This is what is so, so frustrating. I've watched this cycle my entire life, and though I wouldn't really be politically aware until about 99-2000 as Clinton left office, it's the same cycle repeated and has been since at least Reagan. Republicans come in, cut taxes for the rich, start wars, and slowly chip away at our basic liberties. Democrats come in, start in the middle of a war, an economic recession, now a pandemic, etc, and have to clean it up. And then everyone gets pissed off because the dems can't clean it up fast enough and like it's fucking groundhog day, the country forgets and decides what's going to fix it is changing back to the side the caused the fucking problem.

The most mouth breather dumb shit take I hear especially on Lemmy is that "dems just don't inspire enough" so people are going to sit it out or vote third party (which means, help Republicans win.) Well, I guess the absolute dumbest take is voting Republican. Doing the boring ass work and making tiny in roads is not inspiring, but it's how you get to watershed moments. Republicans know this, they've been working for 50 years to overturn Roe, to further the wealth divide, to lock down your civil liberties.

Uh, they are wrong. Think of how much absolute bullshit we would have avoided if turnout in 2016 wasn't so low for Hilary, and people didn't waste their vote on a deliberate spoiler candidate with Jill Stein. You can probably put some numbers on it - how many would not be dead if a rational leader had been overseeing the pandemic? Republicans wouldn't have the Supreme Court, Roe wouldn't have been over turned, we wouldn't have the SC legislating from the bench in regards to EPA/climate change, we could have actual gun legislation, and so much more. The list goes on and on.

Even in 2016, before we knew the depths of how far Trump would sink, we knew he was on tape advising how to commit sexual assault, had been accused of sexual assault by over 20 women, we knew he was racist and demonstrably so, we knew he was a conman that hadn't ever really accomplished anything (unless a record for companies bankruptcies is something?)

But hey, Hilary wasn't "inspiring."

There is a reason there is so much effort to prevent people from voting in this country. There was a deliberate effort in 2016 to convince you that your vote didn't matter, Hilary had it locked up, etc. There is a deliberate effort in basically every red state to gerrymander so progressives can't get ahead.

So anyway, these comments are doing their work for them. Our government has many problems, but the general thing is that it moves slow. If you want to see positive change, vote, and then have an attention span and keep voting.

Don't worry, all the pro-gun people promised that if the government starts ignoring the will of the people they'll shoot them with their cool guns.