as long as journalists and pundits act as if they are amateur political strategists & not people trying to understand and tell the truth about the world, they are going to take the implicit view that voters can never be wrong, which then demands endless explanation of their morally blameless choice
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Same dynamic Jefferson observed when he wrote about the priesthood realizing that grafting "Platonisms" onto Jesus' teachings would provide endless wealth and power for them as arbiters of their meaning. 1/2
E.g., disconnect between economic data and economic perception was deliberate.
I get that they didn’t want the 🫏 Party to swing R, but the result is 🇺🇸 as a whole now swings even FARTHER to the Right than it already has.
The issue is TikTok has an algorithm that is very good at *only* showing it to people who are already leftists, while showing pro-trump content to magats
That was never its intended purpose, it reflects popular will and thus produces ineffective and deadlocked governments. If material results are your desire then technocratic autocracy is your bag.
Faced with a choice between two horrific candidates, voters picked one
in 2016
Faced again with a choice between two horrific candidates, voters once again picked one
in 2024
Maybe stop giving voters two horrific choices?
They should have emphasized the stench of fascism around them
Criticizing Kamala was the entertainment to serve...
Shame on the media
We voted for Brexit.
Now we are taxed to the hilt because we cost our economy billions of £/yr, every single year.
Of course voters can be idiots.
Lots of voters don't connect their morals to their votes.
2. Most people espouse a morally blameless rationale for immoral behavior.
3. It is good reporting to publish the reasons people provide for voting Trump, IF (and only IF)
4. It is accompanied by reporting those justifications are empirically false.
I'm not blaming dipshit fucknuts that voted tRump.
I am blaming tho. Trust me.
You stand in the way and stop them. People made a terrible choice, so we stand in the way however we must.
This right here.
And if it "negates the charade", what alternative do you propose, monarchy?
That’s my leftyest take.
It’s absolutely still the right of every human to have that agency but damn, a lot of people just made a very bad choice.
If you keep throwing fuel on that fire, it will burn you.
He did so while severely mentally ill
& he repents of it. He acknowledges what he did, even though not fully responsible, & is bitterly sorry and takes the consequences
For those two reasons he troubles me far less than some voters
1. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene
2. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathon Haidt
3. The Future and Its Enemies: In Defense of Political Hope by Daniel Innerarity
The choice had to do with one thing only: Trump. This election was thumbs up or thumbs down on Trump, because Harris was an unknown which made her a non-issue.
they want to destroy the lives and families of my friends and neighbors.
There's no way I can ever respect that.
They heard "mass deportations" many times.
He never stopped talking about it.
They may not have known what he meant, but I think the vast majority heard it.
(but yes, they made a conscious choice... and now we'll all pay for it.)
But it jibes, for sure. 🤩
"I'm a Trumper ok?" "He stands up for the people who have been forgotten"
I was stunned
It’s been growing /festering that long
In each of the last three elections voters have chosen the option that represents a change in the status quo. Biden offered crumbs of change and barely won (then didn’t deliver).
in early Trump years I read @michaelduncan.bsky.social’s book on the century leading up to Caesar. many parallels
the scariest part was after Marius there was a Sulla and so forth, Trump also showing a path Americans will follow
In states where Harris campaigned the margin was considerably tighter.
But you are telling me you don’t think disinformation campaigns work.
Really ?
As for X people don’t realize how bad it is. They’ve been hoodwinked.
And the news media doesn’t report on that either.
Sure, some of them were. But not all of them, and maybe not even most of them.
Gore Vidal
Fascist leaders suppress voter’s agency by controlling media and education.
Yes, this is only an explanation but no excuse. Each individual should have known better.
The number of people I’ve seen writing comments online essentially saying “Because the Democrats did XYZ, I was forced to do what I did this election cycle”
we need to get past this point if we are going to fight this. there cannot be a point B until this particular point A is digested.
Even women in comas, children, and the disabled are raped.
They were forced to do what the rapist wanted.
https://bsky.app/profile/jay2.bsky.social/post/3ladgaxerzl2l
No, she’s an adult. She made a choice. Now she has to live with the consequences.
If we portray them with no agency we’ll never fix or change it.
Never attribute bad, destructive choice that what can be attributed to low information voting.
By the way good to find you here!
because they we're cajoled/inspired/begged enough??
Isn’t agency on a spectrum?
Getting all news through low-cost/free media is not always a choice?
And yet we have _allowed_ Fox and FB and Xitter to flood the zone with shitty information. Remember the former head of the LDP becoming Metal's Head of PR?
Fuck the Nazis though...
imo rallying the base would've been much smarter than reaching out to imaginary 'reasonable' GOP voters
You're literally never going to shame people into voting for you, and I want to win.
Complaining only gets us so far. This is a massive problem that has developed over a decade. We need to start talking about how to fix it.
It's only good because it means they're idiots, rather than willful fascists. 😬
I am very worried for America right now.
Institutions MIGHT hold for four more years. They won't last eight.
Democracy only works without comflict in homogenous societies, when you have multiple ethnicities you need a king-figure that dampens the democratic impulse, like Singapore
Media:Why does Trump keep saying racist stuff?
Duh, you amplify it and it works.
And then you realize that’s the case with everything they do, they’re always wrong and never truly understand anything
they are going to be our enemies
They will probably still outlive us, but it will be a MUCH worse existence than they have now
In doing so, they are normalizing criminal behavior and fascism by simply presenting it as another option.
Ex journalist here who’s watched that drift over decades
If a “marginalized group” brings in 10,000 votes but supporting them loses you 100,000 votes, then you’re going to have to carefully budget just how many of those kind of groups you can carry on your back
It is morally right to stand up for folks who are being discriminated against, full stop.
It’s beyond normal human capacity to have authentic emotions about people we don’t know. It’s all internal psychology
Media blames Kamala and black and Latino men. 😆
I'm going to give your words as much credit as you have, none.
Bye.
I'm personally speaking of people who think they're marginalized because they ran up against the reality that, most of the time, only rich or pushy people get heard, unless we organize.
It’s the minority triggering fear responses that did this.
I agree contemporary journalistic scrutiny is lacking, holding the editors, media magnates & political elite (the tiny, greedy, financially wealthy minority) accountable.
Ball don’t lie. But politics & law are not ball.
By any objective measure, 2024 was not a sign of wisdom but of propaganda preying upon ignorance.
Both sides are filled with geniuses to morons, both sides are thoroughly propagandized. The divide is tribalism; the friend-enemy distinction. You vote with who likes you.
Sorry it's just so fucking bleak for us right now
From their current perspective, it might be a conscious, rational, and "right" choice.
Trying to understand it before judging it could be helpful
To the extent you can ever be certain of the morality of a choice, this is it.