But for a lot of people, it does take a lot of effort, and I find not voting in those circumstances more understandable.

There is a long way to go in some places to make voting more accessible, approachable, and available, yes.

I think that other political actions tend to take more effort and more work, or they tend to be less widely impactful.

Complaining online and sharing memes, for example, is easy, but does next to nothing.

Calling your local official or writing an email/letter to them can change local politics, but just like voting can be harder or easier depending on where you live, getting your message to go somewhere other than their garbage bin can take a lot of time and effort… probably more than voting. And even there, that’s only one politician you’ve influenced.

Larger political actions that are stronger than voting definitely exist, but I think the majority of them come with greater risk, more effort, or a larger time investment (like protests, running for local office, etc).

Voting sends a message to politicians nationwide, if not just statewide. And like I mentioned elsewhere, there’s little incentive for politicians to take the opinions of non-voters seriously.

Thanks Kamala Harris

/s

why would I bother

Because voting is one of the least effortful political action that can be taken, and it can send one of the biggest messages.

Democratically-elected politicians get their jobs by people’s votes. Their campaigns are based around getting votes. And they can look at numbers of how people are voting to adjust their platforms to capture those votes.

There’s little benefit for them to try to capture the votes of people who don’t vote because people who don’t vote aren’t likely to vote.

• 77,302,580 people voted for Trump.
• 89,278,948 people were eligible to vote but didn’t.

That’s enough to win an election. I know they wouldn’t all vote the same way, but that’s a HUGE population – enough to potentially make a third political party relevant, for instance.

I know that you vote, and I know both major parties in the US suck. I think we’re generally in agreement here, so I know I’m probably preaching to a member of the choir. I’m just less sympathetic about it because I know that if everyone in the US who was eligible to vote but didn’t all voted with their intentions, upcoming elections would look very different. And I think it’s a combination of learned helplessness/defeatism and laziness/apathy that’s causing this.

As such, I will always advocate for the power of voting. And I will always admonish people who don’t vote and complain about the result.

The proper way to communicate an opinion that “both choices are terrible” is to make your way to the polling station and either vote for something other than those two bad choices, or to decline or spoil your ballot.

Not voting says “I can’t be bothered to make the effort; anything is fine”.

People think it means “Give me something other than these two”, but it takes more effort to communicate that message.

Political activism requires effort, and it requires effort the right way. Not voting is political inaction.

I always find it amazing that people blame the voters

I think people are blaming the people who didn’t vote. They thought they were sending the message “I don’t like genocide”, but that was ignorant of them.

The message they sent was “Eh, either is fine. I’m fine with Trump or Harris. Whatever”. And then they took the moral high ground for doing so.

I don’t know the situation of the children that the parents are talking about. These could be homeschooled kids, etc.

Someone said something about their kids, and I believed that what they said was true. If they meant something else, they could’ve said something else. If they phrased it poorly, then so be it. Lol

Yes.

Japan doesn’t tend to teach its children about the atrocities that Japan committed in the past century.

China is in a similar boat.

Depending on the province, school board, and even teacher, Canada doesn’t always do a good job of teaching its children about the residential schools and related atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the land.

So yeah. I think it’s possible that people old enough to work and be looking for jobs (which can be as young as 14 where I live) are ignorant to the atrocities their countries committed.

The USA is actually surprisingly halfway decent at teaching kids about the atrocities committed against Black people, from my perspective. There is still a long way to go, but at least kids grow up knowing that many Americans owned slaves and that it’s wrong to own slaves. Some regions less-so than others, but still, lol

I’d infer that the children are of the age where they’d be applying to college in your scenario.

If they’re not, then whoever said that isn’t speaking from experience, but from imagination.

Where are you going with this?

imo, you read that with a positive interpretation.

If they were saying that, they should’ve said that their kids “never experienced it” or “never participated in it” or “didn’t live through it”.

But instead, they said their kids “don’t know what apartheid is”.

If they misspoke, fine. But I don’t know with certainty that they meant what you said. I think they might’ve meant what they said.

I dunno, maybe that’s true. People like watching humans be in danger, that’s true.

Monster Truck shows probably don’t need humans though. We like watching stuff get crushed by big things even if humans aren’t involved!

If robots were racing, people would be rooting for the remote pilot, or the team that built it, or the designers of the engine, etc…

Does no one remember Robot Wars or any spinoffs thereof?

I’ve got white children, they’re at the bottom of the hiring list here. So, there is no future for them. And the sad thing is they don’t even know what apartheid is.

If your children are old enough to work, and they don’t even know about your country’s most pressing issue that only ended like 30 years ago, then no wonder they’re at the bottom of the hiring list.

They’re ignorant fucks! Lol

You said it was “the reason”.

You probably would’ve said it was “the reason” if we had a Conservative government, too.

Before Carney, if you’d told me “the reason” that people voted Conservative is because they were tired of Trudeau, I’d believe you. Or told me “the reason” was because they were upset about pandemic restrictions imposed by the provincial governments, along with the economic fallout of the pandemic… I’d believe you.

It was all over the news. Everyone was talking about it. A whole bunch of losers got into trucks and drove to the capital to complain to the wrong people on multiple levels.

When you claim that “the reason” was an issue that I’ve never heard anybody complain about with regards to their voting intentions, it sounds like you’re just coming in with your mind made up and trying to find anything to justify the conclusion you’ve already arrived at.

It was 3 seats of 172 or something like that. That’s why the Liberals aren’t a majority government.

So if this an issue in 3 ridings that flipped from Liberal (to…which party has been anti-Israel?), then sure. Though it probably wouldn’t be “the reason”, since we could probably find 3 or more other ridings that flipped to Liberal from whichever other party.

It seems like you’re living in confirmation bias and seeing the rest of the world through that lens.

the reason they formed a minority government is the same reason Kamala lost, their insistence on genocide

I haven’t heard a single Canadian mention that as an election issue, and I’d been following the election. I live in a metropolitan city, and I have many Muslims in my social circles. I also have people in my social circles who lean more NDP, and others who are further left than that.

Canada could use another few provinces… California, interested?

You guys will literally read “Russia will stop fighting” and complain

You might want to re-read the comment you replied to.

They’re not complaining about Putin stopping the killing temporarily (or at least his claims of such). They’re complaining that he’s acting like he’s doing some sort of humanitarian good in doing so.

Tariffs that don’t exclusively impact red states, I guess?

They should have them, and they should be near zero. And we should do something about it

See, with the pandemic, fighting it hurt profits and the status quo.

This is saying it helps profits, and ignoring it will hurt the status quo.

There’s hope!