this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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politics

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[–] fabian 3 points 1 year ago

This is not a personal attack, the truth is I know nothing about you, and my assumption is that you're most likely a decent human being, as most of us strive to be.

The first reason for my comment is that we've already had a series of 'common sense' laws (in the US) that were used to not allow certain people to participate in the electoral process. These were called literacy tests, and you can read about them here and see an example test.

The other reason is that advocating for stripping rights from other people should not be taken lightly. While young people can be misinformed and make silly mistakes, they are old enough to reason things out and understand the consequeces of their actions, and older people are not immune to any of the things that you mentioned.

Furthermore, the issue of young people not having enough knowledge about the civic process falls squarely on the shoulders of those people in their lives that are teaching them. If your their own parents, teachers, and other role models do not stress the importance of these things, it is unreasonable to expect the average person to be interested.

Finally, this idea of raising the voting age has been floated (recently) since the demographics of the last election came back and showed that young people voted in much higher numbers than usual. It is seen by many people as a naked attempt to game the system to keep people who are voting against republicans from casting their most likely dissenting votes.

Look, you didn't do anything wrong here. You expressed yourself, and a lot of people are jaded because there are a lot of people online who just like to rile people up or are being paid to say intentionally inflammatory things, or they're having a bad day, or take your pick. This is how we learn.

When my daughter was born, we asked the nurses about things our parents had taught us that were now considered not the best way to do things. They told us "when we know better, we do better," and that phrase has really stuck with me.

I hope this interaction hasn't turned you off politics in general, and I wish you the best in your future online commenting endeavors.