Political Memes

That's right reader. YOU are responsible for this nightmare. If only you ~~recycled your plastics more~~, ~~used a non plastic straw~~, shouted at your peers to vote, you could have prevented this hell hole. So hold yourself personally responsible and then push that anxiety and stress onto others without any nuance. Cause if you can prove your moral goodness maybe the world might be heaven without any work other than checking a box.

This is not really at all accurate math and it won't change the people happily voting the other way. Or the Electoral College. Or the ridiculous amount of bribes, corruption and party politics.

I hate this photo for so many reasons and I also think voting should be a mandatory holiday. I just refuse to pretend that this idea that it would fix everything because you yelled at enough people to ~~pray harder~~, vote more.

What I don't understand is what harm is being reduced by doing "harm reduction"? I get maybe one or two election cycles the candidate isn't ideal but after decades of horrible candidates that increasingly become more right wing over time it seems that no real harm is being reduced. Working class people are are still starving under Biden and likely will under Kamala, simultaneously the Capitalist class continues to aquire obscene amounts of wealth. Meanwhile we're all supposed to go along with the idea that Neoliberalism is the only option while so called "radical leftists" (social democrats and social liberals) are too extreme for government. This election cycle we're offered a candidate that has promised to encourage fracking, likley will not offer any federal protections for women and other minorities, openly supports Israel, and is overall a spineless corrupt career politican that for some reason we're all supposed to nod our heads to and say "yup shes the face of the American left". If we keep doing "harm reduction" soon we will all be reduced to nothing.

People don't vote because politicians don't materially benefit them. When politicians provide significant support to regular ass people in way that materially benefit them you will see more voters turn out, not when you whine to them about them not voting. If politicians wanted this to occur, our state reps and their staffers would be in our work places, talking to people, giving them reasons to be involved with the political party apparatus, and providing material aid to the poorest and least represented among us with their own hands. We have bad voter turn out because shitty, myopic politics breeds political disinvestment. This post has it pretty much exactly backwards.

Anecdotally, I have friends from MA who don't give one fuck about politics. Haven't voted in years despite me telling them, messaging them with voter registration status, and locations, giving them every resource they need to make it as easy as possible. None of it mattered. Two of these friends in the last year have told me they want to vote for Governor Healy because they intend to use the free community college program, unprompted. Went out of their way to tell me. Another friend told me they like their state rep because they showed up at a union rally for their union and my friend realized from talking to the politician personally that the rep was a socialist who just happened to have a D next to their name.

It's crusty as hell but checks out.