There is just no bottom to the ignorance and the danger people have put themselves and their loved ones in...

God, I love how seriously Americans take their civic duty, you can tell by the effort they put into researching the candidates they intend to put in the most powerful positions in the country.

I don't get it either. I always try to read up on things. Sometimes there's not enough info on candidates in a local race for me to know who to vote for and so I abstain. Other than that, I always vote for the candidate I think is going to do the least harm. They didn't do their due diligence to even figure that out.
- I remember in 2004, as a kid, my mother (very conservative at the time) teaching me to go through OnTheIssues with the presidential race coming up and examining the policies of each candidate, and to consider whether I agreed with each individual stance in making an overall opinion, not just to presume which one was good and bad by political allegiance.
  She taught me good citizenship. Many people aren't so lucky - or didn't take the lessons to heart.
- It's the social media algorithms, man. Folks think that what they're being fed is reality, so they never double check the information being given to them.
  Full disclosure, I'm just as guilty. For months I had built up this whole narrative about private equity buying up all the houses and causing the current housing crisis. Apparently, private equity only accounts for like 10% of home ownership, and the reality is that we just don't build enough housing. The issue is the same (and honestly I wouldn't be surprised to find out that private equity is still at the heart of it somehow), but I allowed the algorithm to show me inaccurate info, and I bought it—hook, line, and sinker.
- Plus don’t people get something from school? My schools, way back when, and my kids schools always had some class trying to bring current affairs into the lesson, and certainly during a presidential election.
  My teen has a law and gov class where they had various debates about real people and real issues - it’s amazing that teacher can sit back and let the kids have their opinion but he does. Obviously not everyone has a law and gov class, or the Econ class where they’re going over proposed policies of each side but everyone has a history or social studies where they’re do that, don’t they?
  How doesn’t at least some of that carry over into adult life?
It’s mostly a vibes based democracy
- LOL
- and the vibes around Trump were good? the dude is a shitstain on the very fabric of existence
From personal experience, when you're working 2 jobs and raising 3 kids and spend every waking moment worried you can't pay your bills or that you suck as a parent because you're not around enough, taking time to research candidates feels impossible. Which is right where some like to keep us.
I'm in a better place now and have the time to do the work to make better decisions, but it still feels like an uphill battle against the multitude of the uninformed.
- I see what you’re saying but it’s also kind of an excuse. It’s not that hard to find out, for instance in this case, where candidates stand on LGBTQ issues or on education.
- Which makes it even more concerning that people who apparently didn't even have time to fall in a conspiratorial rabbit hole don't manage to distinguish between a not so great candidate and a raging lunatic.
- My mind went to the same place
  [following is hypothetical / made up]
  Absolutely cannot imagine
We all fail somewhere …. I voted wrong on one ballot question, for the vibes, and wish I could take it back.
My state had a question whether the auditor should audit the state legislature, and after so much news about corruption, conflict of interest at the national level, I voted “Hell yes”. However when I read it afterwards, too late, it was a separation of powers question and I would have voted “no, the executive branch can’t police the legislate branch”

If it weren't so sad, it would be almost funny.

So many people are waking up to the fact that... Most people are functionally illiterate children with no understanding of the world they live in.

The easiest way I have to explain it:

You use your phone every day. You know how to use it, menus in and out, all the different programs and their uses. But if I were to pop open the cover and take one single piece out, you would never know, and you would never be able to use it again. Without someone else, you have absolutely no clue how to go about fixing it. You can push it's buttons all day, but when it comes down to how it functions at the basic levels, you are clueless.

So am I, by the way. I don't have any reason to know how to build or program a phone. Or computer. I can push their buttons all day though! Even hidden buttons. But if everyone else on the planet disappeared tonight, I would effectively be living in the 1500s, as that's about where my technical understanding of things ends. (scavenging for replacement electronics notwithstanding, once something electronic breaks, it's gone since I can't exactly run a semiconductor factory by myself, or the mines to get the materials)

My point is, most people only know how to "push the buttons" of the world. They have very surface-level understandingsof it. But when it comes down to it, they don't understand how the internals actually function.

Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.

That's absolutely true, but I can't get how people didn't watch or listen to the Toupee for even a couple seconds and not instantly realize he's full of more shit than an outhouse.
- Because they're stupid too and he speaks at a third grade level way they understand.
- That’s my latest flavor of denial: I don’t think they do have any firsthand knowledge. It’s all what their echo chamber tells them. After all, no one can watch or listen to the toupee for even a couple seconds and not realize ….
This is a funny take I haven’t heard. Maybe it’s a bit true.
People I talk to seem to have little understanding of Trump policies. Like it’s mostly projection.
One person I spoke to with a Trump pin said these two statements: “I don’t like where the country is heading everything is expensive. The government spends too much money”… “yeah we got to support Ukraine, Russia would not have invaded if Trump was president. Russia needs to loose and go home so we can end the war”
… like okay? And Trump will help any of this how, as a lap dog to Putin who blew up the budget and raised taxes on those making less than $500k?
These people vote for people who tell them what they want to hear and project the rest… you know morons.
- These people vote for people who tell them what they want to hear and project the rest
  I think it’s even farther removed from that … these people vote for people their echo chamber tells them are better for reasons their echo chamber tells them what they want to hear, and they never have the awareness to find out from the donvicts mouth. …. You know, morons
As a single person you'd be pretty good for the rest of your (still probably short) life. But honestly, I think ascribing button pushing to some of these people is a stretch. They know the particular buttons to open their social media, or maybe even access their banking, but any mention of settings and you get a blank look. I see that with every generation now, working in IT. It used to just be the boomers, but tech knowledge seems to have degraded over the years.
- I felt something die inside me when I realized "display settings" was going way too far into technical territory for most people.
  All I was trying to do is tell someone why their screen shuts off "so quickly" after two minutes.
  I had to send them step by step pictures with big red circles.
  And this was someone I had thought to be intelligent enough to figure something out, and tech-minded enough to know what I was talking about. Turns out they just like buying whatever fancy new gadgets they see in commercials.
Sorry if this rambled a bit, I hit the bowl as soon as I got home from work.
Still have Keiko trapped in the transporter buffer, I see.
- Shhhhhhhhh.
  She and Molly are just visiting Bajor. Nothing to worry about.

And MY fucking loved ones. And lots of other people's fucking loved ones.

My anger grows each and every day. I don't know how I'm going to make it through what's coming either from a mental health perspective or from a keeping my family safe perspective.

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

Oh believe me, I agree. But they weren't even motivated by their own best self-interests. It's voting for the leopard face eating party on a scale I didn't think was even possible.
KRIEGER!!!

Queer people voting for conservative politicians will never cease to amaze me. I discovered a queer acquaintance who I had friended on Instagram was following Trump, Pierre Polievre, and that insane Randy Hillier, which shocked me. Why would you do that? They hate queer people.

Bootlickers transcend identity politics. They're just looking for a boot.
And they make no secret of it!
There is a big difference between voting/supporting them and following them on social media. I encourage everyone, Left as well as Right, to follow people, pages and communities of the other side. You should know the story the other side tells itself. Even if you don't agree with it - it's better to not agree with the real thing than to fight straw men in echo chambers.
- Maybe but it sure is discomforting.

You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr.

At lunch yesterday, I overheard two women talking about how they should totally be hired for the new department of government efficiency, and how they have a lot of great ideas to offer from their years of experience in federal jobs.

"You should cut my job."
Granted.

I was expressing election stress to someone over Discord and they told me they didn't want to talk about the election (which is fine in itself) because "Joe and Trump are both bad." 💀 I'm like... Do you not even know how the candidates are? I didn't want to push the topic because they didn't want to talk about it, but I'm sure the answer would've annoyed me.

No. They really don't. I was getting some coffee at a drive-up place where they always leave the window open after they take your money, so you can hear them talking. This was maybe a month before the election. One of the workers thought Trump was still the president. They had to tell her who Joe Biden is.
- How are people that disconnected, how do you not hear who the president is even just by accident?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-joe-biden-drop-google-025601942.html
That's a pretty common authoritarian propaganda technique. Like, most Russians do think Putin is bad but they've also bought into the idea that all politicians are bad. They don't realize that most people aren't former KGB agents in bed with the Russian mafia.
Both candidates (in this case a candidate and a former candidate) being bad might be true but it doesn't mean both are equally bad. And it's always "both are bad" never "both are good".

Has anyone been verifying that these kinds of posts lately are real? Certainly some trump voters are already having buyer's remorse, but these posts can just as easily be made up by people who want to play off our emotions and manufacturing further outrage and division. Just saying.

At least from my personal experience, they're all too believable, and I'm sure plenty of others here have similar stories.
A couple of nights after the election I spoke to my father, and he could tell I was quite upset. He told me how I shouldn't worry because Trump was going to make everything better since "Joe and the Ho" hadn't done anything. Not even one or two sentences later he was telling me about how he needed to get all of this medical work done by the end of the year (he is on Medicare), because his Medicare agent told him they expected a good majority of those benefits to be cut next year by the upcoming administration...
Between the many similar stories from other family members and friends, the increased searches for "Project 2025" and "change vote", I really don't think it's a stretch at all for most to accept these as true, because many people are experiencing it firsthand.
- Yikes.
  Thanks for sharing your experience!

That leopard is so overfed it needed to grow additional toes just to cope!
- Just imagine what they'll be like in 4 years.

personally, this cycle the best thing i have under my belt is karma.

I hope republicans/conservatives have to learn their lesson the hard way around.

I hope so, but given that we already know drumph will do a terrible job from.... IDK, four years ago?
..... I think that it's likely that this lesson will ever be learned.
In the most simplest, all I want is for people to look at the platforms and what each party wants to achieve before putting a mark beside their name at the voting booth. That's it.
If you can, with good conscience, vote for someone, knowing what they want to do for the people, then you deserve whatever they do if they win. If you vote without knowing what their plan is, that doesn't absolve you, in fact, you're probably more guilty than if you knew what you were voting for.
Somehow they will blame the Dems.
- TRUE IT'S ALWAYS THE FUCKING DEMS

stupid and ignorant people are going to be the death of our species. And if that happens, we fucking deserve it.

Have you tried drugs and not trying to think about it?
- because the problem is just in my head and not in the world around me?

It's so easy to shit on voters for not being informed.

Dems had $1B to reach this lady with a message about how they were going to improve her material conditions and they couldn't or wouldn't. At least they got that sweet sweet Cheney fan vote.

When people have to work constantly or their kids will starve and it just keeps getting worse wtf is anyone supposed to do?

"You didn't do your homework, so you deserve to have your life destroyed lol"

The system is fucked. Well and truly.

When people have to work constantly or their kids will starve and it just keeps getting worse wtf is anyone supposed to do?
I agree with you when it comes to a lot of things in terms of civic engagement, but in this case, there are lots of websites out there with information that won't even take you more than 20 minutes to read in terms learning of who the candidates are and what they stand for.
You can literally do that on a break (or more than one break since you'll get them every day) at work. And if you're not getting breaks at work, your boss is violating the labor laws which should be posted where all employees can see them. Not that they ever read them. Employees are entitled by federal law to a 5-20 minute paid break. I realize 5-20 minutes is shit, but most full time jobs at least give you longer unpaid breaks than that, if for no other reason than they don't want their employees passing out from hunger.
- You're not wrong about having the physical and temporal capacity to inform yourself regardless, but you've also got to have the mental and emotional capacity as well.
  I'm sure you're aware of how exhausting it is to live here, even just having nominal exposure to all the campaign ads and the outrage bait "news." That's before all the regular stress of living here with a family, all of your material conditions. Is my car gonna break down? If it does will I get fired? How can I afford my kids soccer cleats? Will the babysitter cancel on me for my extra shift?
  If the only exposure you got for the election that you paid attention to because it was "entertainment" was a "funny" Joe Rogan clip your buddy sent you of the Trump interview it'd be real easy to be like "well, we made it through the first one, and at least he acknowledges that things are more expensive..."
  Obviously if you're tuned in, you know that's a bullshit front. But if you don't have the capacity to be tuned in because fucking everything is designed to stress you out and extract what little money you have... Well, here we are.
- there are lots of websites out there … You can literally do that on a break
  Correct. Now your task, should you choose to accept it, is to show someone how to do that. Teach them to do their research. Easy? Now come up with a way to communicate the same message to maybe 150 million people. And make sure they don’t ignore it.
  This is why strategies like advertising, canvassing, and media interviews are effective. Unlike expecting voters to “just do the research,” these methods meet people where they already are—at home, watching TV, listening to the radio, scrolling through social media, or catching up on the news. They reach voters directly, without assuming any prior knowledge or effort on their part.
Democracy isn't government on cruise control. Democracy is a responsibility. Blaming politicians isn't going to change the fact that it is not institutions that uphold democracy. It's the people.
So yeah, ultimately the people failed themselves. Some people just need to learn the hard way. If that is the only way these people will learn, why try to stop them from getting their lessons?
Americans are basically spoiled children. Never experienced government hardship. Why expect them to understand the value of what they have that prevents the hardship?
Maybe if they just googled? Takes about 15 sec. They'd see something like this: https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/kamala-harris-2024-campaign-promises-here-are-her/ It's hard to imagine it could have been any easier for people who weren't aware of Harris' policies.

How does she figure the president isn't allowed to do something? Especially in today's political climate?

Especially when he literally said he's going to be a dictator.
And it's funny, because at the same time they already think the president can do whatever he wants since they think he can control gas and grocery prices.

Read DOE as department of energy and was confused.

Say it with me now: ignorance is not an excuse.

You could post this in the leopards ate my face community. Wonderful fit for that.

The ironic thing about these screenshots is that it's Xitter.

So next time we gotta call everyone up, knock on every door and ask ''hay what are you, your kids, your family'' them tell them ''heres exactly what's going to happen to all of you when this goes down''

I know it's a cliche at this point, and I hate that it's true, but there's plenty of doubt about whether "next time" will be a thing.

Whose responsability is one's ignorance? A ruthless individualist would place the blame only on the person, ignoring the world wround them and the community or lack thereof.

I think everyone has a duty to be the best they can, and everyone is responsible for themselves, yet it is undeniable to me that we all live, and especially the people from the US, in an information system that aims at eroding the truth and our capabilities to gather it. I also think an important part in how this corruption of information works is by also eroding our empathy for the people who are "dumber" than us. You dehumanize ignorant people. You can deny it, but so many like you repeat this. You will justify yourself, which is understandable, no one wants to be the cause of suffering. And yet.

Dehumanization is the weapon of the enemy, we do not need it, we will not use it. These people won't magically get smarter if you hate on them, in fact, they will take refuge on those that present themselves as loving teachers, but are actually ruthless abusers.

I guess it's cathartic to hate those ignorant bums, see where that leads you

What makes you think this is about hatred?
Are you so full of hatred for others that you think everyone is like that?
- I mean, this is on me for not mentioning anyone in particular, but you can't tell me this site hasn't been erupting with rage and judgment since the election results.
  Congrats on pointing the finger right away instead of thinking about what you read btw. Only you are allowed to be judgemental, it seems. Doesn't feel nice when it's you?

DOE? Department of Energy?

Education.
- That makes more sense.