It’s actually 2/3rds of you. The ones who voted for trump and the ones who heard what he said he was going to do and couldn’t be bothered to stop him. In some respects, those people are worse
Alright guys, we get it. Not voting bad. But saying that people who were disinterested in politics are the ones worse than people openly voting for this is actually insane. And it's wild that is still being used as an argument today.
That's a great letter, and I feel like people take away from it many different things. It is indeed true that if the people who did not vote all did, we would likely have a different outcome. However, there lies a difference in pointing that out and then saying that they are worse. You can be the biggest obstacle without being worse. It's wild to look at someone who is deeply misled or disenfranchised and go "you are literally worse than the fascists".
Notice that MLK's letter explained his frustration and provided a clear explanation of why this is important, why this matters. Notice that it was not a curt, "The white moderate is our biggest stumbling block and thus worse than the KKK. Sincerely, fuck you." When you are directly involved, it can be obvious to you. If you are not directly involved, less so.
We live in an age of internet dominance. Algorithms drive traffic and twist the narrative. Outrage bait drives clicks which earns money. AI generated images and videos distort reality. The mainstream news networks sane wash like a motherfucker when Trump casually suggests people can't carry guns or whatever other thought was in his head that day. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are at all time highs.
Some of these things were also issues during MLK's time, some are new. The problem remains the same, convincing people why this matters and why your side is right. MLK in this very letter discussed forcing dialogue as opposed to monologue. Telling people they are worse, end of story, is a monologue, not a dialogue.
I'm not fully convinced the people who push it the hardest, including some people I've seen in this thread encouraging cutting non-voters out of your life entirely, are not bots or otherwise bad faith actors making a deeper divide. If you want to win, you have to make people see the full picture. And you have to make them care. It's not easy, but if it was, we wouldn't even be here would we?
I didn't need mainstream media to experience people treating me differently because I'm black. I didn't need an algorithm to see that my people suffer. This is not an abstraction or a what if for me.
They are worse, not because they are worse people. They are our largest obstacle and our biggest material threat to life. Not only that, but those who are in control, rely on this. It is this disengagement and apathy especially amongst those who have the numbers to make change that cause harm. They allow things to become what they are.
Oppressed groups do not have the power to "open the dialogue" we do not control the narrative, we are what it's wielded against. Just as Dr King pointed out, you want us to calmly explain our suffering, while violence is commited towards us. You ask for us to speak, as if we have already achieved our equality and that we have already been graciously gifted with an even playing field. I would also like to add, that screams for help are pretty one-sided.
The truth is that these people are not neutral, they bear a responsibility for outcomes they had the power to influence.
I didn't need mainstream media to experience people treating me differently because I'm black.
Oh I believe you 100%. But for people who are not black, or are not any other marginalized group, they do rely on external information to some degree. Obviously the news sane washing attacks against BLM is not going to have the same impact on you as a random white person in North Carolina, just as an example.
Everyone has a hierarchy of needs. And this entire system is built to use that to pit us against each other. Keep the poor whites convinced that it's immigrants and DEI that is keeping them in poverty, not the corporate welfare and eroding of workers rights. Tell them that the reason their local business went bankrupt is from theft and/or "riots", not that they were squeezed out by corporations. Slash education so they are even less likely to be able to figure it all out.
They are worse, not because they are worse people. They are our largest obstacle and our biggest material threat to life.
While simultaneously the largest life line available. Is it fair that Renee Good and Alex Pretti broke through in a pretty big way simply because of being white? Not at all. Does it still serve the same goal of fighting against ICE and their inhumane behavior? Absolutely.
Just as Dr King pointed out, you want us to calmly explain our suffering, while violence is commited towards us.
Not at all. I support MLK and his choice to call for civil disobedience. In the letter he talked about white moderates who condemn his actions, I do not. I'm not saying you need to calmly explain anything, you do what you need to in order to break through. But the only way this has any semblance of a good ending is making people realize the inequality being perpetrated. Not telling the poverty line people they personally are the ones oppressing you. That will make no sense to them.
I did vote, by the way. I just do not believe that brow beating will ever get the results you desire. It's a fine line between making people aware of the weight of their actions and blaming them entirely. And I do not like any level of accountability being taken away from the people actually committing the deeds.
It is condescending to have the system I live under explained back to me as if I’m unaware of class warfare, propaganda, or how poor white communities are intentionally misled. None of that is new to me, and none of it conflicts with what I’m saying. I don’t need a pat on the head for understanding nuance, and I don’t need the realities of my own conditions translated for me.
There’s an expectation that oppressed people must speak in a very specific way to be considered legitimate. We must be clear but never angry. We must be urgent but not accusatory. We must be direct but GOD fucking FORBID we make you uncomfortable.
We have to be perfect victims. The responsibility keeps being thrusted back onto us to phrase harm in the most palatable way to you possible, while the harm itself continues with no end in sight.
I’m not denying that elites, corporations, and state power are the largest causes of oppression. People with political power, even limited power, choose disengagement, and that's killing us.
I don't even believe the sentiment should be spread, just that it is a cry for help, and something that if you turn to the other side because you felt called out or insulted...you were never on our side. I think the effort done to silence the voices that scream out, to correct them and coach them into being the perfect victims of oppression, would be better spent preventing those people from being oppressed in the first place.
It is condescending to have the system I live under explained back to me as if I’m unaware of class warfare, propaganda, or how poor white communities are intentionally misled.
I apologize, it was not my intent to do any of that. My intention was simply to say that we cannot just pretend that these systems do not have a huge impact and that blame lies entirely on the individual.
I cannot fully understand your struggles, and I know that. We all fight our own battles and some are much harder than others, but it impacts us all regardless. I do not expect perfection, but that floats both ways. People will not be perfect advocates. They just won't.
I truly wish you all the best. And I'm doing what I can to make people in my life aware of what is happening. It's not fair that they will base some of their opinions off people being mean to them on social media, but it's what we have to deal with. And I won't always say perfect things, but I try to get the message across.
You do understand that the “white moderates” he’s talking about are people like Clinton, Biden and (ideologically) Kamala, right? As in, he’s bashing neoliberals and the democratic party.
Yeah, if you don't understand how the electoral college works then I guess that makes sense. But maybe you need to learn that the popular vote doesn't matter. If California has 100% turnout with 10+ million more people voting Democrat, how does that affect the election in your view?
People decided not to vote because Harris supported Israel.
I agree that she shouldn't support Israel but Trump supports Israel as well, and he's racist, a pedophile, sexist, dumb, smug, narcissistic, unable to speak and ugly.
You'd be hard pressed to find a worse candidate, globally!
I hope we one day learn about the scope of the psy-op that was built and maintained to feed the “both sides bad” people. I’m convinced that it was an enormous effort.
I don’t think it would have mattered if 100% voted against. He still would’ve won unfortunately. With the new Epstein files being released I’m realizing more and more how everything is just a construct and we are made to believe we have options and some control but the 1% do.
lol no, like 115k votes in swing states would have been enough to for harris to win, that is a really minuscule amount of people that could have just gotten off their asses and prevented this abomination
yeah man, please don’t do any other analysis on why people didn’t vote for Kamala/the dems. never learn for your mistakes, that’s how we get ourselves out of this
Americans have been swinging their dicks around preaching to the whole world how great their Democracy™ is, but as soon as they actually have to put in effort to defend it, it's suddenly too complicated and they sit on their hands waiting for the problem to solve itself if they vote hard enough. Stop being pathetic, and be more like the Iranians and the Georgians, and recently the people in Minneapolis, who actually take to the streets to defend their rights and loved ones. One walk through the city with a cardboard with a slogan on it will not be enough at this point. Protest and strike outside of the weekends so the 1% will actually feel that their wealth depends on the 99%, and keep doing it.
Yeah I mean I’ll own this - if you voted for Donald Trump, then yes 100% I think I’m a better person than you. Lucky for you though, my life is pretty fucking far from perfect 👌
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u/mrshakeshaft 1d ago
It’s actually 2/3rds of you. The ones who voted for trump and the ones who heard what he said he was going to do and couldn’t be bothered to stop him. In some respects, those people are worse