buy my kids socks. When life is that stressful and depressing, it’s hard to see and to take on more issues than what you’re already trying to overcome on a day to day basis.
Again, I used to think that people in power couldn’t be that evil, but now moving past that place I can see how keeping people down, under pressure, and uneducated really does benefit certain groups.
I think its more like the mindset of:
“ugh I’m so tired and have to work tomorrow, I don’t feel like I have the energy to look up the candidates, it’s just one vote, is it really gonna matter”
My US citizen mom doesn’t even vote until I tell her how to register and fill out the out the mail ballots. And didn’t even make up her mind until I told her to vote Harris.
Yeah, I spent about 8 hours going over every person this election, including local mayor, city council, and board of education members. And, yeah, 8 hours isn’t an amount of time everyone has all in one block, but most of the research was pretty easy to digest quickly, and I could’ve split it into a bunch of 5-minute pieces whenever I had a bit of time over the course of a couple months. I get that it’s not the most interesting or calming activity, but I think people could at least take a small amount of enjoyment knowing they’ve properly educated themselves on the goals and qualifications of all the people on their ballot.
My mind went to the same place
[following is hypothetical / made up]
Absolutely cannot imagine
I’m not sure if people even research or just google “who should I vote for” when election day comes.
Haha good, fuck her.
Has anyone been verifying that these kinds of posts lately are real? Certainly some trump voters are already having buyer’s remorse, but these posts can just as easily be made up by people who want to play off our emotions and manufacturing further outrage and division. Just saying.
You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl’s Jr.
If it weren’t so sad, it would be almost funny.
So many people are waking up to the fact that… Most people are functionally illiterate children with no understanding of the world they live in.
The easiest way I have to explain it:
You use your phone every day. You know how to use it, menus in and out, all the different programs and their uses. But if I were to pop open the cover and take one single piece out, you would never know, and you would never be able to use it again. Without someone else, you have absolutely no clue how to go about fixing it. You can push it’s buttons all day, but when it comes down to how it functions at the basic levels, you are clueless.
So am I, by the way. I don’t have any reason to know how to build or program a phone. Or computer. I can push their buttons all day though! Even hidden buttons. But if everyone else on the planet disappeared tonight, I would effectively be living in the 1500s, as that’s about where my technical understanding of things ends. (scavenging for replacement electronics notwithstanding, once something electronic breaks, it’s gone since I can’t exactly run a semiconductor factory by myself, or the mines to get the materials)
My point is, most people only know how to “push the buttons” of the world. They have very surface-level understandingsof it. But when it comes down to it, they don’t understand how the internals actually function.
Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.
This is a funny take I haven’t heard. Maybe it’s a bit true.
People I talk to seem to have little understanding of Trump policies. Like it’s mostly projection.
One person I spoke to with a Trump pin said these two statements: “I don’t like where the country is heading everything is expensive. The government spends too much money”… “yeah we got to support Ukraine, Russia would not have invaded if Trump was president. Russia needs to loose and go home so we can end the war”
… like okay? And Trump will help any of this how, as a lap dog to Putin who blew up the budget and raised taxes on those making less than $500k?
These people vote for people who tell them what they want to hear and project the rest… you know morons.
Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.
Still have Keiko trapped in the transporter buffer, I see.
Shhhhhhhhh.
She and Molly are just visiting Bajor. Nothing to worry about.
That’s absolutely true, but I can’t get how people didn’t watch or listen to the Toupee for even a couple seconds and not instantly realize he’s full of more shit than an outhouse.
Because they’re stupid too and he speaks at a third grade level way they understand.
As a single person you’d be pretty good for the rest of your (still probably short) life. But honestly, I think ascribing button pushing to some of these people is a stretch. They know the particular buttons to open their social media, or maybe even access their banking, but any mention of settings and you get a blank look. I see that with every generation now, working in IT. It used to just be the boomers, but tech knowledge seems to have degraded over the years.
I felt something die inside me when I realized “display settings” was going way too far into technical territory for most people.
All I was trying to do is tell someone why their screen shuts off “so quickly” after two minutes.
I had to send them step by step pictures with big red circles.
And this was someone I had thought to be intelligent enough to figure something out, and tech-minded enough to know what I was talking about. Turns out they just like buying whatever fancy new gadgets they see in commercials.
I mean I know enough which candidates are the “lesser evil”, but I’d never fully understand how the global economy works.
Most people aren’t gonna understand everything, and that’s fine. But it shouldn’t take much to know who to not vote into office. But unfortunately… it does seem like making a simple choice is a huge hurdle in many peoples minds.
How does she figure the president isn’t allowed to do something? Especially in today’s political climate?
Especially when he literally said he’s going to be a dictator.
And it’s funny, because at the same time they already think the president can do whatever he wants since they think he can control gas and grocery prices.
And MY fucking loved ones. And lots of other people’s fucking loved ones.
My anger grows each and every day. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through what’s coming either from a mental health perspective or from a keeping my family safe perspective.
YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
Oh believe me, I agree. But they weren’t even motivated by their own best self-interests. It’s voting for the leopard face eating party on a scale I didn’t think was even possible.
The ironic thing about these screenshots is that it’s Xitter.
You could post this in the leopards ate my face community. Wonderful fit for that.
personally, this cycle the best thing i have under my belt is karma.
I hope republicans/conservatives have to learn their lesson the hard way around.
Narrator: unfortunately, they won’t as they are unable to correlate their struggles and hardships with their choices. This is another evidence of the planned degradation of education in the USA that creates a large number of uneducated voters who can be manipulated for votes
I hope republicans/conservatives have to learn their lesson the hard way around.
You are banking on people who have likely never picked up and read a single book after high school, and who likely read at a fifth grade level or less, to learn?
Especially when they have proven themselves to be such gullible rubes and suckers, uncritically swallowing everything the alt-right says like a herd of sheeple?
Buddy… you sound as reality-avoidant as they are.
I hope so, but given that we already know drumph will do a terrible job from… IDK, four years ago?
… I think that it’s likely that this lesson will ever be learned.
In the most simplest, all I want is for people to look at the platforms and what each party wants to achieve before putting a mark beside their name at the voting booth. That’s it.
If you can, with good conscience, vote for someone, knowing what they want to do for the people, then you deserve whatever they do if they win. If you vote without knowing what their plan is, that doesn’t absolve you, in fact, you’re probably more guilty than if you knew what you were voting for.
Somehow they will blame the Dems.
At lunch yesterday, I overheard two women talking about how they should totally be hired for the new department of government efficiency, and how they have a lot of great ideas to offer from their years of experience in federal jobs.
“You should cut my job.”
Granted.
These are the people who vote on vibes and emotions, it’s important candidates and politics don’t discount them because they’re the main voter block.
They’ve been reacting to the perceived moralist shaming of WOKE since 2014, and the right have kept that perception around whilst mocking it, being unPC, and joking around to show they’re “cool guys”.
So when Kamala makes a face when Trump says something about eating cats, the left think he’s an idiot whilst emotional voters think he’s play a game, joking and she’s being rude/shaming.
Or when he dresses like a garbage man, and the left calls them stupid for enjoying it, that pushes emotional voters towards voting for him, and away from voting for her/them.
Dems lost sight of the emotional game/narrative being played. So he played the fun guy, they played the shaming upright moralists who can’t take jokes and want to be serious or angry all the time (often bejng baited into this role).
Made for an easy choice for emotional voters. It was not rational (hence the regret). But it’s what got the Republicans into office.
Ye gods, no wonder it’s so easy to grift people. They’ve got the savvy of a toddler.
Say it with me now: ignorance is not an excuse.
