Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if we keep telling them everyone believes in this stuff and your vote doesn't count and so on I don’t know if you can fix lazy. Turning out new voters basically happens once a generation. The rest tell themselves tales that their vote could never matter, and in doing that, subtly endorse the status quo .
Your comment is extremely reductionist and reverses causality for a large number of voters. Both political parties have multi-decade track records of aggressively supporting pro-corporate political agendas at the expense of their constituency. So in light of literal decades of watching prospects decline regardless of which party is currently in power many voters (correctly) conclude that their vote will not lead to m…
Someone only tuning into general elections and making this complaint is either not intellectually there or plain lazy. Very few places in this country have zero competitive elections on the ballot. And none exist where calling electeds and showing up to advocate don’t move the needle. Doing those things takes effort, however, and I concede that for a lot of people that effort isn’t worth it since they’re comfortable enough—personally—with the status quo.
The flip side is that leaves a lot more room for everyone else. It’s genuinely surprising how accessible power in America is once you start wielding it. That sucks when nobody is watching but a few paid interests. It gets interesting when you find yourself, repeatedly, as the only person in the room with the levers.