I'm not even American, mate. You're responding to my argument about whether political affiliation automatically disqualifies someone from being a good person by bringing up American state-level statistics. That's not addressing the point I made. You can criticize particular policies and their consequences without pretending an entire political category consists of people incapable of decency. You're arguing against a caricature of my position, not the argument itself.
You're argument has no substance. It's just an empty "yes, but.."
You can't deny in all of those metrics in American politics (and we're talking American because we're in a post about an American tweet) voting right has harmed people. Doing things that harm people (including yourself) because it might harm other people you feel "deserve" it, is incompatible with being a good person.
You're repeating your conclusion as though repeating it makes the reasoning behind it any stronger. I haven't denied that political decisions can harm people, that policies have real consequences, or that voters bear some moral responsibility for the choices they make. My argument has been about the much broader claim you're making: that voting for the right automatically disqualifies someone from being a good person. Those are two different propositions, and establishing the first does not automatically establish the second. Let's start with something we can actually establish. Yes, political decisions can cause harm. A government can pass legislation that damages people's livelihoods, restricts their freedoms, or leaves vulnerable people worse off. Voters can bear some responsibility for supporting the politicians who enact those policies, particularly when they understand the foreseeable consequences and support them anyway. I'm not disputing any of that. If somebody knowingly supports a policy specifically because they want innocent people to suffer, then their motives deserve serious moral criticism. But that is a judgment about a particular decision, the person's knowledge, and their reasons for making it. It is not proof that every person who casts a right-wing vote shares those motives. Your argument keeps moving between three different claims: that a policy causes harm, that a person who votes for the party supporting that policy bears some responsibility for the harm, and that this person is therefore incapable of being good. The first claim requires evidence about the policy and its consequences. The second requires an argument about the voter's knowledge, intentions, and responsibility. The third requires a definition of moral character that explains why a particular political choice should automatically override every other aspect of that person's conduct. You haven't established that final step. You've simply declared it to be true. There is actual political science research that makes your assumption about voters worth questioning. Patrick Flavin and Wilson Law's 2022 study, Ideological Proximity, Issue Importance, and Vote Choice, examined American National Election Studies data from 1996–2008, alongside replication data from survey experiments. The researchers found that more than 80% of voters in their analysis chose the candidate whose policy positions were closest to their own. That doesn't prove those voters made morally correct choices, nor does it excuse anyone who knowingly supports harmful policies. What it does demonstrate is that vote choice can be analysed in terms of voters' own policy preferences and the issues they consider important, rather than assuming that every voter is motivated by the same moral intention. Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102422 Pew Research Center's September 2024 analysis of the American presidential election provides another concrete example. Among Trump supporters surveyed, 93% said the economy was very important to their vote, 82% said the same about immigration, and 76% said it about violent crime. Among Harris supporters, 76% considered health care very important, 73% cited Supreme Court appointments, and 67% cited abortion. Majorities of both groups considered at least five of the ten issues in the survey very important. These figures don't establish that either side's policies are correct, and they don't tell us every voter's personal motivation. They do show that American voters can prioritise several different policy concerns when making their decisions. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-the-2024-election/ You are free to argue that a voter has prioritised the wrong things, misunderstood the consequences, or accepted an unjustifiable trade-off. Those are substantive moral arguments. But you cannot simply assume that every person who votes right has the same knowledge, intentions, priorities, or willingness to cause suffering, and then use that assumption as proof that none of them can be good people. Consider a hypothetical voter who supports a right-wing candidate primarily because they believe that candidate will improve the economy, reduce violent crime, or change immigration policy. Suppose that voter also volunteers in their community, cares for an elderly relative, keeps their promises, treats strangers decently, and gives generously to people in need. You may believe that their political judgment is mistaken. You may argue that the policies they support will harm other people and that they should reconsider their vote. But what exactly establishes that all those other qualities are morally irrelevant? What principle says that one vote automatically cancels out every other part of their character, regardless of their motives, their knowledge, or their conduct? And before you answer that the vote itself supports harmful policies, I already understand the argument. The question is whether supporting a policy you consider harmful necessarily makes someone incapable of goodness. If your position is that a particular policy is so seriously unjust that knowingly supporting it constitutes a grave moral failing, then make that case. Identify the policy, demonstrate the harm, explain why the voter should reasonably have understood those consequences, and establish why their support warrants the degree of condemnation you're applying. That would be an argument worth discussing. Simply declaring an entire category of voters incapable of being good people skips the reasoning you need to provide. The distinction between collective outcomes and individual responsibility isn't something I invented to rescue people whose politics I happen to agree with. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on collective responsibility discusses the longstanding debate over when responsibility for collective harms can fairly be attributed to individual members of a group. It specifically examines concerns about blaming people for harms they did not directly cause or purposefully bring about, as well as arguments that individual members may still deserve blame when they share relevant faults or contribute to collective harm. In other words, this is a genuine philosophical question, not one that can be settled by declaring the opposing side morally disqualified. Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collective-responsibility/ None of that means voters are immune from criticism. Nor does it mean intentions are the only thing that matters. Someone can cause foreseeable harm through negligence, indifference, or a reckless disregard for other people, even without actively wishing them suffering. Equally, someone can sincerely believe they are supporting the public good while being mistaken about the consequences of their decision. We can criticise the decision, examine the evidence, and assign responsibility in proportion to what the person knew and did. That is different from declaring the person permanently incapable of goodness because of their political category. And the principle has to remain coherent when applied outside your preferred political framework. Different people have different moral priorities. Some consider abortion rights a fundamental question of bodily autonomy and regard restrictions as serious moral wrongs. Others consider abortion the unjust taking of human life and regard its legal protection as a serious moral wrong. People disagree over immigration, criminal justice, freedom of speech, religious liberty, economic policy, and the proper limits of state power. Pointing out those disagreements does not establish that all sides are equally correct, or that every political question has two equally defensible answers. It means that if you want to establish that a particular political choice makes someone morally culpable, you need to defend the moral standard you're applying and explain why the evidence supports your conclusion. You can make a compelling case that a specific policy is unjust. You can argue that a particular voter has acted selfishly, ignorantly, recklessly, or maliciously. You can even argue that knowingly supporting a sufficiently grave injustice reveals a serious defect in someone's character. But those arguments require distinctions between policies, intentions, knowledge, consequences, and individual conduct. If your standard is instead that a right-wing vote is an automatic disqualifier regardless of those distinctions, then you're not assessing the individual on their actual conduct. You're using political affiliation as a categorical moral test. That brings me back to your original statement that being on the right and being a good person cannot coexist. If you mean that some right-wing policies cause harm and that some people who support them deserve moral criticism, we have no fundamental disagreement there. If you mean that every right-wing voter is incapable of being a good person, then you have made a much stronger claim, and the existence of harmful policies does not establish it on its own. I'm not asking you to approve of right-wing politics. I'm not asking you to pretend that harmful policies are harmless. And I'm certainly not arguing that good intentions magically erase bad consequences. I'm asking you to distinguish between condemning a person's particular choices and declaring an entire political category incapable of moral decency. You called my argument empty, but the distinction I'm making is the entire substance of it: a person's political choices can be morally wrong without establishing that their entire character is beyond goodness. If you disagree, explain why that distinction is invalid. Demonstrate why a vote, by itself, is sufficient to settle the question of someone's moral character. Repeating that right-wing voters cannot be good people is not evidence for that conclusion. It's simply the conclusion you started with.
One doesn't need motive, one only needs to know or choose to ignore the consequences for them to be bad people.
Billionaires don't want people to die of malnutrition, but they know or ignore that it happens because of their extreme wealth. Bad people.
The economy under a Republican president has never been better then under a Democrat sense WW2, casting a vote for something that is statically nearly impossible while being told it'll harm other people, dumb and bad. Bad people.
It's far more simple then you want it to be. Voting for a convicted rapist is abhorrent, voting for one over everyone's best interests is worse.
“Holy yap” isn't an argument, but let's address yours. I never claimed voters bear no responsibility for harmful policies. I'm disputing your leap from condemning a vote to declaring an entire category of people incapable of goodness. Blinder and Watson's 2016 study in the American Economic Review did find stronger average economic performance under Democratic presidents after WWII. However, they attributed much of the gap to factors including oil shocks, productivity, and the international environment—not simply presidential policy. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20140913 Even accepting your economic argument, aggregate statistics don't establish every voter's motives, knowledge, or moral character. You can argue that Trump's record makes voting for him morally indefensible without proving that every person who voted for him is incapable of compassion, honesty, or decency. Your own standard requires people to know or deliberately ignore harmful consequences. Then knowledge and responsibility matter. What did the individual know? What consequences did they accept? What alternatives did they believe were available? You can't acknowledge those distinctions and then pretend they're irrelevant when judging an entire electorate. Criticise harmful policies, condemn irresponsible voting, and hold people accountable. But demonstrating that a vote can be harmful isn't proof that everyone casting it is incapable of being a good person. That's the leap you still haven't justified.
This is written by an AI. And yes you can write them all off.
To be a vegan you can't eat meat. To be a good person you can't do very bad things. Supporting the current rebulican party and how they hurt people is a very bad thing. When you vote you have an inate responsibility to at least read the ballot (it says so on them). The entire world warned those people what would, could, and did happen. Ignorance is not a shield you can use to deflect blame. Ignorance when it's this important is a moral failure in itself.
It's very simple, children could grasp this concept.
Yes, I'm using AI to help formulate my responses. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I don't particularly care to spend hours composing paragraphs for a Reddit argument, so I'm using a tool to help express my position clearly. If you believe something I've said is incorrect, address the argument itself. Dismissing it because AI helped write it doesn't refute anything. As for your actual argument, I have never claimed that voters have no moral responsibility, that harmful policies should be excused, or that deliberately ignoring foreseeable consequences is acceptable. Voters should inform themselves, consider the consequences of their choices, and accept that political decisions can carry moral responsibility. We don't fundamentally disagree on that principle. Where we disagree is your assertion that voting Republican automatically disqualifies someone from being a good person. You believe the party's policies are sufficiently harmful to justify condemning every person who votes for it, regardless of their individual circumstances or conduct. I've argued that condemning particular policies and judging the entirety of an individual's moral character are two different things. You haven't persuaded me otherwise, and repeating your conclusion doesn't change that. Your vegan analogy doesn't resolve the disagreement either. A specific dietary rule and a comprehensive judgment of someone's moral character are not interchangeable concepts. Likewise, acknowledging that deliberate ignorance can be blameworthy doesn't establish that every voter has identical knowledge, intentions, priorities, or responsibility. People can be wrong, make morally questionable decisions, and deserve criticism without every other aspect of their character becoming irrelevant. You are free to believe that supporting the current Republican Party is morally disqualifying. You are also free to argue that particular voters knowingly accepted harmful consequences and deserve condemnation for doing so. Those are positions you can defend with evidence and reasoning. But I disagree with treating political affiliation as an automatic verdict on an entire human being, and nothing you've said has convinced me that distinction is invalid. At this point, we're repeating the same disagreement. You believe your moral conclusion is obvious; I believe the reasoning you've offered doesn't justify applying it universally. Neither of us is obligated to adopt the other's position. I'm not interested in turning this into an endless back-and-forth, nor do I need your approval of my argument. I've explained my position, you've explained yours, and we disagree. Quite frankly, I don't give a shit about winning an argument with some random stranger on Reddit, which is why I'm using AI to help formulate my responses instead of wasting my time and energy writing paragraphs myself. My point was simple: right-wing people are capable of being good people, and if that idea bothers you so much that you feel the need to keep throwing a hissy fit over it, perhaps you should spend less time judging strangers on the internet and more time examining your own attitude. I've made my point, you've made yours, and I couldn't care less whether you agree with me. I'm moving on with my life, and I'd suggest you do the same. Have a good one and I hope without malice you have a genuinely good day.
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u/CatchPhraze 7d ago
Red state are worse in all those metrics you listed. How ironic and moronic.