Aaaaannnddd another person murdered in the good ol' USA for a nonviolent crime.

Home of the free and the brave is no longer reality, it is propaganda.

@freemo > Home of the free and the brave is no longer reality, it is propaganda.

Completely. It was probably True and Right at the time of the Founders, who got off from under the British monarchy and started a new social contract experiment.

Now? πŸ˜”

Sadly it seems a new Revolution is the only way the country will find its course again. It would be bloody, but the status quo is unreal.

@design_RG Yea the thing about revolution, and civil wars, is there needs to be one of two scenarios for it to work...

1) there needs to be a geographic divide between the two sides. In this case left and the right are geographically intermixed so there are no lines that could be drawn

2) The whole of the people need to unite and universally envision the government as the bad guy with some unified sense of a public morality they are fighting for. With the left-right divide in america there is no unification.

As such revolution isnt likely to happen in the current climate.

@freemo I think it might happen, the country can't keep going as it is.

REgional tensions are high, and the Stupid in charge is only trowing gasoline in the fires. Likely it could end up in a bunch of new regional blocks, and this could take a long time to happen, maybe not.

Depends on many things. I love books and film, and have read and seen many; sometimes it feels like it's preparation for what's possibly to come.

Do you know the "World Made by Hand" novels by James Howard Kunstler ? Lovely, he's agreat writer, this series has 4 novels at the moment.

Highly recommend read.

His personal site : kunstler.com/books/world-made-

@design_RG tensions arent enough... I think you are right that things may blow, but its more likely to look like riots and violence among americans than directed at the government in any real sense.

I mean just look at the people the population is voting for, those politicians dont look like revolution to me, they look like Status Quo with dementia.

We have a democracy, if things stood any chance of changing we would have a half-decent politician up for election right now.

@freemo > We have a democracy

Uhm, can be qualified, maybe "flawed" is a good adjective? I have frequently seen it used.

People are blinded by propaganda and noise, distractions. The political class is crass and corrupted. TWO parties, representing all the people?

Elections turn out, for presidential elections, under 50% ? OMG. And they go around harranging other people's countries and systems. Please.

@design_RG The flaws int he democracy, though, are not any unfairness in how votes are counted or any significant suppression in our ability to vote as we please.

All the flaws you mentioned are flaws inherent int he people, not the government. The people choose to read the huffington posts and the breitbart's of the world and get brainwashed by the propaganda, they choose to vote for the politically corrupt, they choose to buy the lie of a two party system and vote for it.

Every single one of these problems are problems inherent in the people and the choices they make. Every single one would go away if the people actually had any proper vision for a revolution and made changes, but they dont.

@freemo @design_RG Its a problem with system in use not the people. It is not a lie when winner takes all, scenario is applied. Even if some third party wins somehow it would still remain only two party system. Third party would just kick out one of those already in place.

@vnarek

That has no basis in reality. winner take all has nothing to do with a two party system. If anything that would mean its a "one party system" but the meaning there means something very different than what people even mean when they say "two party system".

If for example you saw year after year 3 or 4 parts having rather equal chance of winning then it wouldnt be called a two party system. That can happen simply by people voting as such.

@design_RG

@freemo This is the consensus in the political sciences actually. Look up Duverger's Law.

Yes, it can happen, but the winner takes all situation is going against that. Making additional parties does not make sense, because you can't meaningfully affect the country and people would not vote for third party because it is a waste of votes. Even if somehow a third party wins after some iteration, we are going to end up in two party system again.

@vnarek Hardly consensus that one *garuntees** the other.

It is true that because ofthe fact that people have bought into the lie of a two party system that a plurality vote tends to generate a two party system. This is absolutely true.

Likewise other systems of voting (even with a plurality rule in place) can effectively invalidate this sort of two-party thinking among the people, namely things like ranked-choice voting.

So there is some truth taht effectively, as long as people beleive the fallacy of the two-party system, it will be maintained unless and until counter measures are used to prevent it.

But it still, and always will, rely on the underlying fallacy being consider a truth by the voters and the people.

@vnarek In fact no only is not a scientific consensus that such a law is, in fact, a law, if you just go tot he wikipedia page about the law there are multiple counter examples that disprove the "law" listed.

@freemo Yea it says "tend to favour two-party system". I am just saying that it is hard to go against the system which makes two parties stronger and vote for third party. It is the same as systematic oppression of some race/ethnicity. You can escape poverty, but it is highly unlikely if the system does not want you to.

@vnarek Except it doesnt make the two party stronger. The only thing that makes twh two party system stronger is the fact that people beleive the lie that a two-party system exists in the first place.

It takes only very simple logic to realize as a voter there is no incentive to vote for the two parties. But enough propaganda has spread to convince people that they must vote two parties anyway.

Its little more than people being idiotic and letting that effect their vote. Ideally the system shouldnt need to correct for their idiocy, the people should be thoughtful enough not to let themselves fall into that line of thinking in the first place.

@freemo @vnarek Read about first past the post, it's mathematically impossible for what you're suggesting to work; enough people BENEFIT from this system that they can hold us hostage to the two party system by complying with it. They WANT to force us to use it and their numbers allow this. You can't outvote the rich in first past the post.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

@penny

while it is certainly true that many people benefit from and want a two party system. Specifically those who are loyal to one of those two parties, in truth they have absolutely no power to force us to follow along.

The best they can do is spew advertisements at us (the rich).. but if we listen to those advertisements or not, or whether we actually bother to think for ourselves is entierly on us.

When the rich try to manipulate the public into a two party system, or a vote in general, and it happens to work, it isnt the rich who are to blame, it is the masses who were weak and gullible enough to turn on the TV in the first place, let alone listen to whatever nonsense it spewed at them without bothering to think for themselves.

@vnarek

@freemo @vnarek we can seize power by force, that's true, I'm into that. But it is mathematically impossible to vote our way out without achieving a better voting system
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@penny

by the way I'm not against ranked choice voting, I do support it.

But my point is, its an attempt at invalidating the thinking behind the inherent myth of two-party system. since beleive beleive the logic, however flawed, by introducing ways of voting that invalidate that logic, the idea is it destroys the myth and as such would dissolve the two party system.

But the truth is we dont **need** other forms of voting to do it. If the populace just werent gullible enough to buy the myth in the first place it would be a non issue.

@vnarek

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