It’s “basically saying to people, ‘Look, you can do things that other people would say are immoral or unethical in terms of your voting decisions, and you can get away with it because the voting booth is private,’” Saunders said.
They said the quiet part out loud.
I’ve been dating this for a while. If you look at the things that the christofascists call people who disagree with them they tell the whole story.
Progressive - they’re bad for looking forward and for making you feel bad for looking backwards.
Woke - they’re bad for being aware of social issues and making your feel bad for being ignorant about them.
Intellectual elitists - they’re bad for being smart and making you feel dumb.
Tolerant - they’re bad for accepting that people who make you feel icky exist and making you feel bad for hating and fearing them.
It’s all about how they feel about themselves and that they feel that they are constantly being avoided for being ignorant, intolerant, regressive hicks. It’s about their seething resentment and manipulating it to convince them to vote against their own self-interest instead of helping them to be better.
So, vote your fear, anger, hatred, and intolerance like no one is watching.
You have my sympathy, I used to be the exact same person as you politically. Play the ball, not the player, and all that. I learned the hard way that for populist authoritarians, people like us are marks, suckers. Plain as that. Today it’s vote your conscience, tomorrow it’s think what your family would say. Today it’s “free speech absolutism”, tomorrow all the dissenters get deplatformed for the greater good. Whatever can sound reasonable and promote their agenda that Tuesday.
Considering a “reasonable” appeal they make in isolation, outside the context of their overall goals and values, is exactly what they want you to do. A separate bubble reality for each day, for each issue, for each political scuffle, where they get to pick what ethical values to emphasize and what moral high ground to manufacture. They’re happy as long as you don’t see the big picture and don’t ask yourself questions like “wait… do these people actually believe in individualism? That I should do what I want with my life regardless of what anyone else has to say about it? How important has that value been to them historically?”