I don’t believe that voting will save the world but neither will this comment, still I wrote it and still I vote.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
“Both sides are the same, you shouldn’t bother voting”
People don’t bother voting, the bad guys win, things get worse
“See? I was right!”
Bill to Criminalise Being Poor narrowly passes with a 51/49 vote.
Bill to provide Israel with 12,000 brand new “child-melter 4000s” passes with unanimous bipartisan support.
Right. That’s why the whole democracy process isn’t supposed to begin and end with election day… But I have a suspicion, and it is just a suspicion, that a lot of the public don’t actually have as much of a problem with genocide as we assume they would.
I’m not entirely certain my own neighbours could locate Palestine or Israel on a map.
Very depressing and completely real, unfortunately.
The state of public education and historical knowledge honestly makes me second guess the idea of re-education camps, lol. Seems preferable to decades of bloodshed fighting unlimited waved of ignorant propagandized fascists.
Maybe a clockwork orange style eye opening device with the Gaza genocide playing in one eye and both sides of the American political elite saying there’s no evidence of humanitarian violations in the other.
So in other words even if voting did work you’re going to end up with someone as shitty as the average American and they’re still going to commit genocide
That’s not what happens when voting works.
It’s what happens when you vote and then do nothing else.
That’s not what happens when voting works.
Yes it is
It’s what happens when you vote and then do nothing else.
I do agree with that
I do think it odd that the Palestine protests seemed to dry up recently… It got visibility and there were protests before the election, and then nothing. It really just reads almost like the movement cared more about making a point about complicit Democrats than genuine care for the issue, and once Biden and his ilk were “held to account”, they gave up.
Yes, there might be a case of the media colluding to not cover it as much anymore because they were no longer useful in swinging the election, but I think it might be a little of Column A and a little of Column B…
The issue is that even if you voted for the democrat every time, due to them not improving the living situation considerably you’ll always end up having the worse guy win at some point.
The only thing that would really help would be to finally start improving the living reality of the people.
That’s why we need people to vote in the primaries.
The primaries that they can decide not to have? Or that the winner didn’t really win?
at least one state had open primaries, I’d need to check if others do but we got ours from a ballot measure.
Wow, how generous of them to give one state a primary, maybe.
according to balotopedia it’s 14 with open primaries
Truly the land of democracy, lol.
Nah, if people cared about politics before Election Day we could be pushing for better candates in the primaries.
We absolutely will continue to get the choice between a shit sandwich and a shit burrito every time if we keep refusing to take part in the ingredient selection.
I’m gonna need to stop you right there.
Pushing for better candidates means defining a coherent set of qualities one wants in a candidate and then actually doing legwork for them instead of flinging shit everywhere from the lazy safety of your bedroom in your parents’ house.
You’re supposed to “improve living reality” before and after voting, not instead of… Voting doesn’t preclude protesting or working to that end.
Last time the democrats had control of all three branches of government, americans got slightly better healthcare, and now insurance companies can’t just refuse to cover conditions they claim you had before you got insurance. Also no more lifetime maximums.
Also thousands of innocent civilians were murdered on the other side of the planet by those democrats, but they were brown so they didn’t count?
Removed by mod
Don’t dismiss my comment. Those lives are worth your comfort?
Removed by mod
You think someone arguing on behalf of the victims of American imperialism is arguing in bad faith automatically?
That’s a fucked up level of dehumanization, brother, lol.
True, but do democrats improve more than the previous republican made it worse? It doesn’t feel like it.
Also I wouldn’t use Healthcare as an example of something that works in the US
No, because it’s easier to destroy than to build.
Also Republicans have had complete control of government more than Democrats over the last few decades, so you’d expect Republican policy to be moved further.
You don’t think the bad guys were the guys doing a genocide?
People on Lemmy too. Just hop on over to !latestagecapitalism@lemmy.world and there’s the same sentiment.
Come to lemmy where /c/Conservative is for anarchists, and /c/LateStageCapitalism is for conservatives pretending to be centrists.
And people say the Fediverse is confusing, pft.
That community is full of tankies whose literal job it is to mind fuck you into not voting. They ban anyone that calls them out.
Yeah, called out a suspicious account posting that type of content and got banned lol. Account was made a year ago, but had zero activity, not even 1 upvote or downvote, until 3 months ago when it suddenly started posting “voting doesn’t work” type content just as the midterms are coming up. Hmmm 🤔.
Then there’s accounts named shit like ConcernedCitizen or AngryAmerican posting tankie shit. I could take a guess what country they’re probably posting from and it def ain’t US.
I’m proudly banned from that. I can’t stand authoritarians.
It’s because most of the people there are from countries that do not declare themselves a democracy.
The revolution is just leftist rapture. It’ll have fire and punish the ones who deserve it and it’ll happen any day now and when it’s done it’ll be a utopia and even though people have said it’ll happen for hundreds of years it’ll happen this lifetime for sure and we can do some things to push for it but just wait it’ll happen any day now
Honestly for all my bloodthist, ya ain’t wrong. Fact of the matter is most leftists are either too chickenshit or too insular to do jack for shit. Or they get into petty and stupid squabbles effectively preventing any attempts at outreach, seriously id happily join a group of leftists who can stop fighting about theory for five fucking seconds and do something.
I’m a Redneck who follows the old ways of being an anti corporate asshole, I really don’t care about your Soviet larp let’s just set up a communal food pantry you fuckwits. I’ve never felt more rage than when some yuppie ass twig tried fucking purity testing me via quize.
For being so focused on inclusion, we have an issue with purity testing for sure. Maybe people need to accept less perfect allies.
Okay but this analogy falls apart because there have been many actual revolutions and never even a single rapture.
The contemporary USA, China, France, and many other countries’ governments were created by revolutions, it’s not even like they’re particularly rare in human history.
Ok fair, at least there’s been revolutions.
I’m just saying that’s how people are treating it. Why bother working for it when it’s inevitable? “It’ll come save us all” while ignoring the hard work and problems. Ignoring that long term permanent change is more of a result of boring, slow work.
Voting doesn’t change anything, though, it contributes to the nothing changing if you think voting does anything. The gradual change you’re talking about is organizing and building alternative systems of power so that in the future there can exist the basis of a revolution.
Cool, so you’re doing that? Do think most leftists online talking about not voting are doing that? Most importantly, how exactly does voting once every 4 years for the least bad option materially hinder those efforts you’re SURELY working on?
Voting does nothing and thinking it does something prevents people from moving beyond just voting.
So to you, maintain the status quo and keep the masters happy so they don’t release their “retribution” on us again.
Be quiet slaves?
Do you not understand that incremental change is possible without revolution? There’s a middle ground between “maintain the status quo” and “overthrow the government.”
If you were born in this century, you haven’t ever seen evidence that Congress can actually pass legislation that makes our lives better. It used to happen, and I believe it can happen again if we can elect people who aren’t corporate shills.
There was a time when people like Mamdani weren’t the exception and political figures actively tried to make life better for all of their constituents. That should be our expectation, and anyone who doesn’t deliver should lose re-election.
This is impossible with the current leadership and they don’t change.
People aren’t going for the stupid “blue no matter who”. Mamdani and Al-Sayad have even shown that “blue no matter who” isn’t even a thing that the DNC believes in. Why do you think that is? When the DNC had a leader who wanted change and younger reps, they canned him IMMEDIATELY AIPAC funds %60 of the Dems and the Dems will ALWAYS fund Republicans to defeat progressives in elections so they can win by you blue magas
You cannot vote out of fascism it has NEVER happened and we have been couped
I am not against voting. I am against voting for Democrats (the status quo) they cannot be removed until the DNC gets rid of support for Israel and neoliberals are kicked out of the party and sent to the right where they belong.
You cannot compromise with pedophiles. You do not incrementally reduce concentration camps. You don’t incrementally make progress with fascists that are killing DNC reps in MN (when have they brought that up), threatening and intimidating ilhan Omar (of which SCHUMER HAS SADI NOTHING) .
THEY ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE
Politicians in AIPAC’s pocket count as “corporate shills” in my book.
Many of the top Democrats are bought and paid for, they don’t make people’s lives better, and people should stop voting for them.
But the place for your protest vote is in the primaries, where you actually have a better choice. In a general election where your choices are Corporate Democrat or Fascist Republican, the two are simply not interchangeable.
People who make that false equivalence and discourage voting because “both sides are the same” have exacerbated the general apathy that has enabled the Republican party to push American political discourse farther and farther to the right for the past 30 years.
“People who make that false equivalence and discourage voting because “both sides are the same” have exacerbated the general apathy that has enabled the Republican party to push American political discourse farther and farther to the right for the past 30 years.”
That’s the biggest lie of all. You centrists have been shitting on the left and APPEASING the monsters that got us here now. THAT is why political discourse and policy has shifted farther and farther right.
INCREMENTAL CHANGE!!!
No? Why would you assume that’s what I’m about? What a weird leap.
As opposed to what? Like, the entire point of the tweet in the picture is that you guys never actually DO stuff. More importantly, can you explain exactly how you’re materially hindered from preparing the revolution by voting for the least bad option once every 4 years?
It seems insane to me to believe you can overthrow a large ass government, but spending 4 hours once every 4 years puts it in jeopardy. That’s 0.0114% of time, 0.017% of awake time and 0.053% of the median americans free time.
Because your complacency and appeasing only made us drift to the right. Do you see where we are at?
Here is a better option for this.
You tell me: When have they Democrats ever restored a benefit/entitlement that was cut by Republicans? When have they repealed any troublesome laws? (Not counting the WWE senator flip flop game) They had the majority in 1996 and CHOSE not to do anything for us.
Even in CA, Newsome, the frontrunner for standard Dems, had all the votes for universal healthcare in his state and what did he CHOSE to not do it.
Last question, if I am so wrong, why on earth would this party struggle so hard to defeat a mentally ill, cyberpedophile that is openly committing treason?
FORTY YEARS OF YOUR WAY GOT US HERE
The imperial core will be the last to revolt properly. Its inhabitants are too comfortable and chauvinistic to want the actual change that global equality would need. As long as the new system doesn’t radically change their view on exploitation the western left will at best achieve national socialism. The western hegemonial structures need to be crushed first if the capital R Revolution is to come. Western leftists at large have neither the power nor the intention to tear down these systems as that would mean that their own living standards would deteriorate in the short term.
“Seize the means of production!”
… but the means of production are mostly just shops, superstores, malls, shopping centers, restaurants, gyms, car dealerships, movie theatres, film equipment, data centers, offices, warehouses, vans, semi trucks, trains, planes, and airports.
I was banned from a certain “leftist” sub for arguing it’s stupid to dismiss voting or dislike voting instead of whatever-else because election outcomes have very practical consequences for a lot of people in the here and now and you might need to start looking at Plan B’s in the event your systemic revolution that gets rid of the US government and allows you to rebuild– a messy process that you’ve not elaborated on– doesn’t happen.
Far as I’m concerned, it’s proof some leftists are just as dumb and easily mislead as ultra conservatives; your rhetoric is indistinguishable from anti-voting memes that came right out of a Russian bot farm.
Agreed. Voters holding out for the perfect candidate infuriate me. The only “perfect” candidate is staring at you in the mirror. Outside of that, compromises are necessary.
There’s a certain leftist opposition to structure in general.
I had a comrade who was actively trying to get out of jury duty because he has fair objections to the legal system. Others in our organization were encouraging him to wear communist pins and whatnot so he doesn’t get selected.
But like… what if some reactionary takes your place on the jury? Is that preferable to you being selected and needing to briefly take part in a deeply flawed system that you believe should be overhauled? Shouldn’t people who have dedicated their life to fixing these systems make it a point to operate within them in some capacity?
It’s as if they are worried participating in the system in any way will somehow taint you.
deleted by creator
Those subs are just propaganda tools for russian and chinese bots and propagandists - and the useful idiots. You cannot really tell any of them apart.
You must vote out every Republican, then drag every Democrat kicking and screaming to the Left.
We cannot make progress if we’re (barely at that) fighting the Republicans everytime they wanna hunt the homeless for sport or force transpeople to strip naked for perverts.
if Democrats ever pass ranked choice voting, then third parties can finally have a chance
Shhhh the Democrats will hear you!
Had a very long argument on here with some “leftist” several months back where they were trying to argue voting does nothing and makes you complicit with the genocide in Gaza, but during the argument they conceded that republicans had a much more extreme on Gaza as well as were doing worse things to citizens than any democrat, and that voting doesn’t stop you from doing any other kind of activists, but they still just doubled down on “voting bad”
Genuinely insane
They boil down to:
- Paid trolls
- Genuinely mentally ill people whose decision making centers are broken
Either way the solution is not to engage with them in anyway. You will not convince them to be reasonable and your energy is better spent elsewhere.
Or ai bots that have lost the plot in the argument
Damn AI bots taking away jobs from paid trolls
Haha, the paid trolls are much more convincing and I’ve noticed a lot more sophisticated propaganda on the fediverse. Regular Bots are probably in higher abundance on meta and Reddit and other big tech social media platforms.
I knew a guy who daily stared into the sun for a few seconds.
He claimed to vote and tried to get me not to. I think he was either a secret Nazi or a secret superalcoholic or both.
That person probably voted, if they could.
That’s been my experience, except for any concessions.
That’s lemmy as well. Tons of talk. Absolutely zero action.
The fuck do you know?
Ever heard of OpSec?
If there was opsec there wouldn’t be talking about it
at least none that could be directly related to action. which is exactly what OP was complaining about…
LMAO!!
I advocate both.
i regularly get flamed by asking my fellow so-called (internet) leftists one piercing question: “how?” i’ve been called a nazi, maga, etc. because i want people to actually consider how they would go about implementing their big ideas.
it’s great to have big endgame ideas, it’s important to have a direction. but if all you have are the big endgame ideas and nothing else, you are simply not a serious person and you have a lot of political literacy you need to work on. being terminally online and jockeying with nothing but ideas is not praxis, it’s not even theory. it’s just attention whoring for updoots and likes.
Reading this reminded me of a quote. I unfortunately can’t remember for the life of me who said this, but it was something to the effect of: “I appreciate many leftist ideas. But, in my experience, if your only acceptable outcome is ‘utopia’, and your only acceptable timeline is ‘immediately’, then things aren’t likely to go your way.”
We need to democratize our workplaces
People like that are on the same political level as that one Nickelback song.
They love to go on about the French Revolution, yet never acknowledge that it immediately led to dictatorship.
Kinda seems like leftists spend a LOT of time thinking about how to avoid counter-revolutions but whatever
Kinda seems like leftists spend a LOT of time thinking
This part comes across very clearly… seems there’s no time for anything that would follow though.
And a bunch of dead people. Something tells me the terminally online leftists won’t actually be in the frontlines risking their lifes. Exactly like they aren’t risking their lifes, but the minoritized peoples every time they get off on accelerationist fantasies.
It’s important to remember the famous song “everyone I don’t like is literally hitler” by rusty cage and that it applies to a shocking number of people online
You can do both. It’s not like voting voids some firebombing permit you never had anyway. Just mind the timing, because firebombing might end up barring you from voting.
Also, please don’t firebomb Walmart. You’d just hurt other victims of the systemic evil. The people who are to blame don’t shop there.
Unrelatedly, I hear there’s a killer recipe for flame-grilled parasite…
Felons should be able to vote!
No state’s permanently bar all felons from voting anymore. The key difference now is when they’re allowed to vote again.
For some, prisoners can vote, for some it’s after you get out of jail, and for some, it’s when your parole is up.
There are still certain crimes that do require the governor to grant permission, though.
Sorry, no can do, but how about we make one president?
/s
If you think voting is useless, I gotta ask then why do so many politicians try to surpress it?
Teaching the population learned helplessness.
As a black person, if voting is useless, then why did Jim Crow era South come up with millions of ways to stop Black people from voting? Why do d still have systems set in place to make voting for minorities harder, like laws about former felons not being able to vote?
If you’re a minority (race and gender, fuck even poor white men) your ancestors didn’t fight and die for voting rights just for you to sit here and go “oh it doesn’t really do anything”
Politicians and Russian bots.
That’s what makes it useless
The whole “everyone is 12” extends to things like this btw, if voting meant nothing, why is there a constant concerted effort of making voting particularly difficult? Are the politicians bored? Or is there something to a vote we’re not seeing that they do? Of course you don’t think those things you’re 12.
Illusion of choice and controlled opposition.
They have delivered NOTHING since the neoliberals infected the party. They are leadership and no one will replace them. I won’t keep listing all the ways that the leadership has stated and shown how they aren’t going to fix any of this. They will just make the “Jack Smith” rematch and “that will get trump this time”!
We will watch trump (if he is still alive) either never show up or pleas the fifth. We will watch the clips and get excited for a year and a half and then, election time!
It will be narrow margins, we CAN’T have another maga in there, better keep voting blue and NOT progressives because they are “unelectable”. Better keep appealing to the right, THAT WILL DELIVER FOR THE WORKING CLASS SOMEDAY
Experts already agree that we are in fascism. Please look into how many people vote out of fascism
When in the 40 years of this will be enough for people to see?
And your solution is…?
Revolution of course. How that is accomplished is debatable and would be best if it was something like a massive general strike.
We are in a horrible place. DOGE compromised every aspect of our federal government’s information security and data infrastructure. They invaded it, infected it with their AIs, and copied it onto servers. There is no getting that back.
State governments are still effective and people can still have a voice there. Wherever we go from here, it can’t be the status quo. We are in Thomas Paine and pre-revolution times right now.
There are concentration camps right now, treason, and we are dismantling the ICC.
Incremental voting while shifting right has been as effective as believing in trickle down economics.
We need a party that shares the same basic principle as the New Deal Democrats. Neoliberals CANT be that because they abandoned the whole idea of pre distribution policies (shaping the labor market itself through minimum wages, union rights, public works, protective tariffs, and financial regulation. The neoliberal turn replaced that with “redistribution” — letting the market run its course and then compensating the losers via tax-and-transfer tools like the Earned Income Tax Credit)
That’s the principle that can get us stuff incrementally
Cool, so what have you done? And most importantly, how would voting once every 4 years for the least horrible option have hindered you substantially in all these things you’re surely doing?
Or have you done nothing? Exactly like every single big talking, privileged, selfish leftist online?
“how can voting once every four years…” Look where it led? The business owners are in charge - 2 Groups of business owners. Workers are not represented anymore and we are more right wing than every country but Israel.
Privileged and selfish? For advocating and donating to left wing causes? Educating youth in civic duties and principles? I’m a nobody but can contribute locally, but your blind loyalty to a party that has given you nothing is weird.
It’s the exact same argument as trickle down economics. Look back at the last half century, it ain’t happening
I’m not sure what their opinion is, but:
Warfare against the private property owning class that rapes children and funds genocidal imperialist wars.
Cool, how much of that have you done? And can you at least comprehend that some people with lifes worth living DON’T want to lose their life as the very first option?
I have been part of an org a while ago that was opposing military and finance support of Israel. Nothing illegal, though.
Things will change when a critical mass of people reach the point where they have nothing left to lose.
Whole bunch of people I know are literally dying. I don’t care about the comfort of the people who want uninterrupted brunch while that goes on.
As Eminem once put it, “Talk is cheap, motherfucker, if you’re feeling frogish, leap.”
Does voting cause Americans some obscure form of pain or anguish?
I can see no other reason why not to vote.
There was a law a few years back that prevented giving water to people standing in line to vote. Lines in places where your vote matters can take hours. You also do not get time off work so you have to use a personal day or just get paid less that week.
The water law was specifically in Texas, not a federal law.
It’s stupid how difficult some places make it to vote. Also, in a surprise turn off events, the military was specifically ordered to make sure everyone gets a “down day” to vote.
Probably because of the amount of stupid people in the military that will vote red. I hope it flips this year though.
Americans aren’t really allowed to take off work.
Just so people know because this is important, many states have laws requiring employers to allow time off to vote. Check your local laws. Some states even require that time to be paid.
Does anybody require the employee to prove they actually voted?
A problem is that, actually, some are. It’s the carrot on a stick problem allowing the problem to get much, much worse, at a rapid rate.
Like, the big stone door at the end of the tunnel is open, but closing, and there are only 10 people-spaces available. So, 1000 people fight each other to survive, rather than rushing through the door and ripping the spine out of the person closing the door.
“Oh, you have an issue with the door closing person? Maybe if you ran faster and beat more other people you wouldn’t have an issue with it.”
A lot of us have been disenfranchised yet the rest of the world keeps parroting the oligarch shit about pulling ourselves up by the boot straps.
I’m not USian, but here are some assorted reasons why one might choose not to vote. I do not necessarily agree (or disagree) with any of them, and this is my attempt at a reasonably balanced analysis as a person who is not an expert in politics, but has read a lot of arguments in the comments.
-
Voting makes you complicit.
(Let’s say for the sake of argument that it is a given that Democrats will continue aiding Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing just as much as the Republicans, but will improve things for marginalised communities domestically.)
The argument here is that voting for a politician that will perpetuate a genocide makes you complicit in a genocide in a way that inaction does not. The counter-argument is that refusing to exercise what influence you have in the choice between make a choice between Palestinian genocide or Palestinian genocide and trans genocide makes you complicit in trans genocide. This is literally the kind of thing that the trolley problem thought experiment was made to explore. -
Voting for the lesser evil increases harm in the long run.
The argument here is that demonstrating a willingness to vote for the lesser evil - with no red lines whatsoever - incentivises Democrats to only ever be slightly less bad than the Republicans, whereas having red lines and allowing Democrats who cross them to lose will incentivise the Democratic party to change their policies. The counter-argument is that Dems haven’t exactly demonstrated that they willing to adopt certain policies even when it would be demonstrably beneficial to their election prospects, and so the pragmatic thing to do is to delay harm for as long as possible to give a better chance that non-electoral politics will shift in the interim. The counter-counter-argument is that such a shift will not occur while that harm is being delayed, which leads us on to… -
Accelerationism.
(Yes, I’m aware that what I’m about to write isn’t the original meaning of accelerationism. Don’t @ me.)
The argument here is electoral politics either can never progress toward socialism/anarchism/your-flavour-of-leftism (if you’re a leftist), or even that it is no longer even capable of halting a descent into fascism (if you’re a pessimistic liberal), and so we should simply allow shit to get fucked so that a critical mass of people have it bad enough to do some revolution and/or non-voting-based direct action about it. The counter-arguments here include, but are not limited to: a) well, that’s just like, you’re opinion, man; b) that’s an awfully big gamble to take when there’s no guarantee that what will come after will be better; and c) you should prioritise the lives of people that currently exist, now, rather than those of hypothetical future people, and immediate harm reduction is of more benefit to those people specifically.
In case any one cares, I’m English. My position on voting is that I may vote in an election where the Greens or possibly the Lib Dems stand a chance of winning, but otherwise I spoil my ballot. Yes, I’m aware that the Lib Dems are shitlibs. Still better than Labour. I will never vote Labour for as long as it remains transphobic or as long as the likes of Luke Akehurst remain in the party.
The counter-counter-argument is that such a shift will not occur while that harm is being delayed, which leads us on to…
- Accelerationism.
I agree with what you said, up until this point. Non-electoral strategies are not harmed by voting because of accelerationist reasons, but because the messaging becomes muddled.
We have these two horrible, awful parties no one really likes, politics is increasingly driven by “negative partisanship,” just a question of which party you hate more, and then everyone on the other side is assumed to be fully on board with the worst aspects of their side, when in reality almost everyone is following this same “lesser evil” logic, and it’s really just a question of which party’s faults they’re more aware and conscious of. One of the biggest advantages to non-electoral strategies is that you have the opportunity to distance yourself from that and define what you actually stand for and don’t stand for yourself. Someone who (correctly) sees someone like Joe Biden as a slimeball, could be more receptive to leftist ideas if they’re decoupled from him.
Now, you take a protest, a union, whatever, and it takes an official stance endorsing a politician, now you’re gonna be defined by that politicians words and actions, and unless it’s someone you can really trust and stand by, you’re right back to square one.
Point is, accelerationism is stupid and doesn’t work, and I can’t say that no one believes it, but I certainly don’t (although people often assume that it’s what I believe despite everything I say to the contrary). We can look at history and see very long periods of time when things were horrible for a lot of people and they weren’t able to change things just by really really wanting them to, because they lacked power and organization. It can also just lead to the left straight up getting exterminated, as has happened many times in history, like Nazi Germany, or Iran under the Shah, or the mass killings in Indonesia under Suharto. Sometimes, the bad guys just win.
Imo, anyone who actually believes in accelerationism is a fool who doesn’t read theory or study history, but it mostly just exists as an insult or accusation, rather than being something people actually believe.
This is a spot-on analysis, especially for someone not in the US.
-
Several reasons - People are lazy AF, maybe a bit “soft disenfranchised” in terms of not preceiving that they have credible information, and also there are active demoralization campaigns going on.
All those are reasons but none are valid excuses. Get off your ass and vote. Many places allow you to vote early. Federal law requires your employer to give you time off to vote.
No excuses… inform yourself and vote.
