Douglas Edwards 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽🇵🇦🇬🇱🇩🇰🇪🇺<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://federate.social/@Simplicator" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>Simplicator</span></a></span> Sympathy. I just saw your attempt to engage with Ben Royce, with whom I had been mutuals. I just now unfollowed him and am seriously considering blocking him. He went beyond vote-shaming to victim blaming. The idea that the desperately corrupt and ideologically malign <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/JackassParty" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>JackassParty</span></a> leadership is primarily responsive to the votes or non-votes of *leftists* is so far out of touch with reality that I personally see little point in engaging with anyone who professes to believe it — but I have nothing but sympathy for anyone who does engage. You aren't alone on the issue of vote-shaming.</p><p>I did vote for <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/KamalaHarris" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>KamalaHarris</span></a>, and even donated hundreds of dollars to her campaign, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to avoid — well, what is happening right now. But even at the time, I understood clearly that if she had won, we would pay a heavy price for staving off immediate disaster. President Harris would have extended the disastrous decades-long work of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — the work of convincing the American public that no matter who they vote for, or how enthusiastically, or in what numbers, their lives will continue to get harder, and billionaires and corporations will continue getting richer. That is the real reason why so many don't vote. (And the vast majority of the non-voters can hardly be classified as leftists.)</p><p>At least some of the beliefs of <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/JackassParty" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>JackassParty</span></a> devotees are as wildly cultish as those of the fascists, even if they are incomparably more humane in their goals. <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/BlueMAGA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BlueMAGA</span></a></p>