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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t forget that a lot of people are working extremely mentally or physically exhausting jobs, often raising families or caring for children or just scrambling to SURVIVE. After working 12+ hours, the last thing I’d want to do is actually go through ANY news article.
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.
Plus don’t people get something from school? My schools, way back when, and my kids schools always had some class trying to bring current affairs into the lesson, and certainly during a presidential election.
My teen has a law and gov class where they had various debates about real people and real issues - it’s amazing that teacher can sit back and let the kids have their opinion but he does. Obviously not everyone has a law and gov class, or the Econ class where they’re going over proposed policies of each side but everyone has a history or social studies where they’re do that, don’t they?
How doesn’t at least some of that carry over into adult life?
Yeah, I had to take civics in high school.
It’s mostly a vibes based democracy
LOL
and the vibes around Trump were good? the dude is a shitstain on the very fabric of existence
They didn’t say good vibes…just, vibes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We all fail somewhere …. I voted wrong on one ballot question, for the vibes, and wish I could take it back.
My state had a question whether the auditor should audit the state legislature, and after so much news about corruption, conflict of interest at the national level, I voted “Hell yes”. However when I read it afterwards, too late, it was a separation of powers question and I would have voted “no, the executive branch can’t police the legislate branch”
Haha good, fuck her.
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.
These people vote for people who tell them what they want to hear and project the rest
I think it’s even farther removed from that … these people vote for people their echo chamber tells them are better for reasons their echo chamber tells them what they want to hear, and they never have the awareness to find out from the donvicts mouth. …. You know, morons
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.
That’s my latest flavor of denial: I don’t think they do have any firsthand knowledge. It’s all what their echo chamber tells them. After all, no one can watch or listen to the toupee for even a couple seconds and not realize ….
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.
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.
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.
Joe Rogan, before he was horrible, has a funny bit about this exact sentiment: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1i2b6_joe-rogan-on-stupid-people_fun
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.
KRIEGER!!!
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!
Because they’re not single issue voters, would be the rational explanation. But probably they also haven’t bothered to reasonably research who has what agenda. If you’re into politics, it can come as a surprise, but many people really don’t want to know anything about it, and they work hard to learn as little as possible.
I’m not blaming them for developing a strong dislike to politics, considering how dirty almost everyone is, but I hope that people can realize that ignoring a thing you don’t like doesn’t make it go away.
There is a big difference between voting/supporting them and following them on social media. I encourage everyone, Left as well as Right, to follow people, pages and communities of the other side. You should know the story the other side tells itself. Even if you don’t agree with it - it’s better to not agree with the real thing than to fight straw men in echo chambers.
Maybe but it sure is discomforting.
You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl’s Jr.
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.
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.
There is evidence that a lot of people thought Joe Biden was the DNC candidate for the election.
That’s a pretty common authoritarian propaganda technique. Like, most Russians do think Putin is bad but they’ve also bought into the idea that all politicians are bad. They don’t realize that most people aren’t former KGB agents in bed with the Russian mafia.
Both candidates (in this case a candidate and a former candidate) being bad might be true but it doesn’t mean both are equally bad. And it’s always “both are bad” never “both are good”.
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.
At least from my personal experience, they’re all too believable, and I’m sure plenty of others here have similar stories.
A couple of nights after the election I spoke to my father, and he could tell I was quite upset. He told me how I shouldn’t worry because Trump was going to make everything better since “Joe and the Ho” hadn’t done anything. Not even one or two sentences later he was telling me about how he needed to get all of this medical work done by the end of the year (he is on Medicare), because his Medicare agent told him they expected a good majority of those benefits to be cut next year by the upcoming administration…
Between the many similar stories from other family members and friends, the increased searches for “Project 2025” and “change vote”, I really don’t think it’s a stretch at all for most to accept these as true, because many people are experiencing it firsthand.
Yikes.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
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.
That leopard is so overfed it needed to grow additional toes just to cope!
Just imagine what they’ll be like in 4 years.
[Scene opens on a wide, desolate savanna at dusk. The camera slowly pans over a leopard lying under a tree, its large body barely able to move. The sun is setting, casting a cold, dim light over the scene. Soft wind rustles through the dry grass. The leopard’s eyes are dull, its breathing labored.]
Narrator (soft, somber voice): In the wild, leopards are meant to stalk, to hunt, to climb. But for some, this is no longer possible. These are the leopards of the forgotten savanna… the ones who can no longer live the life they were born to lead.
[Cut to a close-up of another leopard, this one lying next to a watering hole, panting heavily. The camera lingers on its enormous, bloated body, its paws barely able to reach the ground. The leopard’s eyes seem vacant, devoid of the wild spark they once had.]
Narrator: Overfed and unable to move, these leopards have been left to a slow, painful existence. They can no longer hunt their prey, no longer climb the trees to escape danger, no longer feel the thrill of the chase. They are trapped in their own bodies.
[Cue the soft, mournful opening chords of “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan. The camera slowly pans over a third leopard, sluggishly trying to rise, but its massive weight prevents it from standing. It lets out a heavy sigh, its once-strong legs buckling beneath it.]
Narrator: They are the forgotten victims of a world that has abandoned them. Too fat to run, too weak to fight… These leopards are slowly fading, one breath at a time. They need your help.
[Cut to a shot of a leopard staring out over the savanna. The camera lingers on its face, eyes half-closed, its expression one of quiet resignation.]
Narrator: For just $3 a day, you can provide the care and support these leopards so desperately need. A donation will help give them the chance to live a life of dignity. Help them find their way back to the wild they were meant to roam.
[The music swells as the camera fades to black, and the words “Your donation can make a difference” appear in white text on the screen.]
Narrator (whispering): Please, don’t let them suffer in silence. The time to act is now.
[The music fades out, and the SPCA logo appears in the corner, along with a toll-free number and website for donations.]
Deposits $3.00
stupid and ignorant people are going to be the death of our species. And if that happens, we fucking deserve it.
Have you tried drugs and not trying to think about it?
because the problem is just in my head and not in the world around me?
Nope. Didn’t say anything close to that.
i’m just so tired of watching world slowly march towards hell and drag me with it. cant do anything because doing anything alone is as good as doing nothing because no one cares about anything. best i can do is talk about it in internet and i dont think that is doing anything either. but doing absolutely nothing feels like watching someone rob you while you smile politely out of fear
It’s so easy to shit on voters for not being informed.
Dems had $1B to reach this lady with a message about how they were going to improve her material conditions and they couldn’t or wouldn’t. At least they got that sweet sweet Cheney fan vote.
When people have to work constantly or their kids will starve and it just keeps getting worse wtf is anyone supposed to do?
“You didn’t do your homework, so you deserve to have your life destroyed lol”
The system is fucked. Well and truly.
When people have to work constantly or their kids will starve and it just keeps getting worse wtf is anyone supposed to do?
I agree with you when it comes to a lot of things in terms of civic engagement, but in this case, there are lots of websites out there with information that won’t even take you more than 20 minutes to read in terms learning of who the candidates are and what they stand for.
You can literally do that on a break (or more than one break since you’ll get them every day) at work. And if you’re not getting breaks at work, your boss is violating the labor laws which should be posted where all employees can see them. Not that they ever read them. Employees are entitled by federal law to a 5-20 minute paid break. I realize 5-20 minutes is shit, but most full time jobs at least give you longer unpaid breaks than that, if for no other reason than they don’t want their employees passing out from hunger.
You’re not wrong about having the physical and temporal capacity to inform yourself regardless, but you’ve also got to have the mental and emotional capacity as well.
I’m sure you’re aware of how exhausting it is to live here, even just having nominal exposure to all the campaign ads and the outrage bait “news.” That’s before all the regular stress of living here with a family, all of your material conditions. Is my car gonna break down? If it does will I get fired? How can I afford my kids soccer cleats? Will the babysitter cancel on me for my extra shift?
If the only exposure you got for the election that you paid attention to because it was “entertainment” was a “funny” Joe Rogan clip your buddy sent you of the Trump interview it’d be real easy to be like “well, we made it through the first one, and at least he acknowledges that things are more expensive…”
Obviously if you’re tuned in, you know that’s a bullshit front. But if you don’t have the capacity to be tuned in because fucking everything is designed to stress you out and extract what little money you have… Well, here we are.
I guess you’re right. It’s just so damn important to them and their families… I have been there, super exhausted from all that, but I knew the risk of not being informed about who I’m voting for. I guess it was enough for me to make sure I knew, but not for others.
I’m definitely not saying you should blame yourself for not phone banking or door knocking enough or something.
The system that we live in is just perfect for making us feel like this. And the people in charge are not incentivized to change it for us.
The only way we fix it is by trying to make things better locally, from the bottom up.
If the only exposure you got for the election that you paid attention to because it was “entertainment” was a “funny” Joe Rogan clip your buddy sent you of the Trump interview…
This right here is hitting on the real problem. People are fed bullshit from firehoses coming in all direction, so they feel like they are informed because of what they have passively taken in. It takes some real effort to step back and think “What if the things I’ve been hearing are not the full story?”, and even more effort to take the next step and actively seek out information that might challenge what you have already heard and internalized. We are ALL guilty of this to some degree.
But if you don’t have the capacity to be tuned in because fucking everything is designed to stress you out and extract what little money you have…
Precisely–it is 100% the point. If you are stressed out working 2 jobs and raising a kid, you are going to have a lot less energy to keep your bullshit detector running and the simple solutions to complex problems naturally sound more appealing.
there are lots of websites out there … You can literally do that on a break
Correct. Now your task, should you choose to accept it, is to show someone how to do that. Teach them to do their research. Easy? Now come up with a way to communicate the same message to maybe 150 million people. And make sure they don’t ignore it.
This is why strategies like advertising, canvassing, and media interviews are effective. Unlike expecting voters to “just do the research,” these methods meet people where they already are—at home, watching TV, listening to the radio, scrolling through social media, or catching up on the news. They reach voters directly, without assuming any prior knowledge or effort on their part.
I guess. I was told in high school before I was even old enough to vote that the League of Women Voters always gives out election info. They used to do it in a free pamphlet and now they do it on their website. Are people really not told that in school anymore or do they just not pay attention?
I personally wasn’t told that in high school. Also in high school I was told that consuming weed was a moral failing and that blood is blue when it’s inside the body so
I remember being taught all kinds of lies about weed for sure. I also remember “Officer Friendly” coming to my elementary school and telling us not to pick up any pieces of paper with cartoon characters on it, by which I think he meant a whole blotter paper’s worth of acid?
And now that I am able to monitor my own child’s schooling because she’s going to an online school, but it’s a public school and it’s run by evil Pearson, the company that makes all the public school textbooks, I can see that they’re still going with all kinds of bullshit lies like “marijuana is a gateway drug” and they don’t even bring up the fact that there are pharmaceutical options when it comes to alcohol and tobacco.
But they sure did push that AA crap.
Democracy isn’t government on cruise control. Democracy is a responsibility. Blaming politicians isn’t going to change the fact that it is not institutions that uphold democracy. It’s the people.
So yeah, ultimately the people failed themselves. Some people just need to learn the hard way. If that is the only way these people will learn, why try to stop them from getting their lessons?
Americans are basically spoiled children. Never experienced government hardship. Why expect them to understand the value of what they have that prevents the hardship?
Maybe if they just googled? Takes about 15 sec. They’d see something like this: https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/kamala-harris-2024-campaign-promises-here-are-her/ It’s hard to imagine it could have been any easier for people who weren’t aware of Harris’ policies.
I can see why they might woo current Republicans… In the case the lose by a thin margin, it would give them greater leverage to block Trump’s administration.
“Maybe if we work to bring the nazis into power, they’ll think about us later on!”
I don’t think Liz Cheney is particularly Nazi affiliated. I suspect the biggest defectors are actually repulsed by what Trump has come to represent.
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 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.
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.
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?
hunger is a very strong motivator, what can i say.
Buddy… you sound as reality-avoidant as they are.
listen bro, karma is the only thing i have going for me right now ok.
hunger is a very strong motivator, what can i say.
And these people will gladly “starve to death”, either to “own the libs” or because they have bought so deeply into the lies and propaganda that it has become a critical part of their being and the cognitive dissonance of trying to learn the truth would be more painful than said starvation.
Fact-free ideology is one hell of a powerful drug.
what can i say, i revel in the suffering of others, brought upon themselves. Maybe it’ll knock some sense into some of them, knock a few others off of the map like covid, and throw a few into the deep end.
These things need to continue spiraling, and they can’t spiral forever, it has to stop somewhere. At the bottom most likely. Where i will be waiting, smugly.
Somehow they will blame the Dems.
TRUE IT’S ALWAYS THE FUCKING DEMS
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.
