Who Are The REAL Silent Majority? Independents, Centrists & Moderates
Let’s do some quick arithmetic! Like, don’t we all just LIVE for fractions?
I know, I know…
*cringe*
But I got over my fear and loathing of my least fave F word in the English language by turning those little fuckers into a yummy pie analogy and whaddaya know, my maths anxieties simply melted away. Math can be quite delicious when it’s food.
Fractions, awaaay!
US POPULATION: 328k-ish
# of People Who Voted in 2020 Election: 159k-ish
Almost 1/2 of those who actually participated went for Trump (but why tho)
And 50% went for Biden, so another 1/2…
70 million people is a lot, but if you think about this situation in proper PIE-spective (yea, I went there), it’s still only one slice. A quarter of the pie.
Takeaway? Neither side has the right to claim that stupid “silent majority”. Each side’s loudest mouthpieces and influencer’s do not represent the true overall values, beliefs and “agendas” of the majority of America.
But this still doesn’t make me feel any better about the state of our democratic republic (because, hello, it’s both!).
Why? Because it means that represent half of a country’s population trying to speak for all 328 million of us. So while we celebrate the historic turnout at the polls in this election, it still means either only half the country cares or that half the country has been disenfranchised so many times, they’ve checked out. Or both.
What it really means, really, is that most Americans are centrists who greatly dislike extemism as a general rule. Americans can no longer afford to allow themselves to be willfully ignorant pawns in info wars engineered by wealthy media conglomerates run by old rich white men. Punditry is generally viewed by most Americans as a form of “yellow journalism”, which I am not sure we should use anymore considering the word “yellow” carries a racial epithet with it toward Asians.
We have been bought and sold by big tech. Our attention spans have become a commodity. Americans generally abhor greed and corruption, desire transparency and a fair shot. That is what the Constitution is supposed to guarantee. Equality.
We must start to live up to that promise. That promise must be kept for BIPOC. Full stop.
And we must work together to establish an objective, common shared Truth.
We cannot let roughly a quarter of this country’s population userp the will of the true majority. The reasonable, rational adults in the room.
However, our neglect is a death sentence. We can no longer bury our heads in the sand. Democracy was never an automatic guarantee.
Just look at the nascent democracies budding around the world that WE have inspired. Let that be proof of how important our role on the worldstage is and why we must remain vigilant to preserve our own.
Consider this:
Every eligible American should be voting in every election.
In a Democratic Republic, we elect representatives to carry out our interests, our will. They work for us. Not for 25% of us, and certainly not for just themselves.
