Because you now did it to yourself.
20 million PLUS all the Trump voters.
You must not focus solely on non-voters.
- The people voting for Trump are much more directly responsible.
- You will need those non-voters in the future, completely alienating them now will not help the cause.
This is implying there is anything - any possible combination of words in the history of linguistics - that could ever convince them not to vote for Trump.
I’ve seen them have their reasoning destroyed in debate, even using gentle wording, even pointing to Trump’s own words. They don’t change as a result.
The inability to change, mental laziness and intellectual poverty don’t absolve his voters of blame. They are adults and should be treated as such, thus anything else but holding them accountable for their actions is nothing but moral laziness on our part. The people voting for the candidate of “the party of personal responsibility” (what a cruel joke that is) need to take responsibility for their action.
We need to be thrice as angry with the red hatters as with the non-voters.
I know it feels worse to be betrayed by people who voted Biden not that long ago, mostly because we expect them to do better, while we have absolutely no expectations of anything positive from the Trump voters. But who is the bigger problem here? The people who ride the bus no matter where it’s going or the people with their foot on the gas, accelerating towards the cliff?
completely alienating [non-voters] now will not help the cause
So we just keep being nice to the braindead traitors who can’t be arsed to get up off the couch and vote so we all don’t live in Nazi World? Because they just haven’t heard the right argument yet, or they just need a wee bit more cajoling, maybe a cookie next time.
idc if it’s existential malaise over the world burning up, or just that they get enough civic participation from their social media Feed. idc about their endless reasons for not showing up (I’ve heard them all up here in Ontario where less than 1/2 the eligible voters turned up, and they’re all nonsense about how it’s someone else’s fault. They feel no shame about it: they’ve been thoroughly convinced that they’re too good/smart to vote).
You keep on with not alienating the braindead lumps. You’ll find them endlessly commentating online, blaming The Woman for Doing It Wrong. Because Kamala didn’t personally bring them tendies they decided their country should be governed AGAIN by a White Supremacist Rapist Incontinent Felon who’s owned by frothy fundies who want to burn the witch.
Every abstaining vote was a vote for Trump. They just wanted to be able to say Wasn’t Me.
This has layers to it.
Morally: Yes, you are absolutely right. Non-voters share part of the blame of electing Donald Trump, they share a part of the moral responsibility and should absolutely be held accountable. Everyone who says “Wasn’t me”, needs to be told that they are part of the problem.
Hell, telling people that non-voters are culpable was one of my first reactions.
Strategically though it’s important that I did not say that they should not be alienated at all, but that I said they should not be completely alienated. Just ask yourself two simple questions:
- Can we (a broader left and left-leaning coalition) win future elections without them?
- If we completely alienate them, if we treat them as enemies, will they vote how we need them to, or will they dig in and maybe even turn into the enemies we would prefer them not to be?
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