5 ms·

Are you apathetic to: - whether your fellow countrymen go to war? - who gets to marry? - abortion rights? If you are, then that's your right, but please don't

by erehweb 12y ago

Are you apathetic to: - whether your fellow countrymen go to war? - who gets to marry? - abortion rights? If you are, then that's your right, but please don't act surprised when people who care about these things get irritated.

tboyd47 12y ago
What I am apathetic to is which liar gets elected into office, the red liar or the blue liar? What surprises me is that people seem to have an irrational trust in these political figures.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  Who trusts political figures? Repeated polling shows that most people don't, even if they vote. Maybe you're down on voting because you think it's supposed to solve all the problems. So since it doesn't, it must be broken. The truth is that voting is just a very small part of trying to make the world look more like you think it should. It's like developing a software application. No one would expect that buying a computer would take care of everything. But you can't start until you have a computer. And while the computer isn't everything, some are still going to be better for what you want than others.
  - tboyd47 12y ago
    If you vote for a certain candidate, that's a sign that you believe he's going to act a certain way in office. And unless you know him personally, that can only be based on what he said on the campaign trail. So the fact that you voted for him shows that you at least trusted him to do what he said he would do.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      Remember that you can often vote for or against officials running for re-election, in which case you can vote based on their actual record of work. Many challengers have records of work by which to judge them as well.
innguest 12y ago
I'm not the OP but what do those issues have to do with voting as voting currently works? And why do you think it's warranted to be deciding how other people live their lives? What is "to get married" and why is it that a decision between two people needs to be chosen by you through "voting"? Regarding war, why do you think anyone has the right to force young men to engage in a war they didn't start? Don't those young men own their own lives? And so on and so forth. I'm not apathetic to any of those things but they're not solved (as can be seen in reality: they haven't been solved) by "voting".
- NotAtWork 12y ago
  I can't tell if you honestly are asking for answers, because all of those have fairly direct answers from people who saying voting matters. Also, the one about war is a strawman, because it conflates war and the draft, which are related but not identical. Ed: Typo.
pitt1980 12y ago
here's what bothers me about this as a voter I such a microscopically small degree of contol of any of those questions (functionally 0), that they don't seem productive to even care about if I care about them, then I have to get upset when things don't go my way, I have to either get into arguments with people I know or actively try to avoid arguments where is the net positive?
- NotAtWork 12y ago
  I mean, if you care more about not arguing with your relatives than you do that the CIA abducted and tortured people, then you have little incentive to engage with the wider political process. Of course, most people think that the US government abducting foreign nationals and torturing them at black sites is a considerably bigger problem than their mother-in-law being grumpy at them for a couple days, and want to do something about it.
  - pitt1980 12y ago
    how do my in-laws being grumpy help foreign nationals tortured by the CIA? how has that made the world a better place? other than now I feel vaguely superior to my in-laws "who just don't get it"
    - NotAtWork 12y ago
      If one person in every family made their in-laws grumpy about the CIA torture scandal, then the entire nation would (at least once, over the course of months/a year) have an actual discussion about the situation. That discussion then goes on to inform their views on various topics, including who they should vote for in the next election. Government officials, at the end of the day, are chosen because the circles get filled in on ballots, and the circles get filled in from a choice made on the aggregate of our experiences, including discussions with friends and family. The difference is that if we talk about it, even if it makes people uncomfortable, then the nation discusses these issues and takes them in to account when voting. If we don't, then the nation doesn't. The rate at which pissed off people bother their family members about what they're pissed off about directly influences the course of national politics, even if the particular result of any particular discussion is some pissed off in-laws and a small percentage chance a bubble gets filled out differently in a few months.
bcoates 12y ago
You realize that two out of three of those issues are archtype culture war distraction issues, right? Political types call them 'squirrels'. They're a great way to get people to watch your network, vote for your candidate, or kill an inconvenient web browser.

by erehweb 12y ago

tboyd47 12y ago

What I am apathetic to is which liar gets elected into office, the red liar or the blue liar? What surprises me is that people seem to have an irrational trust in these political figures.

snowwrestler 12y ago
Who trusts political figures? Repeated polling shows that most people don't, even if they vote. Maybe you're down on voting because you think it's supposed to solve all the problems. So since it doesn't, it must be broken. The truth is that voting is just a very small part of trying to make the world look more like you think it should. It's like developing a software application. No one would expect that buying a computer would take care of everything. But you can't start until you have a computer. And while the computer isn't everything, some are still going to be better for what you want than others.
- tboyd47 12y ago
  If you vote for a certain candidate, that's a sign that you believe he's going to act a certain way in office. And unless you know him personally, that can only be based on what he said on the campaign trail. So the fact that you voted for him shows that you at least trusted him to do what he said he would do.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    Remember that you can often vote for or against officials running for re-election, in which case you can vote based on their actual record of work. Many challengers have records of work by which to judge them as well.

innguest 12y ago

I'm not the OP but what do those issues have to do with voting as voting currently works? And why do you think it's warranted to be deciding how other people live their lives? What is "to get married" and why is it that a decision between two people needs to be chosen by you through "voting"? Regarding war, why do you think anyone has the right to force young men to engage in a war they didn't start? Don't those young men own their own lives? And so on and so forth. I'm not apathetic to any of those things but they're not solved (as can be seen in reality: they haven't been solved) by "voting".

NotAtWork 12y ago
I can't tell if you honestly are asking for answers, because all of those have fairly direct answers from people who saying voting matters. Also, the one about war is a strawman, because it conflates war and the draft, which are related but not identical. Ed: Typo.

pitt1980 12y ago

here's what bothers me about this as a voter I such a microscopically small degree of contol of any of those questions (functionally 0), that they don't seem productive to even care about if I care about them, then I have to get upset when things don't go my way, I have to either get into arguments with people I know or actively try to avoid arguments where is the net positive?

NotAtWork 12y ago
I mean, if you care more about not arguing with your relatives than you do that the CIA abducted and tortured people, then you have little incentive to engage with the wider political process. Of course, most people think that the US government abducting foreign nationals and torturing them at black sites is a considerably bigger problem than their mother-in-law being grumpy at them for a couple days, and want to do something about it.
- pitt1980 12y ago
  how do my in-laws being grumpy help foreign nationals tortured by the CIA? how has that made the world a better place? other than now I feel vaguely superior to my in-laws "who just don't get it"
  - NotAtWork 12y ago
    If one person in every family made their in-laws grumpy about the CIA torture scandal, then the entire nation would (at least once, over the course of months/a year) have an actual discussion about the situation. That discussion then goes on to inform their views on various topics, including who they should vote for in the next election. Government officials, at the end of the day, are chosen because the circles get filled in on ballots, and the circles get filled in from a choice made on the aggregate of our experiences, including discussions with friends and family. The difference is that if we talk about it, even if it makes people uncomfortable, then the nation discusses these issues and takes them in to account when voting. If we don't, then the nation doesn't. The rate at which pissed off people bother their family members about what they're pissed off about directly influences the course of national politics, even if the particular result of any particular discussion is some pissed off in-laws and a small percentage chance a bubble gets filled out differently in a few months.

bcoates 12y ago

You realize that two out of three of those issues are archtype culture war distraction issues, right? Political types call them 'squirrels'. They're a great way to get people to watch your network, vote for your candidate, or kill an inconvenient web browser.