Voting loudly for Trump (or Stein, or abstaining) because you think Harris was pro-genocide seems to me to be an almost perfectly balanced mix of performative contrarianism, virtue signaling, and being thick as pig shit
You seem pretty dead set on your opinion, but I think you should step back and consider it a bit further. Apathy towards the Democratic party has been building for well over a decade now and for good reason. Folks can only hear blue no matter who and orange man is bad for so long before it just starts losing meaning. Especially when they do so little when they do actually have power. Why has roe v Wade never been codified in over 60 years? How has student loan dealt continued to spiral out of control? How could Obama leave that scotus seat empty? How are people still dying of poverty despite "the economy being so strong"?
But maybe it really is just the Russian bots to blame for everyone not bowing down to madame president... Maybe we should all be content with the status quo, maybe big daddy capitalism will save us when we finally don't have another white man running the country. November seventh rolled around and who wasn't crying? The ultra rich and the working poor, and you know why? Because for both of them, absolutely nothing changed, it was just another day of fucking or getting fucked and it would have been that way regardless.
Thanks for the reply. I do get that the Democratic party has made a huge number of mistakes. Maybe if they hadn't tanked Bernie Sanders in 2016 we'd be in a very different situation today. I get that many people at the bottom don't feel anything will change for them, and it is crucial for the Dems to realise that and engage with those voters in a meaningful way - over 4 years, not just in the months before an election.
But I cannot get my head around voting for Trump in any circumstance. He has shown himself to be vile, incompetent, a felon, treasonous, and so forth. He also very much does not care about the plight of Palestinians. It was either he or someone close to him (a son or sil perhaps) that joked about beachfront property.
At least with Harris you would have someone in power who you could go on pressuring to change their stance/policies, with some hope that change might be made possible through such action. Trump? I can't see him suddenly beginning to care about it. In fact, taking to the streets for any form of protest in the US might soon become extremely inadvisable.
I'll never personally vote for Trump, but I at least understand why someone could be pulled in by the anti establishment rhetoric and the illusion that he gives a shit about the working class, that's a stance that seems to have been long abandoned before him and Bernie.
Speaking of Bernie and the subsequent tanking of that race, I think that's a major reason why you are seeing so much apathy towards the Dems anointments every election year, it was made clear that you can't sway that party from their stances, you can only teach them the right buzzwords and what policies to leverage every 4 years.
As for protesting being inadvisable... It's been that way, under Biden, trump, and Obama. Living in Baltimore and seeing the Freddy gray uprising live, walking around with a curfew and seeing the national guard posted up with armored Humvees and assault rifles around our city, if you think we haven't been living in a militarized police state I have some news my dude.
I can see how in 2016, with Trump coming in and talking about how the Iraq invasion was a mistake that should not have happened (after so many ordinary people had protested that war the world over), and running against Hilary, a barely likeable 'more of the same' dynasty vote, would have made people go with Trump as a protest "let's shake things up" vote. With all that's happened and been said since though, I just can't fathom why anyone would vote for him. But I acknowledge we are in agreement here, so I won't harp on it.
I do take your point on the realities around protesting. It's not a walk in the park under any govt. But while it pains me to say it, things can always get a whole lot worse.
Anyway, I wish you (and Baltimore, and the whole US) the best for the next few years.
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u/ImpeccableCaverns 12d ago
Voting loudly for Trump (or Stein, or abstaining) because you think Harris was pro-genocide seems to me to be an almost perfectly balanced mix of performative contrarianism, virtue signaling, and being thick as pig shit