it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior
it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior
I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
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We can now say that anyone who could and didn't vote for Harris in magastan is a genocide enabler.
But but but, how were we supposed to know? We were too busy not paying attention to anything important!!
I've been saying since the election that anyone who voted for Trump or abstained in protest is complicit in Trump's regime of terror. Trump and his staff spent months on the campaign trail telling the public exactly what they would do when they took power, showing everyone exactly who they are, and now they're doing all of it. No one has the luxury of claiming ignorance.
Probably not helpful to be this divisive with your anti trump allies. Whether in your eyes the abstention voters made a mistake or not, we’re going to need all the solidarity we can get to oppose/survive this administration
We can't change the past, so the only choice we have is to work together to start fixing this situation. I understand why they did it, but they refused to think about how their actions would affect the larger outcome. We shouldn't let abstention voters forget the role they played in getting us into this mess while we encourage them to make better (or at least less bad choices) in the future.
My anti-trump allies voted against trump, the rest of you are complicit in enabling his plutocracy.
These people pretend to be allies until the next election season where when they don't get exactly what they want, rabidly push everyone to not vote or vote fascist.
"These people" are strawmen you have been fooled into hating
Nope, they are people that didn't vote against this stupidity we all saw coming. One candidate was going to paint the house red but could be talked to, the other one owns a red-paint business and ran on burning the house down, and "these people" didn't vote because they wanted the the house painted green. Fools. It isn't cope or strawmen, it is observation and you are coming up with any way to save face or feel better about your dire mistake.
No amount of believing this makes it true.
The protest voters didn't meaningfully impact the election.
Young people voted the exact same as they do every election.
Even if every single gaza protester actually stayed home like you're pretending, it wouldn't be enough for the dems to win.
But you can make whatever excuses you want to hate your neighbors
Ignore the actual issue, cool.
That's the dark secret that no one really wants to talk about. We're all genocide enablers. Every single person decided to enable genocide. You didn't vote? Genocide enabler. You voted third party? Genocide enabler. You voted for Harris? Genocide enabler. You voted for Donald Trump? Whew boy, genocide enabler and then some. No matter how you cut it the American populace has and is enabling genocide. Every single fucking one of us.
I think that's why there's so much rancor on this topic. People don't want to admit that to themselves. I enabled genocide. You enable genocide. Everyone in this thread enabled genocide. Till we all admit it acknowledge that we're not going to move forward.
Now that's a level of introspection I never thought I'd see in a thread like this.
If I had some sort of agency to precent genocide, that would be great.
Now that you got you dopamine, feel better?
Great, now it's time to stop pushing propaganda that makes poor people infight.
Oh, so telling people the truth is now propaganda?
I'm sorry but even if my enemy is trump and his billionaires and not their voters, I don't have to like those who helped him get there. They put him there, and it's good if they get some consequences.
If the amount of protesters isn't even enough to get 1mil more votes you're just riling yourself up for no reason. And that's pretending that any of them would have actually voted to start with, considering young people don't vote.
You would be better off focusing your anger at the demographics that actually voted for Biden but refused to vote for Harris.
Spoiler: it's older white women/men and hispanic men.
I keep seeing this stupid narrative. Nobody is buying it.
You have a problem
Yeah, thanks for that.
That’s not how logic works.
Yes it is and it’s such a good example of logic that its archetype is now a formal part of game theory in the prisoner’s dilemma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
Thank you for this. It's always nice to have valid reasoning backing up something you find so obvious lol
Not even close. Did you consent when voting for Biden that his administration could do a genocide? I hope not. This logic implies that we have a moral obligation to vote, which eliminates the free-will of individual choice.
To put it another way. If I am morally obligated to choose the lesser-evil, then that eliminates the freedom of choice. Let’s say you are in a coma during election season. Are you now complicit with everything Trump is doing because you couldn’t vote? Of course not.
By conflating voting with moral obligation, this sophist argument is an example of plausible reasoning.
A vote is a preference, a choice. It carries no burden of complicity. This is separate from ideological support. If one voted for Trump, but then regrets that support, they are no longer responsible for Trump’s actions.
A vote is a preference, a choice. It carries no burden of complicity. This is separate from ideological support. If one voted for Trump, but then regrets that support, they are no longer responsible for Trump’s actions.
Wrong. A vote is an action. And one that has the ability to negatively (or positively) affect others in your sphere.
If you voted for Trump, me and other LGBTQ people are now at immense risk, as are many other populations. Even if you regret your vote you are complicit and have responsibility for the action you took (or didn't take).
It's also false to claim that because something is a moral obligation that eliminates freedom of choice. Even if you have a moral obligation you can always choose to do the immoral thing.
I’ll concede the elimination of freedom of choice, but it does constrain and limit the freedom. By implying that voting is a moral obligation, it elevates voting higher than political activism and organization:
He was equally alert to the problem of voter fetishism: voters mistakenly thinking the vote is an exercise of power, when in fact power in a capitalist society is collective, social and located largely outside the parliamentary realm. source
If voting is the end of political participation, the people will always lose.
By holding grudges against Trump voters who regret their vote, we limit our ability to effectively organize against the incoming fascism. I would gladly march alongside anyone who opposes Trump, and I hope you would too.
By implying that voting is a moral obligation, it elevates voting higher than political activism and organization
For the layperson, I think this elevation is mandated.
He was equally alert to the problem of voter fetishism: voters mistakenly thinking the vote is an exercise of power, when in fact power in a capitalist society is collective, social and located largely outside the parliamentary realm. source
I am not a marxist or communist. I am a self-professed and proud liberal, so while I appreciate your good faith reply, I reject your source as a valid authority.
If voting is the end of political participation, the people will always lose.
Unsupported claim. But also I don't disagree. It's important to become involved in other ways than just voting. For example running for office at all local levels and becoming a local politician. Neglecting to do this and complaining that there are no good candidates is an exercise in lazy whining. Become the better candidate. Run on your principles.
By holding grudges against Trump voters who regret their vote, we limit our ability to effectively organize against the incoming fascism. I would gladly march alongside anyone who opposes Trump, and I hope you would too.
I don't think people really have any excuse for being ignorant enough to vote Trump. At some point, individual responsibility comes into play. If such a person takes real action to correct the harm they have done, I may consider forgiving them. But this forgiveness will not come preemptively nor should be expected or taken for granted.
The other problem is that I don't see these people. I have yet to meet a leftist who is truly sorry about their actions during the election. They've dug in on blaming everyone but themselves for the situation that they've put us in. Which is why in practice, I cannot forgive my grudges, because they truly are not repentant.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." source
You’re fighting a losing battle with entrenched interests that are currently taking over the Energy and Education Departments. We’re past electoral politics, it’s time to realize that. Liberalism won’t survive 2025
So, the 80 million nonvoters in 2020 voted for Biden? I voted for Biden and Harris. That does not imply my consent for genocide. Complicity is only maintained through inaction. When I denounce the genocidal action, my complicity ends.
Since we’re erroneously referencing logic thought experiments, the trolley problem refutes the prisoner’s dilemma.
The thing about the dilemma is that you need to realize that the prisoners are rational, feeling people. They have good reasons to do what they do, often enough. Often their goals are good ones, compassionate ones.
They aren’t trying to scheme or sabotage one another. But they wind up doing that, because the only success condition is mutual cooperation.
That didn’t happen for us, and the outcome is boolean, pass or fail. Any move except sticking to the coalition and acting to cooperate would have doomed the effort completely, and we didn’t do that. So, here we are.
Where in the Wikipedia article does it mention “voting for the lesser evil “ is an archetype for the prisoner’s dilemma? I’m willing to change my mind, but I need actual reasons to do so.
A better understanding about the logic of voting:
It’s a varying application. It usually models opposing groups during diplomatic tensions, but it can also apply to groups within coalitions who face the same problem together but disagree how the coalition should proceed.
In the process of applying things, you have to consider the outcomes and think of the prisoners as “trapped” by the circumstances of the decision they face. Trapped here means that inaction triggers consequences, so it explicitly models inaction as a choice facing the circumstance.
Usually during negotiation that follows this kind of pattern, the prisoner’s dilemma is applied to figure out the best way to articulate the circumstances at hand and the choices everyone has. It’s a way to connect the cause and effect of everything to everyone in the negotiation, and to illustrate how their actions flow into those consequences, in a way that frames everything as less a “you vs me”, and more of an “us vs the problem”.
And that’s where the logic part comes into play: here it works as a mechanic to introduce cause and effect group logic to humans, and connect the notion of it all to their emotional needs. It helps demonstrate that negotiation and compromise are hard but valuable, logically and emotionally.
If you haven’t read it, “Getting to Yes” is fantastic. I highly recommend it, and although it doesn’t speak about the dilemma directly, the entire thing is about navigating compromise tactically in situations where everyone may be very correct, yet still have a hard time with each other.
This is why I don’t think the dilemma is comparable:
However, in real life this is rarely how people judge how to cast their votes. Generally, Democrat and Republican voters are afraid to break rank because if the voters of one party vote 3rd party, and the voters in another part stick to party lines, this means that voters who voted 3rd party will end up with the short end of the stick. This incentivizes voters to stick to party lines and vote for candidates who are “good enough” (which represents the worst option of the prisoners dilemma in which both of the prisoners confess), reaffirming the two party system and preventing the possibility of more viable 3rd parties which can represent the views of the people better. source
Taking a thought experiment and scaling it for millions of voters is a fool’s errand. We’re dealing with social dynamics and fluid variables. I can agree that on an individual basis, or a small group, it could be a helpful tool. But, with large numbers it ceases to be viable. It fails to account for irrational prisoners that both confess, leading to the worst outcomes.
I can see where you're coming from on the whole matter of scale, yeah. It does broaden the subject's surface area a lot, and there's no way to really say you have a control group at that point. So, I think you're right that the variables in a national coalition are possibly too blurry for a direct mapping. Maybe?
I guess I'd say that I can still see the mapping holding, but I suppose it's just in an aspirational sense. The puzzle's framing does hold pretty well for coalition negotiation w/ representation, and so it seems to me like that's a big thing missing here and that's a big point in your favor.
I think, given cohesive, known/defined members in a coalition, even if they're rough models, you get some utility out of the dilemma.
But, I don't think we have that kind of self-aware cohesion, do we?
I think in any case it kind of feels like, to me, your point is just illustrating how badly the folks in charge botched stuff. It's exhausting, honestly. It's always been very nebulous who we are and what we're striving to do, but right now we don't even have those rough models to understand our own coalition. No wonder we can't get anything done.
Like most people... I live in a state where my "vote" literally doesn't matter at all.
It's hilarious how "adults" assume that voting actually matter and that there's a meaningful difference between the two flavors of the state.
About 3 million voters who voted in 2020 decided their vote "didn't matter" in 2024. Kamala lost the popular by 2 million.
Always always vote, even if you think it's pointless.
Presidents aren’t elected by popular vote
No, they are not. But swinging the popular vote reduces their appearance of the public mandate. And Trump also only won by relatively small margins in a lot of the swing states for the electoral college (30k in Wisconsin, 50k in Nevada, 70k in Michigan, etc), where such additional votes matter even more.
Every single vote on the board counts, whether or not you think it does. Not voting is intentionally silencing your voice for no reason.
No, but it at least prevents the appearance of a "mandate." Trump claims that he not only won the popular vote but also the electoral college so that means we're all totally cool with whatever he wants to do whatsoever.
They have less of an argument if more people voted against him, but our stupid system still gave him power.
No, but it at least prevents the appearance of a “mandate.”
This is such a liberal take. They would have acted exactly the same whether they had the 'spirit of the nation' behind them or not. Stop picking fights of symbolic victories.
Republicans have not cared about the decorum that the democrats have been trying to uphold since at the very least the second Obama term likely longer.
Democrats are refusing to employ the same tactics that the republicans use against them when they are in power.
If everyone who thought like you got out and voted, the results would come out very different.
The adage for as long as I can remember has been, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
I desperately wish that liberals realize that reality is the arbiter, and no amount of wishing more folks would fall in line will work.
That adage is pretty much the opposite of true. Republicans make demands of their politicians, and have no reservations about loudly denouncing them as "RINOs" if they don't follow through. The biggest third party candidate in history was Ross Perot in '96, because Republican Bob Dole was seen as too moderate and mainstream. Part of the reason that the party establishment didn't stop Trump from getting the nomination was because they knew there was a credible threat that he'd run third party, while the Democratic establishment resisted Sanders, because they knew he'd fall in line anyway.
The reason the adage exists is, ironically, because democrats are more prone to shaming voters who step out of line. From what I've seen, in right-wing circles, complaining about RINOs and shitting on the Republican establishment will get much less pushback compared to the opposite. Those who try to lecture and vote-shame are more likely to lose credibility themselves than the person they're criticizing.
Of course, because the party has received the message and fallen in line, there's less internal dissent, which is used to push the message that "Republican [voters] fall in line," used to pressure Democratic voters to fall in line.
As a lurker who ends up rubbing shoulders with right wing culture spaces, can confirm. The right has heresy tests for their politicians, the left tests for their voters. However the left expects competency in government (because they actually believe in it) and will sacrifice ideals or policies, while the right can afford the luxury of rejecting good governance because they’re expressly transactional when it comes to politics.
Rightwing voters are willing to cut off their nose in spite and become single issue voters - and it works for them. Pro-life or you’re dead to them. Pro-gun or you’re dead to them. Non-Christian? Dead. They get the political rhetoric and efforts they demand, which has left them severely ripe for opportunist political grifters who say whatever gets them access power. Like the MAGAs who build nothing, but hand out bones to voting blocs. Abortion overturned. No new gun laws. Ten Commandments in school and state houses. “Hurting the right people”. Migrants deported. Culture wars.
Or in the more extreme examples, they’ll just outright co-opt the structures of power and governance to fit the voters whims. It’s why we have the political maximalist lobbying NRA of today, instead of the humbler sportsman’s advocacy group of yesteryear. Or Trump.
Exactly. The reason that democrats think republicans "fall in line" is because they see all these shitty politicians on the right, but they don't realize that they're looking at completely different things from republicans. You can be a total fucking dirtbag, hypocrite, completely incompetent, but as long as you bend the knee to the causes they care about, they don't give a shit. Their standards are all about ideological purity, not character or competence. By contrast, democrats get outraged about any attempt at "purity testing," and would rather have someone "competent," which generally means, "willing to compromise to get things done." Meanwhile republican politicians are always worried that if they work with democrats at all, they'll be outflanked from the right. As a result, the country moves further and further to the right.
That's where crazy extremists like me think we should actually pay attention when the other side's tactics work and learn from them. But I probably shouldn't admit that or I'll be hit with "horseshoe theory" 🙄
You know I think maybe this resolves me that more people should just, run for political office, or maybe, resolves me that the dirtbag left is a concept which could probably be measured with some sort of success. You're probably right, the left needs to learn that people would probably vote for any stupid piece of shit with no sense of decorum, as long as that guy gave them healthcare. No sense of decorum actually might be an advantage, even, because then there's nothing left to rhetorically attack you with. That's sort of the whole, like, john fetterman-phenomena. Too bad he turned into an actual piece of shit instead of just being a guy that dresses in a hoodie.
People follow decorum because they don't want to be pieces of shit. So those that don't are likely to turn out to be pieces of shit. Not "alternative" good guys.
It's an ironic saying because the support for Trump is based entirely on emotion. The Democrats are the ones making the decision based on pragmatism.
So the correction would be that republicans fall in love and fall in line while democrats do neither?
I was up and down many threads immediately before the election straining with every fiber of my being to explain to people the variety of ways in which their democracy is actually a sham and isn't effective or reflective of popular will or sentiment.
The most I got in return was that, nah, none of that applies, because I just don't really feel like it. It's infuriating.
Every 4 years the machine churns, every 4 years people forget everything that happened the last time, forget every detail of the system, and just decide to kind of, sloganeer constantly rather than discuss critically, because that brings them some sense of control over the way things are going. It can be prefigured into their personal narrative of events, and how much they, personally, put on the line, how much they tried to change people's minds. A participation trophy for their rubber stamp, for their ticking of a certain box, while the real rulers are off in washington making the real decisions. Ultimately it's kind of fruitless, I think, or should only be viewed along the same lines as being personal slop-entertainment, or "self-improvement". Anyone who's not honest with at least that much can't really be trusted to speak on these things, I think.
It’s hilarious how people still think that something good will happen as a result of inaction. But no, all your refusal to participate said was that you are fine with the outcome either way. That you trust others to decide this for you. Refusing to choose doesn’t negate the results. Just as doing nothing won’t create something. If it helps, I can explain it in simpler terms:
• You can’t get an answer if you don’t ask the question.
• You won’t ever get anywhere if you don’t make plans to ever be somewhere
• You can’t rightfully expect any change for the better if you’re not willing to do the bare minimum it takes to make it happen.Even simpler:
• No vote ≠ no election.
And additionally, do you not understand that saying “but I live in a red state! My vote doesn’t matter!” Only proves to everyone that things like gerrymandering are effective ways to manipulate votes? Because, congratulations… you’ve inadvertently discovered exactly why they do it!
Blue votes in red stats are FUCKING VITAL.
You know, it’s sadly funny in a very bleak way- how you all excused your poor decisions as “making a statement!” and “sending a message!” when the messages you should have been sending is that you will do WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES to stop a rapist felon that laid out exactly what he intended to do to us- from taking away the rights of your brothers, sisters, and others. Even if it meant voting blue in a red state.
But you didn’t. So sit down, accept your responsibility, and if you’re fucking lucky, you’ll be given the chance to do better next time.