The General US Politics Thread

Trump got 48% of the vote Charles, I know you like to pretend that people are good and just missunderstood...

But the reality is that republicians dont just magic themselfs into office by saying democrats cant vote.. literal millions of people vote to put them there.

And as some one who has has to put up with some form of bigotry on a near daily basis whether it's from being a woman, immigrant, or LGBT I am honestly starting to find the constant covering for those assholes bothersome, I know damn well personaly they exist and they exist in numbers.

Edited by Imca on Aug 13th 2020 at 3:06:17 AM

Minor correction: Trump got 46.1% of the vote. Hillary got 48.2%. Otherwise everything else is correct.

All I know is I'm going to the Polls, covered in a face mask, gloves, goggles, and a jacket to help Biden win the Popular Vote proper this time, and even though I live in Alabama, I hope everyone else does it as well. If we can't vote safely, we're gonna have to overwhelm them at the Ballot.

He got 48% of the vote of a nation where only 55.4% of the eligible voting population voted. Its not like half the nation supports him, really.

A) assuming that any one who didnnt vote automatically didnt suport trump is a fallicy, closer would be to extrapolate known votes to the remaining population and then acknowledge even that's going to be slightly off due to some factors that prevent voting being hostile in nature.

B) that's still 62 MILLION people.

C) We cant fix the problem by pretending there aren't millions of true believers even if it would make us feel better to pretend people cant be that hateful... they are, and it takes quite a bit of privilege to ignore it :/

Thanks for the correction, I remembered the diffrence was 2% but forgot third parties, sorry.

Edited by Imca on Aug 13th 2020 at 3:20:42 AM

The point with that was not to minimize the harm they cause, but to point out that there is a pool of people whose opinions for various reasons arent being heard, or they do not bother sharing it.

That is fair, I just dont think that if they were all heard things would get better, when it's often treated as a silver bullet of "look at all these unheard Hillary voters"

The assumption that every one who is quite agrees with you is a pervasive one on both the left and the right.

Well my assertion was never one about the ones who did NOT vote, it was all about those who DID vote for him, and I was saying they are not close to a majority.

The distinct differences that create a "silent majority" (if you like to call them that) and why they are silent is a convoluted matter subject to a lot of speculation and I would not dare make many assumptions about them beyond stating the fact that characterizes them...which is...

They systematically seem to not vote.

Unfortunately you caught me in a "does not trust other humans to do the right thing" mood, so this does the opposite of getting my hopes up.

Edited by PhysicalStamina on Sep 3rd 2020 at 10:10:53 AM

US authorities have no interest in getting involved with Russia's (obviously rushed) COVID vaccine. Even animal testing has been ruled out as of now.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/europe/russia-us-coronavirus-vaccine/index.html

You're underestimating how many mental hoops people will leap through in order to keep doing what they're already doing. Non-voters are willfully ignorant.

When they find out how cartoonishly evil Republicans are, they go, "Well, Democrats are just as bad. Every politician is like that. All politicians, every single one of them on both the right and the left, are greedy and evil. There are no exceptions."

And if you try to argue the point further they just tune you out. Because they aren't trying to win the argument. They're not having an argument with you at all. You are annoying them and they're waiting for you to stop talking and go away so they can keep doing what they were doing. Nothing you say will change their mind because their actions aren't driven by belief; their beliefs are created to justify action.

You cannot out-debate apathy.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 13th 2020 at 5:45:15 AM

Yeah, that's why I said I'd like to believe rather than that I believe. There are some of them in these very forums.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Aug 13th 2020 at 8:44:14 AM

That's ultimately why voter apathy is the biggest problem for a democracy in general, not just the US. There's no argument you can make to force someone to care about something: they either care about the truth and society at large, or they do not.

The fact is, a lot of people are mostly just concerned with their everyday life and the people in their small social circle. You know, all the things people usually struggle with, their finances, love life, family, work troubles, all that jazz. And they don't necessarily care to learn more about or be invested in a broader world than that, because in their minds, they already have enough on their plate.

Because even if it's morally correct, caring about politics can be and often is emotionally exhausting and leads to uncomfortable and ugly situations. If you don't care or know much about politics, that one neighbor who's really nice to you but makes implicitly racist comments every now and then is something you can easily brush off, but once you are more informed it's much harder to simply ignore them. And when you get into those types of situations with people you're closer to like friends and family, it starts getting much uglier.

There was a Vox article from a while ago that talked a bit about this and how our society has gotten so big so fast that we haven't really been able to catch up yet; our brains aren't adapted in an evolutionary sense to fully handle a society that's this large and interconnected. It makes it easier to just brush off what's happening in the rest of the world if it's not personally affecting you.

EDIT: To be the slightest bit more charitable, we're also at a point where trying to become more informed can be rather difficult due to the right pushing conspiracy theories and just plain ignoring facts, which has created a "post-truth" or "post-trust" environment. To an average person that's not super well-informed they don't have much of a reason to trust someone over another beyond natural inclination or inherited beliefs. Even when you've developed a barometer for respectable sources of information, it also takes a while to become informed about things, politics is a pretty complicated business with a lot of parts to it. So that just makes it easier for someone to justify not being informed about stuff.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Aug 13th 2020 at 9:25:04 AM

Guess who just requested a mail-in ballot in Florida?

Florida Man?

Amen to that. I often find myself wishing I could make myself not care, too, but the simple fact of the matter is that, even beyond my personal stake in specific policy areas, I care about politics because for some reason that I cannot help despite having every reason to be cynical, I care about people.

I know I would love to go back to not knowing how the sausage was made.

It also does not help that even just the process of voting in the US is a ridiculous hassle with underhanded tactics like voter suppression being employed, and people potentially having to take time off work and other responsibilities to vote which is especially harmful for people with more modest income. It often puts people in a situation where if they don't care a lot they're not gonna vote, or they want to but can't. Which just reinforces the apathy.

Also, Senator Ron Johnson all but admitted his investigations into Burisma are to hurt Biden and help Trump's election chances.

""The more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between Obama and Trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies, I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden."

I'd love to not care about politics again. Unfortunately, that's not an option since politics won't stop caring about me.

The only saving grace is that in a democracy I have a say in how the sausage is made.

Edited by M84 on Aug 13th 2020 at 9:39:55 PM

In theory anyways.

Let's not go there. Thinking your vote doesn't matter just leads to people not voting at all. Which doesn't help anyone.

Granted, wanting politics got get boring and samey is not a bad thing in itself, going from "this will save the country and all democracy" every time is.....well, draing.

Trump stokes 'birther' theory about Kamala Harris.

I doubt anyone is surprised by this, but, you know.

Im surprised but in retrospective I shoudnt be, it seen trump is recycling is typical lies.

Trump is going all in... in New York: He thinks the High Crime Rate and High Tax Rates in New York will give him the state.

Despite his seriousness, I think we all needed a good laugh today.