It’s as if these people don’t remember the riots that happened to earn equality.
They do and now they have a surveillance state to make sure the riots don’t happen again
And a president who wants to shoot those protestors, and a federal police, answerable to no one, who can definitely do it. I’m giving it a year before we see at least one protest met with overwhelming lethal force.
Within that year I also expect to see MANY ice agents murdered in the streets.
The false narrative that basic rights were earned through “civil debate” has been parroted by right wing talking heads for so long.
Most people are uninformed, and have an impression that rights just kind of happened via peaceful protests or debates, either due to their own ignorance or learning a very whitewashed version of history.
All the people that didn’t vote are partly responsible for this.
“The overall turnout of eligible voters in the 2024 general election was 63.7%. This was lower than the 2020 record of 66.6% but higher than every other election year since at least 2004.”
People did vote. Constantly blaming the small group of disillusioned voters is just weird.
“The small group” of more than one in three people that didn’t vote.
Oh, you were actually aiming at 100% turnout. Well, that’s just silly.
mandatory voting looks like a small price to pay for a (more) healthy democracy, Australia seems to be doing a lot better than the other British colonies right now
of course with the US, something like that would have to be combined with an extensive overhaul of public education (moving away from the “breed compliant factory workers”-goal), because healthy democracy also requires an educated population capable of knowing when they’re being lied too
Argentina has mandatory voting and they have Milei. How healthy is that?
Argentina also votes on Sunday (a change way simpler than reforming education) and last elections they had 77% turnout. A lot of people simply don’t participate in the democracy and there’s no way around it. No one serious expect 100% people to vote and blames the 30% that doesn’t for the outcomes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/upshot/turnout-2024-election-trump-harris.html
NYT reported that data suggests that nonvoters would have given Trump a larger win.
Last presidential election had the highest turnout of voters and youth voters in American history.
Our problem is much more depressing and much more deeply baked-in.
More than 1 in 3 people didn’t vote.
That’s probably accurate but not unusual, it still had some of the highest turnout in history and the data backs this up, we didn’t have as much of turnout problem as an attention span and informed voter problem.
The problem was more revealed in exit polling determining that people largely didn’t see a difference between candidates, saw no difference between Harris and Biden (kinda true) but saw Trump as a “lets see how he does” option because he wasn’t in charge when egg prices went up.
Studies have shown the Trump beat out Dems in all categories and it has a lot to do with people largely losing interest in politics and just marginally paying attention to social media propaganda, which skews heavily right. Financial uncertainty often pushes populations towards conservatism and authoritarian leaders, and Dems are very, very bad at this kind of populism.
Excuse me, but HOW THE FUCK do you LOSE INTEREST in politics?!
Is there too much lead in people’s food or something?
Almost everything has become media entertainment, media is about capturing attention-spans because attention is monetized via commercials and clicks on affiliates and the like. This has led to an arms-race in grabbing attention faster and faster, so now the general population, and I mean MOST people, pay less attention to anything that requires patience or does not provide immediate dopamine hits.
This is just the state we’re in, it’s widespread and it’s a massive problem and AI is making it even worse every day.
The average grade-school teacher reports they have to design curriculums around 3 - 7 minutes maximum attention-spans, that anything more than a few minutes at a time and kids will start fidgeting, looking around and acting disinterested, nor can teachers even give kids homework anymore because they use ChatGTP to finish it most of the time. Adults aren’t in much better shape. About a full quarter of America’s adult population are functionally illiterate, meaning while they can usually work out words and text messages via context, they can’t read an article or a book, they can’t assemble paragraphs to form narration in their minds.
This is why we’re in this mess right now, because many people are exploiting this trend and only a handful of people are raising awareness about it and trying to get us broadly to put the electronic devices down. Which nobody wants to do, nor can we all do because of the need to use smartphones and computers in our daily lives.
I think you’re right on most things here. But I do think there have been studies showing that attention spans have never really been that high to begin with. Not that catering to that is good or bad, necessarily. But I just wanted to point that out.
Do you have any proposed solutions?
I think it’s a natural tendency for natural systems, including human minds, to seek the easiest paths and short attention spans are a consequence of not needing longer attention, but it still does our society harm when products and entertainment exploit this ingrained tendency or function to make the problem worse.
It’s natural to want high-calorie food because we have millions of years of survival and struggle wired into us, and only about a century or two of plentiful pastries and chicken nuggets whenever want. Same deal and we need to start looking at our minds the way we look at our diets.
To that end, some places have restricted access to social media for youth, which is a good start. But we really need to push the idea that consuming slop at an early age is as bad as consuming junk food. Since we don’t really have a handle on obesity and childhood medical issues due to diet despite being well aware of the dangers… I don’t have a lot of hope for our mental diets, being less understood and more socially acceptable to consume mental slop constantly.
It’s possible things will crash really bad and we will have to correct a problem, post-hoc and figure out how to make better outcomes well after we suffer a lot of harm, IE: leaded gasoline, ozone-depleting chemicals, etc. But it’s also possible that we won’t make that correction and we will have a societal setback as the class-war becomes very different, a division between people who can hold a thought and those who can’t.
We may also see AI radically change the landscape entirely. There is going to be less incentive to even try to correct the problem if each of us has an AI agent or tool that gives us the outcomes we want or provides answers no matter how fried we are. Or maybe better AI systems will become better tutors and companions and we will see the situation improve. It’s way too soon to say how that’s going to pan out. It might be our most pivotal and least predictable period in human history right now.
I don’t mean to be mean, but you need to talk to more people.
A lot of people in America simply do not believe they can change anything. Either because they don’t know how, they’ve never shown up to a town hall, or because the only politics they hear about are from states and federal buildings they’ll never live or work in, or because the only politics they hear about outside of Trump being a dipshit is some 2% thing that will do something which might lead to something else maybe, or because South Park taught them that caring about anything is cringe and, actually, the smartest people spend all day making fun of anyone with an idea.
I mean, let me ask another question: how the fuck do you lose interest in unions? And yet, the US lost interest a looong time ago.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. Things don’t change because they don’t participate. They don’t participate because things didn’t change.
90% of things people claim are the reason they don’t vote could be changed if they fucking voted.
There is an element of people wanting their fast food and being displeased that civil rights took multiple decades to build.
That said, it isn’t just their fault. The Democrats, generally, do not know how to be exciting. As much as people say they’re not interested, it’s not entirely true; there is a spark that has yet to be ignited.
Also, even if you’re not counting the large swath of the population who are chronically attention-span handicapped, the average middle-class American family has to work 6 - 7 days a week to support the increasing costs of raising families and having homes.
Most of these people don’t watch the news, they barely have time to watch a disney movie with their kids Sunday night before browsing social media for 30 minutes and going to bed to start the week all over. People are incredibly overworked and distracted. Politics doesn’t seem to touch you in this kind of life because the US protects the middle-class to some degree, as long as you’re putting in your 80 - 100 hours of work each week between yourself and your partner, you will just barely make the bills and expenses, you will have just enough for expenses and never enough to stop or take a break.
These families are good people, they just don’t have a margin in their life to care about politics. This is the system that’s been engineered to keep people from mobilizing and working together.
At some point we need to tell the “internet people who tell us who to blame” that hillary would have won in 2016 if not for the electoral college. At some point people just give up and that was the entire democratic party in 2024.
Not a single person in the democrats has a plan to fix democracy in the US and until they do the gerrymandering, electoral college and republican rule by minority will continue
Cool story, would still have been nice to avoid the transgender genocide or killing health insurance.
I’m sure all the finger pointing at neighbors will help, instead of, you know, taking 5 minutes to understand how we got here and why its going to continue.
65 million don’t vote. “But Trump” is not a legit platform to run on. You have to give voters something to vote for. Dems fucked up
That’s exactly it. Dems keep throwing winnable elections and when they do get power they don’t attempt to implement any reforms to make it harder for republicans to hold power both electorally and monetarily so their voters get poorer and disenfranchised and leave.
Yeah all that “reform” is really happening now, isn’t it?
I mean Zorhan is a good sign things might finally be changing.
Noo! The democrats were entitled to your vote! Vote blue no matter who they wanna deport and remove!
Donald Trump is the president you fucking moron. Happy to vote for Biden in 2020 but not Harris, essentially just a younger Biden.
Two options. You’re phony or you’re stupid.
I voted for Harris in California. I didn’t like it and it didn’t impact much, but I did. She still lost because she didn’t make herself different enough from Biden, who had low polling rates, plus courted Republicans who got us into this mess.
Democratic VOTERS fucked up, the party did not. So many pathetic excuses for such a stupid decision in November.
The party didn’t even hold a primary and said you have to vote for who we tell you to vote for. “Ugh fine, what is she running on?” … “Nothing! Do you want Trump to win?”
That’s why I voted for Biden and it was much better than this. I never liked him. Still don’t.
Amazing how they refuse to blame the people with more data, money, and people instead of the people who are in states that didn’t matter (solid blue or solid red).
I can do both, don’t worry.
That’s EXACTLY what OP is doing.
At some point people just give up
Why? They won in 2020…
Did you all fucking forget or something?
Keep waiting for perfection, dumbass. Meanwhile, Republicans are destroying the country.
You’re so right, support for genocide was just a minor mark against perfection. Keep compromising, soon you’ll be agreeing that democrats shouldn’t fight for marriage equality because some other issue is on the table and we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of slightly better than rabid nazis.
2020 was only winnable for biden because trump fucked up covid so bad. The media hole is so assymmetric that a solid 25% of the US population (including donald trump, because this shit works on him too) believe biden was president in 2020. The fabricated immigration crisis was also extremely successful. Democrats keep trying to meet halfway on whole lies and it never worked.
Dems did nothing to break up the media/tech oligarchs during that time and now we’re paying for it. Dems have to be willing to play hard ball democracy. And most likely ICE and the FBI will make a bunch of crazy arrests during election season to try and hamper elections and smear candidates.
Every non-voter in California is responsible for this /s
All the people who did vote for the cheeto are responsible as well. And I think that was the point, marriage equality was on the ballot 14 years after the supreme court ruling
The point I think is that this was largely preventable from within our own ranks. Because we didn’t turn out, the minority was allowed to rule. Yes, the minority is responsible but they were a forgone conclusion. Inaction on the left allowed a preventable outcome to occur.
Democrats aren’t “left.”
Silence, online contrarian!
And those who refused to vote against.
Hey, guys, I found that comment! You know, the one where some smug prick tries to remind everyone how correct they were… ::checks watch:: 11 months ago.
Thank goodness they showed up. I was afraid there was going to be a political post that didn’t devolve into liberals and leftists screaming at each other about lesser evils and supporting genocide.
I guess someone needs to do the important work of making sure those who oppose christo-fucking-fascists never find common ground.
Imagine thinking you have the moral high ground after helping bring Trump to power.
Lol. Imagine thinking you have any idea what the fuck you are talking about. It really shouldn’t matter so god damn much but I voted, for Harris. I’m just not an immature shitbird that can’t empathize and can’t move on.
They messed up, sure. Get over it and solve today’s problems instead of constantly, repeatedly, over and over again, bring it up and lording it over them. Infighting keeps Trump in power. You have no moral high ground.
The U.S. should revisit if we need a supreme court anymore.
I’ll vote for anyone legally dismantling SCOTUS. Also if we can’t get rid of the supreme court can we at least move it to the northern most tip of alaska? Nowhere in the constitution does it say scotus has to be in DC.
The summit of Denali
Hell yeah now we’re talking. Hope they fucking enjoy their free RVs there.
So much for individual freedom and small government, huh.
So predictable. The angry assholes hated losing that ruling, as well as losing the culture war around it. That’s why they didn’t really give up, but switched to harping on bathroom bills and “men in women’s sports”. The wedge was trans and they were going to hammer on that until they got enough Confederates in office to, yeah, attack trans, but also go after gays, even if, or even especially because of, the culture being against them for it. They hope to deport, imprison, threaten and smash down enough people to reverse that culture war, too, believe that.
They won’t be happy until they turn on streaming services or their television or go to the movies and won’t have to see any gays, unless it is for comic effect or the like. They definitely don’t want to see anything normalized…
This might not be reversed in the near future - maybe. But the weirdoes on the right will treat this just like they did abortion. They won’t give up, even if it takes them 50 years to take the rights of others away.
I just have no idea why gays voted for Taco. Or any Confederates for that matter. It just makes no sense at all. I know some gays IRL who have voted for Taco. Twice. But I guess there was actually a group called “Jews for Hitler”, too, until the Nazis shut it down…
That’s why they didn’t really give up, but switched to harping on bathroom bills and “men in women’s sports”.
I’m so glad democrats circled the wagons around vulnerable minorities on this one. Can you imagine if they just ignored it and let republicans set the narrative, or worse, ran the “men in women’s sports” hate in their own ads?
If all LGBT people were a precient we would be more pro democrat than anywhere but parts of south LA
Do you mean that when the concurrence for the overturning of Roe v Wade said that they should also have another look at marriage equality, that meant that this was on the roadmap? Huh. Who could have possibly seen this coming?
I’m sure they’ll get around to resurrecting anti-miscegenation laws if their speed run is any indication…
Also, many, many people were trying to warn others about this. The right is too glued to Bullshit Mountain outlets to know anything at all. Of course they are just a lost cause. The “centrists” were actually saying things like “but isn’t Project 2025 just a liberal conspiracy theory?” without bothering to spend two minutes to even look.
And of course, a lot of self-styled super-edgy leftists were often lecturing people like myself about why voting for Democrats just furthers the “uniparty”. That was when they took a break from getting on their high horse about some minor point about terms, labels, phrases, pronouns and checking for “intersectional” points as to whether anyone was worth listening to in their silly Oppression Olympics game. Goddess help you and you better check your privilege if you were to try to inform them on anything if you scored lower on the intersectionality…sigh. And that’s not even getting into the Gaza Single Issue Voters, fuck. Heaven forbid they should use some of this energy to go out and vote, and not a stupid protest vote, either.
So, as you point out - so very many people did see this coming, and a lot of other people felt quite comfortable in ignoring that set of people… 🙄
Fuck Kim Davis
Yep, this was the logical follow-up to Dobbs.
Thanks, non-voters.
Yes, but have you considered this?
both sides
Yes, but have you considered this?
One side.
You’re in a mono-party system.
Figure it out.
You’re in a mono-party system.
Lol. Because things are exactly the same when Democrats are in control as when Republicans are.
Looks at the news. Looks out window at armed, masked men patrolling the streets for brown people. Sees the flagrant Constitutional violations. The unbelievably blatant corruption coming from within the White House. The increased racism. Uptick in hate crimes.
Yep, that’s actually complete horseshit.
NOT. THE. SAME.
Look up what controlled opposition means.
“The good cop and the bad cop aren’t 100% the same!”
“tHaNkS nOn-VoTeRs”
proceeds to support a party that skipped the primaries, has been anointing unlikable candidates for over 10 years with zero input
“ITs ThE nOn VoTeRs!!”
Maybe your shit party should hold actual primaries where people can select their candidate? Maybe, when in power, they should actually make meaningful change that helps people? Maybe they should actually appoint supreme court judges when given the chance?
Somehow when they aren’t in power, they are spinelessly fighting “if only we were in power we could fix all of this” then when they’re in power, they are somehow even more powerless “the Republicans keep blocking us”.
You got to be a real piece of work to think putting your trust in that party will fix anything. They are controlled opposition and the democracy has been lost for a long time.
Non-voters already know this.
Instead of attacking them, how about you hold your party accountable? They stole a primary from Bernie Sanders twice, and went ahead and eliminated primaries this last time. What will it take for you to look in the mirror and reflect instead of blaming everything around you?
Maybe your shit party should hold actual primaries where people can select their candidate?
Fair. Although they didn’t really have time when, a few months out, everyone started freaking out about Biden’s age and demanding a new candidate.
Maybe, when in power, they should actually make meaningful change that helps people?
This shows your lack of knowledge regarding this subject. If you review Democrat voting history, bills they have passed, you’d see that they’ve accomplished quite a bit of value for average Americans. Biden alone made significant strides. They’ve certainly done FAR, FAR more than Republicans ever have. In my own life, I remember when they gave me affordable healthcare through the ACA when I had zero healthcare before.
Maybe they should actually appoint supreme court judges when given the chance?
Republicans have blocked them from doing so and people like RBG selfishly held onto her position until the Democrats couldn’t replace her.
I think you think Democrats have had ACTUAL TOTAL CONTROL more often and for longer periods of time than they actually have. Because when they don’t have total control, they have to convince Republicans to vote with them, which Republicans won’t do.
They stole a primary from Bernie Sanders twice, and went ahead and eliminated primaries this last time.
Lol. No they didn’t. Where do you get your information? Inside your own head? Democrat primaries were held in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Bernie LOST by not getting enough popular votes. AFTER the 2024 primaries enough Democrat voters expressed enough concern over Biden’s age that they offered up another candidate (the VP) without another primary, because it’s kind of hard to hold primaries in the last couple months leading up to an election. You can argue that it was wrong to not hold a second round of primaries for that and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree.
I guess my question to you is…what alternative do you have? We are literally living the repercussion of people not voting or voting 3rd party because they’re upset with Democrats. The repercussion? A fascist party literally waltzed into power and we’re witnessing the flagrant disregard for our Constitution and the deconstruction of our Democracy.
Do you think protesting by not voting or voting for a 3rd party that CANNOT win helps make things better? Do you not grasp that the intelligent thing to do is vote for the lesser of two evils and then work to reform that lesser evil by voting out the candidates that won’t get onboard with more progressive policies? Political party reform has happened multiple times throughout American history and conservatives just did it, in the worst way possible, to the Republican party over the last decade or so.
And to be clear about the chances of a 3rd party candidate winning. They stand a snowball’s chance in hell. Why? Because the 3rd party candidate with the most votes in 2024 was magician Jill Stein, who magically appears right before every election, gets crushed, then magically disappears again. And she got a whopping HALF OF A SINGLE PERCENT of the total votes cast. Proving, beyond doubt, that no 3rd party stands a chance. And, to be more clear, no 3rd party is even trying to become viable. None are doing what’s necessary to start winning local and state elections to get more than ZERO representation in Congress.
Welcome to reality. You should adapt to it.
You have only your shit party to blame
Cool. Murc’s Law, I guess.
They might just punt it to the states like they’ve been doing. Welcome back to the 90’s.
I won’t be surprised when inter-racial marriage and slavery are back on the docket.
Slavery never went away. It’s alive and well in the Alabama prison system. They are building more prisons there, too. That way, all the blacks pushed into poverty after no affirmative action can be exploited accordingly.
This world is so bad.
Slavery never ended though. Hell, I’m pretty sure it’s not even illegal
It’s not. It’s in Alabama prison systems.
https://www.history.com/articles/13th-amendment-slavery-loophole-jim-crow-prisons
The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
“Who am I to stop an enterprising young person from willingly entering into a contract of indentured servitude?”
- Clarence Thomas, probably
The first one has already been floated. The second just comes later. They’re looking at doing an end run on slavery by declaring anyone a criminal, refusing due process, and sending them to work on a farm for nothing.
Yea but we have the knowledge to fuck that shit up. You think there is a lot of e coli on food now, just wait until all those prisoners are purposely shitting on the food.
Well, Trump has taught us that you can ignore the Supreme Court if your party controls Congress. So if there ever is another Democrat president with Democrat control of Congress, just revert all this and ignore whatever the SC says.
We should only be elevating Democrats who make it clear they are ready to play hardball.
We all know that he is not getting out of the white house peacefully
He’s never giving up power.
Good thing so many of us “protested” the election, what could possibly go wrong, right?
Don’t worry bro the files bro. Just release the files. /s
Stay tuned… interracial marriage will be on the chopping block.
I will laugh so fucking hard if America bends over while that happens. To be clear I bet they will but I hope I’m wrong and they finally grow a spine.
Wait until they challenge the equality of man and woman in a marriage…
This is my 0% surprised face
Yet another freedom that Yankees are happily throwing away lmao god it’s like watching an entire nation commit self harm hahah
You speak as if all Americans are the same like a hive mind.
Ironically using such sweeping generalities makes you more aligned with the administration taking away our freedoms.
Don’t get mad at me yankee, go punch a cop
Yeah the Yankees are always focusing on the big name superstars, and not putting enough effort into the fundamentals. They make too many errors, and they have unsuccessful results. It’s all about the money with them, there’s no real heart to them, and that’s why they lose.
Wait, we’re talking about baseball, right?
Ya made me laugh 😅 are they really a shit team tho? I don’t know the sport but it looks like a more exciting game than cricket
