this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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This is what you get when you have such a polarised electoral system. People treat the parties like sport teams and support them no matter what. So they vote against their own interests because they believe they should never vote for the other side.
1/3 of people dont even vote in the US because there is no real choice.
Its amazing how often you see people aggressively defending the democrats purely on the basis that they're not the republicans. Even criticising the dems is framed as being pro Republican which is crazy. Both parties are shit, both have sewn up the US electoral system between them and keep everyone else out at all levels.
And during elections that opinion gets shut down and people become complicit with the system. "Voting for a 3rd party is a wasted vote" etc.
The idea that voters should be registered as democrat PR Republican is also crazy - it's like supporting a party is part of someone identity which is weird.
The only way out is wholesale reform of the system and I don't see either party offering that. A 3rd party could try and build from the bottom up and dismantle the two parties powerbase but it doesn't seem to be happening.
So maybe it'll be revolution when a party pushes people too far? Though Americans seem willing to tolerate an awful lot of shit without doing anything at all.
If you're not conviced by the last . . . eight weeks . . . that that's absolutely not true, I don't know what to tell you. If you're under 24 then that's because the adulting hasn't kicked in full-time, but other than that, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
South Park centrism is definitely something I had to grow out of, but it took a lot of additional reading and growing on my part that I’m guessing most people don’t bother with. Why try to figure out the better of two imperfect options when it’s easier to just say both suck?