These are the times that try men’s souls… Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.~ Thomas Paine, American Crisis, 1776If you’ve watched or attended a town hall meeting recently, you’ve seen unfiltered outrage over Musk and DOGE. Cutting costs to improve government efficiencies is one thing, who...
This percent is meaningless. People who could have voted but didn’t literally do not matter. Most American voters wanted this .
Um, what? Even with the rest of the sentence, these people have been manipulated so thoroughly that they hold, in my opinion, very little of the blame, to the point where it’s not at all worth assigning it to the group as a whole. It’s not productive and it doesn’t help anything. Convince individuals to make changes and take action.
Then fucking do it. 1/3rd if eligible voters made an active choice to not vote despite the choices never being more obvious. They chose not to matter. I’m just respecting their choice. Why can’t you?
I am.
Because many of them made the choice under extreme duress; because they are people who deserve at least the chance to learn and become engaged in helping others; because, as I have stated, I believe the manipulation is pervasive and powerful and generations old and I don’t fault people for falling victim to it. I understand you are frustrated. I understand it’s hard to put yourself in others’ shoes. The solution is not to exclude, but to understand what got us here and start doing the work, internally and externally, to create a better system from the ground up that will ultimately give individuals the tools to make better choices that are consistent with what they really believe, when not under threat of starvation/being cut off from or bankrupted by health care/homelessness/imprisonment/violence/etc.
Edited to add: I missed a couple things at the end of my first comment. I said “Convince individuals make better choices and take action.” I meant to convey that what I’m saying is what I recommend one does to make change, by giving others the tools, support, opportunities, and motivation to make better choices and take action, and set the example that such things are possible, quite literally being the change you want to see in the world.
The solution is entirely beyond you. There is no combination of words or actions you can take that will make commited non-voters give a shit. The only way past this now goes through an era of suffering.
It sounds to me like you haven’t actually talked to many of these people, or at least actively listened to them and tried to understand their concerns. Think this through. At what point do things get better if we don’t start changing how we do things now? What do you prefer to do, and/or suggest as a solution, if those two things are not one and the same?
Edit: also idk about you but I’ve already been in an era of suffering, I’ve been disabled and marginalized and mistreated, and so have many others. To me, treating people as complex beings with layers upon layers of motivations and ideas and beliefs and sensitivities and so on is an important part of respect and I see it as necessary if we are ever going to be able to change how things work and end the global perpetuation of harm.
Undo the last decade of gerrymandering and the math of the last election is subtly different.