This is specifically in regards to the most recent No Kings, because I’ve been seeing, for the first time, normie libs being jaded toward the No Kings protests, I’ve seen surprising amount of “what are these actually accomplishing?” But what’s wild/sadder to me is all the responses being “well, I know they’re useless, but we can’t do anything until November”
Like Americans venerate non-violent protests, to the point all protesting is just completely symbolic, but can’t even take a page out of the civil rights movement and do a nonviolent protest that are actually a protest, like blocking a highway or a sit in, physically blocking people/things from getting places, you know, actually being disruptive, they just accept this tepid shouting parade for a couple hours every 6 months. I’ve been a doomer on American protesting for years now, sorry about the rant post
There are multiple contributing factors which all boil down to "Americans have lost the ability to cause prolonged discomfort for the people with authority".
Some of those factors include: the large number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck; leadership calling the bluff on the implicit threat of future violence that protests represent; the isolation of federal representatives from their constituents; etc
Even if you're not living paycheck employee protection is such a joke here that there is a high likelihood you could end up losing your job, they just have to make up some other excuse.
Yup, totally true. Now, when we're talking about major societal issues, losing your job to protest might be worth the sacrifice, but it's dependent on a lot of things like how much savings you have, you family obligations, the industry you're working in and the likelihood you can find another job, etc
Yes and I'd add that in general people are lazy AF. People couldn't be bothered to vote for not fascism in 2024 and in general if they can't even do that what makes you think they'll protest or even vote next time?
We're locked in here with the most apathetic people who are comfortable enough and just. Don't. Care.
To me it seems it needs to get A LOT worse (as if it isn't bad enough) to jolt the bulk of people into doing anything, even the mundane.
Genocidal pos
As much as people blame nonvoters, the problem is the actual trump voters. 70M voters hate their neighbors enough to vote for a child rapist.
It's both. Trump voters are horrible people, but it's a statistical fact that if every American voted, Democrats would never lose an election.
And gaza would still have been flattened
You spent time on jeffrey island didn't you
I mean but they dont idk how else to explain it lmao.
also a lot of trump supporters too lazy to vote too.
I guess i honestly respect the people who are like "I know im dumb, you guys both confuse me, i wont vote, let the smart people figure it out"
The problem is all the people who went to ivy league schools and work in washington and literally work for trump and do not give a fuck he is ruining the country because they got one promotion from trump.
Even the ice losers, like imagine being some deadbeat dad with a drinking problem, can't hold a job longer than you can hold your piss. And ice comes along offers you $60k to start with benefits and bonuses? No questions ask just are you loyal to the country and the president? Can you really blame them for taking that opportunity?
But yeah idk this is all fucked it's such an unbelievable failure of humanity from top to bottom imho wcyd
Low voter turnout is not a universal problem. There are a lot of places where voter turnout is very high. America just does a really bad job of it for multiple different reasons.
We can't hand-wave it away as "oh those people would never vote, no matter what". There are reasons they don't. They're not always good reasons, but some of them are.
We can talk about multiple problems at the same time. We can talk about bigger problems and smaller problems at the same time, acknowledging that one is more important to solve than the other. We don't have to say "I won't talk about this problem until we've solved that problem".
And for the record, of the people who don't vote, it is a tiny fraction of them that genuinely do it because they don't think they're smart enough. And those people are usually wrong, because while they may not be geniuses, there are people a lot dumber who ARE voting and why the fuck would you leave it up to people dumber than you?
Remember: decisions are made by people who show up. And people a lot dumber than you and me and the non-voters are showing up