There’s been a lot of talk about Taylor Swift’s marching orders to
her 112 million Instagram followers this past Sunday. Some folks are
welcoming her to the resistance. Others wish she’d shut her political cake hole and stick to singing (but Kanye West’s blathering on is totally cool).
No matter which side of the fence you find yourself on in the debate
over whether celebrities should be able to use their status to motivate
the political leanings of their fanbase, there is no denying that an
endorsement or suggestion from the right star gets shit done. According
to Buzzfeed, Vote.org has seen an insane spike in traffic since Swift
waded into politics.
s in a single 24-hour
period since T. Swift’s post,” said Kamari Guthrie, director of
communications for Vote.org.
For context, 190,178 new voters were registered nationwide in the
entire month of September, while 56,669 were registered in August.
In Swift’s home state of Tennessee, where she voiced support for two
Democratic candidates running in this year’s midterms, voter
registrations have also jumped.
“Vote.org saw [Tennessee] registrations spike specifically since
Taylor’s post,” Guthrie said. The organization has received 5,183 in the
state so far this month — at least 2,144 of which were in the last 36
hours, she said, up from 2,811 new Tennessee voter registrations for the
entire month of September and just 951 in August.
Holy shit.
Whether this massive registration will translate into a whack of
voters turning up to cast their vote remains to be seen. Hopefully, by
the time November rolls around, folks will have it in them to understand
that participating in the United States’ particular form of democracy
isn’t just a right. It’s also a vital responsibility.
using your platform to drive results at last? Good on ya! Hope it works!
If someone is that easily influenced by someone else, maybe they shouldn’t be voting.
Um…no. No, sorry, but seriously…fuck that.
Here’s the deal: We’re all influenced by each other, every day, all the fucking time. None of us live in a magical intellectual bubble. We’re all humans. We’re a social species.
Politics is all about influence. That’s how it works. And that’s how it works on both sides. Do you honestly think that people who are pushing the bigoted, racist, xenophobic right wing’s agendas aren’t trying to influence people? You think they don’t have spokespeople in media and on twitter and Instagram and Facebook trying to push their ideas and get people to vote? A large percentage of people who vote are going because they were influenced to do so by someone else. So why the elitism about it being Taylor Swift?
Look, not voting doesn’t win us anything. Not voting means we end up with assholes like Trump in charge, putting even bigger assholes like Kavanaugh on the supreme court. Not voting means we as a country are sitting on more medical debt, more student loans, and more poverty than ever before, while the rich keep getting fucking richer and wages stagnate. Not voting means corporations are getting tax breaks and climate change deniers are in charge of the EPA. Not voting means our planet is dying, our economy is collapsing, and people are getting murdered in the streets by the people who are supposed to be there to protect them. Not voting means guns stay in our schools and sex offenders stay in our congress. Not voting means nothing changes.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not impressed by what not voting has gotten us.
So just…don’t. Don’t start shitting on something that’s actually mobilizing people. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s Taylor Swift or Chris Evans or Barney the Purple Fucking Dinosaur. If it’s getting young people–the people who traditionally vote for progress and change–off their collective asses and to the polls? I’m all fucking for it.
Please, please stop trying to claim some intellectual high ground just because people were influenced to do something good by someone they admire and trust.
AlexTheGhost 