this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
543 points (98.7% liked)

politics

31129 readers
2219 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
  3. No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
  4. No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

paywall removed: https://archive.ph/lPnUo

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Nah. Fuck the US government we don't have control of it. US isn't a real democracy if it ever was.

I mean I agree people should vote and do more to stop fascism but failing to do so doesn't make you responsible for other people's actions. Frankly if all you're doing is voting for Harris in this current disaster then you are barely better than a non-voter anyway.

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 3 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

I mean I agree people should vote and do more to stop fascism but failing to do so doesn’t make you responsible for other people’s actions.

Yes, it does. If your choices are Hitler and someone you disagree with but who's not Hitler and you don't vote, you're saying that both Hitler and the other person are OK for you. So yeah, you are accepting that getting Hitler as president is fine.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago

Imagine believing there's a non-hitler choice in USA. jfc.

[–] Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml -3 points 13 hours ago

The two choices were Hitler. Biden was in the middle of a genocide and then trump came in and continued it.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net -3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Or maybe you fell for disinformation or maybe you just weren't paying attention or maybe you thought your vote was more impactful boosting a third Party candidate because your state wasn't going to be close anyway or maybe you couldn't get off work that day and they closed the polling station near your house so it would have taken 2 hours by bus and you'd have gotten fired.

Lots of reasons people didn't do the optimal thing around voting. Some of those are more excusable than others but none make you directly responsible for the things Trump and his followers are doing. They are responsible for their own actions. We are responsible for our own. That's all.

And again, I personally don't think we will get out of this solely by voting. People need to stop limiting political action solely to making a largely inconsequential mark on a piece of paper.

[–] im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 3 points 12 hours ago

Actually, that's not really true I'm sorry.

Trump is America's great shame. He has harmed people financially all over the world, and he has presided over a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

In the same way todays Australians bear the responsibility for attrocities perpetrated on first nations people before we were born, Americans for generations to come will bear responsibility for Trump.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 3 points 13 hours ago

People really overestimate in how much of the US a person's vote for president matters. Like 2/3rds of the states aren't even within reach of a wave election. And the people who could have an impact on the result but stayed home aren't in a niche politics forum and are really checked out of politics. Like shockingly so. A non-voting acquaintance of mine was going to vote for a conservative nobody because he thought their name sounded cool.

The idea that the 30% non-voters should vote makes sense in a civic ideal sort of way, but they're not going to show up as secret defenders of liberal democracy. They're going to be very susceptible to propaganda and those that aren't are going to vote for Idiocracy-level dumb reasons. Trump's initial election made big gains from non-voters who are now shocked that he's doing things he said he'd do.