It has been tragic to witness politics get reduced to simplistic dichotomies within which you’re either for someone or against them, because it leaves no motivation to persuade people to join your side.
We encourage people to behave like political Puritans who have never supported anything that was detrimental to our society and have always been on the right side of every issue.
This isn’t unique to one side, as both sides of the political aisle have become egotistically partisan, unwilling to meet people where they are and believing that becoming an immovable object on every issue makes them more righteous than the people who sway between the margins.
However, I’ve been witnessing a flippant response that has uniquely come from the political right in response to what they believe are the results of the choices made by voters in any area that’s perceived as a Democrat stronghold: “You voted for this.”
It’s a reductive response to the problems that real people face, but instead of having empathy for what may be going on locally to them, some on the political right choose to figuratively smirk with glee and blame those people for their unfortunate situation.
It’s almost exclusively in response to big-city crime issues, especially ones that are easily propped up by the right-wing online click-bait media machine that’s weaponized against Democrats for supposedly being the accomplices in this societal turmoil.
But there are various complex matters that the right willfully overlooks, because pointing the finger at their political adversaries provides a pleasurable endorphin hit, making it unpleasurable to thoroughly examine their possible participation, or lack thereof, in these dynamics.
Whenever someone says, “They voted for it,” my gut response to them is this: “How do you vote for someone or a party that isn’t there?”
This is the question that’s never given a good answer, because they know the answer holds them partially to blame for “voting for it.”
Highly partisan Republicans refuse to acknowledge their party’s choice to neglect Americans in cities across this great nation by not giving them an option for something possibly better, leaving them to either vote for the devil they know or stay home because the outcome is inevitable.
The typical reply I receive is that “they wouldn’t vote for us anyways,” which, especially coming from those who talk incessantly about personal responsibility and not being a victim, is one of the most irresponsible and defeatist answers someone could provide.
It becomes the justification for never attempting to knock on a door, campaign in areas that are often neglected, or reach out a hand to people who are persuadable. From the perspective of the partisan Republican, everyone is partisan and unreachable because they are; this is called political projection.
Meanwhile, those same Republicans will acknowledge people like me who walked away from the Democratic Party and prop us up as a symbolic mocking of the political left. But just like how partisan Democrats don’t care to understand why someone like me would choose to disassociate with the Democratic Party, neither do partisan Republicans.
There are myriad examples of people who have switched parties, but partisan Republicans only care that they’re on their side and never extract the greater point of the Democrat walkaway: People are persuadable.
When I was a Democrat, I didn’t know any Republicans personally, and the media I consumed only reinforced a left-wing perspective. The only right-wing perspective I would hear came through a malicious left-wing filter.
What helped to open my mind was when I encountered influential people in my life who thought differently and had different political viewpoints. It forced me to question what I believed in and pushed me away from the typical Democratic Party talking points.
However, the Republican strategy appears to be to expect people who have never met an open Republican, have never been sought after locally by Republicans, and have regional cultural voting patterns to just one day vote for them.
The mistake that Republicans make is believing that people who are in “Democrat cities” are in love with the Democrats rather than being passive about the only option available to them. For example, Chicago’s last mayoral election, which resulted in electing Brandon Johnson, had only a 35 percent registered voter turnout.
Lastly, partisan Republicans talk all day about Republican politicians who don’t keep their promises and support measures that most Republicans don’t like but could never conceptualize how many Democrat voters feel the same way about Democrat politicians. Why else do you think we walk away?
We’re all persuadable, but persuasion takes effort, and blaming voters instead of galvanizing the disenchanted ones is a lazy, losing tactic.
The people who are enamored with the sentiment “they voted for this” don’t actually want to win; they just want to feel like winners.
