You know, 18-24 year olds are the least likely to vote.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL things unholy, prove me wrong…
And young people wonder why no one listens to them. Get mad. Call your elected officials about things that you care about. Volunteer for someone you like. Donate if you can. Commenting online is not doing anything.
Oh yeah… fucking vote.
That’s the thing. Politicians do have access to lists who are registered to vote and who voted and in which election.
If your base doesn’t vote, they will adjust their program to those who will. Old people get their way, because they ALWAYS vote.
If your base doesn’t vote, they will adjust their program to those who will. Old people get their way, because they ALWAYS vote
This as well as the OP ignores the fact that the top two reasons for people not voting are politicians alienating them and politicians making it too difficult to vote.
Victim blaming the alienated and encumbered nonvoters does nothing about the root of the problem and is the equivalent of scolding someone working 60 hour weeks for minimum wage for not exercising and cooking healthy meals for themselves often enough.
Disclaimer to save some time rebutting the obvious strawman: I’m not an 18-24yo nonvoter myself. I’m 41 and never missed a chance to vote or told anyone not to.
But what 18-24 yo thinks their life will improve under Trump? Can’t imagine that group of people.
No sane one. Their lives haven’t improved under Biden either, though, which isn’t great for their motivation to go wait for in line for hours to vote against Trump making everything even worse than it already is again.
Is it because trump SCOTUS blocked any changes he tried to do, claiming that it is outside of his power, and the Republican controlled house refuses to pass legislation that would codify it?
That’s like 5% of it. The farce of the Senate parliamentarian comes to mind as an obvious example.
Another is when Manchin scrapped everything progressive from the omnibus bill and was awarded for it, never being disciplined for standing in the way of what Biden and the rest were pretending to want to do.
And of course, there’s the means testing everything to death, like the Dem leadership always do in order to not inconvenience their owner donors too much.
Ok, but that’s also total bullshit. Elected officials don’t give a shit whether you’re young or old, politically inclined or not, foreign or domestic, it only matters if you have money.
These are all good suggestions, and the best way to fight the power. But don’t expect to make politicians care. The goal is to make enough noise and demand your rights, because the powerful will only concede ground when it becomes unprofitable to fight you.
They need votes to win first, and if there are voters that would block their victory they would have to accommodate them too.
As for bribes that’s another issue and we need to keep their feet to fire and not allow
The vast majority of voters are not that dialed in to politics. They vote for names they recognize, or the name next to the D or R that they support. Name recognition is a commodity you can buy with money. If you asked a candidate whether they would rather have a billionaire donor or 10,000 volunteers, guarantee they would all pick the billionaire.
I think that group is also the least likely to answer a poll.
Could be the sleeper we need.
Not polling, actually voting
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2017/comm/voting-rates-age.html
This post didn’t have to be ageist. But it is.
Fun fact, gen z turned up more to vote than any other generation before them- when that generation was the same age, and millennials kinda started that trend.
So you can get off your soap box and stop laying the groundwork for blaming us for yet another thing.
It’s not ageist to say that young people do not vote at the rates of older people. It’s just a fact.
Good for us for voting in record numbers. They’re still poor numbers.
OP clearly seems to think the problem is young voters not voting.
Otherwise there would be no reason to mention that specific age group at all. If the motivation is to encourage people to vote, age is irrelevant- any additional voter is good.
This post is specifically calling out a specific age group, and that’s blatantly ageist. In exactly the same way that saying “black people are convicted of more crime, so stop doing crime!” would be blatantly racist.
The assumption is because when they were that age they didn’t vote… that people that age aren’t voting.
Another statistic- across the board, 40% of Americans don’t vote. Ever. And it’s not a question of age.
This has some major “all lives matter” vibes.
Riiight.
“Hey OP is being ageist .”
“Nuhuh!”
“Calling out a specific group for not voting when nearly half of Americans don’t vote is ageism.”
“Getting some all lives matter vibes!”
Totally the same. Totally.
Simply mentioning a group doesn’t automatically mean discrimination against that group.
What discrimination has been committed against 18-24 year olds because of this post? Was anyone fired? Injured? Killed? Kicked out of their housing? What’s the actual harm you’re upset about here?
I dunno, being blamed for 2016, with with the same damn statement during the election, rather than actually listening to what people are saying seems pretty harmful to me.
Also, there doesn’t need to be clear harm for it to be bigotry. OP’s entire comment - not just the idle fact- is clearly based in a belief that under-25’s don’t vote, and clearly felt it was something they needed to correct.
It is true to say that there are more boomers- as a percentage of boomers- voting over millennials or gen z, (70%, 55%, and 48%) but it’s patently not fair to say we don’t.
Particularly when you understand many of the reasons that young-ish voters are not voting.
The national average was 60%, in 2020, and you have to go back to 1968 to see a higher turn out. Americans suck at voting, there’s really no need to pin it on any one group.
Except OP didn’t say they DON’T vote. They said they were LEAST LIKELY to, which you just confirmed with data.
So either you and OP are both ageist for pointing that out or neither of you are.
Heart disease is one of the biggest causes of death in all age brackets.
For people 65 and older it is the leading cause of death.
Is it ageist to point out that statistic? Is it ageist to recommend that older people should see their doctor regularly, pay special attention to their cardiac health, eat right, get exercise, etc?
Of course all people should do those things, but since those older people are the ones who are most at risk of those issues, I think it’s pretty reasonable to specifically target them with those messages.
Ageism would be if you refuse to hire someone who’s over 65, or insure them, or allow them to do other things just because statistically people in their age bracket are more likely to randomly keel over dead of a heart attack, whether or not they themselves actually have any cardiac issues.
Same goes for voting. Americans in general vote in pretty sad numbers, but the numbers for young people are especially bad, even if our current young people are better at it than young people of previous generations, the numbers for them still are pretty bad.
Pointing that out, encouraging them to vote, talking about why that’s the way it is, what it means for them and for the rest of us, etc. isn’t ageist.
What could be considered a form of ageism, however, is that because they don’t vote in as great of numbers, politicians don’t pay attention to the needs and wants of younger people.
And unfortunately since we can’t just flip a switch and make politicians and other voters grow a conscience and take those younger people into consideration when they’re making decisions, the only way to address it is to actually get those younger people to vote and make their voices heard.
There’s other issues at play, the way people talk about young people not voting and such can certainly contain some ageist language, not all of the takes on the issue are good ones, and the way people try to target their messaging to those younger people to encourage them to vote is often seriously lacking, tone deaf, and even offensive.
There’s also the issue that the way voting and politics are handled in this country can often make it difficult for young people to get to the poles, be engaged in the process, etc, and there’s certainly an argument to me made for that being an ageism issue.
But just making the core statement that young people don’t vote in high enough numbers is not in and of itself against.
Circling around to the all lives matter comparison
Just as people of any age can die of heart disease, people of any race can be needlessly killed by police. However, in both examples, people of certain demographics are at significantly higher risk of those things occurring. Yes there’s a lot of overlap between things that may get both a black guy and a white guy shot by cops, or that may lead to both a 20 year old and an 80 year old having a heart attack, and tackling those common issues is important, but there’s also risk factors that significantly impact one demographic or the other and they need special attention. Black people have to deal with poor police training, mental illness, drug use, etc. same as white people, but they also have to deal with systemic racism on top of that and white people don’t generally have to deal with that, and old people have congenital heart issues, environmental exposures, poor diet and exercise habits same as young people, but have additional health concerns due to their age on top of that which don’t tend to affect young people. As they say a rising tide raises all ships, but some of those ships have issues besides just being stuck at low tide, and the rising tide isn’t going to do anything to fix their leaky hull.
Which is why “all lives matter” is such a stupid statement, because if they truly think that all lives matter, they’d be happy to see those leaky ships getting patched up so they can take advantage of the tide rising for everyone.
So yes, it’s an issue that Americans in general don’t vote enough, but younger people especially don’t vote enough, and so we need to be paying special attention to that issue to try to solve that and make sure their voices are heard. And saying that calling attention to that issue is ageist because other demographics also don’t vote enough absolutely has the same kind of energy as pulling the “all lives matter” bullshit when people talk about black people being killed by police because “white people can get shot too.” Both can be true, and we need to address both parts of those issues, but one demographic needs a little extra or at least a different kind of attention. We can’t ignore the age-related health complications, the systemic racism, and the factors that lead to poor voter turnout amongst younger people just because those issues don’t affect everyone, we have to address them alongside those other issues.
“Old people can’t be ageist against young people”.
Is basically what you are saying.
Also that analogy with cardiac arrest? It is ageist if you then proceed to blame them for whatever. Older people have more cardiac-related problems because they’re old, and things just wear out. Genetics plays a huge risk factor there as well.
the problem here, is that this rhetoric is a prelude to “those damn kids didn’t vote and that’s why we lost”.
You want to make sure young people’s voices are heard? Then listen to them.
Pointing fingers rarely is persuasive or motivational.
“Old people can’t be ageist against young people”.
Is basically what you are saying.
I’d very much like to hear you explain how that is your takeaway from what I said.
Older people have more cardiac-related problems because they’re old, and things just wear out.
Which would fall under the category of age-related health issues I mentioned that is one of the special considerations their specific demographic needs special attention paid to. People of any age can keel over of a genetic defect, and addressing those kinds of issues helps everyone, but it doesn’t address the specific issue of a 70 year old with a worn-out ticker with no genetic issues, and so there also needs to be attention paid to those specific issues that don’t affect young people. Just as addressing mental health issues helps everyone not get shot by cops but doesn’t address systemic racism, and how improving voter turnout overall is good but may not be enough to specifically get younger voters to turn out in similar numbers to older ones.
the problem here, is that this rhetoric is a prelude to “those damn kids didn’t vote and that’s why we lost”.
And how wild would it be if those damn kids actually turned up and voted in unprecedented numbers, took this election by storm, and kept doing so for the rest of their lives turning politics on its fucking head, making politicians have to cater to them and subsequent young generations? It’s only a prelude to that if 1. The younger people in fact don’t vote and 2. The election is lost by a margin that could have been made up by those youth voters, and if both of those things happen, it would in fact be true that it’s one of the reasons the election was lost from a numbers perspective, millennials and Gen z could be one of the biggest voting blocks, we have the numbers to call the shots if we just turn out and vote, but we don’t.
You want to make sure young people’s voices are heard? Then listen to them.
I’m listening, hell, I’m looking forward to hearing your rebuttal to this, the problem is that what matters isn’t getting some rando on the internet to listen to you, you need to get politicians to listen to you, and unless you have the money to throw around and buy them like big companies, lobbyists, and billionaires can do, the only way to get them to listen is by using your vote.
Pointing fingers rarely is persuasive or motivational
And sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling when someone says something you don’t like doesn’t exactly leave you very open to being motivated or persuaded, and yet here we both are doing weird things with our fingers.
Who the ever-loving-fuck is being polled? I don’t know a single person who even knows a person who has been polled. Fuck these polls.
Not polling; actually voting.
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2017/comm/voting-rates-age.html
18-24 as a group does not vote
You know, 18-24 year olds are the least likely to vote.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL things unholy, prove me wrong…
People don’t want to admit this, but young people are politically apathetic. Don’t believe me? You could easily Google voter demographic turnout in American elections since the 1960s.
Young people just don’t vote but love to whine.
I’m not saying this to dissuade people from voting, but the low turnout is a young people problem and I won’t hold my breath whether or not they turn up in the next elections.
18-24 year olds are the least likely to vote.
To be fair, I wouldn’t expect a demographic cohort who are never going to own a house to be keen to turn out and vote for the people who created that situation.
I think it’s worth platforming this particular indigenous perspective outlined in Voting is Not Harm Reduction. Not expounding the point but rather bringing a concertedly marginalized voice into the conversation. https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/
Interesting read, but the article makes some jumps in logic that don’t really make any sense to me. Like, you’re going to fight white supremacy by handing the reigns over to a white supremacist who intends to become dictator, and don’t see that as contradictory? OK? Colonial powers didn’t want to allow you to vote, but now that you can, you’re giving it up for… reasons?
When it comes down to it, it’s basically accelerationism. That’s not going to topple capitalism. All that it’ll do is result in an unimaginable tragedy and then potentially (if you’re lucky) reinstallment of the status quo by outside powers.
I’m sympathetic to the authors position, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve thought this through properly.
Yeah, i agree that there are some really tough contradictions there, and the material result definitely looks like accelerationism.
Thanks for reading it!
My pleasure. It was good food for thought! Even though I disagree with their takeaway, they did make a lot of valid points.
Because body autonomy for women is more important than your petty bullshit.
If Trump is elected, women will die.
RvW was lost under a Democrat, a party that promised for decades to do something, then did nothing. Democrats are equally to blame for women being denied rights
What a load of bullshit.
6 Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents overturned Roe. Fuck off with that both sides crap.
Bullshit. It was a Supreme Court decision. 6/9 of them are conservative and 5/9 of them are extreme right. If Trump were never elected it wouldn’t have happened.
Had liberals listened to us in 2016 about clinton and 2020 about Biden we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
It was Pelosi that refused to bring the freedom of choice act up for a vote. It was democrats that refused to primary anyone not in support of its passage.
While you still have a choice, while voting still determines who sits that position, yes, you should.
When the alternative is Project 2025? Yes.
