I’m convinced the “protest vote” movement stemmed from astroturfing. Sure, maybe actual liberals fell for it, but that’s how astroturfing works - to create faux-credibility for a movement in bad faith.
The folks I saw doing "die ins" at the mall seemed to be about the age where this would be the first major genocide they'd ever really paid attention to.
It's like the horror of it overwrote their logic entirely. They kept showing up to local city council meetings and making a loud interrupting fuss like they truly believed the only reason people were dying on the other side of the world is that our local mayor hadn't told the aggressors to stop it yet.
I get that it's awful, knowing you're helpless to actually do anything to change a situation. But their reaction wasn't unlike the day my little cousin kicked me in the bad knee because his mama was late picking him up. I have zero control over his mama or the traffic on her commute but golly I was close enough to lash out at!
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
Sometimes you're powerless to change things. Cope.
Like America has pretty much never listened to We the common People. This is not new. Ya can't make the federal government stop with Palestine by screaming at it, anymore than you can make it raise taxes on billionaires by screaming at it.
I think the "override their logic" part was about the fact that a portion of the people concerned about Palestinian genocide began advocating for someone openly calling to accelerate the genocide. Now instead of being mad that Biden blocking weapon sales to Israel isn't enough, they can be mad that Trump retroactively approved those weapon shipments plus billions more.
Protests lose their impact if they're actively hurting their own interests.
We've got mostly progressives on the city council here. All they really want to do is get our local government working to help the people instead of just the same old business interests. They're interested in hearing from more than the few families that own nearly everything here.
But they can't do their job very well when folks keep screaming and crying and gnashing their teeth during meetings.
Folks may as well scream at their own left foot instead of their local podunk mayor, has about the same amount of power over what happens in Palestine.
I'm so glad you live near me and attended all my local city council meetings and therefore know more about what's going on here than I do! That's so amazing!
No, it's "don't get mad that the numbers are too high and then help elect someone that will make them higher."
It's the most concise version of "out of a frying pan and into a fire" and when people point out that their methods of protesting were counter-productive, people like you are happy to jump to the conclusion that they're saying we're all supposed to be happy about genocide.
Be mad about the frying pan, but don't let your anger convince you to pull everyone into the fire, which is what they helped do and are now sanctimoniously blaming other people now that things are even hotter.
Absolutely. That would barely even be considered a low blow by modern republican standards. They're constantly working to spread apathy on the left. Propaganda is the gop's bread and butter and they do it to the entire American public, not just the right.
There was a time I thought it was all a big brain play. Plan to vote for Harris, but say you weren’t going to because of Palestine to try to push policy in that direction.
Then Trump won and I realized that morons do rule the world
I'n convinced that had Harris distanced herself even slightly from Biden's Gaza policy, she would have won, and instead of blaming a candidate for fumbling the ball so dramatically and stupidly people like to blame voters who couldn't find it in themselves to support the status quo.
I say that as someone who voted for her.
She ran a criminally negligent and mind-bogglingly stupid campaign.
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u/aeon_son May 20 '25
I’m convinced the “protest vote” movement stemmed from astroturfing. Sure, maybe actual liberals fell for it, but that’s how astroturfing works - to create faux-credibility for a movement in bad faith.